' Interesting '...
I have heard of Mystical Teachers, speak of those that do not return..
The Gurus' speak of the freedom that they hold..
The Freedom of 'Found'..
Those that love the puzzle of life, will grin within understanding..
We can speak of thought control as religions..
Truth has no religion..
Truth Is...
-thomas
' Who is seeing What ? '...
"There's no state in which one is seeing reality.
WHO is seeing WHAT?
You can only BE real.
(And that you are always.)
The problem exists only in thinking.
Let all false ideas go, that's all.
There's no need for true ideas.
(Since there are none.)"
-Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj
' A guest house '...
This being human is a guest house.
Every morning a new arrival.
A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes
as an unexpected visitor.
Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they're a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture,
still, treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out
for some new delight.
The dark thought, the shame, the malice,
meet them at the door laughing,
and invite them in.
Be grateful for whoever comes,
because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond.
- Rumi
' Procastination '...
'Once in awhile I talk with people about the importance of self-knowledge.
Most are procrastinators. They say they will explore the inner world as
soon as a few pressing problems are solved.'
'Procrastination is illogical from every viewpoint. It is like the man who
wanted to cross the stream, so he sat on the bank to wait for all the water
to run by.'"
There is a Way Out, p. 53
Vernon Howard
' For Enlightenment to occur '...
All that is necessary for enlightenment to occur is the clear understanding that it is an utterly different dimension from mere intellectual comprehension, the dimension of BEING, to which no rigorous discipline or set practices can even be relevant.
Seekers continue to practice all kinds of self-torture without realizing that such 'spiritual practice' is a reinforcement of the very ego that prevents them from their natural, free state.
-A Net of Jewels
Ramesh S. Balsekar
' This being human '...
This being human is a guest house.
Every morning a new arrival.
A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes
as an unexpected visitor.
Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they're a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture,
still, treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out
for some new delight.
The dark thought, the shame, the malice,
meet them at the door laughing,
and invite them in.
Be grateful for whoever comes,
because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond.
- Rumi
Coleman Barks
"The Essential Rumi"
HarperSanFrancisco, 1995
' Needs '...
"You will receive everything you need when you stop asking for what you do not need."
-Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj
' Insight '...
“A beautiful woman looking at her image in the mirror may very well believe the image is herself.
An ugly woman knows it is not.”
― Simone Weil,
Waiting for God
' I will soothe you '...
“I will soothe you and heal you,
I will bring you roses.
I too have been covered with thorns.”
― Jalaluddin Rumi
' The eye of seeing '...
“The eye through which I see God is the same eye through which God sees me;
my eye and God's eye are one eye,
one seeing,
one knowing,
one love.”
― Meister Eckhart, Sermons of Meister Eckhar
' The worth of a happiness '...
"What is the worth of a happiness for which you must strive and work?
Real happiness is spontaneous and effortless."
-Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj
' One Universal Mind '...
In The Hidden Teaching Beyond Yoga and The Wisdom of the Overself I unveiled that portion of the hidden teaching which negated materialism and showed the world to be immaterial and spiritual.
In this book I unveil the remaining portion which shows that the person himself is devoid of real existence, that the ego is a fiction, and that there is only the One Universal Mind.
-- Notebooks Category 28: The Alone > Chapter 1: Absolute Mind > # 38
-- Perspectives > Chapter 28: The Alone > # 40 Paul Brunton
' Tuesday '...
It is only the beginning of the week, but knowledge demands entrance ..
You usually expect knowledge to enter your consciousness near the end of week..
But, time is short and knowledge must be presented within smaller hours..
The thought of dissolution of consciousness usually presents itself as death..
But the darkness of death of dreams always ends in Light..
This is the part that you do not understand..
You fear 'non-being', most of all..
The Truth is that there is no 'non-being '..
You return to the Mind of Thought..
You awaken as the Observer..
So easy to state, but difficult for the ego to accept...
-thomas
' The No-Mind state '...
When both the rational and intuitive planes of mind are
allowed full operation, they get superimposed on each
other resulting in a fasting of the mind or NO-MIND state.
This is the most alert state in which the mind can find itself
because of the total freedom in which it can operate - a
beautiful, natural blending of discipline and spontaneity.
- Ramesh S. Balsekar
"A Net of Jewels"
Ramesh S. Balsekar
Advaita Press, 1996
' The web of your own illusions '...
Because it’s endlessly being both created…AND destroyed…a trillion times every nano-second, the dream world appears to be in constant animation.
However, since it’s cycling so fast between “something” and “nothing,” you don’t even notice it happening.
However, (on a more recognizable scale,) the entire world abruptly seems to end every night whenever you slip into dreamless sleep and collapse the universe down into the singularity in your own “heart-of-hearts.”
In the morning, however, you automatically re-enact the “Big Bang” and, from the nothingness of the Void, you spontaneously re-construct the entire dream world.
Identifying with an ego-based body, you re-create your habituated relationships and entanglements and, every morning, get entranced again by the seductive web of your own illusions.
-Chuck Hillig
' The second illumination '...
In the moment that there dawns on his understanding the fact of Mind's beginninglessness and deathlessness,
he gains the second illumination,
the first being that of the ego's illusoriness and transiency.
-- Notebooks Category 28: The Alone > Chapter 2: Our Relation To the Absolute > # 106
-- Perspectives > Chapter 28: The Alone > # 28 Paul Brunton
' Back to Silence '...
You have to become more interested in the silent background than in the foreground, the phenomena: thoughts, emotions, sounds, smells, etc.
Most people are focused on the foreground and what their five senses bring them, but the Self is discovered in the background.
The Self is the source from which the phenomena spring and the ground in which this display of phenomena is happening, from the subtlest feelings and experiences to the grossest matter.
When you rest as this background, you can taste your Self.
You just give yourself to it.
Actually, you’re giving your idea of yourself to your true Self.
The idea comes out of the silence, so you give the idea of who you are back to silence.
~ Adyashanti
The Impact of Awakening
Inline image 1
' The Void '...
People are scared to be engulfed by the void.
What they don’t realize is that their own mind is the void.
-Huang Po
' Divinity is Reality '...
The idea that we have to wait for liberation from the ego and enlightenment by the Overself,
to evolve through much time and many reincarnations,
is correct only if we continue to remain mesmerized by it,
but false if we take our stand on reality rather than appearance:
we are now as divine as we ever shall be--but we must wake up from illusion and see this truth.
-- Notebooks Category 23: Advanced Contemplation >
Chapter 1: Entering the Short Path > # 25
Paul Brunton
' Aloneness== All One Ness '...
The title will introduce you to thoughts and words that were implanted within literature in the last ten thousand years of creative symbols within rock, metal, and paper..
The 'Art' of symbols and painting of nature are balanced..
Voices step forward within the illusions to stir Dreams..
These Dreamers, called Mystics..
So many were killed because they dared to tell Truth..
The Mystics will continue to walk within thoughts forming poetry..
There is no inch of distance between You and the Dreamer..
Perhaps, waking up for a few centuries would be welcome to Light...
-thomas
' Here and Now '...
“This is the real secret of life --
to be completely engaged with what you are doing in the here and now.
And instead of calling it work,
realize it is play.”
― Alan W. Watts
' Our true nature '...
The knowledge you are seeking about your true state is unknowable because comprehension at the mind level is only conceptual and therefore totally illusory.
What you are seeking is what you ALREADY ARE.
We neither exist nor not exist.
Our true nature is neither presence nor absence but the annihilation of both.
-A Net of Jewels
Ramesh S. Balsekar
' Unchanging Truth '...
How can a mental state be the final realization?
It is temporary.
Mystic experience is such a state.
It is something one enters and leaves.
Beyond and higher is realization of unchanging truth.
-- Notebooks Category 16: The Sensitives >
Chapter 2: Phases of Mystical Development > # 29
Paul Brunton
' I am that I was '...
"I am that I was and that I shall remain now and forever.
Then I receive an impulse which carries me above all angels.
In this impulse I conceive such passing riches that I am not content with God as being God, as being all his godly works, for in this breaking-through I find that God and I are both the same.
Then I am what I was, I neither wax nor wane, for I am the motionless cause that is moving all things."
Meister Eckhart
Franz Pfeiffer, editor
The Works of Meister Eckhart
Translated by C. de B. Evans,
London: John M. Watkins, 1924, vol 1, p. 221
' Stinginess '...
One day Mulla Nasruddin saw a crowd gathered around a pond. A Muslim
priest with a huge turban on his head had fallen in the water and was
calling for help. People were leaning over and saying, "Give me your
hand, Reverend! Give me your hand!" But the priest didn't pay
attention to their offer to rescue him; he kept wrestling with the
water and shouting for help.
Finally the Mulla stepped forward. "Let me handle this." He
stretched out his hand toward the priest and shouted at him, "Take my
hand!"
The priest grabbed the Mulla's hand and was hoisted out of the
pond. People, very surprised, asked the Mulla for the secret of his
strategy.
"It is very simple," he replied, "I knew this miser wouldn't give
anything to anyone. So instead of saying, 'Give me your hand,' I
said, 'Take my hand,' and sure enough he took it."
Mevlana Jalaluddin Rumi
as collected by James Fadiman & Robert Frager
' Two ways to Realization '...
There are two different ways to realization:
(a) The path of yoga meditation whose goal is nirvikalpa samadhi.
(b) Gnana whose goal is sahaja samadhi.
This looks on the world as being only a picture, unreal.
Both seek and reach the same Brahman, the world disappearing for both.
-- Notebooks Category 25: World-Mind in Individual Mind >
Chapter 2: Enlightenment Which Stays > # 130 Paul Brunton
' Tao Te Ching '...
Between birth and death,
Three in ten are followers of life,
Three in ten are followers of death,
And men just passing from birth to death also number three in ten.
Why is this so?
Because they live their lives on the gross level.
He who knows how to live can walk abroad
Without fear of rhinoceros or tiger.
He will not be wounded in battle.
For in him rhinoceroses can find no place to thrust their horn,
Tigers no place to use their claws,
And weapons no place to pierce.
Why is this so?
Because he has no place for death to enter.
- Lao-tzu
Tao Te Ching
Translation by Gia-fu Feng and Jane English
Vintage Books Edition, September 1972
' Beyond the shadow '...
~This passage is from Thomas Merton's posthumous Asian Journal, describing his awakening experience upon seeing the great Buddha statues at Polonnaruwa, Ceylon (Sri Lanka):
“Looking at these figures I was suddenly,
almost forcibly, jerked clean out of the habitual, half-
tied vision of things, and an inner clearness, clarity, as
if exploding from the rocks themselves, became evident
and obvious.
The queer evidence of the reclining
figure, the smile, the sad smile of Ananda standing with
arms folded (much more ‘imperative’ than Da Vinci’s
Mona Lisa because completely simple and
straightforward).
The thing about all this is that there is
no puzzle, no problem, and really no ‘mystery.’ All
problems are resolved and everything is clear, simply
because what matters is clear. The rock, all matter, all
life, is charged with dharmakaya . . .
everything is
emptiness and everything is compassion. I don’t know
when in my life I have ever had such a sense of beauty
and spiritual validity running together in one aesthetic
illumination.
Surely, with Mahabalipuram and
Polonnaruwa my Asian pilgrimage has come clear and
purified itself. I mean, I know and have seen what I
was obscurely looking for. I don’t know what else
remains but I have now seen and have pierced through
the surface and have got beyond the shadow and the
disguise.”
~from The Asian Journal of Thomas Merton,
' Escaping difficulties '...
There is no permanent way of escaping difficulties other than the way of seeking spiritual realization.
That is what we have really incarnated for.
This may seem hard on us,
but life on earth as it is known today is also hard for many people.
-- Notebooks Category 13: Human Experience >
Chapter 1: Situation > # 394 Paul Brunton
' Logic and Awareness '...
I agree with your logic and awareness..
The 'Final Reality' consists of Thought and not Dream..
This 'Silence' is confounding to the emitter of sound..
Pure Awareness appears to enjoy, Dreaming..
I have to ask myself,
" What would I do "..
I would probably walk this same road of entertainment..
The "Void' that frightens you so much is Real..
The others words were a bridge...
-thomas
' He's Free '...
Take someone who doesn't keep score,
who's not looking to be richer, or afraid of losing,
who has not the slightest interest even
in his own personality: He's free.
- Rumi
Version by Coleman Barks
"Open Secret"
Threshold Books, 1984
' A higher point of view '...
It would be wrong to say that the pictorial review of life experience when dying is merely a mental transference from one's own shoes to those of the persons with whom one has been in contact during the life just passed, as the pictures unveil before him.
What really happens is a transference from the false ego to the true Self, from the personal to the impersonal.
It is a realization of the true meaning of each episode of the life from a higher point of view.
-- Notebooks Category 9: From Birth to Rebirth >
Chapter 1: Death, Dying, and Immortality > # 114
Paul Brunton
' Absolutely Nothing '...
"Now imagine that you stop to sit on a bench in the park. As you sit there everything stops, absolutely stops. Your mind is so still and quiet that you can hear dust particles floating in the air. Suddenly you are falling, and falling, and falling. There is no ground below or sky overhead, just a crushing thunderous silence, racing faster and faster. You suddenly realize that it’s going to kill you, rip you limb from limb and explode your lungs into dust.
There’s no way out, no possible means of survival. And so you do the only thing there is to do. Surrender. All goes blank and empty, more empty than limitless space. Prior to life and death, you blink out of (or is it into?) existence. Timelessness is all there is, all there ever was, or could be. Eternity reigns supreme, and is radiantly present in every particle of being. Something unborn and undying stirs to life and opens its eyes -- your eyes.
You or It is still sitting on the park bench. It is smiling, radiant, and content. A little girl on roller skates passes by. The sun glitters through the aspen leaves as an old man smokes his pipe on a footbridge crossing over a stream that feeds into a pondfilled with goldfish. Everywhere you look is emptiness. Each ‘thing’ is a veil, a shroud, cloaking Infinity. Nothing is as it seems, and everything is exactly as it is. Somehow perfect in all its apparent chaos, Infinity prevails.
You know with exact precision that there is nothing else -- nothing could be other than this vast and absolute void, this pure and Infinite Potential, this unborn and unformed Infinity. You reflect back over your life and realize that everything that ever happened or ever could happen, from birth to all of the ups and downs of this ephemeral life, to the strange realizations of spiritual awakening, to this exact moment outside of time, was and is the momentary display -- a blip, really -- of Infinity’s limitless potential coming into, and going out of, existence. An old friend finds you sitting on the bench in the park.
She sits down beside you and asks, ‘What are you up to?’ You love her as friends do, but what can you say? You’re already speechless, and as quiet inside as the dead. She doesn’t know it, but you’re in two different worlds, strangely intersecting here on this park bench. How do you reach across infinity to communicate with her? For a moment you strain inside for the words with which to respond. There is a silent pause -- is she onto you? Does she suspect something is different? A cool breeze caresses your face and the universe smiles inside you. ‘Oh, nothing really,’ you say. ‘Absolutely Nothing.’”
~ Adyashanti
The Way of Liberation
' Dreams '...
Bad thoughts make bad dreams
and good thoughts make good dreams,
and if you have no thoughts you don’t dream at all.
-Annamalai Swami
' A Pilgrimage '...
Your life’s journey is a pilgrimage that’s always
going from one sacred space to yet another sacred
space.
And the very road that you’re traveling on between
these sacred spaces is also sacred, too.
No matter what your life looks like right now, you’re
always standing in the Temple of the Divine.
Your own Heart is truly the Holy-of-Holies.
- Chuck Hillig
' Only Consciousness Appearing '...
Many think and believe there is a real objective universe "out there". But what is manifesting are colors, sounds, flavors, smells, sensations and cognitions. Those are only the textures of awareness.
Notice any of the above and notice if any can be found as other than awareness itself. Where can you find the dividing line between awareness and those six items?
There is only Consciousness appearing as colors, sounds, flavors, smells, sensations and cognitions. There are no inanimate things or objects.
-Jackson Peterson
' Ideas move the world '...
The ocean itself is one big drop, but it is also made
of small drops; many little drops put together become
an ocean.
But actually, in the ocean, the drops don't
exist; they are one integral whole.
So, you may say there
are no drops in the ocean, yet you can say it is made up
of drops.
Both notions are correct.
Actually, the drops
in the ocean are only conceptual.
The mind says that
there are many parts.
Ideas move the world.
- Swami Krishnananda
Your Questions Answered
Swami Krishnananda
The Divine Life Trust Society, 1995
' The wise aspirant '...
The wise aspirant will not hanker after manifestations of the marvellous.
He wants the highest life has to offer,
and he knows that nothing could be more marvelous than the realization of God as his own self.
-- Notebooks Category 16: The Sensitives >
Chapter 4: Those Who Seek > # 102 Paul Brunton
' The 'me' ...
The “me” is very impersonal, not meaning cold or distant, but just meaning without inherent self nature, in the same way that when you read a book, the characters are without self nature. They actually don’t exist outside of your imagination. They don’t even exist in the book, because the book is just words. And without someone reading the words and bringing it all alive within imagination, nothing even exists on the printed page. It’s all within the reader, all the life.
When the Buddha talked about the realization of no-self, he was talking about the self that’s an image in the mind being completely seen through. And when there is no image of self, experience has nothing to bounce off of. Everything just is as it is, because there's no secondary interpretation. The one that’s interpreting is the one that’s in pain. And that’s the one who suffers. That’s the one who causes others to suffer.
The false self, the self that’s an image in the mind, uses every experience to measure itself: “How am I in relationship to what’s happening? Am I wise? Am I stupid? Am I clumsy? Am I courageous? Am I enlightened about this?” That’s the movement of consciousness reflecting on an image of itself that doesn’t actually exist. It’s always measuring each and every experience, and then believing in the interpretation of the experience rather than seeing “Everything just is.”
Everything actually just is. From the perspective of consciousness, even resistance just is. And if you resist resistance, that’s just what is. You can’t get away from it. You start to see that the only thing that goes into resistance, a story, or an interpretation of what is—whatever it is—is this mind-created persona. It's like a character in a novel. When you read a novel, every character has a point of view. It has beliefs. It has opinions. There’s something that makes it distinct from other characters. Our persona is literally this mind-created character that’s always making itself distinct. So it always needs to evaluate everything against its preconceived idea….
That’s basically what it means to really wake up: we’re waking up from the character. You don’t have to destroy the character called “me” to wake up from it. In fact, trying to destroy the character makes it very hard to wake up. Because what’s trying to destroy the character? The character. What’s judging the character? The character.
So you leave the character alone. The character called you, just leave it alone. Then it’s much easier for the awakening out of that perspective to happen.
~Adya
' Desires '...
Desires are just waves in the mind.
You know
a wave when you see one.
A desire is just a
thing among many.
I feel no urge to satisfy it,
no action needs to be taken on it.
Freedom
from desire means this:
the compulsion to
satisfy is absent.
- Nisargadatta Maharaj
"I Am That"
Talks with Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj
The Acorn Press, 1973
' What does not real mean? '...
Just that.
Upon turning deep within, a different world of light, space, and attending awareness emerges as predominant, and the external world fades in importance.
As consciousness becomes steady through inquiry or meditation, close observation of the external world, reveals its changeableness, fragility, and hollowness.
It only appears when we awaken, and disappears in sleep.
It depends on us.
It disappears behind us as we move from room to room, only to become memory.
Then memory itself is forgotten, and not reclaimed until we enter that room again.
Out of emptiness, arises form; into emptiness it disappears.
Nisargadatta called this the Causal Body of forgetfullness.
Dogen Zengi said:
To study the Way is to study the self.
To study the self is to forget the self.
When the self is forgotten, is to be actualized by myriad things.
When actualized by myriad things, your body and mind as well as the bodies and minds of others drop away.
No trace of enlightenment remains, and this no-trace continues endlessly.
-Edward Muzika
' Knowledge in the heart '...
Spiritual self-realization is the main thing.
Study of the teachings concerning cosmical evolution and the psychical evolution of man are but intellectual accessories--things we may or may not take on our journey, as we like.
That part of man which reasons and speculates--mortal mind--is not the part which can discover and verify the existence of God.
We are not necessarily helped or hindered on the divine path by taking up the lore of science or by becoming versed in the ways of sophistry.
Once we live out our spiritual life in the heart, the rest sinks to second place.
-- Notebooks Category 7: The Intellect >
Chapter 1: The Place of Intellect > # 204
Paul Brunton
' Source manifests '...
"The universe is my ashram, and every heart is my house, but I manifest only in those hearts in which all other than me ceases to live.
"When my universal religion of love is on the verge of fading into insignificance, I come to breathe life into it, and to do away with the farce of dogmas that defile it in the name of religions, and stifle it with ceremonies and rituals."
Meher Baba
"Final Declaration"
in Bhau Kalchuri
Lord Meher: Biography of Avatar of the Age Meher Baba
Manifestation, v. 13, p. 4544
Online Revised Edition, p. 3639
' Judging others '...
Judging others in your dream world is kind of silly.
After all, doesn’t a playwright love his “villains” every bit as much as he loves his “heroes?”
In fact, maybe he loves them even more.
Why?
Because it’s through his “villains” that he creates the dramatic mischief and gives his “heroes” their opportunity to act, well,….heroically.
-Chuck Hillig
' The Long Path '...
The Long Path gives many benefits and bestows many virtues but it does not give the vision of truth, the realization of the Overself, nor does it bestow Grace. For these things we must turn to the Short Path.
-- Notebooks Category 23: Advanced Contemplation > Chapter 2: Pitfalls and Limitations > # 156
Paul Brunton
The moment for departure from the Long Path is signaled by the full realization that all that he has really gained from practising its disciplines is only the practice itself, not the newer consciousness to which they were supposed to lead him.
-- Notebooks Category 23: Advanced Contemplation > Chapter 4: The Changeover To the Short Path > # 134
Paul Brunton
' It's all It '...
In the domain
of unconsciousness
you see within and without.
In the pervadedness of Consciousness
there is no within and without;
it's all
It.
- Swami Amar Jyoti
"In Light of Wisdom"
Swami Amar Jyoti
Truth Consciousness, Boulder, Colorado, 1983
' Laying down the burden '...
Rules and conventions, as well as liberation, are all simply dhammas. One is higher than the other, but they actually go hand in hand.
There is no way that anything can be guaranteed to be definitely ‘like this’, or definitely ‘like that’. The Buddha said, ‘Just leave it be! Leave it as uncertain.’ However much you like it, or dislike it, you should understand it as uncertain.
The whole practice of dhamma, regardless of time and place, comes to completion at the place where there is no-thing. It’s the place of surrender, of emptiness, of laying down the burden; this is the finish. It’s not like someone asking: ‘Why is the flag fluttering in the wind?’ and me replying, ‘It’s because of the wind,’ and another person saying, ‘No, it’s because of the flag.’ Then someone else retorting, ‘It’s because of the wind!’ There’s no end to that kind of thing. It’s like the old riddle: Which came first, the chicken or the egg? There’s no way reaching a conclusion about that. It’s just nature.
Many of the things we say, are merely conventions that we establish within ourselves. If you understand them with wisdom, however, you will know impermanence, suffering and not-self. This is the outlook which leads to enlightenment.
Training and teaching people with varying levels of understanding is really difficult. Some people have certain ideas. You tell them something, but they don’t believe you. You tell them the truth, and they say, ‘That’s not true! I’m right; you’re wrong.’ But there’s no end to this way of going on.
If you don’t let go, there will be suffering. There’s the story of these four men who go into the forest and hear a chicken crowing. One of them asks, ‘Is that a rooster or a hen?’ Three of them together say, ‘It’s a hen!’ The other man, however, doesn’t agree; he insists it’s a rooster. ‘How could a hen crow like that?’ he asks. ‘Well,’ they retort, ‘it has a mouth, hasn’t it?’ Then they argue and argue until they get very upset and, the tears start to fall. In the end, it turns out, they’re all wrong. The point is, whether you call it a hen or a rooster, they’re only names.
We establish these conventions, saying a rooster is like this, and a hen is like that; a rooster cries like this, and a hen cries like that. But this is how we get stuck in the world. Actually, if you just say that really there is no hen and no rooster, then that’s the end of it.
In the field of conventional reality, one side is right and the other side is wrong, and there can never be complete agreement. Arguing till the tears fall, however, is of no use whatsoever.
The Buddha taught non-clinging. How do we practise non-clinging? We do it simply by giving up clinging. It can be very difficult to understand non-clinging, however. It takes a keen wisdom to investigate it, to really see the depth of it, and then to see the wisdom of it.
Whether people are happy or sad, content or discontent, doesn’t really depend on their having little or having much, it depends on wisdom. In reality, distress can only be transcended through wisdom, through seeing the truth of things.
[From The Collected Teachings of Ajahn Chah]
' The Quester '...
Between the ordinary man who takes himself as he is, and the philosopher who does exactly the same, there stands the Quester.
In the first case, outlook is narrow, being limited by attending to the inescapable necessities and demands of day-to-day living.
In the other case, peace of mind has been established, the thirst for knowledge fulfilled, the discipline of self realized.
In between these two, the Quester is not satisfied with himself, has a strong wish to become a better and more enlightened man.
He tries to exercise his will in the struggle for realization of his ideal.
-- Notebooks Category 1: Overview of the Quest >
Chapter 1: What the Quest Is > # 4 Paul Brunton
' The Holy Trinity '...
Paramhansa Yogananda explained the Christian Trinity (God the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost) in a cosmic sense.
God the Father, he said, is the Infinite Consciousness from which all things were manifested.
God's consciousness was one and undivided ("Hear O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is One"); apart from that consciousness there was no substance out of which the universe could have been made.
The universe is His dream.
To produce the dream, the Creator had to set a portion of His consciousness into motion.
You, I, our earth, the sun and galaxies, our thoughts and inspirations, our very longing to be one with Him again-all are products of the vibrations of His consciousness, separate manifestations of the vast primal vibration of Aum, the Holy Ghost.
The Son of the Trinity represents the underlying presence in a vibratory creation of the calm, unmoving consciousness of the Creator, so called because it rejects the Father's consciousness.
Vibratory creation itself is also known as the Divine Mother. The devotee must commune first with Aum, or the Divine Mother.
Uniting his consciousness with that, he must proceed to realize his oneness with the Son.
Only after achieving union with the Son can he proceed toward oneness with the Father beyond creation.
The Hindu Scriptures name this eternal Trinity, Sat Tat Aum.
Sat stands for the Spirit, the Supreme Truth, which is God the Father.
Tat is the Kuthastha Chaitanya, the Christ Consciousness which underlies all creation.
And Aum is the Word, the Holy Ghost, called also the Comforter in the Bible.
' The Silence of the Silence '...
Although thought, words, logic and reasoning are obviously necessary to lead a moral life, they do not by themselves constitute living.
They are all based on memory of the known and are products of the split-mind, the mind divided by the intrusion of a spurious 'me'.
To LIVE without thought, without words, is to be receptive to the unknown with the whole mind.
True teaching is in reality the SILENCE of the SILENCE in which there is neither talking nor the absence of talking.
It is like drawing the figure of a fish on the water's surface with a stick.
-A Net of Jewels
Ramesh S. Balsekar
' Instant Refuge '...
When the attentive nature of consciousness folds back upon itself, instead of engaging in thoughts images and perceptions, it discovers a natural joy, open emptiness, wisdom and indestructible presence of awareness.
There is no higher refuge or quicker path.
In this way the mind discovers its own nature was always a Buddha.
-Jackson Peterson
' Compassion '...
Compassion is the highest moral value, the noblest human feeling, the purest creature-love.
It is the final social expression of man's divine soul.
For he is able to feel with and for another man only because both are in reality related in harmony by the presence of that soul in each one.
-- Perspectives > Chapter 6:
Emotions and Ethics > # 44
Paul Brunton
' True apperception '...
It is impossible to describe the sense of magnificence that comes out of the true apperception of the nature of the individual in relation to the manifestation.
The loss of personal individuality is exchanged for the gain of Totality of the cosmos.
That which is beyond all interrelated opposites and relativity itself is Absolute and inexpressible in words.
-A Net of Jewels
Ramesh S. Balsekar
' Communion with the Overself '...
Let him stand in his own place, and not seek to occupy that of another.
Let him find a life that is real, and not copied.
But such admonitions are good only so far as he has already come into communion with the Overself.
-- Notebooks Category 1: Overview of the Quest >
Chapter 3: Independent Path > # 101 Paul Brunton
' Detachment brings control '...
'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
' It is only tuesday '...
The leaders of this dream, demand that we be obediant..
It is strange how Consciousness rearanges the chairs upon the Titantic..
The Energy of Source, permeates all dreams and thoughts..
The ego always interfers within discovery..
We can continue to read with understanding but still be confused..
Seeing beyond dreams and desires is difficult..
My time within paragraphs is over..
The rest of this time within mind is yours..
Welcome home, thinker...
-thomas
' Strong desires must be fulfilled '...
"Weak desires can be removed by introspection and meditation,
but strong, deep-rooted ones must be fulfilled and their fruits, sweet or bitter, tasted."
-Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj
' The tenderness for life '...
“We awaken this bodhichitta, this tenderness for life, when we can no longer shield ourselves from the vulnerability of our condition, from the basic fragility of existence. In the words of the sixteenth Gyalwa Karmapa, “You take it all in. You let the pain of the world touch your heart and you turn it into compassion.” It is said that in difficult times, it is only bodhichitta that heals. When inspiration has become hidden, when we feel ready to give up, this is the time when healing can be found in the tenderness of pain itself. This is the time to touch the genuine heart of bodhichitta. In the midst of loneliness, in the midst of fear, in the middle of feeling misunderstood and rejected is the heartbeat of all things, the genuine heart of sadness.” […]
Spiritual awakening is frequently described as a journey to the top of a mountain. We leave our attachments and our worldliness behind and slowly make our way to the top. At the peak we have transcended all pain. The only problem with this metaphor is that we leave all the others behind-our drunken brother, our schizophrenic sister, our tormented animals and friends. Their suffering continues, unrelieved by our personal escape.
In the process of discovering bodhichitta, the journey goes down, not up. It’s as if the mountain pointed toward the center of the earth instead of reaching into the sky. Instead of transcending the suffering of all creatures, we move toward the turbulence and doubt.
We jump into it. We slide into it. We tiptoe into it. We move toward it however we can. We explore the reality and unpredictability of insecurity and pain, and we try not to push it away. If it takes years, if it takes lifetimes, we let it be as it is. At our own pace, without speed or aggression, we move down and down and down. With us move millions of others, our companions in awakening from fear. At the bottom we discover water, the healing water of bodhichitta. Right down there in the thick of things, we discover the love that will not die.”
~ Pema Chödrön, When Things Fall Apart
' The Nought '...
The One behind the Many is not to be mistaken for the figure one which is followed by two, three, and so on.
It is on the contrary the mysterious Nought out of which all the units which make up multiple figures themselves arise.
If we do not call it the Nought it is only because this might be mistaken as utter Nihilism.
Were this so then existence would be meaningless and metaphysics absurd.
The true ineffable Nought, like the superphysical One, is rather the reality of all realities.
From it there stream forth all things and all creatures; to it they shall all return eventually.
This void is the impenetrable background of all that is, was, or shall be; unique, mysterious, and imperishable.
He who can gaze into its mysterious Nothingness and see that the pure Divine Being is forever there, sees indeed.
-- Notebooks Category 19: The Reign of Relativity > Chapter 5: The Void As Metaphysical Fact > # 42
-- Perspectives > Chapter 19: The Reign of Relativity > # 49 Paul Brunton
' The gender of God '...
The idea that Source has a gender makes me look at the ceiling..
The idea of Unconditional Love is sought within this manifestation but is really only felt within Divine Consciousness..
A Mystic like Jesus spent the last few years of His life speaking of this idea..
But, this idea of Freedom is found between the desire of separation and the desire of Unity..
The ego and the non-ego are elements to be examined...
-thomas
' Your Liberation '...
"Nothing stands in the way of your liberation and it can happen here and now but for your being more interested in other things.
And you cannot fight with your interests.
You must go with them,
see through them and watch them reveal themselves as mere errors of judgment and appreciation."
-Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj
' The moment of Enlightenment '...
At the moment of enlightenment, everything falls away - everything. Suddenly the ground beneath you is gone, and you are alone. You are alone because you have realized that there is no other; there is no separation. There is only you, only Self, only limitless emptiness, pure consciousness.
To the mind, the ego, this appears terrifying. When it looks at limitlessness and infinity, it sees meaninglessness and despair. However, the view changes to unending joy and wonder once the mind is let go of.
When you are enlightened, you stand alone. You need no supports of any kind because there is nothing to support; a separate you no longer exists. You realize that the whole ego experience was a flimsy illusion. You stand alone but are never, never lonely because everywhere you look, all you see is That, and you are That.
- Adyashanti (The Impact of Awakening)
' The Real Present '...
There is the real present but there is also the illusory present.
To live in the past is to die, to live in the future is to dream,
but to live in the real present is to be awake, enlightened.
-- Notebooks Category 19: The Reign of Relativity >
Chapter 4: Time, Space, Causality > # 142
Paul Brunton
' Love within Source '...
"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 Diamond Sutra '...
"Subhuti, what do you think? Let no one say the Tathagata cherishes the idea: I must liberate all living beings. Allow no such thought, Subhuti. Wherefore? Because in reality there are no living beings to be liberated by the Tathagata. If there were living beings for the Tathagata to liberate, He would partake in the idea of selfhood, personality entity, and separate individuality."
Also from the Diamond Sutra:
"Yet when vast, uncountable, immeasurable numbers of beings have thus been liberated, verily no being has been liberated. Why is this, Subhuti? It is because no Bodhisattva who is a real Bodhisattva cherishes the idea of an ego-entity, a personality, a being, or a separated individuality."
"A Bodhisattva should develop a mind which alights upon nothing whatsoever..."
"The mind should be kept independent of any thoughts which arise within it." (the principle of khorde rushen)
' The purpose of life '...
Krishna, in the Bhagavad Gita, is the individual's own higher self.
He must keep his inner shrine within the heart reserved for the Ideal.
He should worship there the Spirit that is birthless and deathless, indestructible and divine.
Life in this world is like foam on the sea: it passes all too soon; but the moments given in adoration and obeisance to the Soul count for eternal gain.
The most tremendous historic happenings on this earth are, after all, only pictures that pass through consciousness like a dream.
Once the seeker awakens to the Real, he sees them for what they are. Then he will live in Its serenity, and it will no longer matter if the pictures themselves are stormy and agitated.
It is the greatest good fortune to attain such serenity--to be lifted above passion and hatred, prejudice and fear, greed and discontent, and yet to be able to attend effectively and capably to one's worldly duties.
It is possible to reach this state. The seeker may have had glimpses of it already.
Someday, sometime, if he is patient, he will enter it to stay--and the unimaginably rewarding and perfect purpose of his life, of all his lifetimes, will be fulfilled.
- Paul Brunton
' Reason and common sense '...
“Believe nothing,
no matter where you read it,
or who said it,
no matter if I have said it,
unless it agrees with your own reason and your own common sense.
–Gautama the Buddha
' The Eternal Absolute '...
"You indicated your identity at various stages of your life by such concepts as "a child," "a boy," "a youth," "a middle-aged man," etc.
But which conceptual identity of yours remained faithful to you?
All the identities, in the course of time, proved illusory.
Since it has appeared, it has to disappear; therefore, it is temporary, and time-bound.
But the Knower of the Beingness is the eternal Absolute."
- Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj
' Teach me the truth '...
"The holy Zarathustra said aloud:
'This I ask thee: teach me the truth, O Lord'."
Vendidad, 19.10
in S. E. Frost
Sacred Writings of the World's Religions
NY: New Home LIbrary, p. 78
' It is silence '...
Yet the deeper we travel, the less need have we of thoughts and words,
for all multiplicity collapses in this marvelous unity.
We can neither think nor talk of this sublime state with any accuracy.
Hence the only medium whereby we can properly represent it is--silence!
-- Notebooks Category 1: Overview of the Quest >
Chapter 6: Student-Teacher > # 778 Paul Brunton
' Die before you die '...
Sir, have you forgotten the promise
you made in your mother's womb,
to die before you die?
When will you remember
what you intended?
Don't let your donkey wander loose!
It will stray into your neighbor's
saffron garden. Think of the damage
it might do, and the punishment!
Who then will carry you naked
to your own death?
- Lalla
14th Century North Indian mystic
From "Naked Song"
Versions by Coleman Barks
Maypop 1992
' Sailor Bob '...
Sailor Bob:
There is a knowing that you are. You can’t negate that. Pure knowingness is going on. Now, who or what is knowing that? Pure emptiness, or no thing, is knowing that. There’s no entity there. That knowing is the cognizing emptiness. That’s pure intelligence.
Q: It’s knowing itself?
Sailor Bob:
No. There’s no discrimination of itself in there. It’s one without a second. It’s pure knowing.
' Awareness alone '...
That beautiful state wherein the mind recognizes itself for what it is,
wherein all activity is stilled except that of awareness alone,
and even then it is an awareness without an object-
-this is the heart of the experience.
-- Perspectives > Chapter 24:
The Peace within You > # 68
Paul Brunton
' You are unborn and indestructible '...
"Whatever is seen and perceived is continuously in a state of creation and destruction,
but You in your true nature are unborn and indestructible.
Unless you realize your true nature,
there will be no peace for you."
-Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj
' The ground of Being '...
Leave everything outside and come in.
Everything you see, you must leave.
Don't want anything, not even enlightenment.
Everyone can do this.
Come right into that place before all these things were formed.
Allow yourself to be undone of all falsehood.
Then you will discover for yourself
that emptiness that has never moved.
Everything else has moved.
This is your ground. The ground of Being.
Your very Self is that.
- Mooji
' One Self alone '...
There are two viewpoints:
a qualified truth for the lower stage of aspirants which admits duality; and the complete viewpoint of nonduality for the highest student; thus for practical life, when dealing with other people or when engaged in some activity, those in the first stage must accept the notion of the world being real, because of expediency; yet even so, when they are alone or when keeping quiet, inactive, they ought to revert back to regarding the world, which includes one's own body as a part of it, as idea.
Only for the sage is the truth always present, no matter whether he is with others, whether he is working, or whether he is in trance, and this truth is continuous awareness of one Reality alone and one Self alone.
-- Notebooks Category 19: The Reign of Relativity >
Chapter 2: The Double Standpoint > # 40 Paul Brunton
' This too will pass '...
"This too shall pass."
Accepting this will bring about
a double-sided effect.
When something is bad, you
will know this too will change, so there's no need to
go into the depths of despair.
When something is
good, you won't have to go into the peaks of ecstasy.
This too will pass.
You will be able to accept life as
it comes.
- Ramesh S. Balsekar
"A Net of Jewels"
Ramesh S. Balsekar
Advaita Press, 1996
' Love the unloveable '...
Every position that you find yourself in, every situation that you find yourself in, with whomever you may be in this world, is your right place at this moment.
Bless this, love it.
I know it sounds hard when you think of a horrible condition and you say, " I must love it?".
Let me explain again. The reason you love it, is because God is all there is.
Try to remember this.
There is nothing but God.
Therefore if you hate something, you are hating God which is your Self.
when you become despondent, depressed, hateful, feeling sorry for yourself, this is what blasphemy really means, for you are feeling this way about you,
our Self. Can't you see?
You look at a situation, you watch it, you observe it, you never react, you leave it alone. And then you will be given the power to handle it, to go through it, without thinking, without thoughts, without any commotion, without any noise.
These are the things, you must work on.
~ Robert Adams
' Seek the Knower '..
When you begin to seek the Knower,
who is within you,
and to sever yourself from the seen,
which is both without and within you,
you begin to pass from illusion to reality.
-- Notebooks Category 22: Inspiration and the Overself > Chapter 5: Preparing for Glimpses > # 15
-- Perspectives > Chapter 22: Inspiration and the Overself > # 8 Paul Brunton
' Labor Day '...
This is the day that you celebrate being a slave..
The Energy that you generate within the frequencies,
create that which you Dream..
It is so difficult to believe that you have power..
The Incarnations of Dreams become just another show that you have seen before..
I will speak in short lines,
so that your thought remains within curiosity..
I celebrate your walking...
-thomas
' The Tao '...
The greatest Virtue is to follow Tao and Tao alone.
The Tao is elusive and intangible.
Oh, it is intangible and elusive, and yet within is image.
Oh, it is elusive and intangible, and yet within is form.
Oh, it is dim and dark, and yet within is essence.
This essence is very real, and therein lies faith.
From the very beginning until now its name has never been forgotten.
Thus I perceive the creation.
How do I know the ways of creation?
Because of this.
- Lao-tzu
Tao Te Ching
Translation by Gia-fu Feng and Jane English
Vintage Books Edition, September 1989
' You are home '...
Right now, as you read this, you exist and you are aware that you exist. You are undoubtedly present and aware. Before the next thought arises, you are absolutely certain of the fact of your own being, your own awareness, your own presence. This awareness is what you are; it is what you always have been.
All thoughts, perceptions, sensations and feelings appear within or upon that. This awareness does not move, change or shift at any time. It is always free and completely untouched. However, it is not a thing or an object that you can see or grasp. The mind, being simply thoughts arising in awareness, cannot grasp it or know it or even think about it.
Yet, you cannot deny the fact of your own being. It is palpably obvious, and yet, from the time we were born, no one has pointed this out. Once it is pointed out it can be grasped or understood very quickly because it is just a matter of noticing, ‘Oh, that is what I am!’ It is a bright, luminous, empty, presence of awareness; it is absolutely radiant, yet without form; it is seemingly intangible, but the most solid fact in your existence; it is effortlessly here right now, forever untouched.
Without taking a step, you have arrived; you are home. No practice can reveal this because practices are in time and in the mind. Practices aim at a result, but you (as presence-awareness) are here already, only you don’t recognize it till it is pointed out. Once seen, you can’t lose it, and you don’t have to practice to exist, to be.
-John Wheeler
' Hide the ego '...
He has not attained who is conscious that he has attained,
for this very consciousness cunningly hides the ego and delivers him into its power.
That alone is attainment which is natural, spontaneous, unforced, unaware, and unadvertised,
whether to the man himself or to others.
-- Notebooks Category 25: World-Mind in Individual Mind >
Chapter 2: Enlightenment Which Stays > # 85 Paul Brunton
' It is a vicious circle '...
Every pleasure, physical or mental, needs an instrument.
Both the physical and mental instruments are materials,
they get tired and worn out.
The pleasure they yield is
necessarily limited in intensity and duration.
Pain is the
background of all your pleasures.
You want them because
you suffer.
On the other hand, the very search for pleasure
is the cause of pain.
It is a vicious circle.
- Nisargadatta Maharaj
"I Am That"
Talks with Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj
The Acorn Press, 1973
' Knowledge of myself '...
When Socrates was about to die, one of his pupils said to him:
"My
master, when we have washed you and put on your shroud where do you
want us to bury you?"
Socrates said;
"If you find me, dear pupil, bury
me where you will, and good night!
Seeing that in my long life I have
not found myself, how will you find me when I am dead?
I have lived in
such a manner that at this moment I only know that the least hair of
knowledge of myself is not evident."
--Fariduddin Attar
from The Conference of the Birds
C. S. Nott version
' Freed from narrowness '...
The Overself is the point where the One Mind is received into consciousness.
It is the "I" freed from narrowness, thoughts, flesh, passion, and emotion--
that is, from the personal ego.
-- Notebooks Category 22: Inspiration and the Overself > Chapter 3: The Overself's Presence > # 317
-- Perspectives > Chapter 22: Inspiration and the Overself > # 5 Paul Brunton
' Sahaj dnyan '...
"When you remember me, you are in sahaj dnyan (God’s company or presence). The question is how to remember me.
The easiest and surest way is to do as I tell you. It will be somewhat of a task at first, as when you start to run you feel it too much (sore muscles); but when you are in training, you feel it “sahaj” (meaning, naturally). At first, you will have to do it deliberately, then it will become natural.
"There are four quarters of the day; there are four divisions in man’s physical state: childhood, youth, maturity, old age. There are four quarters that Kabir calls the signposts. The first thing in the morning when you get up, before doing anything, think of Baba for one second. Baba is then worn by your soul: early in the morning dress your soul with Baba. At 12 noon, for one second do the same; do it again about five o’clock; when you retire do it also. I have never asked anyone to do this, not even the mandali. If you do it, I will be always with you, and you will feel my company all the time. Do it for four seconds every day, then you will be in the world, yet Baba will be with you all the time. This is the beginning of sahaj dnyan*."
Meher Baba
in Bhau Kalchuri
Lord Meher: The Biography of Avatar of the Age Meher Baba
MANifestation, 1st. ed., Vol. 13, pp. 4485 – 4486
Revised Online Edition, p. 3599
* The literal English meaning of sahaj is "natural." Dnyan (also transliterated as gyan and jnan) means "knowledge."
' How do you know when to change things? '...
Q: Sometimes it might be a good idea to change things and sometimes it might not. How do you know when to change things?
A: Well, as you begin to trust in that way of accepting things as they are, then your own intuitive sense will guide you. It doesn’t mean to just put up with unpleasant things as a practice, but at this moment now, whatever way it is, it can only be this way. This is just a fact. Right now whatever we are feeling or whatever is around us is the only way it can be at this moment; it’s like this; this is the way it is. In that accepting and allowing, you will have a much clearer sense of what to do—whether you can change it or not, whether it needs to be changed. This is a way of working intuitively rather than from ideas about what you think should be.
I find this is something I can trust in. Many of the mistakes in my life have been from having a fixed idea of how things should be and then trying to make it into that, and in the process destroying the very thing I’m trying to protect. But this other way is recognising a wisdom that you naturally have, that you don’t know from your rational mind. When you think of yourself through your personality, you might have a view that maybe I don’t have any wisdom or wisdom is something that people studying philosophy have. But wisdom is our true nature, really, that we recognise when we begin to let go of the things that blind us to it. And then you learn to trust yourself more in that kind of intuition. Your emotional mind might think, ‘Oh, I can’t trust it,’ because we are not conditioned emotionally for wisdom; we’re emotionally conditioned for ignorance. That is why you can feel very threatened sometimes by this sense of, ‘I don’t know what’s going to happen.’ Emotionally you are primed for something else. This is why I encourage you to trust more your inner sense, your intuition, and not be intimidated by your emotional reactions.
My experience here in the UK for twenty-four years after coming from a precedent in Thailand and implanting it in a European country is that we have these endless ideas of, ‘If it’s not working we’ve got to change it.’ We’ve been caught up in these endless habits of trying to make it better, ‘Got to make it better,’ until we became aware of this as an habitual tendency of the mind and not getting so easily taken in by what it seems like at the time.
Q: There are situations sometimes where holding back and looking at things may interfere with something that comes naturally from deep down. Do you find sometimes that you just act and that it’s the right thing in the right circumstances?
A: What you do can come from a spontaneity rather than from a plan. But holding back is not necessarily trying to just be an indifferent observer of phenomena, it can be a way of learning to appreciate a spaciousness that we don’t tend to notice when we’re just caught in habitual reactions. That is when you can trust in spontaneity rather than being reactive or impulsive. What is the difference between spontaneity and impulsivity?
You can feel an impulse because it’s a habit-reaction. Spontaneous action, on the other hand, is coming from a deeper level than just reactivity and you can trust that. The Theravada scriptures refer to ten fetters. The first three prevent you from seeing the path or what they call stream-entry or sotapanna, and one of these is sakkaya-ditti, the personality-belief or sense of yourself as a separate person. Just notice how one’s personality is a very conditioned thing that changes according to situations. Who I’m with, people I know, people I don’t know or whatever, the personality adapts itself, it arises and ceases.
Before I meditated I assumed that I am this personality because I didn’t know the difference between awareness, pure subjectivity, and personality, they were so bound up together. In awareness, however, I began to observe that actually the subjectivity is not personal; it has no name, it is not mine, it is not a monk, it is not an American, (even though I’m British now). This sense of the personality is conditioned and therefore it is dead. That is why it gets kind of boring after a while being a person; you are really just caught in a lot of habits that operate habitually. As you awaken, in awareness, mindfulness, you begin to realise the truth that this personality is conditioned; you begin to no longer believe in it or be limited by those personal habits and personal identities.
You begin to see how you bind yourself to all kinds of really painful things just because you don’t know how you limit yourself to mediocrity, misery or very unpleasant things as a result of lack of understanding. This awakened-ness is like a light that brings into consciousness the fact that this personality is merely shadow play, it’s a show, it isn’t reality, and so we can let go of our attachment to it. Then there is something you can trust in because on a personal level you feel you cannot trust yourself or you limit yourself to thinking of yourself as unenlightened, ‘I’m unenlightened. I’m an angry person. I’ve made too many mistakes in my life,’ and you hold onto these identities to the point of binding yourself to living within those painful limits. That is why the Buddha called it liberation, enlighten; it is actually freeing yourself from the conditions you attach to.
-Ajahn Sumedho
' Higher Identification '...
A part of the practical technique for attaining the inner awareness of this timeless reality is the practice of the AS IF exercise.
With some variations it has already been published in The Wisdom of the Overself, and an unpublished variant has been included in descriptions of the Short Path as "identification with the Overself."
The practitioner regards himself no longer from the standpoint of the quester, but from that of the Realized Man.
He assumes, in thought and action, that he has nothing to attain because he bases himself on the Vedantic truth that Reality, of which he is a part, is here and now--is not reached in Time, being timeless--and that therefore he is as divine as he ever will be.
He rejects the appearance of things, which identifies man only with his ego, and insists on the higher identification with Overself also.
-- Notebooks Category 23: Advanced Contemplation >
Chapter 6: Advanced Meditation > # 115
Paul Brunton
' Existence '...
"Did anybody exist prior to me?
When my Beingness appeared, then only everything else is.
Prior to my Beingness, nothing was ."
- Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj
' Subject and Object are unreal '...
"All phenomena of the external world are only the manifestations of the luminosity of our own mind and ultimately have no reality.
When we allow our mind to rest in the recognition that everything that it experiences is its own projection, the separation between subject and object comes to an end.
Then there is no longer anyone who grasps at something and nothing that is being grasped at –subject and object are recognized to be unreal."
-Lama Gendun Rinpoche
' He rejects the appearance of things '...
A part of the practical technique for attaining the inner awareness of this timeless reality is the practice of the AS IF exercise.
With some variations it has already been published in The Wisdom of the Overself, and an unpublished variant has been included in descriptions of the Short Path as "identification with the Overself."
The practitioner regards himself no longer from the standpoint of the quester, but from that of the Realized Man.
He assumes, in thought and action, that he has nothing to attain because he bases himself on the Vedantic truth that Reality, of which he is a part, is here and now--is not reached in Time, being timeless--and that therefore he is as divine as he ever will be.
He rejects the appearance of things, which identifies man only with his ego, and insists on the higher identification with Overself also.
-- Notebooks Category 23: Advanced Contemplation >
Chapter 6: Advanced Meditation > # 115
Paul Brunton
' Merging the ego '...
To each person that way is the best which
appears easiest or appeals most.
All the ways
are equally good, as they lead to the same goal,
which is the merging of the ego in the Self.
What the bhakta [devotee] calls surrender, the
man who does vichara calls jnana.
Both are trying
only to take the ego back to the source from which
it sprang and make it merge there.
- Sri Ramana Maharshi
"Be As You Are"
The Teachings of Sri Ramana Maharshi
edited by David Godman
Arkana, 1985
' Total Freedom '...
By knowing for an absolute fact that he does not live but is being lived,
the man of wisdom is aware of the perfect futility of all intentions.
For a nonentity there is no anxiety or worry,
only a sense of incredible, total freedom.
-A Net of Jewels
Ramesh S. Balsekar
' Beingness '...
"My existence is forever.
Ever there.
I am not one of the world, but the world is in my consciousness.
It was supposed that the body has appeared...in this world.
But when the truth came out...in a certain item the entire Universe is contained.
And what is that item?
That item is the Beingness, the knowledge "I am"."
-Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj
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