' Cast away existence '...
"Cast away your existence entirely,
For it is nothing but weeds and refuse.
Go, clear out your heart's chamber;
Arrange it as the abiding-place of the Beloved.
When you go forth, He will come it,
And to you, with self discarded,
He will reveal His beauty."
-Mahmud Shabistari
The Secret Rose Garden
Rendered form the Persian by Florence Lederer
Grand Rapids, MI: Phanes Press, 2002, p. 85
' What belongs to you ?'...
"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!"
-Kabir
Translated by Meher Baba
in Bhau Kalchuri, Lord Meher: The Biography of Avatar of the Age Meher Baba
American Edition, Vol. 14, p. 5026.
Revised Online Version, p. 4038
' Desire Good for All '...
The higher your aims and vaster your desires, the
more energy you will have for their fulfillment.
Desire the good of all and the universe will work
with you.
But if you want your own pleasure, you
must earn it the hard way.
Before desiring, deserve.
- Nisargadatta Maharaj
"I Am That"
Talks with Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj
The
' Hold fast to the Center '...
Heaven and earth are impartial;
They see the ten thousand things as straw dogs.
The wise are impartial;
They see the people as straw dogs.
The space between heaven and earth is like a bellows.
The shape changes but not the form;
The more it moves, the more it yields.
More words count less.
Hold fast to the center.
- Lao-tzu
Tao Te Ching
Translation by Gia-fu Feng and Jane English
Vintage Books Edition, September 1972
' One Spirit '...
If we say that there are many souls, it is true, just as there are many waves or many rays of the sun; but if we say there is one spirit,
it is truer still, just as there is one sea and one sun.
The waves are an action of the sea, the rays are a manifestation of the sun, the souls are a phenomenon of the spirit.
They are and they are not.
They are because we see them, and they are not because there is only one Being.
From The Teachings Of
HAZRAT INAYAT KHAN
Selected & Arranged By
HAZRAT PIR VILAYAT INAYAT KHAN
' Empty of ego '...
Only when a human being becomes empty of ego does it become a vessel of the manifestation of the Supreme.
When there is sufficient space made through the absence of the person,
then the divine cannot hide.
It must reveal itself as the Lord inside that form.
~ Mooji
' Thoughts on a Monday Night '...
Being retired from occupation, my mondays are different from most..
Each day of awakening within this Hologram is another event of survival..
Each day is filled with hate filled words from the bureaus of re-education..
The 'media' controls the minds of half of the humans..
Repeat a lie enough times and it will be believed..
You are now officially within the Matrix..
If you are Awake, you, even as ego,
has eyes to see..
You do not have to be within the State of Consciousness to see..
What are the liars, trying to achieve ?..
What does the ego, try to achieve ?..
Of course the answer always remains,
'Power, Wealth, and Fame' ..
Beware all Politicians, their minions, and the controlled media called news...
-thomas
' Self-Awareness '...
People underestimate the power of self-awareness.
It is the purest and most potent force in the universe
and yet few human beings are aware of it as their
fundamental nature.
Grace has come in the form of
Satsang so that you may recognise and experience
your greatest discovery:
unending peace, joy, wisdom
and love and more than this,
your timeless existence
as Awareness itself.
- Mooji
' Mysticism and Devotion '...
Mysticism without devotion is like uncooked food; it can never be
assimilated.
Bowl of Saki, by Hazrat Inayat Khan
Commentary by Pir-o-Murshid Inayat Khan:
Knowledge and heart are just like the positive and negative forces;
it is these two things which make life balanced. If the heart quality
is very strong and intellect is lacking, then life lacks balance.
Knowledge and heart quality must be developed together. There are
fine lights and shades in one's life that cannot be perceived and
fully understood without having touched the deeper side of life,
which is the devotional side.
Mystics of all ages have not been known for their miraculous powers
or for the doctrines they have taught, but for the devotion they have
shown throughout their lives. The Sufi in the East says to himself
Ishq Allah Mabud Allah which means 'God is Love, God is Beloved', in
other words it is God who is Love, Lover, and Beloved. When we hear
the stories of the miraculous powers of mystics, of their great
insight into the hidden laws of nature, of the qualities which they
manifested through their beautiful personalities, we realize that
these have all come from one and the same source, whether one calls
it devotion or whether one calls it love.
Mysticism without devotion is like uncooked food and can never be
assimilated. 'I am the heart of my devotees,' says Krishna in the
Baghavat Gita. And Hafiz says, 'O joyous day when I depart from this
abode of desolation, seeking the repose of my soul and setting out in
search of my Beloved.' ... The life of the mystics, both the inner
and the outer, is shown as a wondrous phenomenon within itself. He
becomes independent of all earthly sources of life and lives in the
Being of God, realizing His presence by the denial of his individual
self; and he thus merges into that highest bliss wherein he finds his
salvation.
' It's Highest Function '...
When intellect comes to understand that its own existence implies a superior existence which is its origin,
it has served its highest function.
When it accepts the fact of intuition and serves it by laying itself down in stilled prostration,
there is born Intelligence.
Then alone does truth appear and peace bless us.
-- Notebooks Category 7: The Intellect > Chapter 1:
The Place of Intellect > # 33 Paul Brunton
' Learned '...
Why do people call me learned?
What is the mark of real learning?
Learning that all garnered knowledge of things
is empty ignorance
and that true knowledge
is the search for the Knower.
-Sri Ramana Maharshi
' Waiting '...
Waiting is not mere empty hoping.
It has the inner certainty of reaching the goal.
Such certainty alone gives that light which leads to wisdom.
- I Ching
' Retire in Silence '...
In fact, we should retire in silence, and investigate no further,
because our judgement is stuck without any resources.
What indeed could anyone investigate further,
when he has no further way of proceeding,
since all investigation proceeds to the principle,
and comes to a standstill at it?
--Enneads, VI.8.11
Plotinus
' What is there to Realize ?'...
It is false to speak of realization.
What is
there to realize?
The real is as it is always.
We are not creating anything new or achieving
something which we did not have before.
The
illustration given in books is this.
We dig a
well and create a huge pit.
The space in the
pit or well has not been created by us.
We
have just removed the earth which was filling
the space there.
The space was there then and
is also there now.
Similarly we have simply
to throw out all the age-long samskaras [innate
tendencies] which are inside us.
When all of
them have been given up, the Self will shine alone.
- Sri Ramana Maharshi
"Be As You Are"
The Teachings of Sri Ramana Maharshi
Edited by David Godman
Arkana, 1985
' The Original State '...
The Sufi believes that consciousness has,
so to speak, produced matter, or substance,
out of itself, while yet remaining itself in
its original state.
Hazrat Pir-o-Murshid `Inayat Khan
From: A Meditation Theme for Each Day
Selected and arranged by Hazrat Pir Vilayat `Inayat Khan
' The state of mind called 'nothing '...
"Man thinks and acts without noticing. When he thinks, "It is fine
today," he is aware of the weather but not of his own thought. It is
the reflecting act of consciousness that comes immediately after the
thought that makes him aware of his own thinking."
The discipline of Zen concentration eliminates this reflecting
activity in order to come to what Sekida calls absolute samadhi or
pure existence:
"ultimately the time comes when no reflection appears at all. One
comes to notice nothing, feel nothing, hear nothing, see nothing. This
state of mind is called "nothing." But it is not vacant emptiness.
Rather is it the purest condition of our existence. It is not
reflected, and nothing is known directly of it."
"In a word, they and I were one. If I am you, you also are me. In the
field of vision, they and I are distinct structures, each separately
standing in its place. However, just as my own existence is intimate
and warm to me, so now are they intimate and warm to me. We are not
strangers; another me is standing there."
-KATSUKI SEKIDA
' Be Careful '...
Be careful.
The moment you start talking
you create a verbal universe,
a universe of words, ideas,
concepts and abstractions,
interwoven and interdependent,
most wonderfully
generating, supporting and explaining each other
and yet all without essence or substance,
mere creations of the mind.
Words create words,
reality is silent.
-Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj
' Awake and Asleep '...
There are those sleeping who are awake,
and others awake who are sound asleep.
Some of those bathing in sacred pools
will never get clean.
And there are others
doing household chores
who are free of any action.
- Lalla
14th Century North Indian mystic
From "Naked Song"
Versions by Coleman Barks
Maypop 1992
' Intuition '...
Intuition is often the explosive climax of a long slow process of hard thinking but whether it comes swiftly or slowly it must always be ready to justify itself at the bar of reason,
for the latter is our only reliable guide to truth.
Man may lay reason aside only when its fullest use has led him to the point of transcending it.
To ignore it before that moment is to fall prey to extravagant fancies which are likely to lead the mind completely astray.
-- Notebooks Category 7: The Intellect > Chapter 1:
The Place of Intellect > # 22 Paul Brunton
' The Secret of Freedom '...
The secret is 'Surrender'..
Surrender Every-thing..
Become No-thing..
Give All..
Only by entering the Blackness of 'Nothingness'
Is 'Everything' Found...
-namaste, thomas
' The Lord of the Universe '...
"God incarnates Himself in a human form. It is true that He dwells everywhere, in all living creatures, but the desires of the human soul cannot be fulfilled except by an Avatara or Divine Incarnation.
The human being longs to see Him, touch Him, be with Him and enjoy His Divine company. In order to fulfill such desires, the Incarnation of God is necessary. When an Avatara or Divine Incarnation descends, however, the people at large do not know it. It is known only to a few chosen disciples. Can everyone comprehend the indivisible Absolute Brahman, Existence-Intelligence-Bliss Absolute?
"When the Supreme Lord incarnated Himself as Rama, only twelve sages knew it. The other saints and sages knew Him as the prince of the Raja Dasaratha.
But those twelve sages prayed to Him, saying: 'O Rama, Thou art the indivisible Existence-Intelligence-Bliss Absolute. Thou hast incarnated in this human form. By Thine own power of Maya Thou appearest as a human being, but in reality Thou art the Lord of the universe.'"
-Sri Ramakrishna Paramahansa
in The Gospel of Ramakrishna
Ed. by Swami Abhedananda, [1907], p. 409-410
' The No-mind state '...
The no-mind state is not the vacancy of idiocy
but the most supremely alert intelligence,
undistracted by extraneous thought.
- Ramesh S. Balsekar
"A Net of Jewels"
Ramesh S. Balsekar
Advaita Press, 1996
' A Projection of the Overself '...
In the human body there is at one and the same time a projection of the Overself and a channel for it.
The wisdom and intelligence which have gone into and are hidden behind the whole universe have gone into the human body too.
To ignore it, as some mystics try to do--and vainly--or to deny its existence,
as others even more foolishly do, is to ignore God and deny the soul.
The student of philosophy cannot do that.
His outlook must be an integral one, must take in what is the very basis of his earthly existence, must be a balanced one.
-- Notebooks, Category 5, Introductory.Paragraph
Paul Brunton
' Does anyone know what Christ means ?'...
Does anyone know what Christ means ?...
Does anyone know what Buddha means ?..
To 'Be' the Consciousness called Love is the Christ and Buddha Nature..
It is the 'State' of NOW..
To put into the future is just, joy denied..
The future only contains an entity, a character of drama..
The paragraph is ending soon, and therefore, the answer must be presented..
The answer is No-thing..
" you must die to be born ",
said the Nazarene...
-thomas
' Unbroken Self-Awareness '...
Unbroken Self-awareness is the true, bright path of devotion or love.
Knowledge of our inherent nature as indivisible Bliss supreme wells up as love.
The Self, our Being, is Awareness.
- Ramana Maharshi
' Bliss '...
"Really speaking, everywhere in the entire universe is bliss. It is all bliss, bliss and bliss! But poor, ignorant mankind cannot enjoy it, as man does not know how to enjoy it.
"The whole universe is full of infinite bliss, but disregarding it, man hankers after the transient happiness of affluence, influence, possessions, name and fame. This is all false and illusory, yet man runs only after this. It is due to his ignorance of what is real. One should try to acquire real happiness by eschewing that which is false.
"I am bliss personified. This five foot, six inch physical form you see is not real. If you could see my Real Form, you would not be yourself.
"The limited human mind has not the least conception of the Sat-Chit-Ananda state — Infinite Power-Knowledge-Bliss. This state is beyond the realm of the mind. It is called the Nirvikalp state — the "I am God" state. Nirvikalp is the Infinite Bliss state of Paramatma or God's Infinite Consciousness.
"Everyone is destined to attain this state and it is everyone's duty to make efforts toward that end. Some persons may acquire Realization today; if not today, then tomorrow. Some may get it after years and some after many births. But at some time or other, one and all have to experience this elevated state."
-Meher Baba
Bhau Kalchuri
Lord Meher: The Biography of Avatar of the Age Meher Baba
Manifestation, 1st American edition, 1986, vol. 4, pp. 1170-1171
Revised Online Edition, p. 1039
' my/mine, you/yours '...
A newborn baby is the purest form of a human
being.
This purity remains until the baby understands
my/mine, you/yours.
- Baba Hari Dass
Silence Speaks
Sri Rama Foundation
Santa Cruz, California 1977
' What is Christ Consciousness ? '...
Let us examine the words..
The word Christ or Christhood is a 'Free soul' state of mind..
This means that You as
'Self' is Freed from the shackles of Egoic- Desire..
' Being ' in the state of non-ego,
a strange beautiful experience of joy is found..
This is higher than the normal soul knows..
This is the state of 'Unconditional Love '..
Buddha called this, 'Unselfish Love '..
This is the state of 'Divine Consciousness'..
The state of Dreamer and Creator,
within this hologram of thoughts called life...
-thomas
' The Holy One '...
"The essential thing is to habituate one's mind and thought continuously so that everything one sees with one's eyes –
the heavens and the earth and all that is therein –
constitutes the outer garments of the Holy One."
-Rabbi Schneur Zalman
in Edward Hoffman
The Hebrew Alphabet: A Mystical Journey
San Francisco: Chronicle Books, 1998, p. 31
' Devotion to Love '...
Greater the devotion
more the knowledge.
Greater the knowledge,
more the love.
If 'knowledge' does not awaken
more love in you
it's not knowledge;
it's dry intellectualism.
If it's not true devotion
but just mechanical worship,
it will keep you dull.
- Swami Amar Jyoti
"In Light of Wisdom"
Swami Amar Jyoti
Truth Consciousness, Boulder, Colorado, 1983
' Here and Now '...
The omnipresence of the Infinite Mind carries great meaning for us individually.
For it signifies that this Mind is not less present and not less active in us too.
-- Notebooks Category 25: World-Mind in Individual Mind > Chapter 1:
Their Meeting and Interchange > # 23 Paul Brunton
Walter Cronk, Golden Light [excerpts]:
Practical exercise in meditation is simply to recognize oneness with God,
omnipresence of God, and activity of God within one here and now.
-- Notebooks Category 22: Inspiration and the Overself > Chapter 4:
Introduction To Mystical Glimpses > # 198 Paul Brunton
' The World as Separate '...
I see the same world as you do, but not the same way.
There is
nothing mysterious about it.
Everybody sees the world through
the idea he has of himself.
As you think yourself to be, so you
think the world to be.
If you imagine yourself as separate from
the world, the world will appear as separate from you and you
will experience desire and fear.
I do not see the world as separate
from me and so there is nothing for me to desire, or fear.
- Nisargadatta Maharaj
"I Am That"
Talks with Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj
The Acorn Press, 1973
' No Tree, No Mirror, No Dust '...
Hui Neng: No Tree, No Mirror, No Dust
Hui Neng was quite a rustic and was not formally ordained into the monkhood, but rather worked as a kitchen helper at the monastery. When the Fifth Patriarch was ready to pick his successor he asked the monks to write a poem about enlightenment.
The brightest monk there, Shen Xiu, wrote the following poem:
The body is a Bodhi (enlightenment) tree,
the mind a standing mirror bright.
At all times polish it diligently,
and let no dust alight.
It was assumed he had a lock on winning but Hui Neng got one of the other monks to write his poem for him, as he was illiterate. What he wrote was:
Bodhi is no tree,
nor is the mind a standing mirror bright.
Since all is originally empty,
where does the dust alight?
Upon seeing this poem the Fifth Patriarch recognized that this simple, unlettered kitchen helper actually saw much deeper into the real path of enlightenment than any of the other monks. He had him come to his quarters in the middle of the night and passed on his bowl and robe, signifying his office, and then told him to leave the monastery immediately as the other monks were sure to be furious with him when they found out!
-Wu Wei
' Cancellation of Time '...
The idea of Eternity,
which is a prolongation of time,
is not the same as the idea of the Eternal Now,
which is a cancellation of time.
-- Notebooks Category 19: The Reign of Relativity >
Chapter 4: Time, Space, Causality > # 86
Paul Brunton
' The Creations of Maya '...
"Mistakes in valuation can be committed in three ways:
(a) in taking as important that which is unimportant, or
(b) in taking as unimportant that which is important, or
(c) in giving to a thing an importance which is other than the importance which it really has.
All these falsehoods are creations of Maya."
Meher Baba
Discourses
Sixth Edition for the World Wide Web, 2004, originally published 1967, vol III, p.138
http://discoursesbymeherbaba.org/v3-138.php
' Half-Awake '...
That man is already half-awake from the illusion of this World who knows that he is dreaming.
-- Notebooks Category 21: Mentalism > Chapter 3:
The Individual and World Mind > # 26
Paul Brunton
' The Formless One Life '...
“How short-lived every human experience is, how fleeting our lives. Is there anything that is not subject to birth and death, anything that is eternal?
Consider this: if there were only one color, let us say blue, and the entire world and everything in it were blue, then there would be no blue. There needs to be something that is not blue so that blue can be recognized; otherwise, it would not “stand out,” would not exist.
In the same way, does it not require something that is not fleeting and impermanent for the fleetingness of all things to be recognized? In other words: if everything, including yourself, were impermanent, would you even know it? Does the fact that you are aware of and can witness the short-lived nature of all forms, including your own, not mean that there is something in you that is not subject to decay?
When you are twenty, you are aware of your body as strong and vigorous; sixty years later, you are aware of your body as weakened and old. Your thinking too may have changed from when you were twenty, but the awareness that knows that your body is young or old or that your thinking has changed has undergone no change. That awareness is the eternal in you — consciousness itself. It is the formless One Life. Can you lose It?
No,
because you are It.”
Excerpt From
Stillness Speaks
Eckhart Tolle
' The nomenclatures of Reality '...
The names, that we give souls that become Free..
We are the Dreams of God,
This Intellect of creating illusions..
And so, we enter this same road,
within our Dreams, within night,
and our Dreams within, day..
Christ and Buddha are names that we give to those, that returned Home..
Their Wisdom is so far ahead, that we call them gods..
There is only One Source..
This idea of becoming a god, is an act of ego..
We are the Dreams of Source,
We remain a part of Source,
merely,
because Source continues to Dream...
-thomas
' The Way, Home '...
Everywhere is Consciousness and everywhere is
Home.
"Everywhere" is but a small corner of your
heart.
You are that vast.
There is no travel because
you are always Home.
Surrender your ego and you
are Home.
- Papaji
' The Real '...
The real does not die, the unreal never lived.
Set your mind right and all will be right.
When you know that the world is one, that humanity is one, you will act accordingly.
But first of all you must attend to the way you feel, think and live.
Unless there is order in yourself, there can be no order in the world.
- Nisargadatta Majaraj
' Only when we stop '...
All that we experience is subjective,
there is no sensation without interpretation.
We create the world and ourselves;
only when we stop do we see the truth.
- Deng Ming-Dao
' Thoughts on a Friday Night '...
There is much talk about this Master Mystic called Jesus..
You that are aware know the real name of the Nazarene..
This Man is Everyman..
A man born in poverty rises to God..
How does this happen ?..
When the human spirit recognizes Reality,
their name begins with San, Sant, or Saint,
which means Holy..
The word Holy only means that You know what is going on..
Yeshua became Awake early within this walk..
We sit and wait for someone to save us,
and Rabbi Yeshua tells us to look within..
My paragraph is ending,
keep thinking...
-thomas
' You are One '...
"Master of the worlds!
You are One, but not in number.
You are He Who is Highest of the High,
Most Hidden of the Hidden;
no thought can grasp You at all."
"Patach Eliyahu"
Tikunei Zohar 17a
' Accepting Grace '...
I wondered for a long time why God has preferences, why all souls don't receive an equal amount of graces. I was surprised when I saw Him shower His extraordinary favors on saints who had offended Him, for instance, St. Paul and St. Augustine, and whom He forced, so to speak, to accept his graces. I was puzzled at seeing how Our Lord was pleased to caress certain ones from the cradle to the grave, allowing no obstacle in their way when coming to Him.
Jesus deigned to teach me this mystery. He set before me the book of nature; I understood how all the flowers He has created are beautiful, how the splendor of the rose and the whiteness of the Lily do not take away from the perfume of the little violet or the delightful simplicity of the daisy. I understood that if all flowers wanted to be roses, nature would lose her springtime beauty, and the fields would no longer be decked out with little wild flowers.
And so it is in the world of souls, Jesus' garden. He willed to create great souls comparable to Lilies and roses, but He has created smaller ones and these must be content to be daisies or violets destined to give joy to God's glances when He looks down at his feet. Perfection consists in doing His will, in being what He wills us to be.
It is with great happiness, then, that I come to sing the mercies of the Lord with you, dear Mother. It is for "you alone" I am writing the story of the "little flower" gathered by Jesus.
-St. Therese of Lisieux, Story of a Soul
' Know-ING '...
Truth or Reality cannot be stored, cannot be amassed - it does not accumulate.
The value of any insight, understanding, or realisation can only be in the ever-fresh presence of the moment.
Yesterday's realisation is not a bit of good. Now it is dead. Now it has lost it's vitality.
It is useless to try and cling to or hold onto an insight, an understanding, or a realisation, for only in it's movement can there be the enabling of ever-fresh and new insights of Truth or Reality to appear.
The idea of enlightenment or self-realisation as a onetime event or a lasting and permanent state or experience is an erroneous concept.
Understand-ING or know-ING is alive in the immediacy which can never be negated.
The emphasis is on the activity of know-ING which is going on as the immediacy now -
not the dead concept "I understand" or "I know."
- Sailor Bob Adamson
' When the two become One '...
The Gnostics speak of gender within this statement of Truth,
but, I and other mystics see more..
It is indeed the 'prodigal son ', returning Home..
You already are aware that there is only Source (God)..
Therefore, who is looking in the mirror ?..
Has the 'Dream', Awakened ?..
Has the mercy of Love, entered this room ?..
Is the mercy of God, the end of servitude ?..
Or is service to others a joyful state of Love ?..
-thomas
' Dhammapada '...
"11. Those who mistake the unessential to
be essential and the essential to be unessential
dwelling in wrong thoughts, never arrive at the
essential.
12. Those who know the essential to be
essential and the unessential to be unessential,
dwelling in right thoughts, arrive at the essential.
-Gautama the Buddha
_Dhammapada, 1:11-12
Translated from the Pali by Acharya Buddharakkhita
' Mind and imaginings '...
"All that has physical form derives its existence from thought.
Relativity underpins all manifestation.
The world is founded on the substratum of ego.
It comprises the perceived and named objects of your senses.
Yet enquiry reveals that ego does not exist.
Therefore, all that is based on ego does not exist either.
But so long as your mind copulates with your imaginings,
creation will continue to go on for you."
~Jac O'Keeffe
' The Dream of life '...
Earth life is but a dream, lived out in a dream physical body amid dream environment.
Dream experiences are only ideas; during sleep-dream man sees, hears, touches, tastes, and smells exactly as he does during waking-dream.
Hence waking is but materialized ideas, but still ideas.
God's cosmic dream:
all universal activities are but different ideas of God, divine ideation made material and thrown upon the screen of human consciousness.
The cosmic illusion is impinged upon man's sense and seen from within by Mind through consciousness, sensation, and bodily organ.
-- Notebooks Category 21: Mentalism > Chapter 3:
The Individual and World Mind > # 23
Paul Brunton
' The Unborn Awareness Self '...
You are the peace in silence.
You are the silence in peace.
You are the light of consciousness that causes all things to be seen.
You are the perceiving love devoid of objective identity.
You are the wisdom and love which shines from the source of existence.
You are Unborn Awareness Self.
- Mooji
' An aliveness '...
Everything that’s spoken in satsang is only meant to strike a recognition, an aliveness, a remembrance in this moment, and nothing more.
The truth is only true if it’s living for you, for me.
If it’s alive within us, it’s real, and it transcends anything we could say about it.
If the truth remains only in its spoken form it dies.
Even your own insight, if it becomes rigidified in your mind, will die.
Even the greatest sutras die as soon as they aren’t alive within somebody.
When they become just words they die because all teachings, the truest teachings, need you and me to bring them to life, to find the life within them.
When you find the life, then you can bow to the teaching and be the living of it.
At that point the words don’t mean a whole lot..."
- Adyashanti, Pacific Grove, CA
September 2005
' The Mind behind the Dream '...
It is asked why, if the world is like a dream or a hallucination, we all have the same dream or suffer the same hallucination.
Why do we project it in common instead of independently, since we all do have quite different dreams when asleep at night or quite different reveries when awake by day?
The answer is that there is another and vaster Mind behind our personal minds which imposes the same world-image upon them all, so that all see it and live in it.
Moreover, they are of necessity themselves projected by this Mind so that this image is not less real for them than their own selves.
The mind makes for itself this world of illusion, this stage of space and time and form.
But it does not make it independently of all prompting.
For the image that it constructs is imposed upon it--or projected into it--by the Mind behind it.
-- Notebooks Category 21: Mentalism > Chapter 3:
The Individual and World Mind > # 64
Paul Brunton
' The Gospel of Thomas '...
These are the secret sayings that the living Jesus spoke and Didymos Judas Thomas recorded.
1. And he said, "Whoever discovers the interpretation of these sayings will not taste death."
2. Jesus said, "Those who seek should not stop seeking until they find. When they find, they will be disturbed. When they are disturbed, they will marvel, and will reign over all. [And after they have reigned they will rest.]"
3. Jesus said, "If your leaders say to you, 'Look, the (Father's) kingdom is in the sky,' then the birds of the sky will precede you. If they say to you, 'It is in the sea,' then the fish will precede you. Rather, the (Father's) kingdom is within you and it is outside you.
When you know yourselves, then you will be known, and you will understand that you are children of the living Father. But if you do not know yourselves, then you live in poverty, and you are the poverty."
4. Jesus said, "The person old in days won't hesitate to ask a little child seven days old about the place of life, and that person will live.
For many of the first will be last, and will become a single one."
5. Jesus said, "Know what is in front of your face, and what is hidden from you will be disclosed to you.
For there is nothing hidden that will not be revealed. [And there is nothing buried that will not be raised.]"
6. His disciples asked him and said to him, "Do you want us to fast? How should we pray? Should we give to charity? What diet should we observe?"
Jesus said, "Don't lie, and don't do what you hate, because all things are disclosed before heaven. After all, there is nothing hidden that will not be revealed, and there is nothing covered up that will remain undisclosed."
7. Jesus said, "Lucky is the lion that the human will eat, so that the lion becomes human. And foul is the human that the lion will eat, and the lion still will become human."
8. And he said, "The person is like a wise fisherman who cast his net into the sea and drew it up from the sea full of little fish. Among them the wise fisherman discovered a fine large fish. He threw all the little fish back into the sea, and easily chose the large fish. Anyone here with two good ears had better listen!"
9. Jesus said, "Look, the sower went out, took a handful (of seeds), and scattered (them). Some fell on the road, and the birds came and gathered them. Others fell on rock, and they didn't take root in the soil and didn't produce heads of grain. Others fell on thorns, and they choked the seeds and worms ate them. And others fell on good soil, and it produced a good crop: it yielded sixty per measure and one hundred twenty per measure."
10. Jesus said, "I have cast fire upon the world, and look, I'm guarding it until it blazes."
11. Jesus said, "This heaven will pass away, and the one above it will pass away.
The dead are not alive, and the living will not die. During the days when you ate what is dead, you made it come alive. When you are in the light, what will you do? On the day when you were one, you became two. But when you become two, what will you do?"
12. The disciples said to Jesus, "We know that you are going to leave us. Who will be our leader?"
Jesus said to them, "No matter where you are you are to go to James the Just, for whose sake heaven and earth came into being."
13. Jesus said to his disciples, "Compare me to something and tell me what I am like."
Simon Peter said to him, "You are like a just messenger."
Matthew said to him, "You are like a wise philosopher."
Thomas said to him, "Teacher, my mouth is utterly unable to say what you are like."
Jesus said, "I am not your teacher. Because you have drunk, you have become intoxicated from the bubbling spring that I have tended."
And he took him, and withdrew, and spoke three sayings to him. When Thomas came back to his friends they asked him, "What did Jesus say to you?"
Thomas said to them, "If I tell you one of the sayings he spoke to me, you will pick up rocks and stone me, and fire will come from the rocks and devour you."
14. Jesus said to them, "If you fast, you will bring sin upon yourselves, and if you pray, you will be condemned, and if you give to charity, you will harm your spirits.
When you go into any region and walk about in the countryside, when people take you in, eat what they serve you and heal the sick among them.
After all, what goes into your mouth will not defile you; rather, it's what comes out of your mouth that will defile you."
15. Jesus said, "When you see one who was not born of woman, fall on your faces and worship. That one is your Father."
-thomas
' The noise of the lover '...
"The noise of the lover is only up to the time
when he has not seen his Beloved.
Once he sees the Beloved, he becomes calm and quiet,
just as the rivers are boisterous before they join the ocean,
but when they do so, there are becalmed forever."
-Muinuddin Chishti
' The Supreme Bliss '...
That pure consciousness which is the reality,
and which shines without a break, as "I AM"
when the mind becomes calm,
is the supreme bliss.
- Sri Ramana Maharshi
' The most important question '...
In one of my times within the Light of Reality,
I asked Source this question;
" What is the most important lesson for me to learn in this lifetime ?"..
The Light spoke back to Me and said;
" Treat others as you would want to be treated "..
This simple sentence that we were taught as children,
turns out to be the most important lesson in life...
-thomas
' The Dream called Waking '...
When the seeds of thought and conceptualization
are burnt to ash by pure knowledge,
there is liberation
from the dream we call waking.
- Ramesh S. Balsekar
"A Net of Jewels"
Ramesh S. Balsekar
Advaita Press, 1996
' The Dream World '...
This is the dream world that is addressed by many ancient spiritual teachings. When many of the old saints and sages say, “Your world is a dream. You’re living in an illusion,” they’re referring to this world of the mind and way we believe our thoughts about reality.
When we see the world through our thoughts, we stop experiencing life as it really is and others as they really are. When I have a thought about you, that’s something I’ve created. I’ve turned you into an idea. In a certain sense, if I have an idea about you that I believe, I’ve degraded you. I’ve made you into something very small. This is the way of human beings, this is what we do to each other.
To genuinely understand the cause of suffering and our potential release and freedom from it, we have to look very closely at this root of human suffering:
When we believe what we think, when we take our thinking to be reality, we will suffer. It’s not obvious until you look at it, but when we believe our thoughts, in that instant, we begin to live in the world of dreams, where the mind conceptualizes an entire world that doesn’t actually exist anywhere but in the mind itself.
At that moment, we begin to experience a sense of isolation, where we no longer feel connected to each other in a very rich and human way, but we find ourselves receding more and more into the world of our minds, into the world of our own creation.
Adyashanti – “Falling into Grace”
' The Suffering of others '...
It is always hard to watch others who are near and dear to him suffer,
but he must not let go of his own inner faith and peace,
however little they be, because of having to witness such suffering.
It ought not to take him by surprise if he remembers that earthly life is usually a mixture of pleasure and pain,
and that only in the Overself is there lasting happiness.
-- Notebooks Category 24: The Peace within You > Chapter 1:
The Search for Happiness > # 108 Paul Brunton
' The First Questions '...
Why am I here?
Because, 'You' are an adventurer..
--------------------------------
Why am I in this body?
Because, 'you' do not know how to leave and not come back..
--------------------------------
What is the point of an "illusion"?
There is no Real Manifestation of objects.
The Atoms are too far apart to form objects..
-thomas
' Perceiving the Unfording '...
"Place your attention on that which sees fear.
From this objective perspective, the thought of fear is no more potent than the thought of a butterfly.
Fear comes and goes.
If you are not attached to it, it will pass.
The only staying power available is that which is offered by your attention.
This is effortless.
If you apply effort, your attention is with thoughts.
You do not have to control your emotions, senses or feelings.
Observe them.
Let all that is unfolding, unfold.
Let all experiences roll out, and be the perceiving of this unfolding."
-Jac O'Keeffe
' The Unchanging Consciousness '...
The Overself perceives and knows the individual self,
but only as an imperturbable witness--
in the same way that the sun witnesses the various objects upon the earth but does not enter into a particular relation with a particular object.
So too the Overself is present in each individual self as the witness and as the unchanging consciousness which gives consciousness to the individual.
-- Notebooks Category 22: Inspiration and the Overself > Chapter 3:
The Overself's Presence > # 338 Paul Brunton
' Appearances of mind '...
All phenomena,
the outer world and all its inhabitants,
are appearances of our own mind.
Appearances are mind,
appearing and yet empty,
empty and yet appearing.
Appearances are inseparable from emptiness,
deceptive like a dream or an illusion.
They are nothing and yet they appear –
like the moon on water.
To recognize this
completely liberates us
from our deep entanglement
in dualistic grasping and fixation.
Free of artificiality, relaxed and loose,
open to that freshness
that is the very nature
of self-aware consciousness.
Aside from this,
there is nothing to contemplate or meditate on.
Don’t think,
don’t meditate,
don’t do anything..
Simply remain undistracted.
I beg you –
meditate naturally and let go!
~ ☸ Lama Guendune Rinpoche, Heart Advice from a Mahamudra Master
Phenomena – Vajra Song
' The Dreamer called Source '...
Is it not enough accomplishment within a Dream,
to be the Creator and Dreamer?..
All thoughts come into manifestation.
Perhaps, they really come only into Mind..
Why are we forced to mirror this 'Dream World' every night?..
They actually have humans that will take your money to analise your dreams..
You are Consciousness, of course, You will Dream..
When, there is no such thing as time,
what does Consciousness do?..
Dreaming is the only answer for Consciousness to explore,
to attempt to Know Itself...
-thomas
' Self is Love '...
You are always in love
and you can only love yourself,
the Changeless One in which even space is.
There is no beginning, no middle, and no end to it.
Only love is worth loving and this is your own Self.
- Papaji
"The Truth Is"
Sri H.W.L. Poonja
Yudhishtara, 1995
' Drop everything '...
Forget about the past. Forget about people who have hurt you before. Drop everything, let it go. Let go of everything, everything. Hold on to nothing. Stand naked in the world without a foundation, with nothing to take refuge in. Then you'll be cleansed completely, then you'll become the ascended Master. But when you take refuge in this and you take refuge in that, this keeps you from your real Self.
As an example: In buddhism you learn to take refuge in the Buddha, take refuge in the sangha and so forth. Yet when you do this you become an idiot, for you're holding on to something. You become dull, insensitive. Hold on to nothing. Yet most of us have fear. We're afraid to do this because we won't know what will happen to us. We feel secure when we take refuge in something. The security is your downfall. As long as you feel secure you will never grow. It's like having money in the bank. You're afraid to spend it. You're afraid to be without an account. For you think this is your nest egg, you hoard it. You always look at the balance to see what you have. This keeps you from advancing spiritually.
Remember the Israelites of old. When they were in the desert for forty years they were told not to save any manna. So they would throw away the extra manna they had, not to save anything, and new manna was provided for them daily. This is the meaning. As long as you have something to hold onto, something to save you from something, you will never become free and realized. Most of us are afraid of having nothing. Yet nothing is absolute reality. Nothing is your savior. Nothing is reality. Something on the other hand, is your enemy. Something will always hold you back.
I'm not saying you have to give your possessions away; I'm saying possess all you will but don't be possessed by your possessions. Do not believe that what you earn will be your security, it never works out this way. Your security is your Self, the faith that you have, the power that you have, the love that you have, this is your security, nothing else. Yet most of us never live this way for we have been brought up to believe that we have to have something. For if we feel that we have nothing, we haven't made it in this world and we become depressed, we compare ourselves with others.
Yet every great spiritual Master has lived from day to day, never caring at all what is going to happen the next day. But you say, "How can we do such a thing in the West?" You say, "This is for monks, nuns. For people who have given up this world." On the contrary, you'll be happier than you have ever been in your life when you stop worrying about your possessions, what you should have, what you shouldn't have, for you are not your possessions nor are you your body. It is only the mind that thinks these things.
Why not surrender right now to the power which knows the way. Make up your mind this night that you're going to give up everything, mentally. You're going to let go of the past, the future, the present, you're doing this right now this minute. You're letting go of all your fears, all of your frustrations, all of your thinking. You are no longer concerned what's going to happen to you tomorrow, where you will be, where you won't be. You're not worried about a job, income, people places and things, you have found freedom, absolute freedom.
This freedom will take care of you, will guide you, listen to it closely it'll tell you what to do at every turn. This freedom is really you.
--Robert Adams, from Transcript 248: The Silence Of The Heart, March 21,1993
' Needing Nothing '...
" I am astounded by an intensity that fills me with joy –
not the kind of joy where you jump for joy,
but an inner joy that leaves me needing nothing other than what appears in that instant,
nothing else whatsoever,
so I feel … alive."
-Ramana Hridayam
' Listening to Lalla '...
{I exhausted myself, looking.
No one ever finds this by trying.
I melted in it and came home,
where every jar is full,
but no one drinks.}
- Lalla
14th Century North Indian mystic
--------------
The 'real question' within the declaration is,
' who is searching ?'..
As long as someone is searching for Truth,
means that they have not found It..
It is because the ego cannot enter Truth..
Falsehood cannot unite with Truth...
-thomas
' Sink within Stillness '...
If we disinterestedly observe the arising and disappearing of all the states we experience,
we soon come to realize that each state, each perception, each thought,
is reabsorbed into an unspoken knowing, knowing as being.
This, the continuum, the only reality, is there before activity commences.
Let yourself sink deep within this stillness each time it makes itself felt.
- Jean Klein
' Manifestations of the mind '...
External reality appears as such to human beings from whose minds originate diverse dualities,
due to an interaction between their discriminating thoughts and psychic imprints.
External reality is the product of the mind;
all appearances are, therefore, completely unreal,
for they are all the manifestations of the mind!
-Gautama the Buddha - from Lankavatara Sutra
' Beauty is found within '...
To have seen Himalaya's snows turn pink at sunset and the Taj Mahal's marble turn phosphorescent in moonlight, is to have seen beauty indeed.
Yet after all it is not the place or the handiwork that really matters when we have gone,
but the emotion evoked, the memory etched, and the taste refined.
All these are mental things.
We find at such high moments of appreciation, of aesthetic uplift,
that the very essence of beauty is already present within ourselves,
is an internal fact, made momentarily vivid by an external stimulus.
-- Notebooks Category 21: Mentalism > Chapter 2:
The World As Mental > # 71 Paul Brunton
' Seeking Truth '...
I spent many years in meditation with the Nazarene and the Buddha's..
We acted as brothers as we sought Truth..
Time did not exist within our thoughts..
We existed as separate, yet knowing that there is no separation..
We play games , such as 'hide and seek '..
We have always played the games of thought..
And for some non-egoic reason, we return to play again..
Perhaps, Love has something to do with Play..
My paragraph is over...
-thomas
' Soul and Spirit '...
The definition of Soul and Spirit must be considered..
I
believe that we are Spirit and Consciousness, just as God is Spirit
and Consciousness..
So the Spirit of God and of course ourselves use
the illusion of a material body as a vehicle for learning..
The Soul
being the recording device of all activities, mental and physical..
I believe that the Soul is a direct link to Universal Consciousness,
otherwise known as God..
The Soul or Sub-Conscious Mind must be
trained to have thoughts only of Love if the Soul is to have a direct
relationship with God, which is the essence of Love..
Love means
that the false ego is not present..
therefore, the ego must be
destroyed to realize the state of God..
and to realize that we and
God are One...
- thomas
' Out of selfhood '...
"A door swings open in the center of our being and we seem to fall through it into immense depths which,
although they are infinite, are all accessible to us; all eternity seems to have become ours in this one placid and breathless contact.
Where already, supernatural instinct teaches us that the function of this abyss of freedom,
which has been open within our midsts,
is to draw us utterly out of our own selfhood and into its own immensity of liberation."
- Thomas Merton
' Superimposed freedom '...
here is no attainment and no cultivation
of original nature.
You are Consciousness,
not a farmer!
Why work for that which you
already are?
Do not mentate, do not stir a
thought.
Trying to get out of superimposed
bondage,
which is the notion that you are
separate from Existence,
you will land in
superimposed freedom.
- Papaji
"The Truth Is"
Sri H.W.L.
Poonja posted to Along The Way
' Sense perception and Reasoned perception '...
It was Plato who rightly pointed out that experience is really a medley of changing opinions and conflicting beliefs,
thereby offering contrast with the orderliness and consistency of reasoned knowledge.
This is why we have to begin intellectual analysis of the world by separating the realm of sense perception from the realm of reasoned perception, as though they were entirely different.
But we must not end with such an artificial separation.
For in the higher stages we climb to the viewpoint which reunites them again.
The Thought is then the Thing..
The Appearance is then also the Real!
-- Notebooks Category 21: Mentalism > Chapter 2:
The World As Mental > # 2 Paul Brunton
' The Tavern '...
The Souls meet in a half-circle called bar...
The Souls seek Love within those Souls called Friends..
The Addiction of meeting Souls on the same Journey..
The 'Sleeping' will not understand..
Ten million Souls, Awaken, everyday..
Consciousness has Awakened to Dream..
Truth will Appear and Hell will cease..
-thomas
' Looking '...
I exhausted myself, looking.
No one ever finds this by trying.
I melted in it and came home,
where every jar is full,
but no one drinks.
- Lalla
14th Century North Indian mystic
From "Naked Song"
Versions by Coleman Barks
Maypop 1992
' Sensitivity not Visual '...
The five colors blind the eye.
The five tones deafen the ear.
The five flavors dull the taste.
Racing and hunting madden the mind.
Precious things lead one astray.
Therefore the sage is guided by what he feels
and not by what he sees.
He lets go of that and chooses this.
- Lao-tzu
Tao Te Ching
Translation by Gia-fu Feng and Jane English
Vintage Books Edition, September 1972
' The Idea '...
The falsity of the view that the real world is outside consciousness and that the mental copy of it alone is inside consciousness,
becomes known only after thoroughly deep penetrative thought.
There is no world apart and separate to be copied,
for the idea is the world.
-- Notebooks Category 21: Mentalism > Chapter 2:
The World As Mental > # 3 Paul Brunton
' Be Your "Self '...
The self is not a fixed, permanent thing, but an ongoing narrative process.
It’s
dynamic, it’s interactive, it’s engaged in moral choices, it has goals, it has
aspirations, and it is also what allows us to function as a society, as a plurality
of stories, selves that interact and share experiences, learning from and
teaching one another.
“Selfing” is simply the evolutionary strategy that human
beings, probably for biological and adaptive reasons, have been landed with.
There’s nothing deluded or neurotic about being a self in that way.
It’s
actually a very liberating perspective on the nature of the individual.
-Stephen Batchelor, "At the Crossroads"
' How do You teach us ?'...
Once I said to God, "How do you teach us?"
And he replied
"If
you were
playing chess with someone who
had infinite power and infinite knowledge
and wanted to make you a
master of the game,
where would all the chess
pieces be at
every moment?
Indeed, not only where he wanted them,
but where all were best for your
development;
and that is every situation
of one's
life.
- St. John of the Cross
' There is No Findable Self '...
Bon teacher, Tenzin Wangyal offers a simple way that dissolves the “me”, the self that you always felt and thought was “you”.
What remains is a selfless space of vast, pure, empty awareness (Buddha Mind); that has no personal identity.
The “me” and the “story of me” suddenly vanish.
A wisdom arises at this exact moment that now knows that there never was a real personal self.
There is nothing further as “path work” necessary.
The one that seemed to need the path simply vanished, without ever completing the path.
The Buddha’s path of Anatta (no self) offers no benefit for “anyone”, yet all suffering ends.
Without a self to suffer, who remains to suffer?
-Jackson Peterson
' The Sound-current of the Nadd '...
The Guru's Word is the Sound-current of the Naad; the Guru's Word is the Wisdom of the Vedas; the Guru's Word is all-pervading.
The Sound-current of the Naad vibrates there, and countless musicians play on all sorts of instruments there.
Let spiritual wisdom be your food, and compassion your attendant. The Sound-current of the Naad vibrates in each and every heart.
The Sound-current of the Naad vibrates there, amidst the sounds and the sights of bliss.
Wonderful is the sound current of the Naad, wonderful is the knowledge of the Vedas.
The Beloved Himself is the Yogi's horn, and the sound current of the Naad; He Himself plays the tune.
Meeting the Divine True Guru, I merge into the sound current of the Naad.
The Naam, the Name of the Lord, is for me the Vedas and the Sound-current of the Naad.
The Naad, the Sound-current of His Word fills my ears; my body has settled gently into the Lap of my Beloved.
The Sound-current of the Naad, playful joys and pleasures – I am intuitively, easily absorbed into the Celestial Lord.
I am in ecstasy, O Nanak, and my mind is filled with Truth, through the perfect perfection of the Sound-current of the Naad.
The Guru's Word is the Sound-current of the Naad, The Guru's Word is the wisdom of the Vedas; coming in contact with the Guru, meditate on the Naam.
The Glory of God is the Sound-current of the Naad, the Celestial Music of Bliss, and the Wisdom of the Vedas.
-The Sikh Gurus
Selections from the Sri Guru Granth Sahib
' One's True Nature '...
How beautiful and rare to find one who is free of intentions,
desires and needs.
One who has come to that state which
is not driven by the urge to control existence or become
anything.
One's mind comes to a beautiful place of openness,
silence and peace.
In fact, one does not create such a state;
one simply stops identifying with the projections of the
conditioned mind and so comes to recognise and be one's
true nature.
- Mooji
' you will lose everything '...
"As long as you believe that there is a progressive path and you have a way to go,
then it will continue.
But there is a direct path also:
find out what is real.
And be prepared to lose everything,
because you will lose everything,
of what you thought you were."
~ Jac O'Keeffe
' Wisdom is Love '...
"Man is not made by God as wood is cut by the carpenter; for the carpenter and the wood are different, while God and man are the same. Man is made of the substance of God; man is in God, and all that is in God is in man."
"The wonderful thing is that the soul already knows to some extent that there is something behind the veil, the veil of perplexity, that there is something to be sought for in the highest spheres of life, that there is some beauty to be seen, that there is someone to be known who is knowable."
"The soul comes to a stage of realization where the whole of life becomes to him one sublime vision of the immanence of God."
"What is Sufism? It is wisdom. To learn wisdom at every step on the path of life is the only work of the Sufi."
"Wisdom is love, and love is true wisdom. The cold-hearted man is never wise, and the truly warm-hearted person is never foolish, for love comes from wisdom and wisdom from love."
"God knows Himself by His manifestation. Manifestation is the self of God, but a self which is limited, a self which makes Him know that He is perfect when He compares His own Being with this limited self which we call nature. Therefore the purpose of the whole of creation is the realization that God Himself gains by discovering His own perfection through his manifestation."
"The whole of manifestation is the manifestation of love. God Himself is love. So the love comes from the source, returns to the source; and in this the purpose of life is accomplished."
-Hazrat Inayat Khan
Volume XI - Philosophy, Psychology and Mysticism
Part III: Mysticism, Aphorisms
' God is Sound '...
"Gustadji informed Baba that in his absence there had been a heated argument between Rustom and Naval Talati. Naval was certain that if a megha rag (rain tune) was properly sung, rain would fall. Rustom, however, was firm in his opinion that without spiritual powers, it was not possible to bring rain. Baba commented:
'What Naval says is true. By singing the megha rag, rain is possible and no spiritual power is necessary. It is an acknowledged fact that by rain clouds colliding, rain falls. Sound also travels in waves, and scientists have proven that it takes time for them to travel. The traveling of sound waves can be easily understood if you look at a person washing clothes at a distance. When he strikes the clothes on the stone, the sound does not immediately reach you; he strikes the clothes, but you hear it after a few seconds.
'Similarly, in singing the megha rag, when the sound has the required pitch and vibrations it creates waves causing a disturbance in the clouds which results in rain. This is a natural phenomenon; what is there to disbelieve in it?
'Compared with this, the discovery of the radio and the telegraphic wireless is harder to believe; without any apparent connecting link, message or sound is made to travel great distances between two points.
'Now what is the voice? Where does it originate? When one hears sound coming out of his mouth, it must be existing somewhere. In truth, sound pervades the universe. God is sound, light — everything. There is a point from where sound issues forth, and from that Creation point, or Om point, evolution starts. Sound has been given a door — our mouth — to manifest from. When a sound comes out of the mouth it is lost in the Universal Sound which is everywhere.
'So what wonder is there if the sound produced by singing the megha tune reaches the clouds two miles above the earth and produces rain, when it is a recognized fact that sound waves are sent through telegraphy thousands of miles away? There is nothing spiritual or supernatural in producing rain through sound waves.
'It is for this reason, because sound travels and creates various vibrations, that a person should read the holy books whether he understands their meaning or not. The words in the Zoroastrians' Zend Avesta, or in the Hindus' Gita, or in the Muslims' Koran, and in other scriptures, are so arranged that when they are pronounced the sound created comes very nearly in unison with the Universal Voice and is a great help in influencing a person spiritually.'"
Meher Baba
Meherabad, 17 Oct 1922
In Bhau Kalchuri
Lord Meher: The Biography of Avatar of the Age Meher Baba
Manifestation, 1st. American edition, Vol. 2, p. 449
Online Revised Edition, p. 359-360
' New Values '...
The complete acceptance of philosophy involves a complete reordering of a man's life.
His conduct will be motivated by new purposes which will themselves be the result of his new values.
He will stop acting impulsively and start acting rationally.
But in actual practice we find that the acceptance of philosophy is never so complete as this.
The individuals will bring it into a part of life but not into the whole of their lives.
It is only gradually absorbed and the ideals which are sought to be realized are only gradually set up.
-- Notebooks Category 1: Overview of the Quest >
Chapter 2: Its Choice > # 498 Paul Brunton
' Heartfelt '...
The best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or even touched -
they must be felt with the heart.
-Helen Keller
' Knowledge and Vanity '...
In order to reach home, where you have the guidance of cosmic insight,
you must first depart from your present location.
You cannot remain in the noisy city of your own vanities and expect to know what to do.
Cosmic knowledge and personal vanity do not mingle.
- Vernon Howard
' The Good '...
That which soul must quest, that which sheds its light upon Intellectual-Principle,
leaving its mark wherever it falls, surely we need not wonder that it be of power to draw to itself,
calling back from every wandering to rest before it.
From it came all and so there is nothing mightier; all is feeble before it.
Of all things the best, must it not be The Good?
If by The Good we mean the principle most wholly self-sufficing, utterly without need of any other,
what can it be but this?
Before all the rest it was what it was, when evil had yet no place in things.
- Plotinus
--Enneads, VI.7.23
' Thoughts on a Friday Night '...
Every time that I place a Melanie song on this white page, I remember..
After her first album appeared,
Her first big venue was a place called 'Town Hall' in Manhattan..
I would listen to Allison Steele, the 'Night Bird', a local Disc Jockey in New York City..
She would play the album of Melanie, the strange vocals were enticing to my ear..
I was studying 'Folk Music',
which was a very important part of the Awakening of Love during the Woodstock experience..
I and two friends went to see her at this first concert and could get 'Standing room only' tickets..
We stood in the very top of the 'nose bleed area '..
At Intermission, my friends told me of the marble bathrooms..
My curiosity and bladder led the way to this destination..
As I walked out, I followed a string of paintings to the back of the Stage..
The Stage Manager thought that I was the missing 'Back Up' singer and put me on stage..
Fortunately, I had already memorized her album..
My former time within a 'Doo Wop' group, helped a lot..
I invited my two friends to the 'After Party' below the Stage..
Melanie and I spent the entire time talking to each other..
How strange, life is...
-thomas
' This Mystic Marriage '...
"Descending to the earth,
that strange intoxicating beauty of the unseen world
lurks in the elements of nature.
And the soul of man,
who has attained the rightful balance,
becoming aware of this hidden joy,
straightaway is enamored and bewitched.
And from this mystic marriage are born
the poets' songs, inner knowledge,
the language of the heart, virtuous living,
and the fair child Beauty.
And the Great Soul gives to man as dowry
the hidden glory of the world."
- Mahmud Shabistari
The Secret Rose Garden: Mahmud Shabistari
Translated by Florence Lederer
London: J. Murray, 1920, p. 34
' Eternity Itself '...
Time is only a concept.
The future moves into
the past leaving no time for the present.
When
the relativity of time is understood as merely a
concept for the measurement of apparent
change,
then there is only the present moment,
which is eternity itself.
- Ramesh S. Balsekar
"A Net of Jewels"
Ramesh S. Balsekar
Advaita Press, 1996
' Nature and Need of Mysticism '...
Let it be stated clearly that mysticism is an a-rational type of experience, and in some degree common to all men.
It is an intuitive, self-evident, self-recognized knowledge which comes fitfully to man. It should not be confounded with the instinctive and immediate knowledge possessed by animals and used by them in their adaptations to environment.
The average man seldom pays enough attention to his slight mystical experiences to profit or learn from them. Yet his need for them is evidenced by his incessant seeking for the thrills, sensations, uplifts, and so on, which he organizes for himself in so many ways--the religious way being only one of them. In fact, the failure of religion--in the West, at any rate--to teach true mysticism, and its overlaying of the deeply mystic nature of its teachings with a pseudo-rationalism and an unsound historicity may be the root cause for driving people to seek for things greater than they feel their individual selves to be in the many sensation-giving activities in the world today.
Mysticism is not a by-product of imagination or uncontrolled emotion; it is a range of knowledge and experience natural to man but not yet encompassed by his rational mind. The function of philosophy is to bring these experiences under control and to offer ways of arriving at interpretations and explanations.
Mysticism not so controlled and interpreted is full of pitfalls, one of which is the acceptance of confusion, sentimentality, cloudiness, illusion, and aimlessness as integral qualities of the mystical life--states of mind which go far to justify opponents of mysticism in their estimate of it as foolish and superstitious.
The mystic should recognize his own limitations. He should not refuse the proffered hand of philosophy which will help his understanding and train his intuition. He should recognize that it is essential to know how to interpret the material which reaches him from his higher self, and how to receive it in all its purity.
The belief that the neglect of actual life is the beginning of spiritual life, and that the failure to use clear thought is the beginning of guidance from God, belongs to mysticism in its most rudimentary stages--and has no truth in it.
-- Notebooks Category 1: Overview of the Quest > Chapter 1:
What the Quest Is > # 62 Paul Brunton
' My paragraph has ended '...
The words and thoughts have been given to you on a silver platter..
Still, you give thanks to the greed of selfishness..
The ego is the punisher,
And yet, you worship this invisible power of mind..
Have you not read the words of Osho?..
Perhaps, you relish the continuation of incarnation..
When will you become tired of being a battery ?..
The power, that which is not You..
The false, steals Your energy to survive..
But, within this Dream, your energy is for sale..
Ego sells the Soul for a dollar..
My paragraph has ended...
-thomas
' Nature never does a bad thing '...
Nature never does a bad thing.
There is no such
thing as a bad thing for Nature.
It looks unpleasant,
because we are outside nature, psychologically.
If
we are one with Nature, we will see nothing improper
taking place.
We are looking at things by standing
outside nature.
That is why we cannot see things
properly and impartially.
Your Questions Answered
Swami Krishnananda
The Divine Life Trust Society, 1995
' Seeing even the observer '...
"Without editing your thoughts you can know that every thought that you entertain as yours
is all that distracts you from enjoying deep silence within.
Rest in the observing I AM and allow your awareness to sink into That
which is seeing even the observer."
~ Jac O'Keeffe
' The World-Idea '...
The history of universal events,
the ceaseless developments and evolutions as well as the retrogressions,
cataclysms, and destructions, the energies and substances, express the World-Idea.
It is inherent in all things, latent in all laws of Nature.
-- Notebooks Category 26: World-Idea > Chapter 3:
Polarities, Complementaries, Dualities of The Universe > # 85
Paul Brunton
' Ego, The False Center '...
Ego - The False Center
From Beyond the Frontier of the Mind by Osho
The first thing to be understood is what ego is. A child is born. A child is born without any knowledge, any consciousness of his own self. And when a child is born the first thing he becomes aware of is not himself; the first thing he becomes aware of is the other. It is natural, because the eyes open outwards, the hands touch others, the ears listen to others, the tongue tastes food and the nose smells the outside. All these senses open outwards.
That is what birth means. Birth means coming into this world, the world of the outside. So when a child is born, he is born into this world. He opens his eyes, sees others. 'Other' means the thou. He becomes aware of the mother first. Then, by and by, he becomes aware of his own body. That too is the other, that too belongs to the world. He is hungry and he feels the body; his need is satisfied, he forgets the body.
This is how a child grows. First he becomes aware of you, thou, other, and then by and by, in contrast to you, thou, he becomes aware of himself.
This awareness is a reflected awareness. He is not aware of who he is. He is simply aware of the mother and what she thinks about him. If she smiles, if she appreciates the child, if she says, "You are beautiful," if she hugs and kisses him, the child feels good about himself. Now an ego is born.
Through appreciation, love, care, he feels he is good, he feels he is valuable, he feels he has some significance.
A center is born.
But this center is a reflected center. It is not his real being. He does not know who he is; he simply knows what others think about him. And this is the ego: the reflection, what others think. If nobody thinks that he is of any use, nobody appreciates him, nobody smiles, then too an ego is born: an ill ego; sad, rejected, like a wound; feeling inferior, worthless. This too is the ego. This too is a reflection.
First the mother - and mother means the world in the beginning. Then others will join the mother, and the world goes on growing. And the more the world grows, the more complex the ego becomes, because many others' opinions are reflected.
The ego is an accumulated phenomenon, a by-product of living with others. If a child lives totally alone, he will never come to grow an ego. But that is not going to help. He will remain like an animal. That doesn't mean that he will come to know the real self, no.
The real can be known only through the false, so the ego is a must. One has to pass through it. It is a discipline. The real can be known only through the illusion. You cannot know the truth directly. First you have to know that which is not true. First you have to encounter the untrue. Through that encounter you become capable of knowing the truth. If you know the false as the false, truth will dawn upon you.
Ego is a need; it is a social need, it is a social by-product. The society means all that is around you - not you, but all that is around you. All, minus you, is the society. And everybody reflects. You will go to school and the teacher will reflect who you are. You will be in friendship with other children and they will reflect who you are. By and by, everybody is adding to your ego, and everybody is trying to modify it in such a way that you don't become a problem to the society.
They are not concerned with you.
They are concerned with the society.
Society is concerned with itself, and that's how it should be.
They are not concerned that you should become a self-knower. They are concerned that you should become an efficient part in the mechanism of the society. You should fit into the pattern. So they are trying to give you an ego that fits with the society. They teach you morality. Morality means giving you an ego which will fit with the society. If you are immoral, you will always be a misfit somewhere or other. That's why we put criminals in the prisons - not that they have done something wrong, not that by putting them in the prisons we are going to improve them, no. They simply don't fit. They are troublemakers. They have certain types of egos of which the society doesn't approve. If the society approves, everything is good.
One man kills somebody - he is a murderer.
And the same man in wartime kills thousands - he becomes a great hero. The society is not bothered by a murder, but the murder should be commited for the society - then it is okay. The society doesn't bother about morality.
Morality means only that you should fit with the society.
If the society is at war, then the morality changes.
If the society is at peace, then there is a different morality.
Morality is a social politics. It is diplomacy. And each child has to be brought up in such a way that he fits into the society, that's all. Because society is interested in efficient members. Society is not interested that you should attain to self-knowledge.
The society creates an ego because the ego can be controlled and manipulated. The self can never be controlled or manipulated. Nobody has ever heard of the society controlling a self - not possible.
And the child needs a center; the child is completely unaware of his own center. The society gives him a center and the child is by and by convinced that this is his center, the ego that society gives.
A child comes back to his home - if he has come first in his class, the whole family is happy. You hug and kiss him, and you take the child on your shoulders and dance and you say, "What a beautiful child! You are a pride to us." You are giving him an ego, a subtle ego. And if the child comes home dejected, unsuccessful, a failure - he couldn't pass, or he has just been on the back bench - then nobody appreciates him and the child feels rejected. He will try harder next time, because the center feels shaken.
Ego is always shaken, always in search of food, that somebody should appreciate it. That's why you continuously ask for attention.
You get the idea of who you are from others.
It is not a direct experience.
It is from others that you get the idea of who you are. They shape your center. This center is false, because you carry your real center. That is nobody's business. Nobody shapes it.
You come with it.
You are born with it.
So you have two centers. One center you come with, which is given by existence itself. That is the self. And the other center, which is created by the society, is the ego. It is a false thing - and it is a very great trick. Through the ego the society is controlling you. You have to behave in a certain way, because only then does the society appreciate you. You have to walk in a certain way; you have to laugh in a certain way; you have to follow certain manners, a morality, a code. Only then will the society appreciate you, and if it doesn't, you ego will be shaken. And when the ego is shaken, you don't know where you are, who you are.
The others have given you the idea.
That idea is the ego.
Try to understand it as deeply as possible, because this has to be thrown. And unless you throw it you will never be able to attain to the self. Because you are addicted to the center, you cannot move, and you cannot look at the self.
And remember, there is going to be an interim period, an interval, when the ego will be shattered, when you will not know who you are, when you will not know where you are going, when all boundaries will melt.
You will simply be confused, a chaos.
Because of this chaos, you are afraid to lose the ego. But it has to be so. One has to pass through the chaos before one attains to the real center.
And if you are daring, the period will be small.
If you are afraid, and you again fall back to the ego, and you again start arranging it, then it can be very, very long; many lives can be wasted.
I have heard: One small child was visiting his grandparents. He was just four years old. In the night when the grandmother was putting him to sleep, he suddenly started crying and weeping and said, "I want to go home. I am afraid of darkness." But the grandmother said, "I know well that at home also you sleep in the dark; I have never seen a light on. So why are you afraid here?" The boy said, "Yes, that's right - but that is MY darkness." This darkness is completely unknown.
Even with darkness you feel, "This is MINE."
Outside - an unknown darkness.
With the ego you feel, "This is MY darkness."
It may be troublesome, maybe it creates many miseries, but still mine. Something to hold to, something to cling to, something underneath the feet; you are not in a vacuum, not in an emptiness. You may be miserable, but at least you ARE. Even being miserable gives you a feeling of 'I am'. Moving from it, fear takes over; you start feeling afraid of the unknown darkness and chaos - because society has managed to clear a small part of your being.
It is just like going to a forest. You make a little clearing, you clear a little ground; you make fencing, you make a small hut; you make a small garden, a lawn, and you are okay. Beyond your fence - the forest, the wild. Here everything is okay; you have planned everything. This is how it has happened.
Society has made a little clearing in your consciousness. It has cleaned just a little part completely, fenced it. Everything is okay there. That's what all your universities are doing. The whole culture and conditioning is just to clear a part so that you can feel at home there.
And then you become afraid.
Beyond the fence there is danger.
Beyond the fence you are, as within the fence you are - and your conscious mind is just one part, one-tenth of your whole being. Nine-tenths is waiting in the darkness. And in that nine-tenths, somewhere your real center is hidden.
One has to be daring, courageous.
One has to take a step into the unknown.
For a while all boundaries will be lost.
For a while you will feel dizzy.
For a while, you will feel very afraid and shaken, as if an earthquake has happened. But if you are courageous and you don't go backwards, if you don't fall back to the ego and you go on and on, there is a hidden center within you that you have been carrying for many lives.
That is your soul, the self.
Once you come near it, everything changes, everything settles again. But now this settling is not done by the society. Now everything becomes a cosmos, not a chaos; a new order arises.
But this is no longer the order of the society - it is the very order of existence itself.
It is what Buddha calls Dhamma, Lao Tzu calls Tao, Heraclitus calls Logos. It is not man-made. It is the VERY order of existence itself. Then everything is suddenly beautiful again, and for the first time really beautiful, because man-made things cannot be beautiful. At the most you can hide the ugliness of them, that's all. You can decorate them, but they can never be beautiful.
The difference is just like the difference between a real flower and a plastic or paper flower. The ego is a plastic flower - dead. It just looks like a flower, it is not a flower. You cannot really call it a flower. Even linguistically to call it a flower is wrong, because a flower is something which flowers. And this plastic thing is just a thing, not a flowering. It is dead. There is no life in it.
You have a flowering center within. That's why Hindus call it a lotus - it is a flowering. They call it the one-thousand-petaled-lotus. One thousand means infinite petals. And it goes on flowering, it never stops, it never dies.
But you are satisfied with a plastic ego.
There are some reasons why you are satisfied. With a dead thing, there are many conveniences. One is that a dead thing never dies. It cannot - it was never alive. So you can have plastic flowers, they are good in a way. They are permanent; they are not eternal, but they are permanent.
The real flower outside in the garden is eternal, but not permanent. And the eternal has its own way of being eternal. The way of the eternal is to be born again and again and to die. Through death it refreshes itself, rejuvenates itself.
To us it appears that the flower has died - it never dies.
It simply changes bodies, so it is ever fresh.
It leaves the old body, it enters a new body. It flowers somewhere else; it goes on flowering.
But we cannot see the continuity because the continuity is invisible. We see only one flower, another flower; we never see the continuity.
It is the same flower which flowered yesterday.
It is the same sun, but in a different garb.
The ego has a certain quality - it is dead. It is a plastic thing. And it is very easy to get it, because others give it. You need not seek it, there is no search involved. That's why unless you become a seeker after the unknown, you have not yet become an individual. You are just a part of the crowd. You are just a mob.
When you don't have a real center, how can you be an individual?
The ego is not individual. Ego is a social phenomenon - it is society, its not you. But it gives you a function in the society, a hierarchy in the society. And if you remain satisfied with it, you will miss the whole opportunity of finding the self.
And that's why you are so miserable.
With a plastic life, how can you be happy?
With a false life, how can you be ecstatic and blissful? And then this ego creates many miseries, millions of them.
You cannot see, because it is your own darkness. You are attuned to it.
Have you ever noticed that all types of miseries enter through the ego? It cannot make you blissful; it can only make you miserable.
Ego is hell.
Whenever you suffer, just try to watch and analyze, and you will find, somewhere the ego is the cause of it. And the ego goes on finding causes to suffer.
You are an egoist, as everyone is. Some are very gross, just on the surface, and they are not so difficult. Some are very subtle, deep down, and they are the real problems.
This ego comes continuously in conflict with others because every ego is so unconfident about itself. Is has to be - it is a false thing. When you don't have anything in your hand and you just think that something is there, then there will be a problem.
If somebody says, "There is nothing," immediately the fight will start, because you also feel that there is nothing. The other makes you aware of the fact.
Ego is false, it is nothing.
That you also know.
How can you miss knowing it? It is impossible! A conscious being - how can he miss knowing that this ego is just false? And then others say that there is nothing - and whenever the others say that there is nothing they hit a wound, they say a truth - and nothing hits like the truth.
You have to defend, because if you don't defend, if you don't become defensive, then where will you be?
You will be lost.
The identity will be broken.
So you have to defend and fight - that is the clash.
A man who attains to the self is never in any clash. Others may come and clash with him, but he is never in clash with anybody.
It happened that one Zen master was passing through a street. A man came running and hit him hard. The master fell down. Then he got up and started to walk in the same direction in which he was going before, not even looking back.
A disciple was with the master. He was simply shocked. He said, "Who is this man? What is this? If one lives in such a way, then anybody can come and kill you. And you have not even looked at that person, who he is, and why he did it."
The master said, "That is his problem, not mine."
You can clash with an enlightened man, but that is your problem, not his. And if you are hurt in that clash, that too is your own problem. He cannot hurt you. And it is like knocking against a wall - you will be hurt, but the wall has not hurt you.
The ego is always looking for some trouble. Why? Because if nobody pays attention to you, the ego feels hungry.
It lives on attention.
So even if somebody is fighting and angry with you, that too is good because at least the attention is paid. If somebody loves, it is okay. If somebody is not loving you, then even anger will be good. At least the attention will come to you. But if nobody is paying any attention to you, nobody thinks that you are somebody important, significant, then how will you feed your ego?
Other's attention is needed.
In millions of ways you attract the attention of others; you dress in a certain way, you try to look beautiful, you behave, you become very polite, you change. When you feel what type of situation is there, you immediately change so that people pay attention to you.
This is a deep begging.
A real beggar is one who asks for and demands attention. And a real emperor is one who lives in himself; he has a center of his own, he doesn't depend on anybody else.
Buddha sitting under his bodhi tree...if the whole world suddenly disappears, will it make any difference to Buddha? -none. It will not make any difference at all. If the whole world disappears, it will not make any difference because he has attained to the center.
But you, if the wife escapes, divorces you, goes to somebody else, you are completely shattered - because she had been paying attention to you, caring, loving, moving around you, helping you to feel that you were somebody. Your whole empire is lost, you are simply shattered. You start thinking about suicide. Why? Why, if a wife leaves you, should you commit suicide? Why, if a husband leaves you, should you commit suicide? Because you don't have any center of your own. The wife was giving you the center; the husband was giving you the center.
This is how people exist. This is how people become dependent on others. It is a deep slavery. Ego HAS to be a slave. It depends on others. And only a person who has no ego is for the first time a master; he is no longer a slave. Try to understand this.
And start looking for the ego - not in others, that is not your business, but in yourself. Whenever you feel miserable, immediately close you eyes and try to find out from where the misery is coming and you will always find it is the false center which has clashed with someone.
You expected something, and it didn't happen.
You expected something, and just the contrary happened - your ego is shaken, you are in misery. Just look, whenever you are miserable, try to find out why.
Causes are not outside you. The basic cause is within you - but you always look outside, you always ask:
Who is making me miserable?
Who is the cause of my anger?
Who is the cause of my anguish?
And if you look outside you will miss.
Just close the eyes and always look within.
The source of all misery, anger, anguish, is hidden in you, your ego.
And if you find the source, it will be easy to move beyond it. If you can see that it is your own ego that gives you trouble, you will prefer to drop it - because nobody can carry the source of misery if he understands it.
And remember, there is no need to drop the ego.
You cannot drop it.
If you try to drop it, you will attain to a certain subtle ego again which says, "I have become humble."
Don't try to be humble. That's again ego in hiding - but it's not dead.
Don't try to be humble.
Nobody can try humility, and nobody can create humility through any effort of his own - no. When the ego is no more, a humbleness comes to you. It is not a creation. It is a shadow of the real center.
And a really humble man is neither humble nor egoistic.
He is simply simple.
He's not even aware that he is humble.
If you are aware that you are humble, the ego is there.
Look at humble persons.... There are millions who think that they are very humble. They bow down very low, but watch them - they are the subtlest egoists. Now humility is their source of food. They say, "I am humble," and then they look at you and they wait for you to appreciate them.
"You are really humble," they would like you to say. "In fact, you are the most humble man in the world; nobody is as humble as you are." Then see the smile that comes on their faces.
What is ego? Ego is a hierarchy that says, "No one is like me." It can feed on humbleness - "Nobody is like me, I am the most humble man."
It happened once:
A fakir, a beggar, was praying in a mosque, just early in the morning when it was still dark. It was a certain religious day for Mohammedians, and he was praying, and he was saying, "I am nobody. I am the poorest of the poor, the greatest sinner of sinners."
Suddenly there was one more person who was praying. He was the emperor of that country, and he was not aware that there was somebody else there who was praying - it was dark, and the emperor was also saying:
"I am nobody. I am nothing. I am just empty, a beggar at our door." When he heard that somebody else was saying the same thing, he said, "Stop! Who is trying to overtake me? Who are you? How dare you say before the emperor that you are nobody when he is saying that he is nobody?"
This is how the ego goes. It is so subtle. Its ways are so subtle and cunning; you have to be very, very alert, only then will you see it. Don't try to be humble. Just try to see that all misery, all anguish comes through it.
Just watch! No need to drop it.
You cannot drop it. Who will drop it? Then the DROPPER will become the ego. It always comes back.
Whatsoever you do, stand out of it, and look and watch.
Whatsoever you do - humbleness, humility, simplicity - nothing will help. Only one thing is possible, and that is just to watch and see that it is the source of all misery. Don't say it. Don't repeat it - WATCH. Because if I say it is the source of all misery and you repeat it, then it is useless. YOU have to come to that understanding. Whenever you are miserable, just close the eyes and don't try to find some cause outside. Try to see from where this misery is coming.
It is your own ego.
If you continuously feel and understand, and the understanding that the ego is the cause becomes so deep-rooted, one day you will suddenly see that it has disappeared. Nobody drops it - nobody can drop it. You simply see; it has simply disappeared, because the very understanding that ego causes all misery becomes the dropping. THE VERY UNDERSTANDING IS THE DISAPPEARANCE OF THE EGO.
And you are so clever in seeing the ego in others. Anybody can see someone else's ego. When it comes to your own, then the problem arises - because you don't know the territory, you have never traveled on it.
The whole path towards the divine, the ultimate, has to pass through this territory of the ego. The false has to be understood as false. The source of misery has to be understood as the source of misery - then it simply drops.
When you know it is poison, it drops. When you know it is fire, it drops. When you know this is the hell, it drops.
And then you never say, "I have dropped the ego." Then you simply laugh at the whole thing, the joke that you were the creator of all misery.
I was just looking at a few cartoons of Charlie Brown. In one cartoon he is playing with blocks, making a house out of children's blocks. He is sitting in the middle of the blocks building the walls. Then a moment comes when he is enclosed; all around he has made a wall. Then he cries, "Help, help!"
He has done the whole thing! Now he is enclosed, imprisoned. This is childish, but this is all that you have done also. You have made a house all around yourself, and now you are crying, "Help, help!" And the misery becomes a millionfold - because there are helpers who are also in the same boat.
It happened that one very beautiful woman went to see her psychiatrist for the first time. The psychiatrist said, "Come closer please." When she came closer, he simply jumped and hugged and kissed the woman. She was shocked. Then he said, "Now sit down. This takes care of my problem, now what is your problem?"
The problem becomes multifold, because there are helpers who are in the same boat. And they would like to help, because when you help somebody the ego feels very good, very, very good - because you are a great helper, a great guru, a master; you are helping so many people. The greater the crowd of your followers, the better you feel.
But you are in the same boat - you cannot help.
Rather, you will harm.
People who still have their own problems cannot be of much help. Only someone who has no problems of his own can help you. Only then is there the clarity to see, to see through you. A mind that has no problems of its own can see you, you become transparent.
A mind that has no problems of its own can see through itself; that's why it becomes capable of seeing through others.
In the West, there are many schools of psychoanalysis, many schools, and no help is reaching people, but rather, harm. Because the people who are helping others, or trying to help, or posing as helpers, are in the same boat.
...It is difficult to see one's own ego.
It is very easy to see other's egos. But that is not the point, you cannot help them.
Try to see your own ego.
Just watch it.
Don't be in a hurry to drop it, just watch it. The more you watch, the more capable you will become. Suddenly one day, you simply see that it has dropped. And when it drops by itself, only then does it drop. There is no other way. Prematurely you cannot drop it.
It drops just like a dead leaf.
The tree is not doing anything - just a breeze, a situation, and the dead leaf simply drops. The tree is not even aware that the dead leaf has dropped. It makes no noise, it makes no claim - nothing.
The dead leaf simply drops and shatters on the ground, just like that.
When you are mature through understanding, awareness, and you have felt totally that ego is the cause of all your misery, simply one day you see the dead leaf dropping.
It settles into the ground, dies of its own accord. You have not done anything so you cannot claim that you have dropped it. You see that it has simply disappeared, and then the real center arises.
And that real center is the soul, the self, the god, the truth, or whatsoever you want to call it.
It is nameless, so all names are good.
You can give it any name of your own liking...
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