The Master said to me:

All beings are but the 'One Mind'
(consciousness-spirit)
beside, which nothing exists

This Mind (consciousness-spirit)
which is without 'beginning'
is unborn and indestructible

It...has neither form
nor appearance

It does not belong to
the categories of things
which exist, nor do not exist ...

For it transcends all limits...
It is all that
which you see before you...

It is like the boundless void
which cannot be fathomed
or measured

The One Mind
(consciousness/spirit)
alone is Spirit

And there is no distinction
between Spirit
and sentient things

But that sentient beings
are attached to 'forms'

And so seek externally
for a 'godhood'

By their very seeking
they 'lose' it

For that is using the Spirit
to seek for the Spirit

And using mind
to grasp Mind

Even though they do their utmost
for a full aeon

They will not be able
to 'attain' it

They do not know that
if they put a stop
to conceptual thought
and forget their anxiety

The Spirit will 'appear before' them

For this Mind 'is' the Spirit

and the Spirit 'is'
All living Beings .

- Huang Po, posted to Mystic_Spirit
NonDual Highlights 2600

I or no I

In case you have not already picked up on the fact, I have little to no understanding of nonduality. I have never experienced it or should I say I have never experienced not having an I. I am not up on terminology. Judy

Hi Judy,

Just to give 'equal' time to nondual teachings, not all nondual teachings say that you do not have an I.

In fact, some would say the fact that you have never experienced not having an I, proves that the only thing which you actually are is that I, which you have always experienced.

If you say you have never experienced nonduality, again, some teachings would say, that you have never not experienced nonduality.

That nonduality is the very nature of that 'I' which you have always experienced.

However, you have a mind, and that mind which itself is changing in nature, experiences nothing but change, which is the nature of all experience given to you by your sense organs.

The only thing about you which is not changing is that 'I' which you mention as always having experienced, which is why you have always experienced it, because it has never changed.

If you hold that indeed you do exist, and that you never have not experience having an I, then there are teachings of nonduality that you may resonate with more than those which hold that there is no such thing as an I.

There are some very simple pointers to this. For instance, do you feel as if although your body grows old, you don't? Do you feel as if you always are? If these types of things seem to be your experience, then there are teachings which speak to those understandings.

Those teaching begin with this basic premise. I am. I exist. I am a conscious being. I don't know who or what this conscious being that I am is, but I do know that I am, I exist.

So there is a wealth of teachings which begin right there, and very often, from what I've seen, for the mind of the individual, end up with a complete experiential understanding of what has always been true, but not recognized for what it is, i.e. the very nature of your existence, and that recognition is called liberation, or moksha.

"Always I am.
Always I shine.
...
Therefore it is established that I am Brahman,
Which is of the nature of existence,
Awareness and fullness."

From Advaita Makaranda (The nectar of nonduality)

Best wishes,
Durga

NonDualPhil“yahoogroups.com

Subtle awareness of the truth

of the universe
should not be regarded as an achievement.

To think in terms of achieving it
is to place it
'outside'
your 'own' nature.

This is erroneous and misleading.

Your nature and the integral nature
of the universe

are 'one' and the 'same':
indescribable
but 'eternally present'

Simply 'open' yourself to this ...

... ('Yourself')

- Lao Tze, Hua Hu Ching 24, translated by B.Walker, posted to Mystic_Spirit
Nondual Highlights 2592

There is no need of a way out of the dream!

Don't you see that a way out is also a part of the dream? All you have to do is see the dream as dream. The very idea of going beyond the dream is illusory. Why go anywhere? Just realize that you are dreaming a dream you call the world, and stop looking for ways out. The problem is not the dream. Your problem is that you like one part of your dream and not another. Love all, or none of it, and stop complaining. When you have seen the dream as a dream, you have done all that needs be done.

Nisargadatta
http://www.mpeters.de/nisargadatta/index.cfm

Let go your attachment to the unreal

You need not get at it, you are it. It will get at you, if you give it a chance. Let go your attachment to the unreal and the real will swiftly and smoothly step into its own. Stop imagining yourself being or doing this or that, and the realization that you are the source and heart of all will dawn upon you.

Nisargadatta
http://www.mpeters.de/nisargadatta/index.cfm

Prior to heaven and earth

There is a reality
even prior to
heaven and earth

Indeed, it has no form,
much less a name.
Eyes fail to 'see' it

It has no voice
for 'ears' to detect ...

To call it 'Mind' - or 'Buddha'
violates its nature

For it then becomes like
a visionary flower
in the air

It is not 'Mind' -
nor 'Buddha'

Absolutely quiet -
and yet illuminating
in a mysterious way

It allows itself - to be 'perceived'
only by the 'clear-eyed'

Dai-o Kokushi ~ (1235-I308)
Awakening To The Dream 89

The nature of thinking

Our real nature is stillness beyond all complementarities. It is presence without becoming. In the absence of becoming there is completeness and absolute tranquillity. This tranquillity is the home ground of all activity. The activity of thinking, like all activity, is grounded in wholeness. Tranquillity is the continuum in which thinking appears and disappears. What appears and disappears is in movement. It is energy extended in space and time. Thinking, energy, represents itself in discontinuity but as it arises out of and dies in stillness, fundamentally it is nothing other than this presence beyond past, present and future.

What we generally call 'thinking' is a process of memory. It is a projection built on the already known. All that exists, all that is perceived, is represented to the mind. Sequential thinking, rational or scientific thinking, thus begins with a fraction, a representation. Such fractional thinking is born from the conditioned idea that we are independent entities, 'selves', 'persons'. The notion of being a somebody conditions all other thinking because the person can only exist in the repetition of representation, the confirmation of the already known.

Jean Klein, Who Am I?

Ashtavakra Sutra

If one thinks of oneself as free, one is free, and if one thinks of oneself as bound, one is bound. Here this saying is true, "Thinking makes it so."

Your real nature is as the one perfect, free, and actionless consciousness, the all-pervading witness -- unattached to anything, desireless and at peace. It is from illusion that you seem to be involved in samsara.

Meditate on yourself as motionless awareness, free from any dualism, giving up the mistaken idea that you are just a derivative consciousness or anything external or internal.

You have long been trapped in the snare of identification with the body. Sever it with the knife of knowledge that "I am awareness," and be happy, my son.

Nondual Highlights 2586, from the Ashtavakra Sutra

Enlightenment

Attention is constantly pulled to the foreground - to the ever changing dualistic world of the bodymind, thought, words, story.

Enlightenment is a simple shift of attention to the background - to the unchanging, ever present, nondual, no mind awareness beyond words.

The foreground remains but action and nonaction flow from stillness, silence and awareness.

Truth lies

beyond words

The highest self

There is no second, or higher self to search for. You are the highest self, only give up the false ideas you have about your self.

Nisargadatta
http://www.mpeters.de/nisargadatta/index.cfm

Is there no need of effort then?

M: When effort is needed, effort will appear. When effortlessness becomes essential, it will assert itself. You need not push life about. Just flow with it and give yourself completely to the task of the present moment, which is the dying now to the now. For living is dying. Without death life cannot be.

Get hold of the main thing that the world and the self are one and perfect. Only your attitude is faulty and needs readjustment.

This process or readjustment is what you call sadhana. You come to it by putting an end to indolence and using all your energy to clear the way for clarity and charity. But in reality, these all are signs of inevitable growth. Don't be afraid, don't resist, don't delay. Be what you are. There is nothing to be afraid of. Trust and try. Experiment honestly. Give your real being a chance to shape your life. You will not regret.

Nisargadatta, I Am That

The question 'Who am I' has no answer

In reality all existence, every form, is my own, within my consciousness. I cannot tell what I am because words can describe only what I am not. I am, and because I am, all is. But I am beyond consciousness and, therefore, in consciousness I cannot say what I am. Yet, I am. The question 'Who am I' has no answer. No experience can answer it, for the self is beyond experience.

Q: Still, the question 'Who am I' must be of some use.

M: It has no answer in consciousness and, therefore, helps to go beyond consciousness.

Nisargadatta, I Am That

Nothing you do will change you

for you need no change. You may change your mind or your body, but it is always something external to you that has changed, not yourself. Why bother at all to change? Realize once for all that neither your body nor your mind, nor even your consciousness is yourself and stand alone in your true nature beyond consciousness and unconsciousness. No effort can take you there, only the clarity of understanding.

Nisargadatta
http://www.mpeters.de/nisargadatta/index.cfm

No-mindedness

No-mindedness(Wu-hsin) is not a blank mind that excludes all emotions; nor is it simply callousness and quietness of mind. Although quietude and calmness are necessary, it is the "non-graspiness" of the mind that mainly constitutes the principle of no-mindedness. A gung fu man employs his mind as a mirror - it grasps nothing, yet it refuses nothing; it receives but it does not keep.

As Alan Watts puts it, the no-mindedness is "A state of wholeness in which the mind functions freely and easily, without the sensation of a second mind or ego standing over it with a club."

What he means is that one lets the mind think what it likes without the interference by the separate thinker or ego within oneself. So long as it thinks what it wants, there is absolutely no effort in letting go; and the disappearance of the effort to let go is precisely the disappearance of the separate thinker. There is nothing to try to do, for whatever comes up moment by moment is accepted, including non-acceptance.

No-mindedness is then not being without emotion or feeling, but being one in whom feeling is not sticky or blocked. It is a mind immune to emotional influences.
"Like this river, everything is flowing on ceaselessly without cessation or standing still."

No-mindedness is employing the whole mind as we use the eyes when we rest them upon various objects but make no special effort to take them in.

"The baby looks at things all day without winking, that is because his eyes are not focused on any particular object. He goes without knowing where he is going, and stops without knowing what he is doing. He merges himself with the surroundings and moves along with it. These are the principles of mental hygiene." (Chuang-tzu)
A gung fu man's mind is present everywhere because it is nowhere attached to any particular object. And it can remain present because even when related to this or that object, it does not cling to it.

The flow of thought is like water filling a pond, which is always ready to flow off again. It can work its inexhaustible power because it is free, and it can be open to everything because it is empty.

Bruce Lee, No-mindedness

At the root of my being

is pure awareness, a speck of intense light. This speck, by its very nature, radiates and creates pictures in space and events in time - effortlessly and spontaneously. As long as it is merely aware, there are no problems. But when the discriminative mind comes into being and creates distinctions, pleasure and pain arise. During sleep the mind is in abeyance and so are pain and pleasure. The process of creation continues, but no notice is taken. The mind is a form of consciousness, and consciousness is an aspect of life. Life creates everything, but the Supreme is beyond all.

Nisargadatta
http://www.mpeters.de/nisargadatta/index.cfm

A quiet mind is all you need

All else will happen rightly, once your mind is quiet. As the sun on rising makes the world active, so does self-awareness affect changes in the mind. In the light of calm and steady self-awareness, inner energies wake up and work miracles without any effort on your part. Do understand that you are destined for enlightenment. Co-operate with your destiny, don't go against it, don't thwart it. Allow it to fulfill itself. All you have to do is to give attention to the obstacles created by the foolish mind.

Nisargadatta
http://www.mpeters.de/nisargadatta/index.cfm

Self-identification with your mind

When you desire and fear, and identify yourself with your feelings, you create sorrow and bondage. When you create, with love and wisdom, and remain unattached to your creations, the result is harmony and peace. But whatever be the condition of your mind, in what way does it reflect on you? It is only your self-identification with your mind that makes you happy or unhappy. Rebel against your slavery to your mind, see your bonds as self- created and break the chains of attachment and revulsion. Keep in mind your goal of freedom, until it dawns on you that you are already free, that freedom is not something in the distant future to be earned with painful efforts, but perennially one's own, to be used! Liberation is not an acquisition but a matter of courage, the courage to believe that you are free already and to act on it.

Nisargadatta
http://www.mpeters.de/nisargadatta/index.cfm

Who am I

when there is
no mind?

Explanations

The explanation of Non-Duality must enter dualistic realms of language. It is inevitable. The best it can do is point to the inexplicable. We need language just like we need the mind to make the ultimate investigation.

The transcendence of the fixations with mind content is the aim of any true investigation, even if that is not fully appreciated at first. What answer could possibly come from the mind's content?

In a certain way, you already know the answer because you are the answer, moment by moment. It is actually one Moment of knowing.

The mind may make all kinds of objections about anything at all but the foundation of the mind is being -- is 'knowing'. You know that you ARE.

Can we even separate this space of knowing into any sort of twoness?

Could it be a boundless emptiness, which 'knows' all content without exception?

Could it be that it is this stillness, which 'knows' all movement without exception?

Contemplate this -- and you may see that you already know and do not need words.

Knowing is instant. Words are secondary.

In the realm of words and concepts, we appear to leave THIS immediate knowing and enter a realm of descriptions.

In this psychological 'journey' of mind, you can only 'arrive back' at the place you have never left, which of course is now.

This 'space of immediate knowing' has never left you.

It is, in fact, what you are.

Gilbert Schultz ~ Everything is Clear and Obvious: An Exploration of Conscious Presence

Reality

Reality is neither subjective nor objective, neither mind nor matter, neither time nor space. These divisions need somebody to whom to happen, a conscious separate centre. But reality is all and nothing, the totality and the exclusion, the fullness and the emptiness, fully consistent, absolutely paradoxical. You cannot speak about it, you can only lose your self in it. When you deny reality to anything, you come to a residue which cannot be denied.

Nisargadatta
http://www.mpeters.de/nisargadatta/index.cfm

What cannot go?

What is not stable and permanent, let go.
There is only one thing left.
Worlds and gods will disappear, but This will not.
When you are reminded of this keep your eye on it,
not with the intention of having it, but just to BE it!
All the things you want are in the "let go" category:
house, wife, body, parents, gods, let go.
What is left? What cannot go? That you ARE!
You cannot go because you have never come
and anything that comes must go.
Find out what it is.



Papaji ~ The Truth Is



The source of reality

Break the bonds of memory and self-identification and the shell [of the person] will break by itself. There is a centre that imparts reality to whatever it perceives. All you need is to understand that you are the source of reality, that you give reality instead of getting it, that you need no support and no confirmation. Things are as they are because you accept them as they are. Stop accepting them and they will dissolve. Whatever you think about with desire or fear appears before you as real. Look at it without desire or fear and it does lose substance. Pleasure and pain are momentary. It is simpler and easier to disregard them than to act on them.

Nisargadatta
http://www.mpeters.de/nisargadatta/index.cfm

Reincarnation

implies a reincarnating self. There is no such thing. The bundle of memories and hopes, called the "I", imagines itself existing everlastingly and creates time to accommodate its false eternity. To be, I need no past or future. All experience is born of imagination; I do not imagine, so no birth or death happens to me. Only those who think themselves born can think themselves re-born. All exists in awareness, and awareness neither dies nor is re-born. It is the changeless reality itself.

Nisargadatta
http://www.mpeters.de/nisargadatta/index.cfm

Your ideas about yourself

change from day to day and from moment to moment. Your self-image is the most changeful thing
you have. It is utterly vulnerable, at the mercy of a passer by. A bereavement, the loss of a job, an
insult, and your image of yourself, which you call your person, changes deeply. To know what you
are you must first investigate and know what you are not. And to know what you are not you must
watch yourself carefully, rejecting all that does not necessarily go with the basic fact: 'I am'. The
ideas: I am born at a given place, at a given time, from my parents and now I am so-and-so, living
at, married to, father of, employed by, and so on, are not inherent in the sense 'I am'. Our usual
attitude is of 'I am this'. Separate consistently and perseveringly the 'I am' from 'this' or 'that', and try to feel what it means to be, just to be, without being 'this' or 'that'. All our habits go against it and the task of fighting them is long and hard sometimes, but clear understanding helps a lot. The clearer you understand that on the level of the mind you can be described in negative terms only, the quicker you will come to the end of your search and realise your limitless being.

Nisargadatta ~ I Am That

What is the purpose of meditation?

M: Seeing the false as the false, is meditation. This must go on all the time.
Q: We are told to meditate regularly.
M: Deliberate daily exercise in discrimination between the true and the false and renunciation of
the false is meditation. There are many kinds of meditation to begin with, but they all merge finally
into one.

Nisargadatta ~ I Am That

Liberation

is of the self from its false and self-imposed ideas; it is not contained in some particular experience, however glorious.
Q: Does it last for ever?
M: All experience is time bound. Whatever has a beginning must have an end.
Q: So liberation, in my sense of the word, does not exist?
M: On the contrary, one is always free. You are, both conscious and free to be conscious. Nobody can take this away from you. Do you ever know yourself non-existing, or unconscious?
Q: I may not remember, but that does not disprove my being occasionally unconscious.
M: Why not turn away from the experience to the experiencer and realise the full import of the only true statement you can make: 'I am'?
Q: How is it done?
M: There is no 'how' here. Just keep in mind the feeling 'I am', merge in it, till your mind and feeling become one. By repeated attempts you will stumble on the right balance of attention and affection and your mind will be firmly established in the thought-feeling 'I am'. Whatever you think, say, or do, this sense of immutable and affectionate being remains as the ever-present background of the mind.
Q: And you call it liberation?
M: I call it normal. What is wrong with being, knowing and acting effortlessly and happily? Why consider it so unusual as to expect the immediate destruction of the body? What is wrong with the body that it should die? Correct your attitude to your body and leave it alone. Don't pamper, don't torture. Just keep it going, most of the time below the threshold of conscious attention.

Nisargaddata ~ I Am That

What comes first, the person or the knower?

M: The person is a very small thing. Actually it is a composite, it cannot be said to exist by itself. Unperceived, it is just not there. It is but the shadow of the mind, the sum total of memories. Pure being is reflected in the mirror of the mind, as knowing. What is known takes the shape of a person, based on memory and habit. It is but a shadow, or a projection of the knower onto the screen of the mind.
Q: The mirror is there, the reflection is there. But where is the sun?
M: The supreme is the sun.
Q: It must be conscious.
M: It is neither conscious nor unconscious. Don't think of it in terms of consciousness or unconsciousness. It is the life, which contains both and is beyond both.

Nisargadatta ~ I Am That

Within the prison of your world

appears a man who tells you that the world of painful contradictions, which you have created, is neither continuous nor permanent and is based on a misapprehension. He pleads with you to get out of it, by the same way by which you got into it. You got into it by forgetting what you are and you will get out of it by knowing yourself as you are.

Nisargadatta ~ I Am That

Our death is our wedding with eternity

What is the secret? "God is One."
The sunlight splits when entering the windows of the house.
This multiplicity exists in the cluster of grapes;
It is not in the juice made from the grapes.
For he who is living in the Light of God,
The death of the carnal soul is a blessing.
Regarding him, say neither bad nor good,
For he is gone beyond the good and the bad.
Fix your eyes on God and do not talk about what is invisible,
So that he may place another look in your eyes.
It is in the vision of the physical eyes
That no invisible or secret thing exists.
But when the eye is turned toward the Light of God
What thing could remain hidden under such a Light?
Although all lights emanate from the Divine Light
Don't call all these lights "the Light of God";
It is the eternal light which is the Light of God,
The ephemeral light is an attribute of the body and the flesh.
...Oh God who gives the grace of vision!
The bird of vision is flying towards You with the wings of desire.

Rumi ~ Mystic Odes 833

Appearance and reality

Questioner: Repeatedly you have been saying that events are causeless, a thing just happens and
no cause can be assigned to it. Surely everything has a cause, or several causes. How am I to
understand the causelessness of things?
Maharaj: From the highest point of view the world has no cause.
Q: But what is your own experience?
M: Everything is uncaused. The world has no cause.
Q: I am not enquiring about the causes that led to the creation of the world. Who has seen the
creation of the world? It may even be without a beginning, always existing. But I am not talking of
the world. I take the world to exist -- somehow. It contains so many things. Surely, each must have
a cause, or several causes.
M: Once you create for yourself a world in time and space, governed by causality, you are bound to
search for and find causes for everything. You put the question and impose an answer.
Q: My question is very simple: I see all kinds of things and I understand that each must have a
cause, or a number of causes. You say they are uncaused -- from your point of view. But, to you
nothing has being and, therefore, the question of causation does not arise. Yet you seem to admit
the existence of things, but deny them causation. This is what I cannot grasp. Once you accept the
existence of things, why reject their causes?
M: I see only consciousness, and know everything to be but consciousness, as you know the
picture on the cinema screen to be but light.
Q: Still, the movements of light have a cause.
M: The light does not move at all. You know very well that the movement is illusory, a sequence of
interceptions and colour-ings in the film. What moves is the film -- which is the mind.
Q: This does not make the picture causeless. The film is there, and the actors with the technicians,
the director, the producer, the various manufacturers. The world is governed by causality.
Everything is inter-linked.
M: Of course, everything is inter-linked. And therefore everything has numberless causes. The
entire universe contributes to the least thing. A thing is as it is, because the world is as it is. You
see, you deal in gold ornaments and I -- in gold. Between the different ornaments there is no causal
relation. When you re-melt an ornament to make another, there is no causal relation between the
two. The common factor is the gold. But you cannot say gold is the cause. It cannot be called a
cause, for it causes nothing by itself. It is reflected in the mind as 'I am', as the ornament's particular
name and shape. Yet all is only gold. In the same way reality makes everything possible and yet
nothing that makes a thing what it is, its name and form, comes from reality.
But why worry so much about causation? What do causes matter, when things themselves are
transient? Let come what comes and let go what goes -- why catch hold of things and enquire about
their causes?
Q: From the relative point of view, everything must have a cause.
M: Of what use is the relative view to you? You are able to look from the absolute point of view --
why go back to the relative? Are you afraid of the absolute?
Q: I am afraid. I am afraid of falling asleep over my so-called absolute certainties. For living a life
decently absolutes don't help. When you need a shirt, you buy cloth, call a tailor and so on.
M: All this talk shows ignorance.
Q: And what is the knower's view?
M: There is only light and the light is all. Everything else is but a picture made of light. The picture
is in the light and the light is in the picture. Life and death, self and not-self --- abandon all these
ideas. They are of no use to you.
Q: From what point of view you deny causation? From the relative -- the universe is the cause of
everything. From the absolute -- there is no thing at all.
M: From which state are you asking?
Q: From the daily waking state, in which alone all these discussions take place.
M: In the waking state all these problems arise, for such is its nature. But, you are not always in
that state. What good can you do in a state into which you fall and from which you emerge,
helplessly. In what way does it help you to know that things are causally related -- as they may
appear to be in your waking state?
Q: The world and the waking state emerge and subside together.
M: When the mind is still, absolutely silent, the waking state is no more.
Q: Words like God, universe, the total, absolute, supreme are just noises in the air, because no
action can be taken on them.
M: You are bringing up questions which you alone can answer.
Q: Don't brush me off like this! You are so quick to speak for the totality, the universe and such
imaginary things! They cannot come and forbid you to talk on their behalf. I hate those irresponsible
generalizations! And you are so prone to personalise them. Without causality there will be no order;
nor purposeful action will be possible.
M: Do you want to know all the causes of each event? Is it possible?
Q: I know it is not possible! All I want to know is if there are causes for everything and the causes
can be influenced, thereby affecting the events?
M: To influence events, you need not know the causes. What a roundabout way of doing things!
Are you not the source and the end of every event? Control it at the source itself.
Q: Every morning I pick up the newspaper and read with dismay that the world's sorrows --
poverty, hatred and wars -- continue unabated. My questions are concerning the fact of sorrow, the
cause, the remedy. Don't brush me off saying that it is Buddhism! Don't label me. Your insistence
on causelessness removes all hope of the world ever changing.
M: You are confused, because you believe that you are in the world, not the world in you. Who
came first -- you or your parents? You imagine that you were born at a certain time and place, that
you have a father and a mother, a body and a name. This is your sin and your calamity! Surely you
can change your world if you work at it. By all means, work. Who stops you? I have never
discouraged you. Causes or no causes, you have made this world and you can change it.
Q: A causeless world is entirely beyond my control.
M: On the contrary, a world of which you are the only source and ground is fully within your power
to change. What is created can be always dissolved and re-created. All will happen as you want it,
provided you really want it.
Q: All I want to know is how to deal with the world's sorrows.
M: You have created them out of your own desires and fears, you deal with them. All is due to your
having forgotten your own being. Having given reality to the picture on the screen, you love its
people and suffer for them and seek to save them. It is just not so. You must begin with yourself.
There is no other way. Work, of course. There is no harm in working.
Q: Your universe seems to contain every possible experience. The individual traces a line through
it and experiences pleasant and unpleasant states. This gives rise to questioning and seeking,
which broaden the outlook and enable the individual to go beyond his narrow and self-created world
limited and self-centred. This personal world can be changed -- in time. The universe is timeless
and perfect.
M: To take appearance for reality is a grievous sin and the cause of all calamities. You are the all-
pervading, eternal and infinitely creative awareness -- consciousness. All else is local and
temporary. Don't forget what you are. In the meantime work to your heart's content. Work and
knowledge should go hand in hand.
Q: My own feeling is that my spiritual development is not in my hands. Making one's own plans
and carrying them out leads no where. I just run in circles round myself. When God considers the
fruit to be ripe, He will pluck it and eat it. Whichever fruit seems green to Him will remain on the
world's tree for another day.
M: You think God knows you? Even the world He does not know.
Q: Yours is a different God. Mine is different. Mine is merciful. He suffers along with us.
M: You pray to save one, while thousands die. And if all stop dying, there will be no space on earth
Q: I am not afraid of death. My concern is with sorrow and suffering. My God is a simple God and
rather helpless. He has no power to compel us to be wise. He can only stand and wait.
M: If you and your God are both helpless, does it not imply that the world is accidental? And if it is.
the only thing you can do is to go beyond it.

I Am That ~ Nisargadatta

Thubten Yeshe

It’s essential to dissolve the normal ego projection of the physical nervous system body; to absorb the image that our conception of ego instinctively feels--that I’m somewhere around here; Thubten Yeshe is somewhere here. Where is Thubten Yeshe? My ego’s instinctive interpretation is that I’m here, somewhere in my body. Check for yourself. See what comes up in your mind when you think of your name. The huge mountain of your self will arise. Then check exactly where that mountain of “me” can be found. Where are you? Somewhere around your body. Are you in your chest, in your head?

You feel this instinctively. You don’t have to study philosophy to learn it; you don’t have to go to school; your parents didn’t teach you. You’ve known this since before you were born. Buddhism describes two kinds of ego identity: kun-tag and lhen-kye. The one I’m talking about is lhen-kye, the simultaneously born one; the one that exists simply because you exist. It was born with you; it needs no outside influence for its existence. Like the smell that comes with a pine tree, they’re one. The pine tree doesn’t grow first and then the smell comes later. They come together. It’s the same with the innate sense of ego; it comes at conception.

Kun-tag means the sense of self that’s philosophically acquired. It’s something that you learn through outside influence from teachers, friends, books and so forth. This is the intellectually derived ego. Can you imagine? You can even acquire an ego through reading. This one is easier to remove, of course, because it’s more superficial. It’s a gross conception. The simultaneously born sense of self is much, much harder to get rid of.

This instinctive conception of ego is really convinced that around my body is where you’ll find Thubten Yeshe. Someone looks at me and asks, “Are you Thubten Yeshe?” “Yes,” I reply, “I’m Thubten Yeshe.” Where is Thubten Yeshe? Around here. Instinctively, I feel I’m right here. But I’m not the only one who feels like this. Check up for yourself. It’s very interesting.

Until I was six years old, I was not Thubten Yeshe. That name was given to me when I became a monk at Sera Monastery. Before that time, nobody knew me as Thubten Yeshe. They thought I was Döndrub Dorje. The names Thubten Yeshe and Döndrub Dorje are different; different superstitions give different kinds of name. I feel my name is me, but actually, it isn’t. Neither the names Thubten Yeshe nor Döndrub Dorje are me. But the moment I was given the name Thubten Yeshe, Thubten Yeshe came into existence. Before I was given the name, he didn’t exist; nobody looked at me and thought, “There’s Thubten Yeshe.” I didn’t even think it myself. Thubten Yeshe did not exist.

But when one superstitious conception named this bubble, my body--“Your name is Thubten Yeshe"--my superstition took it: “Yes, Thubten Yeshe is me.” It’s an interdependent relationship. One superstition gives the name Thubten Yeshe to this bubble of relativity and my ego starts to feel that Thubten Yeshe really does exist somewhere in the area of my body.

The reality, however, is that Thubten Yeshe is merely the dry words applied to the bubble-like phenomenon of these five aggregates. These things come together and that’s it: Thubten Yeshe, the name on the bubble. It’s a very superficial view. The ego’s instinctive feeling that Thubten Yeshe exists somewhere around here is very superficial.

You can see that the relative reality of Thubten Yeshe is simply the name that’s been given to this bubble of energy. That’s all Thubten Yeshe is. That’s why the great philosopher and yogi Nagarjuna and the great yogi Lama Tsong Khapa both said that all phenomena exist merely in name. As a result, some early Western Buddhist scholars decided that Nagarjuna was a nihilist. That’s a conclusion that could be reached only by someone who doesn’t practice and spends all his time dealing in concepts and words.

If I were to show up somewhere and suddenly announce, “You’re all merely names,” people would think I was crazy. But if you investigate in detail the manner in which we’re all merely names, it becomes extremely clear. Nihilists reject the very existence of interdependent phenomena but that’s not what Nagarjuna did. He simply explained that relative phenomena exist but that we should view them in a reasonable way. They come, they go; they grow; they die. They receive various names and in that way gain a degree of reality for the relative mind. But that mind does not see the deeper nature of phenomena; it does not perceive the totality of universal existence.

Phenomena have two natures: the conventional, or relative, and the absolute, or ultimate. Both qualities exist simultaneously in each and every phenomenon. What I’ve been talking about is the way that bubbles of relativity exist conventionally. A relative phenomenon comes into existence when, at any given time, the association of superstition and the conception of ego flavors an object in a particular way by giving it a name. That combination--the object, the superstition giving it a name and the name itself--is all that’s needed for a relative phenomenon to exist. When those things come together, there’s your Thubten Yeshe. He’s coming; he’s going; he’s talking. It’s all a bubble of relativity.

If right now you can see that Thubten Yeshe’s a bubble, that’s excellent. It helps a lot. And if you can relate your experience of seeing me as a bubble to other concrete objects you perceive, it will help even more. If you can see the heavy objects that shake your heart and make you crazy as relative bubbles, their vibration will not overwhelm you. Your heart will stop shaking and you’ll cool down and relax.

If I were to show you a scarecrow and ask if it was Thubten Yeshe, you’d probably say it wasn’t. Why not? “Because it’s made of wood.” You’d have a ready answer. You can apply exactly the same logic to the argument that this bubble of a body is not Thubten Yeshe either.

I believe very strongly that this is me because of the countless times from the time I was born up to now that my ego has imprinted the idea “this is me” on my consciousness. “Me. This is me. This bubble is me, me, me.” But this bubble itself is not Thubten Yeshe. We know it’s composed of the four elements. However, the earth element is not Thubten Yeshe; the water is not Thubten Yeshe; the fire is not Thubten Yeshe; the air is not Thubten Yeshe. The parts of the body are not Thubten Yeshe either. The skin is not Thubten Yeshe; the blood is not Thubten Yeshe; they bone is not Thubten Yeshe; the brain is not Thubten Yeshe. The ego is not Thubten Yeshe. Superstition is not Thubten Yeshe. The combination of all this is not Thubten Yeshe either--if it were, Thubten Yeshe would have existed before the name had been given. But before this combination was named Thubten Yeshe, nobody recognized it as Thubten Yeshe and I didn’t recognize it as Thubten Yeshe myself. Therefore, the combination of all these parts is not Thubten Yeshe.

If we call the scarecrow Thubten Yeshe and then analyze it to see exactly where Thubten Yeshe can be found, we can’t find Thubten Yeshe in any of the parts or on all the parts together. This is easy to understand. It’s exactly the same thing with the bubble of my aggregates. Neither any single constituent part nor the whole combination is Thubten Yeshe. We also know that the name alone is not Thubten Yeshe. So what and where is Thubten Yeshe? Thubten Yeshe is simply the combination of superstition flavoring an object with the words, “Thubten Yeshe.” That’s all that Thubten Yeshe is.

Beyond the name, there is no real Thubten Yeshe existing somewhere. But the simultaneously born ego doesn’t understand that Thubten Yeshe exists merely as an interdependent combination of parts. It believes that without question, around here, somewhere, there exists a real, independent, concrete Thubten Yeshe. This is the nature of the simultaneously born ego. Therefore, if we do not remove conceptions like, “Somewhere in this bubble, I’m Thubten Yeshe,” we cannot release the ego.

The conception of ego is an extreme mind. It holds very concretely the idea that somewhere within this bubble of the four-element combination body there exists a self-existent I. That is the misconception that we must release. If the ego mind assessed the situation reasonably and was comfortable and satisfied perceiving that superstition giving the name Thubten Yeshe to this interdependent, four-element bubble was enough for Thubten Yeshe to exist, that would be a different story. But it’s not satisfied with that. It cannot leave that alone. It wants to be special. It wants Thubten Yeshe to be concrete. It’s not satisfied with Thubten Yeshe being a mere name on a collection of parts. Therefore, it conceives an imaginary, unrealistic, exaggerated, concrete self-entity. The method we use to remove that conception is to transform our bubble of relativity into light.

http://www.lamayeshe.com/lamayeshe/whoareyou.shtml

Touting one's enlightenment

Those who perpetuate the belief that ego transformation is enlightenment do spiritual culture a disservice. Additionally, the reverence and respect accorded enlightened beings is also undeserved because enlightenment is nothing other than a re-discovery of something that was already known.

When I wake up I don't become somebody else, I simply trade the idea of myself as a dreamer for the idea of myself as a waker. In fact, the waker and the dreamer are the same person, but seem to be separate entities because of their association with the state of consciousness in which they find themselves at the moment.

It is fashionable these days for society to congratulate formerly fat people who returned to their normal size. But rather than offer them respect, shouldn't they be castigated for getting fat in the first place? Touting one's Enlightenment only calls attention to a lengthy and embarrassing stay in ignorance.

Unknown
Quoted by Meenakshi Mammi
http://www.arunachalagrace.blogspot.com
Nondualhighlights 2576

Criticism

Nisargadatta is a mystic in the tradition of Advaita Vedanta. To understand his point of view we must clearly see that Vedanta was a reaction against the strong formalistic ritualism of Vedic Hinduism. Before Vedanta reformulated the basic tenets of Hinduism, religion in India had deteriorated to a large extent into ritualism. People misinterpreted the Veda's. They thought that if they'd followsome prescribed method or ritual, that it would automatically lead to the redemption and liberation of their souls, moksha. But this absent minded murmuring of prayers and dumb-headed bringing of offers didn't lead to anything. Only to more stupidity.

Vedanta protested against this ritualism. They thought it was an insult at religion. Vedanta said that moksha could only be ensured if we would gain a deep insight into the Truth (as summarized above). We have to really understand, right to the deepest layers of our soul, what we truly are and what the world is. Without this deep insight, which is more like an intuition of the soul than mere mental knowledge, we cannot realize the deepest truth in our lives and become liberated. This path of insight and understanding was called jnana-yoga. A full accomplished yogi in this tradition was called a jnani.

But in my view Vedanta is an antithesis and not a synthesis. It overstates its case in depreciating and writing off all methods and paths for reaching enlightenment. Most Vedantists teach us that there is no path, that there is no method to follow, because every person is already enlightened and has always been so. But this leads to some frustration, because this 'being already enlightened' is only true from an enlightened perspective, from an absolute stance, ex specie aeternitatis. But if we ask any average person in the street if he feels enlightened, he will answer 'far from'.

So what happened was this: people flocked in thousands to the tenement apartment of Nisargadatta in Mumbai and got the Vedantic message that there really was no method to reach anything. For the 'I' who wants to reach for enlightenment is imaginary in the first place. Just get rid of this false 'I'. But then people said that they would gladly accept the truth and deep wisdom of his philosophy and feel it them selves all the time. But how do we get rid of this false 'I', which is bugging us from early in the morning till late at night? How can I be like you, so full of love and deep wisdom? But then he would answer 'who wants to get rid of what?' And then the debate got frustrated into vicious circles.

For what Nisargadatta failed to tell his audience was that we can only see our true identity with the help of our relative consciousness. This relative consciousness of ours is closely connected to the body. Body and consciousness are mutually dependent and influence each others condition. So if the body is tensed and all stressed up, then our mind is also full of negative and stressed thoughts. Also vice versa: if we think from memory about bad events in the past, then our body becomes stressed, anxious and painful. So thoughts and emotions are conditioned by the state our body is in and the way our body feels is conditioned by the thoughts and emotions we have.

Now when someone for the first time goes on a search for liberation, to put an end to all of his sufferings, he is bound to be in the worst psychological and physiological shape possible. Otherwise there would not be need for him to find a solution to his problems. So his body and his physical nervous system suffer from the stress of a life time. In this shape it is impossible to see our true identity. We might assent to it intellectually. Our intuition might probably see the deep truth of the spiritual words of Nisargadatta, but we fail to realize it. The shape of our nervous system is conditioning our consciousness. Every time it becomes all covered up with dust and stains, even if we've cleaned it for a couple of minutes or so. In this condition we will never be able to have an adequate reflection of our true identity.

So the body and the mind first have to cool down and become silent and peaceful. This cannot happen in a split second, as many Vedantists want us to believe. Why not? This is because our body is in time. The body needs time to destress itself first. It cannot be released of its tensions in a fortnight. We are here talking about tensions built up in years. So it will take some time, sometimes even considerable years. And apart from intellectual and intuitive insight into the truth, meditation must do the job, because meditation is a physical technique to make the nervous system healthy and relaxed again. Then, with a healthy and peaceful body, are we finally able to realize our true identity (though we may see it on forehand). I have written more elaborately about this topic in the physical aspects of enlightenment.

So other mystical traditions talk of stages of mystical development, as for instant Christian mysticism. I think these traditions are right. Before we can reach to the peak of Nisargadatta's non-duality, we first have to climb some lower mountains. No mountaineer has begun his career with conquering the Mount Everest. The cleaning of the mirror is a process and it requires training. We have to follow some paths to be able to do it. On the via purgativa (see the Mystic Life) we have to encounter the Dark Night of the soul first. Before we can reach the non-dual stage of no-self, we first have to have the unio mystica of the via unitiva. All these stages have been mapped out by the mystics and I think they were right. For the loss of self is a process that spreads itself out over the years. It is the spiritual growth of a life time. Intellectual understanding is not enough.

But given this criticism we must never forget that Nisargadatta truly was a Mount Everest among men. He spoke to us from the highest non-dual and absolute position a human being can ever attain. His mirror was so cleaned that he purely reflected the love and wisdom of the god/Brahman. To be accurate, due to constant identification with our real I, his right mirror had almost vanished completely. He was one of those few people who already in this life realized what most of us only realize after death. With this attainment he had become one of the gods among men.

http://home.wxs.nl/~brouw724/Nisargadatta.html

Sometimes words can hit you like a hammer

When you read the words of Nisargadatta Maharaj with earnest and close attention it can turn your whole world upside down. The words have the ability to shatter everything that you'd always believed in. The mode of thinking is so strange, so novel and so weird (especially for us Westerners) that you can scarcely believe it is ever written down by a humanbeing. And yet you have the feeling that words were never more true than what you have read just now. Just reading one simple sentence from Nisargadatta Maharaj can change your life. It literally is a life shattering experience.

I will call this man 'the mystic with the hammer'. Far more than Friedrich Nietzche will he be remembered as having changed our way of perceiving and thinking about the world. This simple man who had no formal eduction whatsoever, this simple cigarette salesman from Mumbai, will one day be considered to be one of the greatest philosophers ever to have walked the earth.


you are not what you think

Nisargadatta Maharaj had the ability to always take a step further back in consciousness. He was a genius in taking the absolute position. From that absolute position there was no 'Nisargadatta' anymore, but, so to speak, only absolute Consciousness talking to relative consciousness. Everything personal was closely scrutinized and put aside as untrue. Only a universal stance was worth considering, because only universality could make a claim to truth. He always said that identification with the object was the source of all falsehood in the psyche and therefore of all misery. What did he mean by this 'identification with the object'?

Who are you? I'm a conscious person in a particular body, you say? But can that body that you call 'yours' live for one second without consciousness? Doesn't consciousness come first? Is it not a 'conditio sine qua non' for your body to exist? It seems that consciousness is your true identity and not your body. Your consciousness seems to be the vital cause for your body to exist. You cannot think or act without being conscious. Your body cannot perform its vital functions without your underlying consciousness to tell it how to perspire or how to digest. Take your consciousness away and your body won't work, as it happens when you die. So consciousness seems to be the substratum of your body.

But let's dive deeper into this. What about deep sleep? Or when you have a swoon or when you are dumbed by narcotics. In that state you aren't conscious anymore and yet you remained alive, as you inferred in retrospect. 'The whole night I wasn't there. I was fast asleep. Still now, waking up, I'm 'back again'. But this is absurd! I must have been there in deep sleep also, yet unaware. There must have been an 'I' also in the middle of the night.' So you agree that the feeling of 'I' is not dependent on the body nor on consciousness. In deep sleep there was no body nor was there consciousness. Yet you were there, alive. There must have been an 'I' all along.

So the real I is not your relative consciousness nor your body. In deep sleep they were suspended, yet you remained. So your I amounts to something like 'the feeling of being alive'. 'I am' you say to yourself, and this feeling of 'I am' is even there when you're not in the body or when unconscious, as in deep sleep. This 'amness' seems to be you true identity. Now Nisargadatta grasps our shoulder and looks us straight in the eyes and says: 'Always remain with this true identity! This is your real I. Do not for a single moment lose sight of this feeling of 'amness'. Divest your self of all other thoughts about your self. For they are all lies and false deductions.'

But how does it look like, this real I? How does it feel? Where am I to look? How can I realize being this real I? For it seems to be something different from what I conceive myself to be right now. Nisargadatta would only give negative answers when confronted with these questions. The 'I' is not such and such a thing, he said. It only is. Only being is its characteristic, or to be more precise, it is beyond being and non-being. It is a mere nothingness and not even that, for by now we have started to predicate it, and it may as well be concluded that it is everything at the same time. In deep meditation it can be experienced but only as a wide open space of deep emptiness and stillness. But not even that, for it is experienced to be so dynamic that it is fullness and completeness also. We can not know it. For it is the ultimate subject that can never be an object of thought or intuition. How could our eye see its self? We can only be it. Sink into it. Rest in it. But we can never know it.

This is the position the small child is in. His consciousness is a vast open space full of dynamics and possibilities. But his consciousness and his feeling of self have this great disadvantage of not lettingitself be known. In the beginning the child is totally satisfied and at ease with this unknowable self. For it is such a joy just to be and who wants to know, if being alone is fun enough? But then the mind with its rationality develops in his consciousness. The characteristic of the mind is that it wants to know. So it becomes dissatisfied with this unknowable self. It wants to put some labels on it, like it has done with everything else that came to mind. Now the first thing that comes to mind as being 'I' is the body because it seems in some way or another to be controlled by the self. So it is concluded that the body must be the self.

All kinds of feelings connected to the body, like pleasure and pain, satisfaction or frustration, fear or lust, seem so close to the feeling of I, that there must be a connexion between these feelings and the sense of self. Somehow I must have generated these feelings and if I have generated them, I must be the one responsible and in charge. These feelings have a grip on me. What else can I be than these feelings? Also in the mind all kinds of thoughts, images and representations enter consciousness, so exhilarating and exciting that it must be me generating these thoughts and representations. For what else am I? I must be something, mustn't I?

So the child starts to identify his self with these feelings, these thoughts and these representations. He loses sight of the true kernel of his life force and he mixes his subject up with the objects that enter his stream of consciousness. He is beguiled and fooled by mere objects in the space and time continuum. Only because the ultimate subject of his life escapes all objectivation and can not therefore be known.


the two mirrors

To understand this a little bit more let us imagine a dark room with two mirrors placed on opposite sides, facing each other. In between the two mirrors a lamp is placed. The light of the lamp makes it possible for the two mirrors to reflect each others images. In the beginning both mirrors were clean and empty. So both mirrors reflected only each others emptiness perfectly. But in the course of time the right mirror in the room somehow became all covered with dust. The dust settled more and more in the course of time. After the lapse of years the original right mirror couldn't be seen anymore, but was now covered with stains and dirt. Though the left mirror always stayed perfectly clean and empty, it now looked as if this left mirror also had become covered with dirt and stains. For it didn't do anymore than to reflect the image of the right mirror.

But then suddenly (after how many years?) the caretaker of the room entered. He saw the condition the right mirror was in. He right away took out his sponge and cleaned the right mirror. With contentment he now saw that half work done was all work done. For the left mirror wasn't in need of cleaning. It now reflected a perfectly clean and empty image of itself again. Cleaning one mirror was enough, he saw with a laugh.

Now the left mirror is your true Self. It always stays in its self perfectly clean, empty and unsullied. But the way it looks is conditioned by the state of the right mirror, the relative consciousness of the ego-self. If this relative consciousness is calm, empty and peaceful, without all kinds of stains covering up its natural being, then the true Self can reflect its true nature of an empty stainless mirror also.

Nisargadatta says that we cannot do anything to reach, to realize or the know the Left Mirror. It simply cannot be done with an act of the ego-self. Due to the fact that our true Self is of another dimension. The only thing we can do (and if we want to 'work' spiritually, let this be our sadhana, our religious path) is to clean our relative consciousness of the stains of all mental images, of all conceptualizations, of all judgments, of all feelings, in short of all the objects that enter our stream of consciousness, in order for the one true Mirror to reflect the right image and be its true Self again. So the religious path is a via negativa. It is a path of emptying out one's self of all objects of consciousness. 'Entledigung' as Meister Eckhart used to call it.


the unreality of the right mirror

But after realizing this Nisargadatta takes one last final step back in consciousness (as the genius he was) to reveal us the ultimate truth. For the fact is, he says, that in reality the right mirror does not exist. There is only one mirror, the left One. The existence of the right one is only an optical illusion. It looks like the god/Brahman has created numberless mirrors to reflect itself but they are only rays of reflection coming from Its self. In fact every mirror is the One itself.

For relative consciousness in the cosmos has no substantiality. It is a reflection that only lives in the time and space continuum for a short period of time, stretched out over a limited space. When its allotted time is over it dies and is again taken up into its Source, the One. It needs a definite body to manifest itself. It needs content of mind to keep up the illusion of its existence. Both relative consciousness and its body are mere illusions in time and space.

But though an illusion, our consciousness serves a purpose. It's because of our soul that we can experience the One and also that the One can experience the soul, because, like we said, the Mirror can not see itself. Probably that's the reason that the One has created the manifest world, to be able to see Its self. So when we feel the energy, the love, bliss and the joy of the One it can only be in our relative consciousness. In the absolute position of truth there is only the deep stillness and emptiness of God. This is what we truly are.


seeing the false as false

It might seem that there are two selves, an absolute one and a relative, and that the absolute Self is witnessing the relative one. When we still live in the illusion of having a separate identity this having two selves is our reality. When we first start to meditate we slowly learn to be a witness to all the objects that enter the stream of our consciousness, that is: we learn to take more and more the position of our absolute I. This is probably a necessary step in losing the identification with our relative I (and so lose all identification with all of the objects in our consciousness). But Nisargadatta urges us to go on and to realize a higher state: to see that we are not divided in and against our selves. We are not in a psychic schism. Do we really think we have two 'I's'? Is it not our deepest experience that we are one and whole? One of the two must be our false 'I'. Which one? 'Make this question the question of your life', Nisargadatta says.

All it takes is seeing the false as false. It doesn't take time to have insight in which of the two 'I's' is the real one. All it needs is a quantum leap in your consciousness, an altering of Gestalt. See how your false 'I' always changes. See that it is conditioned by your consciousness and your body. That it is no more than a result of thought, place and time. Is there a personality, is there a definite individual, when we totally live in the present, when the past with its conditioning and the future with its hopes and anticipations fall away?

http://home.wxs.nl/~brouw724/Nisargadatta.html

You are the world

Yesterday we went into the difference between concepts and reality. In the course of that, we discovered that there is no such "thing" as Texas. Today, we are going to expose the simple fact that there is no such thing as you either, whoever you are.

You and I are not different from Texas. When you investigate carefully, to see if you can locate your "self," all you find is a flow of thoughts and images and ideas and opinions and roles and scenarios and names and identities, all of it made up entirely of memory, and fantasy derived from memory, accompanied by a flow of bodily sensations -- again, muscular contractions and other feelings -- giving you concrete referents (physical anchors), but no solid, separate, stable "you" to be found anywhere.

Furthermore, in discovering that you are nobody, you also discover that you are everything. That is to say, you can, in any given moment,distinguish between your hand and your foot and your head and your house and your car and the earth and the sky and so on, but close investigation reveals that those are all a part of you. In other words, there is no part of you that is separate from any other part, any more than you can separate your head from your body or your heart or your blood stream. They are all parts of the same thing. Different parts, yes, but not separate.

In reality, every living cell in your body is made up entirely of things you normally think of as "outside of yourself," that is, continuous interactions between water (clouds, rain, streams, rivers, ground water, etc.), plants, animals, minerals from the soil, sunshine, an ovum from your mother, a sperm from your father, genetic structures from both of them as well as their parents and so on and on. In other words, everything is related to and constantly interacting with everything else. Physics tells us this. Biology and ecological sciences tell us this. Psychology also tells us this. But far and away, much more important, is that direct observation will reveal, beyond any shadow of a doubt, that nothing is, or can be, separate from anything else. And that includes everything we think of as us.

The beauty of this very radical realization is that, once you actually see it, feel it, discover it for yourself, you can stop pretending you are somehow this isolated, lonely, fragile little ego, suspended as if in solitary confinement, with its own private life and its own problems and longings and fears and regrets and disappointments and resentments and frustrations and worries and so on. In other words, there is no private you, and there is no private life. (It only seems that way, because when we are thinking about whatever we, at the time, imagine to be ourselves, nobody's watching.)

Please don't make the tragic mistake of reducing this to a philosophy -- something you agree with, or perhaps have a problem with, and so on. Find out directly, beyond any question! You have an opportunity to put a stop, once and for all, to this shallow, silly, neurotic misunderstanding.

You are the world. You are the universe. You are the Infinite Consciousness into which all worlds and all experiences arise and disappear. Are you big enough and bold enough to embrace all that you are, to embrace your own Pure, Infinite Being?

- Scott Morrison, posted to SufiMystic
Nondual Highlights 2572