This journal is a compilation of writings, usually followed by carefully selected quotes from spiritual masters of all traditions, related to each topic, and posted on my Facebook page from May 3rd 2015 to July 5th 2019 at facebook.com/jc.clownie
Note that you will sometimes find the very same quotes illustrating and deepening several different posts. This is not a careless mistake, but meant to be that way.
I kept the Facebook descending date structure of the posts, which means you will read the journal from more recent writings to older ones.
If you want to skip the introduction below, the "Ode to the Beloved" that follows, and go directly to the posts themselves, click here.
Four Years on Facebook
Retrospectively, it seems I have been posting during those four years on Facebook, and been involved with the worldwide "spiritual" communities of this network, for at least three main reasons.
The Inner Teacher
The first reason was to put into words and share those "rays of light" that started to arise organically and regularly from "within", almost like poetry, from this center of silence at the heart of being.
What I have discovered on my path, and out of my practice, is that the more we are bringing the noisy conditioned mind to a stabilized state of silence and stillness, and the more we get out of our own way, the more space there is for this delicate and subtle voice of truth, clarity and wisdom which arises from our very own core of beingness, to express itself and be heard. It's truly a thing of beauty.
The concept of the inner satguru (the "true guru/teacher/guide" within) is not symbolic, not a metaphor, but absolutely literal and real. It always speaks, but we will only be able to listen and hear, if we are inwardly quiet enough.
It's actually your most objective and truest voice (compared to the conditioned and subjective voice of the self-centered mind) which will inform and guide you (as a particular human form) the very same way an external teacher would do.
In this state of silent alignment, it's impossible to claim or own what this inner voice is expressing as "yours", when it's absolutely clear that it is emerging from an ageless source of universal wisdom, of service to your own development and maturation as a human being.
So although its first aim is obviously to teach you something everytime it arises, out of its universal nature, it is also known that it might be of value to others on the path. Hence the sharing in the form of posts on a social network.
Back At School
The second reason is due to the very nature of the globalized social networks like Facebook, and the gathering of huge groups of spiritual people in virtual communities.
The acquisition of self-knowledge obviously always starts (and actually ends) with the studying of oneself. Once it starts to be clear that there truly are no "others", and that "studying oneself" is also "studying others" due to the universality of the human nature and the egoic dynamic, it becomes clear that to "observe/study others" is to "observe/study oneself". There is no separation here.
Prior to the emergence of the Internet and social networks, you could do that with the very few people, and the few spiritual seekers and teachers you would encounter physically in your life. But today, Facebook and the virtual spiritual communities now offer a huge panel of study of seekers and teachers.
If, as a seeker of truth, you're genuinely interested and pulled toward the real discovery and study of "yourself", of the human nature, of the universal ego, of the functioning of the mind and the illusion/maya, of the tricks and traps of conditioned self-centeredness when it comes to engage on a spiritual path, you now have access to hundreds and thousands of facets of "yourself", which will help you to gain a deeper and deeper clarity about it all.
Retrospectively, I understood that this was what happened during those four years. It was like being at school (whether on my own page or in many the groups I joined). Or like being a scientist in a laboratory with having access to almost countless samples to study, where the goal was to have a more and more accurate, a clearer and clearer, a wider and wider view and perspective on "myself".
The Contemporary Spiritual Culture
The third reason, which was a consequence of the first two I guess, was seemingly to be used to address and tackle what appeared more and more clearly as huge flaws and shortcomings within the contemporary spiritual seeking and teaching culture (notably among the advaita/nondual, buddhist, zen and dzogchen communities, and generally all so-called "direct path" spiritual traditions).
Day after day, out of my direct interactions with many spiritual seekers and teachers, I got to realize more and more the utter superficiality and mediocrity of it, and the high level of self-deception at play in those communities.
I have no doubt that the difficulties and traps humans encounter when walking a spiritual path, is nothing new under the sun. But it clearly appears that our superficial, lazy, materialistic, individualistic and self-entitled western culture keeps distorting, corrupting and deteriorating even more our approach of the spiritual matter (both in the seeking and teaching dynamic).
This was also part of my own learning curve and maturation to get more and more clarity about what's at stake in the contemporary spiritual culture, and I can say that due to the huge cunning and deceptive capacities of the conditioned human mind, this was certainly not a given to gain such clarity.
I will not get into too much details about this, as it's the very aim of many of the posts that you may read below, but here's few non-exhaustive general points that became absolutely clear.
- People are totally underestimating and minimizing the power of the ego dynamic, of the conditioned mind, to interfere with, distort and corrupt the approach of the spiritual path.
- People are almost constantly minimizing, and even denying and rejecting the utter necessity and requirement of effort, discipline and dedication, on their way toward "awakening".
- People are most often not making any real progress on their path, not being truly transformed in the least, out of being incapable of having a clear idea of where they are on the path, and systematically believing themselves to be way more prepared, fit, capable, refined, mature, earnest and sincere than what they actually are.
- People, helped by countless self-proclaimed teachers, are now using the words "awakening" or "enlightenment" in a manner which has become so light, simplistic and superficial, that not only it has lost almost all substance, but it pushes them to grab at any bit of superficial intellectual understanding or preliminary transcient glimpse, and call that "awakening".
- People are hijacking spiritual concepts, and constantly gets trapped in some form of "absolutism" (grasping and clinging at what they think might be the "ultimate truth"), to feed a spiritual by-passing mechanism and a denial of their real inner state. For example, they are often grasping at the idea of the illusion of the "ego", to rationalize their reluctance to discover, face and address the universal dark/shadow side of this very "ego" and their human nature.
Finally, I want to point out too that if you appreciate quotes of wisdom like I do, I've settled the website Quotes From The Source, to collect quotes from great spiritual sages around topics that may be relevant to the contemporary seekers of truth.
May you all be blessed in the light, love, peace, silence and purity of your own Being.
Amen. Amin. Om.
"God can't come to visit you unless you are not there." - Meister Eckhart
Once I was touched
by the inconceivable beauty of your fragrance
from within my heart, Oh Friend,
I realized that wherever I have ever looked,
and whatever I have ever seen in this life,
was Your Face.
The diamond of your Love
fragmented in innumerable pieces,
is what this world is about.
How could I be
seeking you for so long?
Love was relentlessly looking for the Lover,
in everything it touched.
The Lover was hidden in Love itself,
all along.
You are the Lover, the Beloved and the Love.
Strip yourself of everything that you think you are,
and remain as the Lover only.
Strip yourself of everything you think you desire,
and only long for the Beloved within.
Strip yourself of all craving for love,
and remain as Love itself.
A Lover desires nothing else but to be attached to His Beloved,
through the bound of Love.
Be the Lover. Be the Beloved. Be the Love.
The path to the Beloved, is that of non-existence.
"Where are you, O Beloved?" I asked.
"Right here, where you are not." He replied.
Disappearing, dissolving, receding,
is the only solution
to all "problems" arising in the mind.
You cannot grasp at the Loved One to kiss Him.
You have to disappear, so He can kiss you.
You cannot "find" the Beloved.
He will find you, when you'll be gone.
Whoever longs for Union,
shall learn the art of vanishing.
How can you expect a visit from the silent Beloved,
when your house is filled with the noise of wants and needs?
Don't you know the duty of a true servant,
is to vanish from within himself,
while being fully present and vigilant
to the slightest sign of his Master?
How can you stay close to the rose,
when not wanting its thorns?
All hearts contain the hidden hurt.
All hearts bleed out of being separate from the Beloved.
Don't blame your heart.
Don't blame the winds.
Don't rush for "healing",
don't rush for "balance",
don't rush for "well-being"!
Don't rush for this pale imitation of "peace",
unless you are still craving for the safety of your prison.
Welcome those bleedings of your heart, dear friend,
they are showing you the way back Home.
Welcome the hurt and the sorrow,
welcome the devastating solitude;
they are the true premises of reunion.
This whole life is an amazing love story.
All we ever longed for,
is reunion with the Beloved inside.
Everything, everywhere, at all times,
only talks about that.
Every rock, every cloud, every rose,
every love story and every grief,
only talks about that.
All heartbreaks you had,
were reminding you of this longing.
All joy and intimacy you had,
were reminding you of it too.
You never ever lived a single moment in this world
which was not Him calling you back Home inside.
You are your own Beloved, dear friend,
frantically looking everywhere but in yourself.
This is the marriage you were waiting for,
all of your life.
This is the perfect love story
that was written into your Heart
since the beginning of time.
This is the only intimacy
you were really seeking
throughout all your life activities.
The Beloved never left.
You left, then forgot that you left,
and now weeping about separation.
Now don't say a word.
Leave the ghosts of your mind.
Leave the foam,
and enter the tender stream.
Be with your weeping heart,
and let the silent tears bring you back
to where you never left.
Be quiet,
so you can hear again
the never ending Call,
arising from your own Source.
Inside. Inside. Closer. Closer still.
I come from a place so pure,
so delicate, so suble, so beautiful,
that even the most refined human emotion
feels like a pale reflection of it.
Everything that ever happened in my life
was just a call to remember.
The beauty, the ugly, all the same.
Every time my heart hurt,
every moment of pain that I experienced,
every time I felt torn apart,
was a help from beyond, to feed and grow
the longing to go back home to the Land of Love.
Every time I was touched and moved by beauty,
every moment of joy,
every time I loved and felt loved,
was a help from beyond,
to feed and grow the remembering of where I come from.
Every time my heart was broken,
whether through joy or pain,
whether through beauty or ugliness,
was a call from beyond,
and an opportunity to let myself fall through the crack,
to the Land from where I come.
"Fly from the land of the alphabet,
to the Land of Love, on the wings of your broken heart",
said the Voice.
"Let silence guide you."
Fall so deeply in love with the Beloved, O Lover,
That even the very ecstasy, joy, peace and enjoyment
Arising out of this union
Are seen as yet things that are separating you from Him.
Give up thoughts.
And give up giving up thoughts.
Here You are.
Give up yourself.
And give up giving up yourself.
Here You are.
Stop thinking.
And stop thinking about not thinking.
Stop trying.
And stop trying not trying.
Stop seeking.
And stop seeking not seeking.
The experience of deep peace is still turmoil.
Peace without peace; this is peace.
The experience of overwhelming bliss is still pain.
Bliss without bliss; this is bliss.
The experience of perfect stillness is still agitation.
Stillness without stillness; this is stillness.
The experience of pure silence is still noise.
Silence without silence; this is silence.
You without you.
This is You.
"Be without leaving yourself."
Six Stages of Awakening
Here's a description of the global structure, which means that many, many other elements are required (always depending on the context, the moment and the people) for the process to be effective.
1- There is only noise. The noise and restlessness of identification. The whole human organism is driven by unconsciousness, by conditioning and by the self-centered thinking mind.
2- That's the beginning of witnessing, or observing. Witnessing, is already something a bit quieter. Some distance starts to be created between the observer and the psychological mind. That's the stage where the journey toward pure being, or silence, starts.
3- Witnessing, or attention, withdraw more and more from the noise of the mind, and is turned toward itself. We learn to go deeper and deeper within, surrendering, dropping, letting go of the noise of the mind, of the psychological "me".
4- Here we may start intermittently to experience pure silence. Pure being remains within itself, and there is no "me" and no self-centered mind anymore. Yet, there is still identity with being, and there is still a subtle duality where pure silence (or pure beingness) seems to be experienced, or experiencing itself. There is still an awareness of the pure state of being, or silence. Here, peace, stillness, rest, wholeness, oneness is felt. But this is not enough.
5- Here, we keep diving. We keep dropping deeper into silence, letting go of consciousness, self-awareness, and any kind of duality. This stage, contrary to the others, is a passive stage. It's not so much that we "let go" or "withdraw", because there is no agent there anymore capable of "doing" this, but that we only refrain from clinging to what's left, we refrain from clinging to pure being, consciousness, awareness, silence, peace, stillness, rest, wholeness. And the dropping happens all by itself.
6- Here nothing can be said about it. What remains is silence (to give it a name), without the concept of silence, without an experiencer of it, without it being an experience, without any consciousness or awareness of it. This is the original and absolute state prior to being and non-being, prior to duality and non-duality. This is the state where even the "I-amness" recedes at its own source.
Those 6 stages are also the stages of refinement of what we call "human effort". Stage 1 is somehow effortless, in the sense of being almost entirely automatic and conditioned. No conscious effort is made toward freedom yet. Stages 2 is the stage of forceful effort. Then this effort refines itself progressively all long stages 3 to 5. To become so refined that it transforms itself into effortlessness through stages 5 to 6.
And of course, it's not "that" linear. We can still be at stage 2, and have glimpses of stages 4, and even sometimes intuitions of stages 5 and 6. This is where, seekers who are on their own (with no real teacher/master) often fool themselves, and grasp at those glimpses, then claim "What I am is effortless". That is a trick of the ego-mind, to push you to drop the efforts prematurely.
Or we can be mostly stabilized in stage 4, but still experiencing moments of stage 1 identification. Hence the absolute need of perseverance.
"The ultimate understanding is that which enables the understanding to take place and itself becomes so subtle, so fine, that it disappears. And when this consciousness arises again, then the Samadhi is broken and this "I Amness" starts again." - Nisargadatta Maharaj
"You have to make an enormous effort to realise the Self. It is very easy to stop on the way and fall back into ignorance. At any moment you can fall back. You have to make a strong determined effort to remain on the peak when you first reach it, but eventually a time will come when you are fully established in the Self. When that happens, you cannot fall. You have reached your destination and no further efforts are required. Until that moment comes, constant sadhana is required." - Annamalai Swami
Idries Shah, A Veiled Gazelle
"One of the prominent Sufis of Central Asia was examining candidates who wanted to become disciples.
"Anyone" he said, "who wants entertainment, not learning, who wishes to argue, not study, who is impatient, who wants to take rather than to give - should raise his hand."
Nobody moved.
"Very good" said the teacher, "now you will come and see some of my pupils, who have been with me for three years."
He led them into a meditation-hall, where a row of people were sitting. Addressing them, he said: "Let those who wish to be entertained, not to learn, who are impatient and want to argue, the takers and not givers - let them stand up." The whole row of disciples got to their feet.
The sage addressed the first group.
"In your own eyes, you are better people now than you would be in three years time if you stayed here. Your present vanity helps you even to feel worthy. So reflect well, as you return to your homes, before coming here again at some future time if you wish, whether you want to feel better than you are or worse than the world thinks you to be." - Idries Shah
Fully Engaged Into the World
The spiritual path has nothing to do with withdrawing from the world.
If you find yourself:
- Withdrawn within the bubble of a "sangha" or a spiritual group
- Having no other friends than "spiritual" friends
- Detached from your family and close friends
- Insensitive to whatever happens in the world at a social/political/human level
- Not having any drive to engage in the world
- Having no energy anymore to sustain yourself and be autonomous within the world
... you might want to check and try to find within yourself the ground of avoidance and escapism which is obviously at play.
A real spiritual path is about being withdrawn within, yes, but while being at the same time fully into the world, fully engaged into the world.
About this, a friend asked: "What is the criteria for 'fully engaged', 'fully in the world', as you understand it?
How in this context is 'world' defined/understood? As the space/frame in which activities take place, things are done, words spoken?
Do you imply that the 'withdrawn within' corresponds to a 'not-world' in or underneath the world?
What drives action/engagement toward the world? Sense of justice or duty to others? Or? Would you say this 'flows out naturally' from the 'sense of being' you name, as you understand it?
1/ Fully engaged - it's simple. Organically, naturally, there is no separation between you and the world. So, full engagement is always the case if you (ego) don't create an artificial division and separation.
You and the "world" are the same thing. How can you be not curious in, interested by yourself, in all your shapes and forms?
So, the end of all artificial/illusory separation (which most spiritual people keeps entertaining) is what "fully engaged" is about.
2/ We could define "world" as many different things, depending on the lens of perception used to define it.
In the post above, yes, I mean the place where activities takes place, where energy moves in many shapes and forms.
You are part of this "movement". It's even deeper than that: you and the world are not two things, not two movements.
3/ Withdrawn within, means to keep a conscious connection with the source, which is both the source of you and the source of the world. This source out of which you and the world arise from, is also the only real substance out which you and the world is made of: call it pure being, pure consciousness, God, it's all the same.
4/ Nothing "drives" the engagement. See point 1 and 2. It's all one unit, you and the world are one.
But something can drive you to artificially pretend that you and the world are two different things, and out of this illusory separation to live as though you could be withdrawn from it, and resist "engagement" (and this happens a lot to "spiritual" people who believe themselves to be way more advanced than they truly are). This is the root of avoidance and escapism (including "spiritual escapism").
So when this false separation idea stops to drive you, yes, it can be called "service", and to call it "service to others" has its place. But deeper than that, it's service to yourself appearing in different shapes and forms.
And yes, that's a "natural flow" arising out of "being" itself, because there is nothing other than "being/beingness".
Satsangs and Effort
All the non-dual teachers out there giving satsangs, who are not emphasizing or even denying the utter need for a continuous effort on one's path, are only trying to make you addicted to them, and to keep you stuck with them.
No amount of clarity or so-called understanding whatsoever, which those teachers are pretending to offer, will ever be sufficient for you to come to transcend the conditioned mind, no matter how many times you attend their "satsangs".
No amount of "spiritual energy" or "shakti", coming from outside of you, will ever be enough for you to be truly transformed in a real way.
Teachers saying that it is enough and sufficient, without telling you about the tremendous amount of work, practice, effort, dedication, surrender, which are required so that a real stable break-through may happen, are just lying to you, obviously for self-centered reasons.
Intensity and Silence
I talk a lot about effort and practice. Let's dig into it a bit more.
Ultimately, what matters supremely, is intensity. And the main obstacle, is inattention (distraction).
For a very long time on the path, all efforts, at all levels of the "work", are meant to develop and acquire a capacity to be present to oneself, and to master attention, mindfulness and one-pointedness of mind. Without this, the high level of intensity that is required to truly break-through, cannot and will never be reached.
Ramana Maharshi calls it the "intense activity which is called silence".
And what is the goal of this "intense activity"? To stop thinking, to prevent your mind from thinking, to stop engaging with the thinking mind, to become more and more still, quiet and silent within, to dive deeper and deeper into real inner silence.
For this, you have to learn to master your own attention first, and then apply this skill to your practice with great intensity (whether it is self-enquiry, self-remembrance, abiding as pure being or "I am", clinging and sticking to the pure "I", keeping attention at its own source, sticking to a mantra, remaining aware of your breath, etc.).
If you want to earnestly understand the level of intensity required, try for a day, or even for an hour, or even for 5 minutes, to stop thinking. Try to be so intensely and alertly immersed in your practice, that no thought whatsoever has the capacity to drag your attention back into the mind anymore.
The point is to completely stop engaging with thoughts.
At first, of course, thoughts will continue to arise and show up. But you have to understand that if you truly don't engage with them in any way, they will drop and dissolve instantly too, leaving absolutely no trace behind.
If you find yourself having a 5 or 10 seconds stream of thoughts, it means you have actually already engaged with them, it means that the continuity of your practice is already broken, and it shows how weak your "attention muscle" still is.
Again, if you are truly present, and truly not engaging with thoughts, no stream of thoughts can last more than 1 second (and even less), and no stream of thoughts can prevent you to remain continuously centered and anchored in the silence of being within.
That's the level of intensity that is required, not only during sitting meditation times, but all day long, during all your day activities, to really break through, and to truly dive deeper and deeper into realms of being which cannot be discovered and known as long as the thinking mind has not been transcended and brought into a state of pure silence.
"For a seeker of reality, there is only one meditation - the rigorous refusal to harbor thoughts." - Nisargadatta Maharaj
"To remain without thought in the waking state is the greatest worship." - Nisargadatta Maharaj
"Keep the mind before thinking." - Seung Sahn
"Your ultimate need is to get established in the changeless peace of the Self. For this you have to give up all thoughts." - Annamalai Swami
"In samadhi there is only the feeling "I am" and no thoughts." - Ramana Maharshi
"Your degree of absence of thought is your measuring stick on the spiritual path." - Ramana Maharshi
"Self-realization is the cessation of thoughts and all mental activity." - Ramana Maharshi
Breaking Down Identification
What gives "you" a shape and an identity, a past, a problem to deal with, stress and suffering, is nothing but thoughts, and identification with those thought stories. At the source of everything you believe to be living, good or bad, pleasant or unpleasant, there is always and only a thought, taken to be real, taken to be you and yours.
If you remain the witness of all those mind stories, if you remain alert, quiet and still, you will more and more be able to watch the arising of all those thoughts, of all those mind stories which are part of the narrative that you previously took to be you and your life, without identifying with them.
And the more you remain in that place of simple witnessing (which is also the place of being, the place of rest), the more you will realize that you can't be those thoughts narrating what you supposedly are and what you are supposedly living, that you can't be any of the mind's narrative, for the simple fact that you can't be what you can notice and witness.
For the simple fact that there can't be two of you here : the "you" which appears in your mind, and "you" which is noticing all of it.
This is how, given that you persevere, identification can start to be broken down.
Reading this only, trying to get this intellectually, or giving it a little "like", will never be enough.
It's a practice, requiring your entire will and life energy, requiring a great earnestness and dedication, all day long, so that little by little you may be stabilized in that still and quiet place of the pure witness within yourself.
"Being Still is not an effortless state of indolence. All mundane activities which are ordinarily called effort are performed with the aid of a portion of the mind and with frequent breaks. But the act of communion with the Self or remaining still inwardly is intense activity which is performed with the entire mind and without break. Maya (delusion or ignorance) which cannot be destroyed by any other act is completely destroyed by this intense activity which is called 'silence'." - Ramana Maharshi
The Voice in the Head
Keep reminding yourself all day long, with great vigilance and alertness, that the voice which speaks into your head is neither you nor yours.
Whether it speaks of you in a flattering or a denigrating way, in a cajoling or threatening way, in a pleasant or an unpleasant way, in a nice or an awful way, in a positive or negative way, in a hopeful or hopeless way... don't cling but don't try to avoid, don't grasp but don't dismiss, just watch, remain still and quiet in the witness attitude, centered within your own being.
Brahman Is The World
The goal of spirituality is to bring one to the realization that there is no such thing as "spirituality".
To say this in another way: everything is spiritual.
At this stage of realization, both "duality" and "non-duality" don't mean a thing, both "real" and "unreal" don't mean a thing.
The world is illusory.
Brahman alone is real.
Brahman is the world.
- Adi Shankara
Come!
"Come, come, whoever you are. Wanderer, worshiper, lover of leaving. It doesn't matter. Ours is not a caravan of despair. Come, even if you have broken your vows a thousand times. Come, yet again, come, come." - Jalaluddin Rumi
Reaching the Peak
Awakening is certainly not just about reaching a peak, or even "the" peak of the mountain (meaning, just having a small or huge shift of perception).
The most important question is in what conditions this "reaching the peak" happens.
First, for yourself. Is your body-mind prepared enough, refined enough, matured enough, so that the shift(s) will have the possibility to be truly integrated and embodied in all its dimensions and subtleties in your human form? Is your human vehicle clean and cleared enough so that what may remain of conditioning doesn't distort and corrupt this shift in the short or long run?
Second, for others. You see, we don't awaken for ourselves. A real awakening will organically lean toward service, and flourish in service to humanity.
Once you "reached the peak", will you have enough clarity and understanding of why and how you reached it, not only at a personal level, but at the universal level, giving you a clear understanding of how to guide other humans, no matter where they are on their path toward the peak, and even if their own path is totally different from yours?
Have you walked many paths of the mountain, have you discovered all the traps and dead-ends we can encounter in mountain climbing, have you learned the art of ropes and ladders, the art of camping, and the many different conditions we can meet depending on the altitude we are at?
Have you acquired a clear understanding of what can be done, if it can be done, where it can be done, and moreover with whom, depending on what stage of the path is trodden?
And if to those questions, the answer is "not completely", have you at least acquired enough humility, self-reflect capacity and common sense to be open to learn more, to embrace growth and maturation, and to discover hidden blind-spots, no matter how "high on the peak" you believe you are?
"There are different kinds of awakening. A man may be asleep: but he should wake up in the right way. It is also necessary that when he does wake up, he should have the means of making full use of his waking state. Our present task is to prepare this desirable end, as well as to prepare for awakening." - Idries Shah (Declaration of the People of the Tradition)
Trusting Silence
One of the hardest thing on the path, is to come to a place where you'll have total trust and faith in inner silence.
This faith can only assert itself little by little, out of direct experience, out of your own continuous effort and practice of withdrawing from the thinking mind, of preventing yourself from thinking, and out of a genuine perseverance in abiding and resting in and as the pure silent being within. You have to taste it again and again.
Our natural conditioned state as a human being, is to have faith in our mind; to have faith that the mind and thoughts are reliable and relevant, and can help us to be happy, help us to solve our problems, help us to prevent suffering, help us to achieve contentment.
As Jesus said: "No one can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other; or else he will be devoted to one and despise the other."
Same, we cannot serve the mind and silence (the inner silent being) at the same time. It can only be one or the other.
So we will have first to break this conditioned automatic trust and faith in the mind, and gain more and more trust and faith in silence.
And it's hard because in the state of identification, to believe that silence can be the ultimate solution for all our problems is absolutely counter-intuitive and nonsensical to the controlling conditioned mind.
I heard that the Buddha is supposed to have said: "You can do it in 7 days, 7 months or 7 years." Which means it all depends on the willingness, earnestness, dedication, perseverance, intensity, that we put in this practice of breaking the habit to think and engage with the thinking mind, moment to moment, and to abide in and as inner silence.
"Give up thoughts. You need not giving up anything else." - Ramana Maharshi
"What is your life about, anyway? Nothing but a struggle to be someone. Nothing but a running from your own silence." - Jalaluddin Rumi
"Look past your thoughts, so you may drink the pure nectar of This moment." - Jalaluddin Rumi
"This silence, this moment, every moment, if it's genuinely inside you, brings what you need. There's nothing to believe. Only when I stopped believing in myself did I come into this beauty. Sit quietly, and listen for a voice that will say: "Be more silent." Die and be quiet. Quietness is the surest sign that you've died. Your old life was a frantic running from silence. Move outside the tangle of fear-thinking. Live in silence." - Jalaluddin Rumi
"Ground yourself, strip yourself down, to blind loving silence. Stay there, until you see you are gazing at the Light with its own ageless eyes." - Jalaluddin Rumi
"Peace is our real nature. It need not be attained. Our thoughts must be obliterated." - Ramana Maharshi
"All other knowledges are only petty and trivial knowledges. The experience of silence alone is the real and perfect knowledge." - Ramana Maharshi
Superficiality and Mediocrity
In most spiritual circles, awakening is understood as the discovery and realization of our true nature. Awakening is considered to be a process of coming to see and know who/what we really and already are. Whether it being called God, Being, Pure Consciousness, Awareness, Oneness, Truth, Non-Duality, That, Self, most seekers and teachers believe that realizing and knowing "it", along with realizing what we are not, is what awakening is about.
In truth, this is only a very first stage within the real process of awakening, and in this first stage, there are already many layers and depths of realization.
Conditioning makes a man very superficial, mediocre and lazy. Which is why many seekers will wrongly and prematurely consider this first stage to be the whole process, and will even often get stuck in preliminary and intermediary steps of this very first stage.
They will for example take an intellectual and mental understanding, or a small transitory glimpse, or a preliminary fleeting experience, as the completion of this first stage of realization.
If we're honest and serious, we have to understand that this very first stage in itself, this "realization of my true nature", requires many steps and depths of experience and an ongoing process of maturation to be really completed and stabilized. And very few will actually truly reach this stage.
But this doesn't end there. This realization, this deep knowing, is only a preliminary stage.
It has to lead to another stage of the process of awakening, which is part of the evolutionary process of life, and part of the organic transformative aspect of humanity, of what it is to be "human", part of the manifesting of the potentialities still in a dormant state within present humanity.
This next stage is an organic evolutionary process of embodying with more and more transparency the very first essential fragrances, qualities or harmonics of "what we really are", of pure Consciousness or God, within and through a human body-mind.
It is a transformative process, absolutely natural and organic (given that nothing is left in the system to resist or deny it), that is leading to an evolution, transformation and transmutation of the human vehicle, making it more and more "divine" or "godlike", so to say, through a deeper and deeper manifesting of those essential qualities of pure consciousness: pure love, compassion, peace, beauty, clarity, intelligence, creativity, fluidity, aliveness, subtlety, transparency, inclusiveness, honesty...
"I am the slave of whoever will not at each stage imagine that he has arrived at the end of his goal. Many a stage has to be left behind before the traveler reaches his destination." - Jalaluddin Rumi
"Hindsight, shows how often yesterday's so-called truth may become today's absurdity. Real ability is to respect relative truth without damaging oneself by refusing to realize that it will be superseded." - Idries Shah
"When a man is a beggar, he thinks that small change is a fortune. It is not. In order to rise above beggarhood, he must rise above small change, even though he uses it as a means. Used as an end it will become an end." - Ibn Ikbal
"There is a succession of experiences which together constitute the educational and developmental ripening of the learner, according to the Sufis. People who think that each gain is the goal itself will freeze at any such stage, and cannot learn through successive and superseding lessons." - Idries Shah
Three Points to Reflect Upon
From Idries Shah, Caravan of Dreams
"You cannot struggle against or avoid vanity until you know where it is operating." - Muhammad Ali-Shah
"The happiness of the superficial: when a man who has lost his donkey finds it again." - Proverb
"Man has less than he suspects of: Time, Friends, Hopes, Qualities." - Proverb
Real Freedom
Your freedom, what you call your freedom, your cherished so-called freedom, is not worth a rabbit's dropping.
Unless you consciously put yourself in the jail of your own heart, and keep yourself there absolutely locked up, diligently ignoring the whining of your own mind no matter what, you will never know what true freedom is.
Addiction To Suffering
"It is very difficult to sacrifice one's suffering. A man will renounce any pleasures you like but he will not give up his suffering." - G.I. Gurdjieff
A friend asked me to explain the quote...
As always, this can only be truly answered and clarified at the experiential level, out of enquiring and digging within oneself. But here's few leads...
Why are we so attached to suffering (no matter the level/depth of it)? To maintain the apparent solidity of the "sufferer". The "sufferer", is at the very root of the construction of our identity, of the ego-self. Without suffering to cling to, the "sufferer" dissolves.
In other words, we have to be truly honest, look within, and see/realize that no matter what we claim, we are actually absolutely terrified of peace. Because in true peace (which is the same as "silence"), identity dissolves.
If you don't have suffering reference points to refer to as "me" and "mine", if you don't have "personal problems" to deal with and to solve, the mind is silent. And when there is silence, there is no "me" anymore. And for the "me" dynamic, this feels as "death".
And this is why, no matter what we hypocritically claim, we are very much addicted to this mental thought rumination of our so-called "suffering" and "problems". And why we almost constantly find justifications to not let go of our mental turmoil.
A Silent Mind
It is true that pure Being (the Self, pure Awareness) doesn't require a silent mind, doesn't need no thoughts to arise, to be what it is, ever was, and ever will be.
The true realization of our own Being to be absolutely primary and independent from the conditioned mind, to be the truth of what we are, whether our mind is quiet or busy, silent or noisy, is obviously a fundamental realization.
But this doesn't end there. This is only a pointer, a first step.
You see, most seekers in the non-dual community, will hijack and rationalize the pointer, to claim that it doesn't matter then, if their mind is busy, noisy, and full of thoughts. This is nothing but self-deception.
In truth, once you have started to realize the validity of the pointer, and the truth/reality of what it points to, you have to act upon it.
To act upon it, means that more and more you will redirect your attention to abide as this pure Being within yourself, you will remain centered in and as this beingness, and stop engaging in any way with your mind. In other words, if you understood the pointer, you will remain as what is real (Being, Self), and stop giving relevance and importance to what is unreal (thoughts, mind).
And if this step is truly taken, more and more the mind will become quiet and silent, because the only thing that made it busy and full of thoughts, is the fuel of your attention. One who truly and fully abides as what is real, as the pure Being within, cannot have thoughts in any way.
So yes, as Nisargadatta Maharaj put it, "You are not the mind. If you know you are not the mind, then what difference does it make if it's busy or quiet? You are not the mind."
But this is only a pointer, a map, a trick to help you recognize what is real, an invitation given so that the real work can begin.
Which is why Nisargadatta Maharaj said also that "To remain without thought in the waking state is the greatest worship", and why Ramana Maharshi stated "Your degree of absence of thought is your measuring stick on the spiritual path", and "Self-realization is the cessation of thoughts and all mental activity".
To Die Before you Die
One day, you will have to lose everything. You will have to leave everything and everyone you are attached to. All of it, including your own body.
Think about that for a moment, think about what it truly means to let go of everything. Think about how irremediable this is and how certain you can be that you will have to face this situation one day.
This is what to "die before you die" is about. Ultimately, this is what a "spiritual path" is about: to consciously and voluntary die while you are alive, before the body drops, before you have no other options anyway, before you will be forced to "die".
To consciously and voluntarily sink into the pure and silent sense of being, where lie no concepts, no ideas, no images, no qualities, no beliefs, no body, no emotions, no feelings, no thoughts, no parents, no wife and no husband, no children, no friends, no enemies, no possessions, no regrets, no hopes, no past, no future, and not even any "present".
"The final experience is the annihilation of our human self, of its good qualities as well as its evil; it is 'dying daily' until even the best of humanhood is gone, and spiritual identity is revealed." - Joel Goldsmith
"To comprehend and to understand God above all similitudes, as He is in Himself, is to be God with God, without intermediary, and without any otherness that can become a hindrance or an intermediary. Whosoever wishes to understand this must have died to himself, and must live in God, and must turn his gaze to the eternal light in the ground of his spirit, where the Hidden Truth reveals Itself without means." - Ruysbroek
"As long as you do not know how to die and come to life again, you are but a sorry traveller on this dark earth." - Goethe
"To lose all is to gain all." - Anandamayi Ma
Sung by Imee Ooi, The Shore Beyond
Gate gate paragate parasamgate bodhi svaha!
Gone, Gone, Gone beyond, Gone utterly beyond!
Here, all things have the characteristic of emptiness, no arising, no ceasing; no purity, no impurity; no deficiency, no completeness.
Therefore, in emptiness there is no form, no feeling, no perception, no volitional processes, no consciousness;
There are no eye, ear, nose, tongue, body or mind;
No forms, sounds, smells, tastes, touches, thoughts;
No eye-element (and so on) up to no mind-consciousness element;
No ignorance, no destruction of ignorance (and so on) up to no old age and death, no destruction of old age and death;
No suffering, arising, cessation, path;
No knowledge, no attainment, no non-attainment.
Therefore, because of the Buddha's non-attainments, he relies on the Perfection of Wisdom, and dwells with his mind unobstructed, having an unobstructed mind he does not tremble, overcoming opposition, he attains the state of Nirvana.
- Heart Sutra (excerpt)
Awakening to the Ego-Self
You cannot awaken to the Self, without awakening to the ego-self first (or concomitantly at least).
Try as much as you want to awaken to the Self along with trying to bypass awakening to the ego-self, and you might have few glimpses and preliminary experiences, but it will never go deeper enough, and no real embodied transformation and integration will happen.
If you want truth, you must be prepared to see and encounter both the truth of the Self and the truth of the ego-self.
This is what is meant by "seeing things how they are". This is what "seeking for Truth" is about.
To want to encounter only the "truth" that you feel will be pleasant and nice (the "higher" truth, or the truth of the Self), is nothing but entertainment and escapism.
Unless you come to truly realize the tremendous amount of self-deception that lies at the core of the ego-self mechanism, what you call your "spiritual path" is nothing but another self-centered and superficial distraction, to which you are hypocritically giving some bombastic name to please your self-image.
Unless you come let go of this neurotic naivety and courageously, honestly uncover the very deep-rooted layers of superficiality, mediocrity, laziness, complacency, lies and self-deception of the ego-self dynamic, do yourself a favor, and stop calling yourself a "spiritual seeker", or even worse, a "spiritual finder".
"When you realize the manner in which the Higher Learning protects itself it is small wonder that so very few people attain to it. When you see how dishonest is ordinary human expectation, you realize how the Higher Knowledge can be said to lie in directions contrary to expectation. If you really know humanity, you can know the Higher Knowledge." - Idries Shah (Knowing how to know)
"Imagination versus Understanding - Understanding the verbal form of a higher teaching expression may or may not be necessary for a person at any given moment. The maximum required of him may be that he familiarize himself with certain materials. What is necessary is that when he has understanding it should be the right kind. There is no certainty that he can be brought from imaginative "understanding" into true realization of meaning. It is characteristic of the imagined understanding that the victim, convinced that he "understands", has effectively blocked his own way to knowledge. "I do not need it", he says, "because I already have it"." - Idries Shah (Knowing how to know)
"Information and Knowledge - You may need information, basic or advanced – certainly appropriate – when you can only think that you need higher consciousness. Don't laugh at the woman who said to me the other day: "If I don't get higher consciousness before I die, I'll be so mad!", because you may be the same as her, just using different words. Everyone must move phase by phase. Unless a person's needs have been determined, his mere wants are of no account. Unless he is aware of his needs, his desires will seem – but only seem – to be the most important thing to him." - Idries Shah (Knowing how to know)
"You cannot transcend what you do not know. To go beyond yourself, you must know yourself." - Nisargadatta Maharaj
"I am only interested in ignorance and the freedom from ignorance." - Nisargadatta Maharaj
The Way to Christ
Jakob Boehme (1575-1624)
"The disciple asked to his Master: How may I come to the place that I may see God, and may hear God speak - to a life that is above my senses and feelings?
The Master answered and said: Son, when you can throw yourself into That, where no creature dwells, though it be but for a moment, then you hear what God speaks.
Disciple: Is that place where no creature dwells near at hand; or is it afar off?
Master: It is in you. And if you can, my son, for an hour but cease from all your own thinking and willing and be silent, then you shall hear the unspeakable words of God.
Disciple: How is it that I can hear Him speak, if I stand still from thinking and willing?
Master: When you stand still from the thinking of self, and the willing of self, when both your intellect and will are quiet and passive to the impressions of the Eternal Word and Spirit, when your soul is winged up, and above that which is temporal with the outward senses and the imagination being locked up by Holy Abstraction, then the Eternal Hearing, Seeing, and Speaking will be revealed in you.
And so God hears and sees through you, being now the organ of His Spirit; and so God speaks in you, and whispers to your spirit, and your spirit hears His Voice. Blessed are you therefore if that you can stand still from self-thinking and self-willing, and can stop the wheel of your imagination and senses, for it is hereby that you may arrive at length to see the great salvation of God, being made capable of all manner of Divine Sensations and Heavenly Communications.
Since it is nothing indeed but your own hearing and willing that do hinder you, so that you do not see and hear God."
Autonomy
One way of talking about this process of awakening, is to say that it's a path leading toward autonomy. Through this process, we may regain our fundamental, essential autonomy and independence of being.
Autonomy, means we don't depend anymore on external factors and conditions, to feel at peace and complete in our life, in our own being/beingness.
You see, at the root of all psychological conditioned lives, lies a craving, an addiction, an obsession to acquire what we feel will make us happy (whether physical, material, emotional, psychological, relational, social, spiritual), and to push away and escape what we feel will make us unhappy.
So, to regain autonomy and independence, means that we enter a process of transformation where we will realize more and more that nothing external (whether outward or inward) can actually make us more happy and more whole than we already are as "pure being", and that nothing can make us unhappy.
Note here that only one who found back this essential autonomy, is capable of real and true love.
Because as long as we are driven by the deeply ingrained conditioned belief that we lack anything, and that our completion and happiness depends on external factors (whether things or people), we will live our life as a business, at all times engaged in a play of transaction, manipulation and control, no matter how sincere, worthy and estimable we believe we are, and no matter how good we are at disguising our real intentions for ourselves and others.
As long as our self-image has any sort of importance and relevance for us, it will distort and corrupt our way of being and acting into the world, which means we will either be a tyrant or a beggar, depending on circumstances.
Human Understanding
From Idries Shah, Reflections
"One cannot guarantee human understanding, but one can help to develop it.
You can, however, enable others to understand only very little further than you yourself understand a thing.
This is why the human heritage of study materials is so under-used; the instructors are passing on only what they can – not what there is.
Understanding one level of materials is only a stage in passing to other levels. To compromise with one's ignorance by assuming that there is no higher level is a serious weakness. It holds back others, causes one to confuse the vehicle with the content, and is a disguised operation of self-esteem.
To believe that higher understanding is something which is not available to ordinary men is a mixture of the pessimist-culture's bequest and, paradoxically, self-esteem again: manifested in "If I don't understand it, there is nothing to understand"; and, "If I don't like it, it is of no use"." - Idries Shah
Stabilizing Consciousness
Yes. Pure consciousness is a seamless, constant, uninterrupted flow. It is and always was the case.
But when this flow hits a conditioned human body-mind, it gets completely scattered and fragmented.
Cling as much as you want to the intellectual knowledge of consciousness being already constant, if it's not the case for you, if it's not an embodied and pragmatical fact in your life, you are just fooling yourself with spiritual concepts.
In truth, our work is to come to bring back pure consciousness in its essential state of uninterrupted flow, and to stabilize it, within a human body-mind.
Which means coming to master attention, learning to withdraw your attention from the conditioned mind and bringing it back at its own source.
"Understand this paradox my dearest students: there is not so much as a speck of dust upon which to meditate, but it is crucial to sustain unwavering attention on pure presence of mind." - Shabkar Tsokdruk Rangdrol
No Frames. No Boundaries.
Connecting with earth from space
Astronaut Russell Schweickart shares his experience of watching the earth from space in March of 1969, during Apollo 9 mission.
This video was made by the "Beyond War" group in 1984, from a speech Russell Schweickart gave in 1974 before a group meeting on "Planetary Culture" at the spiritual community of Lindisfarne, Long Island.
Text from the speech used in the video.
"You go around it in an hour and a half you begin to recognize that your identity is with that whole thing. And that makes a change. You look down there and you can't imagine how many borders and boundaries you crossed again and again and again. And you don't even see them. From where you see it, the thing is a whole, and it's so beautiful. And you recall standing out there at the spectacle that went before your eyes. Because now you're no longer inside something with a window looking out at a picture, but now you're out there, and there are no limits to it. There are no frames, there are no boundaries.
And you think about what you're experiencing and why. Do you deserve this? This fantastic experience? Are you separated out to be touched by God to have some special experience here that other men cannot have? You know the answer to that is "No!". You know very well at that moment, and it comes through to you so powerfully, that you're the sensing element for man.
There you are – hundreds of people killing each other over some imaginary line that you're not even aware of, that you can't see. And from where you see it, the thing is a whole, and it's so beautiful. And you wish you could take one in each hand, and say, "Look. Look at it from this perspective. Look at that. What's important?"
And you realize that on that small spot, that little blue and white thing is everything that means anything to you. All of history and music and poetry and art and birth and love, tears, joy, games, all of it is on that little spot out there that you can cover with your thumb.
You look down and you see that surface of that globe that you've lived on all this time and you know all those people down there. They are like you, they are you, and somehow you represent them, you are up there as the sensing element, and that's a humbling feeling. And somehow you recognize that you're a piece of this total life."
This Life Current is God
In life, the closest link you can find which connects directly to God, to the divine, to Truth, is the life current, the life energy, the aliveness which is felt within your body, and out of which arises then "I am", "I am alive".
This life current, however being felt and sensed within each body, is not "you", nor yours, yet it is the link to the real, deeper, essential, universal "you".
Stay with it.
It's not thinking about it, it's not conceptualizing it, but sensing it, directly, and staying with the sensation of it.
Just stay with it. Focus on it. Cherish it, without a break. Give your whole life to it.
Let it be your God, your Guru and your Beloved.
"These two entities are available to you, the vital force and the knowledge 'I am', the consciousness. They appear without any effort; they are there. Now, in order to be one with Ishwara [God], to understand the non-duality you must worship the vital force. Then that knowledge, which is in seed form, slowly grows. And the seeker becomes full of knowledge; in the process he transcends that, and the ultimate state is achieved." - Nisargadatta Maharaj
"What equipment you are having is that 'prana' (life force/energy entering the body through the breath). 'Upasana' means worship, worship of 'prana' itself. For doing that what equipment do you possess? It is 'prana' itself. Along with 'prana' there is that knowledge 'I am', or consciousness. These two things are available to you to do anything, nothing more than that." - Nisargadatta Maharaj
"Where there is the vital breath, the knowledge 'I am' is present. There being no vital breath, the knowledge of 'I amness' is absent. Take full advantage of the naturally available capital with you - that is, your life force and the knowledge 'I am'; they always go hand in hand. Right now, exploit it to the utmost. All worldly activities are going on only because of the knowledge 'I am' together with that motive force which is the life force, the vital breath. And that is not something apart from you; you are that only. Investigate and study this exclusively, abide in that, worship that only." - Nisargadatta Maharaj
The Nisargadatta Path
For years I've been compiling and carefully selecting quotes from the Nisargadatta Maharaj "I am" practice and meditation, as a pragmatical help to focus and dig deeper into it. Here are the ebook versions of it.
pdf - bit.ly/NisaPathPdf | epub - bit.ly/NisaPathEpub
kepub - bit.ly/NisaPathKepub | mobi -bit.ly/NisaPathMobi
I Am
"I am [is] the Way, the Truth, and the Life. No one comes to the Father except through me [I am]." - Jesus (John 14:6)
Objective Perception
More and more, people in the "non-dual" scene, are grasping at and using the "Everything is as it is!, or the "This is it!", as a way to deny and dismiss the dynamic and transformative aspect of life itself.
Out of this, it ensues that of course, for them, everything is always and ever subjective, and this lead to what I call "absolute relativism".
"Everything we can say or know", they posit, "is relative, and nothing but a subjective point of view."
Don't get fooled by that, my friends, if by chance you are not stuck entirely yet in this superficial "spiritual" blah blah.
Yes, from where we are, in our deep-rooted confusion, in our lack of real clarity, in our state of incompleteness, almost everything is subjective and relative. Perception is almost entirely damaged, distorted and fragmented by conditioned subjectivity.
But in truth, objectivity exists. Ordinarily in a state of potentiality only, but yes, it exists.
There is a place within us where objective perception can start to be reached. A place of pure certitude which has nothing to do with vanity, arrogance, wishful-thinking or any clinging to any system of thought and belief. A place of objective clarity untouched and untainted yet by subjective conditioning. A place of "direct understanding" which has nothing to do with "you", nor with "you" understanding anything.
And the apparent paradox in this, is that this core of "direct knowing", can only start to reveal itself and function, once you have surrendered, let go, give up all (and at least most of the) subjective knowing/knowledge, including the "knowledge" of what you think you are, at all levels.
"Whatever you think of as spiritual knowledge, was gained in the realm of consciousness. Such knowledge is merely a burden upon your head and is going to add more misery. It's nothing more than spiritual jargon." - Nisargadatta Maharaj
"Analysis or synthesis are in the region of intellect. The Self transcends the intellect." - Ramana Maharshi
"The purpose of the intellect is to realize its own dependence upon the Higher Power and its inability to reach the same. So it must annihilate itself before the goal is gained." - Ramana Maharshi
"Fortunate is the man who does not lose himself in the labyrinths of philosophy, but goes straight to the Source from which they all rise." - Ramana Maharshi
"It was my great debt to Vishnu Bhaskar Lele that he showed me this. "Sit in meditation", he said, "but do not think, look only at your mind; you will see thoughts coming into it; before they can enter throw them away from you till your mind is capable of entire silence."
I had never heard before of thoughts coming visibly into the mind from outside, but I did not think of either questioning the truth or the possibility, I simply sat down and did it. In a moment my mind became silent as a windless air on a high mountain summit and then I saw a thought and then another thought coming in a concrete way from outside; I flung them away before they could enter and take hold of the brain and in three days I was free.
From that moment, in principle, the mental being in me became a free Intelligence, a universal Mind, not limited to the narrow circle of personal thought or a labourer in a thought-factory, but a receiver of knowledge from all the hundred realms of being and free too to choose what it willed in this vast sight-empire and thought-empire." - Sri Aurobindo
"I adjure you by the living almighty God, and by the faith you have in our order, and by charity that you strictly promise me you will never reveal in my lifetime what I tell you. Everything that I have written seems like straw to me compared to those things that I have seen and have been revealed to me." - Thomas Aquinas
The Formless Essence and The Birth of Religions and Gods
Our essence, which is the essence and substance of everything, is absolutely formless, timeless and non-conceptual.
And it is pure, absolutely pure, and even pure of purity itself.
The problem human beings ever had to face, is that in their conditioned state of being, their perceptive ability is coarse, unrefined, utterly dualistic. And in this gross state, it is absolutely impossible to directly and consciously recognize, apprehend and experience one's own essence, which is way too formless and subtle for our ordinary unrefined perception.
That is why, although the essence is everywhere and everything, it's as though it's invisible and hidden to the ordinary man.
All along human history, Sages knew that they had to give names, shapes, forms, conceptual and analogical representations of/to this essence, to make it more tangible and objectifiable, so that people would start to be able to apprehend it through their poor inner perceptive abilities.
And that is how appeared the countless gods, goddesses, deities, divinities, all representations of a "superior" being and a "superior" reality and all religious systems.
And the challenge here, is that although this objectivization was absolutely necessary, it held in itself the potentiality to keep people attached to and stuck in this external rough representation, instead of being used as a stepping stone.
Attempts were made to address this too. Like in the Jewish tradition where God would be called the "Ineffable Name" or "Unutterable Name", or referred to God as "HaShem" ("the Name"). Or in the contrary in the Muslim tradition, where God has 99 names, to help relax the fixation on one particular representation or idea of what God (the essence) is.
The essence was also given human representations, so that a relationship can start to happen more easily, like in the Christian tradition, with the figures of Jesus and Mary, and the "Christ" within.
The more gross we were, the greater objectivization was required, such as external god representations. Possibilities were also given to internalize more and more this "relationship", to make it more and more subtle (god is within you).
Until, out of being refined enough, we become capable of relating to this essence in a more and more simple and subtle way, without the need of complex systems of thought and beliefs.
An example would be Nisargadatta Maharaj's approach, where the only necessary representation/intermediary/medium is the pure and formless sense of being within oneself, the pure sense of subjectivity, the pure sense "I am".
"Carry the conviction in yourself that the knowledge 'I am' within you is God.", said Maharaj, inferring that the only practice necessary to (re)discover our most inner essence, is to internally give up everything, to keep quiet, to be still, and to hold on to this simple sense "I am" only.
"For the most manifest way to the knowledge of things is by their contraries: the thing that possesses no contrary and no opposite, its features being always exactly alike when you are looking at it, will very likely elude your notice altogether.
In this case Its obscureness results from Its very obviousness, and Its elusiveness from the very radiance of Its brightness.
Then glory to Him who hides Himself from His own creation by His utter manifestness, and is veiled from their gaze through the very effulgence of His own light!" - Al-Ghazali, 1058-1111 (Mishakat al-Anwar - Niche of Lights)
"Because truth is exceedingly subtle and serene, the bliss of the Self can manifest only in a mind rendered subtle and steady by assiduous meditation." - Ramana Maharshi
"That which is worth enquiring into and knowing is only the truth of oneself. Taking it as the target, it should be known in the Heart with a sharply focused attention. Only to an intellect that has subsided within, having attained a clear silence which is free from the turbidity and agitation of mind that sweats and suffers, will the means for realizing this truth, which shines in an extremely subtle way, be known clearly." - Ramana Maharshi
"Only in the silence will you find reality. Self-enquiry [practice] leads to silence, surrender leads to silence. Be still and know that I am God." - Robert Adams
"Go deep within it, until you find yourself in your absence." - Jean Klein
"'I am' is God. Realise 'I am'." - Ramana Maharshi
"I am so close, I may look distant. So completely mixed with you, I may look separate. So out in the open, I appear hidden. So silent, because I am constantly talking with you." - Jalaluddin Rumi
"The spirit is so near that you can't see it!" - Jalaluddin Rumi
"Take it that this 'I Amness' of yours, is the unadulterated form of Godlihood. The pure Iswara state, is your Beingness." - Nisargadatta Maharaj
"Let me stop looking at myself and start looking at You. For You are nearer to me than I am to myself." - Jalaluddin Rumi
On Learning and Studying
In our conditioned state, life is a puzzle. Knowledge is a puzzle. Spirituality is a puzzle.
As long as we haven't seen, or at least glimpsed the "big picture" of the whole puzzle all at once, we are condemned to imagine that it is a "very important and efficient task" to play with the few little pieces of this puzzle that we have found and to try to re-arrange them into what we imagine is a "coherent" picture.
Pieces of the puzzle are everywhere. "Everywhere" is actually only made of all the pieces of the puzzle.
Seeking for and gathering pieces of this puzzle, studying and learning about those that we found, familiarizing ourselves with their shape and design, in whatever domain we can find them, is part of the preparatory stage leading to true understanding and clarity.
But to call "critical thinking", "reason", "logic", "learning", "comprehension", "intelligence", the attempt to create an image of the whole with the few little pieces that we managed to gather, is nothing but insanity.
Even if we ever succeeded in finding all the pieces available (which is impossible), we would never be able to recreate the original picture, because the whole is always greater than the sum of its parts.
So here's the thing. The "big picture" is already there. Whole and complete.
What is making it appear as fragmented and scattered in countless puzzle's pieces, impossible to see as a whole, is you and your own conditioned mind.
So, study, investigate, read and learn as much as you can, develop your intellect as much as possible, never stop trying to increase and mature your discernment, it's a very important part of the path. But remember that doing so will never bring you to see and realize the "big picture".
Only self-effacement, surrender and silence can.
"When your last breath arrives, grammar can do nothing." - Adi Shankara
"The point is to remember the Beloved, while escaping from the letters of the alphabet." - Khwaja Ubaidullah Ahrar (Master of Wisdom, 15th century, Tashkent, Uzbekistan)
"You give reality to concepts, while concepts are distortions of reality. Abandon all conceptualisation and stay silent and attentive. Be earnest about it and all will be well with you." - Nisargadatta Maharaj
"To expound and propagate concepts is simple, to drop all concepts is difficult and rare." - Nisargadatta Maharaj
"I have learned so much from God that I can no longer call myself a Christian, a Hindu, a Muslim, a Buddhist, a Jew. The Truth has shared so much of Itself with me that I can no longer call myself a man, a woman, an angel, or even a pure Soul. Love has befriended me so completely it has turned to ash and freed me of every concept and image my mind has ever known." - Hafiz
"Scientifically-minded people, and scholars, seek repeatable demonstration of mystical and spiritual fact in their own terms. Because they are looking for things which they can recognize instead of preparing themselves to recognize things which they are not able to, they cannot accept the evidence which they cannot see and will not train themselves to see.
There is a story to illustrate this: In the Land of Fools one of their citizens had fainted and the others decided to bury him. When he started to move, they tied him down onto a plank, so as not to have their intention interfered with. While they were carrying him to the graveyard, he was delighted to see a respected judge by the roadside.
He called out to him that he wasn't dead at all. The judge stopped the cortege and asked the mourners, all honorable and solid citizens, whether the man was dead or not. They all swore that they had seen him dead, and so he must be. Then they produced the death certificate.
So the Judge said: 'Say what you like, but according to the rules of documentation and witnessing, you are dead, and these people can prove it'. And so they took him away and buried him." - Idries Shah (The World of the Sufi)
Sung by Gabriella Burnell
Om poornamadah poornamidam poornaat poornamudachyate
Poornasya poornamaadaaya poornamevaavashishsyate
Om shaantih shaantih shaantih
Om, That is complete, This is complete, From the completeness comes the completeness
If completeness is taken away from completeness, Only completeness remains
Om, Peace peace peace
Becoming An Adult
Another way of talking about the process of awakening: it is to truly become a grown up, a true "adult". It is to gain a real state of autonomy and independence.
What prevents the attainment of this autonomy, is the ego-self, the conditioned self-centered dynamic.
As long as we are living from self-centeredness, all our thoughts, actions and reactions (included our "spiritual quest") will be driven by our attachment to our self-image.
This attachment is what makes us live a psychological/emotional unstable agitated off-centered life.
To be attached to our self-image, is to live as a slave and a victim of it, where out inner state of being is constantly dependent upon external input and triggers (how others views are matching or not how we view ourselves), and upon internal random arising from our own conditioned thinking mind (how those random thoughts are matching or not how we view ourselves).
To gain autonomy, is to free ourselves from this self-inflicted tyranny (or voluntary servitude).
And we reach that autonomy of real "adulthood", by regaining the center of our own being/beingness, where true independence lies.
Definitions:
Autonomy - from Greek autonomia "independence", abstract noun from autonomos "independent, living by one's own laws".
Independence - fact of not depending on others or another, self-support and self-government.
Adult - from Latin adultus "grown up, mature, adult, ripe", past participle of adolescere "grow up, come to maturity, ripen".
"This is the end of yoga, to realize independence. All that happens, happens in and to the mind, not to the source of the 'I am'. Once you realize that all happens by itself (call it destiny, or the will of God, or mere accident), you remain as witness only, understanding and enjoying, but not perturbed. You are responsible only for what you can change. All you can change is only your attitude. There lies your responsibility." - Nisargadatta Maharaj
"As long as you identify yourself with them [body and mind], you are bound to suffer; realize your independence and remain happy. I tell you, this is the secret of happiness. To believe that you depend on things and people for happiness is due to ignorance of your true nature; to know that you need nothing to be happy, except self-knowledge, is wisdom." - Nisargadatta Maharaj
"You have to give up everything to know that you need nothing." - Nisargadatta Maharaj
Spiritual Greed
I am way more interested in the destruction of the false than in the acquisition of the truth.
And to destroy the false, you have to come to know it thoroughly.
I am not sure all the endless debates about what truth is, how it can be defined, how it can be named, how it can be put into a model, has ever brought anyone to a state of real clarity.
But what I am pretty sure of, is that without a proper, earnest, dedicated, persevering practice, nothing can be achieved.
"Your capacity to profit from anything is directly proportionate to the efficiency of your system. This is true physiologically as well as esoterically.
You cannot, and you know it, expect your body to extract and process sugar if you have no pancreas, and yet, in your arrogant, intellectual way, you expect to be able to profit from the knowledge that others have bought for you.
You want to use what you call the "process of thought or logic" to pick over the whole and eat the parts that you consider nourishing. At best your thought processes are surface reactions, at worst you cannot absorb a reaction or thought before it is fallen upon, diluted, dissected and malformed by the infernal process that you call academic reasoning.
Reason, you call it! Do you call it reasonable to gulp down great pieces of wisdom and regurgitate them in the form of theory, the speech and the drivellings of a raw mind?
The so-called Age of Reason in Europe produced less reason, less real intellectual progress, than one day's activity by a developed man.
You aspire, you dream, but you do not do! Tenacity is replaced by hair-splitting, courage by bluster, and disciplined thought by narrow, pedantic attempts at reason.
Bend what little you have left of your intellect to practical activity, realizing your severe shortcomings. Cease your diabolic "examination of self". Who am I? How many I's do I have? You have not the capacity at all to understand the concept of true self-examination.
Follow a valid philosophy or condemn yourself to join the generations who have drowned themselves in the stagnant pools of slime that they call the reservoirs of reason and intellect!" - Sheikh Hassan Effendi (The Teachers of Gurdjieff - Rafael Lefort)
"Most of the people see the tree of knowledge and admire it, but what is to be understood is its source - the seed, the latent force from which it sprouts. Many people talk about it but only intellectually; I talk about it from direct knowledge. A small speck of consciousness, which is like a seed, has all the worlds contained in it. The physical frame is necessary for it to manifest itself. All the ambitions, hopes and desires are connected with an identity, and so long as there is an identity, no truth can be apperceived." - Nisargadatta Maharaj
"The only effective way is instant, direct apperception of the truth, without thought and conceptualization. There is no point in searching for truth through the medium of your proud intellect. Indeed, you will realize that the very effort of searching is an obstruction, because the instrument with which you are searching is the divided mind... a conceptual subject seeking a conceptual object." - Nisargadatta Maharaj
Pure Awareness Is Still a Transient Stage
Steven Wolinsky doesn't say that consciousness and awareness, and even the pure state of awareness being aware of itself (as itself or in its countless other forms) doesn't exist or is not important. He says that even the state of pure awareness/pure consciousness is a transitory stage.
It doesn't mean either, that we shall dismiss it in any way. To reach that embodied state/stage of pure awareness (or pure being we may say), is an absolute fundamental stage on the path. Abidance in/as "I am", beingness, the seer, awareness, pure witness, keeping quiet, surrendering all, etc... is how this stage is reached (the "non-dual" stage we can say).
But then (which is already an utterly rare "then"), if there is any clinging whatsoever, any clinging to "awareness" or "non-duality", any attempt to freeze this state/stage, any desire arising out most often of the fear/terror of non-existence, what Steven Wolinsky says about the "Absolute reality" will never be understood, because it cannot be understood with the tools available within consciousness (mind, language, concepts, etc.).
It's impossible to convince anyone of this with words.
"In the Absolute I do not even know that I am." - Nisargadatta Maharaj
Empty Rock
Here's a silly analogy for those who still don't understand the necessity to hold different lenses of perception at the same time, and not confuse one with another.
A rock, as even science came to understand, is not solid in any way. It's truly not an "object" separate from anything. It's just a strange appearance of emptiness as a seeming separate form/object, seemingly perceived by an empty apparent separate subject.
A rock, here in the dual-world, is a solid object made of solid matter.
Try as hard as you can to hit your non-separated "absolutely empty skull" with the non-separated "absolutely empty non-existing rock" for an hour, while shouting: "Separation is not real in any way!", and see where it goes.
At some point you might not even be there anymore to state that your "passing out is itself also empty".
At best when you wake up, and if you wake up, you might get a glimpse of your "emptiness of intelligence and discernment", how cause and effect is real at its own level, and how irrational and hurtful your obsessive clinging to the absolute lens of perception is.
Meeting God
I noticed many times how lots of people engaged in this "direct path" or "non-duality" path, often end up in some sort of apathy, cynicism even, ending up in a dry place in themselves, a sort of ivory tower of intellectualism, a sort of dry emptiness, a sort of absolute relativism, blasé of everything, and even some sort of desperation.
All this arises out of a lack of balance in the work, and a misunderstanding of what this work is about.
To deny the ontological reality of all appearances (neti-neti, not this, not that), inwardly and outwardly, and to learn to withdraw our attention at the source of all of it, and to abide more and more in/as this formless, non-conceptual, impersonal, empty Seer/Being/Awareness, is certainly a fundamental part of the work.
But if this work is properly conducted, this withdrawing should not lead us to a dull, arid, dry, passive, detached and cynical state of being. On the contrary.
To come to directly see and experience more and more the unreality of everything, has to lead us also to directly experience the pure fragrances of our own essence (pure being), which is the one essence of everything.
And the truth is that the pure, formless, impersonal "I am", IS pure love. As Hinduism puts it, this pure sense of being, is sat-chit-ananda (existence-consciousness-bliss). Pure existence, is pure consciousness, is pure bliss (pure peace, love, stillness).
At this level, this is what has been described through traditional religious terms as "meeting God". Which we can translate as "meeting Yourself".
And when you truly "meet God", when you truly meet the pure essential beingness within yourself, you heart cannot not explode and break open. No one has ever been "meeting God" without falling onto his knees in awe, astounded and devastated by the inconceivable purity, love, peace, beauty, brilliance, light and intelligence of His essence.
Without this direct "encounter", and if we cling to this "non-dual" path in an unbalanced way, there's a great chance we will fall into this trap of apathy, passivity, intellectualism, cynicism and dryness, in one way or another.
Here's few examples of those dry "non-dual" traps:
* too much intellectual grasping at "non-dual" concepts
* entering a sort of artificial and passive way of being in the world (hijacking the "there is no doer", "there is nothing I can do or have to do")
* lack of humaneness/compassion (meeting all people in pain and suffering with "non-dual" crap, without any discernment)
* cynicism ("It's all perfect as it is, so why should I care about anything, right? There is no one here who could care, anyway!")
* incorrectly and artificially grasping at "oneness" or "non-duality", leading to absolute relativism (anything equals anything, everything has the same value)
The Trap of the Intellect
We cannot discern the real inner state of transformation of someone, and where he/she truly is on this process of awakening, just out of reading or hearing what he/she is writing or telling about "truth" or "awakening".
The thing is, human beings have a tremendous capacity to intellectualize everything and to put things into concepts in a very, very refined way.
It may seem to be a very strange thing, but it's not because someone, out of a deep intellectual understanding, and/or out of some intuition based on a preliminary glimpse, has developed the capacity to draw/design a pretty clear and pretty accurate map on certain aspects of the path, that he/she has walked the path shown in this map and been transformed by it.
Out of this extraordinary development of our intellect, we are truly facing a challenge in the spiritual communities: we are pretty confused and lost when it comes to discern (in ourselves and in others) what comes out of an intellectual grasping, and what comes out of a real state of transformation. To truly discern what arises from a clear understanding of "truth", and what arises from a real embodied direct experience of "truth".
I recently saw that one of my "Facebook friend", presenting himself and taking himself to be a real authority in the field of "spiritual awakening", wrote a book about "truth" and the "spiritual path". He's a very learned person, and I was amazed by how the few excerpts I read about his book, were pretty accurate, clear and really well articulated.
But the fact is that I know without a doubt that this person is obviously only at the very early stages of the path, and certainly not transformed at all (not "awakened" if I had to put it simply). Moreover, he's completely stuck on his own path out of wrongly believing that he has "made it".
And yet, and that's the paradox, his book may still have some practical value for others, because it holds valid information that could be used by more genuine and earnest people than him.
So, here's the challenge we face, I think, which is first and above all a personal challenge for each of us: to learn to discern and draw the line between what is only information and intellectual grasping about the path and about "truth", and what is truly my own experience and own realization exclusively arising out of a very genuine direct experience and transformation.
In other word, the challenge is to learn to not fool and deceive myself, through not confusing what's truly actual and what remains potential in me.
But the fact is that no matter the amount of sincerity and self-honesty we believe we have, it will very rarely be sufficient. First because we always overestimate the quantity and quality of honesty we truly have, and second, because we always underestimate the deceiving capacity of the ego-self itself. And here, without the help and guidance of someone who's truly clearer than us, the task is almost impossible.
Here's few things around this that are almost never taken into account, and even less integrated in our psychological human functioning.
* It's not because I claim to be honest, or that I believe myself to be honest, that I am honest. The claim of honesty is actually more than often a clear proof of dishonesty.
* It's not because I genuinely want, wish or desire to be honest, that I have the capacity to be honest. As all qualities that can be acquired on the path, real honesty is never innate, and will obviously require a process of maturation.
* It ensue that the very first steps leading to real honesty, is the discovery in myself of how dishonest I am and can be (how dishonest the conditioned ego-self dynamic is, within me, if you prefer).
And so it goes for all qualities that can and need to be developed on a spiritual path: earnestness, courage, determination, integrity, impeccability, openness, generosity, selflessness, etc.
Negative and Positive Veils
Within the conditioned self-centered mind (ego-self), there are two main kinds of veils and filters. To empty ourselves of ourselves, is to study, observe, notice, face and let go of those two sorts of conditioned veils.
The first kind, is what I would call the "negative veils". Those includes the veils we would often describe as egocentric faults and flaws, and we usually are in agreement about their "negative" nature. If we take greed, arrogance, vanity, selfishness, laziness, lust for power, manipulation, as examples of veils, we easily recognize them as being distorting and destructive for the individual and the common good.
Included in this first kind, we also have personal conditioned filters in the form of neurosis, psychological imbalances, undigested trauma, that are still producing distortions such as lack of self-love, lack of self-worth, self-blame, self-hatred, fears, social inhibitions, etc. And here too, we usually have enough common sense to recognize them as having negative impacts on our lives, and something we have to work on and transform/heal/balance.
Finally, we can include in this first kind of easily recognizable veils, everything that is linked with destructive idealism/ideology (Nazism would be an obvious one).
The second kind, is what I would call "positive veils". The problem here, is that their apparent "positive" nature, and our lack of real discernment, almost always prevent us to recognize them as conditioned veils and filters too, which need to be seen and dissolved. It includes attachment to moral value systems, political value systems, spiritual value systems, positive idealism/ideology, perceived "good" intentions, positive prejudices, positive preconceived ideas, positive obsessions, etc.
Another layer of veils to include in this second kind, is made of all positive opposites of the egocentric faults and flaws described above. Here, we very rarely see the distortions that can come out of our obsessive attachment to qualities like generosity, non-attachment, humility, etc.
So you see, even those "positive veils" have to be recognized and let go of. That's what it means to become more and more empty so that our body-mind can be moved more and more by pure consciousness itself. This is the only way to become truly alive and truly spontaneous, and to be of service to the innate qualities of our pure essence.
A Smart Program
What we call the "ego", is a very, very ancient and smart program, a very sophisticated virus. It has almost an endless capacity to hijack and recycle everything for its own survival.
There is a very good reason why superficial spiritual "non-dual" seekers, are focusing almost exclusively on the "seeing that the ego is not real", as some sort of magical trick to "awaken": the ego itself is doing this for its own purpose.
The ego program has hijacked spiritual information and knowledge, and recycled it within its program to deny its own existence as a program, in order to keep being active and to keep hiding. Ain't that super smart?
"I don't exist!" now says the program. "Don't bother."
Yes. The ego is not an "entity", not a "separate entity", it's a program.
But if you believe that to have a glimpse of this, a preliminary understanding or experience of this, some partial clarity about this, is enough to dissolve the program, enough to stop the virus to drive the whole human organism, enough to stop it from producing effects, well... it might be that the voice you hear telling you to "don't bother", is nothing but the ego's voice.
"The finest trick of the devil is to persuade you that he does not exist." - Charles Baudelaire
Empty
To be "spiritual", is to be of service to "spirit". To cling to the idea "I know what Reality is", is nothing but to be of selfish service to oneself and one's arrogance.
Forget about yourself, forget about your so-called "knowledge", forget about "spirituality", forget about "awakening".
Empty yourself of yourself, remain empty, and let the "spirit" lead the way.
A New Organ of Perception
Most seekers and teachers in the "non-dual" communities, absolutely deny that "awakening" is a tranformative process which has to produce real effects and bear fruits, here, now, in a human body-mind.
One of the reason of this denial (apart from a general ignorance about what those fruits are) is that if they were to accept this, they would have to look at them and see if the fruits are there or not. And this would give them a pretty clear clue about whether they are on the right track or just fooling themselves with intellectual gibberish.
And the fruits I'm talking about, are not about being able then to talk about "non-duality" or "spirituality" endlessly in Facebook groups, or believing oneself to be able to define what Reality is. No. The process of awakening, transforms the human life at all levels. Here's an example.
The real integrated and embodied realization of "non-duality" transforms the mind, the intellect and perception itself. And here again, I didn't say "gives the ego-mind the possibility to obsessively talk about it".
Perception, in its ordinary conditioned state, is absolutely binary and dualistic. In that state, everything, in all areas of life, is filtered through this dualistic lens of perception. It's unavoidable. One who's not transformed yet can think he gets and understands what "non-duality" is, but in truth he will still grasp at it in a dualistic way.
When a real transformation happens, an entirely new and subtler lens of perception becomes available (sometimes described as the birth of a new sense organ). The mind is transformed (the brain is rewired) in such a way that it has acquired the capacity to perceive and interact with the world in a "non-dualistic" way.
The real "non-dual" realization has nothing to do with the acquisition of a new or "higher" knowledge. It's about the acquisition of a new capacity and aptitude, ordinarily only at a state of potentiality in the human apparatus.
"I call this capacity of entering other focal points of consciousness, love." - Nisargadatta Maharaj
Ego is Universal
As seekers in general, we are so not used to be honest with ourselves, so not habituated at looking at ourselves with equanimity, that as soon as someone gives us the least little bit of honest description of the state we are all living in as conditioned humans, we generally freak out and accuse him of being mean, not well-intentioned, condemning, highly judgmental or playing "superior".
As seekers of truth, we should start to see the truth that is right here and now. Looking for a "higher" truth, when this "ordinary" truth is still being minimized, evaded, denied or by-passed, is a dead-end.
No matter how accurate our map of the journey is (the quality and accuracy of the tradition we follow), if we don't situate ourselves exactly where we are on this map, our journey is going to be imaginary. We will dream our path, and all progress will be dreamed too.
So, from where do we start? We are all conditioned human beings, full of the same flaws, veils and filters of the ego-mind dynamic. There is no exception. And everything we see, everything we do, will be filtered and distorted through those veils, including our approach of the spiritual path.
We can state ad nausea that the "ego" is not real, it will never change the fact that as long as it is here, active, within us, it will produce effects and will affect our entire perception and actions in the world.
So the very first step on this path to self-discovery and self-knowledge, is to come to know what this universal "ego" dynamic is, within ourselves, and to realize that as a human being, we are not special in any way.
Not willing to take that step, in the name of a so-called "spirituality", is precisely an effect of the ego dynamic itself, protecting its lies on itself.
And if this step is not taken, we can be sure we will fall into the trap of believing ourselves to be way more mature, prepared, sincere and earnest than we actually are, when it comes to engage on the spiritual path. And from here, we can be sure that our path will be that of constant denial, escapism and by-passing, no matter how "clear" we imagine we are about some "absolute truth".
Finally, here's a few universal veils and filters we can find in the ego dynamic: laziness, superficiality, mediocrity, complacency, hypocrisy, arrogance, self-importance, self-centeredness, selfishness, greed, cupidity, envy, jealousy, manipulative-ness, disloyalty, intolerance, fear, cowardice, impatience, self-pity, denialism, escapism, self-centered rationalization...
"I am a human being, I consider nothing that is human alien to me." - Terence
"You cannot transcend what you do not know. To go beyond yourself, you must know yourself." - Nisargadatta Maharaj
"So first realize what the true nature of the ego is and it will go of its own accord. Examine the nature of the ego: that is the process of realization." – Ramana Maharshi
"Question: When do I know that I have discovered the truth? Nisargadatta: When the idea, "this is true", "that is true" does not arise. Truth does not assert itself, it is in the seeing of the false as false and rejecting it. It is useless to search for truth when the mind is blind to the false. It must be purged of the false completely before truth can dawn on it." - Nisargadatta Maharaj
"The person should be carefully examined and its falseness seen; then its power over you will end." - Nisargadatta Maharaj
"I am only interested in ignorance and the freedom from ignorance." - Nisargadatta Maharaj
Reality Cannot Be Understood
If you are one among those who believe that they have understood what Reality is, who believe that they are finally capable of grasping it with their dualistic mind, who are holding to a conclusion about what this Reality is, and no matter what this conclusion is, "I am Awareness", "Pure Awareness is the only reality", "Reality is non-dual", "Emptiness is the ground of everything", or anything else of the kind, know this: you haven't "understood" anything yet in any way.
And you are not "better" or achieved anything "higher" in any way than any religious folk out there believing in a deity.
As long as you haven't apperceived that the Real cannot be understood, cannot be known, cannot be experienced, cannot be thought about and put into words and concepts in any way, it may be wise for your own good to drop all this intellectual babble, and get back to work. Just maybe.
"I am only interested in ignorance and the freedom from ignorance." - Nisargadatta Maharaj
"To see the unreal is wisdom. Beyond this lies the inexpressible." - Nisargadatta Maharaj
"We can talk only of the unreal, the illusory, the transient, the conditioned. To go beyond, we must pass through total negation of everything as having independent existence." - Nisargadatta Maharaj
"Don't make yourself so small, you are not that great." - Anonymous
"The correct understanding will be when you realise that whatever you have understood so far, is invalid." - Nisargadatta Maharaj
"What you think you have understood is only a movement in your consciousness, and you are separate from that consciousness. As far as the Self is concerned there is no question of understanding or not understanding." - Nisargadatta Maharaj
"The ultimate point of view is that there is nothing to understand, so we try to understand, we are only indulging in acrobatics of the mind. Whatever spiritual things you aspire to know are all happening in this objective world, in the illusion; all your activities, material and spiritual, are in this illusion. All this is happening in the objective world, all is dishonesty, there is no truth in this fraud." - Nisargadatta Maharaj
"Whatever can be described cannot be your self, and what you are cannot be described. You can only know your being by being yourself without any attempt at self-definition and self-description. Once you have understood that you are nothing perceivable or conceivable, that whatever appears in the field of consciousness cannot be your self, you will apply yourself to the eradication of all self-identification, as the only way that can take you to a deeper realization of your self." - Nisargadatta Maharaj
False Humility and Arrogance
The mind in its non-transformed conditioned state, can only function in a dualistic way: this or that, true or false, real or unreal, right or wrong, good or bad.
In all spiritual traditions (and even religious ones), it is asserted that arrogance is bad, a flaw of the ego dynamic that we must learn to recognize and give up, and that humility is good, and has to be acquired through self-effacement. And this is of course absolutely true.
But as everything else, even the idea of humility, can and will be distorted and hijacked by the dualistic ego-dynamic for its own benefit.
It is true that for quite some time on the path, learning to recognize, facing and trying our best to uproot this deep-rooted arrogance, vanity and self-importance, is an absolute requirement (and there are layers and layers of it to see). But at some point, we will also have to recognize how the ego dynamic is using false humility/false modesty to keep itself alive. Here's few examples.
* Having pride in believing oneself to be "humble" or "selfless" (which is nothing but arrogance)
* Desiring to be seen as "humble" or "spiritual" (still a manipulation of the ego)
* Hiding and concealing one's arrogance to oneself and others (denial, faking humility)
* Hiding and playing small, to not take the risk to be seen as arrogant and being judged and disliked (to preserve one's self-image)
* To play safe in the world (to keep being invisible, not disturbing others, avoiding responsibility)
And here, we might realize that getting rid and letting go of this false humility may be way more difficult than getting rid of arrogance.
Real humility, can only arise when both arrogance and false humility are transcended.
Real humility is the result of the total absence (of oneself) and total presence (to the world).
Real humility arises only when there is not a trace of self-concern about one's self-image anymore, and when one reaches a point where there is not the least concern about whether others will see you as humble or arrogant, whether your words or actions will be liked or disliked, approved or judged.
Real humility is not weak, effaced, small, but truly full of power, and an absolute requirement to become truly responsible.
From real humility arises real authority, and this selfless authority is what is required to be truly of service (to truth, to clarity).
A Conscious Contact
I know it will sound silly to the "absolutists" out there, but here's the thing: we have to enter in contact with our deepest Essence, our essential Being, and then establish a continuous intimate relationship with it. That's the work.
The "non-dual" fanatics will tell you that it's non-sense as it's already what we are, that there is nothing to do, that only the "ego" would want to do that, that doing that can only reinforce the illusion of separation, that reality is already "non-dual", blah blah blah...
The question you should ask yourself is this: do I want to end up being a smart "spiritual" parrot, or truly attain a real, embodied, stable transformation?
In truth, and no matter the amount of intellectual ideas and concepts about "non-duality" we pour into our mind, we are all cut from our Essence. And I don't mean in a philosophical or metaphysical way, but in a very concrete, pragmatical way.
To re-establish a conscious contact and a real and direct relationship with the pure and silent sense of Being within (the pure "I am"), a contact which is stable, continuous and uninterrupted, is of utter importance, an absolute prerequisite, and the very core of all spiritual paths and practices.
Only then, through this direct and unbroken experience which can only arise out of a huge amount of right effort and a great discipline and dedication, the real embodiment of "non-duality" may happen.
Anything else, is just fooling and deceiving oneself with intellectual gymnastic and conceptual verbiage about "non-duality".
"The act of communion with the Self or remaining still inwardly is intense activity which is performed with the entire mind and without break." - Ramana Maharshi
"And I am finally going to give you this divine message: meditate on your Self; worship your Self; honor your Self; bow to your Self. Your God dwells within you as you." - Baba Muktananda
"By repeated practice one can become accustomed to turning inwards and finding the Self. One must always and constantly make an effort, until one has permanently realized. Once the effort ceases, the state becomes natural and the Supreme takes possession of the person with an unbroken current. Until it has become permanently natural and your habitual state, know that you have not realized the Self, only glimpsed it." - Ramana Maharshi
All Perfect?
Let's say you have come to realize that the Essence all of that is (no matter the name we give it) is absolutely and ever perfect and pure as it is. Fine. It's true.
Now, what are you going to do? Being obsessed intellectually with that realization? Showing off about how "enlightened" you are?
Or do your best to become and be of service to that Essence and its fundamental qualities, by discovering, facing, clearing and cleaning out all conditioning within the body-mind that is still veiling, filtering, distorting the manifesting of this utter perfection, so that it can shine through "you" in a more and more untainted and pure way?
"It's all perfect as it is!" you say.
Child being molested, women being raped, humans being beheaded in the name of religious beliefs, men and women being tortured under barbaric political systems, millions of people dying in insane wars, people being selfish, greedy, mean, uncaring, manipulating others for their own benefits... Is it the perfection you glimpsed from your Essence? Is it "perfect as it is"? Really?
No. It's not. Absolutely not. It is as it is, for now, but it's dementia and delusion.
And it can change, and mostly through you who claim that you are engaged in a "spiritual" work, if you stop denying that a LOT can be done to continue to uproot in yourself all self-centered conditioning that is still distorting the stunning love, beauty, intelligence and light of the perfect Essence.
There might be no "doer" at an absolute level. But if you (what's left of the ego dynamic in you) hijack and use this absolute truth, in the relative realm, to actually feed and justify your laziness, superficiality and mediocrity, and to feed your reluctance in seeing and uprooting in yourself the delusion that is still there (be it gross or subtle), you may be worse than anybody not calling himself "spiritual".
All Inclusive
Mediocre, superficial, intellectual "non-dualists" be like:
"It's already all perfect! It's all Awareness, all God, all a manifestation of the Absolute, all non-dual, and everything is utterly perfect as it is... EXCEPT:
* effort, discipline, dedication, spiritual practice, individuality, personal will, the sense of separation...
* following and cooperating with the organic and natural unfolding of life toward more and more transparency through the dissolution of egoic filters and tendencies...
* being of service to the transformation, growth, maturation, refinement and improvement of oneself...
Go figure...
"To deny the reality of things is to miss their reality. To assert the emptiness of things is to miss their reality." - Seng-ts'an (Xinxin Ming, Faith in Mind)
"Form is emptiness and emptiness is form." - The Heart Sutra
"The world is illusory, Brahman alone is real, Brahman is the world." - Adi Shankara
So where are we going to draw the line between what's real and what's not? Only people rooted in denial and escapism and stuck in some "absolutism" will draw that line, and among them those clinging to "non-duality", the very same way a religious man clings to a deity or an idol.
You see, what the obsessed "non-dualists" don't get, is that there is an organic and natural movement of life (of pure consciousness) heading toward refinement and sophistication, which actually doesn't need an "I-me", to happen.
Look at the arising and manifestation of this universe, and how absolutely amazing it is. From a formless, spaceless, timeless singularity point, arose space, time, and all the subatomic particles, giving birth to atoms and matter, giving birth to galaxies, giving birth to stars and planets, giving birth to organic life, giving birth to plants, animals, and human beings, giving birth to thought and self-consciousness, giving birth to art, science, philosophy, and who knows where this could lead...
Was any of this requiring an "I-me" to happen? Of course not. So why on earth do they believe that the realization of non-separation and the realization of the illusory nature of this "I-me", signifies the end of this natural movement in life and through human beings toward growth, development, refinement, sophistication and subtlety?
You see, an "I-me" is not required for all this to unfold, but an "I-me" is required to artificially deny and resist this natural movement of life...
On the Utter Necessity of Authority and Its Disappearance
We truly have developed an insane aversion toward all types of authority in our societies, to the point where we are trying (and sadly, succeeding) to destroy it in all domains of our social life, including the spiritual domain. It's truly a catastrophe.
By "authority", I mean two things. 1- A human force used to constraint, limit, drive, organize, manage, direct. 2- One who is knowledgeable, expert in his domain, to whom we can refer to and turn to, to learn, grow, and develop/refine ourselves.
In both ways, real authority is a structuring force leading to humility, growth and maturation.
Out of ignorance and out of our endless search for "comfort" and so-called "well-being", we came to see any type of limit, constraint, pressure, coercion, as hindrances on our way to "comfort" and so-called "freedom" and "autonomy".
The extreme development of individualism, led us to wrongly believe that "freedom" is to be able to do whatever we want. It is not. This is nothing but egotism. It also led us to wrongly believe that "autonomy" is to assume that as I am, I can rely on myself alone (my skills, my gifts, my intelligence) to develop and live a fulfilled life. It's impossible. This is nothing but arrogance and idiocy.
This denigration and devaluation of any hierarchy, of authority and authority figures, as parents (in children education) and teachers (in schools) for example, led to the burst of entire self-centered, self-entitled, arrogant, foolish, uneducated, fragile, lazy, superficial and mediocre generations.
Worse, this disguised egotism totally invaded the spiritual domain. The new fashion is to claim innate "spiritual autonomy". This deluded "spiritual egalitarianism", where anything is worth anything else, where anybody is said to have the same potential and capacity than anybody else, is leading to the denial of the utter need of spiritual authorities, and to the denigration of masters and teachers as being an immature and outdated phenomenon from the past.
The new spiritual motto is "Be your own guru! Be your own authority!" But what kind of autonomy can there be, without competence, skill, clarity, wisdom? What kind of autonomy can there be when you are almost entirely still driven and distorted by your deep-rooted self-centered conditioning? None.
And this explains why so many seekers and teachers have become so superficial and mediocre, and why nowadays, any bit of intellectual understanding, any sort of partial and preliminary glimpse or experience, is being called "awakening".
And it's even worse, when you see that more and more wannabe gurus are now even denying the reality of "awakening" itself. Recently, a very popular "non-dual" teacher put it that way: "The old myth of spiritual enlightenment has turned to dust. The spiritual patriarchy is collapsing under its own weight.", and he calls that the birth of a "new spirituality". I call that the epitome of ignorance and insanity.
"There should be a science of discontent. People need hard times and oppression to develop psychic muscles." - Muad'Dib, from Dune (Frank Herbert)
Water
No one has ever quenched his thirst by thinking or talking about water.
Are You a Non-Dual Pretender Stuck in Duality?
I've been talking to "neo-advaita" folks, for whom separation, duality, individuality, is a myth, only apparent. I've been trying to tell them that non-separation, non-duality, no-self, is also a myth, only apparent, and that there is no reason at all that we should choose and pick only one side over the other.
One of them, kept asking me closed questions (Are there actually separate selves? Is there a doer? etc.). To each of those questions, I answered by: yes and no.
And I noticed a very interesting phenomenon: he was not able at all to consider my answer as an answer. For him, I didn't answer, I was evading the questions. An inclusive "yes and no" answer was entirely invisible to him and his dualistic mind.
So here's the thing.
Most people who talk about "non-duality" (non-separation, non-doership), as though they had realized it, as though they are mastering the subject, are actually still absolutely glued to and stuck in duality, in the dual lens of perception, without being aware of it at all.
They are still living entirely FROM the dual lens of perception only (which means that for them no real transformation has happened yet), but they are fooling and deceiving themselves by being pretty good at manipulating and juggling with intellectual and mental "non-dual" concepts.
It's very easy to spot one of those self-deceived pretenders: he is incapable of handling apparent paradoxes and apparent contradictions, because his mind has not been truly transformed and refined yet by any real embodied realization. His mind is still entirely functioning from the dualistic lense of perception. And such mind cannot embrace paradoxes. It just can't.
A non-enlightened human, no matter what he pretends, is still driven and moved by his own ego. And the conditioned ego-mind IS a dualistic mechanism, and it HAS to always choose one side over the other. Or else he is totally lost. That's what creates those fixations on "non-dual" concepts, and the denial of the dual lens or level of reality.
There can't be non-duality without duality, and vice-versa. They are both lenses of perception, the two sides of the same coin. To cling to the "non-dual" lens only, is a neurotic fixation, and a proof that awakening hasn't happened yet. To exclude the dual lens, is nothing but denial and spiritual by-passing.
So when you see someone pretending to be "realized" who is incapable of holding both duality and non-duality, both separation and non-separation, both free-will and non-doership at the same time, you can know without a trace of doubt that he's just fooling himself.
Here's the rule: the more one clings to "non-duality", the more he is actually stuck in duality.
Are You Happy To Be a Goldfish?
Ingrained laziness makes one superficial. Superficiality makes one mediocre.
I would describe mediocrity as the propensity to be satisfied with very little when more (quantitatively and qualitatively) can be done and attained, the propensity to lower one's expectations and narrow one's horizon just to minimize one's effort and reduce one's expenditure of energy.
Mediocrity is the "peace" of the lazy.
All this is of course produced and entertained by the conditioned ego-mind, and its tricks are almost infinite when it comes to rationalize and justify this tendency toward mediocrity.
We can observe this in all domains of the human life, but it's also amazing to see how it's a prevalent tendency among spiritual seekers and "non-dual" aficionados.
For the mediocre seeker, for the one who mentally hijacked non-dual spiritual concepts, "enlightenment" is nothing special. For him, there is nothing to be gained, attained, or achieved in the process of "awakening". For him, awakening doesn't bear fruits, doesn't produce anything new, particular, unusual or remarkable. The following reasoning ensue: there is no goal, nothing to do to "awaken", hence there is no effort to make. Bingo!
It's even worse. For the mediocre, to foresee a transformation, to think of a goal, to produce efforts to achieve this goal, is counterproductive, insane, and the only reasons why suffering and delusion happen!
See the level of deluded egoic rationalization, here?
You are suffering? Well, don't bother, it's just the way things are! Just accept it, and here you are, fully "awakened"!
You are still full of fears and worries, neurosis, emotional imbalance and self-centered desires? Well, this is what "being human" is, right? And there is nothing you can do about it anyway. There is no doer! Relax, baby!
Your mind is still full of the noise of self-centered thinking all day long? Well, isn't this the case for all of us? Embrace the noise! A "silent mind" is nothing but a "spiritual carrot" invented by fake teachers to get your money! Don't get fooled!
You still have the attention span of a goldfish? Well, what did you expect? To become superman or wonder-woman?
"When someone beats a rug with a stick, he is not beating the rug – his aim is to get rid of the dust. Your inward is full of dust from the veil of 'I-ness', and that dust will not leave all at once." - Jalaluddin Rumi
Stages of Awakening
To believe that an insight, an understanding, a shift, an experience, as significant as they may seem, can be enough to "realize the Self" and "that's it", is a great example of denying and rejecting the laws of manifestation and the dual lense of perception.
To "awaken", in a real and embodied way, requires a transformation. And any type of transformation and refinement requires time, here, in the dual manifestation.
All folks obsessed with this so-called "direct path", should understand that there is no such thing as an "instantaneous awakening". Awakening happens in time, in matter, and there is always a "prior" and an "after" awakening.
Here's another little simplified map of awakening, seen from another angle.
1- All there is, is identification as a body-mind. All there is is "dreaming". Identification with thoughts, memories and conditioned tendencies, prevents one to access in any way to one's true essence (or temporarily by accident only), where true peace lies.
2- Suffering ensues. Whether unconsciously (through the working of life itself), or consciously (through deliberately doing a work on oneself at a personal level), one grows and matures, and starts a process of healing and balancing of one's psychological ground (neurosis, traumas, imbalances, fears, etc).
3- Experiencing how this is obviously not enough, and hearing the message of "spirituality", one starts to enter the "path". Here, if properly guided, and given that the work prescribed is correctly done, a glimpse, a temporary experience can happen when one will start to sense one's own true essence, often with a glimpse of the unreality of identification.
4- If the work is truly done, with earnestness and honesty, and if the path is not used to help one to by-pass/deny anything, for quite some time there will be a back and forth movement, where, still centered in/as the conditioned mind most of the time, the "essence" will be "accessed" from time to time, more and more.
5- If one truly perseveres, while being actively open to face everything in oneself that is blocking this ungluing from the conditioned mind, a shift may happen (based on several preliminary/preparatory shifts). At this point, the balance changes. One will start to be centered in his own essence most of the time, while being caught and trapped into identification with what's left of the conditioned mind from time to time. The "essence" is truly known to be our only reality, and the mind absolutely illusory, yet remaining tendencies may have enough power and enticement to catch us here and there.
6- The work continues, towards more and more transparency and embodiment, where subtler and subtler veils and filters may be encountered to be dissolved in the face of "truth" and "reality".
"Q: "When I am doing our exercise, sometimes I find myself in a different state, but I cannot hold on to it. What is wrong?" A: "Nothing is wrong. It can well happen that in the course of the effort to hold himself present, the pupil finds that he is in a different state but loses it at once. He should not on this account be depressed. With perseverance and effort, the transition becomes easier and finally is established. By continued effort the pupil can reach the same state as that of an angel and, when he is in this pure state, he is able both to see and to accept his own nothingness. It is in this way that the final liberation is attained." - Khwaja Ala ad-din Attar
"Q: Why is it that the mind cannot be turned inward in spite of repeated attempts? Ramana: It is done by abhyas [practice] and vairagya [dispassion] and that succeeds only slowly. The mind having been so long used to go outwards, is not easily turned inwards. A cow accustomed to graze thievishly on others' estates, is not easily confined to its shed. However, its keeper tempts it with luscious grass and fine fodder. It refuses the first time; then it takes a bit, but its innate tendency to stray asserts itself and it slips away. On being repeatedly tempted by the owner, it accustoms itself to the stall; finally, even if let loose, it would not stray. Similarly with the mind. If once it finds its happiness within, it will not dwell outward." - Ramana Maharshi
Unitive Perception
In the identified/conditioned state, perception is very narrowed, and totally constrained by the world of forms and shapes (whether physical or conceptual/mental). All we see and are capable of engaging with, are the most superficial layers of manifestation, appearing as diversity and multiplicity.
When a real awakening and subsequent transformation start to unfold, we start to access deeper layers, more fundamental layers of perception available in pure consciousness. We start to tap into and perceive from a subtler and more essential layer of perception that is actually giving rise and sustaining the world of forms and diversity.
This deeper layer of perception, which is not arising from the ordinary five senses, can be called "unitive perception". This new "sense" arises from the activation of a new subtler organ of perception, previously only in a dormant state of potentiality in conditioned human beings.
It's really difficult to describe it with accuracy with ordinary language and reference points, but at this level, things are perceived at the energetic and holistic level at all times, we may say. This is also what has been called "seeing from the Heart", which has absolutely nothing to do with any kind of emotionality or the fluffy and oozing idea we often have about "love" and "oneness", nothing to do with what we call "intuition". "Heart" in this case, is the technical term for this new organ of perception.
From here, you start to perceive the underlying fundamental currents of energy arising our of consciousness, which then manifest as forms and diversity available to the five senses, in everything you encounter.
It's a bit like instead of seeing only puppets, instead of only being capable of interacting with puppets as a puppet yourself, instead of apprehending and understanding "what's going on" at the level of the puppets, you are constantly aware of the few strings moving the individual and collective puppets.
This new layer of perception, opens up to a deeper level of discernment and understanding, a unitive understanding, way more reliable and accurate than what ordinary perception offers.
And by "you start to perceive the underlying fundamental currents of energy arising our of consciousness", I don't mean you "see" energy or energies (in the new-age sense). It's really another kind of organ of perception, hence why difficult to describe.
It's more like sensing/perceiving at all times the mechanics and the forces at play behind the visible and diversity.
Space Cannot Be a Threat to Space Itself
In the state of identification, we are identifying with particular conditioned inner traits, tendencies, habits, characteristics, memories, thought patterns, inclinations and desires, and with the outer form of a particular body.
In that state, the space of pure being that we are, is frozen in an imagined and constrained structure, taking itself to be an object interacting with other object in the world.
In that state, an object will always be foreign to another object, and intimacy is always almost impossible, or at least never lasting for long. Objects can only bump against each other. Objects may always be a threat to other objects. This is the root of all conflicts, fights and wars in the world, whether at the individual or collective level.
In that state, what we call "being intimate", "being friends", "being familiar", "knowing each other", has very little to do with real intimacy.
All we are doing is wrongly imagining and projecting that we are fundamentally foreign to each other, and that we may become "intimate" when we start to know each others personal imagined stories/structures, and when we agree on acknowledging in each other what we think is defining us.
In truth, real intimacy doesn't require to "know" someone else, doesn't need time to be so. At all.
When you truly know yourself, you know all. When you truly know yourself, the sameness in all and everything is always in the foreground of your perception, you see your own essence everywhere, and the very few particularities and differences are never capable of blocking this natural "instantaneous intimacy" with everyone you meet.
"Who knows himself, knows everyone else, because every man bears the whole stamp of the human condition." - Michel de Montaigne
"I am a human being, I consider nothing that is human alien to me." - Terence
"Know thyself and thou shall know all the mysteries of the gods and of the universe." - Delphic maxim
Mastering Attention
Mastering attention, through one-pointedness of mind, is an absolute requirement on the spiritual path. No one truly "awakens" without becoming first a master of attention. Try to by-pass this arduous stage as much as you want, you will only end up as a "spiritual parrot", mentally imagining your so-called "awakening".
The mind in its natural unrefined conditioned state, and no matter how "spiritual" you think you are, is utterly slow, weak, fragmented, scattered, inconsistent, clumsy, both apathetic and agitated.
Unless you learn to develop a very deep and stabilized sense of presence/being through the refinement and mastering of your attention, you will never be able to overcome your mind. You will never be able to be there the very moment thoughts arise (and they arise at light-speed), and you will always be late.
And if you are not there, in a supreme state of vigilance and vivacity (hence absolutely present), in a very continuous way, in a very grounded way, keeping attention at the very source from where thoughts are arising, and stabilizing yourself here, you will always be carried away by them.
Unless your mind, your attentive capacity, is made firm, strong, focused and one-pointed, you will never have enough mind strength and stability to remain still, prior to the arising of thoughts, and not being driven by them.
Only in that attained stillness and one-pointedness, one can reach a state where the observing and true understanding of the whole functioning of his mind is possible.
This is what "going within" means: going and remaining "prior"; to learn to retain attention at its own source, instead of letting it go "outward", so that the whole functioning of the thinking mind remains in front of you at all times, entirely witnessable and observable.
Abiding in/as "I am", holding on to the pure "I", to stay as "being", self-attention, self-remembrance, self-enquiry, meditation, to remain as the witness or observer, to keep quiet, to remain silent, to be still... those are all different names for the same path leading to this mastering of attention.
"Because truth is exceedingly subtle and serene, the bliss of the Self can manifest only in a mind rendered subtle and steady by assiduous meditation." - Ramana Maharshi
"Whenever the mind wanders, become aware of it. See how thoughts connect with each other and watch how this ghost called mind catches hold of all your thoughts, saying, "This is my thought". Watch the ways of the mind without identifying with them in any way. If you give your mind your full, detached attention, you begin to understand the futility of all mental activities. Watch the mind wandering here and there, seeking out useless and unnecessary things or ideas, which will ultimately only create misery for itself. Watching the mind gives us a knowledge of its inner processes. It gives us an incentive to stay detached from all our thoughts. Ultimately, if we try hard enough, it gives us the ability to remain as consciousness, unaffected by transient thoughts." - Annamalai Swami
"Q: How to control thoughts? Ramana: The wavering of mind is because of its weakness, due to dissipation of its energy in the shape of thoughts. When one makes the mind stick to one thought, the energy is conserved and the mind becomes stronger. Strength of mind is gained by practice, as the Gita points out. In the earlier stages mind reverts to the search only at long intervals, but with continued practice it reverts at shorter intervals until finally it does not wander at all. It is then that the dormant shakti manifests and the mind resolves itself into the life-current." - Ramana Maharshi
"If the meditation is not continuous enough, the other part of the mind becomes predominant. You have to overpower this mind that is taking you away from yourself by repeatedly doing this self-enquiry." - Annamalai Swami
"If the mind that has become one-pointed, like the tip of darba-grass, merges with the Heart, the experience of pure Being, seemingly impossible to attain, will be very easily discovered." - Ramana Maharshi
"Taking a thick fat crowbar (as a needle), it is not possible to stitch together extremely delicate silk cloth using very fine thread." - Ramana Maharshi
"What prevents the insight into one's true nature is the weakness and obtuseness of the mind and its tendency to skip the subtle and focus the gross only. When you follow my advice and try to keep your mind on the notion of 'I am' only, you become fully aware of your mind and its vagaries. Awareness, being lucid harmony (satva) in action, dissolves dullness and quietens the restlessness of the mind, and gently but steadily changes its very substance. This change need not be spectacular; it may be hardly noticeable; yet it is a deep and fundamental shift from darkness into light, from inadvertence to awareness. For this, keep steadily in the focus of consciousness the only clue you have: your certainty of being. Be with it, play with it, ponder over it, delve deeply into it, till the shell of ignorance breaks open and you emerge into the realm of reality." - Nisargadatta Maharaj
"Go deeply into this feeling of 'I'. Be aware of it so strongly and so intensely that no other thoughts have the energy to arise and distract you. If you hold this feeling of 'I' long enough and strongly enough, the false 'I' will vanish leaving only the unbroken awareness of the real, immanent 'I', consciousness itself." - Annamalai Swami
Are You a Spiritual Blasé?
Many people in the pseudo-non-dual communities believe that it's natural if "awakening" leads you to a sort of withdrawing from the world affairs. For them, realization/awakening equates with a natural loss of interest in the world, the end of being really involved in the world, a natural lack of desire and motivation to achieve things in the world (whether at the personal or collective level).
I see so many folks ending up in some (real or created) state of apathy! Absolutely blasé about everything, stuck in their head about the "absolute truth" and obsessed with so-called "spirituality" and "truth". This is what happens when you cling to the concepts of "illusion", "no-self" and "non-doership" in a superficial, mental and immature way.
In truth, a genuine awakening leads to the opposite direction.
One who truly awakens, gets to be truly born to the world. And it's rare. It may seem to be a paradox, but it is when you realize that you are not FROM the world in any way, when you realize in an integrated and balanced way that it's all illusory, that you truly and genuinely end up being IN the world.
The genuine realization that the ego-self is unreal, and that there are truly "no others", actually grows into a very vivid, active and alive intimacy and relationship with all "others", and a genuine interest in "others".
You inherent curiosity about everything grows tremendously, you become way more open and truly interested in all human matters, a natural pull to learn more and more things arises organically, which leads most of the time to an increasing participation and involvement in the world affairs.
The reason is simple: when your life energy and attention are freed up from self-obsession and self-centeredness (which is actually a sort of black-hole sucking in all vital energy), they are then absolutely free to flow in direction of the world and other human beings, free to be used by a deeper source within yourself, of service to the whole.
Obsession With Truth Is Still Obsession
No teacher/master ever could be able to build a big group of followers, a big "sangha", or a big "spiritual business", if they were to tell the truth to their students (given, of course, that they would be in the position to know and tell the truth).
And by "truth", I don't mean only the "ultimate" truth (this is almost irrelevant), but the truth about the inner states of their students, the truth about how superficial, mediocre, lazy, immature, insincere and unserious they often are, the truth about how often they are deceiving themselves, the truth about how their ego dynamic is constantly hijacking spiritual matters, the truth about what they don't want to see and face in themselves.
A real teacher is not teaching to please himself or please his students. A real teacher has to be and often is way more unpleasant to his students, than agreeable.
Also, a real teacher, is never obsessed with "telling the ultimate truth".
His only concern is to tell the type of truths that can be beneficial to such or such student, at this or that particular moment. To the extent that he may even tell an untruth or a temporary "lie", if it can be more appropriate in the moment for the student's development and transformation.
A real teachers knows very well that a premature truth told to a student, can actually harm and hinder his development, not because of this truth itself, but because of the distorted way the student is going to receive it, use it or hijack it.
To teach or to guide, is like feeding with the appropriate food, a specific student, according to his specific need. That's why a real teacher will always make sure before he delivers the food, that the student has the appropriate and operational organs to digest this food. If not, he may need to invite and help the student to develop or heal the required organs first.
Which most immature and imbalanced students are incapable of understanding, or unwilling to, when their unique and unpragmatic obsession is "Gimme the food! Gimme the food!"
You can be obsessed with money, security, control, sex, your self-image, and you can be obsessed with "truth", or what you imagine is "truth". You may call this obsession a "genuine and irresistible aspiration", it remains nevertheless an obsession that will need to be addressed if you are earnest enough, and truly willing to do what needs to be done to attain real freedom.
Free Will
When one is still in living from the conditioned state of being, there is no freedom, no free-will, no immediacy in his experience of life. The unconscious programming (conditioned tendencies, called vasanas and samskaras in Hinduism/Advaita) drives the whole human organism. It's a bit like being a flesh robot. Actions and reactions in the inner and outer world follow the rules of the specific body-mind programming.
"Neuroscientists can read brain activity to predict decisions 11 seconds before people act" says the article out of a new study, which is confirming previous studies on the subject.
The thing is, most people in the "spiritual" domain, are using this as a scientific proof that there is no free-will in any way.
In my view, what those studies show, is that when a man is still almost entirely driven by its unconscious conditioned programming, there is no free-will. Actions and reactions are the result of his programming.
But that doesn't prove the nonexistence, or the impossibility of free-will at all.
I know it will sound almost like a sort of blasphemy to the "non-dual" religious people, but at some level or lens of perception, one who truly awakens, one who truly attained the state of dissolution of the self-centered programming, gains true freedom, becomes free from a determined programming, lives in total immediacy with the present moment, unfiltered, undistorted, and gains... absolute free-will!
Anyway, same as with duality and non-duality, there is actually no reason whatsoever from the standpoint of truth, to pick up and choose, and to cling obsessively to fate (no free-will) or free will. They are both valid standpoints, and none is of higher value or truth than the other.
A Lack of Realism
Surrender, remain surrendered in a continuous way and that's it. Drop all self-concerns, never be concerned again about "yourself", and that's it.
Stop worrying in the least about anything (whether physical, mental, psychological, social or spiritual) and that's it. Stop believing you have any sort of problem, or that you are suffering in any way, and that's it.
Stop trying to achieve anything, stop efforting in any way, die to yourself and to all your desires, intentions and wants, and that's it.
Stop believing your thinking mind once and for all, and never ever come to believe it again, and that's it.
Is this true? Yes. It is. If this is achieved, that's it.
But is it that easy, in the sense that coming to understand this can be enough to embody this truth? Of course not. A tremendous lack of realism, pragmatism and an amazing naivety. Pure wishful thinking.
To start to grasp and understand this truth and how simple it is, may be a first step, but to come to embody it in a continuous way in one's life, to not fall back into the conditioned mind's way anymore, to definitively uproot all tendencies to fall back into identification again, obviously requires a huge dedication, a persevering practice, a great willingness and a constant effort.
No amount of "understanding" (insights or realization), as lots of contemporary teachers keep obsessively saying, will do, on its own. Understanding, is the passive/static side of the path, which will never come to fruition, without the active/dynamic side of it.
As Ramana Maharshi kept saying, the effortless stage of the path, the effortless state, cannot and will never be reached without a tremendous amount of dedication and effort first. The real effortless stage is the very last stage of the path.
Teachers who are discouraging students to produce efforts, when they actually are in the stages of the path which requires effort, are simply criminals.
Being is Primary
"I am" is the primary thought (the primary concept, as Nisargadatta Maharaj put it). The pure sense of being, of existing, is the only real and crucial factor in your life. It has been there since you were born as this body-mind, and was continuously there no matter how your life unfolded.
It's so obvious, so continuous, so prevalent in your life, so permeating your entire life, that you ended up relegating it very far in the background, and not giving it the least attention anymore. Yet, without it, without the sense of being, absolutely nothing could be and could exist in what you call "my life", not even "my life".
How insane this sickness is, which pushes us to give meaning, relevance and importance to everything secondary in life, except to that without which no meaning, relevance and importance could be given in any way, to anything?
This is what the practice is: to learn to consciously pay attention again, in a continuous way, to that which is primary and absolutely essential, to hold it, to be with it, to abide in/as it, to make it again the conscious ground and center of our life, without a break.
No Realization of Self
"There is no such thing as realizing the Self. How is one to realize or make real what is real? People all realize or regard as real, what is unreal, and all they have to do is to give that up. When you do that, you will remain as you always ARE and the Real will be Real. It is only to help people give up regarding the unreal as real that all the religions and the practices taught by them have come into being." - Ramana Maharshi
Two things to notice here.
1- Have you noticed the huge number of seekers and teachers pretending they "realized" the Self, their true nature, or the "truth", and/or making this realization the very core of their teaching? Yet, Ramana says that the Self cannot be realized...
Sure, there may be moments of "realization" (glimpses, insights, recognition) on a spiritual path, but the core and the purpose of such a path, is the dissolution of the unreal, of identification, of the self-centered thinking mind, of all egoic conditioning and tendencies. It's a transformative path leading to transparency, stillness, silence, and above all an emptying of oneself from oneself.
In other words, saying, inferring, claiming, believing, thinking that one has "realized the Self" is the opposite of the path that Ramana is describing.
The true path is about subtracting, losing and giving up, not adding, gaining and claiming.
When one has truly reached the goal (that which Ramana calls "Mano Nasa", the annihilation/dissolution of the egoic mind), there is no "one" left to experience or claim any realization.
2- All people, seekers and teachers entrapped in the so-called "direct path" and denying the need for a path of practice and effort, rationalize this denial by saying that what's Real (the Self) cannot be attained through any path. And they are right! This is exactly what Ramana says.
But what they fail to understand, is that the path is an absolute requirement to give up, disregard and dissolve identification with what's unreal, which is also what Ramana kept saying.
"Be melting snow. Wash yourself of yourself." - Jalaluddin Rumi
"Die to yourself and lose yourself." - Ramana Maharshi
Being Is Enough
Being, the pure and silent sense of being, is enough. Inwardly be devoted to it, surrendered to it, bowed to it.
It's both extremely simple, because all that is required is to stop thinking, to drop all concepts, to let go of your mind all at once, to remain silent and to just be, and extremely difficult, because this very same mind will constantly resist this letting go with all its skills, tricks and strength.
That's why this process of surrender requires perseverance, utter dedication and blind faith.
Any kind of doubt or expectation around this "practice", is the mind's resistance at play, postponing this embodied flow of pure being.
"Just be aware that you are and remain aware. Don't say: "Yes I am; what next?" There is no "next" in "I am". It is a timeless state." - Nisargadatta Maharaj
Perfecting Oneself
"I'm not interested in enlightenment, it's not my thing. I'm not believing or aiming for enlightenment or some state of perfection I had to believe in." - a very popular spiritual teacher
I notice how a lot, if not most people engaged in those contemporary "non-dual" communities (seekers and teachers), are pretty reluctant and resistant to the idea of "perfection", and more precisely of the possibility of transforming and perfecting the human body-mind apparatus.
There is a great confusion here, arising out of a grasping at the "absolute view" and an inability to handle in a balanced way both the absolute and the relative lenses of perception.
For those people, the idea of aiming at perfection/perfecting oneself would be always linked to some sort of deluded attempt at by-passing or denying of our humanness, or attached to an unrealistic desire, antinomic to "awakening".
If at the "absolute" level of the path, it is true that a recognition and an integration have to happen about the inherent perfection of our essential nature (call it pure consciousness, pure being, God), at the "relative" level, awakening/enlightenment is actually nothing but of process of perfecting the human body-mind and aiming at perfection!
Isn't awakening aiming at "perfection", or being a process of perfecting oneself, when it comes to go from bondage of identification to more and more freedom, from selfishness and egocentrism to more and more selflessness, from suffering to more and more peace, from conditioned neurosis to more and more sanity, from confusion to more and more clarity, from ignorance to self-knowledge, from being entrapped into illusion to more and more realization of truth, from limited and narrowed perceptive abilities to wider and wider perceptive capacities, from distorting conditioned flaws to more and more embodiment of and transparency to "divine" qualities?
Perfection/to perfect, comes from the Latin "perciferer", which means "to complete". Isn't awakening/enlightenment a path leading from incompleteness to completeness? From imperfection to perfection?
How would you call that if not "aiming at perfection"? And why being scared of this and not call it by its name?
Lost at Sea
When you are lost at sea in the middle of nowhere, whether on a raft or swimming in the water, your life is in danger, and you may have almost no hope to be saved.
During a day of extremely clear weather, you may catch sight of a very far island. Here, some hope may arise, but however, you are not saved yet. You will have first to find ways, to battle and have great skills, strength and perseverance to reach the island, which may again be hidden to you by unfavorable weather.
"Lost at sea", is our condition when we are lost in identification with the illusion. The "island" is your very essence, the pure universal being/beingness at the source of everything. A "day of clear weather" is a moment of clarity within yourself, when you'll be able to catch a glimpse of this essence.
So, here's the situation among most of the contemporary spiritual seekers.
Most are satisfied enough with a glimpse of "truth", a partial and fugitive seeing/experiencing of their "essence", of the "pure being". While still being lost in the sea of illusion, they will call that glimpse: "being saved". Still battling not to drown, still actually and essentially hopeless, they will grasp at and cling to the "idea of the island", to the memory of the "glimpse" and to the mental knowledge "I now know that there is an island out there which is my salvation".
They are in truth and mostly unconsciously and for so long so deeply desperate, so lost, so hopeless, so paralyzed by fear, that instead of being utterly pragmatical, courageous and determined, that instead of using this new possibility and new hope of salvation as a fuel to dig within themselves to find unsuspected resources to try to reach the island, they will develop nonsensical wishful-thinking rationalizations such as:
- "I know there is an island out there! I must be saved already!"
- "Now that I know there is an island, there is nothing more I have to do!"
- "Trying to reach that island makes no sense anyway, as I may exhaust myself and die trying!"
This is what is kept being said here: to be "saved" is to reach the island, and to settle there for good. To "awaken", is to drag oneself from the "sea of illusion" out of your own effort and determination, once and for all, and to start a new life in the safety of the island itself. To "awaken" is to be established back in a continuous way into your essence, as the pure and silent sense of being. To be "saved" is to actualize and embody this possibility of "being saved" in a definitive way, not to fall in love with the possibility itself.
"No one succeeds without effort. Mind control is not one's birthright. The successful few owe their success to their perseverance." - Ramana Maharshi
"In all cases the effort must be ceaseless and untiring until the goal can be reached." - Ramana Maharshi
"Conscious, deliberate effort is needed to attain that effortless state of stillness." - Ramana Maharshi
"Q: At times the meditation becomes easy, but that remains only for a short period- and it is again disturbed by unwanted thoughts. Ramana: "Yes - maybe - resist the thoughts - you should have more willpower to obtain steadfastness. Slight disturbances should be ignored, taking care to pursue further without break. A sustained effort will bring about results." - Ramana Maharshi
"Maya is destroyed only by engaging with supreme effort in mouna [silence]. It is not destroyed by any other means." - Ramana Maharshi
"If one wants to abide in the thought-free state, a struggle is inevitable. One must fight one's way through before regaining one's original primal state. If one succeeds in the fight and reaches the goal, the enemy, namely the thoughts, will all subside in the Self and disappear entirely." - Ramana Maharshi
"You want immediate results! We do not dispense magic, here. Everybody does the same mistake: refusing the means, but wanting the ends." - Nisargadatta Maharaj
Real Humility
Here's another recent display of a half-baked, superficial, misguiding "spirituality" from a very popular teacher: "No answers. No levels of attainment. No special awakened beings with all the answers. We are all perfectly beautiful amateurs, here in the Heart."
In reality, if the work is earnestly done and properly guided, the process of "awakening" has to make you "special", has to bear uncommon and "special" fruits.
A human being who awakens, becomes way more clear, intelligent, wise, discerning, sensitive, sane, psychologically healed and balanced, grounded, way more selfless, reliable, compassionate and capable of true love than the great majority of other humans. Someone who truly awakens, attains and gains new skills, aptitudes and perceptive capacities. A real "awakening" truly makes one "extraordinary".
To deny that, is utter non-sense. To deny that, is whether based on ignorance of what's truly at stake, or the consequence of a desire to be seen as "humble", to get attention and to please others with spiritual platitudes no matter what (the "guru" syndrome), or based on the herd instinct and a deep-rooted psychological fear of loneliness and not being loved if one's "specialness" were to be held.
You see, in truth, real humility transcends both the desire to be special, and the fear to be special.
One of the apparent paradox of a spiritual path, is that when the egoic desire and need to be special really starts to be healed and transcended (what is commonly called "humility"), you actually starts to become truly "special" and a rare exception among the masses of sleep-walkers.
If and when this starts to happen, a deeper state of humility has then to be attained, which is linked to the total embrace and acceptance of this "specialness".
Here, if being of service to truth is really what matters to you, you will have to transcend any reluctance and fear of being seen and judged as arrogant, pretentious, self-important, on an ego trip and playing the "superiority" game, and any fear of being disliked and rejected as such. This, is real humility and transparency.
And here, you will also need to see that any display of a fluffy false-humility and any desire to be seen as "humble" and "ordinary", is actually based on hidden layers of self-centeredness and arrogance.
Now, how can one hold in a sane way, both views of being essentially nothing and absolutely ordinary, and at the same time of truly being "special" and "extraordinary"? Don't ask. Do your homework. And if you're earnest enough, you may come to know.
Not Always Pleasant
Yesterday, I encountered again two occurrences of what I call "fluffy spirituality". One was a seeker (thinking himself pretty "awakened" I guess) saying that his path has been "joy all the way", and another was a well-known teacher's recent video all centered around "self-love, self-acceptance, being kind to ourselves, embracing our mind and feelings in presence and in the now"...
I still sometimes wonder how and why people can be that unrealistic, that confused and superficial, and in such denial of what a real awakening path is.
As I said the path is both active/yang and passive/yin, including both the effortful and effortless dynamics (and requiring a clear understanding of how both are articulated), and a spiritual path cannot be made exclusively of happy moments, pleasantness, easiness, non-resistance and passive embrace/acceptance.
If by "awakening" we truly mean the dissolution of our conditioned self-centered veils and filters, we will have to face the fact that this dissolution requires both the passive and the active aspects, depending on where we are at on this path, and what phase we are in.
This dissolution will sometimes need to happen through a passive letting go, surrender, acceptance of what is, non-doing, and sometimes through a very active and persevering struggle, fight, resistance and even intransigence (what Ramana Maharshi called the "battle royal").
In other words, the spiritual path requires us to develop and mature both the true "mother/feminine" aspect and the true "warrior/masculine" aspect within ourselves.
Moreover, a spiritual path cannot be exclusively "pleasant" (a Sufi master once noticed that "please" is the perfect anagram of "asleep").
There will be of course, phases where everything will seem to happen effortlessly, with ease, where everything will seem to pleasantly flow and unfold all by its own, but there will be a lot more phases (and for quite some time), where the work will truly feel unpleasant, arduous, unnatural, dry and unproductive, and nothing is wrong with that at all.
On a real path, it's unavoidable that we will also go through phases of great doubts and fears, of great resistance and difficulties, phases where the task will seem to be impossible to achieve, phases where obstacles will truly seem to be insurmountable. Here, if we are immature to the point of desiring only "pleasant" things, nothing real will be achieved.
In other words, on a true spiritual path, there are times to resist things (tendencies, conditioned habits), times to fight against our own complacency to follow again and again the conditioned mind's stream, times to refuse to fall back again into our habitual superficial, mediocre and neurotic mind dynamics, times to develop a great constancy and perseverance, a great discipline and determination, no matter how hard, difficult and unpleasant it may be for the conditioned mind which is always only superficially seeking for what's "pleasant" and "nice".
Selflessness Is the Goal
Let's make it simple. The process of "awakening" is a process leading toward selflessness (real transparency). Not as an idea or a concept, but as a truly integrated and embodied selflessness.
To be truly awakened, is to be impeccably and perfectly selfless. Period. And that's obviously utterly rare.
Anything else, are preliminary stages of the process.
True awakening has nothing to do with embracing and accepting our flaws, conditioned tendencies and self-centered neurosis, and calling that "being human", "imperfectly perfect" or "awakened to what is".
In the preliminary stages of the path, it is true that we will have to discover, face and acknowledge our self-centered conditioned flaws and tendencies, our conditioned veils and filters, but only so that they can be dropped and dissolved, and certainly not to "accept" or "embrace" them.
The human body-mind apparatus, can and has to be transformed, improved, purified, perfected, on a spiritual path, in order to achieve a deeper and deeper state of transparency and selflessness. That's the only way to become really of service to "truth".
Anything other than that is just an expression of denial, egoic rationalization, laziness, superficiality, and mediocrity, and a lack of spiritual integrity.
"A master is one who has meditated solely on God, has flung his whole personality into the sea of God and drowned and forgotten it there, till he becomes only the instrument of God; and when his mouth opens it speaks God's words without effort or forethought; and when he raises a hand, God flows again through that, to work a miracle." - Ramana Maharshi
Facing Fear and Death
The whole self-centered dynamic of the conditioned mind is rooted in fear.
As soon as identification is running, as soon as I take myself to be defined and limited by the particular tendencies of a particular transitory/impermanent body-mind form, there is fear. And this fear expresses itself through a continuous attempt to control "my life", and an endless fight to try to maintain the limited structure of what I call "me" (the particular body-mind form, and the particular network of positive and negative tendencies and memories attached to this body-mind).
Identification is the source of all suffering. Identification is painful. Fear and control are painful. When in a state of identification with what is meant to dissolve one day, we are living in a constant traumatic state, and a pervasive sense of not being safe.
And this is what is driving our continuous attempt to "control". We believe that to be "safe" and "happy" (physically, emotionally, psychologically), we need to control everything; to control what we do and what we are going to do, what we experience and are going to experience, what and how we feel, what we think, how we look, how we are perceived, and of course to control others too...
We are also trying to ease the pain of this unhappy contracted state, through obsessively trying to glean transitory experiences of what we feel is or going to be "pleasant", "nice", "happy".
And here's the vicious circle: in truth, we are trying to escape the suffering arising out of this traumatic state of identification, but from the traumatic state of identification itself! Which is of course impossible, as our very attempts at escaping it, keeps fueling it and reinforcing it endlessly.
We are trying to control the pain that is arising from the controlling dynamic itself, through more and more control. This is literally what the Sisyphus myth is about.
The only solution, then, is to "die". To face the threat, blackmail, fear and terror of the controlling mind, and courageously call the bluff. No matter how scary it may seem, this relief through our own "death" is exactly what we are looking for. This letting go, this unconditional surrender, is the only way we will realize that we were already absolutely and essentially "safe", prior to the illusory contracted state of identification, prior to our useless, tiring and painful attempts at controlling in order to be "safe".
I always loved the movie Contact, and particularly this scene where Ellie (Jodie Foster) realizes that all the troubles, shaking, pain, she's experiencing within the space capsule, are caused because she's attached to her sit which is itself attached to the capsule. In the "E.T." plans to build the capsule, the sit was not attached, but the human engineers thought it would be more safe to attach it!
As soon as she frees herself from the sit, all troubles stop, and she find herself absolutely safe floating unattached.
Passive and Active
"This is IT!", really? Well... yes and no.
The "process" of awakening to truth, is both a passive (yin) and active (yang) process, both still and dynamic, both a matter of simple realization (taking note of the "truth") and a matter of transformation/development/refinement of the human apparatus.
People from the "non-dual" community are almost always leaning exclusively toward the "passive" aspect of it. For them, awakening is only a matter of realizing and acknowledging something, a matter of "seeing", and they will be attached in a very imbalanced way to ideas such as "This is IT!", "nothing to do", "no path to walk", "no real effort to make", "seeking is the problem", "nothing more to get", "it's all perfect already".
So, it's not that they are "wrong" per se, but that by excluding the active and transformational aspects of awakening, they truly make it "wrong", and are really misleading others when they teach and preach in such an imbalanced way.
It is true that the "passive" aspect is based upon the seeing/realization of what's "already here", or what's "already the case", and in that sense, any seeking for "more" or "other" is an hindrance to that realization. That's the aspect of "you are what you are looking for".
But if the active/dynamic/transformational aspect of awakening is denied, the "This is IT!" idea becomes itself an hindrance to the actualization of the full potential of a genuine awakening. The "nothing more to get" aspect alone is wrong, and will then lead to a stagnant state of being, where people/seekers will actually embrace human flaws, limitations, weakness and narrow-mindedness as a "great achievement". That's the epitome of mediocrity.
In truth, a genuine awakening has to bear fruits, has to bring "more".
A real awakening has to transform the human apparatus, has to heal a man at many levels, has to dissolve conditioned veils and filters, has to actualize dormant potentialities of the human being, has to refine human perception to depths unknown to the ordinary conditioned man, has to reveal fields of subtleties previously unseen and inconceivable, has to transform the human body-mind into a entirely new vehicle for the expression of true love, beauty, intelligence, wisdom...
A real awakening has to transmute lead into gold.
Two Sides of Oneness
Awakening to "oneness", or awakening to "reality" we could say, has two sides. Those two sides are absolutely required for the realization of "oneness" to be complete, and the parallel deepening of both are feeding each other when we are truly and properly engaged on a spiritual path. It can also be said to be the two sides of "self-knowledge".
One side is the realization of the oneness/unity of pure Being, of pure Consciousness, of the Self, of God, as being the essence and fabric of all that is, of all that appears. When this starts to kick in, and there are many levels and depths to this realization, you start to see yourself in all, and all in yourself. It's almost like the birth of a very subtle, yet very real new organ of perception, which allows perception to function at a unitive level.
The other side, is the realization of the oneness/unity of humanity. This usually starts to kick in when, through having met yourself deeply and exhaustively with real honesty and transparency, you start to integrate that there is actually and literally only one same "ego-self" on this planet, one same "human being" we may say. Here also, you start to see yourself in all, and all in yourself, but at the human level.
Real transformation, compassion and clarity, can only arise out of having met those two sides. One can also be said to be the knowledge of the "light" (of the truth) and the other the knowledge of "darkness" (of the illusion, of the lie and the false).
The recurrent problem here, is that most seekers are believing and hoping (mostly unconsciously and out of ignorance) that going after the realization of the "light side", will help them to avoid and escape the work that needs to be done to truly meet and realize the "dark side".
And this is why by-passing is so widespread among the spiritual community, and why people, no matter how long they spend on the path, no matter how many teachers they met and "spiritual" insights and experiences they had, no matter what they think of themselves in regard to their "spiritual life", are actually not yet truly transformed, and remain at a very superficial level of spiritual maturity.
As I often say, the "light" doesn't truly need to be "enlightened". But darkness does.
So what are you after? A fluffy and superficial version of "spirituality", or real truth? To use the spiritual path to "spiritualize" your self-image, or to meet yourself and all truth with honesty, no matter how unpleasant, hard, painful, unexpected, unattractive and tiresome it may be? The mediocre veneer of "spirituality" or real transformation?
Just Be
"Just be..." - Jac O'Keeffe
Guidance of Suffering
Suffering, pain, discomfort, distress, unease, is God's way of telling you: "Wrong direction, my love! Put down your burden, come within and rest in Me!"
A Continuum
There is not "effort" on one side, and "effortlessness" on the other side. It's actually all a continuum.
"Effort" will be transformed and refined along the way, the quality of those efforts will progressively change and become more and more subtle, becoming more and more "effortless".
To be attached to or deny either one or the other end of this "effort" scale, is missing the mark.
Ultimately anyway, what we truly are always stands prior to both effort and effortlessness...
"There is a state beyond our efforts or effortlessness. Until that is realized, effort is necessary." - Ramana Maharshi
"Conscious, deliberate effort is needed to attain that effortless state of stillness." - Ramana Maharshi
"When effort is needed, effort will appear. When effortlessness becomes essential, it will assert itself." - Nisargadatta Maharaj
"Do not abandon meditation even if the mind persists in wandering on the pretext that it is mind's nature to wander. Whatever you practice persistently becomes your nature. If control is practiced consistently, that will become the mind's nature." - Ramana Maharshi
A Web of Contractions
What we call "me" or "myself", is nothing but a network of knots and contractions, made of past imprints stored in memory, stored in the body-mind. The spaciousness of consciousness/being is then narrowed and contracted around this particular web of reference points, which are constantly reactivated, remembered through the thinking mind and kept alive moment to moment.
The attachment to this web of contractions ("my identity"), forces our essential being to remain in a contracted "posture" at all times, restraining its natural freedom, ease and openness.
To be a "person", is truly painful. But out of ignorance, habit and identification, we got used and addicted to the limitation, contraction, pain and bondage imposed by this unnatural "posture". To the point of now being scared of the idea of having to live without this contraction and burden of "self", however painful it is.
This is also called the "prisoner's syndrome", where the idea of freedom now scares us way more than remaining in prison.
I am having a physical/body therapy for 3 months now with an amazing Rolfer, and I realized something pretty interesting. Every time he releases a particular contraction in a body area, and then makes me walk in the room, it's truly like this particular area disappears, becomes empty and "non-existent", is almost not "sensed" anymore.
Where the particular contraction was previously (unconsciously) integrated as normal (part of the "body identity" or body-map proprioception) prior to its dissolution, now prevails a strange sense of "air", void and nothingness in the particular area. It's both absolutely pleasant and freeing, of course, but also disorienting for a while, in comparison with the previous contracted state.
I realized it's an amazing analogy for the dissolving of the web of "psychological contractions". When a particular mind/mental contraction starts to dissolve (whether small or big), we lose a reference point within the unnatural network of our "identity", and an integration needs to happen.
We have to relax back into "emptiness" again, we have to be fine with the temporary feeling of "losing" a bit of "oneself" and the temporary disorientation, we have to reaccustom ourselves to the freedom, spaciousness, formlessness and ease of our pure and essential being again.
Also, when this type of dissolving happens (whether physical or psychological), the integration of it requires a period of time when we will need to be vigilant to remain "relaxed" within this new open space regained, vigilant to resist the old habit and pull to contract again around this particular area.
Note also that what we call the "spiritual path", is the dissolving of all contractions which are at the root of the feeling of "me". It can be the dissolving of very specific points of contractions/reference points, it can be the dissolving of particular networks of contraction points within the global web of "identity", and at each stages a further re-integration of our essential unconstricted/empty nature, until the whole unnatural "ego" edifice/contraction becomes so weak, that it will crumble entirely.
Observing Self-Centeredness
In our conditioned state, all our observation is self-centered, is filtered through the lens and the contraction of self-centeredness. Everything that we are observing is tainted by and interpreted through the layers of personal and universal conditioning inhabiting the body-mind.
The only way we have to free ourselves from this self-centered filter, is to step back, relax and widen our observation, and to come to observe self-centeredness itself, to include the self-centered mental filter itself in our passive observation.
When identification with the mind is running, you unconsciously and automatically take all thought movements of the mind as you and yours. Your constant involvement and concern with the self-centered movements of the mind, is the source of all restlessness and suffering.
To widen the observation as described above, means to start to witness all those self-centered mind movements as if they were external to you, as impersonal and accidental occurrences, the very same way you would watch a movie, alert, focused and attentive, but relaxed, detached, uninvolved and unperturbed.
"Watch the mind with full attention. Whenever the mind wanders, become aware of it. See how thoughts connect with each other and watch how this ghost called mind catches hold of all your thoughts, saying, "This is my thought". Watch the ways of the mind without identifying with them in any way. If you give your mind your full, detached attention, you begin to understand the futility of all mental activities. Watch the mind wandering here and there, seeking out useless and unnecessary things or ideas, which will ultimately only create misery for itself. Watching the mind gives us a knowledge of its inner processes. It gives us an incentive to stay detached from all our thoughts. Ultimately, if we try hard enough, it gives us the ability to remain as consciousness, unaffected by transient thoughts." - Annamalai Swami
"Meditation is to be aware of every thought and of every feeling, never to say it is right or wrong but just to watch it and move with it. In that watching you begin to understand the whole movement of thought and feeling. And out of this awareness comes silence. Silence put together by thought is stagnation, is dead, but the silence that comes when thought has understood its own beginning, the nature of itself, understood how all thought is never free but always old - this silence is meditation in which the meditator is entirely absent, for the mind has emptied itself of the past." - Jiddu Krishnamurti
"Watch your mind, how it comes into being, how it operates. As you watch your mind, you discover your self as the watcher. When you stand motionless, only watching, you discover your self as the light behind the watcher. The source of light is dark, unknown is the source of knowledge. That source alone is. Go back to that source and abide there." - Nisargadatta Maharaj
"When you begin to sit still and you look upon the mind, the thoughts, you witness the thoughts, you watch the thoughts the mind slows down. As you continue witnessing the thoughts, watching the thoughts the mind becomes weaker and weaker and weaker and you become happier and happier and happier. Bliss comes when the mind is at rest. Unalloyed happiness comes when the mind is inactive. As long as the mind is active there will always be problems." - Robert Adams
Safe to Die
It's absolutely safe to die. As a matter of fact, the only "safety" you can find, is in your "death". That's the only way you can "rest in peace".
An Electromagnetic Force
As I often say, lots of people, seekers and teachers, are underestimating and minimizing the power of identification. According to them, it would be enough to "realize" or "see" who you really are, and/or have a glimpse of what you are not. Nothing is more false than this.
The force which is attaching attention to thoughts and conditioning, is like a huge electromagnetic force. Identification with the body-mind, is not something that you "do", it is something absolutely automatic, already "effortless", deeply programmed. It is our very primary state of being as conditioned human beings, our default mode of functioning.
You cannot break that force, just with a simple "realization" or a "glimpse". To break free from that electromagnetic force (or gravitational pull), requires a tremendous amount of work, lots of perseverance and discipline.
A conditioned human being has no center of his own, no real substance, and even no real "being" we could say, which is why if you "do nothing" about it, you will be dragged automatically into identification with thoughts endlessly. So you will have to pull yourself out from this electromagnetic force, and start to build little by little a new gravitational conscious center within yourself: a conscious center of being/presence, to which you will then be able to anchor yourself to resist the force of identification, more and more.
The more continuous and solid this new conscious center become, the less power the electromagnetic force of identification will have, and the easier it will be to abide in/as this new center.
And only then, once this work has been done with great earnestness and constancy, once this center is solid enough, the gravitational pull will start to reverse. This is the last phase, where real, true "effortlessness" will start to assert itself.
"You have to make an enormous effort to realise the Self. It is very easy to stop on the way and fall back into ignorance. At any moment you can fall back. You have to make a strong determined effort to remain on the peak when you first reach it, but eventually a time will come when you are fully established in the Self. When that happens, you cannot fall. You have reached your destination and no further efforts are required. Until that moment comes, constant sadhana is required." - Annamalai Swami
"No one succeeds without effort. Mind control is not one's birthright. The successful few owe their success to their perseverance." - Ramana Maharshi
"By repeated practice one can become accustomed to turning inwards and finding the Self. One must always and constantly make an effort, until one has permanently realized. Once the effort ceases, the state becomes natural and the Supreme takes possession of the person with an unbroken current. Until it has become permanently natural and your habitual state, know that you have not realized the Self, only glimpsed it." - Ramana Maharshi
"If one wants to abide in the thought-free state, a struggle is inevitable. One must fight one's way through before regaining one's original primal state. If one succeeds in the fight and reaches the goal, the enemy, namely the thoughts, will all subside in the Self and disappear entirely." - Ramana Maharshi
"You want immediate results! We do not dispense magic, here. Everybody does the same mistake: refusing the means, but wanting the ends." - Nisargadatta Maharaj
Personal and Impersonal
I talk often about "awakening" being all inclusive, as a widening of perception including different lenses of perception. Let me give an example of this, related to human relationships, seen/experienced from both the universal and the personal lenses at the same time.
When the non-dual lens is realized and integrated (that which we also call "oneness"), we don't see "persons" anymore, we are not interacting with "persons" and separate individual entities. It's like a new inner sense is born, a unitive sense of perception, which is always here at the core of our perceptive ability.
What we see, are patterns of energy, of the same energy. No matter who you are interacting with, it's known it's "yourself" (the essence of being) taking different forms, expressing/manifesting different patterns or frequencies of itself. This is the universal perception, always available, and always active.
But you see, it's certainly not a denial of the "personal" level of human interactions, an exclusion of the personal lens of perception. On the contrary, and it's a bit of a paradox here.
At the very same time that you are perceiving from the universal lens, you are still absolutely interacting with "persons". And in truth, this personal interaction, is even way clearer, cleaner, deeper, finer, closer, more direct and more intimate, way more enjoyable and satisfying than it ever was prior to the availability of the universal lens.
This is what I also call one of the "fruits" of awakening, and the fact that it transforms the human apparatus and the human life. Realization of the different facets of the "absolute", transforms our apprehension of the relative. It truly transforms and refines the relative life.
Refinement Takes Time
One thing I am sure of, is that it takes time, a lot of time, to refine a man.
Of course, coming more and more to "know who you really are", coming to know the "truth", is part of the process of refinement, and a crucial factor obviously, but to take it as complete and sufficient in and of itself, is certainly not what I would call "enlightenment" or "awakening".
The refinement I am talking about, is both a process of maturation and transformation of the body-mind apparatus, at all levels, where the human vehicle becomes more and more transparent to the primary qualities of pure Being.
So again, coming to know or realize the "divine essence" of what we are, is one thing (which has in itself many stages), and even is the corner stone around which the whole process unfolds, but to truly embody this "divine-ness" and its sublime qualities within the form of a man, is another thing entirely.
Hidden Delusion
Maybe one day we will start to integrate that the essence of delusion is to not know we are deluded, and to not have any personal means to tackle this delusion as long as we are unaware of it.
In other words, we cannot come to know what we don't know that we don't know.
If this doesn't bring us to realize the utter importance of humility and the need to be guided by someone who "sees" much clearly than we are, nothing will.
"No man is an island, entire of itself." - John Donne (1572-1631)
"It is impossible for a man to learn what he thinks he already knows." - Epictetus
Effort Is Unavoidable
Effort on a spiritual path is an absolute requirement.
Is a new born baby, who hasn't still developed a self-centered, self-conscious mind, who is still living without identification and without any idea of separation from the world and others, could be said to be awakened? Certainly not.
Are all the people who had a dramatic experience of the sudden loss of identity and who are now living in a mental institute out of not being able to integrate that experience or shift, and not being able to live a normal life in the world, awakened? Of course not.
Are you awakened every night, for the hours you spend in the absolute no-mind state where no identification whatsoever can arise, during deep sleep? No. Not in the least.
Are the millions of the people who took psychotropic drugs, and had a unitive experience and a temporary collapse of identity, awakened? Absolutely not.
Was this particular body-mind awakened before it was born? I'll let you answer that one.
So you see, "awakening" is something very specific. The question is not really about "awakening" per se, but HOW to awaken, how to come to a proper, balanced, stable, deep, integrated, embodied and efficient awakening, which can then truly serve others and the Truth.
One can partially "awaken" (have a shift, a great glimpse of the Truth, a preliminary experience, a great "ah-ah" moment, a temporary dissolution of the conditioned identity) and still be full of conditioned crap, fully imbalanced. Is this "awakening"? Well, certainly not.
And this is why there is a path and methods. This is why "awakening" is a gradual and organic transformative process. Not because God, Being, Oneness, Consciousness, Light, needs it (it doesn't), but because the body-mind needs it, in order to become a balanced and transparent vehicle for Truth and Light.
And this is where effort, practice, dedication, discipline, sacrifice, earnestness, perseverance, and the "spiritual path" kick in. Because they will prepare the body-mind, through a process of progressive refinement and gradual dissolution of all veils and conditioned filters, of all egoic tendencies, to be able to receive and moreover to integrate the tremendous energy of truth in the proper way, layers after layers, to then be able to manifest/reflect it in the world in the less distorted way possible.
People who claim that "nothing needs to be done", that effort is not required, or that the only goal of effort is to exhaust the false need of effort, are simply lacking clarity and perspective. They simply don't know what they are talking about, which is precisely an effect of an imagined, a superficial, a partial, or a non-integrated "awakening".
"There are different kinds of awakening. A man may be asleep: but he should wake up in the right way. It is also necessary that when he does wake up, he should have the means of making full use of his waking state. Our present task is to prepare this desirable end, as well as to prepare for awakening." - Idries Shah (Declaration of the People of the Tradition)
"There is a succession of experiences which together constitute the educational and developmental ripening of the learner, according to the Sufis. People who think that each gain is the goal itself will freeze at any such stage, and cannot learn through successive and superseding lessons." - Idries Shah (A perfumed scorpion)
True Not-Knowing
There is something truly misunderstood about this "not-knowing".
"Not-knowing" doesn't mean at all that you lose all common sense, and that you just become some sort of blissful idiot, constantly bathing in "non-duality", just for one's own self-centered pleasure.
Real "not-knowing" is on the contrary, the source of a tremendous amount of knowledge, both in quantity and mostly quality. "Not-knowing" means that something shifted in you, where instead of clinging to what was previously taken as "knowledge" by the conditioned mind, you become absolutely open to the very source of knowledge itself so it may flow through you, despite of you.
"Not-knowing" means you become of service to whatever needs to be known, expressed and acted upon, without interfering with your mind. Where previously the mind and the self-centered energy was believing itself to be the source of knowledge and the mean of understanding, now, a sort of spaciousness and openness prevails, where the mind becomes a tool used by a deeper and greater intelligence, in service of the good of all.
Same as Ramana Maharshi said that true silence is endless speech, "not-knowing" is endless knowledge.
How, Why, Where and When
All the so-called "teachers" out there, who believe that what's of uttermost importance is to "tell what the ultimate Truth is" to the seekers, are really living in wonderland...
To tell the "Great Truth", might of course have some importance, for some people, in some specific circumstances, but what's way more important and even primordial to ponder, is to whom you are sharing this "truth", what "truth", how, why, when, where, and in which form.
Until those teachers come to realize that you can actually hurt and hamper the progression of a student by asking him to focus exclusively on this supposed "ultimate Truth", the delusion will keep growing among the spiritual seekers communities.
Not all the students are at the same stage of development, which means a real teacher need to develop enough sensitivity and perception, to be able to know what a particular student needs, exactly where he is.
Note that the reverse is also true. Until seekers start to integrate that what they need if what they need, and not what they want or desire, until they come to understand that obsessively going after something they will be unable to digest in the proper way, can actually make them even more sick than they already are, confusion, arrogance, pretense and delusion will keep growing at a high speed rate in this so-called "non-dual" community.
Two Realms
To make it simple, and even a bit simplistic, there are two realms. The realm of the conditioned mind and self-centeredness, and the realm of Being (I Am, Presence, God, Consciousness, Silence).
Although the realm of Being is never not here, and although the realm of the mind has no existence and reality whatsoever without the realm of Being, as long as, out of a lifetime of habit and conditioning and even lifetimes of habit (personal and universal), our attention is centered on and immersed in this mind's realm, the realm of Being will seem non-existent to us, and not experienced.
It's impossible to truly shift, in an integrated and embodied way, from the realm of mind, to the realm of Being, without effort (that goes without saying), and without a progressive adaptation and transformation of our perceptive capacity.
The realm of mind, and our very own conditioned attention/perception, are very gross and unrefined by nature.
Through the development of our meditative ability, and persistence in withdrawing our attention from the mind, and in continuously bringing back this attention to the realm of Being (i.e abiding as the "I am" sense), the mind and our perceptive capacity are progressively refined.
And the more they are refined, the more we will be able to truly come into contact with the pure Being within us, and really start to sense and taste the essential very fine qualities of Being.
At some point, we cannot not understand experientially that Being is what we ever longed for. In other words, the closer we will come to Being and really taste it, the more we will fall literally in love with it (hence the Beloved analogy in many spiritual traditions), and the less the realm of the mind will have a capacity to pull us back into its grip.
"Because truth is exceedingly subtle and serene, the bliss of the Self can manifest only in a mind rendered subtle and steady by assiduous meditation." - Ramana Maharshi
"What prevents the insight into one's true nature is the weakness and obtuseness of the mind and its tendency to skip the subtle and focus the gross only. When you follow my advice and try to keep your mind on the notion of 'I am' only, you become fully aware of your mind and its vagaries. Awareness, being lucid harmony (satva) in action, dissolves dullness and quietens the restlessness of the mind, and gently but steadily changes its very substance. This change need not be spectacular; it may be hardly noticeable; yet it is a deep and fundamental shift from darkness into light, from inadvertence to awarenesss. For this, keep steadily in the focus of consciousness the only clue you have: your certainty of being. Be with it, play with it, ponder over it, delve deeply into it, till the shell of ignorance breaks open and you emerge into the realm of reality." - Nisargadatta Maharaj
"Q: How to control thoughts? Ramana: The wavering of mind is because of its weakness, due to dissipation of its energy in the shape of thoughts. When one makes the mind stick to one thought, the energy is conserved and the mind becomes stronger. Strength of mind is gained by practice, as the Gita points out. In the earlier stages mind reverts to the search only at long intervals, but with continued practice it reverts at shorter intervals until finally it does not wander at all. It is then that the dormant shakti manifests and the mind resolves itself into the life-current." - Ramana Maharshi
"When the mind, through the quality of extreme purity, merges in the Heart, it will attain perfection as peace." - Ramana Maharshi
"Taking a thick fat crowbar (as a needle), it is not possible to stitch together extremely delicate silk cloth using very fine thread." - Ramana Maharshi
"That which is worth enquiring into and knowing is only the truth of oneself. Taking it as the target, it should be known in the Heart with a sharply focused attention. Only to an intellect that has subsided within, having attained a clear silence which is free from the turbidity and agitation of mind that sweats and suffers, will the means for realizing this truth, which shines in an extremely subtle way, be known clearly." - Ramana Maharshi
Self-Deception
The main problem, is that we are dreaming within a dream. Inception. So, if we don't wake up first from the second dream, we will never wake up from the main dream.
The problem is not "what we think we are", but what we think about "what we think we are". The problem is not really the "ego", but our minimizing and denial of this "ego".
We are constantly lying to ourselves in many ways, and don't want to face that fact. And in my view and experience, this applies to at least 95% of the "spiritual" folks, seekers and even teachers.
As long as we are denying and avoiding the very clear recognition of our actual egoic state in all its forms, as long as we find more comfortable to keep lying to ourselves instead of facing the depth of our self-deception, as long as our self-image is factually more important than truth, as long as our perception is not in perfect alignment with our real inner state of delusion and self-centeredness, and whether we believe ourselves to be very "spiritual" and "awake" or not... we will never be able to transcend the illusion and to truly awaken.
And it's even worse: we will actually develop, reinforce and refine this second dream (lie/denial) through giving it the appearance of a "spiritual" dream.
We can recognize a tree by its fruits, or the lack of thereof. For one who has come to face himself at least in great parts, others are like open books. When one has come to face the lie in himself, he's able to see through the lie everywhere.
No matter how good people are at lying to themselves and others, at polishing and projecting their "spiritual" self-image, at pretending they have seen "no-self" and realized the "truth", at manipulating spiritual concepts, if you go past those layers of self-deception and truly look at their actual behaviors, you may start to see.
But the thing is that in social environments, and in social groups like Facebook, the lie feeds and protects the lie. If you want to remain as part of the group, as a member of the "spiritual community", you unconsciously know that you have to remain a part of this "association of wrongdoers", as a blind among the blinds.
When you are still lying to yourself, you will absolutely keep being complacent with others lies, in order to remain hidden too. You will never try to expose the lie of others, because you don't want yours to be exposed. That's the fools game. That's the hideous deal: "I'll be complacent with your bullshit, so you you'll keep being complacent with mine. I will keep validating you "spiritual self-image" and you will keep validating mine. I will be blind to your pretense and you'll be blind to mine.".
"For to be a philosopher, to love the truth more than oneself, one must have died to self-deception, one must have killed the treacherous smugness of dream and cozy fantasy. And that is the aim and the end of the war; and the war has hardly begun, there are still traitors to unmask." - René Daumal (The Holy War)
Absolute Impeccability
Truth, pure Being, pure Consciousness, call it what you want, has nothing to do with this popular fluffy idea of being all "nice", "loving" or "embracing".
Truth/Being, is actually utterly vertical, implacable, impeccable, uncompromising, and even ruthless at times. At the very core of Truth/Being, lies something which could be called the epitome of integrity and responsibility, a core utterly homogeneous, dense and solid, within which there is not the slightest space whatsoever for any kind of emotionality, complacency or compromise for the "false" and the "lie".
And this is what true compassion is.
The very first time I truly encountered this in myself, that was a bit of a shock. From the point of view of this conditioned mind still filtered by preconceived ideas about what "truth" is or should be, this was first felt as impressively cold, dry, unloving and even almost inhuman.
But very soon, it was seen and understood that if that was first sensed as being cold and "inhuman", it's because we actually don't know at all what it is to be truly "human". Our idea of what love is (same with truth), is almost entirely filtered and distorted by the flow of neurosis arising out of identification with self-centered conditioning.
And this absolute verticality and integrity of Truth/Being, will always be sensed as a threat by that within us which is still trying to defend and protect the lie and the illusion.
"Wisdom is eternally negating the unreal." - Nisargadatta Maharaj
Light and Darkness
To "awaken" is supposed to expand perception, not to limit or shrink it. It has nothing to do with becoming obsessed with "non-duality", while now excluding, denying or minimizing "duality".
What happens when we start to truly awaken (when the conditioned self-centered dynamic starts to dissolve for real), is that the non-dual lens which is now available, gives us a wider, deeper and clearer perspective on what happens here in "duality", and gives us the capacity to be way more anchored and efficient in the world than before.
When this wider perspective makes itself available, it's like now seeing things from a great distance, hence why you can see the human realm with way much clarity, accuracy and depth than before, when perception was previously narrowed, limited and filtered by conditioning and self-centeredness.
Time and space is now in plain sight. Your ordinary perception now includes the whole timeline of evolution at all times, and includes a seeing of space at a global, non-localized, unitive level.
When this kicks in, something becomes obvious: there truly is a battle between light and darkness, between clarity and ignorance, between "good" and "evil" we might say, in this world. The whole matter of evolution since ever, is rooted in the attempt of light itself, to pierce through density, to manifest itself and its primary harmonics (clarity, intelligence, beauty, love) more and more.
And because we now see how thick, sticky, resistant, impervious this density/darkness is, we are able to appreciate and value even more any arising and appearance of the light in duality. We are now understanding how rare, miraculous and so precious the manifestation of this light is, and this gives rise to a tremendous sense of gratitude and reverence toward the "light workers/seeders/bearers" of the human past, and a huge sense of responsibility in the actual world.
You now understand that "awakening" has nothing and never had anything to do with you, but that it's a matter of whether or not you, as a transient body-mind apparatus, are going to be one tiny link in the chain of transmission and nourishment of this precious light or not.
"The ultimate value of the body is that it serves to discover the cosmic body, which is the universe in its entirety. As you realize yourself in manifestation, you keep on discovering that you are ever more than what you have imagined." - Nisargadatta Maharaj
Pure Intelligence
At this level of reality, of manifestation, it's all one seamless unit, and no matter how many apparent distinctive forms seem to arise, gross or subtle, it is all made of the same fabric, made of this one essence. Call it God, pure Consciousness, Awareness, Life, Life force, Prana, Being, it doesn't matter, as it can only be revealed as being this one essence, through direct deeper and subtler experiences.
This essence, pure beyond even the concept of purity, when starting to manifest, generates its primary harmonics: love, peace, harmony, beauty, clarity. One of those harmonics or fragrances, is intelligence. Pure intelligence.
This tremendous intelligence is at the root of everything that is manifested. Look at the world and the universe, it's impossible to miss.
Life is intelligence. Our very own Being, is intelligence. Your very essence, is intelligence.
One of the goal of the process of "awakening", is to purify the human organism of veils and conditioned filters, so that this intelligence can manifest itself more and more freely and more and more openly through a body-mind, with being distorted less and less by self-centered conditioning.
"Ishwara/God is not an individual person. It is an all-pervading principle, which is latent in everything. It is manifest in the five elements, the three Gunas, and in the cycle of waking, sleep and Knowingness." - Nisargadatta Maharaj
"By being with yourself, the 'I am', by watching yourself in your daily life with alert interest, with the intention to understand rather than to judge, in full acceptance of whatever may emerge, because it is there, you encourage the deep to come to the surface and enrich your life and consciousness with its captive energies. This is the great work of awareness; it removes obstacles and releases energies by understanding the nature of life and mind. Intelligence is the door to freedom and alert attention is the mother of intelligence." - Nisargadatta Maharaj
"Without awareness, the body would not last a second. There is in the body a current of energy, affection and intelligence, which guides, maintains and energizes the body. Discover that current and stay with it. Of course, all these are manners of speaking. Words are as much a barrier, as a bridge. Find the spark of life that weaves the tissues of your body and be with it. It is the only reality the body has." - Nisargadatta Maharaj
Awakening Bears Fruits
I feel it's worth repeating it again: a real awakening (as a process) deeply transforms a human being. Awakening bears fruits.
That's why it's pretty easy to recognize one who is just deceiving himself in pretending awakening, no matter what his behavior is or his words are, and no matter how good he is at faking it (unconsciously or consciously): you can't see the fruits.
You can water a stone, or a dead bush, with as much holy water as you want, you will never reap any fruit. In this analogy, holy water is everything we put under the label "realization" or "spiritual experiences". For sure they are important, but what's even more important is the container which will receive those experiences. If the recipient is not prepared enough, refined enough, ready enough, clean enough, those experiences will never produce the effect and the fruits they have the potential to produce, and will never be integrated properly.
Here is, among many others, one of the fruit: awakening gives clarity. And by clarity, I don't mean the kind of false clarity most so-called "awakened" people pretend they have, which drives them to shout everywhere like parrots: "I am the Self! You are the Self! It's all the Self!"
No. I mean a clarity which is a deep understanding, a deep seeing, arising from prior to our own mind and intellect, of how the world and how human beings functions. One who truly comes to know himself, knows all others, and knows the world. It's crystal clear. It's a unitive seeing and understanding about how everything works, how maya works, how the illusion works, how the "lie" works and manifests itself.
Not in every details of course (this requires an ongoing adaptation of this clarity in a world of impermanence, which in time gives rise to what we call "wisdom"), but the global framework, the root key of it all, is always in full sight.
It's almost like the birth of a new universal organ or sense of perception, almost impossible to describe with conventional labels and concepts. And I am not talking about "intuition" here, or a "third eye", it's really something else entirely. It's not spectacular, not extraordinary (else than factually very rare), it's just there always, like your eyes or your ears.
And the fact is that, when you start to see with those new eyes, spiritual pretenders cannot fool you anymore for long (although I must admit, some a pretty good at it!). And they usually don't appreciate that too much...
"Question: When do I know that I have discovered the truth? Nisargadatta: When the idea, "this is true", "that is true" does not arise. Truth does not assert itself, it is in the seeing of the false as false and rejecting it. It is useless to search for truth when the mind is blind to the false. It must be purged of the false completely before truth can dawn on it." - Nisargadatta Maharaj
Observing the Mind
To learn to observe the mind has two main goals, both linked to breaking identification with it.
* First, notice that when identification is running, there is no conscious awareness of this thinking mind. To be identified means to be unconscious, asleep. When there is no perceptive distance from it, when immersion in the mind is total, we cannot see anything. We have no gravitational center and we are moved by with every movement of thought and by its content.
The first step, which is the step back of observing, of learning to regain the unmoving center of the "observer", will start to help us to become conscious of the movements of the mind.
This is the stage where we will start to discover and understand what this conditioned mind is made of, how it functions, what are its recurring patterns, what are its tricks.
The mind is like a cunning con man, endlessly robbing you from your innate peace and happiness, out of your very inattention. The more you become aware of the con man, the more attentive and vigilant you become, the more you understand its tricks, the more you will start to discover and understand how you were previously robbed, and the less you will be robbed.
This stage is of utter importance. This is the real sens of "self-knowledge", the stage of coming to know the "false", and why Shams Tabrizi, Rumi's master, stated: "Don't forget that the one who knows his Devil, knows his God."
Seekers who are ignoring this stage of self-knowledge and giving all their attention exclusively to spiritual shifts and experiences, who haven't discovered why, when, and how cunning and deceitful their very own mind is, will always end up being tricked by it. No matter how deep and remarkable their "spiritual experiences" are, those will be hijacked and distorted by what remains unconscious, and no real integration can happen. Worse, the conditioned ego-mind will almost always use the energy of those experiences, to reinforce itself, to build up a "spiritual ego".
* The second side of the practice of observing is linked to the fact that the mind has no power in and of itself. It derives all its power and all its energy from you, from your attention. You are the only one fueling the mind and its apparent reality and solidity, with your attention and life force. To bring back attention to this observer state again and again, will start to break identification with the mind, and will weaken the apparent power of the psychological thinking.
Another side of this, lies in the discovery that you cannot be identified with what you observe. Identification runs out of inattention, or lack of presence/being we can say. The magic here, is that the more you will learn to observe with equanimity, the less there will be to observe! In other words, when your life force/attention, is 100% invested in the neutral witness, very soon, the mind will become almost totally silent.
When you look directly into the tyrant's eyes, the tyrant himself dissolves.
"I have discovered the thief who had been ruining me so long. I will now deal with him summarily. Then I shall be happy." - King Janaka (Ramayana)
"Reality is not the result of a process; it is an explosion. It is definitely beyond the mind, but all you can do is to know your mind well. Not that the mind will help you, but by knowing your mind you may avoid your mind disabling you. You have to be very alert, or else your mind will play false with you. It is like watching a thief - not that you expect anything from a thief, but you do not want to be robbed. In the same way you give a lot of attention to the mind without expecting anything from it." - Nisargadatta Maharaj
"The mind is just like a thief. It is stealing your happiness by making you run after things and ideas that make you suffer all the time. Bring it back to the present each and every time you find that it is wandering somewhere else." - Papaji
"This is a good practice: keep attention on your diamond and keep the thieves away from it; keep still and be aware of thought. If you keep aware you will not have any thought because no thought comes when you watch. When you do this you are naturally in Awareness itself." - Papaji
"When the house is full [of you very own presence and attention], the thieves will not enter." - Papaji
"You cannot transcend what you do not know. To go beyond yourself, you must know yourself." - Nisargadatta Maharaj
A Path of Transformation
The process of "awakening" is certainly not only a matter of simple "seeing", "knowing" or "realizing" anything, be it one's own "true nature" or "Self".
To truly "awaken" implies a process of actual transformation that relates to many layers of our human body-mind, of our being.
To simplify, we could say it's both a process of development/refinement of the body-mind apparatus allowing a real/concrete embodiment of the light/truth of our subtle essence, and a process of dissolution of all self-centered conditioned veils and filters (that which are called vasanas and samskaras in the Hindu tradition) which are preventing the real embodiment/manifestation of this essence.
Again, our essence (call it God, pure being, pure consciousness/awareness) is already as pure as it can be, in and of itself. There is no question here. And for sure, the real challenge of "awakening" lies in deeper and clearer realization of this essence, but above all lies in bringing the body-mind to a deeper and deeper state of transparency so that the primary harmonics/fragrances of this essence (peace, clarity, intelligence, beauty, love, creativity, fluidity, aliveness, selfless compassion) may shine forth more and more in an untainted way through this human apparatus, for the good of all.
And this is where a spiritual path is certainly not only about coming to know/see/realize our essence, like so many superficial and mediocre seekers and teachers pretend, but a a never ending vigilant and dedicated work/process prior and after such realization, to clean, cleanse, refine, dissolve all conditioned tendencies within the human form that are filtering the manifestation, here, in the world, of this original essence.
"Intense effort is necessary until the I-thought disappears completely in the Heart [Self] and all the vasanas [egoistic tendencies] and samskaras [mental impressions and psychological imprints] are fried and do not revive again." - Ramana Maharshi
"Question: "Will the knowledge gained by direct experience be lost afterwards?" Ramana: "Kaivalya Navanita [a classic text of Advaita Vedanta recommended by Sri Ramana Maharshi] says it may be lost. Experience gained without rooting out the vasanas cannot remain steady. Efforts must therefore be made to eradicate all the vasanas. Otherwise, rebirth takes place. Some say direct experience results from hearing from one's Master; others say it is from reflection; yet others say from one-pointedness and also from samadhi. Though appearing different on the surface, ultimately they mean the same. Knowledge can remain unshaken only after all the vasanas are rooted out." - Ramana Maharshi
A Prize to Pay
All the people, seekers and teachers, attached (obviously for self-centered/neurotic reasons) to this so-called "direct path", pretending there is "nothing to do" to realize what we truly are, asserting that "seeking" is the only problem we have, claiming that all spiritual practices can only feed the illusory ego-self, pretending that there is no such thing as "awakening", have actually lost all common sense.
Anyone truly interested in this topic of awakening, should refer to real and genuine teachers and masters. How to recognize that a teacher is genuine, you may ask? It's easy. A real teacher will never try to sell you this fluffy new-age idea that you have no prize to pay to reach "enlightenment", and no path to walk.
On the contrary. If a teacher is genuine, if he/she attained a real embodied and integrated state of awakening, he/she will know the tremendous amount of pragmatism, earnestness, effort, dedication and discipline, that was required to reach the goal and truly attain this "effortless" state.
Annamalai Swami (direct disciple of Ramana Maharshi for decades) is a very good example of such great teacher.
"You have to make an enormous effort to realize the Self. It is very easy to stop on the way and fall back into ignorance. At any moment you can fall back. You have to make a strong determined effort to remain on the peak when you first reach it, but eventually, a time will come when you are fully established in the Self. When that happens, you cannot fall. You have reached your destination and no further efforts are required. Until that moment comes, constant sadhana [practice] is required." - Annamalai Swami
"The mind only gets dissolved in the Self by constant practice." - Annamalai Swami
"Constant meditation is the only way. If you bring light into your room, the darkness immediately goes away. You have to see that the light is not put out. It has to be continuously burning so that there is no darkness. Until you get firmly established in the Self, you have to continue with your meditation. Doubts take possession of you only if you forget yourself." - Annamalai Swami
"Meditation must be continuous. The current of meditation must be present in all your activities. With practice, meditation and work can go on simultaneously." - Annamalai Swami
"Don't regard the abidance in the "I am" as part-time activity. You must have a life long commitment to get yourself established in it." - Annamalai Swami
"Don't be discouraged by length of the journey, and don't slacken in your efforts to get home." - Annamalai Swami
"It was my experience that through continuous sadhana [practice] I gradually relaxed into the Self. It was a gradual process." - Annamalai Swami
"Don't worry about whether you are making progress or not. Just keep your attention on the Self twenty-four hours a day. Meditation is not something that should be done in a particular position at a particular time. It is an awareness and an attitude that must persist throughout the day. To be effective, meditation must be continuous. If you want to water a field you dig a channel to the field and send water continuously along it for a lengthy period of time. If you send water for only ten seconds and then stop, the water sinks into the ground even before it reaches the field. You will not be able to reach the Self and stay there, without a prolonged, continuous effort. Each time you give up trying, or get distracted, some of your previous effort goes to waste. Continuous inhalation and exhalation are necessary for the continuance of life. Continuous meditation is necessary for all those who want to stay in the Self." - Annamalai Swami
Continuous Attentiveness
Here's some very clear and very pragmatic instructions by Annamalai Swami (disciple of Ramana Maharshi)...
"You can only stop the flow of thoughts by refusing to have any interest in it.
If you remain in the source, the Self, you can easily catch each thought as it rises. If you don't catch the thoughts as they rise, they sprout, become plants and, if you still neglect them, they grow into great trees. Usually, the inattentive sadhaka only catches his thoughts at the tree stage.
If you can be continuously aware of each thought as it rises, and if you can be so indifferent to it that it doesn't sprout or flourish, you are well on the way to escaping from the entanglements of the mind.
Q: It is relatively easy to do this for some time. But then inattentiveness takes over and the trees flourish again.
AS: Continuous attentiveness will only come with long practice. If you are truly watchful, each thought will dissolve at the moment that it appears. But to reach this level of disassociation you must have no attachments at all.
If you have the slightest interest in any particular thought, it will evade your attentiveness, connect with other thoughts, and take over your mind for a few seconds. This will happen more easily if you are accustomed to reacting emotionally to a particular thought.
If a particular thought causes emotions like worry, anger, love, hate, or jealousy to appear in you, these reactions will attach themselves to the rising thoughts and make them stronger. These reactions often cause you to lose your attention for a second or two. That kind of lapse gives the thought more than enough time to grow and flourish.
You must be completely impassive and detached when thoughts of this kind appear. Your desires and your attachments are simply reactions to thoughts that appear in consciousness. You can conquer them both by not reacting to new thoughts that arise.
You can transcend the mind completely by not paying any attention to its contents. And once you have gone beyond the mind you never need be troubled by it again.
After his realization, King Janaka said, "Now I have found the thief who has been stealing my happiness. I will not allow him to do this anymore".
The thief who had been stealing his happiness was his mind.
If you are always watching with open eyes thieves cannot enter. They can only break in while you are asleep and snoring. Similarly, if you are continuously alert, the mind cannot delude you. It will only take over if you fail to keep your attention on rising thoughts."
Sung by Gabriella Burnell
Song of Mother Madālasā
You are pure, conscious and taintless.
You are not subject to the illusoriness of the world.
Give up this sleep of delusion, this dream which confounds the mind.
Why are you crying? You are pure!
The name you have acquired is not yours, merely a lind-created fiction applied to you.
The body is not you, nor are you of it.
Absolutism is Cruelty
I recently stumbled upon another "teacher" who claimed that it doesn't make a difference if one has realized his true nature or not, that whether people are suffering or not "doesn't matter", that whether one sits in bliss or cries all day, who cares, as it is "all consciousness", all the same "stuff" ultimately.
That's what I am talking about when I say that those people stuck in this "absolutist" paradigm, almost incapable of reconciling the relative and the absolute lenses of perception (yes, the "absolute" view is also a lens!), blindly addicted to this "direct path" fluffy idea, are truly missing the mark...
Let Nisargadatta Maharaj respond to them...
"Question: So even a Jnani has his problems!
Maharaj: Yes, but they are no longer of his own creation. His suffering is not poisoned by a sense of guilt. There is nothing wrong with suffering for the sins of others. Your Christianity is based on this.
Question: Is not all suffering self-created?
Maharaj: Yes, as long as there is a separate self to create it. In the end you know that there is no sin, no guilt, no retribution, only life in its endless transformations. With the dissolution of the personal 'I', personal suffering disappears. What remains is the great sadness of compassion, the horror of unnecessary pain."
Apart from the lack of sensitivity and humanity, and even the cruelty of such statement, to put suffering, delusion, ignorance, at the same level than peace, bliss, love, clarity, wisdom, is absolutely a sign that a person (be it one who consider himself/herself as a "teacher") has actually no idea of what he/she is talking about.
It is true to say that at the widest lens of perception possible (that of Reality prior to duality and non-duality), nothing matters in the least. But at the level of consciousness, hence at the level of manifestation, it truly matters, as the very first fragrances or harmonics arising out of pure consciousness ARE peace, bliss, clarity, and certainly not suffering, delusion or ignorance.
And this is exactly why "seeking" exists. Ultimately, it's consciousness itself (and not the "person") which is trying to regain its own nature of "sat-chit-ananda" (being, consciousness, bliss) within the density of manifestation and duality.
"Before I had studied Zen for thirty years, I saw mountains as mountains, and waters as waters. When I arrived at a more intimate knowledge, I came to the point where I saw that mountains are not mountains, and waters are not waters. But now that I have got its very substance I am at rest. For it's just that I see mountains once again as mountains, and waters once again as waters." - Qingyuan Weixin (9th century)
Mediocrity and Humility
"I am the slave of whoever will not at each stage imagine that he has arrived at the end of his goal. Many a stage has to be left behind before the traveler reaches his destination." - Jalaluddin Rumi
"When a man is a beggar, he thinks that small change is a fortune. It is not. In order to rise above beggarhood, he must rise above small change, even though he uses it as a means. Used as an end it will become an end." - Ibn Ikbal
"Hindsight, shows how often yesterday's so-called truth may become today's absurdity. Real ability is to respect relative truth without damaging oneself by refusing to realize that it will be superseded." - Idries Shah
"There is a succession of experiences which together constitute the educational and developmental ripening of the learner, according to the Sages. People who think that each gain is the goal itself will freeze at any such stage, and cannot learn through successive and superseding lessons." - Idries Shah
"There are so many who take the dawn for the noon, a momentary experience for full realization and destroy even the little they gain by excess of pride. Humility and silence are essential for a student, however advanced. Only a fully ripened Jnani can allow himself complete spontaneity." - Nisargadatta Maharaj
"Only humility can destroy the ego. The ego keeps you far away from God. The door to God is open, but the lintel is very low. To enter one has to bend." - Ramana Maharshi
Real Transcendence
Such is the paradox of this path, that only if you come real close to your own mind, through a perfect intimacy, you'll be able to transcend it.
You see, trying to escape and flee from the mind, is already what we do automatically as conditioned human being. We are already engaged in a process of denial and avoidance of everything that arises from our own mind which displeases us.
Coming to witness the mind with detachment, coming to observe our mind with equanimity, has nothing to do with by-passing or escaping. You can only witness and observe with accuracy, that which you are very close and intimate with. True witnessing, is the end of all resistance, denial and avoidance.
"The only way out is through." - Carl Jung
"Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate." - Carl Jung
"Your visions will become clear only when you can look into your own heart. Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakes." - Carl Jung
"We cannot change anything unless we accept it." - Carl Jung
Preparing the Ground
Seekers of truth most often focus exclusively on events or experiences of "enlightenment". Although those experiences are important (glimpses, shifts, realizations), what may be even more important, and which is almost always forgotten or underestimated, is the very ground upon which those experiences happen.
You see, experiences of "enlightenment" are like the sprouting and flowering of potentialities within a human being.
A human being is like a land, or a field. The "spiritual path" is the way to turn this field into a beautiful garden or orchard. And here, every competent gardener knows that the land, the soil, the ground, have to be tilled, cleaned, prepared, so that what is going to be sowed or planted, may grow and develop in good conditions.
The land may be at first, in its original condition, too dry or too damp, too acid or too basic, too full of rocks, invaded with too much weed or undesirable bugs. If not worked and prepared, flowers, plants, fruit trees, may still be able to start to sprout and grow, but they will not be able to develop properly, may not be able to survive, may not be able to blossom or give fruits.
That's the same with "spiritual" experiences. They may happen on any ground, prepared or not, but on an unprepared ground/field, you can be sure they will no be able to deliver their full potentiality, most of the time they will not be able to develop, mature and be integrated in the proper way, and will almost always be distorted and deteriorated by what was left unprepared and unrefined within the particular human "field" upon which they arose.
Relative and Absolute Truth
I see so many people sharing fakes news and false information...
What amazes me even more is to see how so many people claiming to be involved in a spiritual path, people who are well educated and knowledgeable for most, are engaged in this sharing and spreading of so much false information and even hoaxes (through memes, texts, shared posts, whatever).
Something to consider I think, is to reflect on how quick we are to bash "others" for "fake news" and lies, when at our own level we have not even the basic level of sanity, rationality and responsibility to check if something we want to share and spread is valid or not, true or false, before we do it...
How can we claim that we are interested in (spiritual) Truth, when we actually don't even care in the least in truth(s) that relate to the world we live in? How can we pretend we are after the "Truth", when we don't even have few seconds and a little effort to devote to checking if what we want to share is true or not? How can we claim we want "ultimate Truth", when we are not even yet responsible about relative truth(s)?
What are we after? Attention, clicks, likes, emotional hits, being comforted in our beliefs and biases, distraction and entertainment no matter what, confirmation of how "right" and "moral" we are, or truth? A question worth being asked to ourselves I think... we might be surprised what comes up...
Most of the time, when I say how superficial, lazy, mediocre and irresponsible we are as conditioned beings, people don't like that too much. But to be honest, I may even be still underestimating the level of superficiality we are capable of, including in the "spiritual" communities.
This also shows how imbalanced we are in our approach of "truth" and "spirituality".
We say/pretend we want to achieve the greatest clarity of the highest "spiritual" truth, while not having yet clarified the very ground upon which this quest will happen. We aspire to reach the higher level, and still avoiding, denying, escaping the very ground level of what/who we are.
This is also where you will see so many seekers pretending they "got" what truth is, and still haven't got a clue about what maya, the illusion, the selfing dynamic (the "ego") is.
The relative level and the absolute level are not separated. The "relative" is the very ladder which we must use to reach the "absolute".
If we haven't gain certain qualities, skills, potential, maturity, at the level of the relative, we will never (else than in our wishful-thinking and self-deceptive dream) be able to approach the higher levels with realism and efficiency.
Craving For Love
As long as you are looking for love outside of yourself, as long as you are craving for others love, attention, acknowledgment and recognition, as long as you believe that your felt sense of incompletion can be resolved with anything outside of you or by anybody, you will delay the experiential realization that your very own being is the love and completion you ever were looking for.
As long as you are waiting, longing, craving for others to love you, you will not be able to love truly. With this conditioned inner attitude, and no matter what you are thinking of yourself, you will always be in some business in your relationships.
Only the one who has discovered love within himself, as his own pure silent being, is capable of true love. Only one who needs nothing from others anymore, who has gained absolute independence, who has found total contentment within himself, as himself, is capable of love and having true disinterested relationships.
"You have to give up everything to know that you need nothing." - Nisargadatta Maharaj
Awakening Is Utterly Personal
As a preamble, let's remember that everything that can be conceived, talked about, written, including all ideas of awakening and truth, are part of the dream. Now, let's talk about what happens within the dream...
Love and spread your feel-good mambo-jumbo mediocre and superficial "spiritual" idiocy and platitudes as much as you want, there are (very few) people who are awakened, most that are not, and some few in the process of awakening. To deny that, in the name of a so-called "ultimate truth", is nuts. Period.
We all start from the personal level and a state of identification, here, in this world.
Awakening, which is a path of transformation of the body-mind itself, within which (among other things) the belief in separation and person-hood has to dissolve through different layers of "deaths", is supposed to help one to attain a higher stage of what a human being can be: the universal stage, which is the stage of conscious embodying of pure consciousness, oneness, non-duality.
But see, when this "death" of the "personal" happens, localization of this realization/transformation within a particular (personal, if you want) body-mind is not lost at all. One doesn't confuse a body/mind with another. A selfless sage knows very well that awakening happened "here" in his particular body-mind, and that this has not happened "there" yet in countless others.
The attainment of the "universal" doesn't annihilate the "personal" level of particular body-minds. The realization of "non-duality", doesn't make the "dual" lens obsolete; it remains available at all times.
Now, to all the superficial seekers believing they "got it", and who are obsessed with and addicted to the so-called "ultimate truth" ("there's no one who awakens", "awakening has nothing to do with anyone"), you might want to hear this: there is no such thing as "ultimate truth" within the dream.
The Absolute Reality (that which alone is real) lies prior to duality and non-duality, prior to free-will and fate, prior to personal and universal, prior to delusion and awakening, prior to illusion and reality, prior false and truth, prior to ego and Self.
Awakening is an all-inclusive process, not a process of denial of anything, of any level, of any stage, of any lens of perception. And certainly not the denial that awakening/enlightenment/realization happens to and within particular body-minds.
Guilt and Shame
Human beings are full of unconscious guilt, which itself generates self-blame and self-hatred. This guilt is produced and arises from 3 levels of what we are.
* At the personal level, it is made of all the memories of our past actions that we are still ashamed of, and that we haven't yet truly faced and integrated. It's based on a reservoir of unconscious or semi-conscious, undigested stuck energies felt/sensed as "dark" or "ugly" within us.
* At the cultural/ethnic level, it is rooted in the shared unconscious collective energies/memories of our ethnic group, which we have inherited with being born is such or such cultural/ethnic group. Here also, there is a lot of undigested, non-integrated memories, source of guilt and shame.
* At the universal level, it is based on the collective memory of the entire human species, past and present. At this unitive level, everything that happened and is happening, anything that a human being has done in the past or is doing now, belongs to us and is part of our psyche, whether we are conscious of it (which is utterly rare) or not. Here also, when this has not been faced and integrated out of remaining unconscious, and because we are literally responsible for the bad/deluded actions of all humanity, a great deal of guilt and shame always inhabits us.
As long as those 3 levels are not truly integrated, two things will happen:
* People will enter in automatic conditioned/unconscious reactivity, as a self-defense mechanism to avoid facing all those unbearable layers of guilt and shame within themselves. This is where self-righteousness and virtue signaling, from an imagined moral high-ground ("I'm better than those horrible people", "I am in the good side of the story"), becomes a neurotic way to cope with it.
* People will unconsciously develop self-blame and self-hatred (at the personal, ethnic and universal levels), as a neurotic way to cope with the unconscious layers of guilt and shame.
Context and Perspective
About subtleties, nuances, and awakening being a process of dissolution of conditioned veils, here are two contradictory statements from Ramana Maharshi.
"Your thinking that you have to make an effort to get rid of this dream of the waking state and your making efforts to attain jnana [realization] or real awakening are all parts of the dream."
"In all cases the effort must be ceaseless and untiring until the goal can be reached."
The question is: how to reconcile such absolute opposite statements? Was Ramana confusing? Not clear? Confused himself? Maybe "awakened", but not a great or coherent teacher (as several said in comments)?
Not at all. Without a trace of doubt, he was awakened AND a really great teacher.
The thing is, only those whose perception has truly started to be transformed and widened, out of their own pragmatical work, can handle such apparent paradox.
See, it's a matter of context and perspective, and as long as you haven't gained that larger perspective out of a real direct experience within yourself, you will not be able to see and understand clearly what's at stake on a spiritual path.
Let's try to give some elements of understanding here...
- To awaken is a process, a path of transformation at the human level. As I said, it's certainly not only about "knowing" or "understanding" what you really are, or having had a "spiritual" experience or shift, be it felt as hugely significant to your limited mind, it's about progressively becoming transparent enough so what you really are can shine through you in the purest way possible.
- Without following a genuine path, without being guided by one who is already transformed, without being firmly engaged in a proper practice, without a huge willingness, effort, discipline, honesty, courage, earnestness, there is not a chance in the world that you will be transformed enough and truly come to embody the real state of "effortlessness" Ramana Maharshi is talking about ("Conscious, deliberate effort is needed to attain that effortless state of stillness.")
- The conditioned mind is rooted in laziness, mediocrity and superficiality. Add this to a great lack of perspective, and you may understand why instead of questioning the apparent paradox Ramana is expressing, dishonest seekers will always pick up and choose the side of the coin that fits their shortcomings: doing no effort and trying to get "it" for free.
- Not everyone is at the same stage on the path, not everyone needs the same instruction. A real master such as Ramana Maharshi knew that, and was addressing each aspirant according to his real inner state of development, not according to what aspirants thought about themselves, not according to some general rule of teaching, not according to a global idea of what "ultimate truth" is.
A friend commented on this saying this: "Postponement is the ego's greatest weapon. Study is the subtlest form of postponement."
No, the ego's greatest weapon, is to *imagine* that you have stopped postponing, or to *imagine* that you are "awakened". Here, the ego won fully.
As for study, it's the very same as with effort and practice. They are not "bad" in and of themselves. Again, context is everything. But without them as means, nothing is possible.
Without language, which arises out of "study" (in the larger sense) you would not even be aware that there is a possibility of freedom and something called "awakening".
Now, even what you call "postponing" can be imaginary. I can imagine that I am postponing to become the greatest violin player in the world, when in fact I don't have any talent, skills or aptitudes to become one.
Again, subtleties and nuances...
Excluding Before Including
Awakening has nothing to do with the essential nature of the Absolute Reality. Intuiting or knowing that the Absolute Reality is timeless, effortless, ever whole, ever pure and perfect as It is and ever were, never subject to any change whatsoever, is not the point at all.
Awakening is the process of transformation and refinement of the human body/mind vehicle, so that instead of being moved by the old self-centered conditioning and programming, it becomes transparent enough, more and more, to become a way for the Absolute Reality to manifest Itself in manifestation and density, in the purest way possible.
In other words, awakening is the process of removing and dissolving of all veils and filters, that are distorting the expression Truth.
Seekers always approach of the process of "awakening" in terms of gaining something, or adding something to themselves: new "spiritual" experiences, clarity, knowledge, a shift, an understanding, an epiphany, a realization, a new teaching, a new teacher. No matter what "spiritual blah-blah" they are using to cover that fact, it's always about gaining something "more".
I haven't met one single seeker who was ready to accept that in his original inner state of confusion, he needed to lose something before gaining something else, and that he (like everybody else) needed a period of preparation, maturation, clarification, in order to be fit enough to add or gain anything of value which could be then properly integrated.
Irrationally, everybody on this path, always considers himself already prepared, ready, fit enough, mature enough, balanced enough, clear enough, refined enough to acquire "truth" or "awakening".
You see, it's a like wearing since ever a pair of distorting glasses without you knowing it, and looking everywhere to find a pair of glasses that you will wear on top of the distorting glasses, so you may see clearly. It's insane and inefficient.
So, because context is everything on a spiritual path, and because you are the context, you will have to understand that your own human ground needs to be prepared, and that you will need to first learn to:
- Exclude before including
- Remove before adding
- Lose before gaining
- Get rid of false distorting ideas, concepts and beliefs, before new true ideas can impact you properly
- Let go of old detrimental habits, before new beneficial habits may be adopted in an integrated way
- Balance the lower before the higher can be integrated correctly
- Detach yourself from the unnecessary before what's necessary can transform you
- Disconnect at a lower level of your being before that connecting at a higher level can happen beneficially
- See the false for what it is, before the truth may be seen clearly
If this is not taken into account with great earnestness, no matter what you encounter on what you imagine is your "path", no matter how huge, relevant, impressive, and amazing you may think it is, it will always be distorted and filtered through your unprepared conditioned ground, it will never be able to be integrated properly, and no real embodied transformation has any chance to occur. You can be sure that what's left unseen and unconscious in you at the conditioned levels, will hijack whatever you experience as being an "awakening".
"True innocence is not by birth. It is fought for, and obtained. True innocence is not a thing of kid's toys and diapers and drools and chuckles.It is rather a thing of swords and blood and tears and groans. True innocence is not a kid's face. True innocence is a Kabir's face." - Kabir
"God is not found in the soul by adding anything, but by a process of subtraction." - Meister Eckhart
Subtlety and Refinement
Most spiritual seekers I meet, are confusing what's subtle with what's complicated.
You see, there is a fake "simplicity" which is grounded in conditioning, lack of refinement, superficiality and mediocrity, and a true "simplicity" which is grounded in the subtlety and refinement of a widened perception.
The inner life of the unrefined, non-transformed conditioned man, no matter how "advanced" or "enlightened" he believes he is, is always rooted in dualistic perception. At that level, the mind is almost incapable of handling subtlety and nuance, apparent contradictions and paradoxes, perceiving everything (including spirituality) through a dualistic black and white filter. At that level, things are irremediably whether true or false.
Subtleties, are even a threat to his way of functioning, because such conditioned mind/man, needs very solid dualistic reference points and views, in order to feel "safe", in order to preserve what he calls his "knowledge", and to preserve the apparent solidity of the "knower" himself.
This happens in all domains of life (psychology, social relations, politics...) but also in the spiritual domain. This is where you will see people clinging very firmly to dualistic, one-sided and oversimplified so-called spiritual or ultimate "truth".
This is where seekers will feel embarrassed and disoriented when encountering subtlety, nuance, and more refined and widened ways of perception, and where, out of resistance, they will call that "too complicated" and "not true". A good example of that, is their inability to reconcile the necessity of personal effort on a path, while holding on to the fact that our universal essence is effortless.
So, why are subtleties and nuances important, you might ask? Because they are the true marks and fruits of awakening, because they are the signs that a real "spiritual" transformation has started to occur in the seeker's body-mind. A real process of awakening transforms, refines, opens up and widens discernment and perception at heights and widths unknown and inaccessible to the conditioned man and ordinary spiritual seeker, and bring one at a depth of existence where things are now always perceived as true and false at the same time.
"If it's not paradoxical, it's not true." - Shunryu Suzuki
"The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposing ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function." - F. Scott Fitzgerald
"The pivot of Tao passes through the center where all affirmations and denials converge." - Chuang Tzu
"Whatever you may say will be both true and false. Words do not reach beyond the mind." - Nisargadatta Maharaj
Being Here and Not Here
We human beings are living in a great tension between "I don't want to be here" and "I am terrified to not be here anymore".
In other words, it's a continuous tension and conflict between "I can't stand to live in this impermanent, unstable, uncontrollable and painful life" and "I can't stand the idea of not being part of it anymore".
It means we are unconsciously living two contradictory pull or opposite urge: constantly trying to escape life as it is, and constantly afraid of being irremediably pulled out of it at any moment, at the same time.
This is the root of most of our misery and suffering, because this contradiction can never be resolved at the level it appeared (self-centered conditioning). How to be fully here and not here at the same time? It's impossible.
So, we will have to progressively and experientially learn to face this deep-rooted escapism within ourselves, and come to realize that in truth, nothing can truly be escaped. Escapism, denial, avoidance, is always imaginary, a mental process only, yet it is enough to create the totality of our suffering.
We will have to realize that what we ever wished for, this deep peace and contentment we heard about from sages, lies right here, right now, at the very core of our own being and presence, and that identifying with the very conditioned movement of escapism and avoidance, of "not wanting to be here", is precisely what prevents us to enter and be in contact with this core essence of our own being.
"The only way out is through." - Carl Jung
"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 Maharaj
Truly Born to the World
Somehow, if you want to put it in the simplest way, to awaken, is to become truly honest. It's the end of all denial, the end of attempting to manipulate whatever arises inwardly or outwardly in one's experience for one's own sake (or the sake of one's conditioning, comfort or pleasure, we could say), and the end of all wishful-thinking.
Contrary to what is often inferred through the term "awakening", it is to be born for real into the world, not a withdrawing from it in any way. And this true birth, is obviously something very rare.
Stabilization in Being
The conditioned man has no center of his own. It is like to say that he has no "being" yet.
Fully identified with the endless chaotic programmed projections of his mind, he is like a leaf in the wind, moved wherever the thought projections go.
One of the first goal of a "spiritual" path for a seeker of truth, is to work on himself so that he progressively acquires and regains a stable center of being (or conscious presence we could say), independent of his mind's projections. This the stage where a tremendous effort, a great discipline, earnestness and dedication are absolutely required, to break identification with the self-centered dreaming mind.
If this step is not taken, nothing real can be attained and no true transformation can unfold.
A lot of superficial seekers, moved by their conditioned laziness and mediocrity, following the lead of superficial so-called "teachers", will tell you that "being" is all there is, that "being" is already what they are, and that nothing needs to be sought after or attained.
What they don't realize, is that without the work described above, without having regained a true center of conscious being, without a real stabilization of their attention at the root of being, all this is nothing but more projections of their mind with which they are identified with and moved by. They are only "dreaming" of being "spiritual", "clear" or "awakened".
Worrying
Peace is the (temporary or in the long term) end of self-concern and worrying about oneself.
To come to this end, is a progressive process, parallel with coming to a term with identification with thoughts.
What is self-worrying? Thoughts only, and identification/involvement with those thoughts patterns.
We need to understand that "worrying" is a very deep-rooted mechanism of the conditioned mind. There are layers to it, which need to be discovered and brought up at a conscious level, whether those worries are about the physical, material, psychological, emotional, relational, social, or spiritual domain.
And the problem we have to face here, is that things that are very much habitual, recurrent or continuous in our inner life experience, and that thought processes that we are identifying with for such a long time, are now taken to be totally "normal", hence are not seen anymore, out of being taken for "who we are".
So we will have to dig up and detect, with a very alert attentiveness, layers after layers, those patterns of mind-worrying, starting with the most obvious of them, and until we reach those low level self-worrying thoughts that where previously absolutely unconscious.
And this is where to learn witnessing with equanimity our inner life, is of utter importance.
When thought-patterns of worries are seen and detected, we should remember we can't be what we perceive. The perceiver of worries, is itself never worried. This is where we will also learn to shift our attention, stay as the "perceiver", and ignore, let go, give up, surrender the perceived thought-worrying stories with great constancy and perseverance.
"Misery is only unwanted thoughts." - Ramana Maharshi
"Worry is like a rocking chair, it gives you something to do but it doesn't get you anywhere." - Zen Saying
"Your ultimate need is to get established in the changeless peace of the Self. For this you have to give up all thoughts." - Annamalai Swami
"Can any one of you by worrying add a single hour to your life?" - Jesus (Matthew 6:34)
"That which is, is peace. All that we need do is to keep quiet. Peace is our real nature. We spoil it. What is required is that we cease to spoil it." - Ramana Maharshi
"Bliss is a thing which is always there and is not something that comes and goes. That which comes and goes is a creation of the mind and you should not worry about it." - Ramana Maharshi
Saturation and Cristallization
How to reconcile the fact that the path is both progressive and instantaneous? How to solve the paradox that only effort can lead to effortlessness?
Watch this 1.30 min video below first and then read.
In the video, we see a chemical reaction called crystallization. You have at first a container: water. Then you add a lot of a salted chemical principle until the water becomes super-saturated with it. At this point of super-saturation, nothing seems to happen, nothing seems to have transformed the water in any way. But then, you add that very last tiny bit of salt, and instantaneously, a transformation/crystallization happens.
The same happens on a spiritual path, at every stage that needs to be attained and truly realized.
The progressive path and all efforts required, is the stage where you add the "chemical principle" (seeking, enquiry, studying with a master, glimpses, partial experiences, partial realizations, clearing out basic conditioning and healing psychological neurosis, refining/mastering the mind, meditation, contemplation), to the "water" (to yourself). And the direct path or instantaneous realization, is the stage where out of the water having reached a last stage of super-saturation, a very last tiny insignificant addition of salt will be enough to initiate what seems to be an instantaneous happening (spontaneous crystallization/realization).
If you didn't know that what looks like just water, had actually been super-saturated previously, and if you were only to see the addition of the last tiny bit of salt, you would obviously conclude that this tiny bit is the entire cause of the transformation/crystallization, right?
And this illusion is exactly the reason why so many seekers and so many neo-teachers out there, are so confused and so confusing, and why they are blindly clinging to this deluded "nothing to do" attitude, and so-called "direct path" and "instantaneous" awakening.
And that is why you can see so many seekers desperately trying to add a "tiny bit of salt" without any real result whatsoever (to the point that they end up imagining illusory results), and why so many so-called teachers who are absolutely ignorant about the entire process, end up misleading everybody through the teaching and preaching that what is required is just a "tiny bit of salt".
For example, there are lots of folks, groups and teachers, out there, preaching that all that is required to "awaken" is to see "no self". They are selling the idea that through a guided enquiry (the "tiny bit of salt"), one can "awaken". What are the results? Pathetic and horrendous. It is only creating a whole bunch of folks and so-called "awaken guides", who are not transformed in the least, and obviously still full of imbalances and neurosis. But now, with another layer of delusion: a spiritual neurosis.
So you see, it is true that it is possible to realize this "no self" in a timeless instant, to attain a state of clarity so refined, that a very last tiny kick can produce a complete reliable seeing of the self/selfing dynamic, which will itself start to initiate an irreversible real transformation. But surely not before years and years of effort and work, of discipline and refinement, not before one has already seen many, many different facets of the ego-dynamic, not before many partial glimpses and experiences has been had, at many levels of our being. Not before a state of super-saturation has been achieved.
And then, to push the analogy a bit further, you will see that although the transformation starts instantaneously as soon as the last "bit of salt" is added, the crystallization itself is taking some time to unfold. This is where true integration and maturation happens "on its own" (given that we don't mess with the process).
Also, the fact that nothing (or nothing important or stable) seems to be going on to the "water" for a long while, no appearance of transformation, no matter how much salt chemical is added, is a good analogy of why we should absolutely be persevering... this is faith, blind faith, trust in the words/wisdom of the teacher/master (the "chemist").
We must keep going "adding salt", we must keep saturating the "water", because we don't know when it will be ready (super-saturated) to receive that "last bit of salt" that will initiate the "instantaneous" transformation/crystallization.
If we stop, again and again, because we don't see any apparent transformation of the water, we will never reached this super-saturated stage.
Note also that to reach that state of super-saturation, you need to heat the water many times. Just adding the salt at room temperature will not be able to reach that stage of super-saturation. When heating the water, then letting the water rest, then heating again, it allows more and more "salt" to be added, until super-saturation is attained. This bit was also a great analogy. We need heat and pressure in order to be "ready".
This "heat and pressure", is provided in 3 ways I think.
1- By life itself, by all experiences of life that is shocking and pressurizing the system (loss, betrayal, difficulties, etc...) which help dissolving the "ego", making it more "humble", more capable to receive.
2- By our own earnest and dedicated practice. This is where mediocrity and lack of perseverance will never do it.
3- Last but not least, through the heat and pressure provided by a teacher/master, who's pushing us to go further and further.
"Don't bother about anything, just continue abiding in the 'I am', a moment will come when it will be pleased and reveal all the secrets." - Nisargadatta Maharaj
"There will be periods of frustration; there will be periods of doubt. Your worldly involvements would hamper your Sadhana and an atmosphere of defeat would prevail. But, come what may, just throw everything aside, don't bother about anything and continue your abidance in the 'I am' with all earnestness. The 'I am' would test your endurance, but a moment would come when it will be pleased with you, become your friend and release its stranglehold on you, and reveal all the secrets." - Nisargadatta Maharaj
"The task seems hopeless until suddenly all becomes clear and simple and so wonderfully easy." - Nisargadatta Maharaj
"Don't worry about whether you are making progress or not. Just keep your attention on the Self twenty-four hours a day. Meditation is not something that should be done in a particular position at a particular time. It is an awareness and an attitude that must persist throughout the day. To be effective, meditation must be continuous. If you want to water a field you dig a channel to the field and send water continuously along it for a lengthy period of time. If you send water for only ten seconds and then stop, the water sinks into the ground even before it reaches the field. You will not be able to reach the Self and stay there without a prolonged, continuous effort. Each time you give up trying, or get distracted, some of your previous effort goes to waste. Continuous inhalation and exhalation are necessary for the continuance of life. Continuous meditation is necessary for all those who want to stay in the Self." - Annamalai Swami
Confusion and the Big Picture
I am very aware that everything that is posted here, will be truly useful only to the very few, and will even be a source of more confusion and delusion for most.
It's not that what is written here is confusing in itself, but that most seekers who read it are confused. And when there is confusion (which is and will be the case as long as we have not attained a certain stage of freedom from identification and some genuine clarity), almost everything will be filtered and used to feed this confusion.
Just an example. Some posts talk about the utter importance of effort, dedication, perseverance, and discipline. Some other posts talk about effortlessness, how the concept of a "doer" is illusory, and how in truth there is nothing to get or attain, as we already are what the mind is looking for.
The point is, the confused one will never be able to reconcile this perceived apparent paradox. He will always pick one or the other, according to the only criteria available at this stage of confusion: whether it feels pleasant or not, whether it's feeding his deluded preconceived ideas or threatening them.
The root of this confusion, lies in the lack of clarity and the incapacity to see the big picture of the spiritual path.
Here's an analogy of the situation (within the limits of every analogy, of course).
To make some good bread (in order to feed yourself and to share the bread with others), you need a correct recipe, you need to know where and how to get the ingredients, and you need to be taught by someone who's experienced, all the tricks and traps about bread making.
Once you've gathered all the required ingredients, you will need to follow the correct procedure, and all the required stages. From mixing the flour with water, salt and yeast in correct proportions and order, to kneading, to putting the dough to rest at the right temperature, to molding the dough, heating the oven at the right temperature, to baking the bread with the right amount of time.
So you see, a post can be written describing with details the kneading stage (effort) and another post about the resting stage of the dough (effortless), and what's going to happen for the confused ones who don't see the big picture of the entire procedure, is that they will grasp at one of those steps of the other.
One will cling to the idea that to "make some bread" is to "knead". For him, to "knead" is what awakening is about, or the only "way" for awakening to happen. So he will "knead" obsessively, out of his tendency to seek for constant activity and agitation, hoping that his "kneading" alone, will lead at some point to the "bread".
Another will cling to the idea that to "make some bread" is to do nothing and just putting the "dough" to "rest", out of his conditioned tendency to laziness and mediocrity, hoping that a "bread" will then appear out of the blue.
Sounds silly, right? Yet, this is exactly what's going among seekers of "truth".
Gaining and Losing
A friend said, in substance, that he experienced already many things on his path, no-mind/silence, experiencing the unaffected witness, moments of deep joy and peace, etc., but that he still feels no deep satisfaction, still experience a deep longing without knowing for what, and is still lost as to knowing what he really is.
What I notice a lot in the spiritual seeking world, is how people consider what is their progress, as always "positive", as always something that was added to them, something that was gained (silence, joy, peace, so-called "spiritual" experiences).
I still have a to meet a seeker who is rejoicing about what he has lost! I still have to meet someone who will consider that to come to see and realize how superficial, mediocre, lazy, inconsistent, self-pitying, complacent, hypocritical, he is as a conditioned human and as a seeker of truth, how much he is lacking earnestness, courage and determination, and how he is full of distorting preconceived ideas, is a great victory and progress!
It has been said in all great spiritual traditions, that nothing can be added to a pot that is already full to the brim. It has been said countless times, that the art of waking up is first of all about knowing what to reject, what to exclude, what to let go of, first of all about discovering and giving up wrong ideas, false beliefs and useless conditioned patterns of thoughts and behaviors, before starting to include right ideas that might have a real and efficient effect on the human system.
Another thing about this: the mind is a very, very poor tool to measure one's progress on the path.
So, I think we should remember that very often, what the mind is seeing as a great progress, might actually be a period of stagnation, and what it is seeing as a period of stagnation and failure, might actually be a time when things are truly deepening. And that is why patience and perseverance are great skills to develop on this path...
Witnessing Thoughts
Have you noticed that thoughts can only arise now, now, now and now?
That is why to come to a state of neutral witnessing of thoughts can be so powerful.
When identification is running, it means that we are losing that position of witnessing, and that we are involved with the content of thoughts, instead of just noticing the appearance and disappearance of thoughts.
When we are involved with the content of thoughts, this is where we seem to be losing sight of the "now", because "past" and "future" are nothing but concepts embedded in the content of thoughts themselves.
Try to play with that, and put yourself in the position of witnessing the thought process itself with great alertness, as if it has absolutely nothing to do with you (the same way you would observe something happening outside of you with equanimity), with no involvement whatsoever in the content of the thoughts themselves.
If you genuinely try, you will come to notice that your mind comes to a state of stillness all by itself.
Out of this, you may discover experientially that only your involvement with the content of thoughts, was fueling the thinking process.
"It was my great debt to Vishnu Bhaskar Lele that he showed me this. "Sit in meditation", he said, "but do not think, look only at your mind; you will see thoughts coming into it; before they can enter throw them away from you till your mind is capable of entire silence." I had never heard before of thoughts coming visibly into the mind from outside, but I did not think of either questioning the truth or the possibility, I simply sat down and did it. In a moment my mind became silent as a windless air on a high mountain summit and then I saw a thought and then another thought coming in a concrete way from outside; I flung them away before they could enter and take hold of the brain and in three days I was free. From that moment, in principle, the mental being in me became a free Intelligence, a universal Mind, not limited to the narrow circle of personal thought or a labourer in a thought-factory, but a receiver of knowledge from all the hundred realms of being and free too to choose what it willed in this vast sight-empire and thought-empire." - Sri Aurobindo
"There are in fact several ways. My own way was by rejection of thought. "Sit down", I was told, "look and you will see that your thoughts come into you from outside. Before they enter, fling them back." I sat down and looked and saw to my astonishment that it was so; I saw and felt concretely the thought approaching as if to enter through or above the head and was able to push it back concretely before it came inside. In three days - really in one - my mind became full of an eternal silence - it is still there. But that I don't know how many people can do. One (not a disciple - I had no disciples in those days) asked me how to do Yoga. I said:"Make your mind quiet first." He did and his mind became quite silent and empty. Then he rushed to me saying: "My brain is empty of thoughts, I cannot think. I am becoming an idiot." He did not pause to look and see where these thoughts he uttered were coming from! Nor did he realise that one who is already an idiot cannot become one. Anyhow I was not patient in those days and I dropped him and let him lose his miraculously achieved silence." - Sri Aurobindo
"To get rid of the random thoughts of the surface physical mind is not easy. It is sometimes done by a sudden miracle as in my own case, but that is rare. Some get it done by a slow process of concentration, but that may take a very long time. It is easier to have a quiet mind with things that come in passing on the surface, as people pass in the street, and one is free to attend to them or not - that is to say, there develops a sort of double mind, one inner silent and concentrated when it pleases to be so, a quiet witness when it chooses to see thoughts and things, - the other meant for surface dynamism. It is probable in your case that this will come as soon as these descents of peace, intensity or Ananda get strong enough to occupy the whole system." - Sri Aurobindo
Face Your Conditioning
To witness/observe, and to abide as/in being/I am, has nothing to do with denial and escapism.
To take some distance from the mind, will produce two things.
One, this withdrawing of attention will help little by little to stop fueling a lot of the insane and unnecessary self-centered thought rumination. And in return will help us to abide more as being/I am/presence/now.
Two, out of the distance created, it will help us to see and to become conscious of certain conditioned patterns of thoughts, which were previously unconscious when we were totally identified with and immersed in mind (you cannot see what you're identified with).
It's a subtle dance here, depending on where we are on the path of breaking down identification.
But generally, there's a learning curve here, where discernment has to be gained as to whether to ignore and drop some patterns of thoughts (which are somehow already known to be habitual and irrelevant), or discovering something new and recurrent about our conditioning that needs to be seen for what it is and acknowledge.
If we discover something new, it's not about using it to enter into rumination again, or using it to feed blame and guilt. It's about honesty, about becoming conscious of what still inhabits us, so we are not being played by it anymore.
As an example, you may already know your conditioned tendency to ruminate thoughts about a fear to be judged by others, which hinders your behavior/actions in the world. Fine. When this habitual pattern of thoughts appears, you drop it, you come back to thoughtless presence, and learn to let your behavior be more fluid, less or not influenced by this conditioning.
But you may also encounter and discover for the first time a new layer of conditioned thinking. Let's say some recurrent sense of bitterness or irascibility when meeting certain people or life circumstances, producing specific patterns of thought rumination. Here, it has to be acknowledged, not denied, no resisted, not pushed away. Again, no blame, no guilt, not an opportunity to indulge in it and ruminate about it, we just notice, and we remain open to see more of it.
If we do that, and that's the beauty of this type of neutral observing/noticing, we will often come to discover other underlying layers of this specific pattern, which would have remained hidden if the first layer had not been seen and acknowledge. Maybe you will find an underlying thought-layer of judgment, which itself might reveal a layer of arrogance ("I am so better and more awake than those silly people!"), or realize that what makes you bitter, irascible and judgmental about others behavior is because they are mirroring something in you that you hate, deny or blame yourself for...
Many people/seekers, equates this "come to know yourself", as coming to know what they truly are, coming to know they are "awareness", or "being", or "non-dual", or "God", or whatever.
We have to understand that, even if that may have its place, it's always metaphorical. You will never "know" yourself, like you would know something, or perceive an object (be it some ultimate "knowledge"). In reality, you can not know who you are, at all. You can only be who/what you are. This has been said relentlessly by all traditions and great sages.
But what's not metaphorical, is come to know yourself as to come to discover and know what you are not. Here, subject/object perception and knowledge is valid, and as a matter of fact, absolutely required. Only through knowing from head to toe what you are not, you will come to truly be what you really are.
Justifying the Sickness
The essence of reality, of what we are, is absolutely perfect, absolutely pure, beyond even the concept of purity.
The process of "awakening" has very little to do with having some particular experience, be it a seemingly huge and relevant one.
This organic process, which is a transformational process, is way wider than that, and it's about purifying the whole body/mind organism of all the conditioned filters and veils, of all self-centered motives and intentions, that are polluting and distorting the actual manifestation of this original "purity".
Our fundamental essence doesn't require any purification, but the manifesting of it, here, in the world, in duality, requires a purification of the human vehicle. The cleaner, clearer, emptier it becomes, the more this essence will be able to be manifested in its purest form.
People, seekers like teachers, who are clinging to this "human mess", the human conditioned sickness and neurosis, as if it was something wonderful, and rationalizing it with spiritual concepts, are just falling in love with their own disease and shortcomings, our of mediocrity and ignorance.
Embracing our "human mess" and our "flaws" may surely be a required stage, to balance our innate conditioned pull to deny and escape, but it's only a preliminary stage, actually a psychological stage, which has very little to do with spirituality and awakening.
Isolating the "I"
"I want what I want, because I know that what I want is what I need."
"I want what I need."
"I want true peace and awakening."
"I want."
"I"
""
The reason why we call that progression a "path", is because the goal is the dissolution of this false conditioned "I", so that only "" remains.
But the thing is, the "I" will never be able to truly let go, to give up, or to be let go of, or given up, as long as it is entangled in and with the self-centered conditioned mind. So it has to be "purified" from all attachments of any kind first, so that it may remain on its own. Only at that point, when the "I" or the "I-thought" stands alone and unattached, it's going to be up to Grace. Before that, you have work to do.
Necessity of the Teacher
Without the help of a real teacher, I truly believe that one cannot overcome his/her own the self-deception and the endless tricks of the conditioned mind.
As long as we are polluted by the ego-mind conditioning, it's going to be very hard, if not completely impossible, to know by ourselves where we truly are on the path, and what is our real inner state of development.
We have to understand that the belief in being "special" is built-in the self-centered conditioned mind. Out of this, always arises the false belief in the seeker's mind that he is ready enough, mature enough, prepared enough, clear enough, sincere enough, skilled enough, to hear, receive and digest the highest teachings, and to reach "awakening". "I want, so I am going to get" is the motto of the immature seeker. And very rarely he asks himself if he is in the position to get what he wants, and however never question the fact that what he wants may not be at all what he truly needs.
We have to understand that the distorting "ego-mind" mechanism is absolutely the same in all, producing the very same flaws and veils in all, and that as long as this ego is there, it will affect all people and seekers in the very same way.
Annie asks: "In what way you might have kidded yourself [on the path]?". It's very simple, in all ways possible.
Annie also wonders how to overcome this "kidding myself" deep rooted mechanism, and I would say: learn to see, acknowledge and accept first that you are not special in any way. Learn to accept that you already are kidding yourself and lying to yourself in countless ways that are still totally unconscious to you. Be absolutely open to this first.
Which means, be open about the fact that, out of not being special in any way, and still having in yourself this ego programing, it is safe to say that all the layers of this programing are there within yourself, whether latent, semi-active or fully active: laziness, superficiality, shallowness, mediocrity, complacency, hypocrisy, self-centeredness, selfishness, greediness, cupidity, envy, jealousy, arrogance, self-importance, manipulativeness, disloyalty, intolerance, judgmental-ness, fear, cowardice, anger, impatience, self-pity, denial, escapism, repression, self-centered rationalization, self-deception, etc...
As long as those flaws, tendencies, filters, veils, are remaining unconscious, repressed or denied, you can be sure that they will impact, drive, pollute and distort your involvement and progress on the spiritual path.
"Homo sum, humani nihil a me alienum puto" - Terence, 195/185–159 BC ("I am a human being, I consider nothing that is human alien to me.")
"So if you are only concerned about feeling good, you are far better off having a full-body massage or listening to some uplifting or life-affirming music than receiving dharma teachings, which were definitely not designed to cheer you up. On the contrary, the dharma was devised specifically to expose your failings and make you feel awful.
Try reading "The Words of My Perfect Teacher". If you find it depressing, if Patrul Rinpoche's disconcerting truths rattle your worldly self-confidence, be happy. It is a sign that at long last you are beginning to understand something about the dharma. And by the way, to feel depressed is not always a bad thing. It is completely understandable for someone to feel depressed and deflated when their most humiliating failing is exposed. Who wouldn't feel a bit raw in such a situation? But isn't it better to be painfully aware of a failing rather than utterly oblivious to it? If a flaw in your character remains hidden, how can you do anything about it?
So although pith instructions might temporarily depress you, they will also help uproot your shortcomings by dragging them into the open. This is what is meant by the phrase "dharma penetrating your mind", or, as the great Jamgon Kongtrul Lodro Taye put it, "the practice of dharma bearing fruit", rather than the so-called good experiences too many of us hope for, such as good dreams, blissful sensations, ecstasy, clairvoyance, or the enhancement of intuition."
- Dzongsar Jamyang Khyentse Rinpoche
"If you look for truth, you may find comfort in the end; if you look for comfort you will not get either comfort or truth only soft soap and wishful thinking to begin, and in the end, despair." - C.S. Lewis
Know What You Are Not
A friend said: "Does this mean you first have to cleanse the mind and unravel the deep rooted conditioned dishonesty to be able to go beyond the mind? In other words to have a healthy ego before transcending it?"
Yes. As Nisargadatta said, you cannot leave a mess behind and go beyond. We cannot transcend, or integrate we could say, a conditioned programing that is still driving us in many ways, if it remains at the unconscious level.
To "awaken" can mean many things, but for quite some time, it will mean to learn to become awake to, and aware of ourselves. That's what "enlightenment" means, to bring the light of consciousness, of attention, of clean observing, of neutral noticing, to what was previously unconscious, hidden, in the "dark".
We cannot be free of what we don't know. We cannot surrender or let go of the "false" if we don't come to know this "false" from head to toe.
How can you drop your attachment to something (and be free of it) if you don't know what this "something" is, and if you are not even aware that you are attached to it?
The "spiritual" path, cannot be based on any denial whatsoever. It has to be all-inclusive.
You cannot "transcend" the ego-mind mechanism ("go beyond", or realize what's "beyond" it, let's say), if you don't know and see very clearly what this ego is, how it works, how it operates, of what it is made of, how tricky it is, how cunning it is...
So in the end it's not really about coming to know who we really are (it can't be "known" anyway), which is the obsession of most seekers on the spiritual path looking for a quick fix, but to come to know what we are not. This is where the work must happen.
So how to achieve a "healthy ego"? Through discovering and uncovering what an "unhealthy" ego is. The "unhealthy" ego (which is the conditioned ego) has certain universal built-in qualities (or filters, or veils) like superficiality, laziness, mediocrity, hypocrisy, dishonesty, complacency, selfishness, self-centered rationalization, self-pity, greed, envy, etc... that needs to be uncovered and faced for what they are.
And it's not an easy work, because "ego" IS itself a mechanism of protection of itself, of its own self-image, it is itself a self-deceptive mechanism, it is dishonesty itself.
But if this work is not done, you can be sure that those unseen/non-enquired qualities will invade, distort and corrupt what we imagine is our "spiritual" path. We'll be fooled, again and again.
Just a small applied example with "mediocrity". The egoic mechanism is mediocre. Which means that as a conditioned human being, I will be content enough with very little, with small changes, with very small improvements in my life. If this is not seen, uncovered, uprooted, we cannot go very far on the spiritual path, because we will be stopped on our track every time something changed and improved a bit, as soon as we gained a little peace or relief, as soon as we gained a little understanding or clarity...
This is also why many people out there are believing and considering themselves to be "awakened", just out of having had a little understanding, a small glimpse or a little preliminary breakthrough.
"Don't forget that the one who knows his Devil, knows his God." - Shams Tabrizi
"Question: When do I know that I have discovered the truth? Nisargadatta: When the idea, "this is true", "that is true" does not arise. Truth does not assert itself, it is in the seeing of the false as false and rejecting it. It is useless to search for truth when the mind is blind to the false. It must be purged of the false completely before truth can dawn on it." - Nisargadatta Maharaj
"Questioner: How to find the Atman [Self]? Ramana Maharshi: There is no investigation into the Atman. The investigation can only be into the non-self. Elimination of the non-self is alone possible. The Self being always self evident will shine forth of itself." - Ramana Maharshi
"Do not try to know the truth, for knowledge by the mind is not true knowledge. But you can know what is not true - which is enough to liberate you from the false. The idea that you know what is true is dangerous, for it keeps you imprisoned in the mind. It is when you do not know, that you are free to investigate. And there can be no salvation, without investigation, because non-investigation is the main cause of bondage." - Nisargadatta Maharaj
"Reality is not the result of a process; it is an explosion. It is definitely beyond the mind, but all you can do is to know your mind well. Not that the mind will help you, but by knowing your mind you may avoid your mind disabling you. You have to be very alert, or else your mind will play false with you. It is like watching a thief - not that you expect anything from a thief, but you do not want to be robbed. In the same way you give a lot of attention to the mind without expecting anything from it." - Nisargadatta Maharaj
"The mind is the real cause of our problems, the mind that is working mechanically night and day, consciously and unconsciously. The mind is a most superficial thing and we have spent generations, we spend our whole lives, cultivating the mind, making it more and more clever, more and more subtle, more and more cunning, more and more dishonest and crooked, all of which is apparent in every activity of our life. The very nature of our mind is to be dishonest, crooked, incapable of facing facts, and that is the thing which creates problems; that is the thing which is the problem itself." - Jiddu Krishnamurti
Blooming of Humanity
To truly awaken, IS to be human in the highest and deepest way one can imagine. Awakening IS the blooming of humanity.
So when I keep seeing in a lot of "spiritual" places, people talking about "integrating" their so-called "awakening" or "deep spiritual experience" back into the human life, I know there is something smelly and fishy about it.
If your claimed "awakening" is already not making yourself way more human than you were... you can be sure that this has nothing to do with any genuine awakening in the first place, and no matter then how much you are trying to "integrate" it, you have just entered a path of lies and self-deception.
If it didn't transformed you into a fully balanced human being, fully integrated in the human life, fully balanced and sane psychologically, you can be sure that your "enlightenment" is almost entirely based on denial, suppression, avoidance and escapism, and no matter how profound you imagine it to be, it's actually nothing but your conditioned mind playing tricks on you.
Any move in direction of the spiritual life based on avoidance, denial and escapism, is assured to create ever more mess and more imbalance that there was in the human body/mind system in the first place.
In short, you cannot be "awakened" or "realized" and still be full of psychological neurosis and imbalances.
You cannot build a solid and stable house on quicksands.
So before (or after, if it's too late) following your desire to attain the mountain top of spirituality, be sure that what you actually need first, is not to work on yourself at base camp and to unravel (among other things) your deep-rooted conditioned lack of honesty.
"To go beyond the mind, you must have your mind in perfect order. You cannot leave a mess behind and go beyond." - Nisargadatta Maharaj
True Reality
When the mind is seen and experienced as real, that which is seeing and experiencing the mind, will seem to be hidden, forgotten, nonexistent, although it is the only true reality.
The more the mind is seen and realized to be unreal, the more that which is seeing and experiencing its unreality, will show itself to be the only reality.
Inattention to Being
When it is said that being/beingness is happiness itself (sat-chit-ananda/existence-consciousness-bliss), it is not a metaphor, not poetry, not some inaccessible esoteric truth, it is a simple and real fact.
And when we talk of "being", we don't talk about some deeply hidden principle who could be uncovered and discovered only after having gone through decades of enquiry or seeking, but of our very obvious and intimate sense of being, of existing, we talk about that simple principle pervading our entire life, and preceding absolutely everything we experience: the sens "I am".
If this inner ever available, ever present being/happiness seems something far away from our actual experience for now, it is only due to the fact that our attention is constantly turned outward (whether as inner objects like thoughts, emotions, memories and expectations, or outer objects and experiences of the world), constantly grasping at what is seen and experienced, and overlooking constantly that which is seeing and experiencing: being, I am.
It then goes that our misery, and us missing the obviousness and happiness of our own being, only arises out of inattention.
This is why all spiritual paths point to the fact that we will have to bring back our attention inwardly, to regain a conscious contact with our very own sense of being, and keep it there.
Out of a lifetime of habit, it's not going to be easy. And without perseverance, persistence, patience, in bringing back a conscious contact with it, the "I am" will not be able to deliver its fragrance to us.
You see, it's a bit like brooding and sitting on an egg. If the bird keeps flying away from the nest several times a day, leaving the egg alone, there's not a chance the egg will hatch.
In the same way, if you keep your attention connected with the "I am", with being, if you keep it close to you and hold your embrace, there will come a time where it will deliver its innate fragrances of peace, happiness and wholeness.
"Nothing stands in the way of your liberation and it can happen here and now, but for your being more interested in other things." - Nisargadatta Maharaj
Peace Is There Already
As conditioned human beings seeking for truth, we have a hard time believing, accepting, not resisting the fact that all we ever dreamed of, all we ever wanted, all we ever desired, all we ever needed, lies right here, right now, at the core of our very own silent being/beingness.
There is no fundamental difficulty whatsoever that we have to overcome to "attain" this pure state of fulfillment and contentment, because this is not anything new, nor a state that needs to be produced, nor something far away requiring a great effort to be reached: it is truly what we already are.
The only major difficulty we will have to encounter on this pathless path, is our own conditioned resistance to let go of our deep rooted habit to seek it outside of us, outside the utter simplicity of pure being (outside, whether inwardly in thoughts and emotions, or outwardly in objects, activities and relationships), our own inability or unwillingness to rest within ourselves.
This simplicity, is absolutely outrageous for one who has been seeking, trying to control, struggling, fighting, all his life to find this peace and contentment.
Having looked forever for the changeless in the changeful, for the unconditional in the conditional, we will not admit and accept easily that a solution is lying right here and now as what we are, prior to any idea of having any problems to solve.
When we've been tricked and fooled for so long by the self-centered thinking mind, when we've been absolutely convinced since ever that "something" is lacking, when we've been absolutely conditioned/programmed to believe that we will be finding peace only once this "something" is found, it's pretty hard to accept to relax and to let ourselves sink into the simplicity of being.
This programming says: "I will be at peace and content once I'll get what I desire, once I'll get rid of this or that, once I'll find love, once I'll find stability in thoughts and feelings, once I'll understand and be perfectly clear, once I'll find truth, once I'll acquire the ultimate knowledge, once I'll be having the highest spiritual experience..."
How outrageous to hear then, that nothing is required at all, that nothing needs to be gained or attained, nothing needs to be solved, nothing needs to be stabilized, nothing needs to be experienced, nothing needs to be understood, that nothing needs to be done... but to just silently be what we already are!
How outrageous to hear that "you" will never succeed, but through admitting your complete failure to make your heart be at peace!
How outrageous to be told, and how difficult to understand, that "you" are not even required, here!
"All the glories will come with mere dwelling on the feeling 'I am'. It is the simple that is certain, not the complicated. Somehow, people do not trust the simple, the easy, the always available. Why not give a honest trial to what I say? It may look very small and insignificant, but it is the seed that grows into a mighty tree. Give yourself a chance!" - Nisargadatta Maharaj
"'I am' is God. Realise 'I am'." - Ramana Maharshi
"People seek it far away - what a pity! They are like him who, in the midst of water, cries out in thirst so imploringly." - Hakuin
"I am so close, I may look distant. So completely mixed with you, I may look separate. So out in the open, I appear hidden. So silent, because I am constantly talking with you." - Jalaluddin Rumi
"This is the mystery of imagination, that it seems to be so real. You may be celibate or married, a monk or a family man; that is not the point. Are you a slave of your imagination, or are you not?" - Nisargadatta Maharaj
Sens of Lack
There is one fundamental element at the root of all discontentment and restlessness within the conditioned man: the sens of lack.
Arising from the original "I-thought" producing the sens of separation, is the unconscious "I am lacking something" thought/belief underlying most of our conditioning. It can be felt as a lack of contentment, wholeness, peace, happiness, love, attention, security (physical, emotional and psychological), clarity, certitude, knowledge, intelligence, wisdom, and it is the root cause of all the restless seeking.
The thing is, this sens of lack is absolutely illusory and unreal, only a root conditioned thought-story. And the key here is to come to realize that an illusory sens of lack can never, and will never be fulfilled, whether inwardly or outwardly, no matter how hard you try, no matter how much effort you put into the process.
But you see, a mental, intellectual, rational understanding of this, will never be enough. It has nothing to do with adding a new belief, or a new view, upon the deluded background of the conditioned mind.
And this is why all the superficial so-called "non-dual" teachings out there, centered only on the description of the situation, are failing to deliver the goods, and even producing more frustration and delusion among the seekers community.
This realization has to be experiential. It must be the fruit of direct experience. We must learn, through the guidance of someone who's clear, and through our own effort, dedication, discipline and earnestness, to come to taste within more and more, until absolute conviction is gained, that which lacks nothing, that which is always ever present, whole, complete, at peace, at rest, safe, and clear.
Diligently withdrawing attention from the restless mind and involvement with the psychological thinking process, and abiding in/as the pure and silent sens of being within us, all day long, is what is going to bring us progressively closer and closer to this experiential realization.
This is the only way the "I am lacking something" root-thought can be truly uprooted, the only way a real embodied certitude can arise.
"You have to give up everything to know that you need nothing." - Nisargadatta Maharaj
"Freedom from all desire is eternity. All attachment implies fear, for all things are transient. And fear makes one a slave. This freedom from attachment does not come with practice; it is natural, when one knows one's true being. Self-knowledge is detachment. All craving is due to a sense of insufficiency. When you know that you lack nothing, that all there is, is you and yours, desire ceases." - Nisargadatta Maharaj
Of Service to God and Life
To "awaken" (as an unfolding verb) could be said to be of service to the organic movement of life, to be of service to the essence of all that is, to be of selfless service to the higher good, of service to true love and clarity, to be of service to an intelligence which arises from way deeper than the conditioned mind. Poetically, it can be said to be of service to God.
And you see, this cannot happen as long as the body/mind is still cluttered with the filters and distorting tendencies of the conditioned self-centeredness (what is called "vasanas" and "samskaras" in Hindu terminology).
When conditioning is still running, and no matter how "spiritual" and "awakened" we believe we are, what we call "love" is not love at all. There will always be a self-centered/neurotic motive (subtle or not) behind every move we make.
True love (which is true service) has nothing to do with the fluffy, superficial and emotional version of "love" and the fluffy so-called "kindness" we imagine it to be in many "spiritual" circles.
In those circles, what most people call "kindness" is most of the time still a strategy of the ego, a self-image strategy based on fear to not being loved and being rejected, a strategy to please and be pleased, and to see oneself and to be seen as "loving" and "spiritual", still a complacent way to hide.
Real love/kindness has nothing to do with that. Real love is fierce, truly selfless and fearless, absolutely vertical, totally uncompromising, firm, honoring truth always, manifesting itself according to what the moment needs, not according to one's fluffy desires, preferences, beliefs and egoic preconceived ideas.
Which means it will manifest itself sometimes through embracing, letting be, and comforting ways, if this is what's required, and sometimes through absolute intransigence, force, inflexibility and resolution.
And this second facet of true love, is what people who are still trapped in the idea that love should be emotionally "pleasant" and "nice", will most often see and feel as "cold", "unkind", "unloving" and "mean".
So the thing is, as long as we are not ready, out of conditioning, to be seen as "cold", "unkind", "unloving" and "mean" by others, we cannot be of service to true love.
Stop Believing Thoughts
You cannot choose your thoughts, they pop-up organically and automatically depending on the body/mind conditioning and the world circumstances.
But you can learn and choose to stop believing in them, to stop giving them fuel, to stop being involved with them, to stop reacting to them, to just be the pure witnessing of them. And for this, you must first learn to become very present and very alert.
And if you do that with perseverance, you will start to see that a thought which previously used to grow into more and more thoughts, and more and more self-centered stories, into more and more repetitive, boring, scaring, painful drama, will now become totally harmless and sterile. This thought will come, and it will go, upon the background of silence which will itself expand more and more.
And the reason is simple: mind, thoughts and conditioning, without your attention and energy, without your belief and reactiveness, cannot sustain themselves for long. You are the crucial factor here, not the mind.
You are not a slave of the mind, you are the king, who forgot he is the king.
You are not a victim of the mind, you are the only one creating your so-called bondage.
"Inattention is what separates us from God." - Bahauddin Naqshband
"Be free from thoughts. Do not hold on to anything. They do not hold you. Be yourself." - Ramana Maharshi
"The Real is ever-present, like the screen on which the cinematographic pictures move. While the picture appears on it, the screen remains invisible. Stop the picture and the screen will become clear. All thoughts and events are merely pictures moving on the screen of Pure Consciousness, which alone is real." - Ramana Maharshi
"Habits create the false notion that thinking is a permanent institution, with which it is impossible to dispense, but enquiry and discrimination will blast this fallacy." - Ramana Maharshi
"Continuous attentiveness will only come with long practice. If you are truly watchful, each thought will dissolve at the moment that it appears. But to reach this level of disassociation you must have no attachments at all." - Annamalai Swami
Die While Alive
Want to eradicate the fear of death?
Die while you are alive.
Bring the mind to a lasting state of pure silence and peace.
Where there is silence and peace, "you" are not there anymore, "you" are dead.
Yet, He is.
"People are afraid that when ego or mind is killed, the result may be a mere blank and not happiness. What really happens is that the thinker, the object of thought and thinking, all merge in the one Source, which is Consciousness and Bliss itself, and thus that state is neither inert nor blank. I don't understand why people should be afraid of that state in which all thoughts cease to exist and the mind is killed. They are every day experiencing that state in sleep. There is no mind or thought in sleep." - Ramana Maharshi
Giving Up Thoughts
"The thought "I am meditating" is an ego thought. If real meditation is taking place, this thought cannot arise." - Annamalai Swami
This is absolutely true, but this might be useful to add some clarification about what Annamalai Swami is talking about here.
The problem, is that such statement (which however needs to be put into the whole context of Annamalai's teaching) can and often will confuse the seekers even more than they already are, and can even be misunderstood to the point where seekers will claim that meditation is not required, useless, and can even be detrimental as "only the ego meditates".
We have to understand that unless we enter the path of meditation (whatever it is for you, abidance, self-remembrance, self-enquiry, giving up the mind, surrender, devotion, etc.) with absolute determination, earnestness and discipline, we will never come to truly experientially understand what Annamalai Swami is talking about.
Through the process of meditation, all "ego-thoughts" will have to be given up, layers after layers, so that we go deeper and deeper into the inner realm of the silent being. This process took Annamalai Swami almost 40 years of dedication, practice and refinement.
And it is only at the very end of the meditative process, when all other "ego-thoughts", all self-centered desires and attachments are left behind, that we will be left with the last "ego-thought" which is "I am meditating". All that will be left is this "I" experiencing "meditation", this "I" experiencing silence, peace, stillness, oneness, wholeness... And only then, this last layer of the self-centered mind, once really isolated and detached from all other attachments, can be given up and let go of. And only then, what will be left is meditation itself, Reality itself, devoid of the "I-thought".
We need to use the mind to dissolve the mind, to use the ego to remove the ego, to use the "I" to remove the "I", which is, as Ramana Maharshi (Annalamai Swami's master) said, is to use a thorn to remove a thorn, or use a stick for stirring the burning funeral pyre which at the end will itself be consumed in the fire.
"Moreover, the integral 'I-thought' implicit in such enquiry, having destroyed all other thoughts, itself finally gets destroyed or consumed, just as a stick used for stirring the burning funeral pyre gets consumed." - Ramana Maharshi
Abidance Reveals Attachments
The path, the practice required to regain sanity (along with peace, rest, stillness, wholeness, freedom, clarity), is utterly simple. It is only to abide in/as "I am", as being, beingness, isness, I-am-ness, as the pure and silent sense "I exist". It is to withdraw entirely from the self-centered mind, to ignore it, to stop giving it any attention whatsoever, and to rest as the pure silent sense of being within.
That's the path. That's simple.
When the instruction is understood, which in itself might already take some time and maturing, we will start to apply effort to this practice. And this is where the real work begins.
You see, it's somehow silly to imagine that to be what you already are should require any practice and any effort. What effort do you need to relax and rest in and as what you really are? If I put a rock (as a metaphor for the conditioned self-centered mind) in front of you and tell you "Don't grasp this rock, and remain in your natural state of not grasping this rock!", do you need effort? Is there any need of any "doing"? Of course not.
But if you have been living your entire life through the habit of grasping this rock, if it became your "natural" way of experiencing life, if having this rock in your hand is so familiar that it makes you feel good and safe, if holding on to this rock has become such a habit that you are now considering it as an extension of yourself, you will have a hard time to let it go and regain your natural state of "non-grasping" the rock, isn't it?
This is what happens when we start the practice of abiding/abidance as/in "I am", as/in the pure sense of being.
Your very attempt to withdraw from the mind and to rest in/as your natural state of being, will start to reveal all your past conditioning, all your attachments to the mind, to what you think you are and to your self-image, all your fears, insecurities, resistances, clinging, denial, lies, unfulfilled desires, neurotic habits, false beliefs, preconceived ideas, hypocrisy, superficiality, laziness, mediocrity, attachment to suffering and lack of real desire to be truly free...
So here, given that you are really earnest in practicing the instruction, you will have to encounter and face within yourself with a great honesty, all the self-centered conditioning which is resisting this letting go, all that is preventing you to abide and rest as pure being, all that makes you grasp and cling to the "rock", again and again. You will have to discover and consciously meet all of it, in order to let it go, layers after layers.
And this is where the work is, and why the path is always progressive.
"Go into [consciousness/I am] and purify it of all that is foreign to it. This work of mental self-purification, the cleansing of the psyche, is essential. It is useless to fight the sense of being a limited and separate person unless the roots of it are laid bare. Clarification of the mind is Yoga." - Nisargadatta Maharaj
"I don't ask anybody to follow any particular path. I just tell them to be what they are, in their natural, spontaneous state. Stabilize there, in the beingness." - Nisargadatta Maharaj
"You cannot transcend what you do not know. To go beyond yourself, you must know yourself." - Nisargadatta Maharaj
"Seeing the false as the false, is meditation." - Nisargadatta Maharaj
"The person should be carefully examined and its falseness seen; then its power over you will end." - Nisargadatta Maharaj
"These spiritual practices are not for knowing one's own Self, which is all-pervading, but only for getting rid of the objects of desire." - Ramana Maharshi
Pure Witnessing
Watch your mind, 24/7. It's way easier than you imagine, because you already are the "watching" of it all. So be that "watching", and realize that any movement of thought having the "I" at its root is false and unreal. Realize that this "I" generating what you call "my mind", is the false personal "I", appearing as thoughts only, already seen and perceived in totality from the real universal "I" which is pure seeing/watching/listening.
Regain that conscious, uninvolved, natural, resting position of pure watching/listening, where even "I have to keep watching my mind" is seen as nothing but a passing thought. This is what to "keep quiet", or to "be still" means.
Out of a life long habit to go along with the mind flow and leave the witnessing position, very quickly, thoughts will arise: "Then what?", "So what?", "What's the point?", "Nothing happens!", "How can I remain like that?", and you will be tempted to follow them and cling to them as "me" and "mine". Be patient! Aren't those thoughts also passing clouds in the ever present sky of pure watching?
"The sense of doership is false. You are a witness, so remain like that. This is the only practice you should perform." - Nisargadatta Maharaj
"When you apperceive that whatever you think yourself to be is only based on memory and anticipation, your search ends and you stand aloof in full awareness of the false as false." - Nisargadatta Maharaj
"There are no conditions to fulfill. There is nothing to be done, nothing to be given up. Just look and remember, whatever you perceive is not you, nor yours. It is there in the field of consciousness, but you are not the field and its contents, not even the knower of the field. It is your idea that you have to do things that entangle you in the results of your efforts - the motive, the desire, the failure to achieve, the sense of frustration - all this holds you back. Simply look at whatever happens and know that you are beyond it." - Nisargadatta Maharaj
"Q: How can I attain Self-realization? M: Realization is nothing to be gained afresh, it is already there. All that is necessary is to get rid of the thought "I have not realized". Stillness or peace is Realization. There is no moment when the Self is not. So long as there is doubt or the feeling of non-realization, the attempt should be made to rid oneself of these thoughts. They are due to the identification of the Self with the not-Self. When the not-Self disappears, the Self alone remains. To make room, it is enough that the cramping be removed; room is not brought in from elsewhere." - Ramana Maharshi
"Abandon every attempt, just be; don't strive, don't struggle, let go every support, hold on to the blind sense of being, brushing off all else. This is enough." - Nisargadatta Maharaj
"You get happiness only when you forget yourself. All other activities are entertainment." - Nisargadatta Maharaj
"Still the mind. You still the mind by not reacting. By watching, by looking, by seeing but not reacting. You sit in the silence observing your mind thinking. Observing your thoughts. Observing your feelings. And you leave them alone. You no longer try to change anything. You stop following your thought patterns. As we discussed before you "Drop it!" Whatever comes to you, you simply drop it! You no longer go along with your thoughts. You catch yourself every time the thoughts start thinking. You keep remembering to catch yourself. To catch yourself thinking." - Robert Adams
Purifying the Mind
"All other knowledge, is only petty, and trivial knowledge; the experience of silence alone, is the real and perfect knowledge." - Ramana Maharshi
We often talk about the "mind", or the noise of the mind (the noise of conditioned self-centered thinking), but what we have to understand is that there are many layers to it.
Pure Reality, as whole, untouched, pure and perfect it might be, may always be here and now as the background/source/essence of all appearances, but It will never be able to be reflected in a mind full of the noise of identification and attachments.
Our path is not that of creating, developing, adding or attaining what's real, but to get rid of the unreal which is obscuring what's already here as pure being. And this path is that of progressive refinement of the conditioned mind.
The more there is identification and attachment, the more crude and opaque the mind is. Real silence (a silence truly integrated in a stable way in one's body/mind, in one's life) cannot be attained and achieved when the mind is at that level of density and noise. We will have to start to get rid of the first layers of conditioning first, and dive deeper and deeper as we go, layer after layer, in order to purify the mind.
In other words, a mind full of trauma, fears, neurosis, delusion, psychological imbalance, countless self-centered attachments, a mind still almost entirely centered in the pain/pleasure dynamic and insecurities, will never be able to attain a deep integrated/stabilized state of silence. It's way too thick for that.
But through removing/dissolving layers after layers of this "noise", the mind can be transformed and refined, and can be stabilized progressively in deeper and deeper states of silence.
If you are habituated to live in an environment full of very loud noise, moving in a place with just a little less noise, is already an improvement and a relief, is already a move toward silence. And that's how it goes with the "spiritual" work.
Until we come to discover and let go of layers of "noise" more and more subtle and refined within oneself, layers that would have been absolutely impossible to detect without having previously cleared the mind of its thicker layers.
Until we come to realize that even the experience of pure silence, is itself a layer of noise.
And of course, everything being possible in this universe, it may happen than out of certain circumstances, one who is deeply imbalanced may all of a sudden be plunged in a state of pure silence (with drugs, with illness, with spiritual practices, with the "help" of irresponsible so-called "teachers"...), but out of the density of the mind, this state will never be able to be stabilized and even less integrated.
And that is why we can see many seekers out there believing that they are "awakened" out of having experienced such a passing state, when in reality they still are a big mess within. Often, this premature encounter with such a silence, impossible to truly integrate in one's life, even becomes another hindrance on the path, creating another neurotic attachment which will be then very, very hard to uproot.
"Maya is destroyed only by engaging with supreme effort in mouna [silence]. It is not destroyed by any other means." - Ramana Maharshi
"Go into [consciousness/I am] and purify it of all that is foreign to it. This work of mental self-purification, the cleansing of the psyche, is essential. It is useless to fight the sense of being a limited and separate person unless the roots of it are laid bare. Clarification of the mind is Yoga." - Nisargadatta Maharaj
Craving for Attention
One of the most common and most powerful impediment to becoming an earnest student/seeker is this: the craving for attention and acknowledgment, the desire to be loved. And if you think that this doesn't apply to the "spiritual" world and the so-called "non-dual" community, think again.
This very deep-rooted dependency and addiction to this craving to be "seen", is at the source of countless other distortions within a human being, at the source of countless aberrations in the life of the immature seeker.
One of the disastrous effect of this addiction to others' attention, is hypocrisy and insincerity. When the unconscious core motivation of a human being or of a seeker is "I want to be seen and loved", you can be sure it will never end nourishing the seed of this self-deceptive hypocrisy.
People will hide (from themselves and from others), lie (to themselves and to others), and will avoid seeing and naming things as they. When the craving for being seen and loved is active, nothing will have any importance other than to polish one's self-image. And this is one of the major problem on the path of a seeker, because to start to acknowledge the fact of insincerity, at least a bit of sincerity is required.
When this addiction is still in place, it also generates a global resistance to truth and truths, which is guaranteed to hinder completely any possibility of further development on one's path.
So, ask yourself: Do I want and need to be seen? Do I want and need to be loved? Do I want and need to be acknowledged? Would I still be fine if from now on and for the rest of my life, I never received any attention and love whatsoever from another human being?
Therefore we must never think we are sincere enough, and we must always be on our guard against influences which may carry us away from that sincerity which is the bridge between ourselves and our ideal. No study, no meditation is more helpful than sincerity itself." - Hazrat Inayat Khan
"Man possesses a deep capacity to recognise truth, even in written materials. But greed and comparative laziness (which can render him much more superficial and immature than he thinks) make him blind to what he should do once he has perceived it. This is a major reason why he has to cultivate sincerity. 'Sincerity is the true self-interest; compared with it all else is spurious'." - Idries Shah (Knowing How to Know)
Earnestness and Maturity
There is one crucial factor on the path: your degree of maturity, your degree of earnestness and willingness to let go of yourself, to let go of the conditioned mind, to let go of the thinking mind.
And here, the path you are on is secondary. No matter what your path is, whether the path of enquiry/knowledge/meditation, the path of surrender/devotion or the path of service, it has to lead you to a true letting go of yourself, a giving up of the self-centered mind.
What matters most, is your inner attitude, your inner maturity and understanding about this letting go and giving up of yourself.
You can be on the path of enquiry/knowledge, and actually be full of yourself, full of desires to be an "awakened one", to gain peace for yourself, to acquire the "ultimate knowledge", to be comforted by the idea of being "eternal".
You can be on the path of surrender/devotion, and in truth be full of yourself, doing all this to gain something in return, to receive grace or blessings from the Universe or God.
You can be on the path of service, and in reality be full of yourself, attached to the one being "generous" and "noble", bound by the desire to see yourself and to be seen by others or by God as "good" and having a "meaningful life".
To believe that a path in itself is more complete, or superior to another one, is to miss the fact that your inner attitude is always the crucial factor here. It is a lack of understanding about the fact that, ultimately, all paths lead to absolute unconditional surrender, and the surrendering of the surrenderer himself.
It has nothing to do with the acquisition of anything (ultimate knowledge, truth, eternal or absolute identity, grace, blessings), but everything to do with emptying yourself out of everything, including of yourself.
"Complete effacement of the ego is necessary to conquer destiny, whether you achieve this effacement through Self-enquiry or through bhakti-marga [devotion, surrender]." - Ramana Maharshi
"Surrender can take effect only when it is done with full knowledge as to what real surrender means. Such knowledge comes after enquiry and reflection and ends invariably in self-surrender. There is no difference between jnana and absolute surrender to the Lord, that is, in thought, word and deed. To be complete, surrender must be unquestioning; the devotee cannot bargain with the Lord or demand favors at His hands. Such entire surrender comprises all; it is jnana and vairagya, devotion and love." - Ramana Maharshi
"The other way is to kill the ego by completely surrendering to the Lord, by realizing one's helplessness and saying all the time: 'Not I, but Thou, Oh, my Lord', and giving up all sense of 'I' and 'mine' and leaving it to the Lord to do what he likes with you. Surrender can never be regarded as complete so long as the devotee wants this or that from the Lord. True surrender is love of God for the sake of love and for nothing else, not even for the sake of salvation. In other words, complete effacement of the ego is necessary to conquer destiny, whether you achieve this effacement through self-enquiry or through bhakti-marga." - Ramana Maharshi
"O my Lord, if I worship You from fear of Hell, burn me in Hell; and if I worship You from hope of Paradise, exclude me from Paradise. But if I worship You for Your own sake, do not withhold from me Your Eternal Beauty." - Rabia al-Basri (717-801)
"There are two ways. One is looking into the source of 'I' and merging into that source. The other is feeling "I am helpless by myself, God alone is all-powerful and except by throwing myself completely on him, there is no other means of safety for me". By this method one gradually develops the conviction that God alone exists and that the ego does not count. Both methods lead to the same goal. Complete surrender is another name for jnana or liberation." - Ramana Maharshi
"Stay without ambition, without the least desire, exposed, vulnerable, unprotected, uncertain and alone, completely open to and welcoming life as it happens, without the selfish conviction that all must yield you pleasure or profit, material or so-called spiritual." - Nisargadatta Maharaj
"The surrender is the melting of the ego in its source, the Heart. God is not deceived by outwards acts. What he sees in the worshipper is how much of the ego remains in full control and how much is on the verge of destruction." - Ramana Maharshi
"Self-surrender is the surrender of all self-concern. Verbal self-surrender, even when accompanied by feeling, is of little value and breaks down under stress. At the best it shows an aspiration, not an actual fact." - Nisargadatta Maharaj
Effort is Mandatory
No one has ever attained a real stabilization in/as the effortless being (whether you call it Self, Being, God, Awareness, Silence, Stillness), without exerting a tremendous amount of effort and making a great sacrifice, without nurturing an inner state of dedication and utter perseverance.
All teachers out there telling you the contrary, or minimizing the importance of effort, and sometimes not even mentioning it (in the name of "non-duality"), are at best ignorant and stupid, at worst cruel out of being exclusively interested in their egocentric "teacher" self-image.
Of course, I am not saying that they are the only responsible for that mess. Superficial and lazy students, seekers, disciples, willing to buy into this alluring idea that they have nothing to do, and no price to pay to awaken, are as much part of this fools game. It's the "supply and demand" mechanism. As long as there are people willing to buy false gold, there will be false gold suppliers. And vice versa.
But those who still have within themselves at least some sincerity and earnestness, should hear that without effort and perseverance, nothing real and stable can be attained. They should hear that they will need the "intensity as that of a drowning man struggling for air" as Ramana Maharshi puts it.
Those who have not the ability to reconcile the apparent opposites and paradox of "effort" and "effortlessness", or "doership" and "non-doership", obviously don't have the qualifications to call themselves "teachers", and even less "masters".
Because you see, in all cases, the path of awakening is progressive, until it is not anymore. And the "effortless" state all great sages are talking about, will only start to assert itself when all the efforts required to reach that last phase of awakening will be reached. Unless you are willing to pay the real price, nothing of value will be/can be given to you.
Silence has to be conquered. This is the "battle royal" Ramana Maharshi is talking about.
So, for your own sake, stop losing your time and energy with this childish mental game of so-called "spirituality", "truth", "knowledge" and "non-duality", and resolutely enter the path of effort, perseverance and experience, where nothing has any importance whatsoever other than to learn to withdraw your attention from the noise (and the "spiritual" noise) of the mind, to learn to become a master of your own mind, and to learn to abide more and more in/as your own silent being.
"In reply to a question about the method of effortless and choiceless awareness as distinct from that of deliberate concentration Sri Bhagavan explained : "Effortless and choiceless awareness is our real nature. If we can attain it or be in that state, it is all right. But one cannot reach it without effort, the effort of deliberate meditation, all the age-long vasanas (inherent tendencies) carry the mind outward and turn it to external objects. All such thoughts have to be given up and the mind turned inward. For that effort is necessary for most people.
Of course everybody, every book says "Be quiet or still" but it is not easy. That is why all this effort is necessary. Even if we find one who has at once achieved the mouna (silence) or Supreme state indicated by "Be still" you may take it that the effort necessary has already been finished in a previous life. So that effortless and choiceless awareness is reached only after deliberate meditation.
"That meditation can take any form which appeals to you best. See what helps you to keep away all other thoughts and adopt that method for your meditation." In this connection Bhagavan quoted from Thayumanavar. "Bliss will follow if you are still. But however much you may tell your mind about this truth, the mind will not keep quiet. It is the mind which tells the mind 'Be quiet and you will attain bliss'. Though all the scriptures have said it, though we hear about it every day from the great ones, and though even our Guru says it, we never are quiet, but stray into the world of maya and sense objects. That is why conscious, deliberate effort or meditation is required to attain that mouna state or the state of being quiet." - Ramana Maharshi (Day by Day with Bhagavan)
"Everyone will get what they deserve only according to their merits. Only those who make the desperate effort to realize their own Self will reap the benefits." - Ramana Maharshi
"What way is there, except to draw in the mind as often as it strays or goes outward, and to fix it in the Self, as the Gita advises? Of course, it won't be easy to do it. It will come only with practice or sadhana." - Ramana Maharshi
"Attending unceasingly and with a fully concentrated mind to Self, which is the non-dual perfect Reality, alone is the pure Supreme silence; on the other hand, the mere unthinking laziness of the dull mind is nothing but a defective delusion. Know that." - Ramana Maharshi
"Question: Then it is possible to be without effort, without strain? Ramana: Not only that, it is impossible for you to make an effort beyond a certain extent. Question: I want to be further enlightened. Should I try to make no effort at all? Ramana: Here it is impossible for you to be without effort. When you go deeper, it is impossible for you to make any effort." - Ramana Maharshi
"Practice is power. If thoughts are reduced to a single thought, the mind is said to have grown strong. When practice remains unshaken, it becomes sahaja (natural)." - Ramana Maharshi
Endless Resolution
As long as you try to salvage anything coming from the mind, you will never let go and surrender fully. Something will always seem to hold you back and keep you stuck, something will always seem to be lacking and unfinished, something will always seem to need more "understanding" or "figuring out".
As long as you trust the mind, it will always seem to be presenting to you something that supposedly needs a resolution before you can finally be "free".
Unless you come to the absolute experiential conviction that all that is arising from the mind is false, unreal and illusory, you cannot realize how free you already are, and how free you actually ever were.
As long as you don't see (or refuse to acknowledge) the absolute unreality and fraud of your own mind, you will continue to postpone and delay the true unconditional diving within the depths of your pure silent being.
You Without You
Give up thoughts.
And give up giving up thoughts.
Here You are.
Give up yourself.
And give up giving up yourself.
Here You are.
Stop thinking.
And stop thinking about not thinking.
Stop trying.
And stop trying not trying.
Stop seeking.
And stop seeking not seeking.
The experience of deep peace is still turmoil.
Peace without peace; this is peace.
The experience of overwhelming bliss is still pain.
Bliss without bliss; this is bliss.
The experience of perfect stillness is still agitation.
Stillness without stillness; this is stillness.
The experience of pure silence is still noise.
Silence without silence; this is silence.
You without you.
This is You.
Free-Will to No Free-Will
The question of a "doer" having free-will is an important question on the path. Lots of people I met in those non-duality circles, are grasping at this concept of "no doer" and "no free-will" at an extremely superficial level (and lots of teachers out there are responsible for this), and this sadly hinders further real transformation and awakening.
The truth is, you cannot surrender what you don't have. The very same way that you can't be free from what you are still unconscious of that is still driving your body/mind.
A conditioned human being has no free-will. He is almost entirely moved by automatic conditioned reactions, driven by his programming, almost like a robot. That is what we call "being asleep". The life of such human being is that of "sleep walking". His life is almost entirely predictable. All his thoughts and actions, are automatic responses/reactions to life inputs.
So the very first stage of transformation that has to occur, is for him to acquire free-will, through awakening from his conditioned programming. It also can be said to be the path of transformation from an unconscious life to a conscious life, from the bondage of conditioning to freedom from this conditioning.
This stage is unavoidable. This is where without tenacious effort and absolute earnestness, without the "intensity as that of a drowning man struggling for air" (as Ramana Maharshi puts it), nothing real can be achieved.
This is the stage where we learn to observe our inner and outer life, where we become more and more conscious of our programming, and where we gain real freedom from it. It is also at this stage that the unraveling and untying of our conditioned/psychological knots happens, where we learn to gain freedom from our inherited and bounding prejudices, beliefs, preconceived ideas, value systems, self-centered opinions and views, freedom from our past traumas and stuck psychological energies.
This is the stage where from non-being (that of a robot), we acquire real beingness (that of a real human being).
And only then, this acquired "free-will" and this "being" can be surrendered, can be given up, can be let go of, can be handed over, can be transcended, to truly start to enter experientially the wider realm of "non-being", of "Reality", where "free-will" has no place anymore, but where it remains available at the level of the manifested world and pragmatical functioning of life.
In other words, as long as the very deeply rooted belief of being a "person" is there, you will have to start from where you are, and use this idea of being a "person" to walk the awakening path. If you don't, you are just fooling yourself with comfortable spiritual concepts and ideas.
Many Stages of Awakening
There is no such thing as "awakening". There are many, many awakenings along the path. And even when one has finally attained the stabilized state of dissolution of the ego/I-thought, there can be more that can happen in regard to the dissolution of subtle conditioned filters remaining in the body/mind system, so that more and more transparency can be achieved.
People and seekers are usually so superficial and mediocre, that everywhere in so-called spiritual circles, you will see them lightly define what THE "awakening" is. Doing so, they prevent themselves to go further and deeper.
Referring to my post about the 6 stages on the path a bit below, you will see that at each stage, something called an "awakening" can happen.
When you are at stage 2 for example (starting to observe the mind and creating some distance with it), it is very possible that you can have a glimpse, or a temporary experience of the dissolving of the ego-mind, or just having a first glimpse of its unreality. Then, most people, if not guided by a real teacher/master, will easily and prematurely consider and assert that they now know what "awakening" is.
The thing is, and this goes also for all other "awakenings", there are many layers to the discovery of the unreality of this ego-mind. If you remain open and keep going, you will discover refined layers after layers of this unreality. If you get fooled by your own mind, only perceiving things through contrast, and content enough with small changes, you will never attain true freedom.
Stay open. Stop drawing hasty conclusions. Cultivate a beginner's mind.
Stop being a beggar. Be a king. Stop being that mediocre and content enough with crumbs when the whole bread is waiting for you.
"I am the slave of whoever will not at each stage imagine that he has arrived at the end of his goal. Many a stage has to be left behind before the traveller reaches his destination." - Jalaluddin Rumi
"Hindsight, shows how often yesterday's so-called truth may become today's absurdity. Real ability is to respect relative truth without damaging oneself by refusing to realize that it will be superseded." - Idries Shah
"There is a false sense of liberation that aspirants reach that very few ever go beyond." - Ramana Maharshi
"There is a succession of experiences which together constitute the educational and developmental ripening of the learner, according to the Sufis. People who think that each gain is the goal itself will freeze at any such stage, and cannot learn through successive and superseding lessons." - Idries Shah
Attachment to Suffering
As I already said, at the deeper level, the conditioned human being is unconsciously terrified of peace. In other words, the ego-self is absolutely addicted to suffering, to his suffering stories and his suffering past.
If all so-called "problems" and past "traumas" were to dissolve, the ego-self would also dissolve. With no "problems", nothing would be left to ruminate mentally, and that is what scares the most the conditioned man. The ego-self (which is noise only) will always see silence as a threat.
That is why most people don't want to be "healed", no matter what they think of themselves (and their so-called "sincerity" or "clarity"), and no matter how loud they claim and shout that they are tired to suffer. "I suffer, therefore I am" is the motto of the ego. Nothing has the capacity to create and maintain the idea of "me", like suffering or taking oneself to be a "victim".
99% of humans don't want to heal, don't want their problems to be solved. What they want is to be "embraced", "loved as they are", "acknowledged", "seen", what they want is attention, and to be a "sufferer" is a great strategy to get this attention from others who are also trapped in this game of emotionality and complacency with the ego tactics.
What they mostly want, is to learn to be "comfortable" with their cherished suffering, not to get rid of it. Offer them tools to truly start to solve their problems, and they may even be very mad and angry at you, and even call you "mean", "not well-intentioned" or "insensitive".
This is where self-knowledge and the real effort of sincerity is absolutely required, for one who truly wants to "awaken" and find peace.
And as long as we confuse what's helpful, with what feels "pleasant" and "nice", we are far away from this effort of sincerity.
"If you look for truth, you may find comfort in the end; if you look for comfort you will not get either comfort or truth only soft soap and wishful thinking to begin, and in the end, despair." - C.S. Lewis
"You cannot transcend what you do not know. To go beyond yourself, you must know yourself." - Nisargadatta Maharaj
"I am only interested in ignorance and the freedom from ignorance." - Nisargadatta Maharaj
"Understanding comes only through self-knowledge, which is awareness of one's total psychological process. Thus education, in the true sense, is the understanding of oneself, for it is within each one of us that the whole of existence is gathered." - Jiddu Krishnamurti
"Use your mind. Remember. Observe. You are not different from others. Most of their experiences are valid for you too. Think clearly and deeply, go into the structure of your desires and their ramifications. They are a most important part of your mental and emotional make-up and powerfully affect your actions. Remember, you cannot abandon what you do not know. To go beyond yourself, you must know yourself." - Nisargadatta Maharaj
"The fact of pain is easily brought within the focus of awareness. With suffering it is not that simple. To focus suffering is not enough, for mental life, as we know it, is one continuous stream of suffering. To reach the deeper layers of suffering you must go to its roots and uncover their vast underground network, where fear and desire are closely interwoven and the currents of life's energy oppose, obstruct and destroy each other." - Nisargadatta Maharaj
"Once you have grasped the truth that the world is full of suffering, that to be born is a calamity, you will find the urge and the energy to go beyond. Pleasure puts you to sleep and pain wakes you up. If you do not want to suffer, don't go to sleep. You cannot know yourself through bliss alone, for bliss is your very nature. You must face the opposite, what you are not, to find enlightenment." - Nisargadatta Maharaj
"Above all, we want to remain conscious. We shall bear every suffering and humiliation, but we shall rather remain conscious. Unless we revolt against this craving for experience and let go the manifested altogether, there can be no relief. We shall remain trapped." - Nisargadatta Maharaj
"The mind is the real cause of our problems, the mind that is working mechanically night and day, consciously and unconsciously. The mind is a most superficial thing and we have spent generations, we spend our whole lives, cultivating the mind, making it more and more clever, more and more subtle, more and more cunning, more and more dishonest and crooked, all of which is apparent in every activity of our life. The very nature of our mind is to be dishonest, crooked, incapable of facing facts, and that is the thing which creates problems; that is the thing which is the problem itself." - J.Krishnamurti
A Map of Awakening
Here's a short technical map of the process of "awakening". It's just a description of the global structure, which means that many, many other elements are required (always depending on the context, the moment and the people) for the process to be effective.
1/ There is only noise. The noise and restlessness of identification. The whole human organism is driven by unconsciousness, by conditioning and by the self-centered thinking mind.
2/ That's the beginning of witnessing, or observing. Witnessing, is already something a bit quieter. Some distance starts to be created between the observer and the psychological mind. That's the stage where the journey toward pure being, or silence, starts.
3/ Witnessing, or attention, withdraw more and more from the noise of the mind, and is turned toward itself. We learn to go deeper and deeper within, surrendering, dropping, letting go of the noise of the mind, of the psychological "me".
4/ Here we may start intermittently to experience pure silence. Pure being remains within itself, and there is no "me" and no self-centered mind anymore. Yet, there is still identity with being, and there is still a subtle duality where pure silence (or pure beingness) seems to be experienced, or experiencing itself. There is still an awareness of the pure state of being, or silence. Here, peace, stillness, rest, wholeness, oneness is felt. But this is not enough.
5/ Here, we keep diving. We keep dropping deeper into silence, letting go of consciousness, self-awareness, and any kind of duality. This stage, contrary to the others, is a passive stage. It's not so much that we "let go" or "withdraw", because there is no agent there anymore capable of "doing" this, but that we only refrain from clinging to what's left, we refrain from clinging to pure being, consciousness, awareness, silence, peace, stillness, rest, wholeness. And the dropping happens all by itself.
6/ Here nothing can be said about it. What remains is silence (to give it a name), without the concept of silence, without an experiencer of it, without it being an experience, without any consciousness or awareness of it. This is the original and absolute state prior to being and non-being, prior to duality and non-duality. This is the state where even the "I-amness" recedes at its own source.
Those 6 stages are also the stages of refinement of what we call "human effort". Stage 1 is somehow effortless, in the sense of being almost entirely automatic and conditioned. No conscious effort is made toward freedom yet. Stages 2 is the stage of forceful effort. Then this effort refines itself progressively all long stages 3 to 5. To become so refined that it transforms itself into effortlessness through stages 5 to 6.
Now of course, it's not "that" linear. We can still be at stage 2, and have glimpses of stages 4, and even sometimes intuitions of stages 5 and 6. This is where, seekers who are on their own (with no real teacher/master) often fool themselves, and grasp at those glimpses, then claim "What I am is effortless". That is a trick of the ego-mind, to push you to drop the efforts prematurely.
Or we can be mostly stabilized in stage 4, but still experiencing moments of stage 1 identification. Hence the absolute need of perseverance...
"You have to make an enormous effort to realise the Self. It is very easy to stop on the way and fall back into ignorance. At any moment you can fall back. You have to make a strong determined effort to remain on the peak when you first reach it, but eventually a time will come when you are fully established in the Self. When that happens, you cannot fall. You have reached your destination and no further efforts are required. Until that moment comes, constant sadhana is required." - Annamalai Swami
Those stages can also be said to be stages of refinement of "human desire". We first experience personal/self-centered desires based on conditioning, desiring external things and believing that fulfilling them can help us to find peace and contentment.
Then, the desire for truth, freedom and liberation arises at stage 2. This desire is still very much self-centered (the "me" wants freedom and truth), but it's already a propitious re-orientation of desiring.
Then, desire/desiring gets refined more and more through stages 3 to 5, cleared more and more of the layers of self-centeredness, and this is where the desire for truth and liberation is no more polluted with desiring anything else, given that the work is properly done, of course.
To finally go through the last 5 and 6 stages, the stages of "unconditional surrender", of desirelessness, where even the desire for truth, awakening and peace has to be given up.
"The ultimate understanding is that which enables the understanding to take place and itself becomes so subtle, so fine, that it disappears. And when this consciousness arises again, then the Samadhi is broken and this "I-Amness" starts again." - Nisargadatta Maharaj
"Don't regard the abidance in the "I am" as part-time activity. You must have a life long commitment to get yourself established in it." - Annamalai Swami
"Don't be discouraged by length of the journey, and don't slacken in your efforts to get home." - Annamalai Swami
"Q: Is the state prior to Beingness experienced consciously by Maharaj? M: In that state 'I' alone prevail without even the message 'I Am'. There are no experiences at all, it is the non-experiential, eternal state. Q: How is that state cognised? M: When the state of Beingness is totally swallowed, whatever remains is that eternal 'I'." - Nisargadatta Maharaj
"I'm simply saying that there is a way to be sane. I'm saying that you can get rid of all this insanity created by the past in you. Just by being a simple witness of your thought processes.
It is simply sitting silently, witnessing the thoughts, passing before you. Just witnessing, not interfering not even judging, because the moment you judge you have lost the pure witness. The moment you say "this is good, this is bad", you have already jumped onto the thought process.
It takes a little time to create a gap between the witness and the mind. Once the gap is there, you are in for a great surprise, that you are not the mind, that you are the witness, a watcher.
And this process of watching is the very alchemy of real religion. Because as you become more and more deeply rooted in witnessing, thoughts start disappearing. You are, but the mind is utterly empty. That's the moment of enlightenment. That is the moment that you become for the first time an unconditioned, sane, really free human being." - Osho
All Mind is a Lie
All mind is a lie. All of it. All thoughts, no matter what their content is, are untrue. All of them. All inner mental struggle is unreal. All of it.
And that is why the shortest expression of the core practice is: "Stop thinking, and end your problems." (Lao Tzu)
And if you find yourself running a thought like: "Ok. But how do I achieve that?", know that this thought too is a lie, and that this apparent struggle too is unreal.
Nevertheless, let me expand a bit about this "stop thinking".
It is true that psychological thoughts are appearing all by themselves, according to the personal and universal conditioning of the body. And it is also true that "trying to stop thinking" would also a be a thought.
But we have to realize that thoughts, the thinking mind and the endless stream of thinking, cannot sustain themselves for long without us giving them power and attention. Without our energy, without us taking it for real and true, relevant and significant, personal and important, the whole edifice of thinking would crumble pretty quickly, and thoughts/thinking would come to a total end, along with our so-called "problems", revealing our natural state of peace and wholeness.
Our essential being is thoughtless and silent. This state of rest, peace and stillness, is the very ground and reality of our being and our natural state, always available at all times, here and now. What's not natural, is the thinking mind and the endless stream of psychological thoughts. But as long as we take whatever arises in/from/as the mind, as real and true, this will never be our direct experience. And as long as you forget who's the master in the house, and consider yourself to be the slave of your tyrant mind, you will live as a victim of it.
As paradoxical as it may seem, to come to this experiential understanding and reality, a lot of struggle and fight is required. A lot of struggle is necessary before we come to see that all struggle is mental only and unreal. A lot of effort is required before we come to truly realize what's effortless, and truly start to live from this effortlessness of our own being.
So persevere in your practice of withdrawing your attention from this mind, and keep diligently abiding in/as your silent sense of being. And little by little, the unreality and untruthfulness of the whole thinking mind will be revealed to you.
"Refuse attention to things, let things come and go. Desires and thoughts are also things. Disregard them. Since immemorial time, the dust of events was covering the clear mirror of your mind, so that only memories you could see. Brush off the dust before it has time to settle, this will lay bare the old layers until the true nature of your mind is discovered." - Nisargadatta Maharaj
"Learn to live without self concern. For this you must know your own true being as indomitable, fearless, ever victorious. Once you know with absolute certainty that nothing can trouble you but your own imagination, you come to disregard your desires and fears, concepts and ideas, and live by truth alone." - Nisargadatta Maharaj
"Bringing the mind to the feeling 'I am' merely helps in turning the mind away from everything else. When the mind is kept away from its preoccupations, it becomes quiet. If you do not disturb this quiet and stay in it, you find that it is permeated with a light and a love you have never known." - Nisargadatta Maharaj
"Q: You sometimes say the Self is silence. Why is this? Ramana: For those who live in Self, as the beauty devoid of thought, there is nothing which should be thought of. That which should be adhered to is only the experience of silence, because in that supreme state nothing exists to be attained, other than oneself." - Ramana Maharshi
Awakening Is An Activity
What most people, still tricked by their conditioned mind, call "awakening", is nothing (at best) but a glimpse or an experience they had at some point on their path, which brought them some partial clarity.
Now, it's nothing but a dead knowledge, a cherished memory they are clinging to.
"Awakening", "clarity", "freedom", always have to be now, because now is all there is and all we have. "Awakening" or "clarity" is not a thing, not a noun, not an experience, it has to be an activity, a verb, always alive and fresh here and now.
So you may have had a glimpse, a momentary recognition, something around "Oh! I am not my mind at all!", or "Oh! I am not whatever can be perceived, I am the seer of it all!", and associated with it you may have experienced a moment of peace, stillness, silence.
But the true questions are:
Am I, right here, right now, believing my mind, taking it to be real and true, identified with and hypnotized by self-centered thoughts and stories, or not?
Am I, right here, right now, lost in worrying, struggling, clinging, resisting, and self-centered concerns, or not?
Am I, right here, right now, lost in what is perceived, in what is seen, and have I lost track of the pure quiet and peaceful seer, or not?
Sweetness of Nothingness
Somebody asked: "Is the point of asking "who?" after noticeable thoughts like "I am wasting my life" or "What am I doing here?" just to find nothing over and over again? I mean, nothing is there with that question. It's asked, "Who is wasting his life?", and its just zero, blank over and over. After doing it a lot/for a while, it can seem like, "Ok, I arrived at nothing again, but that doesn't necessarily mean I have seen anything"."
The point of all practices, is to come back to rest in our natural state again, our essential being, quiet being, pure being, pure "I Am", and to come to live life more and more from this place of natural rest.
The question "Who?" is not really a question. Hence, its aim is not to provide an answer, be it the "ultimate" answer. It's a tool, a skillful mean, to unglue oneself from identification with a thought/mind, to unglue attention from what is seen, transient and conditioned, and to bring back attention to the seer, to pure being, to the ever available pure/universal peaceful "I" or "I Am".
The point is to learn to come to ignore the self-centered/psychological mind entirely. The point is to stop being fascinated and bound by the self-centered mind, by what is false and unreal. The point is NOT to gain the "real" as if it is something entirely new, you ARE the "real". How can you gain what you already are?
When Ramana Maharshi or Nisargadatta Maharaj say that "I Am" (the simple sense of being) is "God", it is not an image, not a metaphor, not an allegory, it's truth and a very concrete reality, and it's already the case. But this cannot be grasped by the conditioned mind, because what seems to obscure this realization IS precisely the mind. It will only start to make sense, once we let go of the mind and are stabilized enough in this letting go.
So let's look at your example. At some point, right here, right now, I will realize that I am fully involved and lost in a painful/stressful self-centered thought-story: "I am wasting my life". So I ask "Who is wasting his life?", to withdraw my attention from the mind-story, and bring back attention to the "I" (I am, being, presence).
Because you see, in "I am wasting my life", there is only one element that is real and true, and this is the "I". All else, "wasting my life", is false, unreal, illusion, transient. "I", no matter what the mind-story is (whether positive or negative) is ALWAYS the only real and true element. So through the question, attention comes back to what is real. In that very moment, I "awaken".
But then, the mind will very quickly produces other thoughts: "I find nothing", "I arrived again at a blank, at nothing", "I am not realizing anything", "I am not sure I am seeing anything".
And here also, the only real and true element is "I". All else, is false, unreal, illusion, mind, part of the movie. So if enquiry is your way, you should also ask "Who is finding nothing?", "Who arrives at a blank again?", in order to unglue your attention from those stories, and to come to rest again in your natural being, in the pure and peaceful sense of being, in the quietness of the pure "I" or "I am".
We also have to understand that it is not a magical trick. Letting go of the mind, of what's false and unreal, of identification with it all (whether through enquiry or surrender), is a practice requiring absolute perseverance and dedication. To break that habit to go along with the mind flow will not happen overnight. There are layers to it that we have to discover and transcend. Same as you spotted that "I am wasting my life" had the smell of unreality to it, but totally missed that "I arrived again at nothing" has the same smell.
We also have to understand that the seeking part of the mind, although helpful as long as we are bound by identification, will always look for the "final experience", for the "ultimate answer", for the "perfect understanding" as if "truth" or "reality" or "awakening" was an object to be seen, found, experienced, gained. It is not. Again, YOU already ARE truth, reality, awakening, realization, you already are what you are looking for, right here, right now. And what makes you miss it again and again, is your mind and all its stories that you are still believing in. Hence the necessity to learn to withdraw from it (to withdraw from the false), as long as identification with it is running.
And note also that this sense of "nothing", "emptiness", "blank", "zero", is nothing but a very dry intellectual/mental view arising from the mind. That's why it brings a sense of frustration, incompleteness, and sometimes even fear. It's the mind itself saying this. It's the mind which, when approaching a state devoid of the usual endless noise of thinking, will label it as "nothing", "blank", "zero", "not interesting", "boring", "scary", by comparison with its usual restless state.
And that is why we should go further with our practice, and let go of this, withdraw from this too.
In truth, when the mind is truly dropped, when thought-stories are really let go of or surrendered, what's left is this pure "I", pure "I am", pure being, pure presence, and here, there is no questions, no doubts, no seeking, no struggle to "get anything", no fear to lose anything, no labeling of any kind, no wondering if "this is it" or not, but just a sense of completeness, peace, quietness, rest. And it's far from being "dry". It's sweeter than sweet...
"On this short path he searches into the meaning of Being, of being himself and of being-in-itself, until he finds its finality. Until this search is completed, he accepts the truth, passed down to him by the Enlightened Ones, that in his inmost essence he is Reality. This leads to the logical consequence that he should disregard personal feelings which continue from past tendencies, habits, attitudes, and think and act as if he were himself an enlightened one! (...)
It is objected, why search at all if one really is the Self? Yes, there comes a time when the deliberate purposeful search for the Self has to be abandoned for this reason. Paradoxically, it is given up many times, whenever he has a glimpse, for at such moments he knows that he always was, is, and will be the Real, that there is nothing new to be gained or searched for. Who should search for what?
But the fact remains that past tendencies of thought rise up after every glimpse and overpower the mind, causing it to lose this insight and putting it back on the quest again. While this happens he must continue the search, with this difference, that he no longer searches blindly, as in earlier days, believing that he is an ego trying to transform itself into the Self, trying to reach a new attainment in time by evolutionary stages. No! Through the understanding of the short path he searches knowingly, not wanting another experience since both wanting and experiencing put him out of the essential Self. He thinks and acts as if he is that Self, which puts him back into It. It is a liberation from time-bound thinking, a realization of timeless fact."
- Paul Brunton (Notebooks)
"You can not know the Self with your mind or visualize it with your imagination. The only direct way to make it happen is to eliminate imagination and to try to be yourself." - Ramana Maharshi
"Q: But the answer does not come for the search inward. M: The enquirer is the answer and no other answer can come. What comes afresh cannot be true. What always is, is true." - Ramana Maharshi
"The only permanent thing is Reality; and that is the Self. You say 'I am', 'I am going', 'I am speaking', 'I am working', etc. Hyphenate 'I am' in all of them." - Ramana Maharshi
"Carry the conviction in yourself that the knowledge 'I am' within you is God." - Nisargadatta Maharaj
"'I' is the name of God. It is the first and greatest of all mantras." - Ramana Maharshi
"Never forget that the knowledge 'I am' is God. Day by day, through constant meditation this conviction will grow." - Nisargadatta Maharaj
"The egoless 'I am' is not a thought. It is realisation. The meaning or significance of 'I' is God." - Ramana Maharshi
"'I am' is truth, another name for Self." - Ramana Maharshi
"If you have regard for me remember my words. The knowledge 'I am' is the greatest God, the Guru, be one with that, be intimate with it. That itself will bless you with all the knowledge relevant for you in the proliferation of that knowledge, it will lead you to the state which is eternal." - Nisargadatta Maharaj
"Take it that this 'I Amness' of yours, is the unadulterated form of Godlihood. The pure Iswara state, is your Beingness." - Nisargadatta Maharaj
"To no purpose do you bear on your head this load of pride and vanity. Kabîr says: Lay it down in the dust, and go forth to meet the Beloved. Address Him as your Lord." - Kabir
"If you want to remember this visit, if you have love for me, remember this 'I am' principle and without the command or direction of this principle, do nothing." - Nisaraghatta Maharaj
"You yourself are God, the Supreme Reality." - Nisaraghatta Maharaj
"The removal of ignorance is the aim of practice, and not acquisition of realization." - Ramana Maharshi
Being Is Instantaneous
To be the Self that you are is instantaneous.
It doesn't take time. There is no path, no way, no progression to it. All that is required, is to stop thinking, to withdraw from the thinking mind, all at once, right here, right now, and not to grasp a thought again. And that's it, that's the only thing that needs to be done.
But because you will obviously cling to another thought very soon, because you will bring attention back to the mind once more, because you will once again buy the illusory mind's idea of a path, of seeking, of having to attain something, because of all this, the instantaneous giving up and letting go of the mind will have to happen once more too, right here, right now. And this is why it will seem and feel that there is a path and a progression in time, to be what you already are.
It doesn't take time to be realized/awakened. Again, realization is what you are. You already are the Self, all else is illusory. Drop the mind, keep it dropped, and here you are.
But it will take time for you to be mature enough, earnest enough, transformed enough, ready enough, to come to a term with clinging to thoughts and mind again, and with not leaving anymore the ever available natural resting place of your silent being/Self.
"What you seek is so near you that there is no place for a way." - Nisargadatta Maharaj
"Carry the conviction in yourself that the knowledge 'I am' within you is God." - Nisargadatta Maharaj
"Never forget that the knowledge 'I am' is God. Day by day, through constant meditation this conviction will grow." - Nisargadatta Maharaj
"The egoless 'I am' is not a thought. It is realisation. The meaning or significance of 'I' is God." - Ramana Maharshi
"'I am' is truth, another name for Self." - Ramana Maharshi
"If you have regard for me remember my words. The knowledge 'I am' is the greatest God, the Guru, be one with that, be intimate with it." - Nisargadatta Maharaj
Surrender and Rest Within
To be identified with the mind, is to be identified with the "I-thought" and all its extensions and conditioned qualities, and it is to believe there is a "me" who is in charge of his own life.
As long as this deep rooted belief is in place, there will be endless attempts to control, endless desires and preferences, endless likes and dislikes, endless struggle with what appears in the present moment, endless seeking to find "happiness" in the realm of the changeful, and endless suffering.
To surrender, is to hand over this idea of being in charge, to a higher power within yourself (call it God, Being, I am, Presence, Consciousness, Silence, it doesn't matter).
Ultimately, that is how we come to rest within, and how the mind can come to a perfect state of quietness and stillness. Why? Because all the noise of the self-centered mind, and all discontentment and suffering, arise from this idea of being in charge, of having to control. Surrender fully this idea of control to the silent being within, and all the noise will dissolve.
One who, fully surrendered, has tasted the sweetness and peace of being nothing, wanting nothing, having to do nothing, in the arms of his Beloved Being, will never be the same again.
"Just drop all seeking, turn your attention inward, and sacrifice your mind to the One Self radiating in the Heart of your very being." - Ramana Maharshi
"That which is, is peace. All that we need do is to keep quiet. Peace is our real nature. We spoil it. What is required is that we cease to spoil it." - Ramana Maharshi
"The only offering worthy of the Lord is to clear the mind of thoughts and remain steady in the peace of the Self." - Ramana Maharshi
"Surrender can never be regarded as complete so long as the devotee wants this or that from the Lord. True surrender is love of God for the sake of love and nothing else, not even for the sake of salvation." - Ramana Maharshi
"He who gives himself up to the Self that is God is the most excellent devotee. Giving one's Self up to God means remaining constantly in the Self without giving room for the rise of any thoughts other than that of the Self." - Ramana Maharshi
Waking Deep Sleep
The path is the way backward to what happens to us at waking up in the morning.
What happens when we wake up? First sleep, no consciousness, no "I am", no "me". Then waking up happens, the body wakes up, and pure non-dual consciousness rise up. From pure non-dual consciousness, the "I am" rise up, along with duality, creating the perceiver, the perceived and the perceiving. At that point, no personal stories, no self-centered mind yet. But then, the "I am" attaches itself to memories stored in the body/brain, and the "person" is born again: "I am me, and this is my story and a new day is arising for me".
Of course, all this goes so fast, that it usually goes totally unnoticed. And it is a very good practice to go to bed at night with the intention to be very alert and attentive the next morning, to witness this sequence of waking up, and to try as much as possible to not connect with the "person".
So you see, all spiritual practices are in fact a way to revert the process, the sequence, and to go up this usual stream. We start from the place of identification, withdraw from it, withdraw from the self-centered thinking mind, to abide more and more as the pure "I am" (pure presence/being). If we go further back, and this will never happen as long as we are not stabilized enough in the "I am" without reconnecting with thoughts, we will start to tap into pure consciousness itself, and a state of non-duality. If I could describe it, I'd say it's the pure state of being, without being aware of being. And only then, once stabilized here, the last step backward can happen, to what's truly prior all of it, pure Reality prior to being and non-being (that which is always here, even in deep sleep).
To be stabilized in this "waking deep sleep" is what is called Awakening.
"In deep sleep state we lay down our ego, our thoughts and our desires. If we could only do all this while we are conscious, we would realize the Self." - Ramana Maharshi
"Once in the early hours of the morning when Subbaramayya visited Bhagavan, Bhagavan talked about how we have a glimpse of our real Self every day. Between the state of sleep and waking, there is a moment of twilight. The waking consciousness begins with the thought of 'I'. Just before the upsurge of this thought, there is a fraction of a second of undifferentiated pure consciousness. So, first there is unconsciousness, followed by pure consciousness and then creeps in the thought of 'I'. It is during this state that we become conscious of the world around us. We can sense pure consciousness only if we are alert and watchful for the state." - V. Ganesan
About Fear and Terror
Somebody asked me about psychological fear/terror. This was something in the back of my head that I wanted to write about. So here it is.
There is absolutely nothing to fear about. Nothing. All fears, and even terror, arise only in the mind as thoughts and fearful stories, that's all.
As soon as we identify with those thoughts, it seems we are truly in danger, that something in the (near) future is really going to happen and hurt us very badly, maybe we will die, or become insane, lose our mind, not being able to function anymore, or we'll live in terror for the rest of our life if we cannot control it...
Out of identification and belief, which itself produces a huge movement of resistance against that fear/terror within us (again, through thoughts), those thoughts produce chemicals effects in the body, what we call feelings and emotions, which are reinforcing the idea that fear is real, and that we are right to fear something.
It's all an illusion. I can guarantee that. I'm an expert!
Ultimately, the only way we have to truly know that, and confirm that fact for ourselves, is to surrender unconditionally to that fear/terror.
See, it's all about the mind threatening you and blackmailing you. Nothing else. The mind shouts horrible stories and scenarios in your head, and because you trust it, you are scared and terrified, and you want to run away. That's all. That is called being a slave of an unreal tyrant.
What I have learned along the years, is to call the bluffs of the mind, whatever they are. To stop running away, to stop being a slave of it, to stand very vertical, not moving anymore, to be very present and tell the mind: "Ah! You are threatening me and blackmailing me again. Ok. Go. Give your best punch. Be even worse. I am here. I am not moving away anymore. Kill me, make me mad, I don't care. Go."
And out of calling the bluffs and the threats, and out of stopping to resist (this is unconditional surrender), you will little by little, or suddenly, discover the total powerlessness of the mind, and the fact that it cannot affect and hurt you. At all.
And you will discover that only your resistance was fueling that fear, again and again.
So give up. Stop trying to control. Surrender. Let the terror have you, completely.
Now, if you want to add a layer to this "unconditional surrender", which was what I did, do enquiry at the very same time that you surrender as described above, be very still, and try to find the one who is terrified. Follow the smell/feeling/sense of the fear in your body, that you have welcomed completely, and find the one who is suffering it at the other end. It's not an intellectual enquiry, do it really as if you wanted to meet and encounter the one in fear, the one suffering from this terror. Follow the fear feeling in you, in your body, and the one suffering it should be at the other hand, right? So look, and try to find him.
You also have to understand also that as long as you try to resist a fear or a terror, to make it go away, or try to run away from it (pretty hard, isn't it?), as long as you try to use technics and spiritual tricks to make it vanish, you are applying control. And you HAVE to realize that this attempt to control, is itself feeding on and on the so-called reality of the fear. Do you see? You would not try to control something which is unreal. So the more you try to control, the more the fear will look real and threatening.
That is why unconditional surrender is the only key here. You let go of control, abandon yourself to the fear, and ONLY THEN you will be able to experience in your flesh, that fear and the mind producing that fear, is absolutely powerless (what's not real cannot have any true power over what is real, which is you).
Once you experienced this going through fear and realized that it is nothing at all, as huge as it seemed, it doesn't mean the fear will not come back again, one day or another. Actually it will. But now, something in you knows the way, knows how unreal the threats of the mind are, and surrender becomes easier and easier, until the fear you use to experience will totally dissolve, to never come back.
Seeing/experiencing the total unreality of all fears, is like pulling off the plug of a fan. The fan may continue to spin for a while, but given you don't re-plug it, it is aimed to come to a total stop.
Only Practice Matters
The quicker you will get that this work has very, very little to do with knowledge and understanding, but everything to do with practice and experience, the better.
It may take a long time before you truly come to this conviction and certitude, but ultimately the only thing that really matters on the path, is the amount of effort and dedication you put on withdrawing from your mind, and on abiding in/as your very intimate silent being, 24/7. Everything else of true value will arise from this.
If all your spiritual talks and discussions, all your questions and inquiries, all your understanding, all your reading, all your listening and watching teachers and masters, all your attending Satsangs, all your hair-splitting arguments about the mind, the Self, the ego, awakening, truth, the absolute, being thought-free or free from thoughts, if all of this is not a very direct and instantaneous help to feed the effort mentioned above, it is all worth absolutely nothing.
Breaking Identification
When you give up and stop trying to be at peace, Peace is here.
When you give up and stop trying to be happy, Happiness is here.
When you give up and stop trying to be content, Contentment is here.
When you give up and stop trying to solve anything, the universal Solution is here.
When you give up and stop trying to understand, Understanding is here.
When you give up and stop trying to be loved, Love is here.
See, that's the amazing and marvelous power of Maya: to make us keep seeking on and on that which we already are, that which is always right here, right now, in plain sight.
But how are we supposed to "give up and stop trying"?
By giving up and surrendering entirely that out of which the entire Maya is arising from and as: your mind and thinking. By seeing thoughts as just... thoughts, and not giving any attention to what they are supposed to say. In other words, by seeing the false as false, and the unreal as unreal, disregarding it totally and keeping your attention anchored in your Being.
It's that simple, beyond simple even.
Is it easy? Surely not, as long as you keep having that solid faith in your mind, but more and more easy as you come to disbelieve this mind, and gain more and more confidence and faith in your own silent being.
What we call a spiritual path, is to pass through the different stages required to break identification with one's own mind. Nothing else, because all else is and will be a consequence of that.
"I will sing this new song: nudity. Real Purity is empty of thought; thought, she must stand out. That's how I lost what's me. I'm reduced to nothing. Who has stripped of the mind can no longer be concerned. I don't know what's going on with me." - Tauler (Master Eckhart's disciple)
You Have No Problem
You never had a problem...
Really, be very alert in your day, so that you will notice every time you are unconsciously believing that you have a problem, a problem to solve.
The thing is, out of conditioning and habit, this happens again and again, and still happens for years on a spiritual path.
But if you are attentive and alert enough, you will catch yourself when you have already entered in that trance-state of identification with thoughts producing this sense of an "I" having a "problem" to solve (to be "at peace" again, to be "safe" again, to feel "good" again, to be "clear" again, etc), a trance-state which is producing this endless painful thought-rumination. It's like an uncomfortable feeling of having a heavy load on your back once again, not knowing really how it got there and how to get rid of it...
The belief, the identification with the thought "I have a problem" (no matter what the so-called "problem" is), is the root of all seeking and all restlessness. It is that belief which is preventing you on and on to rest in your silent being, and experience the unconditional peace that arises from it.
In truth, you never had any problems. Never. It's all a creation of your conditioned mind, mixed with your belief/identification and involvement with it.
The very moment you spot the fraud - and this always has to happen right here and right now, absolutely independently of any past or future and any idea of becoming - you let go of it, you stop clinging to that thought, you ignore it all at once, you stop thinking, you stop trying to solve your so-called "problem", you stop trying to make your situation better, you stop trying to regain a "state" which would be "nicer". You just bring your attention back to that alone which is real and true within: your silent being/presence. And hold it there.
And you see, it's not a matter of denial or by-passing anything, nor of being superficial or irresponsible. Only the mind would try to convince you of that. It's just regaining sanity and clarity, through experiencing again and again, and as long as it is needed on your path so that you come to a total conviction, that whatever the mind says, it is a lie, and that you are the unconditional peace that you are looking for, right here, right now.
As a side note, when identification is sticky, and letting the "thought-problem" go is not easy, this is where we use spiritual tools like self-enquiry ("Who is having a problem? Who am I?"), unconditional surrender ("I surrender this at your feet, God/I am/Guru/Beloved/Presence/whatever...") or reciting a mantra.
"For a seeker of reality, there is only one meditation - the rigorous refusal to harbor thoughts. To be free from thoughts is itself meditation." - Nisargadatta Maharaj
"To remain without thought in the waking state is the greatest worship." - Nisargadatta Maharaj
"Your ultimate need is to get established in the changeless peace of the Self. For this you have to give up all thoughts." - Annamalai Swami
"It is within your competence to think and become bound or cease thinking and thus be free." - Ramana Maharshi
"All the present troubles are due to thoughts and are themselves thoughts. So give up thoughts. That is happiness." - Ramana Maharshi
"All is known in the sacredness of silence." - Jalaluddin Rumi
"Even as fire finds peace in its resting place without fuel, when thoughts become silence the soul finds peace in its own source. When the mind is silent, then it can enter into a world which is far beyond the mind: the highest End. The mind should be kept in the heart as long as it has not reached the highest End. This is wisdom, and this is liberation." - Upanishads
"You and I are the same. What I have done is surely possible for all. You are the Self now and can never be anything else. Throw your worries to the wind, turn within and find peace." - Ramana Maharshi
Distrust Your Mind
The situation is quite simple: whether you trust you mind or you trust your own beingness. The ordinary man usually trusts his mind only. While the already matured seeker of truth lives in between: sometimes trusting his mind, sometimes his beingness.
As long as there is still the smallest bit of trust in your mind, you cannot gain absolute conviction and faith in your own beingness. And unless you gain this conviction and faith in your own silent being, through your own effort of abidance, you will never have the power to distrust your mind entirely.
To Desire is to Suffer
To desire is to suffer. To desire is to live in hell.
And I mean personal desire, all that which arises out of the "I want/I don't want", "I like/I dislike", "I love/I hate" dynamic.
Any version of this type of desire, and at some point even the desire to be at peace and to "awaken", will inevitably pull you out of your own heaven.
When all desires are surrendered at the feet of your own silent being - and it's easier than we think because all desires are just thoughts - silence is back, peace is back, heaven is back, because it actually never went anywhere and was just hidden behind the noise of your desiring, patiently waiting for you to give up, once more.
And once personal desires are given up, it doesn't mean the body-mind will not be moved anymore by what could appear as "desiring", but that all movements and involvements, will now be generated by the Great Desiring of Life itself, for the sake of the greater good, and for your own sake too.
Notice also how all desiring-thoughts, are always linked to memories, with the conditioned pull to not experience something again, or pull to try to experience something once more...
"O heart, if you recognize any difference between joy and sorrow, these lies will tear you apart. Although your desire tastes sweet - doesn't the Beloved desire you to be desireless? The life of lovers is in death. You will not win the Beloved's heart - unless you lose your own." - Jalaluddin Rumi
"What actually is fundamental comes only when certain patterns of thinking have been reduced to their correct perspective. The seeker must "open his arms" to an embrace, not expect to be given anything, while he stands passively awaiting. The Friend comes at night - comes, that is, when things are still, and when the individual is not drugged by automatic thinking." - Idries Shah (The Sufis)
"Free of who I was, free of presence, free of fear, free of hope, free of wanting." - Jalaluddin Rumi
Annihilate Yourself in Him
To "awaken", is to disappear.
For now, no matter what you think, feel or believe, no matter how much you are infected with this virus of spiritual denial, you are taking yourself to be a person.
Until now, what you called your "spiritual path", has been nothing but to add things upon yourself: knowledge, experiences, so-called "realizations". From being an ordinary person, and again no matter what is your level of denial and willingness to fool yourself, you are now taking yourself to be a "spiritual" person. Maybe an "awakened" one, and you are happy to claim: "I know who I really am!", "I am the Self!", "I am Awareness!", "I am God itself!" That is worse.
The only way to cure yourself from this spiritual disease, is to understand that as long as you take yourself to be a person, you have a work to do. And this work is to surrender yourself to a higher power in yourself, until you disappear and only this power remains. Call it God, Self, pure Being, I am, Silence, Presence, Consciousness, Satguru, Reality, Absolute, or anything else, it doesn't matter.
Your work is not to identify yourself with "It", but to bow to it relentlessly, to abandon yourself to it, to hand over all your wants and desires to it, to annihilate your will in His, to give up all ideas of control and your entire mind at His feet, and to dissolve and disappear, until "It" alone remains.
"Most people have many desires which they want to fulfill. But some rare people tell God: "I want nothing. Make me desireless, that is my only desire." Such a one will be a fit instrument to receive grace. The one who gets the most grace is the one who is completely desireless. Such a person will have no desire even for Moksha [Awakening/Liberation]." - Annamalai Swami (Living by the Words of Bhagavan)
"O heart, if you recognise any difference between joy and sorrow, these lies will tear you apart. Although your desire tastes sweet - doesn't the Beloved desire you to be desireless? The life of lovers is in death. You will not win the Beloved's heart - unless you lose your own." - Jalaluddin Rumi
"Only humility can destroy the ego. The ego keeps you far away from God. The door to God is open, but the lintel is very low. To enter one has to bend." - Ramana Maharshi
"Not until someone dissolves, can he or she know what union is. That descends only into emptiness." - Jalaluddin Rumi
"You are, you know you are - this is the great Lord, the sudden, explosive effulgence. Surrender to it, and you will know all. It is without form or name. It is to be abided in by firm conviction." - Nisargadatta Maharaj
"What do you love now? The "I am". Give your heart and mind to it, think of nothing else. This, when effortless and natural, is the highest state. In it, love itself is the lover and the beloved." - Nisargadatta Maharaj
"If one has entirely surrendered oneself is there any part left to ask for Grace? He is swallowed up by Grace." - Ramana Maharshi
Dissolving Ego Structure
"The mind with all its activities has come between you and your Self. What you have to do now, is to get rid of that." - Ramana Maharshi
Ego Structure
The mind will fight very, very hard to maintain the structure of an "ego-me", including on the spiritual path. And in truth, any structure will do (even a "spiritual" one). What's important for the mind is to have any kind of familiar referential structure (that we call "me", "myself", or "ego"), to which it can refer to whenever it is needed to re-assert itself.
An ego structure, is made of thoughts, of patterns of thoughts (memories, beliefs, views, opinions, preconceived ideas, prejudices, etc.), which arose from both the individual/personal body history and the collective/universal. It's build on thousands and thousands of elements/bricks, of self-referential points. The head cornerstone of the structure is the "I-thought". The thing is, there are many layers to this structure. Some at the surface are obvious and known, and some, maybe most, are deeply hidden and remain at the unconscious level most of the time.
What the conditioned mind senses as the "fear of death", is actually the fear of the crumbling/dissolution of this thought structure (it can also be sensed as the fear of "losing one's mind"). Hence, why it is rebuilding/feeding it again and again through the continuous mental activity (thought rumination, sometimes called "selfing"), and making sure it is always solid and available at all times. That's how the ego feels "safe".
Notice here, that the general sense of insecurity, worry, fear, danger, this sense of not being really safe no matter what, that sense which is is lingering in all conditioned human beings, comes from the intuitive knowing that this structure is in truth totally artificial and very fragile. We all have a great hint here, as it fully disappears every night in deep sleep, hence why we're so quick to rebuild it in the very first few seconds of the waking state.
So, when consciousness, or the pure mind we could say, is identifying with this structure, it takes the shape of it, and this is where the idea of being a person, a particular person associated with that particular thought structure, takes place.
"I am a human being, I am a man/woman, my name is this, I believe in this and that, I like/love this and that, I dislike/hate this and that, I am doing this and that in my life, I know this and that, I am a Democrat/Republican, I have this past and aiming to that future... I am sincere, I fear this and that, I am shy, I am healing from this and that, I am a spiritual person, I don't know who I am, I know who I am...". All of it, is part of the structure.
Everything that is threatening the integrity of the structure, whether inwardly or outwardly, is resisted, and often fought against. This is the source of all violence and wars in the world, the source of all suffering.
Dissolving the Structure
On a true spiritual path, we come to realize that this structure is here, and come to discover how it is made, come to realize of what thoughts/thought patterns it is made of. This is the first step in the work, to bring to the conscious mind, what was previously mostly unconscious.
And then, we start to take more and more distance from what we are discovering of the structure, starting with the external layers first, and going deeper as we go. This starts to break identification with the structure, and doing so, withdrawing our attention from it, will also start to dissolve the first layers (what we are not attached to anymore, what we stop giving attention to, what we stop defending, cannot sustain itself for long).
At this stage, the structure starts to become a bit more fluid. We are not so attached anymore to see ourselves and to be seen by others, as this or that. Beliefs and views (about ourselves and about the world) are getting softer. Changing your mind becomes an ordinary routine for you. You start to live from a more opened space where "I don't know" is fine and not threatening anymore. And this, will help to go deeper and deeper into the discovery of the structure and the dissolving of its subtler and subtler layers.
You see, there is a good reason why this discovery/dissolution has to be progressive. The full dissolving of the structure is what is called awakening/liberation (the whole edifice crumbles, along with its "I-thought" cornerstone), and this full dissolving cannot happen when the structure is too big, too rigid and solid and when the inner mental forces of resistance/fear are too strong and active. It has to happen progressively, as a result of a conscious work and maturation, at many levels of our being.
Any premature dissolving of too much of the structure all at once (sometimes forced through using drugs, or kundalini/energy practice/meditation, etc.) often leads to much more problems and imbalance, even adds more trauma, out of the body/mind system not being able to handle and integrate the too abrupt shock, and also often leads to a false sense of awakening, because the structure will invariably rebuild itself anyway around the "shock" (the "I am awakened/I saw the light" syndrome, for example).
This is why this work requires that we progress organically. The first external psychological layers of the structure need to be seen, addressed and dissolved at least in great parts (this is where psychological/emotional healing happens also) before deeper and subtler layers, now more and more universal, can be discovered and let go of.
Reaching the Summit to Die
When we really do our work, with earnestness and perseverance, and do our best to stop feeding the solidity of the structure, through withdrawing our attention from the mind and thoughts, again and again, 24/7, it's like engaging in a voluntary movement toward dying/death, literally.
We are diving deeper and deeper, dismissing any sort of reference and landmark we encounter, no matter what they are, no matter how rational, real, true or spiritual they seem to be, and going deeper into this non-conceptual silence of being, eyes wide open.
At this stage, it's unavoidable, we will encounter all the deep subtle universal layers of the structure. One of the main layer, is the terror of non-existence.
We have to understand here, that same as the body needs to breathe air/oxygen to survive, the ego structure needs to "breath" thoughts to keep surviving. The "I-thought", as Ramana Maharshi described it, needs to be continuously connected with other thoughts, in order to remain active and alive. Deprived of those connections, it can't survive for long, and may be irremediably dissolved back into the source, the Heart, the Self.
I remember years ago, sitting in meditation (always eyes open, as I always was careful not to enter any trance-like/fake samadhi states), consciously diving again deeper and deeper into the silence of being, I started to sense a movement of panic, but this time not being "mine", but like coming from afar within me. And then I literally saw/felt the ego itself (the structure) kicking and screaming out of being deprived of its oxygen-thoughts, and literally suffocating, dying of asphyxia. And the power it has to fight for its survival is huge! It will do everything it can to reconnect with a thought, a concept, a reference point, anything, to keep surviving, to prevent the whole structure to collapse. And usually, fear will be used for this with great results.
The analogy of oxygen/thoughts is great. To awaken, is like having to climb to reach the top of a very high mountain. As we all know, if you were to be transported all of a sudden at the top of the Everest, you would die in few minutes, out of the rarety of oxygen. Yet many people succeed in reaching the summit, but only because there are stages/camps, higher and higher, where their body is accustomed progressively with the ever growing lack of oxygen.
It's the same on the spiritual path. We get used more and more to live in an inner atmosphere more and more free of thoughts, reference points, concepts. Then sometimes we need to get down to a lower camp, or even base camp, and after a while we start to climb again to reach one camp above.
The Great Unknown
This is what we fear: the great unknown, the irremediable dissolving of the entire structure, the death of all conceptuality, of all rationality, of all conceptual reference points. Because we know that when the time is ripe, if we truly let go, we will literally lose our mind, we will lose the world and we will lose our world. Everything that made sense till now, will dissolve. Everything. Not only the idea you have about yourself, but all ideas, about anything you can think of, including the very concept of existence itself. Which also includes all concepts linked to the spiritual path, all ideas of spiritual knowledge, realization, truth, awakening, and everything that you are reading right now on this post. All nothing but dust in the wind. Not even that.
And this is exactly why, so many seekers in this contemporary spiritual world, out of this hidden terror of non-existence and of the great unknown, are happy and content enough, when the weather allows it, to look at the mountain summit from base camp, sometimes camp one or two, claiming: "I know who I am! I am the Summit from which everything can be seen!"
Witnessing the Whole Mind
Real, true observing of the mind (that which we call witnessing, or abiding as the seer), can only happen if we observe from a point of view which is at the very edge of the mind, from which the entire mind process will be seen.
This requires qualities that we rarely have without having developed them first: stillness, capacity to really rest and relax within ourselves, patience, and non-involvement in what is seen. It is to be absolutely passive and absolutely alert at the same time.
To truly observe, requires also that we put to rest (at least for while) our incessant unconscious inward process of qualifying everything we perceive as good or bad, positive or negative, pleasant or unpleasant, coupled with the automatic impulse and need to grasp at what we like, and resist or push away what we dislike, to try to gain and avoid to lose.
That is true witnessing. From here, great clarity may arise.
And I may add that from this real place of witnessing, "trying to be the observer" or "I am witnessing", are both part of what's witnessed...
"Watch your mind, how it comes into being, how it operates. As you watch your mind, you discover your self as the watcher. When you stand motionless, only watching, you discover your self as the light behind the watcher. The source of light is dark, unknown is the source of knowledge. That source alone is. Go back to that source and abide there." - Nisargadatta Maharaj
Believing a Thought-Story
Anytime you feel any type of stress, tension, discontentment, unhappiness, dissatisfaction, unease, suffering, which is creating an energy of struggle and resistance within you, a desire and attempt to "do" something about it, to fight something within yourself or try to make it right/better "again", to try to solve something, just stop. Full stop. Do not go further.
And notice that there is no other solution to attain, other than realizing that all those feelings are the result of you believing a thought-story. Locate and notice this thought, acknowledge it and let it go entirely, knowing that it is just a thought, a conditioned movement of the mind, and come back to your own silent being, where everything is already ever solved, at rest and at peace, unconditionally ever happy and content.
In that sense, if you reverse the usual way of perception of the conditioned mind, you will start to see ALL discontentment as blessings and great signposts trying to help you to release an attachment to, and an identification with a thought or pattern of thoughts.
The "solution" is always prior to the so-called "problem". All else is nothing but a dead-end.
"Misery is only unwanted thoughts." - Ramana Maharshi
"Give up thoughts. You need not give up anything else." - Ramana Maharshi
Sweetness of Being Lost
There is nothing comparable to the sweetness of being lost and abandoned in the arms of your own silent Being.
"If the eight Paradises were opened in my hut, and the rule of both worlds were given in my hands, I would not give for them that single sigh which rises at morning-time from the depth of my soul in remembering my longing for Him." - Bayezid Bistami
The Serpent's Voice
Beware of this "I got it!", whispered into your inner ear by that which is faking your own voice to deceive you!
Or else you'll end up wandering indefinitely into the imaginary realm of ups and downs.
Learn to recognize the serpent's voice within yourself. It's easy: only him speaks.
Smaller and Smaller
If, on a spiritual path, everything you do is not mainly about dying, dying, and dying more, and dying to the dying, if it is not about getting smaller and smaller, that's all fine, but it might be of interest to you to know that you are not on a spiritual path, but a path of aggrandizement.
"Love is reckless; not reason. Reason seeks a profit. Having died of self-interest, Love risks everything and asks for nothing." - Jalaluddin Rumi
Devotion to Being
Be fully devoted to your own silent Beloved Self. Be with Him at all times, surrender to Him, give up your entire life at His feet. Give up all self-centered thoughts, hand over all your worries, problems and self-concerns, may them be physical, psychological, intellectual, mental or spiritual, to the Self within.
Out of this devotion and surrendering, He may grant you the gift of states of peace and contentment. And then take them back from you all at once. Doing so, He is only testing you, testing your devotion and earnestness, testing your sincerity, unselfishness, faithfulness and self-effacement, along with curbing your ego if you ever claimed "Victory!" when those states of peace were granted to you.
"Don't be attached to my beauty! Don't even cling to my peace!" says the Beloved. "Continue to empty yourself out of yourself, relentlessly, so only I remain!"
And because the conditioned mind always needs to "do" something, always try to find a resting place for his ever restless attention, this has always been the most simple instruction given, cutting through a lot of the mind complexities: remain in a continuous conscious contact with your own being, with the sense "I am" in you. Let this be the landing place of your attention, 24/7.
Don't think about it (it's about "feeling" it, "sensing" it), don't make it complicated, just keep at least a bit of your attention focused/anchored in this intimate and obvious sense of being ("I exist, right here, right now"), and doing so ignoring all mind chatter. This is what devotion is, what surrender is.
"Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. Therefore, whoever takes the lowly position of this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven." - Matthew 18:1
"Be without leaving yourself." - Ramana Maharshi
Surrendering is Unavoidable
I love the idea and energy of surrender/surrendering. I really think that there are way more chances that people engaged on the "non-dual" path, that of knowledge/self-knowledge, of Jnana, can be trapped by the ever subtle tricks of the ego dynamic, than those on this path of total unconditional surrender.
People on this path of "knowledge" will rarely see that hidden self-centered energy which is at play in desiring (or asserting they found) knowledge and truth, or desiring total freedom and peace, and even this "eternity", that this so-called knowledge is supposed to give them.
If earnestness is there, one who really embraces the path of surrendering (be it through devotion, or just plain surrendering), will obviously face one day the necessity of surrendering all knowledge too (be it "ultimate" or "absolute"), all fruits of experiences, all supposed acquisitions gleaned on the path, all certitudes, all reference points, and more generally all desires to get/acquire anything for oneself (be it lasting peace, love, freedom and stillness).
Stillness and Witnessing
There is a great power in observing the functioning of the mind, as a whole. But for this, you have to be very still, absolutely still. Because as soon as you "move" (which means as soon as you start moving with the mind's movement itself), your observation will be distorted, polluted, and valueless.
It's truly like observing an external phenomenon, in a neutral, relaxed, fresh and unconcerned way. No involvement, no comment, no judgment, no doing nor non-doing. You are just here, still within the stillness of your being, observing external occurrences.
Watch how the mind is creating, moment to moment, "your" world, "your" life, and even what you call "you".
To reach this state of stillness and still witnessing, a little trick may help: notice that you don't have to create the still witness. It's already here, at all times, witnessing everything, even the most subtle appearances. And if you are truly still in that way, you will also come to notice that "trying to be still and to observe with equanimity", is itself already a movement of mind/thought.
The Power of Words
Words have power. A guidance, a pointer, a mantra, a prayer... all have power, if one knows how to relate to them.
Words are like food. You have to put them in your mouth, and then swallowing and digesting will happen, to extract the nutriments out of them.
Using those words as fuel for more mentation, rationalization, intellectualization, rumination, thinking, is wasting the food. Nothing nourishing can come out of it. It would be like putting the food in your mouth and to leave it there forever.
Words have to be felt, not thought about. The mouth here, is the intellect, that which is capable to receive and echo concepts. But then, you have to swallow and let digestion happen. And you do that through feeling the words through your whole being, silently, calmly, in a very alert way, with as much presence as you can, and let them deliver their power/nutriment, without interfering in the least.
Let's take an example.
"Be nothing. Know nothing. Want nothing. Do nothing. Rest in God." (put anything you resonate more with, instead of "God")
You say those words within, very slowly, bit by bit (that's putting the food in your mouth), in a very focused/attentive way, you can even pause after each occurrence, while silently feeling them, quietly feel into them, embracing them, fully listening to them, letting the concepts (pure meaning) and vibration they carry be diffused into your whole being, without any interference of the mind.
There is the need of a special kind of refined receptivity in oneself, to let words deliver their good. That's the kind of receptivity we don't usually have, out of our automatic pull to interfere with everything, our impatience, our lack of capacity to let things happen without trying to control them.
Yes, words have "truths" in them. They are like the qualities (or names) of God. Each word is a vibration, a frequency, that can help us, and which can only operates within a quiet (inner) environment. They are not only conceptual/intellectual pointers, they truly are medicines and remedies, agents of transformation.
"How can you break through the barrier and know personally, intimately, what it means to be immutable? The word itself is the bridge. Remember it, think of it, explore it, go round it, look at it from all directions, dive into it with earnest perseverance: endure all delays and disappointments till suddenly the mind turns round, away from the word, towards the reality beyond the word. It is like trying to find a person knowing his name only. A day comes when your inquiries bring you to him and the name becomes reality. Words are valuable, for between the word and its meaning there is a link and if one investigates the word assiduously, one crosses beyond the concept into the experience at the root of it. As a matter of fact, such repeated attempts to go beyond the words is what is called meditation." - Nisargadatta Maharaj
Giving and Receiving (Effort and Grace)
All talk or description on/of the path, is ultimately poetic, symbolic. That said...
The Self, God, Consciousness, Beingness, Satguru, Heart, Grace, the Beloved, is absolutely discrete, delicate, and infinitely patient. It will never impose Itself on you, will never force your realization or awakening, will never touch your total freedom to come closer or move away from Him. That is true Love. Pure respect.
In other words, you can only receive from Him, what you are giving to Him. That's total fairness and "divine" justice. Yet, He is also generosity itself. There is an old saying: "If you make one step toward Him, He will make two steps toward you."
Another way of putting it, is to say that a conditioned human being is like a recipient full to the brim; full of himself, full of conditioned self-centeredness energies. And Grace, Clarity, Truth, can only enter at the exact measure he truly empties himself out of this noise of the ego-mind. Pretense, here, cannot work.
This also means that we are never "alone" on our path. Whether we are aware of it or not, each time we are earnest and doing our best in our practice (i.e in surrendering oneself and giving up thoughts), the entire Universe will respond to help us, all the forces of Grace and Clarity, all the Liberated Ones from the past, present and future, are here to respond to and support our goodwill and sincere willingness.
Here's some quotes below illustrating all this.
"The Guru, the Lord who resides in the Heart of each devotee, watches your devotion and your progress and gives you grace in proportion to the effort you make. It is his job to keep track of your progress. Your job is to make the effort. This effort should be directed towards giving up thoughts. When the Lord in your Heart sees this effort being made, then the grace you are looking for will start to flow. Eventually if you persevere, the Lord may grant you an effortless thought-free state." - Sri Laskshmana Swami
"If we perform sadhana to the limit of our abilities the Lord will accomplish for us that which is beyond our capabilities. If we fail to do even that which is within our capabilities, there is not the slightest fault in the grace of the Lord." - Ramana Maharshi
"Realization of the Self comes through both effort and grace. When one makes a steady effort to abide in the Self one receives the guru's grace in abundance. The grace comes not only through the form of one's guru. When you meditate earnestly all the Jivanmuktas [liberated ones] of the past and the present respond to your efforts by sending you blessings of light." - Annamalai Swami
"The amount of Grace which one receives is proportional to the degree to which one surrenders. If you surrender completely, then you will receive enough Grace to realize the Self." - Sri Laskshmana Swami
"Stop thinking. Live in the moment. Stop worrying about the past or the future. Awaken to yourself. Be happy. Be free. You are not alone. You have divine forces right now taking care of you, guiding you, directing you to your ultimate good. Trust these divine forces. Have faith in them. All they want is your recognition. When you recognize there are divine forces taking care of you then you will find they are working for you and you find infinite joy." - Robert Adams
"The secret protects itself: Concentrate upon spirituality as you will - it will shun you if you are unworthy. Write about it, boast of it, comment upon it - it will decline to benefit you; it will flee. But, if it sees your concentration, it may come to your hand, like a trained bird. Like the peacock, it will not sit in an unworthy place." - Idries Shah
"The more one gives up, the more one gets. When all is given up, all is achieved." - Brahmajna Ma
"I never curse or bless anyone. Nothing is gained by doing namaskars to any Jnani in hope of being blessed. Everyone will get what they deserve only according to their merits. Those who make the desperate effort to Realize their own Self will reap the benefits." - Ramana Maharshi
"When the mind has trained itself to subside a little into the Heart, the Self starts to pull it into itself." - Sri Laskshmana Swami
"When the devotee makes an effort to be without thoughts or to surrender to the Self, the Guru within responds." - Sri Laskshmana Swami
"The amount of love I send out depends entirely on the amount of love I am given. Ramana Maharshi once said that the grace of the Self is like an infinite ocean. If you approach the ocean with a cup, you can only take way a cupful; if you approach it with a bucket, you can only take away a bucketful. This is exactly how it is with me. I am willing to give my full love to anyone who wants it, but the devotee must initiate the process by loving me first. The Self does not choose whom to love; it only gives love to those who love It. It is the nature of the Self that It gives more love than it receives." - Mathru Sri Sarada
"Be still in the presence of the Lord. Wait patiently for Him to act." - Psalm 37:7
"Your repeated effort is bound to erase them [vasanas]. All sadhana is meant for this purpose only. Keep up your practice. There is no need to remind God about His business which is to keep an eye always on our welfare." - Ramana Maharshi
"Practice is necessary. Then there is Grace. Your repeated effort is bound to erase tendencies. Leave God's job to God. You have to do what is in your hands. When the time is ripe, God's Grace, which is always operating, will be felt. The mistake one is prone to make is to abandon effort under the mistaken impression that God's Grace is absent. But one should not slacken, for God's Grace is bound to operate in due time, when you are ripe." - Ramana Maharshi
"Bliss is always flowing from Swami [Sri Laskshmana] but it depends on the maturity of the disciple how much is received. The more one is free from thoughts, the more one will receive that force. Each devotee will receive grace in proportion to the amount of faith he has."- Mathru Sri Sarada
"Because truth is exceedingly subtle and serene, the bliss of the Self can manifest only in a mind rendered subtle and steady by assiduous meditation." - Ramana Maharshi
"God, whose love and joy are present everywhere, cannot come to visit you unless you are not there." - Angelus Silesius
"Grace and effort are both necessary. The sun is shining, but you must turn and look at it in order to catch a glimpse. Similarly, individual effort is necessary as well as Grace." - Ramana Maharshi
"Surrender can never be regarded as complete so long as the devotee wants this or that from the Lord. True surrender is love of God for the sake of love and nothing else, not even for the sake of salvation." - Ramana Maharshi
"Not until someone dissolves, can he or she know what union is. That descends only into emptiness." - Rumi
"Complete surrender to God means giving up all thoughts and concentrating the mind on Him. If we can concentrate on Him, other thoughts disappear. If the actions of the mind, speech and body are merged with God, all the burdens of our life will be on him." - Ramana Maharshi
"A man willing to die for truth will get it." - Nisargadatta Maharaj
"Don't bother about anything, just continue abiding in the 'I am', a moment will come when it will be pleased and reveal all the secrets." - Nisargadatta Maharaj
"We can't invite the wind, but we need to leave the window open." - Jiddu Krishnamurti
"There's something within you that knows what to do. There is a power greater than you that knows how to take care of you without your help. All you've got to do is to surrender to it. Surrender your thoughts, your mind, your ego, to the current that knows the way. It will take care of you. It will take better care of you than you can ever imagine." - Robert Adams
"Unless the destruction of all vasanas is accomplished, it will not be possible even for Ishwara [Supreme Being] to bestow the state of liberation." - Ramana Maharshi
"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." - Nisargadatta Maharaj
"Don't be afraid to let go, you'll never be alone. The universe is your friend. It will always take care of you if you do your part first. That is to surrender and allow the universe to take care of you." - Robert Adams
"I learned utter devotion to the Search for Truth from a gambler. I watched a gambler lose everything he possessed and when a comrade begged him to give it up, he answered, "Ah my friend, if I had to give my head for this game, I could not do without it." When I heard this, my heart was flooded with amazement and ever since I have pursued Truth with the same single-mindedness." - Bahauddin Naqshbandi (Master of Wisdom, 14th century, Bukhara, Uzbekistan)
Generosity
To truly "awaken", obviously requires the greatest, most selfless act of generosity one can imagine. Because ultimately, as long as you desire something for yourself on this path, as long as you expect to receive or gain anything in return of your engagement and practice (a blessing, a grace, knowledge, a state, whatever), you're into a business, not spirituality, and awakening/liberation (the dissolving of the "I-thought") cannot and will not happen.
Oh Beloved!
If I'm seeking You out of desiring paradise, exclude me from paradise.
If I'm seeking You out of fear of hell, throw me in hell.
But if I'm seeking You for Yourself, and for the service of Man,
Grant me Your Grace and Your Light.
(prayer adapted from Sufi master Rabia al-Basri's words, 8th century)
"Deafened by the voice of desire you are unaware the Beloved lives in the core of your heart. Stop the noise and you will hear His voice in the silence." - Jalaluddin Rumi
"I said: "Show me the ladder, that I may climb up to heaven." He said "Your head is the ladder, bring your head down under your feet"." - Jalaluddin Rumi
"This silence, this moment, every moment, if it's genuinely inside you, brings what you need. There's nothing to believe. Only when I stopped believing in myself did I come into this beauty. Sit quietly, and listen for a voice that will say: "Be more silent." Die and be quiet. Quietness is the surest sign that you've died. Your old life was a frantic running from silence. Move outside the tangle of fear-thinking. Live in silence." - Jalaluddin Rumi
"There is nothing to save, now all is lost, but a tiny core of stillness in the heart like the eye of a violet." - D.H. Lawrence
Don't Be a Beggar
A friend said: "But, freedom is not thoughtlessness. It is non-attachment to thoughts. Knowing that you are not thoughts, that you are the awareness of them."
This in itself (comment extracted from a thread), is a good example of the mediocrity of contemporary so-called "non-duality", and a very good example of what the Sufi master Ibn Ikbal describes here:
"When a man is a beggar, he thinks that small change is a fortune. It is not. In order to rise above beggarhood, he must rise above small change, even though he uses it as a means. Used as an end it will become an end."
To become the witness of thoughts, breaking identification with them and severing attachments to them, is one of the very first step on one's path. But now (and it's not uncommon among neo-advaitins) it has become the goal, and it's called "realization". What a farce, really.
In true Liberation/Realization, only the Self remains, because the "I-thought" itself (the mind), that which can be attached or non-attached, has been annihilated back into its source, the Self. Attachment and non-attachment don't mean a thing for the Self, because there is no mind, no "I-thought" left that could be attached or non-attached. Plus, as the very source of the mind itself producing all self-referential thinking, the "I-thought", is not there anymore, there can't be any self-centered thought anyway, to be attached to or detached from.
A Glimpse is Not Enough
When people claim to know they are the Self (or Awareness), and say "I am the Self", or "I know my true nature as the Self/Awareness", like it happened on few comments here, in truth, they only had a glimpse, or few glimpses of it.
And now, once the (often very partial) experience is gone, and that the "I-thought" and all its egoic conditioning came back, it's only a memory for them. It became an intellectual/mental idea, which they are grasping unto as a new identity, a mental idea that they now call "knowledge" or "realization".
When real sages, true Jnani (realized one) like Ramana Maharshi say "There is only the Self", they are not talking about some knowledge (be it ultimate), not even about truth, but about their very direct and continuous, uninterrupted experience. And that's a big difference.
The only way to attain such a state (which could be called stateless) where "There is only the Self" is a continuous living experience, is through the irremediable dissolution of the "I-thought", out of which all egoic dynamic arises.
When this "I-thought" is annihilated, when it melted back into its source, when the mind itself is fully dead, when the arising of any self-referential thought is impossible because the root "I-thought" itself is gone, there is no one left that could claim "I am the Self", or "I know my true nature". And only then, the living experience of "There is only the Self" can happen.
"To go beyond nothing, is to be in thoughtless reality: Parabrahman!" - Siddharameshwar Maharaj
"When a man is a beggar, he thinks that small change is a fortune. It is not. In order to rise above beggarhood, he must rise above small change, even though he uses it as a means. Used as an end it will become an end." - Ibn Ikbal
"I am the slave of whoever will not at each stage imagine that he has arrived at the end of his goal. Many a stage has to be left behind before the traveler reaches his destination." - Jalaluddin Rumi
"Whoever might perfume a scorpion, will not thereby escape its sting." - Bahauddin Naqshband
"Hindsight, shows how often yesterday's so-called truth may become today's absurdity. Real ability is to respect relative truth without damaging oneself by refusing to realize that it will be superseded." - Idries Shah
"There is a succession of experiences which together constitute the educational and developmental ripening of the learner, according to the Sufis. People who think that each gain is the goal itself will freeze at any such stage, and cannot learn through successive and superseding lessons." - Idries Shah
"There are so many who take the dawn for the noon, a momentary experience for full realisation and destroy even the little they gain by excess of pride. Humility and silence are essential for a sadhaka, however advanced." - Nisargadatta Maharaj
"Look and where you find yourself, renounce yourself. There is the highest. Know that never anyone has renounced himself enough so that he doesn't find to renounce himself more. Start from there, die on the task: it's there that you'll find real peace and nowhere else." - Master Eckhart
"Cast off what has been realized. Turn back to the subject that realizes to the root bottom and resolutely go on." - Bassui Tokusho
Sri Lakshmana Swami
Same as Annamalai Swami, and of course Ramana Maharshi, for Sri Lakshmana Swami (direct disciple of Ramana), true self-realization has very little to do with discovering/knowing/realizing the Self, and not even temporary experiences of nothingness and subsiding of the mind into the Self (although all this plays a part in one's path), but the final annihilation/dissolution of the "I-thought", of the mind itself, with no return, at its source.
He says that all efforts are to be made to stabilize oneself in the thought-free state. That in itself, is surely not a given, because the "I-thought" will rise again and again. Hence the need for perseverance. But if we are able to stabilize this state through constant dedication, sacrifice, surrender and effort, then and only then, there may be a possibility to attain the effortless thought-free state, and from here then a chance that the remnant "I-thought", deprived of other thought attachment for long enough and in a continuous way, will be re-absorbed entirely into its source, and dissolve, die there. For him, that's true self-realization.
Here's few excerpts from David Godman's book "No Mind, I am the Self", about Sri Lakshmana Swami's life and teaching.
"Anyone who's mind completely subsides into the Heart for a short time, can talk like an enlightened person. Their experience of the Self is the same as that of a realized person. However, their "I-thought" is not dead and it is likely to re-emerge at any time. Such an experience is not the final state because it is not permanent." - Sri Lakshmana Swami
"If one can remain without thoughts for a long time, then the mind will automatically subside into the Self and one will experience the bliss of the Self. This is not the true experience of the Self because there is still an "I" which is experiencing the bliss. The true experience of the Self comes when the mind dies. Then there is no experiencer, there is only the Self." - Sri Lakshmana Swami
"Mind is only thoughts. The more easily you can be without thoughts, the nearer you are to a direct experience of the Self. To make the mind die you must deprive it of thoughts. The effortless thought-free state is the highest level of practice. There are no stages or degrees of realization, there are only stages of spiritual practice. The final stage of sadhana (practice) is this effortless thought-free state. If this state can be maintained, then the "I" will sink into the Self and it will experience the bliss of the Self. This is not self-realization, for there is still an "I" which is experiencing the bliss of the Self. These experiences are only temporary; the "I" will continue to reassert itself until the moment of realization. Realization can only happen in this effortless thought-free state, for it is only in this state that the Self can destroy the "I-thought". The "I-thought", which is the mind, must die completely before self-realization occurs." - Sri Lakshmana Swami
The End of All Identity
"When there is true awakening, all the sense of 'being' disappears. Even the sense that you are the Self, also dissolves." - Sri Siddharameshwar Maharaj (master of Nisargadatta Maharaj)
"The real thing is to achieve "mano nasa" or extinction of the mind. That is what is called Jnana." - Ramana Maharshi
Few things related to the discussion that happened in the two last posts...
A lot of people in this new-age so-called non-duality sphere of contemporary spirituality, keep insisting that the goal is about "knowing" who you are, or "understanding" who/what you are, or "understanding/knowing" what truth is.
They will usually end up claiming that they are "Awareness", "Eternal", that they are the "Self".
In truth, and no matter how clever they are with manipulating "spiritual" concepts, all that happened is a shift of identity: from an ordinary ego, to a god-ego, a spiritual ego, an absolute-ego. As if it was not enough delusion to believe to be a "person", they are know happy to believe they are "God", "Awareness", "Eternal", "Self".
And of course, they will deny what is described in many different spiritual traditions, that the true goal on a spiritual path is the dissolution, the annihilation, the death of the ego, which in Ramana's words (but you'll find the same in Sufi or Christian tradition, see the quotes below) is the final and irremediable dissolution of the "I-thought" back into its own Source (Mano Nasa, which only can be called true Jnana/Liberation).
But see, they don't want that. They don't want to die, to disappear, to dissolve, to be nothing beyond nothing, they want to be "God", they want to be the "Absolute", they want "Eternity", they want the "ultimate knowledge", the "absolute understanding". Instead of dissolving and self-effacement, their path is that of aggrandizing, the path of the "I" enlarging itself to the point of believing it is now "God/Awareness/Absolute/Eternal".
What a trap!
To make it short, and using Ramana's terminology, the goal is through great effort and help/instructions/grace of a Master, to make the mind and the I-thought subside, again and again, through ignoring and discarding it with great perseverance, and holding on to the primary pure sense of being (Heart, Self, I-thought, I am). When this happens, it is called Mano Laya (temporary subsiding of the mind/I-thought), generating different stages of samadhi. That's how far one can go, because in this state, there is no "personal" agent anymore to "do" or "know" anything. From here, it's all in "Grace's hands". This is the stage where silence, peace, oneness, timelessness, the sense of being the "Self", pure consciousness, pure awareness, can be experienced.
But this is certainly not the end of the story. The "I-thought" will revive again, and re-engage with being a "person", because all conditioning is not yet burnt. But what's even worse, is when this "I-thought" starts to cling to any of what was intuited during Mano Laya, in the form of "I am the Self", "I am Awareness", "I know myself". This is where seekers go from ordinary delusion, to absolute delusion.
But what Ramana (or other great sages, in other traditions too) tells us, is that if we humbly persevere in our practice, and do our best to bring the mind back to this state of quietness/no-thought, again and again, isolating the "I-thought", not allowing it to connect with any other thoughts, and refrain from clinging to anything arising in that state, the "I-thought" itself may dissolve back entirely in its source and not revive again. This is Mano Nasa: final annihilation of the mind/I-thought, and real Jnana, true Liberation.
"The no-mind state is where you come from practicing to the place in Silence where there are no thoughts to bother you any longer. You get there through Self-inquiry. That's the fastest way. But that's not Self-realization. Self-realization is when the mind is pulled completely into the spiritual heart. Liberation, moksha, Self-realization, is when the mind that's left over in the Silence is pulled completely into the spiritual Heart. At that time the whole mind, the I, dissolves completely, and you are free." - Robert Adams
"Never stand still on the path; become non-existent; non-existent even to the notion of becoming non-existent. And when you have abandoned both individuality and understanding, this world will become That." - Hakim Sanai (12th century, Persia, Afghanistan)
"Therefore we declare that a man should be as free from his own knowledge as he was when he was not." - Meister Eckhart
"To be poor in spirit, a man must be poor of all his own knowledge: not knowing any thing, not God, nor creature nor himself." - Meister Eckhart
"The experience of non-being [adam] reverts to ordinary human existence, but the experience of annihilation [fana], does not revert to ordinary human existence." - Shaikh Khadim (12th century)
"The expression "experience of non-being" signifies the seekers realization of the character of non-being. This is a kind of loss of self, a state which comes to those at the beginning of the path of the Masters of Wisdom, in the course of their exertions. As the adornments of the external world are obliterated from the eye and the heart, genuine existence begins to shine from the direction of the experience of non-being. Due to the condition of human nature, this experience is not permanent, and it can be reversed. As for the perpetuity that succeeds annihilation, and marks the beginning of genuine existence, once it has been realized it never goes away. As soon as the faithful seeker has cleansed all the external world's allure from the mirror of his heart, he begins to perceive a non-existence within himself. He becomes incapable of seeing and recollecting his own being and the lower world. In the language of Sufism, this is called "non-being" [adam] and "absence" [ghaiba]. This state is the first indication of the dawn of bliss and the moment of Divine communion. The all-important point, however, is for this state to become permanent and established in the spiritual traveller. If the spiritual traveller is able to persevere in this state, passing from non-being to annihilation and attaining to genuine existence, he will have reached the station that cannot possibly cease to exist. This is the station of "permanence after annihilation" [baqa' ba'da 'l-fana]. Once one has come to experience this existence, it is no longer possible to revert to ordinary human existence." - Ali ibn Husain Safi (16th century)
Refuse To Think
I feel it might be worth realizing that everything we experience in our lives, is thought only. We never ever experienced anything else than our thoughts. All experiences, are conceptually based. Regrets, worries, desires, expectations, fears, anger, frustration, discontentment, boredom, anticipation, sadness, shame, blame, etc... are all thoughts, all rooted in conceptuality.
What regrets or worries can there be, if there are no thoughts supporting them? How could you be ashamed, sad, or bored, if your mind is silent? You literally can't. So see, what we call "life", "my life", has nothing to do with "you" experiencing "things" or "events" in life. All of it, including the idea of the "experiencer", is nothing but experiencing of thoughts, of mental stories. This is what Maya is. Confusing a movie with reality.
And that is why all spiritual instructions culminate, through a progressive maturing, to this one spiritual instruction: keep quiet, be still. At some point, only one effort is worth doing: to learn to not engage with and disregard all mental movements of thinking within oneself.
"Stop thinking, and end your problems." - Lao Tzu
"The fastest way to become awakened is to stop the mind from thinking. There's no faster way." - Robert Adams
"The highest form of Grace is Silence. It is also the highest spiritual instruction." - Ramana Maharshi
"To remain free from thoughts is the best offering one can make to God." - Ramana Maharshi
"For a seeker of reality, there is only one meditation - the rigorous refusal to harbor thoughts. To be free from thoughts is itself meditation." - Nisargadatta Maharaj
"To remain without thought in the waking state is the greatest worship." - Nisargadatta Maharaj
"Keep the mind before thinking." - Seung Sahn
"Your ultimate need is to get established in the changeless peace of the Self. For this you have to give up all thoughts." - Annamalai Swami
"All the present troubles are due to thoughts and are themselves thoughts. So give up thoughts. That is happiness." - Ramana Maharshi
"It is within your competence to think and become bound or cease thinking and thus be free." - Ramana Maharshi
"That which is, is peace. All that we need do is to keep quiet. Peace is our real nature. We spoil it. What is required is that we cease to spoil it." - Ramana Maharshi
"I never saw any lamp shining more brilliantly than the lamp of silence." - Bayazid Bastami
"The best meditation is to simply keep quiet. Don't follow any thought and don't activate the mind. This is true meditation." - Papaji
"What are all our experiences but thoughts? Pleasure and pain are mere thoughts. They are within ourselves. If you are free from thoughts, and yet aware, you are that Perfect Being." - Ramana Maharshi
Remain Naked and Hopeless
Sit and gently relax within your own heart, within your own sense of being, abandoned, surrendered, open, naked, helpless, powerless, defenseless, unprotected, aimless, lonely, exhausted, defeated, gratefully lost, vulnerable, unassumingly offered, non-entitled, humble...
And remain, truly hopeless and without any expectations, sited within, at the mercy of your own silent and tender heart.
"I wish I could show you when you are lonely or in darkness the astonishing light of your own being." - Jalaluddin Rumi
We Are Happiness
To be happy and content is our birthright, for the simple reason that we ARE happiness and contentment, literally. Being, to be, "I am", equates with happiness, joy and contentment. If this happiness is not felt, it is not because it is not yet attained or gained, or that it is yet far away in distance and time, but because our attention is still sucked in the ever-troubled self-centered mental realm. It's that simple.
Have you noticed that you cannot feel truly happy, joyful and content, even for a short period of time, and at the same time ruminating thoughts? When thoughts subside, the happiness of being (which is always here) is felt. When we feel happy, thoughts subside.
This happiness, joy, peace, and contentment of being, is absolutely conditionless. It is timeless, consubstantial with being, beyond the realm of causality and reason. Again, to be (the sense "I am"), is happiness itself. And that's something the complicated conditioned mind, for which everything needs a cause and conditions to be, has a very hard time with. It's too simple, too direct, to close.
Stuck in causality, conditions, time, memory, blame, shame, lack of self-worth, the mind will actually resist this ever-available happiness. For this mind, happiness needs to be fought for, deserved and gained, must be the result of efforts or worth. And if you listen to the mind, you will notice that there will NEVER be a time where all conditions are met for true happiness and contentment to arise and remain, there will NEVER be a time when you will fully deserve to be happy and content.
A good thing to play with, to heal this disease of the mind, and re-balance the system, is to allow yourself to be fully happy and content, for no reason at all, several times a day. Might feel a bit weird in the beginning, but keep practicing it. Be fully happy and content, at will. It's a frequency, a vibration, arising out of your very being. Feel it, tune with it, dive into it.
Of course, it's just a little trick, because you actually are fully happy and content, within, as being, at all times, you are just not aware of it. This little trick will help you become more aware of it.
"Get yourself out of the way, and let joy have more space." - Jalaluddin Rumi
"I Am" is the Gate
The only constant fact in one's life, is the fact of being, to be able to say, sense, feel: "I am", "I exist", "I am alive". Without it, nothing else could be. Yet, this most important fact among all other facts, is the most overlooked and neglected factor in the life of ordinary human beings.
And it's precisely because it is so constant and utterly familiar, that it is overlooked. We know very well how the conditioned ego-mind treats that which is too familiar: with superficiality and inattention. That's how we are missing on and on, that which is absolutely primary and fundamental in our lives. This is what is called "sleep".
To awaken, starts with bringing back in one's life, a curiosity, an interest, a freshness of perception, an amazement, an awe even, about this primary, naked fact of being.
This "I am" was/is your entry gate into this world, use it as an exit gate toward your original nature. Submit to Being All discontentment finds resolution in being. All trouble and struggle, finds resolution in being. In the bare simplicity, humility, sobriety and silence of being, love is found, peace is found. In this unassuming state of being, the sweetness of God arises. In wanting nothing, in desiring nothing, in giving up everything, in full surrendering, in capitulation and submission, in admitting one's full defeat, here lies the great and sweetest embrace of Being. Pure Being is Humble The person, the ego, selfing, the self-centered activity of the mind, IS arrogance itself. The ego is by essence, that which is "playing God". Perceiving perceives, and the ego claims: "I am perceiving". The body moves, and the ego claims: "I am moving". The brain produces thoughts, and the ego claims: "I think". I want, I need, I deserve... And this is why in all traditions, the emphasis has been put on humility. Not as a moral value, but as a very pragmatical tool which is crucial for the student transformation. And the reason is simple: humility is one of the primary harmonics of pure consciousness or pure being (or God you could say), itself. Pure being is discrete, intimate, delicate, unassuming, and fully humble. Imagine that! Being that huge, that omnipresent and omnipotent, being the source and creator of all that is, and at the same time so discrete and humble, that most will not even see or sense "You"! That is why, the development of the quality of humility is absolutely crucial on one's path, because it will put the seeker in tune with the harmonics of pure Being, so that through a mechanism of resonance, he will start to vibrate at the (very high) frequency of pure consciousness/being. The vibration of the egoic selfing mental activity is too gross, too raw, too thick, well, too "arrogant" and noisy, to reach and resonate with the vibration of pure being/consciousness. Finally, note that the frequency of humility, is extremely close to that of silence and love. Thinking Hurts "There is not one thing that can hurt you in this universe other than what you are thinking and believing." - Byron Katie Be Still and Know You cannot leave your ego, you cannot leave your "I", because the one wanting to leave the ego is the ego itself, the one wanting to get rid of the "I" is the "I" itself. But what you can "do" is to be very still. And to be still is not a doing, not an attainment, and it's very easy to "achieve" because you already are stillness itself. And when you are still, you may realize that you are (and already ever were) the witness/seer of everything that appears within you, including all thought-stories about "you", "your ego", your "I", your "quest for happiness", your "seeking for awakening", your "struggle with your life", your "attempts to stabilize a state of peace". And you will come to see that there can't be two of you here; if you are the witness of absolutely everything that you call "you", of everything that you believe is "your life", appearing as thoughts, it means that you are none of it, and that none of it actually defines what you really are. You only have been struggling with your own shadow all along. This means that you actually never been seeking, never been struggling, never been feeling bad, never been unhappy, never suffered, never been lost and never had to find your way back. All this was just mental stories, produced by/in the body, that you have ignorantly been believing in, that you have been taken for yourself. This is why, as a skillful mean, or a little trick we could say, the only real "practice" available, is to keep the "I" and all the mental movements of this "I" in the focus of your attention, in the focus of the seer/witness (or seeing/witnessing) that you already are. When we do that (which again is not really a doing, but more a relaxing, because witnessing is already happening fully without a "me" having to do it), we will start to realize that we cannot be this "I" and its movements that we are perceiving/witnessing, for the very reason that we are perceiving/witnessing it/them. "Being always the real Self, we are striving to become one with it." - Ramana Maharshi "Just see the person you imagine yourself to be as a part of the world you perceive within your mind, and look at the mind from the outside, for you are not the mind. After all, your only problem is the eager self-identification with whatever you perceive. Give up this habit, remember that you are not what you perceive, use your power of alert aloofness." - Nisargadatta Maharaj "The thought of an obstacle is itself the greatest obstacle." - Ramana Maharshi "Realization is nothing new. It is eternal. There is no question of instantaneous or gradual realization." - Ramana Maharshi "The brilliant clear essence of the sun is not obscured by the darkness of a thousand eons." - Tilopa "Any thought that you have reached or are going to reach that state is false. Whatever happens in consciousness is purely imaginary, an hallucination; therefore, keep in mind the knowledge that it is consciousness in which everything is happening. With that knowledge, be still, do not pursue any other thoughts which arise in consciousness. What is necessary is to understand with sure conviction is that all is temporary, and does not reflect your true state." - Nisargadatta Maharaj Organic Effort and Non-Effort "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." - Nisargadatta Maharaj I think that might be explaining the very reason why, whether we are clinging to effort or non-effort, it's all a great misunderstanding of how things work. When effort is needed, effort needs to be made. If a concept/belief of "effortlessness" is there, it will interfere with one's development. When effortlessness is needed, non-effort will assert itself. If a concept/belief of "effortfullness" is there, it will also interfere with one's development. Scared of Consciousness We are actually scared of consciousness, scared of the very power of consciousness, which means we are scared of ourselves. As Nisagardatta said "People find it difficult to bear their own consciousness." This is so true... See, we ARE consciousness (witness/seer, witnessing/seeing of all). And the problem, from the standpoint of identification, is that we cannot not be conscious! We cannot not be conscious of what arises in our experience, whether we "like it" or not. And this is literally hell from the "person" point of view, which is all based on preferences, on likes/dislikes. As a "person", we want to be conscious of what feels pleasant, and do everything we can to not be conscious of what feels unpleasant. Which is of course impossible (hence the hell), but we constantly try to trick ourselves to achieve this anyway. When something labeled/sensed as pleasant presents itself, we are happy to be conscious of it. But when something labeled/sensed as unpleasant shows up, we will try to push it away, to avoid or repress it (even by using "spiritual" tricks), to deny it, to numb it, or we will use distractions, entertainment, by-passing behaviors, to try walk away from it, to try to stop being conscious of it... which again, is impossible. Do you see? It's like being a mirror and not wanting to reflect everything, but only what "pleases" us. Is that possible? No, of course. But out of conditioning, we developed powerful strategies of denial, powerful strategies to blind ourselves, where we became somehow capable of denying being conscious of what we are conscious of... Something might be here in the full light of consciousness, but we are capable of saying "No, it's not there." Amazing. So, once we start accepting the fact that consciousness can never be turned off, and that we ARE this consciousness (and not the content of the mind, not the "I-stories" of the mind), once we accept that we are the mirror reflecting whatever comes in front of it, and take our stand as this never-touched never-affected and totally equanimous mirror, something might start to relax... Remain As the Seer You are the ultimate seer, or witness, of the entire (inner and outer) movie. The seer, which is what you are, is already and always stable, at peace, quiet, even blissful. The seer is already and always neutral, non-reactive, seeing things unfolding with total equanimity, never concerned, never touched, never affected by what comes and goes, by what is seen/felt/experienced. Which means the seer is always free from any dualistic involvements such as attraction/repulsion, attachment/aversion, likes/dislikes, embracing/resisting, clinging/pushing away. So again, the "work" has nothing to do with becoming anything new, or creating something new, or attaining a new state of being, but to remain as you really are, the pure neutral witness/seer of it all. This is where past conditioning stored in the memory of the body, where self-centered tendencies and habits, play their part. Instead of remaining the already perfectly neutral seer of anything that arises and dissolves (remaining the screen upon which everything appears and disappears), we get involved and develop a "personal/self-centered" relationship with some of it, in the form of the dualistic involvements/reactions as described above. In other words, due to identification with the body, which means identification (involvement) with some thoughts arising in the brain, we take the shape of those stories, and start to live from those stories, which gives us the false impression that we are agitated, that we have lost stability, peace, bliss and quietness. And this, is the root of seeking. From "I lost peace" arising in the mind, and taken to be true out of identification and dualistic involvement, the "I am seeking for peace" arises as a response, as an urge which can never be assuaged. This is peace itself saying "I lost peace, I have to find peace again". This is the seer itself saying "I lost track of myself, I have to find myself back." But how can the seer lose track of itself? The seer must be here to witness the arising of the thought-story "I have lost sight of myself and I need to look for myself". So, here's a little trick: as much as you can, look at yourself, look at your own mind, from the standpoint of a neutral witness, remain as the equanimous seer, and without any intention or involvement whatsoever, be very present and curious about what the next arising thought-story or seeking-story is going to be, remembering that any thought-form that is arising has nothing to do with you, is part of the seen, is an object seen, an appearance appearing to you-the-equanimous-peaceful-ultimate-seer. Don't get involved with any of it, refrain from reacting or judging any of it, trying to grasp it or suppress it, just notice it and let it be. Remain as the seer, and remember that you cannot see or experience yourself. You ARE yourself, and everything else, everything else that is seen, felt or experienced, is just an appearance. Maya is such an amazing power. When we hear "You already and always are the ultimate and peaceful seer of the mind. Remain as that.", there are many ways the conditioned/seeking mind can react to it, and if any of it is taken to be true and real, we will remain seemingly trapped into the movie, which will keep feeding back the seeking activity and the belief that there is something to "find". Remain as the witness, no matter what arises within, good or bad, and do absolutely nothing about it. Let it be exactly as it is, painful or pleasurable, noisy or silent, agitated or calm, just remain as the witness of it all. Whatever arises, witness it and remember that whatever it is, none of it can touch you or affect you. "The mind is continuously flowing; that means the words are continuously welling up. When you do not get involved with the thought process or the flow of words, or the flow of mind, you are not the mind. When you are in a position to observe the mind, you are other than the mind." - Nisargadatta Maharaj "You are not the mind. If you know you are not the mind, then what difference does it make if it's busy or quiet? You are not the mind." - Nisargadatta Maharaj "If you go the way of your thoughts you will be carried away by them and you will find yourself in an endless maze." - Ramana Maharshi "Any thought that you have reached or are going to reach that state is false. Whatever happens in consciousness is purely imaginary, an hallucination; therefore, keep in mind the knowledge that it is consciousness in which everything is happening. With that knowledge, be still, do not pursue any other thoughts which arise in consciousness. What is necessary is to understand with sure conviction is that all is temporary, and does not reflect your true state." - Nisargadatta Maharaj "Of the entire universe you are the subtle cause. All is because you are. Grasp this point firmly and deeply and dwell on it repeatedly. To realize this as absolutely true, is liberation." - Nisargadatta Maharaj "True awareness (samvid) is a state of pure witnessing, without the least attempt to do anything about the event witnessed. Your thoughts and feelings, words and actions may also be a part of the event, you watch all unconcerned, in the full light of clarity and understanding. You understand precisely what is going on, because it does not affect you. It may seem to be an attitude of cold aloofness, but it is not really so. Once you are in it, you will find that you love what you see, whatever may be its nature. This choiceless love is the touchstone of awareness. If it is not there, you are merely interested, for some personal reasons." - Nisargadatta Maharaj Free of All Clinging Clinging, is one of the main problem we are facing. Whether we are clinging to "falseness" or "truth", "relative or "absolute", "illusion" or "reality", it is the same. Wherever and whenever there is clinging, there is identification. Identification, is clinging. Any truth that is heard, is supposed to act instantaneously. If it is grasped, we are back in identification. You already are the "changeless witness of the changeful mind". It is already a fact, and there is nothing to "do" or "practice" for this to be an ever present fact. Whatever is appearing in the mind (including the "I-thought"), is a form, part of the seen. All of it has to be recognized as such, because all of it is illusory, a lie. In short: you are not the mind. At all. Now, it must also be seen that "I am not the mind", "I am the seer of it all", "I am the Self", are also thoughts, forms, illusory appearances, part of the seen. Cling to any of it, and you are back into the movie. So the "challenge" is not to become the witness, but to remain the witness that we already are, to remain free of clinging. Thoughts Are Vibrations On the subject of attachment to the thinking mind as being the strongest addiction we experience. Imagine this, that you are at the same time, the drug chemist producing the drug, the drug dealer, and the drug addict. Can you see how (almost) perfect the trap of identification is? And of course, the drug here is thought, self-centered thoughts. Whenever you want a hit of the drug, you buy it from yourself. Whenever you produce some drug, you'll always find a dealer right away: yourself. Whenever you want to sell some drug, you'll always find a customer right away: yourself. So, why are we so addicted? In my experience, it is quite simple: we cannot remain still and quiet, we need to be agitated to "feel alive", to perpetuate a seeming sense of existing/existence as a person, as a separate body, and what has an almost infinite potentiality to agitate the body, is thought, thinking. Thoughts are vibrations, literally. Any sort of thought that you have, will have an impact on the body, will generate a corresponding vibration in all your body cells (generating hormonal chemistry, emotions, feelings, and more thoughts linked to that specific vibration). I am not making this up. I saw this, very clearly, years ago, through meditation. When you slow down the mind process, when you go deeper and deeper into the silence of being, this can show itself very clearly. I remember realizing how, from a deep ground of silence, hence a deep sense of peace, even the most pure, positive and most harmless thought, for example the arising concepts of "silence", or "peace", were actually a disturbance of/to the pure peace of being, and even painful for the body. When there are no thoughts, the body, and all the cells of the body, come to a total rest and peace. They stop being agitated by the vibrating power of the thinking mind. This is heaven on earth (Sat-Chit-Ananda). So every thought story we are entertaining, is actually self-inflicted violence and pain. From the most negative, egoic and heavy ones, to the most positive, insignificant, impersonal and light ones. But for the self-centered mind, this peace of body and mind, is sensed as a threat to its own existence, a "nothing", a "void", a "blank", inert. We actually are spending our life trying to run away from peace (in that regard, rest, peace, quietness, is felt a some kind of death), through constantly agitating the body with thoughts. That is one main root of this addiction with self-centered thinking. "Abhyasa [practice] consists of withdrawal within the Self every time you are disturbed by thought. It is not concentration or destruction of the mind, but withdrawal into the Self." - Ramana Maharshi It's All in the Movie The story of "you" on the spiritual path, of "you" not being awakened yet or being awakened, of "you" on your way to awakening, is also part of the unreal movie, part of what appears and moves on the neutral screen of what you are, and it is seen and perceived like any other image, form or movement. But so often, it goes unnoticed as such, and there is an automatic movement of identification with this story. So, keep rejecting everything that appears, as "not you", "not real", whatever it is, and remain as that which cannot be rejected. Remember that "that which cannot be rejected", cannot be a concept or a form, and cannot be defined in any way. Dive deep into "that" by rejecting everything. If a concept, a form, an image, a definition appears, no matter what it is (space, nothing, void, being, seer, truth, awareness, consciousness, god, absolute...), that's not "it", don't go along with it, reject it and keep diving (or "dying") deeper into what could be called a non-conceptual and silent discovery and experience. And as it happens, come to discover that what we call "reality" is nothing but an edifice of concepts. "The 'I am' is a useful pointer; it shows where to seek, but not what to seek. Just have a good look at it. Once you are convinced that you cannot say truthfully about yourself anything except 'I am', and that nothing can be pointed at, can be yourself, the need for the 'I am' is over - you are no longer intent on verbalizing what you are. All definitions apply to your body only and to its expressions. Once this obsession with the body goes, you will revert to your natural state. We discover the natural state by being earnest, by searching, enquiring, questioning daily and hourly, by giving one's life to this discovery." - Nisargadatta Maharaj The Compulsion to Think I'm really fascinated by the functioning of the mind, the thinking process and identification. Maya is truly an amazing thing. The compulsion to think is really something to observe and enquire into, an enquiry which can open huge areas of clarity and understanding. As I already said in a post, there is a fallacy in believing it's impossible to stop thinking (to keep quiet, to remain silent). Out of ignorance of what this thinking process is, out of apparently not being able to stop this process, and out of a tendency to lie to oneself, most will conclude there is nothing to do about it, and even use spiritual concepts to validate this conclusion ("thoughts are not a problem"). In truth, "I can't stop thinking" doesn't mean "It's impossible to stop thinking", but "I actually don't want the thinking process to stop". This can only show itself out of a deep observation and enquiry about what's going on in the intimacy of our being, and out of a true willingness to honestly be open to discover how things really are. So here's the thing: to stop thinking, means to die to oneself. So "I can't stop thinking" actually hides the fact that "I don't want to die". And this fear of "death" is at the root of this very deep obsession with and addiction to psychological thinking. The only reason why I can't seem to be able to stop thinking, is because I actually don't want the thinking process to come to stop, I don't want to surrender myself, to drop myself, to die to myself. Because in the silence of the mind, "I" am no more. This deep obsession with the thinking mind and the apparent impossibility to silence it, actually hides all my remaining attachments to "myself", to what I think I am, to "my" story, "my" life, "my" existence, "my" past and "my" future, and even "my" path to awakening, which all of it is nothing but thoughts. "Self-realization is the cessation of thoughts and all mental activity. Thoughts are like bubbles upon the surface of the sea [Self]." - Ramana Maharshi "All is known in the sacredness of silence." - Jalaluddin Rumi "Even as fire finds peace in its resting place without fuel, when thoughts become silence the soul finds peace in its own source. When the mind is silent, then it can enter into a world which is far beyond the mind: the highest End. The mind should be kept in the heart as long as it has not reached the highest End. This is wisdom, and this is liberation." - Upanishads "The mind must come to a state of silence, completely empty of fear, longing and all images." - Jean Klein "Maya is destroyed only by engaging with supreme effort in mouna [silence]. It is not destroyed by any other means." - Ramana Maharshi "Only that mind which by practice of yoga, having lost all its latencies, has become pure and still like a lamp in a domewell protected from breeze, is said to be 'dead'. This 'death of mind' is the highest fulfillment. The final conclusion of all the Vedas is that Liberation is nothing but mind stilled. For Liberation nothing can avail, not wealth, relatives, friends, karma consisting of movements of the limbs, pilgrimage to sacred places, baths in sacred waters, life in celestial regions, austerities however severe, or anything but a still mind. In similar strain many sacred books teach that Liberation consists in doing away with the mind. In several passages in the Yoga Vasishta, the same idea is repeated, that the Bliss of Liberation can be reached only by wiping out the mind, which is the root cause of samsara, and thus of all misery!"
- Ramana Maharshi "Questioner: What are the hindrances to the realization of Reality? Ramana: Memory chiefly, habits of thought and accumulated tendencies. Questioner: How to get rid of these? Ramana: Find out the Self through meditation in this manner. Trace every thought back to its origin which is the 'I-thought'; never allow thought to go on. If it does it will be unending. If you take it back to the source, thoughts will die of inaction, for the mind exists by thought; take away thought and there is no mind. As each doubt and depression arises ask yourself, "Who is it that doubts? Who is depressed?" Tear everything away until there is nothing but the source left." ~ Ramana Maharshi All About Nutrition All in life, all in the human realm, is about nutrition. Everything we do, are attempts to feed ourselves, to feed our "soul" [note: just for the sake of this post, I am going to use the word "soul", as the intermediary element between our lowest conditioned ego-self, and our divine nature]. Everything, at all levels, is about food. We try to get nurtured, nourished, in everything we do. All attempts to connect with things, activities or people, are attempts to find "food" and be fed. The problem here, is that we are totally unaware of this fact, and totally ignorant about the kind of nutriment/nutrients we are actually craving for through our diverse activities. Hence the global madness in this world. So here it is: in truth, there is only one basic element in this manifestation, which is like the DNA of all forms (whether gross or amazingly subtle), and this is light. Pure light (Divine Light we could say, or Prana). Everything you can think of, is made of this primary pure light. In reality, our "soul" is only craving for one thing to be nurtured with: light. Let's look at some examples. When we eat food, the only thing we (unconsciously) try to absorb doing so, is the light/prana constituting this food. This "light" is actually the only thing that is nourishing us (body/mind/soul). When we breath, Prana (light) from within the air is what nourishes and keeps us alive as a body, and what can nurture and develop our inner being or soul (when we breathe consciously). When we engage with people, friends, or fall in love, it's the same. It takes another form, but truly, all we do is trying to find some "light" for our soul to be nurtured with. Because see, "love" is the primary subtle form that arose from this pure "light". When this pure light "DNA" starts to manifest, the very first form it takes is love. This is what we're looking for in all relationships. And this goes the same with whatever human activities you can think of. See that all craving for external attention, acknowledgment, love, and fulfillment through worldly activities, arise from your deep hunger for light-food. Now, what we are trying to do on a spiritual path, is to become conscious of this fact, and to regain our total independence as "being", from external and discontinuous gross forms of light. And the only way we can do that, is through going back to the very source of light within us, to feed and nurture our very own soul at the source of light itself, at the source of "being". When we consciously connect with the ground/field of pure being within us, with the pure impersonal "I am" or pure "I", and remain connected, we actually connect with the very source provider of what our soul is truly craving for in life: light in its purest form. And that is the only source which is stable and inextinguishable. When we start to nourish ourselves from within, this brings such a feeling of satiety, nourishment and contentment, that we start to break down the craving and addiction for the discontinuous external gross forms of light in the world, and we start to regain our "divine" independence. So not only this is the only way to truly be nourished and nurtured, and to feel complete, but through the independence gained at this level, only then we will start to be able to truly manifest real love and compassion in the world, true generosity and altruism, because our actions will not be driven anymore by this unconscious need and craving to utilize, to be fed and nurtured with whatever/whoever we're entering in contact with. Do you see? "Excuse me", said an ocean fish. "You are older than I, so can you tell me where to find this thing they call the ocean?" "The ocean", said the older fish, "is the thing you are in now." "Oh, this? But this is water. What I'm seeking is the ocean!", said the disappointed fish as he swam away to search elsewhere." - Anthony De Mello "There are these two young fish swimming along, and they happen to meet an older fish swimming the other way, who nods at them and says, "Morning, boys. How's the water today?" And the two young fish swim on for a bit, and then eventually one of them looks over at the other and goes, "What the hell is water?" - Unknown "And "He is with you" means He is searching with you. "It makes me laugh to think The Ground of Being There must be "being" before thoughts and thinking arise. Without "being", there would be no thoughts, no "me", no "you", no "we", no "them, no "world", there would be no ground for any thought-forms to appear and disappear. This ground of being is like a formless/motionless/silent blank canvas upon which forms and thought-forms/thought-sounds, are appearing and disappearing. Thoughts cannot arise without being, but being can be and still is without thoughts. This ground of pure being names itself as the universal "I am" in you. This silent ground of being in you is obvious, utterly obvious, huge, indisputable, undeniable, self-evident, omnipresent, all-pervading, impossible to miss. And yet, we miss it, out of constantly narrowing our attention to forms and thought-forms that are appearing and disappearing. When "being" is identifying with thinking, it enters a state of constant agitation and restlessness. When "being" consciously regains its state of independence upon thoughts and any kind of forms (gross or subtle), it is peace and stillness. Notice that, regardless of thoughts appearing or not, you are still here as "being". When thoughts aren't there at all for a short moment, you (as the silent ground of being) don't disappear. Stay as this ever-present sense of being. Cling to this ground of being in and as yourself, with all your power and will. Sense it, feel it, be with it, but don't "think" about it. Ignore all forms and thought-forms/thought-sounds, remain focused on and stay as this silent ground of being. And persevere. "Love the Lord your God [the pure sense of being] with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength." - Mark 12:29 "The excellence of the practice lies in not giving room for even a single mental concept." - Ramana Maharshi And notice that: "A would-be Seeker asked a Sufi: 'How long will it take me to arrive at the point of true understanding?' The Sufi answered: 'As soon as you get to the stage where you do not ask how long it will take.'" Another way of saying it: there must be consciousness before being conscious of anything can be possible (whether inwardly or outwardly). Out of being uninterruptedly hypnotized by things we are conscious of, we have forgotten that our true nature is consciousness itself. Be conscious of consciousness, and remain as consciousness. Another way of saying it: you are the subject of all experiences you have. You are the subject experiencing all objects (gross or subtle, inward or outward, material or immaterial, physical, mental, emotional or psychological). Withdraw your attention from the objects, and the experience of those objects, and bring it back to the subject itself. Keep it here. Bring the subject back to experiencing the subject itself. Do it again, and again, and as soon as you lost track of the subject. The Growth of Wisdom There seem to be a pretty common belief in contemporary spirituality, that awakening (in the general sense) is the ultimate solution for everything. Something like "Attain enlightenment, and all self-centeredness, everything unloving, unrefined in you, will dissolve. Plus, you'll have access to pure wisdom." This is quite a misunderstanding at many levels. You know that I keep saying here how important are the preliminary stages on the path, that which most seekers are refusing to go through out of ignorance, laziness, mediocrity and superficiality. This is of utter importance, for at least two reasons. 1 - I've already spoke about it on many posts: unless we work on our human ground, come to know it, come to know our functioning as conditioned human beings, come to know what the individual/universal ego dynamic is and how it operates, unless we come to refine it, balance it, no real awakening can happen. People who refuse to go through this ("Why would I spend time learning about the false?" they say, "Give me Truth and the Absolute!"), will ever be ripped off by their own unconscious psychological patterns and remaining egoic tendencies (whether gross or subtle). They can reach some understanding, some glimpses, some real preliminary experiences even, but they will never reach the goal. Everything will remain partial, hijacked, polluted and distorted by what was left non-enquired into of the self-centered dynamic in them. It's a constant. Note that this is also why, there are so many reports of abuse of teachers among seekers following those contemporary "non-dual" teachers. That's something the whole community is very quick to burry and not talk about, or not put out into the open, but those who have connections with this circus know very well that it happens a lot. 2 - Now let's say someone attained at least a pretty real level of awakening, despite having worked on things like described in the first point. Awakening is happening here, in the world, in body-minds. It's like building a castle. You can build it on moving sand, on earth, or on a solid foundation, in a wild desolate place, or close to water and fertile lands. Depending on what ground it is built upon, the very same castle will not behave in the same manner, and the way we will be able to make use of it will also be very different. That's what's happening. In truth, "awakening" is only a tiny part of the process. The real problem we face is way less about how to awaken, than how we are going to be able to make use it for (or more how it is going to make use of us), here, in the world, for the real good of all, and truly be of service to the higher good. If the ground, the inner land, upon which the castle of awakening is built upon, has not been worked on and refined at many, many levels, no matter how great the "castle" is, it will produce very poor effects in the world. So the point is not so much about being obsessed about attaining awakening and getting it (the very same way we actually would be obsessed about buying a Porsche), but to ask oneself: "Will I be in the position of making use of this awakening, to truly integrate it, and will my body-mind be sufficiently refined, polished, balanced and rightly cultivated, so that it may handle it in the correct way and produce real nurturing "awakened fruits" from within the world?" A very opposite and dramatic example would be to see that mental institutes are full of people taking themselves to be Jesus-Christ. This happens out of "awakening" experiences. See, those poor people are right, they don't exist as their persona, what they really are in the world is Christ, pure Christ consciousness, pure impersonal Being. But out of not being able to handle this opening, they end up being totally dysfunctional in the world, in worse state than prior to their "awakening". Now take this extreme example, and bring it back to more normal or subtle areas of the human sphere, of the "spiritual seeking" sphere, and you'll start to understand. It's not because someone had an awakening, and even a deep awakening, that he/she is in the position to make a real good and efficient use of it, if the ground is not perfectly prepared and cultivated. Such one, for example, can be a very, very bad teacher. Take another example. Babies prior to the arising of self-centeredness. Can we say they are "awakened"? Of course not. Yet they are still living from that place of unity consciousness, with no reference whatsoever to separation and the idea of a separate self. Can babies become great teachers? Can babies have real deep impact into the world when it comes to spreading and cultivating truth? Of course not. So, see that awakening doesn't guaranty wisdom. In fact, real wisdom has very little to do with awakening. True wisdom comes from the ground upon which awakening is happening. The more the ground and the primary elements of our human ground are prepared, cultivated, refined, balanced, cleaned, cleared, healed, opened up, expanded, the more there will be wisdom, the more there will be the possibility for wisdom to grow and flow, and the more this awakening will have a chance to produce real efficient effects in the world, through making a very efficient use of a particular body-mind. To Stop Thinking One way of talking about self-enquiry is to say it's developing the art of being curious, tremendously curious. Curious about one's very own mind's functioning and thinking process, curious about one's total psychological process. All seekers have heard about this: the mind is a tool, and one of the big step on the path, is to attain and stabilize a state of perfect stillness of the mind. As with any tool, we can use it or not. Stillness and quietness arise when the mind's tool is not used anymore. So do this: find a quiet place, sit for a moment, and decide very consciously to put down the mind's tool, the "thinking tool", and not using it. Very soon, you will notice that you are still continuing to use the tool, despite your intention and willingness to stop using it! Now, look at this fact, and be very, very curious about it. Ask yourself the questions: why am I still engaging with the mind and the thinking mind, when I decide to not doing it? Why can't I stay here sited in silence even for few seconds without going back to thinking again? Why am I thinking, thinking and thinking, no matter how determined I am not to think? And observe what's happening, very, very consciously, with the total capacity of your attention. Try to observe and understand what's truly going on. Why can't I seem not being able not to think? How is this happening? What is the process at play? I want to pause the thinking process, and yet I find myself thinking again: how and why is this happening? Be very attentive, like a cat in front of a mouse hole, and look for the very moment engagement with thinking will happen again. What will it be? What is going to be the next story, the next thought? If you are very curious about it, very earnest to find a valid answer, you will start to notice several things. Among them, just a few: * The more you are observing your mind, the less there are thoughts. And if you come to invest your whole attention energy in this observing of the process of addiction to thinking, and come to be absolutely present to it, you will see that the thinking process will come to stop completely and pause, at least for few seconds or few minutes, in the beginning. * The more inattention there is, the more there will be thoughts. The more attention there is, the less thinking. Total attention, is total silence, hence total peace. Hence the old Sufi saying: "Inattention is what separates us from God." * When there is inattention, what happens is that the automatic/conditioned functioning of the self-centered thinking mind will prevail, along with automatic identification. * Inattention, which is our original state as a conditioned human being, cannot be overcome as long as we don't strengthen the power of attention within ourselves. Hence this Ramana Maharshi's teaching: "Question: But the mind slips away from our control. M: "Be it so. Do not think of it. When you recollect yourself bring it back and turn it inward. That is enough. No one succeeds without effort. Mind control is not one's birthright. The successful few owe their success to their perseverance." * Out of your practice, you will come one day to clearly know that those who say it's undesirable, not required or impossible to control the thinking mind, are just lazy, mediocre and superficial seekers. "The world arises only through the mind which is full of the vasanas of the world. These vasanas, the sense of 'I' as an individual soul and the mind (chitta) are all being experienced though unreal. The only way to stop the arisal of the world and 'I' sense is annihilation of the mind (Manonasa). This annihilation of the mind is to be done through great effort i.e. through repeated practice of Jnana yoga (Vichara i.e. enquiry and contemplation etc.)" - Yoga Vashishta Preparation and Maturation Very, very few seekers actually know and understand what a spiritual path really is. Most seekers, if not all, believe themselves to be earnest, serious and sincere. For them, it's a given, it even goes without saying, and they imagine that what remains to be done, is apply those qualities a little bit more so they can achieve their goal (awakening, enlightenment, liberation). That's the lie. The big lie. The great sickness in contemporary spirituality. The big hypocritical and self-deceiving game the "spiritual" ego is playing with itself ad nauseam. What those seekers don't get, is that if they were truly earnest, serious and sincere, they would already be fully awakened. Because in truth, nothing, absolutely nothing, stands in the way of one who is truly earnest, serious and sincere. With perfect earnestness and sincerity, one could break through and attain the highest achievement in less than 24 hours, without return. So in a way, the spiritual path has very little to do with achieving a "spiritual" goal, or reaching a destination called "enlightenment", or having to focus on some ultimate knowledge, light or truth. In reality, 99% of the path is about preparation, maturing and learning how to finally become earnest, serious and sincere, through discovering and removing all obstacles to the manifesting of such required qualities. And of course, the very first step, which most refuse to make, is to accept to recognize how hypocritical, insincere, half-hearted, superficial, mediocre, fearful and weak in our determination we actually are in regard to our so-called "desire to awaken", no matter how "great", "ready" and "fit" we believe we are. In other words, nothing keeps me from irremediably letting go of myself, but my own lack of maturity, determination, earnestness, honesty and sincerity. Nothing stands in the way, but myself. Despite what I claim, if I am not yet completely free of myself, right here and right now, it's only out of my actual unwillingness to let go of myself. To believe the contrary, is hypocrisy and self-deception. "You yourself are your own obstacle. Rise above yourself." - Hafiz "Third Year Studies - One of the prominent Sufis of Central Asia was examining candidates who wanted to become disciples. "Anyone" he said, "who wants entertainment, not learning, who wishes to argue, not study, who is impatient, who wants to take rather than to give - should raise his hand." Nobody moved. "Very good" said the teacher, "now you will come and see some of my pupils, who have been with me for three years." He led them into a meditation-hall, where a row of people were sitting. Addressing them, he said: "Let those who wish to be entertained, not to learn, who are impatient and want to argue, the takers and not givers - let them stand up." The whole row of disciples got to their feet. The sage addressed the first group. "In your own eyes, you are better people now than you would be in three years' time if you stayed here. Your present vanity helps you even to feel worthy. So reflect well, as you return to your homes, before coming here again at some future time if you wish, whether you want to feel better than you are or worse than the world thinks you to be." - Idries Shah - A Veiled Gazelle "Nothing stands in the way of your liberation and it can happen here and now, but for your being more interested in other things." - Nisargadatta Maharaj "The desire to find the Self will be surely fulfilled, provided you want nothing else. But you must be honest with yourself and really want nothing else. If in the meantime you want many other things and are engaged in their pursuit, your main purpose may be delayed until you grow wiser and cease being torn between contradictory urges. Go within, without swerving, without ever looking outward." - Nisargadatta Maharaj "If the seeker is earnest, the light can be given. The light is for all and always there, but the seekers are few, and among those few, those who are ready are very rare. Ripeness of heart and mind is indispensable." - Nisargadatta Maharaj "No way to self-realization is short or long, but some people are more in earnest and some are less." - Nisargadatta Maharaj "I learned utter devotion to the Search for Truth from a gambler. I watched a gambler lose everything he possessed and when a comrade begged him to give it up, he answered, "Ah my friend, if I had to give my head for this game, I could not do without it." When I heard this, my heart was flooded with amazement and ever since I have pursued Truth with the same single-mindedness." - Bahauddin Naqshband Imagination Nothing can trouble you but your own imagination. There are no solutions to imaginary problems. Stop imagining, and remain in that non-imagining state. Have absolute faith in the silent Being within. "According to Mawlana Qasim, one of the venerable Khwaja Ubaidu'llah's chief deputies: "Attentiveness must attain to such a degree that nothing alien can invade the seeker's heart, from sunrise to sunset. His power of imagination must reach the point of discharging itself." To be capable of eradicating the power of imagination, as the Master of Reality are well aware, is an extremely difficult and rare accomplishment, peculiar to a few great saints." - Ali ibn Husain Safi (16th century) "Stop thinking, and end your problems." - Lao Tzu
"All the glories will come with mere dwelling on the feeling 'I am'. It is the simple that is certain, not the complicated. Somehow, people do not trust the simple, the easy, the always available. Why not give a honest trial to what I say? It may look very small and insignificant, but it is the seed that grows into a mighty tree. Give yourself a chance!" - Nisargadatta Maharaj
"If you have regard for me, remember my words. The knowledge 'I Am' is the greatest God, the Guru; be one with that, be intimate with it. That itself will bless you with all the knowledge relevant for you and in the proliferation of that knowledge it will lead you to the state which is eternal." - Nisargadatta Maharaj 
And we will miss the (obvious) fact that any "This is not my experience yet", "I don't experience the peace you are talking about", "I don't feel anything special with all this", "I find myself endlessly seeking no matter what", or any "Yes, I am the ultimate seer", "I am awareness", are all thought-forms which are part of the illusory/transient appearances, all part of the "seen"...
You don't have to become the witness. The witness is already there (this has to be seen and understood!), aware of everything that arises, or else nothing could appear to you ("All is because you are."). Be that witness, be that seer. The witness is not trying to do or attain anything, he's just there, conscious of what's unfolding, inwardly or outwardly, in total equanimity.
And remember: you don't have to "attain" this, it is already the case!
He is nearer to you than yourself. Why look outside?
Become like melting snow; wash yourself of yourself.
With love your inner voice will find a tongue
growing like a silent white lily in the heart." - Jalaluddin Rumi
That a fish in the water
Thirsts for a drink.
From forest to forest he sadly roams
In search of a jewel
Lying at home.
It makes me laugh to think
A musk-deer is seeking
The very fragrance
Which emanates from him.
Without knowledge of the Self
What use O pilgrim,
At Mathura or Kasi
To go looking for him?
It makes me laugh to think
That a fish in the water
Can thirst for a drink."
- Kabir
"I don't get it" is a thought-form appearing to you-being. Ignore it. Remain as being.
"I don't understand what I should do" is a thought-form appearing to you-being. Ignore it. Remain as being.
"I totally understand what you said" is a thought-form appearing to you-being. Ignore it. Remain as being.
"I don't find this "being" you talk about." is a thought-form appearing to you-being. Ignore it. Remain as being.
"Am I doing it right?" is a thought-form appearing to you-being. Ignore it. Remain as being.
"Is that it? Then what?" is a thought-form appearing to you-being. Ignore it. Remain as being.
"It's so hard to do!" is a thought-form appearing to you-being. Ignore it. Remain as being.
"I am doing it and nothing happens!" is a thought-form appearing to you-being. Ignore it. Remain as being.
"How long should I practice that?" is a thought-form appearing to you-being. Ignore it. Remain as being.
"How long will it take to awaken?" is a thought-form appearing to you-being. Ignore it. Remain as being.
Nothing can make you suffer without your consent.
To surrender your thought-problems is the only solution.
Refuse to think, and be faithful to that non-thinking state.
This is how you succeed, beyond success.
"Stop making use of your mind and see what happens. Do this one thing thoroughly. That is all." - Nisargadatta Maharaj
"Misery is only unwanted thoughts." - Ramana Maharshi
"It's in the silence that your problems just dissolve. Try it. It really works." - Robert Adams
Sacrifice Yourself
There is only one way: to sacrifice yourself to your practice, 24/7. Whether your practice is self-enquiry and clinging to the I-thought, abiding in the "I am", self-remembrance, being conscious of the breath, inwardly repeating a mantra, surrendering to God, being centered in pure Consciousness, being devoted to the Self within... if you don't sacrifice yourself to it entirely, it will never work.
When I say "sacrifice", it means sacrificing the thinking mind (that which we call "me"), and devoting so much energy and attention, second after second, all day long, to your meditative practice, that there is no energy and attention left for the ego-mind, no room left for the self-centered mind to wander, no possibility for the conditioned mind to pull you out in the dreamland of time and conditioning.
So, compare this to what the non-dual wanabees in love with the "non-effort" or "direct-path" ideas believe, and you'll have an idea of the level of deception at play in contemporary spirituality.
There is a good reason why the great Thai Buddhist of the forest Maha Boowa described the amount of effort required in order to get to a real transformation as "Hell on earth" ["referring to the extremely strenuous effort of mind and body that is required in order to maintain this level of mindfulness"]. A good reason why Ramana Maharshi said "This battle is symbolically spoken of in scriptural writings as the fight between God and Satan." and "In all cases the effort must be ceaseless and untiring until the goal can be reached."
The sacrifice must be so complete that, as master Maha Boowa noted, so much absorbed into our practice, we should not even be concerned or worried in the least about our own progress.
"This is what is like hell on earth; when you have to force the Citta [attention, consciousness] to stay with Buddho [mantra, or any other mindful practice], when you have to force yourself to be extremely mindful." - Maha Boowa
Forget Yourself, Remember God
The point is to remember God so much, so that there is no room left to remember yourself. And to come back and remain in that God/Self-remembrance and ego/self-forgetting as much as we can. This is what surrender means. This is what devotion means. This is what meditation means. This is what self-enquiry means. This is what abidance means.
At their core, all religions, all spiritual paths, all paths of Knowledge and Truth around the world since ever, are only talking about this simple point, no matter how diverse and different they may seem.
God, Self, I Am, Being, Light, Truth, Beloved, silence, stillness, peace, beingness, pure I, pure being, pure consciousness, pure awareness, pure attention, one-pointedness, Sat-Chit-Ananda, are really one and the same. Literally. It's that straight forward and simple.
You have to come to forget yourself, and to remember God within you. That's the practice. And see, it goes hand in hand: you cannot remember God, if you don't forget yourself, and you can't forget yourself, if you don't remember God. Those are the two pillars of our practice.
And it's a very difficult practice, not because it is hard to remember and be with God (it's even the most simple thing), but because to do so we have to struggle and fight with our very own conditioning and desires to be with other things than God.
The tilting point comes when we start to realize how God/I Am is way more fulfilling than the other things we are still attached to and still desire, when we come to enjoy the Presence of God within us, more than our very own presence (as the ego-self-mind).
So the equation is very simple: if you are not inwardly with God at all times, if you are not continuously and uninterruptedly immersed in the peace and stillness of God within at all times, it just means you are still more interested in other things (rooted in the ego-self) than God, you are still more interested in the outer than the inner.
If this is the case (which it is for 99.99% of humans), there is no blame and nothing to judge or be ashamed of. It just means you have to persevere to come to "taste" God more and more within you, and that you have to enquire, learn, and let go more and more of what remains of your self-centered conditioning and attachments.
"The point is to remember the Beloved, while escaping from the letters of the alphabet." - Khwaja Ubaidullah Ahrar (Master of Wisdom, 15th century, Tashkent, Uzbekistan)
"Remember God so much that you are forgotten. Let the caller and the called disappear; be lost in the Call." - Jalaluddin Rumi
"Remember, the entrance door to the sanctuary is inside you." - Jalaluddin Rumi
"We cannot reach You. Not even with our thoughts. Nonexistence is the key to Your secret." - Mirza Abdul-Qadir Bedil
"Only the one who has made his mind die is truly born." - Ramana Maharshi
"Move outside the tangle of fear-thinking. Live in silence. Flow down and down in always widening rings of being." - Jalaluddin Rumi
"When we turn the mind inwards, God manifests as the inner consciousness." - Ramana Maharshi
"Direct experience of samadhi can also be attained by devotion (bhakti) in the form of constant meditation (dhyana). Kevala kumbhaka [being conscious of the breath] with Self-enquiry, even without control of inhalation and exhalation, is an aid to this. If that becomes natural to one, it can be practiced at all times even during worldly activity and there is no need to seek a special place for it. Whatever a person finds suitable may be practiced. If the mind gradually subsides, it does not matter if other things come or go. In the Bhagavad Gita, Lord Krishna says that the devotee is higher than the yogi and that the means to Liberation is bhakti (devotion) in the form of continuous or prolonged meditation on the Self, which is the sole Reality. Therefore if, somehow or other, we get the strength to rest the mind perpetually in Him, why worry about other things?" - Ramana Maharshi
The importance of single-mindedness of bare attention, is illustrated in the following anecdote:
One day a man of the people said to the Zen master Ikkyu: "Master, will you please write for me some maxims of the highest wisdom?"
Ikkyu immediately took his brush and wrote the word "Attention".
"Is that all?" asked the man. "Will you not add something more?"
Ikkyu then wrote twice running: "Attention. Attention."
"Well", remarked the man rather irritably, "I really don't see much depth or subtlety in what you have just written."
Then Ikkyu wrote the same word three times running: "Attention. Attention. Attention."
Half-angered, the man demanded: "What does that word, 'Attention' mean anyway?"
And Ikkyu answered, gently: "Attention means attention."
- Philip Kapleau (The Three Pillars of Zen)
Jnana and Bhakti
At the core of them, the Jnana (path of knowledge and enquiry) and Bhakti (surrender, devotion) paths are really one and the same. To still and quiet the mind, is to surrender. To surrender, is to still and quiet the mind.
What is surrendered (let go of, given up) is the self-centered part of the mind, the idea you have about yourself, the addiction to the thinking mind producing the appearance of "you".
To still and quiet the mind through a meditative or enquiry practice, through a withdrawing of attention from the thinking mind, amounts to surrendering yourself, your ego.
To surrender yourself, through surrendering all self-centered hopes, fears, memories, expectations, desires, will, wants and worries about "me", which are all appearing as thoughts, is to come to still and quiet the mind.
Of course, it's easy to say "I surrender" or to imagine that having surrendered once is enough. But it's far less easy to maintain a real continuous state of surrendering, moment to moment in one's life.
"Attending unceasingly and with a fully concentrated mind to Self, which is the non-dual perfect Reality, alone is the pure Supreme silence; on the other hand, the mere unthinking laziness of the dull mind is nothing but a defective delusion. Know that." - Ramana Maharshi
"There is a false sense of liberation that aspirants reach that very few ever go beyond." - Ramana Maharshi
Until the Ego is Consumed
"Effort is necessary to move oneself deeper and deeper in the practice of Self-enquiry, not philosophizing on the subject. Firm determination is necessary to achieve experience, not trying to find it at one particular point. This is to be done until the ego is consumed and only the Self remains." - Ramana Maharshi
I love this Ramana's quote. It addresses so many points, in so few words, I've been trying to express here (about the so-called "direct path" and the overall mediocrity in contemporary spirituality).
Free-will: if there was no free-will, nothing to do and no one to do it, why would Ramana say such thing? Of course there is "free-will" at the level of where we have to engage into a spiritual path!
Effort/Firm determination: yes, effort is necessary, and even mandatory on this path, along with absolute earnestness, discipline and perseverance. Non-effort can only assert itself truly, in an embodied way, once a huge effort has been made, and once everything has been done to the maximum of our abilities.
Deeper: this shows that a progression has to happen, from the surface of things to our inner depths. Most regards self-enquiry as the "direct path", seeing the "Who am I?" question as some sort of magic key, which could open up at once all truth. This is certainly not the case. Self-enquiry is a meditative/transformative practice, helping us to go deeper and deeper into pure being/pure consciousness, helping us to stabilize at a deeper level of our being.
Philosophizing: intellectual understanding has very little importance on this path (contrary to what most believe, whether consciously or unconsciously). Practice is everything.
Experience: again, it shows that our practice (self-enquiry in Ramana's way) should lead to actual experience, and should bear fruits. This is far from hoping that some mere "seeing" or "realization" could be enough.
At one particular point: same as above. This shows clearly that self-enquiry has very little to do with a tool that should be used to gain a "seeing", an "understanding" or a "realization" at some particular point of our life. It's a transformative tool, implying a deepening, a progression (hence, the different types of samadhi, for example, or the different types of silence/dissolution of the mind).
Until the ego is consumed: here Ramana reminds us that the goal of all spiritual path, is the final death/dissolution/annihilation of the ego-mind, not a mere "I am not my mind" idea that most take as some ultimate realization (which is actually a first very small baby step).
Only the Self remains: that's the counterpart of the final dissolution of the self-centered mind. Nothing to do, again, with some mere "I know I am the Self" idea or temporary seeing. This is the final fruit of the transformation required to happen on one's path: total stabilization in/as the Self, in a continuous/uninterrupted way.
"Do you wish to be included with the Lords of Sight? From speech, then, pass on to experience. By saying 'Unity', you do not become a monotheist; the mouth does not become sweet from the word 'Sugar'." - Prince Dara Shikoh (1615-1659)
"I am the slave of whoever will not at each stage imagine that he has arrived at the end of his goal. Many a stage has to be left behind before the traveller reaches his destination." - Jalaluddin Rumi
"Whoever might perfume a scorpion, will not thereby escape its sting." - Bahauddin Naqshband
"A man may have mastered the Vedanta philosophy and yet remain unable to control his thoughts." - Ramana Maharshi
The Face Behind the Mask
We must come to understand what identification is, so it can be broken down. When we say "I", this "I" is automatically and instantly associated with this particular body/mind and its history. It's a bit like wearing a mask for so long, that we forgot we were wearing a mask, and taking this mask to be our original face all the time.
As soon as "I" is uttered (in thought, speech or action), it is unconsciously always inferred as "me", "my body/mind". If nothing is done, this automatic/unconscious identification will keep unfolding.
The goal of enquiry/self-enquiry or abidance (as "I am", pure being, pure presence, or the seer), is to break through this deep conditioning and automatism, through bringing back attention to the face behind the mask, again and again.
It may be a simple instruction, but it's far from being easy, as this habit/automatism of identification is very strong and very deep, happening and being fed for years and decades, if not lives.
Consciously asking "Who am I?" is a way to start to break this continuous unconscious tendency, to bring back attention itself to the original and pure "I" before it was contaminated with identification, so it can be rediscovered for what it is.
"The mind, having been so long a cow accustomed to graze stealthily on others' estates, is not easily confined to her stall. However much her keeper tempts her with luscious grass and fine fodder, she refuses the first time. Then she takes a bit, but her innate tendency to stray away asserts itself and she slips away. On being repeatedly tempted by the owner, she accustoms herself to the stall until finally, even if let loose, she does not stray away. Similarly with the mind. If once it finds its inner happiness it will not wander outward." - Ramana Maharshi
"Thought rises up as the subject and object. 'I' alone being held, all else disappears. It is enough, but only to the competent few." - Ramana Maharshi
"Q: "What is the easiest way and most effective way to do atma-vichara, self-inquiry?" Ramana: "To always be aware consciously in all situations of the "I Am". No matter what you're doing, where you are, be aware of the "I Am" in your heart. This is the most effective practice." - Ramana Maharshi
"What is essential in any sadhana [spiritual practice] is to try to bring back the running mind and fix it on one thing only. Why then should it not be brought back and fixed in Self-attention (to this feeling of 'I')? That alone is Self-enquiry (atma-vichara). That is all that is to be done!" - Ramana Maharshi
"In the question 'Who am I?' the 'I' is not known and the question can be worded as: "I do not know what I mean by 'I'". What you are, you must find out. I can only tell you what you are not. You are not of the world, you are not even in the world. The world is not, you alone are. You create the world in your imagination like a dream. As you cannot separate the dream from yourself, so you cannot have an outer world independent of yourself. You are independent, not the world. Don't be afraid of a world you yourself have created. Cease from looking for happiness and reality in a dream and you will wake up. You need not know 'why' and 'how', there is no end to questions. Abandon all desires, keep your mind silent and you shall discover." - Nisargadatta Maharaj
Unimportant and Insignificant
When seen from a little distance, it's really funny to see how we believe we are important, and how we overvalue our own life. This overvaluing is somehow the root of self-centeredness and obsession with self, and the root of all suffering.
When seen from a place of equanimity and neutrality, we can't miss how in reality, our life is unimportant and how insignificant we are, in the grand scheme of things.
I know how this may hurt and disturb all the people engaged in the "your life is precious/you are unique" way of thinking, but it still remains a fact, available to see for those who have enough courage and honesty.
Among the 7 billion other human beings (and the 100 billion who already appeared on this planet), you and your life are not special in any way, and even pretty average we could say.
In truth, you are indispensable to no one (not even to yourself, but that's another matter). If you were to be erased right now from the equation of life, everybody will be fine. Your family, your children, your partner, your friends, your co-workers, everybody will deal with it and move on, and life will take care of them all. And whatever task you were engaged in, if it had any real value for the good of all, will be assigned to another human body.
"Complete effacement of the ego is necessary to conquer destiny, whether you achieve this effacement through Self-enquiry or through bhakti-marga [devotion, surrender]." - Ramana Maharshi
"Take the lowest place and you shall reach the highest." - Milarepa
"Do not seek superiority that much, it is better to be unimportant." - Jalaluddin Rumi
"God, whose love and joy are present everywhere, cannot come to visit you unless you are not there." - Angelus Silesius
"Relating happiness and fulfillment to a process of alchemical transmutation of the human mind, Ghazali gives a story of Bayazid, one of the early classical Sufi masters, in his Alchemy of Happiness, to stress how the amour propre (Commanding Self) must first be seen in its real light before any relining can actually be done:
A man came to Bayazid and said that he had fasted and prayed for thirty years, and yet had not come near to an understanding of God. Bayazid told him that even a hundred years would not be enough. The man asked why.
"Because your selfishness is working as a barrier between yourself and truth."
"Give me the remedy."
"There is a remedy, but it is impossible to you."
The man insisted, and Bayazid agreed to describe it to him.
"Go and shave your beard. Strip yourself naked, except for a loincloth. Fill a nose bag full of walnuts and go to the marketplace. There cry out, "A walnut for every boy who slaps me!" Then make your way to the court where the doctors of law are in session."
"But I really could not do that. Give me some other method."
"This is the only method," said Bayazid, "but I have already told you, there is no answer for you." - Idries Shah (The Sufis)
Let "I Am" be your God
Surrender yourself to your Self. Surrender "I am so and so" to the "I am".
Be totally insignificant and irrelevant, entitled to nothing, not even to "awakening", and let the "I am" be everything.
Lose yourself in this "I am". Disappear in favor of the "I am".
Keep quiet, be silent, be hopeless, be helpless, at the mercy of your own Being.
Forget about yourself completely, and remember only the "I am".
Sacrifice all your needs, all your desires, all your worries, all your concerns and your entire mind, to the pure sense of Being.
Take refuge in that pure and silent beingness in you.
Let the silent "I am" be your God, your Goddess, your Lover, your Beloved, your Everything.
"Just drop all seeking, turn your attention inward, and sacrifice your mind to the One Self radiating in the Heart of your very being." - Ramana Maharshi
"Try something different. Surrender." - Jalaluddin Rumi
The thing is, you cannot make your way to the "I am" through your mind. You cannot think your way to Beingness. Same as stillness cannot be achieved through agitation, same as silence cannot be achieved through words. Here, the thinking mind is an hindrance. You cannot abide as the "I am" and be in your mind at the same time.
This is why it is also called a "sacrifice". You have to give up your mind, to "gain" your own beingness. Even if in truth, it's not truly a sacrifice: if someone told you "Give me the coins you have in your pocket, and I'll give you 10 tons of gold.", would you have to think twice about it?
In the "I am", there are no questions, no doubts, no past, no future, no next, no becoming, no ideas of success and failure.
Stay as the "I am".
Now, one side comment: to lose oneself in the "I am", is not to be spaced out, or being lost in some hypnotic trance state, at all. On the contrary. We are "spaced out", and in a trance-like/sleep-walking state, as long as we are attached to and identified with the self-centered mind. When this is given up, when we "sacrifice" ourselves in favor of the "I am", we can reach a state of absence (of "me") and total presence (as "being").
"I Am" is God
"Lord, you are closer to me than my own breathing, nearer than my hands and feet." - St Theresa of Avila
The sense "I am", the pure sense of being/beingness in yourself, is God. In truth, it's that simple, that obvious, and that's all we ever need to hear, know and realize, as seekers of truth/peace.
If you asked: "How can I meet God?", and by God, I mean, the highest you can think of about love, beauty, intelligence, clarity, peace, bliss, happiness, light, purity, wholeness, or about a perfect beloved, the answer would be: "He is already here as the one asking the question. Turn your attention around, stay with the pure sense of being within yourself, persevere, give your whole life to it, and you will come to know." That's... that... simple.
But is that easy? No. Why? Many reasons can be given. In short, we are too attached and addicted to our ideas of who we are as a person, so instead of diving within to re-discover this pure "I am" which is God Himself, we come back again and again to the false "I am so and so". And it's also too simple and immediate to not be doubted, and too subtle to be apprehended by the complicated and gross conditioned mind.
So what to do? First, you have to realize that this above, will never be revealed to you if it stays only at a mental/intellectual/theoretical level. It may make sense to you intellectually, and you may even had glimpses of it, but that will never be enough. Several energetic shifts have to happen, a deeper and deeper transformation and diving has to occur, which will be the fruit of your practice. Without effort and perseverance, nothing real can happen.
The main practice (no matter what form it takes), is to let go of the self-centered mind, and to bring attention back to the original, pure, impersonal sense of being within yourself, in order to dive/abide deeper and deeper, in subtler and subtler ways into it. Here, there is a retraining that must happen, because attention, in its gross conditioned form, is terribly fragmented, and only used to pay attention to gross forms and things, to things that have great contrasts, obvious opposites, things that are clearly appearing or disappearing, whether inwardly or outwardly. When "being", is never ever changing, never "appeared", has no opposites, and cannot be compared through contrast to anything else.
From the conditioned mind's perspective, "being/I am" is so empty of everything, it feels like nothing. "Being/beingness" is still a form, a very subtle object, the very primary form actually, but it is so pure, so refined, so transparent, so still, so silent, so unchanging, so near, that the unrefined mind can't find any interest in it (or not for long), and can't find anything "solid" enough to get attention to hook itself on it in a continuous way (which is what is required).
This unrefined mind also needs distance to perceive things, in order to assert a perceptive experience, in order for attention to notice anything. When "being" is at zero distance from where we look from, and is even closer than close. And that's why it keeps evading us, not out of being hidden or far away, but out of its utter obviousness and nearness.
So no matter how many times the seeking mind hears: "This pure sense of being is what you really are, it is what you are looking for since ever!", it actually cannot make sense: "That can't be what I am looking for... I've tried to look, but nothing is there, and nothing really happens in a stable way."
So unless we refine and strengthen the mind and attention themselves, through developing mindfulness and one-pointedness, and through insisting and persevering in our spiritual practice (meditation, abidance, self-remembrance, withdrawing from the mind), there's not a chance this will ever truly make sense to us one day, and we will keep running after gross objects of perception (including "spiritual" intellectualism and escapism) and diversity of experience, to find happiness and wholeness... with no success whatsoever.
"Inattention is what separates us from God." - Abd Al Khaliq Ghudjuvani
"'I am' is God. Realise 'I am'." - Ramana Maharshi
"Its obscureness results from Its very obviousness, and Its elusiveness from the very radiance of Its brightness. Then glory to Him who hides Himself from His own creation by His utter manifestness, and is veiled from their gaze through the very effulgence of His own light!" - Al-Ghazali, 1058-1111 (Mishakat al-Anwar - Niche of Lights)
"Let me stop looking at myself and start looking at You. For You are nearer to me than I am to myself." - Jalaluddin Rumi
"Why look for God? Look for the one looking for God. But then why look at all? He is not lost, He is right here, closer than your own breath!" - Jalaluddin Rumi
"By God, when you see your beauty you will be the idol of yourself."
- Jalaluddin Rumi
"I wish I could show you when you are lonely or in darkness the astonishing light of your own being." - Jalaluddin Rumi
"You cannot be conscious of what does not change. All consciousness is consciousness of change. But the very perception of change - does it not necessitate a changeless background?" - Nisargadatta Maharaj
"Beloved, I sought You here and there, asked for news of You from all I met. Then I saw You through myself, and found we were identical. Now I blush to think I ever searched for signs of You." - Fakhr-al-Din Iraqi
"Lord, you are closer to me than my own breathing, nearer than my hands and feet." - St Theresa of Avila
"Self is everywhere, shining forth from all beings, vaster than the vast, subtler than the most subtle, unreachable, yet nearer than breath, than heartbeat. Eye cannot see it, ear cannot hear it nor tongue utter it; only in deep absorption can the mind, grown pure and silent, merge with the formless truth." - Mundaka Upanishad
"The egoless 'I am' is not a thought. It is realization. The meaning or significance of 'I' is God." - Ramana Maharshi
"'I am' is truth, another name for Self." - Ramana Maharshi
"I am that I am." - Exodus 3:14
"Where can I go from your spirit? Or where can I run away from where you are? If I take the wings of the morning or live in the farthest part of the sea, even there your hand will lead me and your right hand will hold me."
- Psalm 139:7
"Truly you are a God who has been hiding himself." - Isaiah 45:15
"I am shining in each one of you as 'I'. Attend only to that." - Ramana Maharshi
"The understanding is then used as a basis for the Sadhana (practice) that has to follow, which is abidance in the 'I am' or the knowledge 'I am' meditating on itself. That is all that has to be done; if done correctly and earnestly, it will lead you to your ultimate destination, the Absolute or Parabrahman. Quite certainly, this profound teaching could not have been expounded in a simpler way than this." - Nisargadatta Maharaj
"Your mind is steeped in the habits of evaluation and acquisition, and will not admit that the incomparable and unobtainable are waiting timelessly within your own heart for recognition. All you have to do is to abandon all memories and expectations. Just keep yourself ready in utter nakedness and nothingness." - Nisargadatta Maharaj
"When Attention is directed towards objects and intellect, the mind is aware only of those things. That is our present state, But when we attend to the Self within, we become aware of it alone. It is therefore all a matter of attention. Our mind has for so long been attending to external things that the latter have enslaved it and drag... it hither and thither." - Ramana Maharshi
"According to an old Hindu legend, there was once a time when all human beings were gods, but they so abused their divinity that Brahma, the chief god, decided to take it away from them and hide it where it could never be found. Where to hide their divinity was the question. So Brahma called a council of the gods to help him decide. "Let's bury it deep in the earth," said the gods. But Brahma answered, "No, that will not do because humans will dig into the earth and find it." Then the gods said, "Let's sink it in the deepest ocean." But Brahma said, "No, not there, for they will learn to dive into the ocean and will find it." Then the gods said, "Let's take it to the top of the highest mountain and hide it there." But once again Brahma replied, "No, that will not do either, because they will eventually climb every mountain and once again take up their divinity." Then the gods gave up and said, "We do not know where to hide it, because it seems that there is no place on earth or in the sea that human beings will not eventually reach." Brahma thought for a long time and then said, "Here is what we will do. We will hide their divinity deep in the center of their own being, for humans will never think to look for it there." All the gods agreed that this was the perfect hiding place, and the deed was done. And since that time humans have been going up and down the earth, digging, diving, climbing, and exploring - searching for something already within themselves." - Hindu Story
Man is a Machine
Man is a machine. A biological machine. Whatever we do, absolutely everything we do in life (which means whatever the body/mind itself is driven to do), we do it so that the body feels good. It's all done for biological purpose, in order for the body to release the chemicals, hormones, endorphins, which will make the body feel good.
It's a program. We are a program. And nothing else.
That's what it means to be "conditioned", "asleep", "egoistic", "self-centered".
As conditioned men, whatever activity we are engaged in, and no matter how many different names we give to countless apparent different activities, love, friendship, relationships, altruism, growing up kids, search for happiness, work, job, sex, spiritual seeking, sports, entertainment, having fun, traveling, thinking, eating, feeling, discovering, learning, talking, teaching, creating, selling, buying, fighting, being at war, developing and nurturing beliefs, opinions, ideas... it's all about achieving one goal: to help the body release the chemicals that will make itself feel good through the brain.
To "awaken" or to achieve "freedom", is first to become more and more aware of this deep programming, and then to learn to transcend it through a continuous dissolving of it (through the light of consciousness). Until the very core of this programming, which is the "I-thought", is itself dissolved.
As long as this program is active in us, no matter how we see and qualify our activity (including the "spiritual" search, or worse, the "spiritual clarity"), it's all for the self-centered biological aim of the body.
"Is it not very important that one must understand oneself above everything else? For if we do not understand ourselves we shall not understand anything else for the root of understanding lies in ourselves. In understanding myself, I shall understand my relationship with another, with the world; for in me, as in each one, is the whole; I am the result of the whole, of the past. This concern to understand oneself may appear superficially to be egocentric, selfish, but if you consider it you will see that what each one of us is, the world, the State, society is; and to bring a vital change in the environment, which is essential, each one must begin with himself. In understanding himself and so transforming himself, he will inevitably bring about the necessary and vital change in the State, in the environment. The recognition and understanding of this fact will bring a revolution in our thinking-feeling. The world is a projection of yourself, your problem is the world's problem. Without you, the world is not. What you are, the world is; if you are envious, greedy, inimical, competitive, brutal, exclusive, so is society, so is the State.
- Jiddu Krishnamurti
A Trick of the Devil
Denying that the ego dynamic is still here when it's still here and active, repressing it, believing we can make it "not here" just out spiritual wishful-thinking ("I am Awareness", "I am That"), may look like no attention is given to it. That's not true, that's the contrary. This very denial, is rooted in attention given to it. This very denial is rooted in ego. Do you see? As long as the selfing dynamic of the mind is here, it's inescapable, no matter how hard we try to escape it through spiritual by-passing. Only the "ego" can deny the "ego". It's a loop, another trick of the ego itself.
"The finest trick of the devil is to persuade you that he does not exist." - Charles Baudelaire
So what to do?
We must first do our best to be real, pragmatical, honest and sincere about where we truly are on the path. One of the goal of the path, can be said to truly uproot the ego permanently (this is what Ramana call "mano nasa" or final extinction of the mind, total dissolving of the primary "I-thought"). Until then, the ego is here, active, in some form or another, gross or subtle, and denying this fact will never help.
And as long as it is here, we must make use of this ego dynamic, to the best of our abilities.
Do you think it's better to let the ego-mind run the house, endlessly engaging in some denial and escapism, continuously driving the body/mind through its unconscious/conditioned energies, or use it as a way of discovery, of enquiry, of practice, of mastery of the mind itself (one-pointedness), of re-orienting its energies in a conscious way of transformation? Of course, the latter is what is called a "spiritual path".
Ramana Maharshi was pretty clear about this. He says we use the ego-mind to destroy the mind. We use the "I-thought" as a means to enquire about and burn down the mind which is itself a production of this very "I-thought". And only then, the "I-thought" itself, will get burnt into the fire of enquiry/practice/meditation.
The "ego" is not "something", it's an activity. It's an activity appearing at many levels, at different frequencies of being. From deep rooted unconscious identification ("I am this and that") to the very refined and almost impersonal "I-thought", and everything in between, it's all the manifestation/continuum of what can be said to be the "ego". No matter at what stage of "purification" (or "death", or "dissolving") we are in this continuum, we should use what's left of it to progress toward "mano laya" first (periods of temporary subsiding of the ego-mind) and then "mano nasa" (final extinction of the ego-mind).
"The devil can recite scriptures to serve his purpose." - Shakespeare
"What is sometimes thought to be clever, is significantly often, merely an advanced form of foolishness." - Idries Shah
Studying the Ego
Someone asked in a group: "What do you do with your ego? Hate it? Love it? Ignore it?"
I want first to point out (again) how superficial we are. And saying this, I don't mean to be judgmental at all, blaming or snarky. "Superficial" is a technical description of a human tendency affecting all unrefined and conditioned human beings. To be superficial, is to stay at the surface of things, to very rarely enquire into things, to very rarely question ourselves and our views.
Here, with this question, the questioner presupposes and implies that he and everybody else already know what an "ego" is, and that what is important is to understand what to do with it. This is the superficiality dynamic at play. We don't even question the very root of such a question: What is an ego? Do I already know what an "ego" is? And without this fundamental questioning, any further questions are rendered irrelevant and useless.
And the fact is, almost nobody truly knows what an "ego" is. Out of this superficiality (and mediocrity), we are content enough with playing with the vagueness of the concept itself, like a child with a toy, satisfied enough to have a very blurry and unsubstantial image of what an "ego" is, mostly acquired out of hearsay.
So here are the real questions. How can we do anything about something we are still mostly unconscious of? How can we come to transcend something we don't really know? How can we become free of something we haven't deeply explore, of something we haven't truly meet experientially? It's impossible.
An "ego" (the self-centered dynamic/activity of the mind) is something very complex, very refined, having many layers to it, gross and subtle, permeating and impacting all levels of what we are as human beings (and as spiritual seekers).
As long as we are not truly observing it and studying it within ourselves, and come to know how it works, where and how it manifests, when it shows up and why, as long as we are not knowing it from head to toe, both at the personal and universal levels, in its deeper and finer layers, we will be fooled by it. This "ego" is like a crook. A very old, clever and skillful crook, having thousand years of experience and practice. If we do not come to know all the crook's tricks, if we do not vigilantly go deeper and deeper into it and become utterly conscious of what it is, we will always be too late, we will always end up being ripped off, and never be able to do anything about it. No matter how advanced we superficially believe ourselves to be on the spiritual path.
"You cannot transcend what you do not know. To go beyond yourself, you must know yourself." - Nisargadatta Maharaj
"Don't forget that the one who knows his Devil, knows his God." - Shams Tabrizi
"The discovery of truth is in the discernment of the false." - Nisargadatta Maharaj
"To go beyond the mind, you must have your mind in perfect order. You cannot leave a mess behind and go beyond. He who seeks Liberation must examine his mind by his own efforts, and once the mind is purified by such introspection Liberation is obtained and appears obvious and natural." - Nisargadatta Maharaj
"Do not try to know the truth, for knowledge by the mind is not true knowledge. But you can know what is not true - which is enough to liberate you from the false. The idea that you know what is true is dangerous, for it keeps you imprisoned in the mind. It is when you do not know, that you are free to investigate. And there can be no salvation, without investigation, because non-investigation is the main cause of bondage." - Nisargadatta Maharaj
"Just give full attention to what in you is crude and primitive, unreasonable and unkind, altogether childish, and you will ripen. It is the maturity of heart and mind that is essential. It comes effortlessly when the main obstacle is removed - inattention, unawareness. In awareness you grow." - Nisargadatta Maharaj
"The person should be carefully examined and its falseness seen; then its power over you will end." - Nisargadatta Maharaj
Someone asked: "Something that comes to mind is to wonder what mechanism in us is at play when we search for the ego, relating to the ego, thinking about the ego? Who is it who is relating to this concept? What is it that is relating to this concept? And I'm not looking for quick answers, a flash of "no one is looking" so that I can relax my tension. I'm really asking."
Answer: Here's a general answer...
Denying that the ego dynamic is still here when it's still here and active, repressing it, believing we can make it "not here" just out spiritual wishful-thinking, may look like no attention is given to it. That's not true, that's the contrary. This very denial, is rooted in attention given to it. This very denial is rooted in ego. Do you see? As long as identification with the selfing dynamic of the mind is here, it's inescapable, no matter how hard we try to escape it through spiritual by-passing. Only the "ego" can deny the "ego". It's a loop, another trick of the ego itself.
"The finest trick of the devil is to persuade you that he does not exist." - Charles Baudelaire
So what to do?
We must first do our best to be real, pragmatical, honest and sincere about where we truly are on the path. One of the goal of the path, can be said to truly uproot the ego permanently (this is what Ramana call "mano nasa" or final extinction of the mind, total dissolving of the primary "I-thought"). Until then, the ego is here, active, in some form or another, and denying this fact will never help.
And as long as it is here, we must make use of this ego dynamic, to the best of our abilities.
Do you think it's better to let the ego-mind run the house, endlessly engaging in some denial and escapism, continuously driving the body/mind through its unconscious/conditioned energies, or use it as a way of discovery, of enquiry, of practice, of mastery of the mind itself (one-pointedness), of re-orienting its energies in a conscious way of transformation? Of course, the latter is what is called a "spiritual path".
Ramana Maharshi was pretty clear about this. He says we use the ego-mind to destroy the mind. We use the "I-thought" as a means to enquire about and burn down the mind which is itself a production of this very "I-thought". And only then, the "I-thought" itself, will get burnt into the fire of enquiry/practice.
See, related to the post, the "ego" is not "something", it's an activity. It's an activity appearing at many levels, at different frequencies of being. From deep rooted unconscious identification ("I am this and that") to the very refined and almost impersonal "I-thought", and everything in between, it's all the manifestation/continuum of what can be said to be the "ego". No matter at what stage of "purification" (or "death", or "dissolving") we are in this continuum, we should use what's left of it to progress toward "mano nasa".
A Balanced Spiritual Path
The spiritual path, to be complete, must be walked in what seems to be two apparent opposite directions. Unless we integrate those two components, no real transformation and balance can occur.
One direction, is about discovering our essential nature (whether we call it Self, Awareness, pure Consciousness, Beingness, That...). It's about realizing that which we truly are, which never ever needed anything to be already what It is, no path, no effort, independent of everything, independent of our "personality", ever untouched, untainted, unaffected, pure since ever, ever present and obvious. That which, no matter how full of the mud of conditioning we still are, remains ever pure and clean. This is what we learn to tap into through our practice, meditation, contemplation, abiding, self-enquiry, etc.
The problem here, if we are clinging to only this part/component of the work, is that we are always going to hijack our realizations, in order to deny and avoid doing the work that needs to be done in the second direction.
The second direction, is about being of service to the cleaning and clearing out of the body/mind, of all the mud of conditioning, all personal and universal veils and conditioned filters that are still present and active in ourselves. This second component of the work, is about to bring more and more transparency to the individual body/mind system at all levels, so that what we truly are (discovered in the first part of the work) can really shine through with less and less distortion, and bear fruits here, in the world, in manifestation.
We could say that "enlightenment", is to shine a light unto both what we really are, and what we are not.
What I keep seeing in the "spiritual" communities, is seekers using the "my real nature doesn't require any work at the level of the individual body/mind" (which is true, and why it is so deceptive), as a denial and escapism strategy. They will hide through pretending that knowing or having had a glimpse of what they really, they don't have to care about what they are not.
On the contrary, on a path which is properly walked, integrating both components, when we come to discover more and more what we truly are at the absolute level, something inside naturally responds by bowing down to It with a great humility, an organic urge to truly be of service to It, through doing whatever needs to be done to clean/clear the human vehicle, to get out of the way at the relative/body-mind level, through unconditional and radical honesty about what's left in ourselves that could pollute, distort, filter the manifesting of our essential nature.
Made for Love
We, human beings, at the core of what we are, we are made for love, we are wired for love, because we come from Love itself.
Describing the spiritual path using the language of love, of divine, mystical union, is not some sort of poetical random occurrence in history, but may be the most accurate and intimate way of talking about what "spirituality" is.
See, whatever we do in our life we do it in the name of love, whether consciously or unconsciously. The good, the bad, the beautiful and the ugly.
What we love, we give attention to. Attention, is love. When we are in love with the "me", with the sense of being a person, we will have full devotion to it, worship it, trying to fulfill its wishes and desires, to make it happy and content. When we love wealth, we will devote our time and energy in this life, to acquire more and more of it. And of course, love stories in relationships, is occupying a huge place in everybody's life. And we will also do crazy and ugly things in this world, always out of love, or at least some distorted version of love (what we call "hatred" is always the counterpart of a misguided excessive love for oneself/"me").
So what the spiritual path is saying, is that everything we come to love in the ordinary/wordily way, will never satisfy the deep longing we have for the ultimate love relationship.
We have to redirect our attention/our love, we literally have to fall in love with our own pure being, with the pure beingness, pure sense of "I am" within ourselves. This is the only love story we are longing for. And this is not an image, not a metaphysical analogy, no. We really have to fall in love with our own most inner being, the very same way we would fall in love with somebody in the world. We have to truly establish and nourish a very personal relationship with the Self within.
Only the power contained within that love we are made of, will have enough energy and momentum to fully draw us back within.
But we cannot fall in love with "someone" we still don't know yet, "someone" we haven't met yet. That's the work. We have to trust all sages and traditions first, and with faith, courage, perseverance, discipline, do our best to empty ourselves as much as we can of any other desires and redirect our attention within in order to meet and discover the silent, discrete, delicate Beloved inside, how pure and beautiful He/She is, until we finally start to really fall in love with Him/Her, of a love absolutely incomparable with nothing we ever experienced in the world, a love so fulfilling that any other things in the world (including human love) will look so pale and unattractive in comparison. A love and a Beloved so beautiful that we cannot move away from it anymore.
"I once had a thousand desires. But in my one desire to know You all else melted away." - Jalaluddin Rumi
"Between you and me there lingers an "It is I" which torments me. Ah! Lift this "It is I" from between us both!" - Mansur Al-Hallaj
"If the eight Paradises were opened in my hut, and the rule of both worlds were given in my hands, I would not give for them that single sigh which rises at morning-time from the depth of my soul in remembering my longing for Him." - Bayezid Bistami
"In front of your Beloved, when you are stripped of all your attributes; then His attributes become your qualities. Between me and You, there is only me. Take away the me, so only You remain." - Mansur Al-Hallaj
"The source of my grief and loneliness is deep in my breast. This is a disease no doctor can cure. Only union with the Friend can cure it." - Rabia al-Basri
"Oh Lord, nourish me not with love but with the desire for love." - Ibn Arabi
"From that moment onwards, the 'I' or Self focused attention on itself by a powerful fascination. Fear of death vanished once and for all. The ego was lost in the flood of Self-awareness. Absorption in the Self continued unbroken from that time. Other thought might come and go like the various notes of music, but the I continued like the fundamental sruti note ['that which is heard'] a note which underlies and blends with all other notes." - Ramana Maharshi
"Jnana without bhakta is dry knowledge. You have to have jnana with bhakta. You have to feel passion. You have to feel love. You have to feel loving kindness. This comes with bhakta. Unless you become a bhakta, you cannot be a jnani. They both go together hand in hand. It's like a man and a woman. You can't have one without the other. There are many people who profess to be jnanis. They are very dry intellectuals. Very cold people. When you chant to the Goddess or the God, and you feel the chant in your heart, you will feel this way towards your fellow man. The same love you give to God you give to your fellow man. How can you love others if you do not love yourself? You love yourself by letting your heart open up and feel the passion, the joy, the harmony which is your divine real nature." - Robert Adams
The consciousness in you and the consciousness in me, apparently two, really one, seek unity and that is love." - Nisargadatta Maharaj
"Love is reckless; not reason. Reason seeks a profit. Having died of self-interest, Love risks everything and asks for nothing." - Jalaluddin Rumi
A Clear Description of the Path
Breaking the identification with the body and the self-centered part of the mind producing self-centered thoughts, is one of the main focus of all real spiritual paths.
For the sake of describing the situation let's say for now that what we are, is the pure universal consciousness, the pure universal being/beingness which is one, appearing as many.
A human body is a form appearing within consciousness, with which consciousness, out of some hypnosis, is identifying with. When we say "identification with a body", we should understand that it also implies, identification with that part of the brain/mind where is produced a continuous flow of self-centered thinking.
So, there cannot be a body, a mind, thoughts, an idea of "self", without consciousness. Consciousness is the universal energy (prana) giving form, existence, substance and seeming "reality", to all of it.
Nobody is producing the self-centered thinking (the "selfing" activity of the brain/mind). There is truly no "thinker" (the "thinker" being itself only a thought). But through identification with it, consciousness will take itself to be a "person" and a "thinker".
The self-centered thinking, is a feature of the human organism. Same as a body produces fluids (transpiration, urine, saliva, etc...) it also produces thoughts through the brain. Self-centered thinking is a bit like a specific module within the brain (neuroscience now knows pretty well which parts/neural networks of the brain is producing this sense of self and all self-centered thinking, and when brain-scanning people, they notice that those neural networks are totally shut down, whether temporarily when people are in deep meditation or permanently when they are fully enlightened).
When through identification, consciousness invest attention/energy into this module, it fuels the module and feeds its own specific programming, making it to produce more and more self-centered thoughts/thinking, which through identification, pushes consciousness in return, to invest even more and more attention/energy into it, in a continuous way. That's the hypnosis, the loop of self-centeredness, when everything is "about me". That's when identification is the most solid (and producing the most quantity of discontentment and suffering). And this is where this selfing module of the brain will literally hijack and filter all other functions of the body, all perceptions, all senses ("I am the body", "I perceive", "I sense", "I feel", "I think"...).
On the spiritual path, the instruction is given to consciousness itself (obviously not to the imaginary/non-existent "self/person"), to withdraw its attention, energy, vital force, from the self-centered brain/mind module, and to redirect it toward and to itself. Doing so, it will start to re-awaken to itself and its original nature, and it will deprive the self-centered module of energy and fuel, so it will little by little slow down, stop functioning (first temporarily when meditation is truly active), and even die off (in true awakening). It's like pulling of the power plug from a fan, after a while it will stop spinning.
So in other more concrete words, the path is to break this deep hypnosis/obsession with the self (ego, selfing, me) by forgetting again and again oneself.
There are 3 paths or modalities to break this obsession, which are actually not really distinct.
Path of enquiry/meditation (Jnana Yoga) - we withdraw our energy/attention from the self-centered brain/mind module, and bring it back to itself. This is where we abide as consciousness, I am, being, presence, the Seer, the witness/observer.
Path of devotion/surrender (Bhakti Yoga) - we acknowledge the fact that what we think we are as a "person" is false and unreal, at least intellectually or intuitively first, and we work then on surrendering it all to a "higher power". That's the path of self-effacement and humility. We surrender all self-centered concerns to this "higher power". We stop "loving ourselves" to come to love the great Beloved (maybe first in an outside form such as a divinity or trust in a master, and then within, as the Sadhguru, Jesus, Being, etc.). That's another way to stop fueling the self-centered module of the brain/mind.
Path of service (Karma Yoga) - we dedicate and redirect our vital energy to others, in selfless action and service. Or we practice to not feel as the "doer" whatever this body/mind is pulled to do in the world. By thinking more of "others", and not being the "doer", we weaken the "all about me" dynamic. That's here too a way to stop fueling the self-centered module of the brain/mind.
"Why are you unhappy? Because 99.9 percent of everything you think, and of everything you do, is for yourself - and there isn't one." - Wei Wu Wei
Truth in Darkness
As I said, we are living an off-centered life. We have lost something, experience the painful lack of it, but don't know where to find and regain it. So we live an unconscious life of endless seeking, of continuous search looking outside in the hope of finding back what we lost, which we rightly intuit will be able to bring us back to that state of contentment and wholeness.
We all know the Mulla Nasrudin story. Nasrudin is on his knees on the sidewalk, under a streetlamp, looking for his lost keys. A friend passes by and help him. Nothing is found, and the friend asks Nasrudin if he is sure that he lost his keys here. As Nasrudin says "Not at all, I have lost them in my house." The bewildered friend then asks: "Then why are we looking for the keys here, outside on the sidewalk under this street lamp?", to which Nasrudin replies: "Because there is more light here than inside my house!"
See, that's what we do. We are looking in the "outside light of the world" for what we feel we have lost. We get attached to whatever seems shining and sparkling outside, an "outside" which is whether outward (in the world) or inward (in the mental/emotional/psychological sphere), which includes also everything we falsely believe is the "spiritual path".
Same as Nasrudin, we have lost the keys inside of our "house" (lost sight of the keys within us), but we don't look there, because in there, it's dark, and we can't imagine how anything real or important could be found in this very "darkness of our own being". It's absolutely counter-intuitive for the conditioned mind to imagine that the pure luminosity of the gem we are looking for, lies at the very core of the darkness/emptiness of our own being.
Now, hear what our beloved master Nisargadatta Maharaj has to say about it.
"The source of light is dark, unknown is the source of knowledge. That source alone is. Go back to that source and abide there." - Nisargadatta Maharaj
"Give yourself no name, no shape. In the darkness and the silence reality is found." - Nisargadatta Maharaj
"In solitude and darkness, the last step is made which ends ignorance and fear for ever." - Nisargadatta Maharaj
"In reality there is only the source, dark in itself, making everything shine. Unperceived, it causes perception. Unfelt, it causes feeling. Unthinkable, it causes thought. Non-being, it gives birth to being. It is the immovable background of motion. Once you are there, you are at home everywhere." - Nisargadatta Maharaj
An Inextricable Situation
People who are alcoholics (or heroin addicts), know very well how hard and utterly difficult it is to become sober, and above all, to remain sober in the long run.
Now, take this, multiply it by a thousand, and you'll have a pretty good analogy of what it is to be addicted to identification with the self-centered mind.
The problem we have is this: imagine being an alcoholic, and although you desire to stop drinking and do you best to resist alcohol every day, you find yourself again and again, every day, every hour, in a kind of temporary narcolepsy and unconscious sleep-walking state, where every time you are in that state, you instantly go grab a bottle and get drunk, and realize it happened again, once you come back to your senses.
Now add another layer to it: contemporary seekers/alcoholics claiming "I don't care about being an alcoholic, because my original state is to be sober."
That's the almost inextricable situation we are facing.
Those who get this, will understand how primordial is the very first step in the process of "getting sober": to learn to heal first from this "narcolepsy" and "sleep-walking" syndrome, to regain control over our own fragmented consciousness, through learning to maintain a continuous conscious state of vigilance/alertness/one-pointedness, to stop falling into "narcolepsy" where we "get drunk" without even knowing it.
Only then we will be able to work efficiently, consciously, at all times, to resist the pull to "drink again" (to automatically buy into the self-centered thinking/mind), and to remain centered in our "sober state" (pure being, I am).
Neo-Advaita Fallacy
The great fallacy of contemporary Advaita/non-duality movement
In Hinduism, there are 3 main paths. Karma Yoga (path of action, service), Bhakti Yoga (path of devotion, surrender) and Jnana Yoga (path of knowledge and wisdom).
Lots of people in the West jumped into this "path of knowledge", the Jnana Yoga, interpreted by them as a "direct path", direct self-enquiry, an "easy" path, a "nothing to do" path, and often sold as such by countless superficial so-called "teachers" in the non-dual scene.
But here's the fallacy and the problem. Doing so (should I say again, out of laziness, superficiality and mediocrity?), they just hijacked and grasped at a very tiny part of what this ancient Jnana path really is, as a whole body of knowledge and path of transformation. Traditionally, there are four pillars of Knowledge in the Jnana path. And contemporary seekers/teachers just hijacked the very first pillar: Viveka (discernment, discrimination), which consist in "a deliberate, continuous intellectual effort to distinguish between the real and the unreal, the permanent and the temporary, and the Self and not-Self". The 3 other pillars? Who cares, right?
That explain very much why seekers now believe that a little intellectual intuition, or what they call "knowing" of what they really are (Self, Awareness), or some mental "understanding" of how the "ego-self" is unreal, or a small glimpse that most "teachers" are selling as a great achievement, is enough for them to claim an "awakening/enlightenment".
Working on Vairagya (dispassion/non-attachment)? Who cares? Working on the "six virtues" (six mental practices to stabilize the mind and emotions, and to further develop the ability to see beyond the illusions of maya)? Who cares? Working on Samadhana (focus, concentration, complete one-pointedness of the mind)? Who cares? Working on Titiksha (endurance, forbearance) ? Who cares?
It's as foolish as if you wanted to make bread, took a recipe which has been refined through centuries of practice, and focused exclusively on "kneading the dough", as being the only and very direct method to produce bread, not caring in the least about any other steps. And actually, that's what people do: they keep "kneading" their intellect and mind, and call that "a very deep and profound spiritual activity".
Who cares too, if the Vishishtadvaita, one of the most popular schools of the Vedanta school, through the great sage Ramanuja (1017-1137), said that we should regard knowledge arising out of Jnana Yoga, only as a condition of devotion [surrender]...
Encounter Your Ghosts First
All conditioned human beings, are living an off-centered life. They live outside of themselves, in the bubble of the thinking mind that they call "myself", or sense as "my home". All human beings are living in exile. And it's painful to live in such way.
So they hear about the spiritual path, which is supposed to be the ultimate solution to come back home.
But they don't get what it really is, because they don't understand first why they are living in exile, why they live an off-centered life.
We live an off-centered life, because we are afraid to be home, we are afraid to be with ourselves. Our house is filled with countless ghosts: past traumas, unresolved emotional pains, unpleasant wounds, shame, existential fears...
So we spend our entire life running away from home, from ourselves, from our "ghosts", applying countless strategies to endlessly escape from ourselves (including "spiritual" strategies), and we will do anything to distract ourselves but to come home and meet those "ghosts"... while all along feeling homesick.
And as long as we don't see this, we will also use what we believe is the "spiritual path", as a way to keep escaping. Of course, it will never work, and this is why for most seekers, what they believe is their "awakening" is nothing else than another layer added to their off-centered mental movie bubble.
So here's the point. You are totally off-centered (for the reasons said above), and if you want to come back to your very center, the very core of your own beingness which is your true home, to your true homeland where you will be truly at peace and rest, you will have to encounter first ALL your ghosts on the way back home. That's unavoidable. And that's exactly what most so-called spiritual seekers don't want to do, and why they get caught in this trap of the so-called "direct path".
Come to Truly Be
Most of confusion arising in spiritual circles like non-duality, arises out of mixing levels of reality.
A conditioned human being, doesn't know what it is to "be". "To be", is not yet his state. For him, "to be" is only a potentiality, not yet actualized. He spends almost his entire life in a dreaming state, not in a state of being.
I know very well that saying this is not going to make any sense, or may even be felt as some sort of blasphemy or idiocy for those hypnotized by the "non-dual" spell. They will reply: "There is only Being, there is only the Self.", which is absolutely true, but they are confusing and mixing the relative and the absolute levels of reality, what's potential with what's actual.
See, it is true to say that the tree is already entirely in the seed. But you will not get to see and touch the tree, and maybe harvest its fruits, here, in manifestation, in the relative plan, for yourself and for others, unless the seed sprouts and grows.
To "awaken" simply means to learn and to come to "be". And you cannot "be" as long as you are living in the identified sleeping/dreaming state. For a conditioned human being, to truly come to "be", the path of being, is going to require a great fight, a lot of efforts and perseverance. The seed of being is surely already there, inside, but for it to sprout and grow in a mighty tree producing fruits, volition and discipline are required.
"To be" means to consciously be, to come to stabilize an uninterrupted state of being conscious of being, within oneself, 24/7. Only then, someone can rightly say "I am".
If you doubt this, ask yourself if you were at all time, in a continuous manner, aware of being, consciously aware of your own sense of being, while reading this post... or not. If not, it means you were lost in appearances (in the words of this post, in the thoughts arising out of reading it, etc.), lost in a sleeping/dreaming state.
"Keep up the practice until there are no breaks. Practice alone will bring about continuity of awareness." - Ramana Maharshi
"Q: Are there no breaks at all in the jnani's awareness of the Self? For example, if he is engrossed in reading a good book, will his full attention 'be always on the book? Will he simultaneously be aware that he is the Self? AS: If there are breaks in his Self-awareness this means that he is not yet a jnani. Before one becomes established in this state without any breaks, without changes, one has to contact and enjoy this state many times. By steady meditation it finally becomes permanent. It is very difficult to attain Self-abidance, but once it is attained it is retained effortlessly and never lost. It is a little like putting a rocket into space. A great effort and great energy are required to escape the earth's gravitational field. If the rocket is not going fast enough, gravity will pull it back to earth. But once it has escaped the pull of gravity it can stay out in space quite effortlessly without falling back to earth." - Annamalai Swami
"Q: Is it better to meditate for long periods of time or for short periods? AS: Except when one is in the sleep state, the effort to meditate should continue always. Just like the river which is flowing constantly towards the sea, our awareness should flow without a break. We should not have this concept that we should meditate at certain times. The meditation on the Self should continue while walking, working, eating, etc. It should be naturally flowing in all places at all times." - Annamalai Swami
Pure Awareness Is Not Self-Aware
Seekers are actually desiring to know who/what they are. They think that when they will know who they are, they are going to be at peace, enlightened. So they learn to identify everything they believed they are (body, mind, conditioning), to realized that whatever it is that is appearing, as subtle as it can be, is just unreal appearance, and that they are still the knowing of this appearance. So they come to a place when they state: "I know what I am. I am this ever knowing infinite Awareness. I am That."
What they don't quite get, is that the very one claiming "I am That", the very one seemingly happy to have found who/what he is, is also the unreal identity, also an appearance. When people/seekers get stuck in that place, in fact, nothing really changed. They just shifted from an identity claiming "I am me", to another identity claiming "I am That/Awareness." Out of absolute fear of death and non-existence, they have taken another identity, which they project for their own comfort and out of an uncontrolled craving to continue to exist, as infinite and ever-existent.
In truth, "That" doesn't say, and even can't say "I am That." Awareness cannot claim "I know who I am, I am Awareness". In That, in Awareness/Absolute, there is no one and nothing that could claim anything, there is no one and nothing there who can know anything, be it itself. Pure awareness, cannot be self-aware.
When all powers of Awareness are withdrawn and resting within itself, in its inconceivable nature, the very potential to be self-aware is not there anymore, because the very potential to be, is also withdrawn. This pure Awareness (Absolute/Parabrahman), is neither finite nor infinite, neither ever-existent nor non-existent, neither being nor non-being, neither conscious nor unconscious.
"Remain as pure witness, till even witnessing dissolves in the Supreme." - Nisargadatta Maharaj
"When one doesn't know anything, and doesn't even know that he doesn't know anything, that is Samadhi." - Nisargadatta Maharaj
Are You Enlightened?
Many people talk so lightly about "awakening" nowadays. For most, "knowing" or "understanding" who they really are, is what "awakening" is. What they totally miss, in their deep rooted mediocrity, is that a true awakening produces fruits, here, in manifestation, within a human body. If those fruits are not there, all the so-called "spiritual knowledge" is worth nothing at all, and no matter what you think or believe, this not a real "awakening".
I stumbled upon a webpage of a well-known neo-advaita teacher, where there is a quiz, to supposedly know if you are "enlightened" or not. Of course, all you find there, is a long list of some sort of metaphysical/spiritual questions, about truth, non-duality, Self, Awareness... which a good parrot could all answer. So I thought I would drop here few (unpleasant) questions, that could be valuable for those who have a more genuine interest in the matter...
Can you sit silently for a moment, and really imagine as if it was real, that you are going to die, in 5 minutes, and be entirely, absolutely ok with it, thinking of everyone and everything that you are going to leave irremediably? Take your time, dive deep into the scenario, your body is going to stop breathing and your heart is going to stop, your life is going to end, in 5 minutes. What's the emotional/mental reaction arising out of it for you?
Can you sit, and really imagine as if it was real, that you are going to lose all material wealth all of a sudden, become homeless and a beggar for the rest of your life, and be entirely, absolutely ok and at peace with it? What's the emotional/mental reaction arising out of it for you?
Can you be in absolute physical pain for hours or days, and have zero resistance to it, no self-centered emotional reactions, no desire whatsoever for it to leave?
Can you hold opposites, apparently contradictory statements in mind, without seeing any contradiction to it whatsoever, without feeling any urge to choose one over the other (example: "there is a lot of effort to make to attain awakening" and "there is no effort to make to be what you really are", or "There is free-will" and "There is no free-will")?
Can you fully see and recognized yourself, with heart and mind, in the most barbaric people on earth? In those who abused you in some form or another, during your life?
Can you see that everything you are, everything you have, everything you learn, everything you think, you owe it to others?
Can you drop absolutely all "spiritual" knowledge you believe you acquired or understood, seeing the falseness of it all, included everything about who you think you ultimately are (Awareness, Oneness, Consciousness, Knowingness, whatever), not taking it back, and still be ok?
Can you see in yourself how often or at times you can be lazy, superficial, mediocre, complacent, hypocrite, self-centered, selfish, greedy, cupid, manipulative, fearful, coward, as all humans on this planet, and be ok with it, and ok to keep unveiling all those filters so they can dissolve more and more? What's your emotional reaction when people or friends are pointing out some of this to you, or you are discovering those things in yourself? Grateful and happy or resistant and self-defensive?
Can you be open to recognize that veils and filters distorting the manifesting of pure consciousness/being, such as prejudices, beliefs, preconceived ideas, value systems, self-centered opinions and views, dogma, ideologies, are still inhabiting your system, and no matter how "enlightened" you think yourself to be, no matter how much you think you "know who you really are", be ok with unveiling and uprooting them more and more along the way?
Are you free of all cravings and self-centered desires?
Are any of your actions in the world, still induced by any self-centered motive?
Is your mind still constantly or often filled with self-centered thinking and rumination?
Are you still finding yourself in situations where you are still craving for or desiring attention and acknowledgment of others?
Of course, those are just few questions, and if you "pass the test", it surely doesn't mean you are enlightened. But if you didn't pass the test, it surely means that if you believe yourself to be "free" or "awakened", you surely have placed the bar, way, way too low...
The path of "I Am"
"I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me."
- John 14:6
I'll try to explain why this path is a path of transformation, and not of simple "understanding" or getting some ultimate "knowledge", as most in the neo-advaita field are believing.
At an end of the path, we have the conditioned human being. Entrapped in identification, illusion, full of veils and conditioned filters, egoistic tendencies and past imprints, karmic forces. At the other end, we have Liberation, divinity fully embodied in man, let's say.
What we need to understand, is that it's absolutely impossible to go from one end to the other, without an intermediary. All people/seekers that I met who believed they could "do it" or "did it" without this intermediary (which I will explain below), are lost in self-deception and delusion. All of them.
No matter what you feed into the conditioned human system, it will be degraded, distorted, polluted. It's unavoidable. You can believe you are engaged on a path of truth and awakening, or even in a "direct path", but if you haven't cleared/cleaned out your human system from those veils and filters, all your so-called "spiritual" achievements and realizations, are just dreamed ones. You just added another layer of conditioning to those already in place in yourself. It's just more of this superficial intellectual material, that is being falsely called "understanding" or "spiritual".
So, to travel from one end to the other, we need an intermediary means, a vehicle, which will act as a means of transformation and purification, so that you'll be able to reach the other end. It is there in all real traditions.
The "I am" (or pure "I", what Ramana calls the "I-I") is such a vehicle, such intermediary. Nisargadatta Maharaj said that the "I am" is a door, opening on one side to the world, and to the other side to the Absolute.
We come from the world. To reach the Absolute, we must pass through the door of "I am", of pure being, of pure consciousness, of pure silence. And the thing is, we cannot reach this door, and pass through it, with our conditioning, veils, filters or any trace of self-centeredness and identification left within ourselves. It's impossible. You can pass through this door, only if you are absolutely naked and empty, only if the sense of being is truly cleared, cleaned, shed of everything it is attached to in manifestation.
The work of abiding as the "I am", which means to learn to approach the door, and to learn to remain at the doorstep more and more, and to come back to it again and again, is what is going to transform, clean, clear us of conditioning, to empty ourselves of anything that is not this pure beingness. And only then, the beingness/I Am itself can be transcended.
You can delude yourself as much as you can with endless beautiful spiritual conceptualization and platitudes, if you are not entirely pure, truly entirely empty (and you can't fake this), you will not be able to pass through the door. You will only dream that you can or that you did. As it is said: "The secret protects itself."
See, it's the same in Christianity. Jesus is the intermediary, the way, the door to the Father. To love Jesus within oneself, to die to yourself so that He may live in you, is the only way to reach the Father. Jesus is the pure "I am", the pure light of being, the pure beingness within the human realm.
"All I can say is: 'I am', all else is inference. But the inference has become a habit. Destroy all habits of thinking and sleeping. The sense 'I am' is a manifestation of a deeper cause, which you may call Self, God, Reality or by any other name. The 'I am' is in the world; but it is the key which can open the door out of the world." - Nisargadatta Maharaj
"Only humility can destroy the ego. The ego keeps you far away from God. The door to God is open, but the lintel is very low. To enter one has to bend." - Ramana Maharshi
Here, humility is not a moral idea. It's a technical tool. To believe that we can pass through the door with all the burden of our conditioning, is fooling ourselves. This humility means that we come to agree to enter the path of transformation, agree to pay the price, agree to make the efforts and sacrifices required, to attain the required state of purity and emptiness which will allow us to pass through the door.
But the ordinary immature seeker will say: "I am going to make it in my own way, without having to pay such a high price. Here, there is this "direct path" which says there is nothing to do, no efforts to make, no sacrifice to make. I like that. This is going to be my path."
It may be laughable if it weren't true, but what most seekers and even teachers are doing, is standing on the world side of the "I am" door, endlessly talking about what's beyond it, what it is, how it is, what is the way to describe it with the more accuracy and truth possible... and call that "spiritual knowledge" or "awakening".
"If you want to be perfect, go, sell your possessions and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow Me." - Matthew 19:21
"Again I tell you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God." - Matthew 19:24
Here, to "sell your possessions" mean to give up and surrender all our attachments to ourselves, to become "poor" of ourselves, naked, empty, to give up all self-centered thinking that we believe we are rich of, so we can "follow" Jesus, follow the "I am".
Grace's Infinite Patience
Yes, somehow you cannot "do" your awakening, or your dissolving. But you can, and you have to "undo" your resistances to it.
See, there are two forces at play in the process. One is Grace (God, Beingness, Reality...), which out of pure love, is constantly pulling you in toward Itself. The other is you constantly resisting this pull, through your attachments to the inner psychological world and outer material world.
We have to understand that Grace, out of pure love too, will ever respect our own desires, will and freedom, and will never force us toward Itself. Grace has an infinite patience (it's even a timeless patience), and is only waiting for your conscious, deliberate, absolute "yes". And this total "yes" cannot come as long as we have not severed all attachments we have for anything else than Grace. This is where the work is, this is where efforts have to be made, this is where perseverance and earnestness are absolutely necessary.
Once all clinging and grasping are gone, this is when the pull from Grace is going to work on its own to pull you back inside, to bring you Home.
"Grace is ever present. All that is necessary is that you surrender to it." - Ramana Maharshi
"If we perform sadhana to the limit of our abilities the Lord will accomplish for us that which is beyond our capabilities. If we fail to do even that which is within our capabilities, there is not the slightest fault in the grace of the Lord." - Ramana Maharshi
"Killing the ego is not an easy thing. It is only when God Himself by His Grace draws the mind inwards that complete surrender can be achieved. But such grace comes only to those who have already, in this or previous lives, gone through all the struggles and "sadhanas" [spiritual practices] preparatory to the extinction of the mind and killing of the ego." - Ramana Maharshi
"Grace and effort are both necessary. The sun is shining, but you must turn and look at it in order to catch a glimpse. Similarly, individual effort is necessary as well as Grace." - Ramana Maharshi
Just two more points about it.
- See, you cannot genuinely claim "I want truth and awakening" (which by the way, means "I want to die to myself entirely"), and still want other things. As long as there are attachments in yourself, whether conscious, unconscious or semi-conscious, you will always find yourself in a dilemma, not understanding, or pretending to not understand, why you are not fully Liberated yet. You cannot win a fight with yourself. You can lie to yourself by pretending that you want "truth more than anything else", but if you actually want others things more than truth, truth will never succeed to pull you in.
- When it comes to severing attachments, we have to understand that this goes too for all kind of identification that is appearing in the "spiritual" process, and all kind of so-called spiritual knowledge or truth we think we acquired. "I am Awareness", "I am That", "What I am is non-dual", etc, are all identities. "Truth is effortless", "Reality is non-dual", "All there is is Awareness", etc, are all part of the limited knowledge. Any grasping and clinging at any of it, will prevent Grace to pull you inside.
"I learned utter devotion to the Search for Truth from a gambler. I watched a gambler lose everything he possessed and when a comrade begged him to give it up, he answered, "Ah my friend, if I had to give my head for this game, I could not do without it." When I heard this, my heart was flooded with amazement and ever since I have pursued Truth with the same single-mindedness." - Bahauddin Naqshbandi (Master of Wisdom, 14th century, Bukhara, Uzbekistan)
Someone asked: "Can you explain how you can get rid of that feeling I have everything is superficial. I feel like I am a "deep" person but my life experience is filled with very down to earth people. The depth of connection I want to feel is nowhere to be found except in 2 best friends I have. It's like I feel trapped..."
Yes, human beings are superficial. And we are always way more superficial than we may think. I think it's good to remember.
True relationships, true meetings are very rare in this world. That's how it is. The shell/carapace is too thick to allow real interactions/meeting, so we only have self-images bumping into other self-images. Hence, why it is superficial, lacking substance.
If you have two best friends with whom you feel you can have deeper connections (which are deeper, always out of more sincerity, more openness, less self-protection), you should highly value this, they are gems, rare... that's how it is.
Now, let me go a little deeper with it all. The "deepness of connection you want to feel/experience" that you find nowhere, which somehow bothers you... It bothers you because you are looking for it outside.
The pull you feel in yourself to have "deep connections", is actually a pull and a call to deepen a connection with yourself (with your own beingness). That's the intimacy you are longing for, which, out of a misunderstanding, you are looking outside of yourself.
When you truly become your best friend, when you are deepening this connection with your own sense of being (which is called the Beloved, or the Friend, in mystical poetry), you will not feel any lack whatsoever, or any more longing to find it "outside".
The more you become truly intimate with yourself, the more you will be able to be intimate with others, if there is an openness for it in others you meet, and if not, you will not suffer any more about this "superficial" world and "superficial" relationships, you will not experience a lack. This doesn't mean you become an hermit of some sort, but your sense of completeness/intimacy doesn't depend on "others" anymore, on the outside world.
A Divine Mariage
It's truly and literally simple. The tremendous difficulty comes from not understanding, or not wanting to understand, how simple it is.
And there is only one simple thing we should come to understand: ultimately, the whole path is nothing but to come to fall in love completely, entirely, absolutely, exclusively with the "I am", with the pure sense of being/beingness in yourself.
As long as we are in love with other things, it will delay our progress. As long as we are in love with anything else (inwardly and outwardly), that is going to be our very difficulties on the path. We may kick and scream, we may find it unjust, we may blame God, Grace, Life, and Love itself about how miserable we still are, it will not change the fact that we are our own difficulty, that we are creating our own hindrances through still loving other things more than we love our own inner sense of pure being, still more attached to other things than the Beloved Being within.
Only when you will start to have a faithful love relationship with the pure and silent sense of being within yourself, something will start to open up.
This Beloved is such an exclusive lover!
And this is what frightens you. You are actually scared to fully commit to this love. You are scared to lose all your little casual loves, all your little toys, your little distractions, your little needs and wants, your mediocre but highly revered desires, your sacred intellect, thinking and so-called "understanding", your cherished so-called "spiritual knowledge", and scared to lose what you imagine is your sacred "freedom" and "autonomy". And this why it can be said that you are the only responsible of your own misery, through delaying and postponing again and again this divine marriage.
Fall so deeply in love with the Beloved, O Lover, that even the very ecstasy, joy, peace and enjoyment arising out of this union are seen as yet things that are separating you from Him.
Paradigm Shift
A way to say it, is that the spiritual path of transformation, or "awakening" (as a verb), is to go from a paradigm to an upper paradigm, on and on. Each paradigm has its own rules and laws of functioning. Each upper paradigm, is a larger/wider and more complete perspective on what reality/truth is, which will include all lower paradigms.
All confusion in spiritual circles (and there's a lot), comes from the fact that people/seekers from within a particular paradigm, try to apprehend and understand the next upper paradigm with the tools of apprehension and understanding of the paradigm they are in. It's impossible. It's aimed to fail and produce an endless loop of self-deception.
As an analogy, a two dimensional being, will never understand what it's like to be a three dimensional being. And a three dimensional being, will never understand what it's like to be a four dimensional being.
All that can be done, is to humbly and properly work with the tools a particular dimension has to offer, to push it to its very limit, to mature and grow to the maximum possibility of the current dimension/paradigm, and then, and only then, a sort of quantum leap happens out of nowhere (a sort of chemical precipitation happening out of a saturation), where the next dimension/paradigm is reached.
We can learn at least three things from here:
1 - You will never be able to make the upper/higher fit into the lower, no matter how hard you try, no matter how many lies you are telling yourself out of craving for comfort and "being pleased".
2 - The first dimension/paradigm we are in, is the self-centered/conditioned one, where the idea of an independent "I" having free-will, is at play. Unless you use this "I" and this free-will to mature and grow to the maximum possibilities offered by this dimension, the next upper dimension/paradigm cannot be reached. If you negate and deny the law of free-will from within this dimension/paradigm, believing it's a smart and enlightened spiritual move to do so, you will actually make yourself totally powerless and impotent, making yourself incapable of producing the correct conditions for the quantum leap to the upper dimension/paradigm to actually happen.
3 - Without effort, dedication, discipline, earnestness and perseverance from within the dimension/paradigm you are in, there is not a chance in the world you will truly reach an upper dimension of being/truth.
"If we perform sadhana to the limit of our abilities the Lord will accomplish for us that which is beyond our capabilities. If we fail to do even that which is within our capabilities, there is not the slightest fault in the grace of the Lord." - Ramana Maharshi
"Whenever you experience something, you experience it from one level lower" - Lakshman Joo
Just stating this more clearly maybe: see, we don't, we can't "produce" the quantum leap, the "precipitation" itself, and somehow that's what we can call "grace". But we produce, we have to produce the conditions at the level/dimension we are, so that the leap may happen (independently of our "will").
So when seekers grasp at this "we cannot produce an awakening", and conclude that it means all efforts and attempts to improve oneself, are useless, they totally miss the point, and are putting themselves in a place of inescapable failure (stuck in their own dimension).
"Killing the ego is not an easy thing. It is only when God Himself by His Grace draws the mind inwards that complete surrender can be achieved. But such grace comes only to those who have already, in this or previous lives, gone through all the struggles and "sadhanas" [spiritual practices] preparatory to the extinction of the mind and killing of the ego." - Ramana Maharshi
Recede in the Name of Love
Prostrate yourself, sacrifice yourself, surrender yourself to the "I am", to the sense of being/beingness in you. Let it be what supremely matters, above anything else. Let yourself be absolutely unimportant, insignificant, non-existent, not worthy of any attention whatsoever, not entitled to anything whatsoever.
Fall in love with the "I am". When you are truly in love, you don't matter anymore. Only the one you love matters. You don't try to get or gain anything from your beloved, you don't even care if you are going to be loved in return. All that matters, is to give way to your beloved.
Recede, disappear, dissolve, forget yourself, silence yourself, efface yourself in favor of the "I am".
"Just drop all seeking, turn your attention inward, and sacrifice your mind to the One Self radiating in the Heart of your very being." - Ramana Maharshi
As saint-Francis is whispering into the ears which want to hear, true humility is absolute absence, and absolute presence at the same time. Absolute absence of "yourself" and absolute presence of "Yourself". "In the absence of both other and self, there may be known 'The Perfect Peace of the Presence of Absolute Absence'." - Wei Wu Wei "What way is there, except to draw in the mind as often as it strays or goes outward, and to fix it in the Self, as the Gita advises? Of course, it won't be easy to do it. It will come only with practice or sadhana." - Ramana Maharshi "In watching the mind, you have to know what you are watching, and know what you're supposed to do. The purpose of watching the mind is to stop your mind from thinking. If you cannot stop your mind from thinking and you still watch it, it doesn't do you any good. Why do you want to stop your thinking? It's because your thinking creates cravings and desires which follows by depression, restlessness and agitation. So, watching the mind means watching your thoughts and stopping your thoughts. You have to learn how to stop your thoughts. You need something to stop your thoughts. The easiest way is to recite a mantra. Keep reciting a mantra or keep watching your breath. You have to go back to have something to stop your mind from thinking. Watching your mind is just to make sure that your mind is not doing anything bad. If your mind is not thinking, or if it's not creating any problem, then it's ok. But when it starts to create problems, you have to know how to stop it. If you don't know how to stop your thoughts, watching the mind will not give any benefit." - Ajaan Suchart Abhijato Hypocrisy A friend said: "The true seeker constantly checks himself, in his private mind he would never dare lie to himself: sincere, earnest, honest..." That's somehow fascinating to see how it's so hard for the great majority of people and seekers, to just start to questions their abilities. Wishful thinking, and even having good intentions, cannot be used as a measurement of our abilities and capacities. It's not because one wants, that one can. It's not because one desires, that one has enough skills to get what one is desiring. Competence has nothing to do with "doing your best". For any task appearing in this world, whether you are competent or not. And if you are not, you'll have to learn to become competent for what you try to achieve. But of course first, you'll have to admit that you are incompetent when you are incompetent. Which no seeker whatsoever wants to do when it comes to the spiritual path and the goal of awakening. Let's take sincerity, as an example. We all know it's an absolute prerequisite on the path. Now, take 100 seekers at random, and ask them if they think they are sincere in their quest. The whole bunch of 100 will tell you that they are sincere. Not one, I'm sure, will question his ability and capacity to be sincere, and ask himself if he even knows what true sincerity is. And truly, that is the very demonstration of a huge hypocrisy and insincerity in this area of spiritual seeking. There is not one required quality on the path of awakening, not one, which is innate and natural in a conditioned human being willing to be seeking for truth. All those qualities have to be developed and acquired, matured and refined. Sincerity, generosity, humility, earnestness, perseverance, discipline, courage, discernment, etc... those are all qualities which the conditioned human being and the seeker have in very, very little quantity and quality. So as long as seekers continue to believe that wishful thinking and supposed "good will" can replace competence, we will keep seeing what we see everywhere in this contemporary spiritual domain: superficiality, mediocrity and endless self-deception. And to end up with the work on sincerity: the very first step to make in order to acquire a bit more of sincerity, is to realize how insincere I am. That's sincerity. To believe that I am sincere, just because I think or say I am, this is hypocrisy, a lack of discernment and a lack of earnestness. Third Year Studies One of the prominent Sufis of Central Asia was examining candidates who wanted to become disciples. "Anyone" he said, "who wants entertainment, not learning, who wishes to argue, not study, who is impatient, who wants to take rather than to give - should raise his hand." Nobody moved. "Very good" said the teacher, "now you will come and see some of my pupils, who have been with me for three years." He led them into a meditation-hall, where a row of people were sitting. Addressing them, he said: "Let those who wish to be entertained, not to learn, who are impatient and want to argue, the takers and not givers - let them stand up." The whole row of disciples got to their feet. The sage addressed the first group. "In your own eyes, you are better people now than you would be in three years time if you stayed here. Your present vanity helps you even to feel worthy. So reflect well, as you return to your homes, before coming here again at some future time if you wish, whether you want to feel better than you are or worse than the world thinks you to be." - Idries Shah - A Veiled Gazelle Awakening is Difficult Is self-realization easy or difficult? "Bhagavan Ramana Maharshi sometimes said that Self-knowledge, that is, attaining the state of the jnani, is an easy thing because we are already the Self and consequently are already realized. At other times he would admit that attaining such a state is very difficult. To illustrate the later attitude I can offer the following exchange. A woman came and had Bhagavan's darshan. When she was ready to leave, she asked him, "Bhagavan, my mind is wandering in many directions. What shall I do?" Bhagavan advised her, "Let it go in only on in one direction." After she had left, I asked him, "If that is possible, what more do we want? That is jnana itself, is it not?" "Well, what am I to do or say?" asked Bhagavan. "As soon as people come here they want to become jnanis [self-realized]. They think it is quite easy. They do not realize the difficulty in it." - Rangan (Velacheri Ranga Iyer) Be a Lamp Unto Yourself When attention is turned unto itself, when consciousness is aware of consciousness, when being abides as being, when the "I am" is used to abide as the "I am", when the life energy is redirected to the life energy itself, it's truly like a light is turned on within yourself. When this is not the case, you live in the darkness of a night where you are fully asleep, no matter how alive and awake you imagine yourself to be, or seem to be for others who are as much asleep as you are. This is what to "enlighten" means. This is the ultimate meaning of the Buddha saying: "Be a lamp unto yourself." This light will truly act like an inner sun, radiating its light unto your inner garden. And as everybody knows, nothing can grow without the sun's light. The challenge here, is to be able to maintain the radiance, heat and light of this inner sun through continuous self-awareness, so that the seeds of clarity, wisdom and true love may have a chance to sprout and blossom. Imagine if the sun would show up only 30 minutes each day, or once a week, on earth. Nothing could grow. That's the same within us. Unless you are capable of maintaining a continuous heat and light, through this core practice of self-awareness, self-remembrance, abidance as "being/I am", your inner land will ever remain a wasteland, no matter how much fertile your intellectual/mental ability is to imagine otherwise. "First of all, establish a constant contact with your self, be with yourself all the time. Into self-awareness all blessings flow. Begin as a center of observation, deliberate cognizance, and grow into a center of love in action. 'I am' is a tiny seed which will grow into a mighty tree." - Nisargadatta Maharaj "[On dwelling on the 'I am'] It is the simple that is certain, not the complicated. Somehow, people do not trust the simple, the easy, the always available. Why not give a honest trial to what I say? It may look very small and insignificant, but it is the seed that grows into a mighty tree. Give yourself a chance!" - Nisargadatta Maharaj "What way is there, except to draw in the mind as often as it strays or goes outward, and to fix it in the Self, as the Gita advises? Of course, it won't be easy to do it. It will come only with practice or sadhana." - Ramana Maharshi The Uncomfortable Truth #1 The Uncomfortable Truth about Self-knowledge and the Spiritual Path A very strange phenomenon is happening in the domain of spiritual seeking, for a very long time. Same as all paths of discovery, knowledge and transformation in the human realm, this path has stages. No one would ever believe that it could be possible to learn quantum physics, prior to having fully acquired the capacity to count. But in the spiritual domain, it seems almost all people (seekers and "teachers") are affected by a strange lack of common-sense and discernment, which pushes them to believe that they can avoid to acquire the primary skills and abilities which will be absolutely required on the further stages of their development. For the purpose of trying to understand what is at stake, let's say that from full identification with the illusion, to full liberation, the spiritual path is made up of 3 stages. Stage 1, 2 and 3. Let's say that stage 3, is the final stage of learning, practice, development and integration when one is fit and mature enough to fully embark in what we could call the "direct path", and that the stages 1 and 2, are the preparatory stages leading to this final stage 3. What you can constantly observe in almost all circles of spirituality, and even more in the neo-advaita circles, is that people will always consider that they are fit, mature and smart enough, no matter what, to start their so-called "spiritual search" at stage 2 or 3, if they have heard about them. That is absolutely insane, but seems very sane from the point of view of those "seekers". As soon as you entered in what you ignorantly believe is the spiritual path, directly through stage 2 or 3, and ignoring the preparatory stage 1, you can be sure that all your search, all your supposed experiences, progress and so-called "realizations", will be polluted and distorted by your lack of knowledge that you should have acquired at stage 1. Everything you think you are acquiring or developing, will be unreal, insubstantial, and at best very superficial and totally shaky. Imagine a man not having learned to count at all, but still believing he is making good progress in quantum physics, and even very often, believing he managed to get his final diploma. You get the picture. That's literally what's happening in the search for truth. So let's talk about stage 1. This primary, preparatory stage, is where you are supposed to gain the very basic knowledge of what a human being is. This is the stage where you come to study, discover, learn, understand, the very root of all illusion, the very roots of the actual functioning of the conditioned human being. This is where you come to know yourself as an identified human being, where you come to know what the "ego" dynamic is and how it operates. This is what is called "self-knowledge". As all you can really know, is what you are not. As long as you haven't come to learn and know yourself as a human being, from head to toe, you still don't know "how to count", and you haven't acquired enough skills to step into the next stage of development. In short, stage 1 is where you must learn to discover in yourself, using your very own inner laboratory, your own personal ego (as a result of your personal life trajectory), and the universal human ego in itself. To be clearer still, this is where you come to discover all the veils and filters that you have within yourself, produced by the personal and universal conditioning, which are at the source of all your behaviors and thinking. To be even clearer, this is where you come to see all the prejudices, beliefs, preconceived ideas, value systems, self-centered opinions and views, dogma, ideologies that are distorting your perception. This is where you come to see all the layers of laziness, superficiality, mediocrity, hypocrisy, insincerity, self-deception, fears, cowardice, conditioned reactivity, complacency, self-pity, indulgence, selfishness, manipulative energies, greed, cupidity, attachments, cravings, inefficiency, inconsistency, inattention, that are polluting your very functioning as a human being. This is also where, through self-knowledge, you come to balance (at least in great parts) your psychological ground and emotional body. If you haven't gone through this primary stage in the proper way, and you arrogantly and ignorantly started at stage 2 or 3, you will be constantly fooled, tricked and manipulated by your very lack of fundamental knowledge of how a human being functions, of how the illusion works, of how almost endless in quantity and quality are the tricks and the subtleties of the ego-mind dynamic. Nothing you will believe you are achieving (be it what you imagine is the overcoming of your ego), will have any real value, in regard to true spiritual development and achievement. No further real integration can be possible. All your attainment, will be dreamed-attainment. And if you don't realize this soon enough, and correct your trajectory soon enough (see the "3 years study" story below), another thick layer of self-deception will be added to the whole self-deceptive mechanism. The more and the longer you will fool yourself in believing you are doing an "important work" at stage 2 or 3 (which you aren't), the less you will be prone to reconsider your insanity, and the more you will become resistant to come back to stage 1 to learn what you are obviously lacking. If you managed to fool yourself in believing that you are doing very well at learning quantum physics, and for long enough, or that you have received your diploma, you will never be willing to hear anyone pointing at the fact that all your supposed knowledge is worth absolutely nothing as long as you don't come back to stage 1 to learn how to count, and as long as you don't come to follow the entire program properly. You will kick and scream, resist, and accuse the messenger of trying to fool you, confuse you, or accuse him of being confused, of being a total idiot and a very judgmental man, generalizing or exaggerating way too much. I still have to meet one of those so-called "seekers", trapped in this kind of self-deception, who managed to have enough humility, courage and earnestness, to hear this and change his mind, due to the many years and energy he already spent in this useless insanity. All of them, all of those who I encountered (and they are many), have always preferred to remain with their dreams of "attainment" and "progress", instead of engaging themselves where they should have started from the very beginning. So really, and contrary to the dominant view, the most important stage of the whole process, and surely the stage that is requiring the most effort, discipline, perseverance, courage and sincerity (as here, you will meet the incredible resistance of your attachment to your very own self-image, and the countless tricks and traps of the ego), is stage 1, and not stage 2 or 3. Same as we cannot build a house on sand, or on a shaky foundation, if stage 1 is not properly conducted and integrated, everything else will be shaky, unstable, and destroyed anyway by the very first autumn wind. So if you don't want to live in a hovel while dreaming and imagining you are the king of a magnificent castle, be first very careful with the foundations! And if stage 1 is well conducted, generally under the guidance of one who "knows himself", with attention, sincerity and earnestness, all subsequent stages will become each time a little bit easier and smooth to conduct, while delivering the real fruits of what a true spiritual transformation is supposed to produce. I also want to mention, that the 3 stages example, is only an analogy. In reality, the spiritual path is way less linear than that. Linearity has its place, and there is truly a linear progression from stage 1 to 2 to 3, but there is also an important factor of non-linearity. If at the beginning, we will obviously put more energy and emphasis on stage 1, we will also have in view, as a target point and a container of integration of this stage 1, the other stage 2 and 3. "Don't forget that the one who knows his Devil, knows his God." - Shams Tabrizi "You cannot transcend what you do not know. To go beyond yourself, you must know yourself." - Nisargadatta Maharaj "You can meditate 4000 years, but if avoidance is at the root of it, you won't be free." - Papaji "Third Year Studies - One of the prominent Sufis of Central Asia was examining candidates who wanted to become disciples. "Anyone" he said, "who wants entertainment, not learning, who wishes to argue, not study, who is impatient, who wants to take rather than to give - should raise his hand." Nobody moved. "Very good" said the teacher, "now you will come and see some of my pupils, who have been with me for three years." He led them into a meditation-hall, where a row of people were sitting. Addressing them, he said: "Let those who wish to be entertained, not to learn, who are impatient and want to argue, the takers and not givers - let them stand up." The whole row of disciples got to their feet. The sage addressed the first group. "In your own eyes, you are better people now than you would be in three years' time if you stayed here. Your present vanity helps you even to feel worthy. So reflect well, as you return to your homes, before coming here again at some future time if you wish, whether you want to feel better than you are or worse than the world thinks you to be." - Idries Shah - A Veiled Gazelle The Uncomfortable Truth #2 The Uncomfortable Truth about Self-knowledge and the Spiritual Path As a consequence of what has been described in the first part of this post, we can notice that people/seekers will always minimize and underestimate the power of the dual pleasant/unpleasant dynamic, at the root of the self-centered conditioned mind. Due to the lack of investigation into it, this dynamic remains a very powerful unconscious force that is driving their whole life, behavior and thinking, and their seeking for truth. And out of not being aware of it (which awareness would have been a result of the work in stage 1), this dynamic will invade and distort what they believe is a "genuine and earnest" pull toward spiritual seeking. They will remain absolutely unaware that the main force that is driving their "search for truth", is this conditioned pull to seek and grasp at what seems and feels "pleasant" and "easy", from an egoic point of view through which they are still fully seeing things from. In that distorted framework of behavior, it will be obvious to see that almost everything that composes the work at stage 1, will be felt, sensed and interpreted as "unpleasant" and "non-desirable" by the unconscious conditioned mind, by the immature seeker. There is very little instant gratifications that one could expect from this stage 1 of coming to know oneself as the conditioned self-centered mind. It's mostly work, and a hard work that is going to require a lot of sacrifice, effort, sincerity, generosity, courage, surrender, a work that is truly going against the strong conditioned pull of the ego to protect itself and its self-image, a stage where the seeker will literally have to "pay the price". This explains, at least for those who want to see, why it will be felt as "natural" to those who want to avoid the preliminary work, to grasp at the subsequent stages 2 or 3 first. How appealing it can be, for the immature ones, a "spiritual" path which is interpreted as a path where there is no effort to make, no one to make any effort, and no free-will! That's the perfect set up to excuse and rationalize one's deep rooted laziness, superficiality and mediocrity, and to avoid really starting the work where it should begin. The perfect trap which is going to expand more and more this self-deceptive dynamic. Those immature people/seekers, however "serious" they believe themselves to be in their self-deception dynamic, will always feel it is way more "pleasant" to seek for and talk about the "spiritual truth", about light, fireworks, so-called "spiritual" knowledge and experiences, effortlessness, consciousness, awareness, absolute, true nature, awakening, enlightenment, than having to face and consider first all the unpleasant, unappealing, arid and unrewarding shadows, darkness, and distorting self-centered forces that are obviously still unconsciously active in themselves. "Everybody wants to go heaven, but nobody wants to die." "What matters supremely is sincerity, earnestness." - Nisargadatta Maharaj The Uncomfortable Truth #3 The Uncomfortable Truth about Self-knowledge and the Spiritual Path So let's be clear. Yes. You are "That". You already are what you are looking for. Ultimately, all ideas of a path to walk to reach or gain what you already are, is delusion. Moreover, nothing can be said about this "Ultimate Reality" or "Ultimate Truth". It cannot be understood, it cannot be defined, it cannot be seen, it cannot be experienced and it cannot be known. That which is Real prior to consciousness/awareness, prior to duality and non-duality, prior to being and non-being, prior to existence and non-existence, prior to the arising of all concepts, that which you really are, cannot be apprehended in any way from within the framework of consciousness/awareness itself. No path. Nothing to do. It's all "God" already. Yet, if there was truly no path, and nothing to do, the subject of "awakening" wouldn't even be appearing in human cultures, everywhere in the world, at all periods of time, in so many forms. We wouldn't even have to talk about it. Yet, we cannot deny that we are all here, in the spiritual circles, whether as students or teachers, because of this uninterrupted flow of wisdom traveling throughout the ages, which is telling us that there is a path of transformation which can give access to a possibility to wake up and to become free from the illusion of identification and separation. So, how can there be a path and no path at the same time? How can there be "something to do", and "nothing to do" at the same time? Well, this can only seem to be a paradox and a contradiction, if we haven't clearly understand what a spiritual path is about. Any desire to reach enlightenment or awakening, is rooted in escapism and denial. Any intention or hope to realize what you really are, is rooted in self-centeredness. And that's fine. As a starting point. But it should be known that it's all a movement of the ego dynamic, believing it can become a Realized-ego, and Enlightened-ego, a God-ego or an Absolute-ego. In truth, the light doesn't need to be enlightened. At all. Darkness does. See the difference? You cannot know and realize what you are, but you can, and you actually have to know and realize what you are not. All of it. This is the path. This is the path from within the larger framework of "no-path". Again, this is what self-knowledge is about. And that's the only path which can offer a real possibility to stop being the puppet of the dynamic of escapism and denial, to stop denial and escapism to pollute our search for Truth. On this path, you must learn to become utterly intimate with what you are not. You already are what you really are, beyond even intimacy, beyond even any necessity or even possibility to know yourself. But to come to know with absolute clarity every aspects of what you are not, here and now, in manifestation, from within a human body, is the intimacy that is required. And only this can bring about real freedom. The full uncovering and enlightenment of the self-centered dynamics within yourself, which are both a personal and a universal force, as said previously, is what is called "awakening" and "enlightenment". You cannot be free, absolutely and pragmatically free, free in a true embodied way, of things you are still unconscious of. This is where the work is, this is where the effort, earnestness and willingness must be directed toward. This is where a maturation and a deepening must happen. This is where the light of consciousness or truth must penetrate all the deeper and deeper, subtler and subtler layers of unconsciousness and non-truth (Maya, or illusion), so you will not be fooled nor tricked by it anymore, so you will truly become free of it, here, now, in a human body, in manifestation. You cannot add what you really are to yourself. But you can learn, through self-knowledge, with courage, honesty and earnestness, to become conscious of and empty yourself out of everything that you are not. You cannot "gain" yourself, but you'll have to "lose" everything that you think you are (that's the price to pay!), so that what you really are can shine through with less and less, and even without any left unconscious conditioned filters or veils. And you cannot transcend or let go of what you are not yet aware of. And know that all pointing, pointing to "what you are", are only giving you a contextual reference point, a direction, a temporary conceptual map, to help you discern and uncover more and more of what you are not. If you grasp at the pointing, you miss the mark. If you attach yourself to the pointing, as being a definition of what you are or a description of your present state, you miss the mark. You just grasped at another kind of identity. You may claim and shout ad nausea "I am That! I am That!", but as long as you don't know what you are not from head to toe, you are just fooling yourself, and you will be fooled on and on by what you tried to deny and escape. And if that's the case, you should be remembered that even a parrot can be taught to say "I am That!" "So first realize what the true nature of the ego is and it will go of its own accord. Examine the nature of the ego: that is the process of realization." - Ramana Maharshi Terror of Non-Existence At the core of every human being, lies a tiny seed of absolute terror of non-existence. Most (if not all) of the activities of a conditioned human being on this planet, no matter how many forms those activities may take, arise out of this urge to flee and escape this seed of existential fear and terror. Fear is not a bad thing in itself. All animals experience fear, which produces the fight-or-flight response, when an external danger or threat is met. It's a very natural organic response, used for the survival of the organism. It happens in/from the reptilian and limbic brains. But in humans, fear has invaded the psychological domain, the neo-cortex brain. Here, the threat is non-existence, the fear of the loss of the seeming psychological identity. And because the threat is now internal, the fight-or-flight response became a very inadequate solution. Yet, we spend our whole life trying to escape or fight this sensed danger of non-existence. We try to numb it, to escape it, to bury it, to pretend it is not there, to distract and entertain ourselves in order to forget about it, throughout countless strategies, and endless activities (including most of what we call and pretend are "spiritual activities"). And of course, as we cannot in any way truly escape from what's within us, and as all our attempts to flee or fight this existential inner threat are aimed to fail, we literally are living in hell and constant agitation and restlessness. What we have to come to understand, is that the only solution here, is not to flee or fight anymore, but face this terror in ourselves, and literally go through it, in order to transcend it, while we are still in this body. We will have to face it anyway, the very moment the body is going to die. That's a way, among many others, to describe the "spiritual path". Let' add this. All you ever wanted, all you ever desired, all you ever wished for, lies under or behind this core knot of terror of non-existence within yourself. As long as you are trying to run away from it, you'll run away from the very peace, love and wholeness you are longing to find. I remember the day I started to realize, to see, that all humans walking on the planet are actually terrified. Truly like little child absolutely scared. But pretending (yes, only pretending!) that all is fine, faking happiness, faking self-confidence, bragging sometimes about how at ease and peace they are, but inwardly a total mess, and scared to death. All of them, with no exceptions. Sleeping Flesh Robots "We already are", "We already are Awareness", "Everybody is already enlightened", "We cannot not be in the now, so trying to be in the now is an absurdity". So, are we, already? Is "being" what we already are? I think here, again, people are confusing a conceptual ultimate/spiritual reality, with an actuality. Obviously "being", "to be", is only a potentiality for the majority of human beings living on this planet, which is very rarely actualized. Ordinary human beings are asleep, living in a constant state of dreaming, or sleep-walking. They barely can be said to have "being/beingness". Their whole organism is almost entirely driven by conditioned forces in themselves, by a programming based on past imprints. Being asleep is like being a flesh robot. Almost everything that a conditioned human being says and does, arise out of his conditioned programming. His life is a continuous flow of automatic and pure reactivity to whatever he's encountering (whether inwardly or outwardly), without him being conscious of it. Can a robot be said to have "being/beingness"? Can a robot be said to be "alive", or "awake"? Of course not. And this is where the spiritual path and spiritual practices, are rarely and barely understood in what they have to offer to those who feel attracted to them. And why those who, in their sleep, are claiming that "Being is already what we are", are denying the necessity of a path and practices. The core practice of self-remembrance, whether through abiding in/as the "I am", through clinging and bringing back attention to the pure "I", pure being, Presence, consciousness, or through self-enquiry, is a way to start to cultivate this actualized energy of "being" in oneself. The more you "are" (which means the more you consciously develop the energy of being in yourself, of being conscious that you are), the more you wake up. And the more you will start to live in the "now". The more you will put effort to bring back attention to the seed of being in yourself, the more you will become conscious of this seed of being/I am, the less you will be lost in the "never in the now" dream of your conditioned mind, and the more this seed of "being" will grow inwardly, like a flower, and will start to diffuse its own fragrances. "What you are trying to do [with your spiritual practice] is intensify your own beingness." - Nisargadatta Maharaj Someone said: "Thinking does not make one fall out of being." "Q: Are there no breaks at all in the jnani's awareness of the Self? For example, if he is engrossed in reading a good book, will his full attention 'be always on the book? Will he simultaneously be aware that he is the Self? AS: If there are breaks in his Self-awareness this means that he is not yet a jnani. Before one becomes established in this state without any breaks, without changes, one has to contact and enjoy this state many times. By steady meditation it finally becomes permanent. It is very difficult to attain Self-abidance, but once it is attained it is retained effortlessly and never lost. It is a little like putting a rocket into space. A great effort and great energy are required to escape the earth's gravitational field. If the rocket is not going fast enough, gravity will pull it back to earth. But once it has escaped the pull of gravity it can stay out in space quite effortlessly without falling back to earth." - Annamalai Swami True Meditation Imagine. You are a free soloing climber (climbing rock faces without equipment and ropes). You are in the middle of a 500 meters (1600 feet) high rock face. The face is pretty vertical, hands and feet locked into cracks in the rock. You still have 250 meters to climb. If you fall, it's a 250 meters fall, and obvious death. You are absolutely focused, all your energies gathered intensely in the present moment. Your attention supremely concentrated and one-pointed. Here, there's no room whatsoever for any distracting or intrusive thinking. It's a matter of life and death. You can't and don't indulge in thinking about the past, and you can't and don't indulge in thinking about the future. All that exists is now, without even thinking about the now. That's meditation. But in this example, the meditative state is due to external conditions. The climber put himself in a particular situation which will cause and force on him this thought free meditation, which means if he wants to regain this state, he will have to put himself back into the same situation, again and again (which they usually do). True meditation is to learn to gain and stabilize this very same meditative state, without the aid of anything external, without it depending on any external particular conditions whatsoever. "As if" it was a matter of life and death. That's the intensity required, as if you were from morning till night, in the middle of a rock face.
Perfecting the Body-Mind So many people post about the "ego-self" that cannot be improved or perfected or dissolved, because it is non-existent/unreal, and people using this as a rationalization of "doing-nothing" and the "no-effort" mantra. What they don't get, is that it is not the "ego-self" that has to be improved and perfected per se, but the body itself. As long as the body/brain/mind/subtle-body is infected with the ego-self virus, it will not be a proper vehicle to manifest the pure fragrances of consciousness (or being, Self, God, etc.). The work is a work of heading toward more and more transparency, toward pure service we could say, to clean and clear the body of all the self-centered conditioned filters distorting or preventing the pure light (love, beauty, creativity, intelligence) of beingness to manifest freely in manifestation. To claim "I am the effortless awareness/Self" and to have the body-vehicle still full of the conditioned past imprints driving it to act in a very self-centered way, is just self-deception at its peak, hiding deep rooted laziness and mediocrity. It's far more than "knowing" who you really are (which for most is just an intellectual knowing, anyway). It's about truly embodying who you really are, being an empty container/vehicle for what you really are, and that can't happen unless all conditioned self-centered veils are dissolved. And that dissolution cannot happen unless you come to know what the veils are and how they manifest themselves in yourself. "Intense effort is necessary until the I-thought disappears completely in the Heart [Self] and all the vasanas [egoistic tendencies] and samskaras [mental impressions and psychological imprints] are fried and do not revive again." - Ramana Maharshi "Only the one who has made his mind die is truly born." - Ramana Maharshi "Not until someone dissolves, can he or she know what union is. That descends only into emptiness." - Jalaluddin Rumi "You cannot transcend what you do not know. To go beyond yourself, you must know yourself." - Nisargadatta Maharaj The Inconceivable All I know, all I can know, is what I am not. And what I know, is that I am ultimately not even consciousness, awareness, pure being, infinite, oneness, knowingness, non-dual, or anything of that sort. But I also know that it's useless to talk about that. Those who keep clinging to an "absolute" identity such as "I am this non-dual awareness" like dogs to their bone, will never be convinced by any words. Words can only convey what's conceivable, or imagined as conceivable. How could any word or concept bring anyone to the realization of what's inconceivable? The "Ultimate Reality" cannot be conceptualized, cannot be known, cannot be witnessed, cannot be experienced, but can only be apperceived, inferred, through a deep continuous surrendering and rejecting of all that you are not, of all concepts, of all knowledge, of all definitions, of all attachments, of all clinging, as subtle as they might be. If there is the slightest clinging remaining in you, you'll miss it. And you should know that all clinging arise out of one single source: the terror of non-existence. You should know that as long as you are avoiding in yourself this deep rooted existential fear and terror, you will keep clinging to some identity, including any "absolute" or "spiritual" identity, as a way of avoidance and rationalization of that repressed fear. "To expound and propagate concepts is simple, to drop all concepts is difficult and rare." - Nisargadatta Maharaj "Become non-existent; non-existent even to the notion of becoming non-existent." - Hakim Sanai (12th century, Persia, Afghanistan) "Therefore we declare that a man should be as free from his own knowledge as he was when he was not." - Meister Eckhart Life is a Seamless Unit
Chanting, or saying a mantra out loud, can be a good preliminary exercise to get a glimpse of this.
At first, there is always a separation, a fragmentation, arising out of the "I am chanting" deep rooted thought/belief/habit. So, "you" have to disappear, in favor of the "chanting" itself. That's surrender.
But the dissolution of "you", of the "one who chants", is not being spaced out or being in a state of unconsciousness, but is replaced with a full attentiveness, alertness, without anyone being alert or attentive. The "witness" disappears, the duality between the chanting, the one who chants, and the chant, disappears. There is no trace of a "you" left who could "enjoy" or "benefit" from the chanting.
It's the same with the "I am", with the sense of being.
Part 1 - The preparatory stages
And this will be very helpful. Let's say stage 2 is where you are supposed to start to learn and integrate that the conditioned ego-mind you are believing yourself to be, is really not personal but a universal dynamic at play in all humans, and even at the end truly unreal and non-existent. The immature seeker who had jump unto this stage 2 from the start, will use the information provided at this stage 2, to deny and avoid all the work which is required at stage 1. "If the ego is not real, why should I work on it anyway?" he will say, in his self-deception.
But for the earnest seekers, on the contrary, the information and perspective of stage 2, will help him go deeper into stage 1. "Knowing, as an information for now, that this ego-dynamic is not real, not what I really am, it's going to help me dig into it, and unravel it more and more, without me being too resistant when what I will discover within myself will hit and threaten my self-image."
Also, even when you'll be working on stage 2 and 3, while stage 1 is pretty well integrated, it doesn't mean you will not have to keep refine and deepen elements of this stage 1. The unraveling and understanding of the egoic-dynamic can go really deep...You might also for example, still stumble upon some layers of conditioning that were still unconscious. But at least, stage 1 has to be stable, balanced, and integrated in most parts.
Truly, the ego dynamic will be there till the end, till final Liberation, in subtler and subtler layers. Vigilance is an absolute requirement until the goal is reached (this is where many got fooled, no matter how deep their understanding and transformation went).
Part 2 - Seeking for the pleasant
"Whatever name you give it: will, or steady purpose, or one-pointedness of the mind, you come back to earnestness, sincerity, honesty. When you are in dead earnest, you bend every incident, every second of your life to your purpose. You do not waste time and energy on other things. You are totally dedicated, call it will, or love, or plain honesty. We are complex beings, at war within and without. We contradict ourselves all the time, undoing today the work of yesterday. No wonder we are stuck. A little of integrity would make a lot of difference." - Nisargadatta Maharaj
Part 3 - You cannot know who you are, you can only know what you are not
"The discovery of truth is in the discernment of the false. You can know what is not. What is - you can only be. Knowledge is relative to the known. In a way, it is the counterpart of ignorance. Where ignorance is not, where is the need of knowledge? By themselves, neither ignorance nor knowledge have being. They are only states of mind, which again is but an appearance of movement in consciousness." - Nisargadatta Maharaj
"Questioner: How to find the Atman [Self]? Ramana Maharshi: There is no investigation into the Atman. The investigation can only be into the non-self. Elimination of the non-self is alone possible. The Self being always self-evident will shine forth of itself." - Ramana Maharshi
"The person should be carefully examined and its falseness seen; then its power over you will end." - Nisargadatta Maharaj
"Do not try to know the truth, for knowledge by the mind is not true knowledge. But you can know what is not true - which is enough to liberate you from the false. The idea that you know what is true is dangerous, for it keeps you imprisoned in the mind. It is when you do not know, that you are free to investigate. And there can be no salvation, without investigation, because non-investigation is the main cause of bondage." - Nisargadatta Maharaj
So-called adults are just pretenders. All of them. But as long as you don't see that, you will walk besides them (and they will walk besides you, because you are doing the very same), thinking how bizarre and miserable you are compared to all those people who seem to do pretty good and are "happy" in their life. Thinking how scared you are, and how scared you are of that fear itself, compared to those others. So you start to pretend also, to play the same game in order to be "included" and not "excluded" from what seems to be the "normal" life of people... So, see, it's a collective trap, a trap of misery, of dishonesty, of faking... That's hell, with a smile on its face.
That's why the only way, is to start with ourselves, to start to accept within ourselves, for ourselves, for our own sanity, to stop this insane game of comparing ourselves with others (who are only pretending and faking anyway), and to drop the inward shield, and to let our heart bleed, weep, wail, and say whatever it has to say, to accept to be scared, to be a terrified little child, and to start to let him express whatever he has to say and feel. And it's an inward job, of course.
Imagine a mother who's response to her child being terrified, would be to be terrified herself, and sending him in his room alone, punishing him, telling him to stop to be scared, yelling at him, trying to convince him that he is not scared... Well, that happens continuously in real life, but here, you have to become your own loving mother...
"'I am' is a tiny seed which will grow into a mighty tree." - Nisargadatta Maharaj
"[On dwelling on the 'I am'] It is the simple that is certain, not the complicated. Somehow, people do not trust the simple, the easy, the always available. Why not give a honest trial to what I say? It may look very small and insignificant, but it is the seed that grows into a mighty tree. Give yourself a chance!" - Nisargadatta Maharaj
"In awareness you grow." - Nisargadatta Maharaj
If we don't see how tremendously different this is to be trapped in the dreamland of the conditioned mind, and being absolutely consciously conscious of being, moment to moment, we will be trapped also in this endless spiritual blah blah and self-deception of the mind.
There is a difference between a potential and an actualization of this potentiality. "To be", is only as a state of potentiality, for those who are asleep, lost in maya. No matter if you say that it's all happening in the larger context of this "universal beingness", the question for a human being, is to embody this potential, not to think or talk about it, or believing to "know" about it.
The whole thing about a spiritual path, is to actualize this potential. And when it's actualized, it bear fruits, very concrete fruits, which clearly doesn't appear for/in those who remain in a state of sleep-walking and hypnosis.
See for example this quote of Ramana... He says that this state of stillness (which is the same as silence, or being) has to be brought about in one's concrete experience "without a break".
This whole life, this whole universe, this whole consciousness and human consciousness, is one single organism, one single seamless unit. It only appears to be fragmented in separate pieces, or separate individuals. This appearance of separation plays its role, and is also valid at a certain lens of perception, a certain level of how life/consciousness plays out. But I think we could benefit to remember and dig more into the unicity of it.
Nothing is, and nothing ever was about you. Nothing. Despite the appearances. The analogy of the entire life (animate and inanimate) being a single organism, can be used to express this.
Every human being is a cell of this entire human organism. A cell may seem to be separate and having a life of its own, and again, it is so at a certain lens of perception, but this cell actually only exist as a part of the organism, exists because of this organism, and cannot exist apart from the organism.
When a cell, or a group of cells, are functioning well, it benefits the entire organism. As soon as a cell, or a group of cells, no matter where they are in the organism, starts to malfunction, or starts to function erratically, di-synchronized from the rest of the organism, it will not only affect this group of cells itself and the specific functions they are performing, but will also affect all other cells in the body, and all other functions, and ultimately the entire organism. This is truly what happens.
Today, the majority of cells of the human organism are sick, malfunctioning. It's a bit like a cancer or an autoimmune disease, and its name is self-centeredness. The way a human "cell" may heal itself, is through the spiritual/awakening path, which goal is to discover and eradicate the self-centered virus. But see, this "spiritual healing" has nothing to do with the cell itself. The cell itself is almost irrelevant, it can die, and the organism will produce another one. The only reason why the healing of a cell, or of a group of cell is important, is for the health/healing of the entire organism.
Whatever level or stage you are in the process of maturing/healing, it's life itself which is maturing, for the benefit of life. In other words, and again, despite the appearances, we never work for ourselves truly, and no spiritual work is ever truly done for any "personal" benefit. When you are feeding the madness, ignorance, unconsciousness in you, you are feeding the collective madness. When you are feeding the light, clarity, sanity, consciousness in you, you are literally working for and feeding the entire life/humanity's light and clarity.
A cell or a group of cells which attains a certain level of healing/sanity, will affect positively the others cells, other groups of cells, no matter where they are in the organism, even if they are not in direct contact, and ultimately the entire organism. Interdependence is total, no matter if we are aware of it or not.
The disease was never "yours", and the healing is never "yours".
"Surrender can never be regarded as complete so long as the devotee wants this or that from the Lord. True surrender is love of God for the sake of love and nothing else, not even for the sake of salvation." - Ramana Maharshi
"All that happens is the cause of all that happens. Causes are numberless; the idea of a sole cause is an illusion." - Nisargadatta Maharaj
"Visitor: What do I gain by Self-knowledge? Maharaj: The idea of profit and loss is a sign of the body identity and they apply to an individual. With Self-knowledge these concepts don't remain. When the individual is no more, to whose account will you put the profit or loss? In the formless there are no separate accounts to register profit or loss. It is all one account or no account. If you are looking for profit, this (Nisargadatta Ashram) is a wrong place for you." - Nisargadatta Maharaj
Psychological Work
Don't confuse "being human", with "being neurotic". Don't confuse the expression of the human self-centered disease, with "embracing your humaneness" or "sanity". Emotions, feelings and patterns of behaviors arising out of conditioned past imprints and traumas, are part of the disease. They are not to be put on a pedestal.
If you are sick, you need healing.
Working on letting all your repressed feelings and emotions arise, so you can see and acknowledge them, and so they can be healed and transcended, is one thing. It's called psychological work. But falling in love with the effects of your sickness, or believing they are part of your "humanity", a sign of your "sanity", or being something "spiritual", will never be of any help.
Being truly "human", is so much more...
A New Organ of Understanding
In a human being, there are several modalities of comprehension of reality. Conditioned human beings, the huge majority of people on earth, are only experiencing the world (inner and outer) from the very first basic modality, and most of the time, this modality is not even truly functional. All other higher modalities, are dormant, in a state of potential only, and can only become manifest when a proper and balanced spiritual work/development is implemented. Let's have a look at the first two ones.
* From ignorance to partial clarity - The first basic modality, which concerns whether common or spiritual knowledge, is how everyone is acquiring knowledge and understanding, from collecting and connecting bits of information and knowledge. This is the path of learning, the path of developing and refining the intellect, through opening it to various new and different inputs, so that some clarity can be gained about the inner or outer world/reality. We try to get a better perspective on how things are, a better picture of the whole, through welcoming and connecting the countless dots/inputs we are encountering.
This is both a path/work of accumulation (being exposed to more and more information, and to digest it, integrate it), and a path/work of clarification/opening. This is where a huge part of the work, is to learn to detect and transcend the conditioned limitations in oneself, taking the form of prejudices, beliefs, preconceived ideas, value systems, self-centered opinions and views, dogmas, ideologies, which are all a hindrances to this opening of the intellect and expansion of perception, acting out as distorting filters to a more refined understanding/comprehension.
Very few are fit and mature enough to truly develop that modality to its limits, due to the fact that it already requires a great dedication, lots of effort and honesty, to be able to make room for new inputs, in other words to constantly be able to put previous conclusions aside, to constantly be able to let go of the present "personal" perspective, to gain new fresh perspectives, according to the new inputs. As long as there is attachment to knowledge as being "what I am, what I think", this modality cannot be matured.
And although this is a very important stage and modality, we will come to understand that even when truly developed, it will ever remain limited. No real and deep comprehension, no true big picture can be reached through gathering and connecting fragments of it. It will ever remain partial and distorted.
* From clarity to comprehension - This modality can analogically be described as the birth of a new organ of perception, at an entire new qualitative level of being, which can only happen when the spiritual work is done properly (and among other things, when the first modality has been deepened and matured enough). It's a first quantum leap. Contrary to the first one, the very root of this modality is clarity itself, the big picture, at all times. This organ is not perceiving reality from its fragmented state anymore, trying to "make sense" of the countless fragments, but from the whole itself, from clarity itself. We don't have to try to discover, hold unto, or grasp at any conceptual view, or what we imagine is clarity, but clarity is holding us, clarity is the new center from which reality and its countless fragments are apprehended and perceived.
From here, comprehension keeps deepening on and on, but we don't have to "fight" for it, or try to "understand" anything, or try to get a "better" picture of reality. Clarity itself will organically provide the right and correct understanding/comprehension, out of the encountering in life of new inputs.
This entirely new way of perceiving, arises when there is a total shift from believing that you are the one who understands or have understood anything, to the deep inner knowing that "you", as the self-centered mind, never understood anything at all.
At this stage, the work is to be vigilant enough, to be as much empty of yourself you can be, empty of the idea of being the one who understands, so that the old self-centered fragmented/partial way of perceiving reality don't obscure the new way again, so that clarity, the very source of all knowledge, keeps being the master in its own house.
Confused Spirituality
There is new growing trend in the non-dual scene: to "embrace our humaneness". I see more and more teachers pushing forward this so-called "spiritual" view, as if it was the ultimate spiritual truth and achievement. To be "human".
But this has nothing to do with true spirituality. At best (and not even always) what they are talking about is mere psychotherapy. People/seekers and even teachers, out of immaturity, naivety and lack of proper preparation, spend their time using what they think is the "spiritual path" and so-called "spiritual knowledge", to avoid and by-pass their emotional and psychological imbalances.
They believe (mostly unconsciously) that embarking on the spiritual path will be the ultimate magic trick to finally escape the basic psychological work they are running away from since ever, to escape having to meet and work on their shadows, traumas, emotional pain, fears, cravings, attachments, and conditioned tendencies.
But you cannot build a castle on sand. You cannot work on a higher level of your being, and truly stabilize anything at this higher level, unless you have already worked and balanced, at least in most parts, the lower levels. Any "spiritual" work that is based on avoidance and escapism, is aimed to fail. All you will achieve, is to crystallize a deeper state of repressing, and a neurotic attachment and mental clinging to some "absolute" views.
That's how most will end up using the conceptual "I am Awareness/Self", "I am not a person", to cover up a huge swamp of unresolved psychological and emotional energies within themselves, which is still completely driving their own life. And if you point it out to them, they will of course evade it saying something like: "It doesn't matter, I am not the mind or the illusory person/mind who has imbalances. I am That, and there is nothing to perfect."
This is where, instead of seeing this huge basic bias for what it is (neurosis), realizing how most are totally fooled in an ever ending self-deception, and starting to work at the level this neurosis arises from (the basic psychological level), in order to prepare the ground for a real spiritual work, more and more teachers and seekers are now talking about "embracing our humaneness" as if it was the ultimate "spiritual" goal.
Sadly, this is where we are: believing that re-contacting repressed traumas and emotions, letting them flow, and working on the root conditioning/knots they are arising from, is seen as a great "spiritual" work, a great "spiritual" accomplishment! Not to mention how, out of this mediocrity, more and more people are now equating having "emotions" with sure signs of "awakening". Or how they will see the emotional expression of a neurotic knot, or a neurotic attachment (in grief for example), as a "spiritual" unfolding or experience, without having the discernment and courage to look at the knot/attachment/imbalance itself.
"You can meditate 4 000 years, but if avoidance is at the root of it, you won't be free." - Papaji
Nasrudin wanted to play the guitar, and went to see a teacher, inquiring about cost. "Twenty dollars for the first lesson, ten dollars for the subsequent ones", said the teacher. "Excellent", said Nasrudin, "I'll start with the second lesson".
"Taking a thick fat crowbar (as a needle), it is not possible to stitch together extremely delicate silk cloth using very fine thread." - Ramana Maharshi
"The more sincerity is developed, the greater share of truth you will have. And however much sincerity a person may have, there is always a gap to fill, for we live in the midst of falsehood, and we are always apt to be carried away by this world of falsehood. Therefore we must never think we are sincere enough, and we must always be on our guard against influences which may carry us away from that sincerity which is the bridge between ourselves and our ideal. No study, no meditation is more helpful than sincerity itself." - Hazrat Inayat Khan
"Whatever name you give it: will, or steady purpose, or one-pointedness of the mind, you come back to earnestness, sincerity, honesty. When you are in dead earnest, you bend every incident, every second of your life to your purpose. You do not waste time and energy on other things. You are totally dedicated, call it will, or love, or plain honesty. We are complex beings, at war within and without. We contradict ourselves all the time, undoing today the work of yesterday. No wonder we are stuck. A little of integrity would make a lot of difference." - Nisargadatta Maharaj
"It is definitely beyond the mind, but all you can do is to know your mind well. Not that the mind will help you, but by knowing your mind you may avoid your mind disabling you. You have to be very alert, or else your mind will play false with you. It is like watching a thief - not that you expect anything from a thief, but you do not want to be robbed. In the same way you give a lot of attention to the mind without expecting anything from it." - Nisargadatta Maharaj
Abidance in "I Am"
At the root of it all, there is the sense "I am", the sense of being, of existing. What is it, and where is it exactly?
Strangely, the "I am" sense, is the most obvious factor and the most elusive one at the same time. If you are asked "Are you?", there is only one obvious answer: "Yes, of course!". And if you say "I don't know!", or even "No!", it's obvious that you must be, that the "I am" must be here, to even be in the position to say "I don't know", or "No".
Whatever you are living, whatever you are experiencing, thinking, feeling, sensing, imagining, perceiving, whether inwardly or outwardly, the "I am", the sense of being, is at the root of it. That's irrefutable. It is, and must obviously be there, prior to any sense of experiencing anything.
But we have to be radically honest, and admit that although it is the most important, fundamental and crucial factor in our life, it is the less noticed, that which is given the less attention. We are aware of what we are experiencing (most of the time), but in the actuality of our life, very, very rarely aware and conscious of that which is experiencing all this. To the point that we actually don't know at all what it is. It remains the most elusive object of knowledge for us, while being the very source of all knowledge.
There are at least two main reasons for this.
Firstly, the sense of being, the "I am", is an absolute constant factor in our life, since we are born. And the conditioned mind is not a tool that is refined enough in its gross original state, to be attracted to and to perceive what's constant and never changing.
Secondly, as a consequence of the first point, attention will always be "out" from its own source of being, out of its natural pull to grasp at what is changing, what has contrast, what has apparent novelty, what seems exciting and entertaining.
This constant and pure sense of being without which nothing could be experienced, has very little attraction for such a conditioned mind, always seeking for contrast. And from this contrast seeking dynamic, the "I am", this pure sense of being, it is too constant, empty, still, silent, formless, impersonal, dull, to be truly noticed and to be of any interest. And that is why we don't know ourselves, why we always remain off-centered, and at the very surface of the sense of being, of the "I am".
We cannot come to discover and know what we are not giving attention to. We cannot come know the primary, to know ourselves, what we are and what is at the root of all experiencing, as long as all our attention is constantly immersed in the secondary, in what is experienced.
That is the whole point of all spiritual traditions, and the core practice of bringing back attention to this very pure sense of being. Whether called abidance (in the pure "I", pure "I am", in "Being", in Presence, in the "Self", in God, in Awareness, which are all the same), or self-remembrance, self-enquiry, meditation or devotion, it's all the same tool used to dive and sink deeper and deeper into what's primary, our own being, so we come to know it more and more, in a very intimate and experiential way.
Abiding in the "I am", is truly a path and a journey back home, with many steps, and endless refined layers and stages. Along the way, given that we are dedicated fully to the practice and persevere, given that we do our best maintain a contact with it, given that we put aside our old conditioned way of apprehending things and our cherished intellect and reason, we will attuned ourselves and refine our very own sensitivity to and perception of this primary beingness. From what was originally felt as so elusive, evanescent and "almost nothing", we will come to discover an entire universe of subtleties and fragrances, which will be like signposts on our journey Home.
From here, you will surely have understood how shallow, superficial and mediocre it is, when a so-called "spiritual seeker" believes that he/she made a "great step" by saying and claiming: "I know that I am this universal Being", "I know that I am Awareness". A parrot could do the same, and he would still be a parrot.
"I know that I am, and this 'I am' is what I am", has no value whatsoever for one who hasn't started the journey. It is like having found a donkey that could carry us to where we say we want to go back, but not getting on it and instead spending one's time to talk about the donkey, or congratulating oneself to have found a donkey.
This path is not about "knowing", it's about traveling within oneself, about real discovery and transformation, the kind of transformation that can only happen through an actual journey, through an actual experiencing of our own beingness, at a deeper and deeper level and subtlety.
"Discontinuity is the law when you deal with the concrete. The continuous cannot be experienced, for it has no borders. Consciousness implies alterations, change following change, when one thing or state comes to an end and another begins; that which has no borderline cannot be experienced in the common meaning of the word. One can only be it, without knowing, but one can know what it is not. It is definitely not the entire content of consciousness which is always on the move. To realize the immovable means to become immovable. I am talking of immovability, not of immobility. You become immovable in righteousness. You become a power which gets all things right. It may or may not imply intense outward activity, but the mind remains deep and quiet." - Nisargadatta Maharaj
Inside the Heart
This whole life is an amazing love story.
All we ever longed for, is reunion with the Beloved inside. Everything, everywhere, at all times, only talks about that. Every rock, every cloud, every rose, every love story and every grief, only talks about that.
All heartbreaks you had, were reminding you of this longing. All joy and intimacy you had, were reminding you of it too. You never ever lived a single moment in this world which was not Him calling you back Home inside.
You are your own Beloved, dear friend, frantically looking everywhere but in yourself.
This is the marriage you were waiting for all of your life. This is the perfect love story that was written into your Heart since the beginning of time. This is the only intimacy you were really seeking throughout all your life activities.
The Beloved never left. You left, then forgot that you left, and now weeping about separation.
Now don't say a word. Leave the ghosts of your mind. Leave the foam, and enter the tender stream.
Be with your weeping heart, and let the silent tears bring you back to where you never left.
Be quiet, so you can hear again the never ending Call, arising from your own Source.
Inside. Inside. Closer. Closer still.
"If the eight Paradises were opened in my hut, and the rule of both worlds were given in my hands, I would not give for them that single sigh which rises at morning-time from the depth of my soul in remembering my longing for Him." - Bayezid Bistami
"In front of your Beloved, when you are stripped of all your attributes; then His attributes become your qualities. Between me and You, there is only me. Take away the me, so only You remain." - Mansur Al-Hallaj
"It is here the whole business: in the Heart. You will find everything there."
- Mawlana Jami
"The wailing of broken hearts is the doorway to God." - Jalaluddin Rumi
"For someone whose guide is love, belief and disbelief are equally a veil, concealing the doorway of the friend; his very being is a veil which hides God's essence." - Hakim Sanai
"The life of lovers is in death. You will not win the Beloved's heart - unless you lose your own." - Jalaluddin Rumi
"As my words turn to silence, your sweetness surrounds me." - Hakim Sanai
"I once had a thousand desires. But in my one desire to know you all else melted away." - Jalaluddin Rumi
Pinnacle of Your Effort
As the sage says: "Don't look at me, take what's in my hands."
"Let me repeat. Without effort you will never reach it, with effort nobody has ever reached it. You will need great effort, and only then there comes a moment when effort becomes futile. But it becomes futile only when you have come to the very peak of it, never before it. When you have come to the very pinnacle of your effort - all that you can do you have done - then suddenly there is no need to do anything anymore. You drop the effort. But nobody can drop it in the middle, it can be dropped only at the extreme end. So go to the extreme end if you want to drop it. Hence I go on insisting: make as much effort as you can, put your whole energy and total heart in it, so that one day you can see - now effort is not going to lead me anywhere. And that day it will not be you who will drop the effort, it drops on its own accord. And when it drops on its own accord, meditation happens." - Osho
"Swarupa, the supreme, is in the Heart, the abode of the virtuous. To be qualified to have the darshan of this swarupa one only has to keep the outward-rushing mind fixed fully within, maintaining continuous vigil over it. Know that this is true heroism." - Ramana Maharshi
"There must be a great battle going on inwardly all the time until the Self is realized. This battle is symbolically spoken of in scriptural writings as the fight between God and Satan." - Ramana Maharshi
Continuous Awareness of Being
What does it mean to "remember that you are" (Nisargadatta Maharaj), what does it mean to "be without leaving yourself" (Ramana Maharshi)? What does self-remembrance mean, and how is it achieved? How do we maintain a constant contact with the "I am", with the pure sense of being within ourselves? (And this is the same with abiding as the Self, practicing self-enquiry, clinging to the "I", meditation, etc.)
First, imagine there is a stone in front of you, and that you are being told to put your hand on it and to keep a physical contact with it. It's simple, as long as your hand touch the stone, the contact is maintained. As soon as you withdraw your hand from it, the contact is lost. Simple. And pretty easy.
It's the same with keeping a continuous contact with your own sense of being, with the "I am", with the "Self", but the hand here, is attention.
So now, imagine that you are still said to keep a physical contact with the stone, with your hand, but that you must also remain conscious of this physical contact, that you must keep your attention centered and focused on the feeling/sensing of the stone on your hand. See how more subtle and way more difficult it is?
Maybe your hand will remain on the stone, but your attention will break the conscious contact many times, out of escaping relentlessly somewhere else, contacting other things from within your perception field (whether inward or outward).
That's the work when it comes to "be without leaving yourself", all day long. You may "remember that you are" for a moment, your attention may be in contact with the inner sense of being for a few seconds, but it will be impossible for you to maintain this continuous conscious contact for long. Very soon, very often, your attention will escape, will break the contact with the "I am", attaching itself to something else (a thought, a mind story, a physical sensation, a feeling, a mood, an outward activity, a phone call, reading a book, a discussion with someone, etc.), and you will totally lose sight of the sense of being.
The challenge here is to retrain your attention, to learn to master your attention, to not lose sight of yourself (of the "I am", the pure sense of being, of the Self) no matter what is happening or unfolding in your life, in your day, and to learn maintain a continuous conscious attentive contact with yourself, to consciously be with the "I am" without a break, during all your daily activities.
"Meditation must be continuous. The current of meditation must be present in all your activities. With practice, meditation and work can go on simultaneously." - Annamalai Swami
"Q: Are there no breaks at all in the jnani's awareness of the Self? For example, if he is engrossed in reading a good book, will his full attention 'be always on the book? Will he simultaneously be aware that he is the Self? AS: If there are breaks in his Self-awareness this means that he is not yet a jnani. Before one becomes established in this state without any breaks, without changes, one has to contact and enjoy this state many times. By steady meditation it finally becomes permanent. It is very difficult to attain Self-abidance, but once it is attained it is retained effortlessly and never lost. It is a little like putting a rocket into space. A great effort and great energy are required to escape the earth's gravitational field. If the rocket is not going fast enough, gravity will pull it back to earth. But once it has escaped the pull of gravity it can stay out in space quite effortlessly without falling back to earth." - Annamalai Swami
"Being Still is not an effortless state of indolence. All mundane activities which are ordinarily called effort are performed with the aid of a portion of the mind and with frequent breaks. But the act of communion with the Self or remaining still inwardly is intense activity which is performed with the entire mind and without break. Maya (delusion or ignorance) which cannot be destroyed by any other act is completely destroyed by this intense activity which is called 'silence'." - Ramana Maharshi
"Constant meditation is the only way. If you bring light into your room, the darkness immediately goes away. You have to see that the light is not put out. It has to be continuously burning so that there is no darkness. Until you get firmly established in the Self, you have to continue with your meditation. Doubts take possession of you only if you forget yourself." - Annamalai Swami
"Meet you own self. Be with your own self, listen to it, obey it, cherish it, keep it in mind ceaselessly. You need no other guide." - Nisargadatta Maharaj
See for example, Nisargadatta Maharaj said: "All you need is to be aware of being, not as a verbal statement, but as ever present fact."
What we can learn from that, is that first, it is not enough to say, claim, or even to pretend to know that "Being" (or Consciousness, Awareness, That, pure I Am) is what I am. If this stays only at a mental level, it is useless. Then, we learn that this awareness of being must be an "ever present fact". It's the same here, to say or think, from time to time, "I know that Beingness is an ever present fact and the only reality", has no value whatsoever.
The challenge is to work hard, very hard, to make this conscious contact with being, to maintain that awareness of being, a continuous experiential fact for oneself, moment to moment, until it becomes truly continuous. That's the practice. All else, is nothing but spiritual blah-blah.
Can you wash the dishes and remain consciously conscious of the "I am/being"?
Can you read a book and remain consciously conscious of the "I am/being"?
Can you write anything and remain consciously conscious of the "I am/being"?
Can you talk with a friend and remain consciously conscious of the "I am/being"?
Can you eat your dinner and remain consciously conscious of the "I am/being"?
Can you be engaged in your work and remain consciously conscious of the "I am/being"?
Can you feel a strong emotion and remain consciously conscious of the "I am/being"?
"The 'I am' is the sole capital that you have. Dwell on this, nothing else is necessary." - Nisargadatta Maharaj
"Turn your attention inward, and sacrifice your ego-mind to the One Self radiating in the Heart of your very being." - Ramana Maharshi
"You" Don't Understand
True understanding has nothing to do with you. True understanding never arises from an accumulation of knowledge, not even from the acquisition of the "right" knowledge, and not even from a clarification of knowledge. As long as you believe that understanding has anything to do with you, that is not understanding.
As long as you believe that you can understand anything, please, do your best to acquire the right knowledge in order to refine your understanding, to refine the human vehicle through the opening and development of the intellect. That is essential. But know that you are still in the preparation/preliminary stage.
True understanding can only arise when the belief in the one who can "understand" or has "understood" anything, dissolves. Then understanding has a life of its own, absolutely independent, never contrived nor calculated, free to come and go, free from intention, free to respond (inwardly and outwardly) to any situation in its own time and way, and exceeding by far, both in quality and depth, what "you" could ever believe or expect to "understand".
"Open the door of your mind to the waif of understanding; for you are poor and it is rich." - Jalaluddin Rumi
"Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it." - Jalaluddin Rumi
(Same with "understanding". It is already there at all time. "I understand" is a veil, a barrier which will prevent true understanding to flow.)
Hidden in Plain Sight
You are the Essence (Prana) of the body.
You are the Essence (I Am) of what you think you are.
You are the Essence (Being) of everything that appears to be.
You are the Essence (Is-ness) of everything that is.
You are the Essence (Life) of life itself.
You are the Essence (Seer) of everything that is seen.
You are the Essence (Silence) of the primary sound.
You are the Essence (Stillness) of your own mind.
Prana, I Am, Being, Is-ness, Life, Seer, Silence, Stillness, same Pearl.
Leave the shell, look for the Pearl.
Prana, I Am, Being, Is-ness, Life, Seer, Silence, Stillness, same Essence.
Leave the form, stay with the Essence.
Don't you know yet that you are overlooking your Essence,
out of its own utter obviousness?
Aren't you tired yet of pretending to be
addicted to the changeful?
Aren't you tired yet of pretending to be
afraid of the changeless?
"Be without leaving yourself." - Ramana Maharshi
"There is a force within, which gives you life - seek That. In your body lies a priceless gem - seek That. If you want to find the greatest treasure, don't look outside, look inside, and seek That." - Jalaluddin Rumi
"For the most manifest way to the knowledge of things is by their contraries: the thing that possesses no contrary and no opposite, its features being always exactly alike when you are looking at it, will very likely elude your notice altogether. In this case Its obscureness results from Its very obviousness, and Its elusiveness from the very radiance of Its brightness. Then glory to Him who hides Himself from His own creation by His utter manifestness, and is veiled from their gaze through the very effulgence of His own light!" - Al-Ghazali, 1058-1111 (Mishakat al-Anwar - Niche of Lights)
Same as we should be careful not to confuse "simple" and "easy", we should understand how what's absolutely obvious and ever present, can remain "hidden".
The body/mind of the conditioned man, is not a tool fit to notice what's changeless and constant. We only perceive through contrast. That which has no contrast whatsoever, cannot be perceived through the gross human organs of perception (including the intellect).
So, we have to understand that it will require way more efforts, discernment, refinement, perseverance, discipline, to come to intimately know and live from that changeless reality, than perceiving anything that appears through contrast.
The thinking mind, is not the right tool to start apprehending this changeless reality, our very own all-pervading silent Essence (unless your goal is just about becoming another spiritual parrot, of course).
It's more about sensing, or feeling into it, sensing, feeling and bringing back our attention toward the "I am", the presence itself, the sense of being, and to stick to it, to cling to it, to remain with it, again and again, on and on, without using the mind in the least. That's the only way to go deeper and deeper, to truly refine perception itself, and to truly start to stabilize attention at its source.
Experience and Conviction
One of the core problem or dilemma we are facing on the spiritual path, which keeps delaying our progress, is that we (the seekers) want to be convinced and to be sure beforehand, that what we are going to "get" in exchange of what we are going to give up, is worth it.
"How can I be sure if I give myself up entirely, that what is going to happen next will satisfy me more than what I previously had?" says the seeker. "How can I know for sure that it's going to be a good trade? How can I be sure that I am going to even have anything in return? I need a proof first before letting everything go! That seems reasonable to me."
This deep rooted mechanism, based on ignorance, fear, and of course self-centeredness, is what slows down the process. Out of it, we are going back and forth, back and forth, again and again, regularly leaving the nest and the eggs. Out of this irregular and discontinuous intention and attention, no sufficient heat is produced to light the fire.
The thing is, we need to give before we can receive. We will never start to reach a real state of conviction, out of thinking, talking, philosophizing, evaluating, dithering, bargaining, quibbling, but only out of experiencing. That requires, among other things, courage, discernment, and a particular kind of faith.
The more we give up, the more we will come to taste. And the more we will taste, the more we will be prone to give up even more.
The path to the Beloved, is that of non-existence.
"Where are you, O Beloved?" I asked.
"Right here, where you are not." He replied.
Disappearing, dissolving, receding,
is the only solution to all "problems" arising in the mind.
You cannot grasp at the Loved One to kiss Him.
You have to disappear, so He can kiss you.
You cannot "find" the Beloved.
He will find you, when you'll be gone.
The Flame of Attention
A friend wrote: "Thousands are the layers which wrap the Self. The work of digging through those layers is really hard and time-consuming. Just carry on, and you will even realize that there is still much to be done, much stuff to be delved. But at some point, when you begin to glimpse that mysterious inner center, even by little specks of light, and you start embracing it with your awareness, it will act as a fire that will slowly begin burning the mind from inside."
Yes, that's how it is. The flame of attention, when brought unto itself, light a fire. Light onto light.
The problem we all face, and why it requires a lot of effort and perseverance, is to light that fire, which can only burn when attention is on attention itself, in a continuous way. Nobody, absolutely nobody, originally, has enough stability and substance within himself, enough strength and maturity, to maintain such a continuous contact with the inner spark, in order to make a fire.
Most so-called "seekers", who are still at the stage of rationalizing their conditioned laziness and self-deception, will enter the spiritual domain, as if it was just another pleasant distraction, having no idea whatsoever of the amount of genuine effort, earnestness and perseverance such a goal is requiring. Out of their ignorance and dishonesty (always looking for what's cheap), they are confusing "simple" with "easy". At best, out of their unseen mediocrity, they will be satisfied to have glimpsed a very small speck of light, hardly piercing through their thick layers of veils, and call that "awakening". Those usually end up posting endless spiritual platitudes on Facebook.
The other few ones, who have been genuinely trying to put into practice what all true traditions are pointing to, can't miss the fact, out of their own experience, that it is utterly difficult to maintain a lasting contact with the inner spark (I am, being, presence, consciousness), and even more difficult to light the inner fire.
Unless we work very hard at it, on one hand, and unless we come to understand what prevents our attention to stay at home, on the other hand, and through actual experiencing, there is not a chance in the world we will progress on this path.
All the veils, or layers, we have to dig through, are all the remaining unconscious and conditioned habits, desires, beliefs, tendencies, imprints, attachments, that are relentlessly driving our attention "out" (whether inward or outward), preventing a conscious and continuous contact with the inner spark of beingness that lies into our heart. As long as we are more interested in the secondary, what's primary cannot come to the surface, cannot reveal itself truly.
And it's surely not a matter of "glimpsing" it, or "understanding" it, or "getting it", but to stabilize it, to enter a dynamic of real transformation within ourselves and of how we function.
Lao Tzu mentioned that process as if we had to be a "mother bird who sits on her nest".
Holding On and Perseverance
"As the gates of Heaven open and close, can you remain steadfast as the mother bird who sits on her nest?" - Lao Tzu
"Whatever happens to you, don't fall in despair. Even if all the doors are closed, a secret path will be there for you that no one knows. You can't see it yet but so many paradises are at the end of this path. Be grateful! It is easy to thank after obtaining what you want, thank before having what you want." - Jalaluddin Rumi
"Come, come, whoever you are. Wanderer, worshiper, lover of leaving. It doesn't matter. Ours is not a caravan of despair. Come, even if you have broken your vows a thousand times. Come, yet again, come, come." - Jalaluddin Rumi
"There will be periods of frustration; there will be periods of doubt. Your worldly involvements would hamper your Sadhana and an atmosphere of defeat would prevail. But, come what may, just throw everything aside, don't bother about anything and continue your abidance in the 'I am' with all earnestness. The 'I am' would test your endurance, but a moment would come when it will be pleased with you, become your friend and release its stranglehold on you, and reveal all the secrets." - Nisargadatta Maharaj
"Question: When I am doing our exercise, sometimes I find myself in a different state, but I cannot hold on to it. What is wrong? Answer: "Nothing is wrong. It can well happen that in the course of the effort to hold himself present, the pupil finds that he is in a different state but loses it at once. He should not on this account be depressed. With perseverance and effort, the transition becomes easier and finally is established. By continued effort the pupil can reach the same state as that of an angel and, when he is in this pure state, he is able both to see and to accept his own nothingness. It is in this way that the final liberation is attained." - Khwaja Ala ad-din Attar
"There are always moments when one feels empty and estranged. Such moments are most desirable for it means the soul has cast its moorings and is sailing for distant places. This is detachment - when the old is over and the new has not yet come. If you are afraid, the state may be distressing; but there is really nothing to be afraid of. Remember the instruction: whatever you come across - go beyond." - Nisargadatta Maharaj
"Your deepest presence is in every small contracting and expanding. The two as beautifully balanced and coordinated, as bird wings." - Jalaluddin Rumi
"Work. Keep digging your well. Don't think about getting off from work. Water is there somewhere. Submit to daily practice. Your loyalty to that is a ring at the door. Keep knocking, and the joy inside will eventually open a window and look out to see who's there." - Jalaluddin Rumi
"There is absolutely nothing in ordinary human experience to compare with the joy of the presence of the Love of God. No sacrifice is too great nor effort too much in order to realize that Presence." - David R. Hawkins
"The Divine within you is stronger than anything that is without you. Therefore, be not afraid of anything. Rely on your own Inner Self, the Divinity within you. Tap the source through looking within. Improve yourself. Build your character. Purify the heart. Develop the divine virtues. Eradicate evil traits. Conquer all that is base in you. Endeavor to attain all that is worthy and noble. Make the lower nature the servant of the higher through discipline, Tapas, self-restraint and meditation. This is the beginning of your freedom."
- Sivananda
"No one succeeds without effort... Those who succeed owe their success to perseverance." - Ramana Maharshi
Love the "I Am"
There is no love, only proofs of love. Saying "I love you! I love you!" to the one you are pretending to love, is surely not enough. What's required is acts of love. It's the same in the spiritual domain. Saying or thinking, once in a while, "I am That! I am Awareness! I am Oneness! I am that I Am!", are just empty words.
If you want to truly love the "I Am", stay with it, stay close to it, cherish it, worship it, keep being in contact with it, be without leaving it, surrender yourself to it, give it your full attention and tenderness, embrace it, hug it again and again.
Your very sense of being, that which in you appears as the pure sense "I am", is the only very fine thread connecting you to your Beloved. Attach yourself to that thread with all your strength and will, with all your loving attention and perseverance, and let trust and silence lead you along this thread back Home.
Self-effacement and self-remembrance, are the two wings of the bird of Love.
What is love? Forgetting yourself and remembering the Other.
This "I am" is not personal. It's truly universal (it's the very same "I am" in all). It only seems to become personal, when anything is attached to it ("I am Greg or Mary", "I am this or that", "I am like this or like that").
When anything is attached to it, attention will be sucked in all those little personal extensions. When "I am Greg" arises, the most important and noticeable factor for attention itself, becomes "Greg", seemingly obscuring the universal "I am" root of it.
So the task is to withdraw our attention from anything that might be added to the pure "I am", and to bring back that attention to the root. To feel the "I am", to sense the "I am", to maintain a constant contact with this pure and universal "I am". The more you will love the "I am" in that way, the more the "I am" will love you in return.
"There will be periods of frustration; there will be periods of doubt. Your worldly involvements would hamper your Sadhana and an atmosphere of defeat would prevail. But, come what may, just throw everything aside, don't bother about anything and continue your abidance in the 'I am' with all earnestness. The 'I am' would test your endurance, but a moment would come when it will be pleased with you, become your friend and release its stranglehold on you, and reveal all the secrets." - Nisargadatta Maharaj
"As the gates of Heaven open and close, can you remain steadfast as the mother bird who sits on her nest?" - Lao Tzu
"All that one has to do is find out one's source and take up headquarters there." - Nisargadatta Maharaj
"You must cover your vegetables when you cook them, then only will they keep their flavor and be fit for food. It is the same with the mind. You must put a lid over it and let it simmer quietly. Then only does a man become food fit for God to eat" - Ramana Maharshi
Hitler Was a Human Being
Hitler was a human being. Hitler is us.
What pushed Hitler to manifest such level of barbarity, is the very same disease of ignorance and delusion, arising out of the virus of self-centeredness, which we all have in ourselves. And as long as we are denying this, barbarity will prevail on this planet, in an endless vicious circle, century after century.
One of the problem we have, is that instead of looking into the mirror of ourselves when it reflects "Hitler", we blame the reflection. In other words, we are using Hitler (or any other manifestation of human madness and evil) as a way to avoid looking at ourselves, by placing this evil outside of us, out there, in the "Hitler form", alien to us. "This man was mad!" we say. "This man was inhuman and an insane, random, rare and disgusting expression of evil!"
And another response arising out of this distorted view, is the "Never again!" mantra. "Fascism is evil, and we must be vigilant that is never rises again!" Not seeing that the very root of all fascism, never left, never went anywhere: it lies entirely in each and every human being who is not yet completely free from the self-centered mental virus.
And this is why, among many other examples, we are seeing the rising of groups like Antifa (anti-fascist groups), which out of an ideology, out of the belief to be "right", and out of denying where the root of the problem lies, are using violent methods, tyrannizing and beating people who don't think like them, trying to shut down free-speech, considering "hate speech" every opinion that doesn't fit their ideology and belief system.
Hitler did the same. He honestly tried to manifest what he thought was right, to manifest an ideology he thought could help humanity.
"Homo sum, humani nihil a me alienum puto" - Terence, 195/185-159 BC ("I am a human being, I consider nothing that is human alien to me.")
"When you are free of the world, you can do something about it. As long as you are a prisoner of it, you are helpless to change it. On the contrary, whatever you do will aggravate the situation." - Nisargadatta Maharaj
"You talk so much of reforms: economic, social, political. Leave alone the reforms and mind the reformer. What kind of world can a man create who is stupid, greedy, heartless?" - Nisargadatta Maharaj
"The welfare of humanity is always the alibi of tyrants." - Albert Camus
"Those who cling to perceptions and views wander the world offending people." - The Buddha (Magandiya Suta in the Sutta Nipata)
A Huge Amount of Effort
Whether free-will is something ultimately real or not, that's something that appears in our experience, and which we should use as long as it appears. That's called common-sense and pragmatism. To grasp at a conceptual/intellectual idea of "no-free-will", believing you are being "spiritual" doing so, will only make you impotent, powerless and more miserable.
Prematurely using this conceptual idea ("I have no free-will") will only serve to feed your laziness, mediocrity, cynicism, irresponsibility and victim-hood mentality ("Poor me! My life is miserable and there's nothing I can do about it! But at least, I know the truth: there is no doer!").
If there is no "free-will" at the level of where ordinary men are living, if free-will is not a tool, an agent that we have to make use of, on our way to freedom and liberation, why do you think countless masters, like Ramana Maharshi and Nisargadatta Maharaj, advocated the utter necessity of a huge effort, discipline and earnestness, to gain real freedom from suffering?
A huge amount of effort (applying free-will) has to be made before the real, true and natural state of effortlessness (no one left to apply free-will) can organically assert itself.
"Conscious, deliberate effort is needed to attain that effortless state of stillness." - Ramana Maharshi
"Effort is necessary up to the state of realization. Even then the Self should spontaneously become evident. Otherwise happiness will not be complete. Up to that state of spontaneity there must be effort in some form or another." - Ramana Maharshi
"Being Still is not an effortless state of indolence. All mundane activities which are ordinarily called effort are performed with the aid of a portion of the mind and with frequent breaks. But the act of communion with the Self or remaining still inwardly is intense activity which is performed with the entire mind and without break. Maya (delusion or ignorance) which cannot be destroyed by any other act is completely destroyed by this intense activity which is called 'silence'." - Ramana Maharshi
"When a man is a beggar, he thinks that small change is a fortune. It is not. In order to rise above beggarhood, he must rise above small change, even though he uses it as a means. Used as an end it will become an end." - Ibn Ikbal
"I tell you no one can experience this birth (of God in the soul) without a mighty effort."- Meister Eckhart
Know Your Own House
Right now, as it is, you inner house is very small, your mind is very small, your heart is very small. That little space that you proudly call "yourself", is congested with a huge amount of prejudices, acquired beliefs, preconceived ideas, value systems, self-centered opinions and views, dogmas, ideologies, limited viewpoints and distorted truths, conditioning and conditioned responses, past imprints and acquired so-called "knowledge", fears, attachments, cravings, countless self-centered desires taken for "needs", psychological imbalances...
How can you even believe that there is enough room for The Truth to fit in? There isn't. How can you even think that you are ready to invite The Guest, when you don't even know your own house? You aren't. Nothing can be added to a pot that is already full to the brim.
This is the drama of contemporary so-called "spirituality" (or "non-duality"). People always think they are fit enough, prepared enough, matured enough, refined enough, in short, empty enough, to be able to receive anything of superior value, while they are full of useless distortions and veils.
Dropping drops after drops of pure water in a highly polluted lake, will not clean the lake. It will waste the drops.
So if you have any bit of common sense left in yourself as a "seeker", start with seeing the tremendous ignorance and arrogance that it is to think that you are fit in any way to receive Truth or Light. Start by discovering your very own house first. Start by exploring all of its rooms. Start by acknowledging all the dirt and useless furniture which is cluttering up your house, and work hard to get rid of it. Clean your house, expand