Self realization

The highest experience is when everything disappears, even God. Until this happens you will continue to be reborn.
So forget everything, even forgetting,
because forgetting and remembering belong to the mind. Without mind you can't see your God, or Guru, or country, or parents.
Just don't give rise to identifying as a body or mind or personality and there will be no forgetting or remembering.
First forget yourself which means stop identifying as the body.
You are the Essence which does not disappear. FIND IT!

~ Papaji

Liberation

Ramana says: "Liberation is not anywhere outside you. It is only within. If a man is anxious for deliverance, the internal Guru (Master) pulls him in and the external Guru pushes him into the Self. This is the grace of the Guru."

I thought

Ramana says: "Search for the source of the `I'-thought. That is all that one has to do. The universe exists on account of the `I'-thought. If that ends there is an end to misery also. The false `I' will end only when its source is sought."

Eternal bliss

Papaji Says: "The Atman consumes you, giving you eternal existence, eternal consciousness, and eternal bliss. And nobody knows it. Everyone is searching outside through the senses. Whatever you see, wherever you see name and form, it is not true. These names and forms will never give you peace or love. Whatever you see, feel, or experience through pleasurable sense objects ultimately will leave you hungry."
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.papajidaily

Death

Q: Are you not afraid of death?

M: I am dead already.

Q: In what sense?

M: I am double dead. Not only am I dead to my body, but to my mind too.

Q: Well, you do not look dead at all!

M: That’s what you say! You seem to know my state better than I do!

Q: Sorry. But I just do not understand. You say you are bodyless and mindless, while I see you very much alive and articulate.

M: A tremendously complex work is going on all the time in your brain and body, are you conscious of it? Not at all. Yet for an outsider all seems to be going on intelligently and purposefully. Why not admit that one’s entire personal life may sink largely below the threshold of consciousness and yet proceed sanely and smoothly?

Q: Is it normal?

M: What is normal? Is your life -- obsessed by desires and fears, full of strife and struggle, meaningless and joyless -- normal? To be acutely conscious of your body id it normal? To be torn by feelings, tortured by thoughts: is it normal?

A healthy body, a healthy mind live largely unperceived by their owner; only occasionally, through pain or suffering they call for attention and insight.

Why not extend the same to the entire personal life? One can function rightly, responding well and fully to whatever happens, without having to bring it into the focus of awareness. When self- control becomes second nature, awareness shifts its focus to deeper levels of existence and action.

- I AM THAT ch. 12

Witness

No personal, individual effort can possibly lead to enlightenment.
On the contrary, what is necessary is to rest helpless in beingness, knowing that we are nothing---to be in the nothingness of the no-mind state in which all conceptualizing has
subsided into passive witnessing.
In this state whatever happens will be not our
doing but the pure universal functioning to which we have relinquished all control.

*************

It is nothing but the personalization of the impersonal Consciousness as individual
identity, that constitutes the infamous 'ignorance' from which liberation is sought.
And liberation, or true knowledge, is the realization that this identity is merely an
illusion, a temporary aberration, like the shadow of a passing cloud.

Ramesh Balsekar
30th August

God alone

One cannot develop love of God or obtain His vision without work. Work means meditation, japa, and the like. The chanting of God's name and glories is work too. You may also include charity, sacrifice, and so on.

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One realizes God even if one believes Him to be formless. One also realizes God if one believes that God has form. Two things are necessary for the realization Of God: faith and self- surrender. Man is ignorant by nature. Errors are natural to Him. Can one-seer pot hold four seers of milk? Whatever path you may follow, you must pray to God with a restless heart. He is the Ruler of the soul within. He will surely listen to your prayer if it is sincere. Whether you follow the ideal of the Personal God or that of the Impersonal Truth, you will realize God alone, provided you are restless for Him.

- Sri Ramakrishna Paramahamsa.

<3

Theory

Questioner: There are so many theories about the nature of man and universe. The creation theory, the illusion theory, the dream theory -- any number of them. Which is true?

Nisargadatta Maharaj: All are true, all are false. You can pick up whichever you like best.

Questioner: You seem to favour the dream theory.

Nisargadatta Maharaj: These are all ways of putting words together. Some favour one way, some favour another. Theories are neither right nor wrong. They are attempts at explaining the inexplicable. It is not the theory that matters, but the way it is being tested. It is the testing of the theory that makes it fruitful. Experiment with any theory you like -- if you are truly earnest and honest, the attainment of reality will be yours. As a living being you are caught in an untenable and painful situation and you are seeking a way out. You are being offered several plans of your prison, none quite true. But they all are of some value, only if you are in dead earnest. It is the earnestness that liberates and not the theory.

Questioner: Theory may be misleading and earnestness -- blind.

Nisargadatta Maharaj: Your sincerity will guide you. Devotion to the goal of freedom and perfection will make you abandon all theories and systems and live by wisdom, intelligence and active love. Theories may be good as starting points, but must be abandoned, the sooner -- the better.

~ from "I Am That", chapter 30

Life no longer identify with the drama

“When the mind is somber, broad daylight gives birth to demons and evil spirits. When the mind is clear, a dark room has its blue sky. That which is self-concious and ulterior is far from the Truth. That which is Mindless, is near.” – Taoist poem.

There’s a common saying in Zen that says after Satori (Enlightenment, there sits the ordinary old man.

Something extraordinary happens through Enlightenment, but nothing at all. Vedanta — the philosophy Buddhism originates from — translates to “the end of knowledge.”

If Enlightenment is the end of knowledge, the end of struggles and the end of suffering, what is left in life? What is there left to do after the struggle is gone? After all, isn’t part of the beauty of life the struggle, the tears, the heartache and finding healing and peace through it all?

If there’s nothing left to do, if there’s nothing left to strive for, what’s the point of living? What’s the point of living when life itself has no point? What’s the point if the game of life isn’t worth playing?

There is a point though; the creation of your story. The only difference is after Enlightenment and the realization of One Taste, we no longer identify with the drama.

But detachment does not mean not participating. It’s not an escape from life; it’s simply creating your story with the awareness that you are not the story. It doesn’t bother you when your life takes a wrong turn or when something goes awry. In the same way you can celebrate when something wonderful in your life happens, but you don’t get attached because you realize that your story is not you.

Everything in life is a story. The evolution of the Universe, from unconscious matter to becoming conscious, is a story. The Eros of human consciousness, how we evolve from duality and separateness to Enlightenment and union, is a story.

The search for meaning and beauty outside ourselves, and realizing that happiness can only come from within, is yet another story. We turn even the most mundane things (like washing the dishes) into a story. We have all sorts of feelings about everything and we use those feelings and associations to mold our story. Life is a series of stories.

Suffer or happy

If Creation is perfect, and the Creator has done such a good job, why is there so much suffering? It is such a perfect job that it gives you the opportunity to be whichever way you wish to be. If Creation had not given you this opportunity, then there would be no possibilities, there would be no such thing as liberation.

So why create bondage and then liberation? Why couldn’t you have just been liberated? Then there would be no Creation. Only because there is Creation, now there is the possibility of going beyond that.

काहीही न करणे

श्रीब्रह्मचैतन्य श्रीगोंदवलेकर महाराजांचा नामबोध
२६ ऑगस्ट
कारणावाचून आनंद, तो खरा.
जगण्यामध्ये काहीतरी आनंद असला पाहिजे. जगणे हे आनंददायक आहे, मग आपल्याला दुःख का होते ? मनुष्य आनंदासाठी न जगता वस्तूसाठी जगतो. वस्तू ही सत्य नसल्यामुळे तिचे रूप अशाश्वत असते. अर्थात तिच्यापासून मिळणारा आनंद हा देखील अशाश्वत असतो. आनंद हा अर्थात अशाश्वत असणार, म्हणून तो खरा आनंद नाही. कारणाशिवाय आनंद मिळवण्यासाठी अगदी स्वस्थ बसायला शिकावे. हे 'काहीही न करणे' ही फारच उच्च अवस्था आहे. काहीतरी करण्यापेक्षा ती फारच कठीण आहे. भगवंताशी अगदी अनन्य होणे, आपले कर्तेपण पूर्ण मारणे, ही ती अवस्था आहे. आनंद पाहिजे असेल तर तुम्ही आनंदातच राहा ! कशाही परिस्थितीत आनंद राहावा. आपल्या मनासारखी गोष्ट घडून आली तर समाधान वाटावे. काल जे झाले त्याबद्दल दुःख करू नये, उद्या काय होणार याची काळजी करू नये, आज मात्र आनंदात आपले कर्तव्य करावे आणि भगवंताच्या अनुसंधानात राहावे. यातच सर्व आले.
भगवंताची प्राप्ती व्हावी असे वाटणे हे जन्माचे सार्थक आहे.
|| हरये नम: | हरये नम: | हरये नम: ||

साभार : अविनाश नगरकर जी

Loving what is

HOW DO WE RELATE TO OUR THOUGHTS?

Most people think that they are what their thoughts tell them they are. One day I noticed that I wasn’t breathing — I was being breathed. Then I also noticed, to my amazement, that I wasn’t thinking — that I was actually being thought and that thinking isn’t personal.

Do you wake up in the morning and say to yourself, “I think I won’t think today?” It’s too late: You’re already thinking! Thoughts just appear. They come out of nothing and go back to nothing, like clouds moving across the empty sky. They come to pass, not to stay. There is no harm in them until we attach to them as if they were true.

No one has ever been able to control his thinking, although people may tell the story of how they have. I don’t let go of my thoughts — I meet them with understanding. Then they let go of me.

Thoughts are like the breeze or the leaves on the trees or the raindrops falling. They appear like that, and through inquiry we can make friends with them. Would you argue with a raindrop? Raindrops aren’t personal, and neither are thoughts.

Once a painful concept is met with understanding, the next time it appears you may find it interesting. What used to be the nightmare is now just interesting. The next time it appears, you may find it funny. The next time, you may not even notice it. This is the power of loving what is.

- Byron Katie, 'Loving What IS'

self quote 2