SAGEHOOD AS AN IDEAL

SAGEHOOD AS AN IDEAL

Q. Do you have thoughts?
Sri Ramana: I usually have no thoughts.

Q. But when you are reading?
A. Then I have thoughts.

Q. And when someone asks you a question?
A. Then, too, I have thoughts when replying, not
otherwise.

Q. How can I keep the idea of that real state always
before me?
A. Because you think you are a body you are not able to keep that single idea, you are not firm!
The idea that you must go to Tiruvannamalai and see Maharshi is only a function of the intellect.

Really no help is required. You are already in your original state; how can anyone help you to arrive where you already are? The help given is only to clear out your wrong notions. The great men, the gurus can help only by removing the obstacles in your way.

A child and Jnani are in some ways similar. The child ceases to think of incidents after they have passed off. Thus
it shows that they do not leave deep impressions on the child's mind. So too with a Jnani.

Conscious Immortality

Mind

A man was worried because he could not succeed in concentrating the mind.

Sri Ramana: Is it not only One even now? It always remains One only. Diversity lies in your imagination only. Unitary Being need not be acquired.

- Talk 167.

Jnani

The jnani knows all is of the Self, or all this is Brahman. If there be pain let it be. It is also part of the Self. The Self is poorna [perfect]. ~ Sri Ramana Maharshi
from Be As You Are: The Teachings of Sri Ramana Maharshi ~

Self

The idea that you must go to Tiruvannamalai and see Maharshi is only a function of the intellect.

Really no help is required.

You are already in your original state; how can anyone help you to arrive where you already are? The help given is only to clear out your wrong notions. The great men, the gurus can help only by removing the obstacles in your way.

- Bhagavan in Conscious Immortality

Enlightenment experience

COMPLETE FAILURE

Q: I want what you wanted.

Adya: What did I want?

Q: You wanted to become enlightened.

Adya: I wanted to become enlightened. Ok. It didn’t work out.

Q: Did you at least become awake?

Adya: No. Awakeness became awake. Enlightenment becomes enlightened. The me, the little guy, little Steven Larry Gray, that meditated in his parent’s backyard for hours and hours a day, every single day, in the morning and the evening, and did nothing but do the good Buddhist thing, diligently, terribly, terribly disciplined, he didn’t get enlightened. He never made it. He never crossed the river of nirvana, it never happened to him.

What he did was, for whatever reason, maybe the seeking was necessary, is he got exhausted. It just completely exhausted itself. The little one that was trying to get awake and enlightened got so exhausted, so stricken by I can’t do this, I can’t, and I could no longer tell myself I can. That means the complete and utter destruction of denial. Because the denial is “I can”. And your experience keeps showing you “you can’t.”

And so I got so exhausted psychically, internally, emotionally, spiritually that I couldn’t keep it up anymore. And i had to see the truth. I was willing to see the truth only because I was exhausted. I can’t do it. And in that “I can’t do it,” and not as a spiritual strategy, emptiness woke up out of the seeker. The seeker didn’t wake up. Consciousness woke up from the seeker, from the personality, from the “me” that was trying so hard.

— Adyashanti
from “Big Sword Swinging”

Liberation

LIBERATION

Questioner: Kindly tell us how you realized.

Maharaj: I met my Guru when I was 34 and realized by 37.

Q: What happened? What was the change?

M: Pleasure and pain lost their sway over me. I was free from desire and fear. I found myself full, needing nothing. I saw that in the ocean of pure awareness, on the surface of the universal consciousness, the numberless waves of the phenomenal worlds arise and subside beginninglessly and endlessly. As consciousness, they are all me. As events they are all mine.

There is a mysterious power that looks after them. That power is awareness, Self, Life, God, whatever name you give it. It is the foundation, the ultimate support of all that is, just like gold is the basis for all gold jewellery. And it is so intimately ours! Abstract the name and shape from the jewellery and the gold becomes obvious. Be free of name and form and of the desires and fears they create, then what remains?

Q: Nothingness.

M: Yes, the void remains. But the void is full to the brim. It is the eternal potential as consciousness is the eternal actual.

- I AM THAT ch 12