UNREALITY OF TIME AND SPACE - LILA'S STORY

UNREALITY OF TIME AND SPACE - LILA'S STORY

The Maharshi was often questioned about death and reincarnation. He would sometimes answer: "Let us know first who we are" or "The birth of the 'I-thought' is one's own birth, its death is the person's death. After the 'I'-thought has arisen the wrong identity with the body arises. Thinking yourself the body, you give false values to others and identify them with bodies. Just as your body has been born, grows and will perish, so also you think the other was born, grew up and died."

In so many ways Bhagavan tried to bring home to us the true nature of the Self, which is eternal, unborn and free. When an illogical sequence in an apparent death and rebirth was brought to his attention, he would often cite Lila's story from the Yoga Vasishta.

For example:
An elderly gentleman, formerly a co-worker with B. V. Narasimha Swami and author of some Vasishtadvaita work, visited the place for the first time. He asked about rebirths, if it is possible for the linga sarira (subtle body) to get dissolved and be reborn in two years after death.

Ramana Maharshi responded: "Yes. Surely. Not only can one be reborn, one may be twenty or forty or even seventy years old in the new body though only two years after death."

In another documented case of reincarnation, a boy who is seven years now recalls his past births. Enquiries go to show that the previous body was given up 10 months ago.

The question arises how the matter stood for six years and two months previous to the death of the former body. Did the soul occupy two bodies at the same time?

Sri Bhagavan pointed out that the seven years is according to the boy; ten months is according to the observer. The difference is due to these two different upadhis (limiting adjuncts). The boy's experience extending to seven years has been calculated by the observer to cover only 10 months of his own time. In order to explain this phenomenon, Sri Bhagavan again referred to Queen Lila's story in Yoga Vasishta.

Lila asked:
O Goddess, you said that it was only eight days ago that the holy man had died; and yet my husband and I have lived for a long time [in the present birth]. How can you reconcile this discrepancy? (The "holy man" was reincarnated as Lila's present husband, who had now again just died).

Goddess Saraswati said:
O Lila, just as space does not have a fixed span, time does not have a fixed span either. Just as the world and its creation are mere appearances, a moment and an epoch are also imaginary, not real. In the twinkling of an eye the jiva undergoes the illusion of the death-experience, forgets what happened before that, and in the infinite consciousness thinks 'I am this', etc., and 'I am his son, I am so many years old', etc. There is no essential difference between the experiences of this world and those of another - all this being thought-forms in the infinite consciousness. They are like two waves in the same ocean. Since these worlds were never created, they will never cease to be: such is the law. Their real nature is consciousness.

Even as in a dream there is birth, death and relationship all in a very short time, and even as a lover feels that a single night without his beloved is an epoch, the jiva thinks of experienced and non-experienced objects in the twinkling of an eye. And, immediately thereafter, he imagines those things (the world) to be real. Even those things which he had not experienced nor seen present themselves before him as in a dream.

This world and this creation is nothing but memory and dream. Distance, measures of time like a moment and an age, all these are hallucinations. This is one kind of knowledge-memory. There is another which is not based on memory of past experience. This is the fortuitous meeting of an atom and consciousness which is then able to produce its own effects.

Liberation is the realization of the total nonexistence of the universe as such. This is different from a mere denial of the existence of the ego and the universe! The latter is only half-knowledge.
Liberation is to realize that all this is pure consciousness.

- Talks with Sri Ramana Maharshi & Yoga Vasistha

Ego I false

REALITY IS SIMPLY THE LOSS OF THE EGO.
TALK 146

Reality is simply the loss of the ego. Destroy the ego by seeking its identity. Because the ego is no entity it will automatically vanish and Reality will shine forth by itself. This is the direct method. Whereas all other methods are done, only retaining the ego. In those paths there arise so many doubts and the eternal question remains to be tackled finally. But in this method the final question is the only one and it is raised from the very beginning. No sadhanas are necessary for engaging in this quest.

I am that i am

"I AM THAT I AM."

The pointers can be more or less true, but no matter what the pointer says, no matter how it says to get there, it doesn't say anything about what's beyond. Nothing.

Because as soon as you are beyond, as soon as you are being what you are, nothing applies anymore. That's why so many of the great spiritual teachers have said that there is nothing to know. In order to be free, in order to be enlightened, there is absolutely nothing to know, and there is no enlightenment as long as you think you know something.

As soon as you absolutely know that you don't know anything and there is absolutely nothing to know, that state is called enlightenment because all there is, is Being.

When there is Oneness, who is the One going to know about? The One knows only, "I am that. I am this." As it says in the Bible: "I AM THAT I AM." This is true awakened knowledge. All other knowledge is secondary.

Adyashanti, Emptiness Dancing

Karma is servant u control it do or not do

At one of my experiences in India,
I was with a yogi called Neem Karoli Baba.

And one day a bunch of us,
and one of the people there was Ram Dass,
you remember Ram Dass he was there too.

We were sitting in front of him,
when an old lady came up to him and spoke in Hindi,
whatever language they were talking I forgot.

And what she said was that her husband was dying,
"Would you please come and save him,
because only you can come and save him.”

And Neem Karoli Baba looked at me
and said, "Should I go?" and
I said, "yes go, let's all go."

So we walked about two miles to a little shack and
the husband was lying on the cot dying of some kind of disease.

And he looked at him and
all of a sudden the candles began to flicker.
So he turned around and ran out the house and
started to run back to the ashram and we all followed him.

And we said when we finally stopped we said,
"Baba what happened?
Why did you leave?" and
he said, "Ah, God wants him to die," and he died.

The point is this:
your life, your health or your sickness,
your riches or your poverty
has all been preordained by the law of Karma.
And whatever you're going to go through,
you're going to go through.

If you're supposed to become a health fanatic and
watch your health and eat the right things all the time,
you will do that and if you're not supposed to, you won't.

If you're supposed to take the middle path you will do that.
Everything is ordained, planned before time.
The only freedom we've got is to not identify with the process,
even though your body's going through it.

Do not attach yourself to what your body's going through.
Keep your mind above it,
keep your head in heaven and your feet on the ground.
So we have no choice in the matter.

Whatever is going to happen will happen.
So if we have to do all kinds of things and
we find ourselves running from one doctor to another doctor
and so forth, do not attach yourself to that
but do it anyway because you can't help it.

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Question : Can you try to clarify this a little more,
you've just been speaking of karma, and
yet I know that you believe that karma does not exist will you comment on that,
karma exists and karma does not exist?

Robert : Again the Buddha said,
"Karma is a taskmaster for the foolish and
the servant to the wise,"
meaning, if we in the level mentally of karma,
we will suffer and it'll become our task Master.
But if we lift our minds away from the condition and we keep our minds
on the absolute reality,
we will not suffer no matter what the body is going through.

Who suffers?
The mind, not the body, the body cannot suffer.

The body is merely a lump of flesh and bone and blood,
but it's animated by the mind, so the mind suffers and
allows the body to suffer, but the body can do nothing by itself.

So if the mind is taken away from the body something else will happen,
you'll be free.

(SA: What was the line again? Buddha's line, karma is the taskmaster for the foolish...)

...and the servant for the wise,
it's a servant because you do not pay any heed.

(SA: Control it.)
Exactly, you observe it and you do not respond.
So it becomes your servant when you do not respond to karma,
then you overcome it.

In other words if somebody becomes angry at you and you do not respond,
there is no karma, and you'll be free.

Karma again is like a person, who talks to you
and talks to you and talks to you but you say nothing.

What will that person do?
They'll get up and leave.
So when your karma sees that you're not paying any attention to it,
It dissipates and returns to the nothingness from whence it came.

Let's play some music.
Why don't you put the fan on while we're doing it?

To assure you there is a power that knows how to take care of all things if you
trust it. That power of course is you, but you don't know it.

I've been trying to get a hold of a certain picture of Ramana Maharshi for quite a
while but first I should tell you that, when I was seventeen,
I was led in mysterious ways to Arunachala, where I met Ramana.

I won't elaborate on that right now but
there was mysterious circumstances that caused that.
So going back to now, I tried to get a picture of Ramana Maharshi that I liked,
and sure enough last week George brings me the same picture as a present,
in color, that I had been looking for for a long time.

So I took it home and hung it on the wall.
But in the meanwhile I had a visitor from Hawaii.
He used to be one of my students came to see me,
he was traveling through and he brought a lae and put it around my neck.
So I took off the lei and put it around Ramana's picture,
and he said to me - after being on this path for so-called ten years or more,
he said, "I didn't know you worship gurus."

Now, he should've known better.
So I explained to him the facts. Ramana's not a guru, he is the same as my Self,
I am simply paying homage to my Self.
There is only one Self and we are all that.

So when I honor him with a lei I am doing it to me
because he is none other than my Self,
and you none other than my Self also. So it's not a guru worship,
it's bowing to your Self, praying to your Self, worshiping your Self,
because God dwells in you as you.

But this just goes to show you that there is a power that knows how to take
care of you, that loves you, that is always on your side.

It only requires one thing, surrender.
Surrender to your Self.
God, guru and Self are one,
bow down to your Self, love your Self.

When I speak of your Self I'm not referring to your ego self.
There is something about you that perhaps you're not aware of yet.
The absolute reality that we've been talking about.
It is you, that's what you worship, that is what you bow down to,
that is what you express.

Never defile your Self, by hating yourself.
Never believe there is any mistake you've made
that is going to rise up against you.
Everyone has made mistakes, forget it.

Begin to realize who you are,
begin to love yourself dearly, have mercy on yourself,
lift yourself up and become free,
any questions about that ?

~ Robert Adams, You Must Have Your Own Experience