silence , supreme ,

The time comes, in our evolution, when we truly understand what the mind really is. And we begin to observe it, realizing that it functions without us. We begin to watch the mind in action. We watch it making us depressed. We watch it making us angry. We watch it making us happy. We watch ourselves when we accomplish something great, and we think we're important. Just the watching alone causes you to go further in your evolution. For it shows you that I possibly cannot be the mind for I have been watching all this time. I have been watching my thoughts bring up the past and make me unhappy, bring fears into my life, as if something bad is going to happen in the future if I don't watch out. We've been watching the mind do this to us.

Then we finally say to ourselves, "Who is this watcher? Who is this person that has been watching the mind?" We honestly have to say, therefore, "I don't know. I don't know who I am. I have no idea who has been watching, but I have to admit ‘I’ have been watching. All these years I thought that when I said ‘I,’ I was referring to my mind. I believed my mind was ‘I.’ But now as I watch myself getting angry, as I watch myself becoming depressed, or becoming happy, I realize that I am separate from my mind. Therefore, “Who am I? Where did I come from? It's amazing that I am able to watch my mind doing all these things to me. But now I know that there is an ‘I.’ Who is this I? I don't know. How can I find out?"

By becoming silent, through silence. By allowing my mind to empty itself of all thoughts, and as I keep on watching my mind in action, without responding, I notice something very interesting happening to me. I notice that I feel happier. I feel more peaceful and I feel more powerful. I notice that I've lost my fears, my frustrations, and even my searching for truth has slowed down, for I am beginning to understand that there is really nothing to search for. It's all here. Everything I've always wanted is here. Amazing discovery. Yet I still don't know who I am. But I'm beginning to understand that I do not have to know who I am. It is not necessary to know who I am. Do you follow? I doesn't have to know who it is. What an amazing discovery. I don't have to go around searching for the I, or wondering who the I was that has been watching the mind in action all these years. I simply have to become still. Be still and know that I am God. And the watching all these years has caused me to become still. In other words, as you practice observation of your thoughts and mindfulness, your mind becomes quieter, and quieter and quieter. And to the extent your mind becomes quieter and quieter, to that extent does your consciousness become revealed to you as absolute reality.

Now when we talk about absolute reality, or Parabrahman, there are no words, for everything I would tell you about that would be superfluous. We therefore learn to keep quiet. We no longer get involved in complications. We keep our lifestyle simple. We actually stop worrying about the future, about our existence or about anything else. Something tells us from within that the same power that knows how to make apples grow on apple trees, flowers bloom so beautifully, mangos grow on mango trees, wheat grow in the fields, and yet there's just enough sun, just enough rain, just enough of everything to sustain and maintain their growth. Something tells me that the same power knows how to take care of me. I can therefore be myself, silence.

🌼 Robert Adams

2

D.: Instead of enquiring: ‘Who am I?’ can I put the question to myself: 

‘Who are you?’ so that my mind may be

fixed on you whom I consider to be God in the form of the Guru? 

Perhaps I would come nearer to the goal of my quest by that enquiry than by asking myself: ‘Who am I?’

RamanaMaharshi: Whatever form your enquiry may take, you must finally come to the one ‘I’, the Self. 

All these distinctions made between

‘I’ and ‘you’, master and disciple, are merely a sign of ignorance.

The supreme ‘I’ alone is. 

To think otherwise is to delude oneself.

Therefore, since your aim is to transcend here and now these superficialities of physical existence through self-enquiry,

where is the scope for making the distinctions of ‘you’ and ‘I’

which pertain only to the body? 

When you turn the mind inwards, seeking the source of thought, where is the ‘you’ and where the ‘I’? 

You should seek and be the Self that includes all.

D.: But, isn’t it funny that the ‘I’ should be searching for the ‘I’? 

Doesn’t the enquiry, ‘Who am I?’ turn out in the end to be an empty formula? 

Or am I to put the question to myself

endlessly, repeating it like some mantra?

RamanaMaharshi: Self-enquiry is certainly not an empty formula; it is more than the repetition of any mantra. 

If the enquiry: ‘Who am I?’ were mere mental questioning, it would not be of much value. 

The very purpose of Self-enquiry is to focus the entire mind at its source. 

It is not, therefore, a case of one ‘I’ searching for another ‘I’. 

Much less is Self-enquiry an empty formula, for it involves an intense activity of the entire mind to keep it

steadily poised in pure Self-awareness. 

Self-enquiry is the one infallible means, the only direct one, to realise the

unconditioned, absolute Being that you really are.

🪔 The Teachings of Bhagavan

Sri Ramana  Maharshi in His Own Words

Edited by Arthur Osborne.

1

Before you go to sleep, meditate and go into the Self. Then when you fall asleep, your whole sleep will be a meditation of staying in the Self.

The moment you wake up in the morning, again go into meditation for a few minutes and remain as the Self. Throughout the waking state, the undercurrent of remaining in the Self will be there even though you are working, arguing or quarreling.

This substratum will always keep you in the Self.

Sri Ramana Maharshi 

(Ramana Periya Puranam)

relax

Transcendental Relaxation  

There is another kind of relaxation  - neither physical nor mental - which is not to be achieved but which can only happen as a result of the deepest possible understanding that the individual entity as the 'me', as opposed to the 'other', truly does not exist.  It is understood that the billions of human beings have no individual volition or choice of decision and action and that they are only uniquely programmed instruments through which the Source or Primal Energy or Consciousness or God functions and brings about such happenings as are supposed to happen according to what might be called a Natural Law or Cosmic Law. The total acceptance of this concept, which one can test in the fire of one's own experience, results in the total acceptance of What-Is as God's Will, which leads to the real relaxation of the body-mind organism leading to enlightenment or Self-realization:  the fictitious ego-entity doer finds himself surrendering to the noumenal Source in its entirety. This is what might be called transcendental relaxation, the sheer Joy of Being.

                    - Ramesh S. Balsekar

CALM IS GREATER THAN JOY, Shirish Kumar S. Murthy, Zen Publications (2010) 

advaita.org

15

When the body first appeared, everything about you was preordained. Whether you're going to be male or female, the kind of nose you would have, your color, where you were born. Everything was taken care of. You had absolutely nothing to do with it. Isn't it reasonable to assume therefore, that the same power that was able to bring you into this world as an appearance, can take care of this appearance, maintain it and sustain it, and do with it what's supposed to happen?

Robert Adams

14

13

There is nothing external in consciousness.

Ramana

12

Sannyas is just a beginning, 

a seed of a totally different kind of world 

where people are free to be themselves, 

where people are not constrained, crippled, paralyzed, 

where people are not repressed, made to feel guilty, 

where joy is accepted, where cheerfulness is the rule, 

where seriousness has disappeared, 

where a non-serious sincerity, a playfulness has entered. 

0sho

11

"During one of Narendra's early visits I touched his chest and he became unconscious. Regaining consciousness, he wept and said: 'Oh, why did you do that to me? I have a father! I have a mother!' This 'I' and 'mine' spring from ignorance.

"A guru said to his disciple: 'The world is illusory. Come away with me.' 'But, revered sir,' said the disciple, 'my people at home — my father, my mother, my wife — love me so much. How can I give them up?' The guru said: 'No doubt you now have this feeling of "I" and "mine" and say that they love you; but this is all an illusion of your mind. I shall teach you a trick, and you will know whether they love you truly or not.' Saying this, the teacher gave the disciple a pill and said to him: 'Swallow this at home. You will appear to be a corpse, but you will not lose consciousness. You will see everything and hear everything. Then I shall come to your house and gradually you will regain your normal state.'

"The disciple followed the teacher's instructions and lay on his bed like a dead person. The house was filled with loud wailing. His mother, his wife, and the others lay on the ground weeping bitterly. Just then a brahmin entered the house and said to them, 'What is the matter with you?' 'This boy is dead', they replied. The brahmin felt his pulse and said: 'How is that? No, he is not dead. I have a medicine for him that will cure him completely.' The joy of the relatives was unbounded; it seemed to them that heaven itself had come down into their house. 'But', said the brahmin, 'I must tell you something else. Another person must take some of this medicine first, and then the boy must swallow the rest. But the other person will die. I see he has so many dear relatives here; one of them will certainly agree to take the medicine. I see his wife and mother crying bitterly. Surely they will not hesitate to take it.'

"At once the weeping stopped and all sat quiet. The mother said: 'Well, this is a big family. Suppose I die; then who will look after the family?' She fell into a reflective mood. The wife, who had been crying a minute before and bemoaning her ill luck, said: 'Well, he has gone the way of mortals. I have these two or three young children. Who will look after them if I die?'

"The disciple saw everything and heard everything. He stood up at once and said to the teacher: 'Let us go, revered sir. I will follow you.' 

"Another disciple said to his teacher: 'Revered sir, my wife takes great care of me. It is for her sake that I cannot give up the world.' The disciple practised hathayoga. The teacher taught him, too, a trick to test his wife's love. One day there was a great wailing in his house. The neighbours came running and saw the hathayogi seated in a posture, his limbs paralysed and distorted. They thought he was dead. His wife fell on the ground, weeping piteously: 'Oh, what has befallen me? How have you provided for our future? Oh, friends, I never dreamt I should meet such a fate!'

"In the mean time the relatives and friends had brought a cot to take the corpse out. But suddenly a difficulty arose as they started to move it. Since the body was twisted and stiff, it could not be taken out through the door. A neighbour quickly brought an axe and began to chop away the door-frame. The wife was crying bitterly, when she heard the sound of the axe. She ran to the door. 'What are you doing, friends?' she asked, still weeping. The neighbour said, 'We can't take the body out; so we are chopping away the door-frame.'

"'Please', said the wife, 'don't do any such thing. I am a widow now; I have no one to look after me. I have to bring up these young children. If you destroy this door, I shall not be able to replace it. Friends, death is inevitable for all, and my husband cannot be called back to life. You had better cut his limbs.' The hathayogi at once stood up. The effect of the medicine had worn off. He said to his wife: 'You evil one! You want to cut off my hands and feet, do you?' So saying, he renounced home and followed his teacher.

10

"Take refuge in silence. You can be here or there or anywhere. Fixed in silence, established in the inner 'l', you can be as you are. The world will never perturb you if you are well founded upon the tranquility within. Gather your thoughts within. Find out the thought centre and discover your Self-equipoise. In storm and turmoil be calm and silent. Watch the events around as a witness. The world is a drama. Be a witness, inturned and introspective."

Sri Ramana Maharshi

9

Don’t cling to mind, it will always keep you at the door. You will appear as if you are searching, but you will not find. So don‘t build your house outside the gates of Nirwana. 

You are inside, dreaming you are outside. When you fully grasp this in your heart you will come to see, actually I am beyond outside and inside. 

Mooji 🌳🏠

8

Talk 607. 

Sri Bhagavan said to Lady Bateman: 

There is a fixed state; 

sleep, dream and waking states are mere movements in it. 

They are like  pictures moving on the screen in a cinema show.

Everyone sees the screen as well as the pictures but ignores the screen and takes in the pictures alone. 

The Jnani however  considers only the screen and not the pictures. The pictures certainly  move on the screen yet do not affect it. The screen itself does not 

move but remains stationary.

Similarly, a person travels in a train and thinks that he moves. 

Really speaking he sits and reposes in his seat, and it is the train  which is steaming fast. He however superimposes the motion of the  train on himself because he has identified himself with the body. 

He says, “I have passed one station - now another - yet another  - and so on”. A little consideration will show that he sits unmoved  and the stations run past him. But that does not prevent him from  saying that he has travelled all the way as if he exerted himself to  move every foot of the way.

The Jnani is fully aware that the true state of Being remains fixed  and stationary and that all actions go on around him. His nature  does not change and his state is not affected in the least. He looks  on everything with unconcern and remains blissful himself.

His is the true state and also the primal and natural state of being. 

When  once the man reaches it he gets fixed there. Fixed once, fixed ever he  will be. Therefore that state which prevailed in the days of Pathala  Linga Cellar continues uninterrupted, with only this difference that 

the body remained there immobile but is now active.

There is no difference between a Jnani and an ajnani in their  conduct. The difference lies only in their angles of vision. The 

ignorant man identifies himself with the ego and mistakes its  activities for those of the Self, whereas the ego of the Jnani has 

been lost and he does not limit himself to this body or that, this  event or that, and so on.

There is action in seeming inaction, and also inaction in seeming  action as in the following instances:

1. A child is fed while asleep. On waking up the next morning, he  denies having been fed. It is a case of inaction in seeming action. 

For although the mother saw him take his food the child himself  is not aware.

2. The cartman sleeps in the cart when it jogs along the way in the night and yet he reaches the destination and claims to have driven the cart. This is a case of action in seeming inaction.

3. A man appearing to listen to a story nods his head to the speaker  but yet his mind is otherwise active and he does not really follow the story.

4. Two friends sleep side by side. One of them dreams that both of them travel round the globe and have varied experiences. On 

waking the dreamer tells the other that both of them have been round the earth. The other treats the story with contempt.

The lady protested that dream and sleep do not make any appeal to her. She was asked why then she should be careful about her bed unless she courted sleep.

She said that it was for relaxation of the exhausted limbs, rather a state of auto-intoxication. “The sleep state is really dull, whereas  the waking state is full of beautiful and interesting things.”

M.: What you consider to be filled with beautiful and interesting things 

is indeed the dull and ignorant state of sleep, according to the Jnani: 

Ya nisha sarva bhootanam tasyam jagrati samyami.

The wise one is wide awake just where darkness rules for others. 

You must certainly wake up from the sleep which is holding you  at present.

~ Talks with Sri Ramana Maharshi

7

Just as the Sun imparts light to the Moon,

so does the Heart impart light to the mind..

Ramana Maharshi....

5

"Put nothing in the mind as something you want to experience because then you create a shape and you become attached. You make a compromise in some way.  Come completely into the invitation now and leave everything to That.  If It wishes to use the body for some play It will do it.  Otherwise it becomes personal again as someone who wants to see 'this' happen." Mooji

4

“Suffering is not wrong; it is suffering. The judgment is a purely human fabrication that we project onto life. Drop the judgment about suffering and there is Love. Love knows how to respond to every situation without going into division.”

~ Adyashanti, from Redemptive Love

Sacred Inquiry

https://bit.ly/2FBXVbU

3

That which Is, forever shines in Grace as I,

the Self-Awareness, the Heart.

Can that be blamed for lacking Grace?

The fault is theirs who do not turn within

and seek the Self-Awareness, in love.

(Verse 966 Guru Vachaka Kovai)

2

"I am not looking for devotees. I am looking for somebody who feels the power of what I am pointing and wants to look, to prove it inside themselves. I don’t want to tell people, ‘This is bad, this is good, stop doing.' I prefer to show people a much easier way. 

Just be. 

What is the lotus flower doing? Nothing. It is just responding to the sunlight, but this opening is happening. What if it is really as simple as this? 

I want you to know the thing that cannot be known through study. I love it that it is so magnificent. This urge must not fade in you until you reach the goal. Now you are using your powers of discernment rightly, your wisdom is coming back. Everything is happening but nothing feels greater than here...”

~Mooji <3

1

I had quite an interesting day today. I received approximately fifteen phone calls from people all over the place. My door bell rang about ten times. The dog was barking and biting everyone who comes in. My daughter was playing the stereo at full blast. And yet my body responded the way it's supposed to. But I had absolutely nothing to do with it. It didn't affect me, the Self, one iota. Yet my body did what it had to do, took care of the calls and answered the door, quieted the dog, turned down the stereo, but I had absolutely nothing to do with it. 

I'm bringing this point up to show you that you can be in the most horrendous situations and be at peace. It doesn't matter what you're going through, even death. It makes no difference. The real you has absolutely nothing to do with it. You are free from the whole thing. There may be wars all around you, people fighting and stabbing each other, people quiet and peaceful. Look at both those situations the same way, with even mindedness. Do not react to anything. Do not allow your mind to go out and respond. Do not think past your nose. Your body is going to do whatever it has to do, but you are not your body. Anything that you respond to is a product of your mind. It is your mind that becomes angry. It is your mind that becomes stubborn. It is your mind that wants to get even. It is your mind that is hurt. But if you subdue your mind, tell me, where is the anger? Where is the depression? Where is the response to conditions? There isn't any. When the mind is subdued there is only eternal peace and that peace is the Self, consciousness. 

Consciousness is always peaceful, always happy. It has nothing to do with conditions. All conditioning comes from the mind. Therefore I say to you, do not try to change conditions. Do not try to change situations. Simply learn how to control the mind by making it passive and quiet, and then you will find that things turn out better for you than you can possibly ever hope for. There are no problems. There is nothing wrong. Everything is unfolding as it should. Everything happens in its own time. Space and time are illusions. They really do not exist. They're stationary. Causation does not exist either. No thing has a cause therefore no thing has an effect. Cause and effect are again products of your own mind. When the mind is quiet, karma ceases, samskaras are non-existent. There never was a cause for anything.

Sri Robert Adams

<3

5

We can never obtain peace in the outer world until we make peace with ourselves- Dalai Lama

 

Varanasi  , India

4

Bhagavan: "Everything we see is changing. Always changing. There must be something unchanging as the basis and source of all this. It is the Self."

~The Mountain Path, April 1972.

3

Ramana says:  

"If one scrutinises one's own Self, which is bliss, there will be no misery at all in one's life. One suffers because of the idea that the body, which is never oneself, is `I'; suffering is all due to this delusion."

2

“Happiness is your nature. It is not wrong to desire it. What is wrong is seeking it outside when it is inside.

Concentrate on the seer and not on the seen, not on the objects, but on the light which reveals them.

Throw your worries to the wind, turn within and find peace.”

~ Ramana Maharshi

1

* ध्यान है तो सब है, ध्यान नहीं तो कुछ नहीं *

ध्यान सतत करना होगा, जब तक समाधि उपलब्ध न हो जाए। अगर एक दिन की भी गाफिलता की, एक दिन की भी भूल-चूक की, तो जो कमाया था वह खोने लगता है। ध्यान तो ऐसा ही है जैसे कि कोई साइकिल पर सवार आदमी पैडल मारता है। वह सोचे कि अब तो चल पड़ी है साइकिल, अब क्या पैडल मारना! पैडल मारना बंद कर दे तो ज्यादा देर साइकिल न चलेगी। चढ़ाव होगा तब तो फौरन ही गिर जाएगी। उतार होगा तो शायद थोड़ी दूर चली जाए, लेकिन कितनी दूर जाएगी? ज्यादा दूर नहीं जा सकती। सतत पैडल मारने होंगे, जब तक कि मंजिल ही न आ जाए। ध्यान रोज करना होगा। 

जो-जो कमाया है ध्यान से, उसकी रक्षा करनी होगी। वह जो-जो हाथ में आ जाए उसको तो बचाना। जितना थोड़ा सा चित्त साफ हो जाए, ऐसा मत सोचना कि अब क्या करना है सफाई। वह फिर गंदा हो जाएगा। जब तक कि परिपूर्ण अवस्था न आ जाए समाधि की तब तक श्रम जारी रखना होगा।

      

हां, समाधि फलित हो जाए, फिर कोई श्रम का सवाल नहीं। समाधि उपलब्ध हो जाए, फिर तो तुम उस जगह पहुंच गए जहा कोई चीज तुम्हें कलुषित नहीं कर सकती। मंजिल पर पहुंच गए। फिर तो साइकिल को चलाना ही नहीं, उतर ही जाना है। फिर तो जो पैडल मारे वह नासमझ। क्योंकि वह फिर मंजिल के इधर-उधर हो जाएगा। एक ऐसी घड़ी आती है, जहां उतर जाना है, जहा रुक जाना है, जहां यात्रा ठहर जाएगी। लेकिन उस घड़ी के पहले तो श्रम जारी रखना। और जो भी छोटी-मोटी विजय मिल जाए, उसको सम्हालना है। संपदा को बचाना है।

                       ओशो, एस धम्मो सनंतनो, प्रवचन--13

bliss

The most supreme meditative state is the state of being absorbed into the Shakti of Rudra.

Bliss beyond description is the essence of the Self. Ones own Self is verily everywhere.

Absorption into ones Self as such, is said to be the real bath of purification. 

- Vijnana Bhairava (Slokas 151&152). 

💛

Vijnana Bhairava Tantra pdf link: https://www.indiadivine.org/content/files/file/198-vigyan-bhairav-tantra-with-english-translation-pdf/

soul

“The soul becomes restless for God when one is through with the enjoyment of worldly things. Then a person has only one thought - How to realize God? 

He listens to whatever anyone says to him about God.”

- Bhagavan Sri Ramakrishna Dev.

god

Look within. 

Within you is the hidden God. 

Within you is the immortal soul. 

Within you is the inexhaustible spiritual treasure. 

Within you is the ocean of bliss. 

Look within for the happiness which you have sought in vain.

- Swami Sivananda.

💛

screen

Talk 607. 

Sri Bhagavan said to Lady Bateman: 

There is a fixed state; 

sleep, dream and waking states are mere movements in it. 

They are like  pictures moving on the screen in a cinema show.

Everyone sees the screen as well as the pictures but ignores the screen and takes in the pictures alone. 

The Jnani however  considers only the screen and not the pictures. The pictures certainly  move on the screen yet do not affect it. The screen itself does not 

move but remains stationary.

Similarly, a person travels in a train and thinks that he moves. 

Really speaking he sits and reposes in his seat, and it is the train  which is steaming fast. He however superimposes the motion of the  train on himself because he has identified himself with the body. 

He says, “I have passed one station - now another - yet another  - and so on”. A little consideration will show that he sits unmoved  and the stations run past him. But that does not prevent him from  saying that he has travelled all the way as if he exerted himself to  move every foot of the way.

The Jnani is fully aware that the true state of Being remains fixed  and stationary and that all actions go on around him. His nature  does not change and his state is not affected in the least. He looks  on everything with unconcern and remains blissful himself.

His is the true state and also the primal and natural state of being. 

When  once the man reaches it he gets fixed there. Fixed once, fixed ever he  will be. Therefore that state which prevailed in the days of Pathala  Linga Cellar continues uninterrupted, with only this difference that 

the body remained there immobile but is now active.

There is no difference between a Jnani and an ajnani in their  conduct. The difference lies only in their angles of vision. The 

ignorant man identifies himself with the ego and mistakes its  activities for those of the Self, whereas the ego of the Jnani has 

been lost and he does not limit himself to this body or that, this  event or that, and so on.

There is action in seeming inaction, and also inaction in seeming  action as in the following instances:

1. A child is fed while asleep. On waking up the next morning, he  denies having been fed. It is a case of inaction in seeming action. 

For although the mother saw him take his food the child himself  is not aware.

2. The cartman sleeps in the cart when it jogs along the way in the night and yet he reaches the destination and claims to have driven the cart. This is a case of action in seeming inaction.

3. A man appearing to listen to a story nods his head to the speaker  but yet his mind is otherwise active and he does not really follow the story.

4. Two friends sleep side by side. One of them dreams that both of them travel round the globe and have varied experiences. On 

waking the dreamer tells the other that both of them have been round the earth. The other treats the story with contempt.

The lady protested that dream and sleep do not make any appeal to her. She was asked why then she should be careful about her bed unless she courted sleep.

She said that it was for relaxation of the exhausted limbs, rather a state of auto-intoxication. “The sleep state is really dull, whereas  the waking state is full of beautiful and interesting things.”

M.: What you consider to be filled with beautiful and interesting things 

is indeed the dull and ignorant state of sleep, according to the Jnani: 

Ya nisha sarva bhootanam tasyam jagrati samyami.

The wise one is wide awake just where darkness rules for others. 

You must certainly wake up from the sleep which is holding you  at present.

~ Talks with Sri Ramana Maharshi