Relationship

RELATIONSHIP

IT is a fact of life, whether we like it or not, that the relationship is not between two people but between two images which each has created about the other.  There is relationship only when two of us can look at each other without the image of memory, of insults and all the rest.

To be related means being in contact, something direct and not between two images.  It requires a great deal of honesty, of attention, of an awareness to look at another without the image which I have about that person, based on my memories.

This can happen only if we are deeply aware that what we consider as someone’s ‘action’ - oneself or the other - is really in fact a happening according to God’s Will or Cosmic Law, and not any individual’s action.

- From CELEBRATE THE WIT & WISDOM, The Mysterious Way In Which Understanding Happens by Ramesh S. Balsekar  https://advaita.3dcartstores.com/CELEBRATE-THE-WIT-WISDOM-The-Mysterious-Way-In-Which-Understanding-Happens-by-Ramesh-S-Balsekar_p_282.html

advaita.org

Consciousness

Consciousness is the One without the second - the Source of everything.

The “who,” the “what,” the “where,” and the “when” are all conceptual images in Consciousness. They are all “real” as any mirage or dream. …The totality of manifestation, and everything therein, is Consciousness Itself, the Unicity. All there is is Consciousness, not aware of Ittself in Its noumenal Subjectivity, but perceived by Itself as phenomenal manifestation in Its objective expression. If this is understood in depth, there is nothing more to be understood. Why? Because such understanding must comport the realization that there is no individual entity as such. What we think we are is merely an appearance, an insubstantial shadow, whereas what we really and truly ARE, is Consciousness Itself, the formless Brahman.
-

WHO CARES?! by Ramesh S. Balsekar​ (1999) ​

Who cares

IS there a step just prior to enlightenment or Self-realization? Yes. That step is the individual not caring whether enlightenment happens or not. That is the penultimate step for the final understanding to happen. No “one” to care. Who cares? A thought will arise, “Will there ever be enlightenment in this body-mind organism?” And promptly, “Who cares?” You see? So “who” cares? There is no “who” to care!

~ WHO CARES?! by Ramesh S. Balsekar

World illusion

The world doesn't exist and we just come to see that clearly.
It's all an illusion. It never did exist. There is no way it can exist—it's all the reflection of a concept attached to inside.

There is No One and Nothing. It’s literal. Are you ready to
live without a world? Is that what you really want? Are you willing to lose the moon?

—Byron Katie

Deathlessness

“Deathlessness is our real nature, and we falsely ascribe it to the body, imagining that it will live for ever and losing sight of what is really immortal, simply because we identify ourselves with the body. It says in the Upanishads that the jnani looks forward eagerly to the time when he can throw off the body, just as a laborer carrying a heavy load looks forward to reaching his destination and laying it down.”

- Bhagavan in 'Day by Day'

Pure consciousness

Pure Consciousness wholly unrelated to the physical body and transcending the mind is a matter of direct experience. Sages know their bodiless, eternal existence, just as an unrealised man knows his bodily existence. But the experience of Consciousness can be with bodily awareness as well as without it. In the bodiless experience of Pure Consciousness the Sage is beyond time and space, and no question about the position of the Heart can arise at all. Since, however, the physical body can not subsist (with life) apart from Consciousness, bodily awareness has to be sustained by pure Consciousness. The former, by nature, is limited and can never be co-extensive with the latter which is Infinite and Eternal. Body-consciousness is merely a miniature reflection of the pure Consciousness with which the Sage has realised his identity. For him, therefore, body-consciousness is only a reflected ray, as it were, of the self-effulgent, infinite Consciousness which is himself. It is in this sense alone that the Sage is aware of his bodily existence.

Conscious Immortality

CONSCIOUS IMMORTALITY

174-In the Yoga Vasishta it says that what is real is hidden from us, but what is false is revealed as true. Actually, we are experiencing only the Reality, but we do not know it. Isn't it the wonder of wonders?

Q: Are our attempts sure to succeed?

M: Realization is our nature. It is nothing new to be gained. What is new cannot be eternal, therefore there is no need to doubt whether one will gain or lose the Self.

When I had the 'death' experience as a lad, I entered into the Self and since then I have not 'progressed' or moved one iota. It has remained the same ever since — there has been no development.

The Maharshi told us that when he was a youth, the actual process of obtaining spiritual Self realization took no longer than twenty minutes. The next few years were spent in establishing this Realization in gradual adjustment.

- p. 174