From Seeing to Ultimate Reality
Knowing from sense perceptions happens continuously. What can be discarded is only what we have put together from memories. The emotional attitude that is required for any action is only the thoughts from our energy source. Therefore all actions are contained in thoughts. And thoughts? They are in us. Where is that ‘us’? In the center of our awareness. And where is awareness? Anywhere and everywhere, always the same perpetually. In truth we are that.
Whatever is known is the knowledge of oneself. The knowledge of ‘I’ alone is not that of ‘I’. Therefore to illuminate the knowledge of ‘I’ there should be something else there. That something is that has to be known. What can be done for that? All the knowledge that is known can be discarded. That is the only thing that can be discarded. Even the thought of ;I’ has to be discarded because that is also what is known. Then I with my world is no more. Only Truth stands there.
Unable to die or be born, above birth and death, or destruction, alone without a second, it exists as the secret of existence. As the secret of birth and death, as the secret of creation and destruction, as the mind and light of everything, it exists. It exists by itself. Just like the sun that exists by its own self illumination. Just as the things illumined by the sun are not of the sun, its knowledge is not of itself. Nothing that it illuminates can be itself. Nothing that I know is self-illumined, because as I am there to know them. I am the one that lights it. They are dead and inert things. To be aware that they are not me it would be enough to have the knowledge that ‘I Am’ .
Therefore, to know the self the only way is to grow above what is known and reaching the knowledge of ‘I’, disappear along with that ‘I’. Then there will be only the Truth. That truth is the real Me.
-Sandananda Giri Translated from Malayalam 23-12-10
Friday, December 24, 2010
Saturday, August 28, 2010
feel the secret source within
feel the secret source within
‘I’ was not there when I was born. It had not yet been formed. The feeling of ‘I’ came much later. What was there then? Just the wriggling dynamic force of life vibrating inside a bundle of flesh and blood, growing according to a package of coded instructions. All that I am now, my thoughts, my image of myself, my body, my likes and dislikes, my agony and ecstasy, all were formed much later. The vibrant force behind life that was there when born is still there now, and was there even before the birth took place and was always there, within the womb and before the ovum and sperm met. Otherwise they could not have met and joined.
The point is whether I can feel that single force which was there all through, and is still there within me while I sit in meditation, ignoring everything else, the thoughts, fears, happiness and sorrow, emotions and everything, all of which surfaced only after my birth? That is of utmost importance. How can anything thing else be important if you want to know the secret?
That energy one can find every where in the universe, moving, growing, changing, creating, destroying. But only human individual is equipped to feel that camouflaged secretly within him, but available for apprehending.
But if what you want, what you desire to have is the ecstasy of divinity or some special powers, that is entirely a different matter. You go ahead in your own way.
‘I’ was not there when I was born. It had not yet been formed. The feeling of ‘I’ came much later. What was there then? Just the wriggling dynamic force of life vibrating inside a bundle of flesh and blood, growing according to a package of coded instructions. All that I am now, my thoughts, my image of myself, my body, my likes and dislikes, my agony and ecstasy, all were formed much later. The vibrant force behind life that was there when born is still there now, and was there even before the birth took place and was always there, within the womb and before the ovum and sperm met. Otherwise they could not have met and joined.
The point is whether I can feel that single force which was there all through, and is still there within me while I sit in meditation, ignoring everything else, the thoughts, fears, happiness and sorrow, emotions and everything, all of which surfaced only after my birth? That is of utmost importance. How can anything thing else be important if you want to know the secret?
That energy one can find every where in the universe, moving, growing, changing, creating, destroying. But only human individual is equipped to feel that camouflaged secretly within him, but available for apprehending.
But if what you want, what you desire to have is the ecstasy of divinity or some special powers, that is entirely a different matter. You go ahead in your own way.
Sunday, August 22, 2010
God Particle AIR talk
(The article speculates on the impact of finding the God Particle in the thinking on spirituality.)
Scientists are now seriously searching for the ‘God Particle’. Whether we understand it, and appreciate its significance or not, we read in the newspapers about the Large Hadron Collider or LHC and the mysterious Higgs Boson that the scientists are expecting to find. They are searching for it by making protons collide with each other. An unusually large amount of money is spent for the purpose. The fact that scientists have called this ‘god particle’ raises a curiosity and hope in the minds of all of us to know whether they have at last found a basis to connect divinity and spirituality with the material world unifying both together to reveal the ultimate secrets of existence.
When I was studying Chemistry for my Intermediate Class (that is, the present plus two) way back in the forties, we learned that Atom was indivisible. All the materials and substances of the universe were consisted of by the combinations of the atoms of about seventy different elements. Now with the further elements discovered there are more than a hundred elements. From the material point of view when we talk about what the world is made of, we say that it is made of these elements. The atoms have since been split, and we have now as the ultimate constituents of matter, twelve different particles of energy called quarks and leptons, and four different types of forces. But the most important thing in this set up is the large space between these particles which though thought to be empty has a field like that of the magnetic field. This field although very weak is spread through out the infinite space and therefore of great importance. Scientists feel that this field is in the form of a particle that can be perhaps found. As the probable existence of it was suggested by Peter Higgs it is called Higgs boson. Once found it will have tremendous importance in the sense that it will be omnipresent and therefore nearer to God. It is therefore called the God Particle. It is mostly non-existent in the physical world. Perhaps it is most of the time beyond the physical in the quantum plane or spiritual domain.
If we approach the question of the constituents of the phenomenal world from the mental angle, we have a picture of the history of the world constructed by Bertrand Russell from sense impressions of the mind. His famous book ‘Mystisism and Logic’ explains it. He called one single impression or image a ‘sensibilia’. A series of sensibilias constituted a perspective. All the perspectives from all points in the universe constituted the article and all perspectives for all time of all objects from all points existent or non-existent constituted the history of the universe. But this model remains at the mental imagery level and does not appear to go deeper. To make good the shortage let us consider a probe into the layers of the mind as available in ancient spiritual texts. The ancients say that objects are, after all mere groups or bundles of sense impressions. Therefore senses are more reliable and important than objects. Mind which collects the impressions are even more important than the senses. Intellect which processes the mental impressions and functions is of next higher importance. Higher than that in importance is the entity that sits behind all this phenomena and perceives all this. Next stage is emptiness from which the entity that perceives emanates. Thus according to their point of view it is from nothingness that the whole universe emerges. But in all these there seem to be no meeting point between the physical, mental and spiritual views.
Human body is physical, made of matter. It deteriorates and ultimately dies. But ultimate material constituents are not destroyed. Deepak Chopra, the author of the book ‘Ageless Body and The Timeless Mind’ says that aging is a matter of choice or is optional and is not mandatory or inevitable. How the choice is exercised is a big question. It is exercised through belief. Aging happens because from birth onwards we believe that we have to age and die. We see also that others as well as animals and plants age and die. This belief has to be reversed to slow down aging. And the belief that aging is not inevitable has to be so rooted that it comes from beyond the mind from the quantum field or domain. You might have read the drama of Bernard Shaw titled ‘Back to Methuselah’ in which the Butler, overhearing about the possibility of living for five hundred years or more from a group of professors’ discussions, believes it so firmly and so intensely that it actually happens to him. The professors were doubtful and they died in their time as usual. Every hundred years the butler managed to fake death by drowning or missing and lived as a new person. Shaw was actually predicting what may happen in future. Now Deepak Chopra tries to prove through the latest findings in quantum physics that aging can actually be avoided.
Body is made of material. But what is this material? If you go to the ultimate ingredients we find the individual cells and then the genetically coded DNA consisting of Nucleotides and then Amino Acids, Sugars etc. Material means cluster of energy. DNA contains information and energy. All the information for the functioning of the body is contained in the DNA. But if you analyze the DNA we come across amino acids, sugars etc which are molecules and atoms only. Atoms consist of quarks, neutrinos and electrons and bosons, all of which are particles in vibration or spin. There is tremendous intelligence functioning in the body for all the organs working in unison. Where is then this intelligence lying? Not in the material body where there is hardly any solid portion where data can be stored.. In between the neutrinos and electrons there is only vast space. In fact 99.9 per cent of material is space. There is intelligence and information functioning, directing, manipulating, guiding these constituents of the body to act in a particular manner in these quantum space or quantum field. It sees and supervises. It makes sure that a cell does not grow as a nail in the liver. Tremendous intelligence is at work without our conscious participation. The seat of this intelligence, the source of this information we cannot find in the cells or in the DNA. The coded information in the DNA functions alright but what intelligence creates it and makes it function we cannot fathom. In the atoms there are quarks and leptons, i.e. electrons and neutrinos. These are concentrations of energy waves. Therefore the whole universe is composed of empty space and energy, fluid energy and empty space. Energy and matter are convertible at quantum level. So, our body is mainly empty space at the quantum level. The material nature of the body ends there. The intelligence, the source has to lie in that empty space in the quantum field. And the empty space is the Higgs field with Higgs bosons. Is the source of all thought and matter including the all pervading Higgs boson that in the quantum domain? Or is it further deep in the spiritual domain? Thus speculating, in finding the God Particle there seems tremendous possibilities not only in the field of nuclear science and origin of the universe, but also in revealing the nature of Ultimate reality or God.
Human thought happens when the neurons in the brain fires. Thought is thus matter. Memory is stored thought. Therefore all kinds of functions that we are conscious of are connected with matter. The only thing we have left is our awareness, pure awareness. All the intelligence, all the information that the body needs must therefore be coming from the awareness or through the awareness. That must be the source and that must be the creator and the controller of the DNA and the very atom. Its seat is in space, everywhere in space. The gap, the chink in the quantum world through which the access to intelligence is possible is the awareness. It is the only possible window.
We know from modern science that billions of cells are dying in our body every day and billions are being replaced. Yet we all look and function as if the body is the same. That is to say that repair and replacements are happening every day, and by the time a year is out we have a completely new body. Then why should we age? It must be because the replacing mechanism does not function fully. Replacing and repairing or healing will work perfectly if the underlying intelligence of the awareness is taken recourse to without interference by thought. The thought has to be quiet, still. According to Deepak Chopra, attention and intention of pure awareness can do the trick.
Einstein has shown ihat is time is a make believe, an illusion. It is relative. Chronological time is because of earth’s change of position or rotation relative to the sun, our light. The duration is divided into twenty four hours, then hours into minutes etc. Imagine a person in empty outer space far away from the sun. What is time for him? There may be changes in his position or bodily functions. But there is no time. There are only changes in the universe. And memory creates past and future. We understand time by thinking. But if we feel it by observing, perceiving, witnessing then we find that time stands still in the present. A timeless mind, a timeless awareness creates an ageless body. Natural rebuilding and replacing of the body happens and aging slows down. Finding the Higgs Boson will lead to better understanding of the nature of empty space, and in turn nothingness, which at the spiritual level is equivalent to awareness.
Scientists are now seriously searching for the ‘God Particle’. Whether we understand it, and appreciate its significance or not, we read in the newspapers about the Large Hadron Collider or LHC and the mysterious Higgs Boson that the scientists are expecting to find. They are searching for it by making protons collide with each other. An unusually large amount of money is spent for the purpose. The fact that scientists have called this ‘god particle’ raises a curiosity and hope in the minds of all of us to know whether they have at last found a basis to connect divinity and spirituality with the material world unifying both together to reveal the ultimate secrets of existence.
When I was studying Chemistry for my Intermediate Class (that is, the present plus two) way back in the forties, we learned that Atom was indivisible. All the materials and substances of the universe were consisted of by the combinations of the atoms of about seventy different elements. Now with the further elements discovered there are more than a hundred elements. From the material point of view when we talk about what the world is made of, we say that it is made of these elements. The atoms have since been split, and we have now as the ultimate constituents of matter, twelve different particles of energy called quarks and leptons, and four different types of forces. But the most important thing in this set up is the large space between these particles which though thought to be empty has a field like that of the magnetic field. This field although very weak is spread through out the infinite space and therefore of great importance. Scientists feel that this field is in the form of a particle that can be perhaps found. As the probable existence of it was suggested by Peter Higgs it is called Higgs boson. Once found it will have tremendous importance in the sense that it will be omnipresent and therefore nearer to God. It is therefore called the God Particle. It is mostly non-existent in the physical world. Perhaps it is most of the time beyond the physical in the quantum plane or spiritual domain.
If we approach the question of the constituents of the phenomenal world from the mental angle, we have a picture of the history of the world constructed by Bertrand Russell from sense impressions of the mind. His famous book ‘Mystisism and Logic’ explains it. He called one single impression or image a ‘sensibilia’. A series of sensibilias constituted a perspective. All the perspectives from all points in the universe constituted the article and all perspectives for all time of all objects from all points existent or non-existent constituted the history of the universe. But this model remains at the mental imagery level and does not appear to go deeper. To make good the shortage let us consider a probe into the layers of the mind as available in ancient spiritual texts. The ancients say that objects are, after all mere groups or bundles of sense impressions. Therefore senses are more reliable and important than objects. Mind which collects the impressions are even more important than the senses. Intellect which processes the mental impressions and functions is of next higher importance. Higher than that in importance is the entity that sits behind all this phenomena and perceives all this. Next stage is emptiness from which the entity that perceives emanates. Thus according to their point of view it is from nothingness that the whole universe emerges. But in all these there seem to be no meeting point between the physical, mental and spiritual views.
Human body is physical, made of matter. It deteriorates and ultimately dies. But ultimate material constituents are not destroyed. Deepak Chopra, the author of the book ‘Ageless Body and The Timeless Mind’ says that aging is a matter of choice or is optional and is not mandatory or inevitable. How the choice is exercised is a big question. It is exercised through belief. Aging happens because from birth onwards we believe that we have to age and die. We see also that others as well as animals and plants age and die. This belief has to be reversed to slow down aging. And the belief that aging is not inevitable has to be so rooted that it comes from beyond the mind from the quantum field or domain. You might have read the drama of Bernard Shaw titled ‘Back to Methuselah’ in which the Butler, overhearing about the possibility of living for five hundred years or more from a group of professors’ discussions, believes it so firmly and so intensely that it actually happens to him. The professors were doubtful and they died in their time as usual. Every hundred years the butler managed to fake death by drowning or missing and lived as a new person. Shaw was actually predicting what may happen in future. Now Deepak Chopra tries to prove through the latest findings in quantum physics that aging can actually be avoided.
Body is made of material. But what is this material? If you go to the ultimate ingredients we find the individual cells and then the genetically coded DNA consisting of Nucleotides and then Amino Acids, Sugars etc. Material means cluster of energy. DNA contains information and energy. All the information for the functioning of the body is contained in the DNA. But if you analyze the DNA we come across amino acids, sugars etc which are molecules and atoms only. Atoms consist of quarks, neutrinos and electrons and bosons, all of which are particles in vibration or spin. There is tremendous intelligence functioning in the body for all the organs working in unison. Where is then this intelligence lying? Not in the material body where there is hardly any solid portion where data can be stored.. In between the neutrinos and electrons there is only vast space. In fact 99.9 per cent of material is space. There is intelligence and information functioning, directing, manipulating, guiding these constituents of the body to act in a particular manner in these quantum space or quantum field. It sees and supervises. It makes sure that a cell does not grow as a nail in the liver. Tremendous intelligence is at work without our conscious participation. The seat of this intelligence, the source of this information we cannot find in the cells or in the DNA. The coded information in the DNA functions alright but what intelligence creates it and makes it function we cannot fathom. In the atoms there are quarks and leptons, i.e. electrons and neutrinos. These are concentrations of energy waves. Therefore the whole universe is composed of empty space and energy, fluid energy and empty space. Energy and matter are convertible at quantum level. So, our body is mainly empty space at the quantum level. The material nature of the body ends there. The intelligence, the source has to lie in that empty space in the quantum field. And the empty space is the Higgs field with Higgs bosons. Is the source of all thought and matter including the all pervading Higgs boson that in the quantum domain? Or is it further deep in the spiritual domain? Thus speculating, in finding the God Particle there seems tremendous possibilities not only in the field of nuclear science and origin of the universe, but also in revealing the nature of Ultimate reality or God.
Human thought happens when the neurons in the brain fires. Thought is thus matter. Memory is stored thought. Therefore all kinds of functions that we are conscious of are connected with matter. The only thing we have left is our awareness, pure awareness. All the intelligence, all the information that the body needs must therefore be coming from the awareness or through the awareness. That must be the source and that must be the creator and the controller of the DNA and the very atom. Its seat is in space, everywhere in space. The gap, the chink in the quantum world through which the access to intelligence is possible is the awareness. It is the only possible window.
We know from modern science that billions of cells are dying in our body every day and billions are being replaced. Yet we all look and function as if the body is the same. That is to say that repair and replacements are happening every day, and by the time a year is out we have a completely new body. Then why should we age? It must be because the replacing mechanism does not function fully. Replacing and repairing or healing will work perfectly if the underlying intelligence of the awareness is taken recourse to without interference by thought. The thought has to be quiet, still. According to Deepak Chopra, attention and intention of pure awareness can do the trick.
Einstein has shown ihat is time is a make believe, an illusion. It is relative. Chronological time is because of earth’s change of position or rotation relative to the sun, our light. The duration is divided into twenty four hours, then hours into minutes etc. Imagine a person in empty outer space far away from the sun. What is time for him? There may be changes in his position or bodily functions. But there is no time. There are only changes in the universe. And memory creates past and future. We understand time by thinking. But if we feel it by observing, perceiving, witnessing then we find that time stands still in the present. A timeless mind, a timeless awareness creates an ageless body. Natural rebuilding and replacing of the body happens and aging slows down. Finding the Higgs Boson will lead to better understanding of the nature of empty space, and in turn nothingness, which at the spiritual level is equivalent to awareness.
Friday, April 23, 2010
sandananda giri
Here is my translation of a Malayalam article from ‘JANMABHOOMI’ which I thought is worth publishing here :-
Divinity is untouched by thought – by Santhananda Giri
Experience the Absolute Truth in the denial of the ‘I’ awareness. It is all the imagined differences joined together that has perpetuated and maintained the ‘I’ throughout the ages and rebirths. When that is removed the quest as to ‘who am I?’ ends. The doubt as to what is that I see around also ends. Because the apprehension of everything is one single unity; then how can one see a second? To evaluate what you see and to elaborate it, the mind is ever ready; but where the mind has vacated what elaboration can exist? Unity is where no two things exist for comparison. Everything ideologically or conceptually habituated end there. Before the existence of One Truth nothing second remains to be talked about. That is the joy of divinity.
Right, wrong, good, bad, blessing, sin, duty, idling, etc. or the interpretation of language to conceptualize the meaning of a thing and its shape, its memory and experience, nothing of these are there in divine experience. Divinity is untouched by thought.
Our decision on any subject is always likely to be wrong. That is because, what we know is about a thing or subject that changes. On things that we know, we decide that it is such and such, but it should have been so and so, that it is beautiful or ugly, and that it is useful or useless etc. They are all ideas that get changed. Life and death are just two concepts. And soul is divine experience. It is very difficult to understand. If life is the continuance of the present, death is an interval. Again it has to continue. The entity that remains throughout the changing experiences is the Truth.
Our conclusions about a subject are most likely to be wrong. Because, what we know are about changing things. And on those changing things we decide what we know as beautiful, ugly, good, bad, useful, useless, essential, unnecessary etc.etc. The ideas are all subject to change. Life and death are just two ideas. And Atma is an experience. It is difficult to understand this. If life is a continuation of the present, its stand-still interval is death. It has no alternative but to repeat itself. That which continues through all these changes of experiences is The Truth. That is the essence of divinity. It is to that entity that has no birth or death. It is beyond time. It is not something that has come into being. Therefore it has no death. Only when one goes beyond the mind it will get revealed. There is neither space nor time there. Therefore God does not engage himself in the work of completing your imaginary aspirations of the future. What is the role of God in life? It exists ever luminous throughout, at the root of all, enlightening everything and every experience, omnipresent, while you conceive and execute every action of yours. Once you understand that God does not undertake the work of making changes in the day to day transactions in the life of man as per man’s wishes, you will not feel cheated.
The reason for all tragedies, all untoward happenings and all sorrows is because of seeing things through the narrow gap of the senses and mind constricted by the feeling of ‘I’ and ‘mine’. Once you know the basics of ‘I’, all problems end. The first thing to understand is that the experiences of the senses are not truth. And firmly establish in your mind that the world around you is not as you see around.
Athma is essentially in the nature of bliss. Therefore whatever you understand in Atma is blissful. Bliss is right. All else is wrong. When does a thing create sorrow? It is when you separate what you see through names and boundaries and considering them as different from you that something becomes the cause for sorrow. Know that all experiences are within yourself. Without the presence of Atma nothing exists here. To know anything ever there must be first a person to know. While knowing as well as after knowing he is there. Therefore without the presence of an ‘I’ it is not possible to know or experience this world. Before experiencing the world there is no sound. Where all the sounds terminate there is the real form. Atma in the form of knowledge is the self; that is the fact and all else is false. There is no ‘knowing’ there. What one knows is of things imagined or conceived in one’s mind due to ignorance. One who knows that what is known in imagination when the energy of Grace is reflected and present, is different from Atma, is the greatest among the spiritual masters. There is no doubt about that. See the world bereft of conceptual imaginations. Don’t doubt whether that is possible. To see our body we do not need imagination, is it not so? Like that see all bodies. That is the way or trick to experience ultimately the divinity in its entirety. In all that you consider as universe, you can experience the essence of divinity. ‘All this in its entirety is divinity of God!’ “Isavasya midam sarvam”, understanding that should be without the interference of the mind.
The duality perceptions of one who sinks into the depths of his visions in the heart gets annihilated. When sights are annihilated the ‘se-er’ is left. The illumination and brightness of the seer is not imaginary or a guess-work. That is Truth. You cannot take it and present it to somebody as you give a physical object. It is not possible to take is as something that can be argued about and won over. It is beyond words. The Atma entity cannot be shown by any demonstration. Those who say that they can show God is misleading you. A real Guru is one who shows you that ‘God Is’ behind the process of your seeing. Not the one who undertakes to save you in the name of God and cheats you.
Words, mind and intellect have no reach there. Then how can it be shared? How can it be shown? There is no other way but to sink into one’s own self. Existence is infinite. Everywhere it is complete. Therefore by perceptions in depth inside it does not become non-existent there. That is how its ‘is-ness’ is to be experienced.
Dry leaf has no individuality in the wind; likewise fly for the sake of Truth in complete renunciation. In that you surrender everything. Let detachment come with a passion. This Absolute Truth is not far off. It is because of burying one’s heart in darkness without appreciating the greatness of human life that we fail to know it. Keeping the mind silent turn your attention towards its depth. It is there, for sure.
Divinity is untouched by thought – by Santhananda Giri
Experience the Absolute Truth in the denial of the ‘I’ awareness. It is all the imagined differences joined together that has perpetuated and maintained the ‘I’ throughout the ages and rebirths. When that is removed the quest as to ‘who am I?’ ends. The doubt as to what is that I see around also ends. Because the apprehension of everything is one single unity; then how can one see a second? To evaluate what you see and to elaborate it, the mind is ever ready; but where the mind has vacated what elaboration can exist? Unity is where no two things exist for comparison. Everything ideologically or conceptually habituated end there. Before the existence of One Truth nothing second remains to be talked about. That is the joy of divinity.
Right, wrong, good, bad, blessing, sin, duty, idling, etc. or the interpretation of language to conceptualize the meaning of a thing and its shape, its memory and experience, nothing of these are there in divine experience. Divinity is untouched by thought.
Our decision on any subject is always likely to be wrong. That is because, what we know is about a thing or subject that changes. On things that we know, we decide that it is such and such, but it should have been so and so, that it is beautiful or ugly, and that it is useful or useless etc. They are all ideas that get changed. Life and death are just two concepts. And soul is divine experience. It is very difficult to understand. If life is the continuance of the present, death is an interval. Again it has to continue. The entity that remains throughout the changing experiences is the Truth.
Our conclusions about a subject are most likely to be wrong. Because, what we know are about changing things. And on those changing things we decide what we know as beautiful, ugly, good, bad, useful, useless, essential, unnecessary etc.etc. The ideas are all subject to change. Life and death are just two ideas. And Atma is an experience. It is difficult to understand this. If life is a continuation of the present, its stand-still interval is death. It has no alternative but to repeat itself. That which continues through all these changes of experiences is The Truth. That is the essence of divinity. It is to that entity that has no birth or death. It is beyond time. It is not something that has come into being. Therefore it has no death. Only when one goes beyond the mind it will get revealed. There is neither space nor time there. Therefore God does not engage himself in the work of completing your imaginary aspirations of the future. What is the role of God in life? It exists ever luminous throughout, at the root of all, enlightening everything and every experience, omnipresent, while you conceive and execute every action of yours. Once you understand that God does not undertake the work of making changes in the day to day transactions in the life of man as per man’s wishes, you will not feel cheated.
The reason for all tragedies, all untoward happenings and all sorrows is because of seeing things through the narrow gap of the senses and mind constricted by the feeling of ‘I’ and ‘mine’. Once you know the basics of ‘I’, all problems end. The first thing to understand is that the experiences of the senses are not truth. And firmly establish in your mind that the world around you is not as you see around.
Athma is essentially in the nature of bliss. Therefore whatever you understand in Atma is blissful. Bliss is right. All else is wrong. When does a thing create sorrow? It is when you separate what you see through names and boundaries and considering them as different from you that something becomes the cause for sorrow. Know that all experiences are within yourself. Without the presence of Atma nothing exists here. To know anything ever there must be first a person to know. While knowing as well as after knowing he is there. Therefore without the presence of an ‘I’ it is not possible to know or experience this world. Before experiencing the world there is no sound. Where all the sounds terminate there is the real form. Atma in the form of knowledge is the self; that is the fact and all else is false. There is no ‘knowing’ there. What one knows is of things imagined or conceived in one’s mind due to ignorance. One who knows that what is known in imagination when the energy of Grace is reflected and present, is different from Atma, is the greatest among the spiritual masters. There is no doubt about that. See the world bereft of conceptual imaginations. Don’t doubt whether that is possible. To see our body we do not need imagination, is it not so? Like that see all bodies. That is the way or trick to experience ultimately the divinity in its entirety. In all that you consider as universe, you can experience the essence of divinity. ‘All this in its entirety is divinity of God!’ “Isavasya midam sarvam”, understanding that should be without the interference of the mind.
The duality perceptions of one who sinks into the depths of his visions in the heart gets annihilated. When sights are annihilated the ‘se-er’ is left. The illumination and brightness of the seer is not imaginary or a guess-work. That is Truth. You cannot take it and present it to somebody as you give a physical object. It is not possible to take is as something that can be argued about and won over. It is beyond words. The Atma entity cannot be shown by any demonstration. Those who say that they can show God is misleading you. A real Guru is one who shows you that ‘God Is’ behind the process of your seeing. Not the one who undertakes to save you in the name of God and cheats you.
Words, mind and intellect have no reach there. Then how can it be shared? How can it be shown? There is no other way but to sink into one’s own self. Existence is infinite. Everywhere it is complete. Therefore by perceptions in depth inside it does not become non-existent there. That is how its ‘is-ness’ is to be experienced.
Dry leaf has no individuality in the wind; likewise fly for the sake of Truth in complete renunciation. In that you surrender everything. Let detachment come with a passion. This Absolute Truth is not far off. It is because of burying one’s heart in darkness without appreciating the greatness of human life that we fail to know it. Keeping the mind silent turn your attention towards its depth. It is there, for sure.
I AND MY BOREDOM
I and my boredom
Who am I?
Of course, I am surely the entity that feels the pain when this body is pinched.
No doubt about that. Is that your body that feels the pain or the mind behind it?
The body feels the pain and the mind recognises it.
Then who are you?
The body-mind-complex, or the body-mind system as a whole.
But what is the mind?
Running thoughts, memory, and memory retrieval mechanism (and the running commentator?) constitute the mind.
What about the sense organs and attention? Are they not part of the mind?
No, sense organs just feed the attention at the moment, and the memory storage. Attention seems to be focussed awareness, a part of the vast awareness that powers everything.
Then where comes the feeling of ‘I’ or the ‘ego’ as it is referred to?
‘I’ seems to be a mental construction of an image from various memory factors for purposes of identity, self perceived security, and self importance.
In this set up, who is bored? The body cannot be bored. There is no reason for the memory, or running thoughts to be bored. Awareness, while supplying power, is a passive witness, never bothered about boredom. Then who gets bored?
The mental construction that is ego, who is selfish and wants some pleasure all the time, coaxes the attention to jump from one thing to the other searching for pleasure or at least some engagement of the attention so that it can ride on it and enjoy. Otherwise it is afraid that it will be burdened with suppressed fears, discomforts or aches of the body highlighted, and other unpleasant experiences. That could be the only reason to be bored. It is this ego, a fictitious element that is getting bored.
There is that great saying Tat Twam Asi ‘that thou art’. What is ‘that’ and what is ‘thou’? ‘that’ seems to refer to the Ultimate reality, and ‘thou’ to ‘you’. How can the ultimate reality be the miserable ’you’?
'THAT', of course, refers to the Ultimate Reality, which is the same entity as the Pure Awareness that powers man including his universe. Or it could be what is virtually beyond and behind the Awareness in the quantum domain. There is no way of knowing.
And ‘thou’ here does not refer to the miserable ‘you’ or the ego. It refers to the entity that is beyond and behind the body-mind complex, powering it as well as everything else. It cannot be ‘you’ in the sense that the limited ego or ‘I- feeling’ cannot be the vast immeasurable Infinity that is the ultimate reality. The profound statement if thus interpreted would seem to be nothing but a tautology saying ‘ultimate reality is ultimate reality’. It may look absurd, but It means that the ultimate principle of the universe is the same as the ultimate reality lying within you. That is to say that you need not look elsewhere to find the Truth but within yourself.
Who am I?
Of course, I am surely the entity that feels the pain when this body is pinched.
No doubt about that. Is that your body that feels the pain or the mind behind it?
The body feels the pain and the mind recognises it.
Then who are you?
The body-mind-complex, or the body-mind system as a whole.
But what is the mind?
Running thoughts, memory, and memory retrieval mechanism (and the running commentator?) constitute the mind.
What about the sense organs and attention? Are they not part of the mind?
No, sense organs just feed the attention at the moment, and the memory storage. Attention seems to be focussed awareness, a part of the vast awareness that powers everything.
Then where comes the feeling of ‘I’ or the ‘ego’ as it is referred to?
‘I’ seems to be a mental construction of an image from various memory factors for purposes of identity, self perceived security, and self importance.
In this set up, who is bored? The body cannot be bored. There is no reason for the memory, or running thoughts to be bored. Awareness, while supplying power, is a passive witness, never bothered about boredom. Then who gets bored?
The mental construction that is ego, who is selfish and wants some pleasure all the time, coaxes the attention to jump from one thing to the other searching for pleasure or at least some engagement of the attention so that it can ride on it and enjoy. Otherwise it is afraid that it will be burdened with suppressed fears, discomforts or aches of the body highlighted, and other unpleasant experiences. That could be the only reason to be bored. It is this ego, a fictitious element that is getting bored.
There is that great saying Tat Twam Asi ‘that thou art’. What is ‘that’ and what is ‘thou’? ‘that’ seems to refer to the Ultimate reality, and ‘thou’ to ‘you’. How can the ultimate reality be the miserable ’you’?
'THAT', of course, refers to the Ultimate Reality, which is the same entity as the Pure Awareness that powers man including his universe. Or it could be what is virtually beyond and behind the Awareness in the quantum domain. There is no way of knowing.
And ‘thou’ here does not refer to the miserable ‘you’ or the ego. It refers to the entity that is beyond and behind the body-mind complex, powering it as well as everything else. It cannot be ‘you’ in the sense that the limited ego or ‘I- feeling’ cannot be the vast immeasurable Infinity that is the ultimate reality. The profound statement if thus interpreted would seem to be nothing but a tautology saying ‘ultimate reality is ultimate reality’. It may look absurd, but It means that the ultimate principle of the universe is the same as the ultimate reality lying within you. That is to say that you need not look elsewhere to find the Truth but within yourself.
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