The mind must learn that beyond the moving mind there is the background of awareness, which does not change. The mind must come to know the true self and respect it and cease covering it up, like the moon which obscures the sun during solar eclipse. Just realize that nothing observable, or experienceable is you, or binds you. Take no notice of what is not yourself.
Nisargadatta Maharaj
Don’t bully yourself. Violence will make you hard and rigid. Do not fight with what you take to be obstacles on your way. Just be interested in them, watch them, observe, enquire. Let anything happen — good or bad. But don’t let yourself be submerged by what happens.
Nisargadatta Maharaj
The ‘I am’ came first, it’s ever present,
ever available, refuse all thoughts except
‘I am’, stay there…
Understanding the ‘I am’, your sense of ‘being’ or just ‘presence’ is extremely important as on it rests the entire outcome of the teaching.
Firstly, are you at all aware of your ‘being’ or of the fact that ‘you are’? You have ‘to be’ before anything else can be,
your sense of ‘presence’ or the feeling ‘I am’ is really fundamental to anything that has to follow.
Secondly, this sense of ‘being’ or the feeling ‘I am’, was it not the very first event or happening before any of your living experiences could begin? Apply your mind go back in time to the moment when it dawned on you that ‘you are’ or ‘I am’. This ‘I am’ is still there with you, ever present, ever available, it was and still is the first thought, refuse all other thoughts and come back there and stay there.
So try to understand and grasp this ‘beingness’ or ‘I amness’ that is inherent in you. The more precisely and clearly you do it the more rapid will be your progress.
Nisargadatta Maharaj
Q: Beeteen the spirit and the body, is it love that provides the bridge?
M: What else? Mind create abyss, the heart cross it.
Nisargadatta Maharaj
Only that which was prior to the appearance of this body-consciousness is your true identity.
That is Reality.
It is here and now, and there is no question of anyone being able to reach for it or grasp it.
Ramesh Balsekar
Practice non-action.
Work without doing.
Taste the tasteless.
Magnify the small, increase the few.
Reward the bitterness with care.
See simplicity in the complicated.
Achieve greatness in little things.
In the universe the difficult things are done as if they are easy.
In the universe great acts are made up of small deeds.
The sage does not attempt anything very big,
And thus achieves greatness.
Easy promises make for little trust.
Taking things lightly results in great difficulty.
Because the sage always confronts difficulties,
He never experiences them.
Lao Tzu
What becomes clear after a period of the conscious seeking taking place is that the ego mind always wants to do the job of helping to reach enlightenment. This is its strategy for maintaining its image of itself as the doer or controller of what is simply happening.
Any form of meditation that holds an intention within it is for a future moment and as long as this imagined future moment is envisioned so is the continuation of the ego concept. What is a requirement for awakening is the realization that there is no actual past or future, just the moment, which has already dissolved when it has been claimed to be.
In the seeing of Oneness not only is there no past or future, other than a thought arising in that particular way, but there is no NOW! The term “Be Here Now” has no place in this seeing for where is NOW?
This term also implies that there is a someone to be here now and this is not the case. There is not and never has been a someone here now, such a term is based upon a deep ignorance and given as an order by this ignorance to an imagined someone. There is only this and this is already passed by the time it is claimed to be this, immediately replaced by a new this.
In fact unless the word THIS is referring directly to Awareness, which is the permanent this, it is a misused word. Awareness is an unchanging, permanent presence, even in those moments when its attention is on objects, and therefore unaware of itself. It is ALWAYS present as THIS that cannot be described because it is not a thing as such, it is indescribable because of the very fact that it has no description.
Usually when an experience has taken place which the mind has claimed to be enlightenment the expression is stated with awe “ It is indescribable WOW ”. This is a description of something NOT nothing. In the moment of actual realization there is a wow but is a gentle wow, a sort of “Ah! This is it” in all its obviousness, nothing new, totally familiar.
The so called spiritual seeker has been filled with the nonsense of spiritual jargon and has been measuring that against all the experiences, waiting for that to fit one of those experiences and so confirm that enlightenment has taken place. The moment of enlightenment is self confirming and fits none of the previously given descriptions for it has no description.
No help at all is required of the ego to bring about the elimination of the ego as the entity that it is imagined to be, when it is seen to be no more than an activity.
Any help or effort with intention will guarantee the continuation of the ego concept holding its place in the mind as an imagined entity.
This does not mean that there is abstinence from experience, in fact experiences are taken on board more fully than ever as there is no one to refuse them and so they are received and expressed fully. They come, they remain in expression momentarily and they dissolve, leaving behind THIS that is NOT an experience. All is simply happening, to no one.
Too often it is seen that helpers are present offering solutions in the form of deliberate doing to imagined doers to bring about the moment when it is realized that there is no doer, only the action of doing taking place as the stillness of Awareness releases and gives rise to another bubble of activity. This is a joke, the Divine joke, for ALL action is Divine action. The one imagined to be resisting this recognition and the one imagined to be no longer resisting are both activities of the One.
No one realizes and no one does not realize, these both are impersonal actions arising as sensation or thought, witnessed by this empty Awareness, no one.
When this is clearly seen it is obvious that all seeing is seen, witnessed, by the same Being and that it is this Being itself which is manifesting temporarily as things but is in itself the no-thing within which the manifestation is appearing, it is all One.
This then is “I”, I am the nothingness out of which all manifests AND the manifestation itself. This is what is true of us all, there is no US, there is only I.
I am appearing as you and myself as these apparently separate objects in all circumstances. There is therefore no actual separation but only apparent separation, the former is a BELIEF and the latter is SEEN. The former is the illusion of no other than the latter, witnessing , for there is no actual witness only witnessing. Throughout the whole of creation that is action only, no actor.
“ There is doing but no doer thereof ”
The Buddha
“ There is writing but no writer, a verb but no noun.”
Avasa
There is neither creation nor destruction, Neither destiny nor free will, Neither path nor achievement; This is the final truth.
Sri Ramana Maharshi
Words create worlds. Reality is silent.
Nisargadatta Maharaj