The jnani or liberated sage no longer has an individual identity to be concerned or embarrassed about, and his psychosomatic apparatus, the body, carries out its normal functions in the normal way without his even being aware of them. The wisdom he speaks is being said not by an individual personality but by the universal Consciousness, which has no shape or form.
Ramesh Balsekar
IN ALL OUR experiences, there is always the experiencer, the observer, who is gathering to himself more and more or denying himself. Is that not a wrong process and is that not a pursuit which does not bring about the creative state? If it is a wrong process, can we wipe it out completely and put it aside? That can come about only when I experience, not as a thinker experiences, but when I am aware of the false process and see that there is only a state in which the thinker is the thought.
So long as I am experiencing, so long as I am becoming, there must be this dualistic action; there must be the thinker and the thought, two separate processes at work; there is no integration, there is always a centre which is operating through the will of action to be or not to be – collectively, individually, nationally and so on. Universally, this is the process. So long as effort is divided into the experiencer and the experience, there must be deterioration. Integration is only possible when the thinker is no longer the observer. That is, we know at present there are the thinker and the thought, the observer and the observed, the experiencer and the experienced; there are two different states. Our effort is to bridge the two.
The will of action is always dualistic. Is it possible to go beyond this will which is separative and discover a state in which this dualistic action is not? That can only be found when we directly experience the state in which the thinker is the thought. We now think the thought is separate from the thinker; but is that so? We would like to think it is, because then the thinker can explain matters through his thought. The effort of the thinker is to become more or become less; and therefore, in that struggle, in that action of the will, in ‘becoming’, there is always the deteriorating factor; we are pursuing a false process and not a true process.
Is there a division between the thinker and the thought? So long as they are separate, divided, our effort is wasted; we are pursuing a false process which is destructive and which is the deteriorating factor. We think the thinker is separate from his thought. When I find that I am greedy, possessive, brutal, I think I should not be all this. The thinker then tries to alter his thoughts and therefore effort is made to ‘become; in that process of effort he pursues the false illusion that there are two separate processes, whereas there is only one process. I think therein lies the fundamental factor of deterioration.
Is it possible to experience that state when there is only one entity and not two separate processes, the experiencer and the experience? Then perhaps we shall find out what it is to be creative, and what the state is in which there is no deterioration at any time, in whatever relationship man may be.
I am greedy. I and greed are not two different states; there is only one thing and that is greed. If I am aware that I am greedy, what happens? I make an effort not to be greedy, either for sociological reasons or for religious reasons; that effort will always be in a small limited circle; I may extend the circle but it is always limited. Therefore the deteriorating factor is there. But when I look a little more deeply and closely, I see that the maker of effort is the cause of greed and he is greed itself; and I also see that there is no ‘me’ and greed, existing separately, but that there is only greed. If I realize that I am greedy, that there is not the observer who is greedy but I am myself greed, then our whole question is entirely different; our response to it is entirely different; then our effort is not destructive.
What will you do when your whole being is greed, when whatever action you do is greed? Unfortunately, we don’t think along those lines. There is the ‘me’, the superior entity, the soldier who is controlling, dominating. To me that process is destructive. It is an illusion and we know why we do it. I divide myself into the high and the low in order to continue. If there is only greed, completely, not ‘I’ operating greed, but I am entirely greed, then what happens? Surely then there is a different process at work altogether, a different problem comes into being. It is that problem which is creative, in which there is no sense of ‘I’ dominating, becoming, positively or negatively. We must come to that state if we would be creative. In that state, there is no maker of effort. It is not a matter of verbalizing or of trying to find out what that state is; if you set about it in that way you will lose and you will never find. What is important is to see that the maker of effort and the object towards which he is making effort are the same. That requires enormously great understanding, watchfulness, to see how the mind divides itself into the high and the low – the high being the security, the permanent entity – but still remaining a process of thought and therefore of time. If we can understand this as direct experience, then you will see that quite a different factor comes into being.
J. Krishnamurti
Do not stand at my grave and weep.
I am not there; I do not sleep.
I am a thousand winds that blow.
I am the diamond glints on snow.
I am the sunlight on ripened grain.
I am the gentle autumn rain.
When you awaken in the morning’s hush
I am the swift uplifting rush
Of quiet birds in circled flight.
I am the soft star that shines at night.
Do not stand at my grave and cry;
I am not there; I did not die
Mary Elizabeth Frye
I discovered that it is necessary, absolutely necessary, to believe in nothing. That is, we have to believe in something which has no form and no color–something which exists before all forms and colors appear… No matter what god or doctrine you believe in, if you become attached to it, your belief will be based more or less on a self-centered idea.
Shunryu Suzuki
When you realize yourself as less than a point in space and time, something too small to be cut and too short-lived to be killed, then, and then only, all fear goes. When you are smaller than the point of a needle, then the needle cannot pierce you–you pierce the needle!
Nisargadatta Maharaj
To cease fabricating objects in the mind is to stop perceiving what we are not and to apperceive what we ARE.
~
‘Me’ is the conceptual flow of time to the future from the past, a flow that makes the relative present impossible to exist, while that which I AM is the eternal present moment.
Ramesh Balsekar
To the illumined man or woman, a clod of dirt, a stone, and gold are the same.
Bhagavat Gita
In order to understand this strange, unknown, starkly inevitable thing called death we must first understand life. What we must find out is what we are now.
Ramesh Balsekar
If deep down inside you want most desperately to survive and be in control of things, you cannot genuinely take the attitude of not worrying about it. And trying to stop worry means making an effort to control. You must allow yourself the freedom to worry, to let the mind think whatever it wants to think.
Ramesh Balsekar
I cannot be touched, nor tasted or smelt.
No sound is my equal, no form will be I.
Lay to rest then the seeking of objective experience
And I will be with you in the blink of an eye.
I am here, always here as the presence eternal
Forever unknown, a mystery I be
To myself, for no other exists in this presence
You, him and her are always just me.
As I seek it is I that I seek for, not knowing
That the seeking is my action manifesting as things.
Their appearance obscures what immediately remains
When searching collapses, the moment then brings
The realization that what lies behind all the movement
Is this stillness that always, already is here.
Rested unnoticed I am the bare empty canvas
On which the light-show of life does appear.
All is just this, nothing more, nothing less,
And when my attention comes finally to rest
At its source it is seen it is I that creates
All arising as my effort to fulfill my quest.
Avasa