not2.info

Tag: mind

  • Body-mind

    The body is made of food, as the mind is made of thoughts. See them as they are.

    You are neither the body nor the mind, they appear and disappear according to their own laws. Let the body and mind work according to their own inclinations and the conditions, but know you are not them.

    Miseries abound because we identify ourselves with the body. It is the nature of the body-mind to experience joys and sorrows. If you know that you are not the body, there is no suffering. In deep sleep there is no identification with the body, hence there is no experience of happiness or sorrow. Yet the mind goes on working, taking itself to be the body. It is false. If there is no mind then nothing can be witnessed. With the conviction that you are neither the body, nor the mind, you will understand this fraud.

    The body-mind complex is merely an object, a phenomenon, and no phenomenon can act. You think you decide, but that is purely a concept. The individual as an object thinks he can decide, but in fact no object can decide. Everything is conceptual, and the concept of acting is in your body-mind complex.

    The mistaken idea: ‘I am the body-mind’ causes the self-concern, which obscures the universe, just as a speck in the eye, by causing inflammation, may wipe out the world. It is useless to fight the sense of being a limited and separate person unless the roots of it are laid bare. Selfishness is rooted in the mistaken ideas of oneself.

    To get rid of the habit of the body-mind is difficult and will take considerable time. It is done by substituting one habit for another. The substitute habit is to think constantly that you are not the body. Observe and understand that events are started by your mind, but you are only its witness. Do not participate. Be no longer concerned. All the world activities happen through the mind. If you think ‘I am the body-mind’… then you are doomed.

    Any thoughts or actions will be based on body-mind identity, and in order to see your true nature there must be abandonment of this identity with the phenomenal centre. This cannot come about by any volitional action… it happens without any special efforts. There is no question of doing anything because there is no one to do anything.

    You can only kill the body, you cannot stop the mental processes, nor can you put an end to the person you think you are. Just remain unaffected. This complete aloofness, unconcern with mind and body is the best proof that, at the core of your being, you are neither mind nor body. What happens to the body and the mind may not be within your power to change, but you can always put an end to your imagining yourself to be body and mind. Whatever happens, remind yourself that only your body and mind are affected, not yourself.

    Outside your consciousness nothing exists. All being, like all knowing, relates to you. A thing is because you know it to be either in your experience or in your being. Your body and your mind exist as long as you believe so. Cease to think that they are yours and they will just dissolve. By all means let your body and mind function, but do not let them limit you. If you notice imperfections, just keep on noticing… your very giving attention to them will set your heart and mind and body right. Man becomes what he believes himself to be. Abandon all ideas about yourself, and you will find yourself to be the pure witness, beyond all that can happen to the body or the mind.

    You have to be separate from your mind and your body. This is the total message. You are that sense of presence, and not the body-mind.

    Take steps to separate your real self, that in you which is changeless, from your body and mind. The more earnest you are at remembering what needs to be remembered, the sooner will you be aware of yourself as you are, for memory will become experience. Earnestness reveals being. What is imagined and willed becomes actuality… here lies the danger as well as the way out.

    Does the mind appear in the body, or the body in the mind? Surely there must be a mind to conceive the ‘I-am-the-body’ idea. Realize that the body depends on the mind, and the mind on consciousness, and consciousness on awareness, and not the other way around.

    Matter and mind are not separate, they are aspects of one energy. Look at the mind as a function of matter and you have science, look at matter as the product of mind and you have religion. The confusion is apparent and purely verbal. What is, is. Neither mind nor matter come first. Matter is the shape, mind is the name. Together they make the world. Pervading and transcending is Reality… pure being-awareness-bliss… your very essence.

    There is no duality. There is the body and the Self. Between them is the mind, in which the Self is reflected as ‘I Am’. Because of the imperfections of the mind, its crudity and restlessness, lack of discernment and insight, it takes itself to be the body, not the Self. All that is needed is to purify the mind so that it can realize its identity with the Self. When the mind merges in the Self, the body presents no problems. It remains what it is, an instrument of cognition and action, the tool and the expression of the creative fire within. The ultimate value of the body is that it serves to discover the cosmic body, which is the universe in its entirety. As you realize yourself in manifestation, you keep on discovering that you are ever more than what you have imagined. As there is no beginning, there is no end.

    A person caught in a whirlpool suffocates and drowns. One who dives to the bottom of the vortex gets out. We are caught in the whirlpool of the body-mind… dive deep into the mind to get out of it.

    Nisargadatta Maharaj

  • Feeling the fear

    There is nothing wrong with being afraid but if we give into it we desensitise the body and suffer. Fear can be used to enliven the body and bring focus to the mind, when this is clear we can welcome it in the knowledge that we benefit from it.

    We are in very strange times now and anyone who does not feel fear is either enlightened or has a mental problem, I am not sure which in my case LOL.
    What I have been talking about for years now is happening and if we can face this and not try to hide in the hope that it will go away it can change for the better, we will all come out of it stronger in ourselves. If we are able to be open and allow the impact of information to be felt it will lead us to our true self. Yes we will have to face the feelings of helplessness and hopelessness and uselessness but if these are fully felt we arrive in a place within ourselves where we are the power that creates the universe. This is where the change for the better for ALL can take place, ONLY from here. You are not alone in this as many are realising what is happening and are willing to be open without hiding and it is in this way that we can bring about change.
    There are no plans or strategies that will change the present situation on this planet. Only by allowing what we see and hear etc to have its affect upon us without denying it will bring about the much needed change. “I” is the greatest power that exists and only “I” can change the dream of the world. The requirement now is that we take what is happening to face whatever arises as reaction and stay present to it until “I” is revealed, We are heading into a time of mass enlightenment, conscious awareness of the fact that we are all the same Being, it is already happening. The fear is of the one that imagines itself to exist, the ego, and that one will die in the fire of the fear leaving behind this which never dies and is never threatened, “I”.
    This is our adventure.

    Avasa

  • Self-improvement

    The unfortunate result of all efforts at self-improvement is that the ego creates further and deeper separation within itself, defeating its own purpose by strengthening the very source of separation and conflict that the ego itself is. Such efforts lead at best to mental frustration and at worst to total insanity.

    Ramesh Balsekar

  • Seeing and not seeing

    Out of all the many awakenings that have been described to me, it is continuously confirmed that one of the first realisations that arises is the seeing that no­one awakens. And yet we see that the majority of teachings, both traditional and contemporary, are constantly speaking to an apparent separate seeker (subject) and recommending that in order to attain enlightenment (object) they should choose to meditate, self­enquire, purify, cultivate understanding, still the mind and the ego, surrender, be honest, seek earnestly , give up seeking, do therapy, do nothing, be here now, and so on . . . the ideas are as endless and as complicated as the mind from where they are generated.

    These recommendations arise from the belief that the “enlightenment” of the “teacher” has been attained or earned through the application of choice, effort, acceptance or surrender, an d that other seekers can be taught to do the same.

    Of course there can be nothing right or wrong with earnest seeking, meditation, self enquiry, understanding and so on. They are simply what they appear to be. But who is it that is going to choose to make the effort? Where is the effort going to take the apparent chooser to? ­ where is there to go if there is only oneness? If there is no separate individu al there is no volition, and so how can an illusion dispel itself?

    There is no person that becomes enlightened. No­one awakens. Awakening is the absence of the illusion of individu ality. Already there is only awakeness, oneness, timeless being, radical aliveness. When the dream seeker is no more it is seen (by no­one) that there is nothing to seek and no­one to become liberated.

    Here is oneness, the realisation of wholeness that cannot be attained or owned. This is the awakening in which the awareness of what is arises together with the dreaming of that which cannot be known. There can be a dance between dreaming and being, and in that dance there can be a retu rn to the fascination of personal ownership.

    However, the realisation that the dream seeker is also oneness is liberation, the uncaused, impersonal, silent stillness which is the celebration of unconditional love. This is all there is.

    There is no me or you , no seeker, no enlightenment, no disciple and no guru . There is no better or worse, no path or purpose, and nothing that has to be achieved.

    All appearance is source. All that apparently manifests in the hypnotic dream of separation ­ the world, the life story, the search for home, is one appearing as two the nothing appearing as everything, the absolute appearing as the particular.

    There is no separate intelligence weaving a destiny and no choice functioning at any level. Nothing is happening but this, as it is, invites the apparent seeker to rediscover that which is . . . the abiding, uncaused, unchanging, impersonal silence from which unconditional love overflows and celebrates. It is the wonderful mystery.

    Tony Parsons

  • A quiet mind

    A quiet mind is all you need. All else will happen rightly, once your mind is quiet. As the sun on rising makes the world active, so does self-awareness affect changes in the mind. In the light of calm and steady self-awareness, inner energies wake up and work miracles without any effort on your part.

    Nisargadatta Maharaj

  • The source of all thought

    Insofar as you keep watching the mind and discover yourself as its witness, nothing else can project itself on the screen of consciousness. This is so because two things cannot occupy the attention at the same moment. Therefore, delve within, and find out where thoughts arise. Seek the source of all thought, and acquire the Self-knowledge which is the awakening of Truth.

    Ramesh Balsekar

  • Zen

    “In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities, hut in the expert’s there are few.”

    SHUNRYU SUZUKI

    zenmind.pdf

  • Prior to time and space

    You, who are the creator of all, have limited yourself to the concept of being in the size of a body and therefore something that is limited to the length of one lifetime.

    You, who are the creator, have fallen into identification with the action of words arising as mind and cease to see that you are what knows of their arising.

    Prior to time and space you are the Stillness within which they arise.

    Avasa

    One-liners.pdf

  • Just be

    There is nothing to practice.

    To know yourself, be yourself.
    To be yourself, stop imagining yourself to be this or that. Just be.

    Let your true nature emerge.
    Don’t disturb your mind with seeking.

    Nisargadatta Maharaj

  • THE THINKER AND THE THOUGHT

    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