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Post by Admin on Jan 15, 2020 21:17:30 GMT
H.W.L. Poonja (Papaji)
One is already free. One need not make any effort. Simply keep quiet. Mind is past, all is past. There is no one who does not speak of anything that he has not read from a book or heard from any teacher. When you reject everything that belongs to the past, you will enter a new, unspeakable dimension.
In the moment between past and future, just look at who you are. No effort, no thought. Just keep quiet. In this quietness you will experience for the the first time a peace, love, beauty that you have never felt.
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Post by Admin on Jan 15, 2020 21:20:56 GMT
Nisargadatta Maharaj ‘Clarity’
The memory of the past unfulfilled desires traps energy, which manifests itself as a person. When its charge gets exhausted, the person dies. Unfulfilled desires are carried over into the next birth. Self-identification with the body creates ever fresh desires and there is no end to them, unless this mechanism of bondage is clearly seen.
It is clarity that is liberating, for you cannot abandon desire,unless its causes and effects are clearly seen. I do not say that the same person is reborn. It dies and dies for good. But its memories remain and their desires and fears. They supply the energy for a new person. The real takes no part in it, but makes it possible by giving it the light.
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Post by Admin on Jan 22, 2020 18:40:39 GMT
Robert Adams Excerpt from: Satsang ‘You’re only playing games with yourself’
When your mind begins to think, stop it, catch it, put an end to it. Many of you are still under the impression that you come to hear lectures, talks. Let me ask you, how many lectures, how many talks have you been to all of your life? And what has it done for you? It simply adds more confusion. Always remember what you are trying to do. You’re not trying to add more knowledge to your ignorance. You’re trying to empty yourself of all your knowledge, all of your ignorance, everything that you have accumulated. You want to become empty.
Yet most people seem to go to different teachers, read many books, and they add on. They keep adding, adding, adding, adding, adding. Yet the day must come in your life, when you stand naked before God, so-to-speak, when you have no crutches to hold onto. All the books are gone, there are no more teachers for you, there’s no one to ask for help, there’s no one to ask if you’re on the right path. It is then that your sadhana actually begins. Ponder this very well. Your sadhana, your spiritual practice does not begin when you’ve gone to many teachers, and you’ve read many books.
It actually begins when you give up everything. That’s when real sadhana begins, when you have surrendered everything, when you’ve emptied yourself of all knowledge, all desires for liberation. When you have become an empty shell, then your spiritual life begins. Until that time you’re only playing games with yourself.
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Post by Admin on Jan 22, 2020 19:21:01 GMT
You have to examine yourself. You have to see who you are. You have to begin to understand, you are not the doer and become still and relaxed and peaceful with yourself.
The way you become peaceful is by realizing I am not the doer. I didn't ask to be born the way I am. I didn't ask to be born of certain parents, in a certain country, at a certain time. I didn't ask to be born into an impoverished family or into a wealthy family or into a spiritual family or into an atheist family or into a family of agnostics. You didn't ask for that yet you find yourself in that particular family.
If you are fortunate enough when you get to the age of reason you begin to question, "How did I get here? What am I doing in this environment? Who put me here? What is my purpose?"
As you sincerely ask yourself these questions, the answers will be revealed to you and you will begin to understand that everything was predetermined, preordained. If you are fortunate enough to come under the tutelage of a guru, or a Jnani it will be explained to you that you may appear to think that you were born into this particular family under these circumstance but in reality that is not you. You are not that.
You are boundless. You are free. You are of the unborn. You have always been and you will always be. That is your true nature.
~ Robert Adams
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Post by Admin on Jan 23, 2020 3:50:43 GMT
H.W.L. Poonja ‘Stop your search, simply be Quiet.’ On three accounts searching and practice are foolishness and misleading and are only the clever mind postponing Freedom. The first is that it creates a searcher. This reinforces the concept of an individual sufferer that is separate from Freedom, and that Self is something "other" than that Here and Now. The second is the search. Searching is a distraction which causes postponement and endless needless suffering. Searching promotes religions, traditions, and paths to be adhered to, which serve only to trap you deeper in illusion. The Truth is only Here and Now, but the search says it is tomorrow. The third account is that search creates an object to be found, and this can be the subtlest and most misleading trap. As you start a search you conceptualize what it is that you are searching for. Since the nature of Maya, of illusion, is that whatever you think the goal to be you will attain it. There is no doubt about this: as you think so it becomes. So because of your search you will create and then attain that which you think you are searching for! Any heaven or high spiritual state you long to attain you will attain after you conceptualize and create it. Then you will rest satisfied in this trap thinking that you have attained your "Heaven." This pie-in-the-sky freedom custom made for you out of your very own thought and conditioning of what the ultimate is. The Truth is beyond thought, concept, and conditioning and this Truth is what you are, and only the Truth Is. So stop your search, simply be Quiet.
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Post by Admin on Jan 25, 2020 22:52:41 GMT
Robert Adams ‘Awakening’
When one starts to go into the self deeper and deeper within and finally reaches an awakening, that one becomes the whole universe. This is what awakening is. Awakening is not selfish. There are some people who believe you awaken to a greater and bigger personality. Some people actually believe that you awaken to gigantic ego. Where you're able to do all kinds of miracles and perform all kinds of feats.
Again let me remind you that there has to be someone left to do those things. When you awaken, the personal self has been destroyed. There is no-one to have siddhis, no-one to perform miracles, no-one to be clairvoyant, no-one to tell fortunes. All that has been completely annihilated and only the substratum remains.
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Post by Admin on Jan 26, 2020 0:32:17 GMT
The mind is nothing else but the self.
Assumption obscures reality without destroying it. All separation, every kind of estrangement and alienation is false.
Your being a person is due to the illusion of space and time. The mind creates time and space and takes own creations for reality.
Nisargadatta Maharaj
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Post by Admin on Jan 26, 2020 1:18:52 GMT
Everything and everyone have to be abandoned at some point. All possessions and all relationships will leave you. No matter how much love you have for a person, that relationship, will go one day because it is not who you are. Who you are never goes, never leaves. A king in India built the Taj Mahal to enshrine his love for his dead wife. She was the love of his life, but the relationship ended and left him. So what is your nature? It is 'I am'. Not 'I am this' or 'I am that'. Not the 'I' that owns a house or has a relationship with a wife. Just 'I am', with nothing attached to it, or identified with it. Let your will burn in this fire so that it takes you nowhere else. Let your self be burned in this fire of eternity, love and peace. Don't be afraid of this fire, it is love itself. This desire for freedom is the fire of love!
~ Papaji
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Post by Admin on Jan 26, 2020 1:34:10 GMT
We are happy in deep sleep. We remain then as the pure Self. The same we are just now too. In such sleep there was neither the wife nor others nor even ‘I’. Now they become apparent and give rise to pleasure or pain. Why should not the Self, which was blissful in deep sleep, continue its blissful nature even now? The sole obstruction to such continuity is the wrong identification of the Self with the body. There is neither birth nor death. Waking is birth and sleep is death. The difference lies in the different thoughts. That is the cause of pain. All this is the mischief of the mind. The mind creates pain for himself even when there is pleasure. But pleasure and pain are mental creations. Again, why mourn the dead? They are free from bondage. Mourning is the chain forged by the mind to bind itself to the dead. The Bhagavad Gita says: “What if anyone is dead? What if anyone is ruined? Be dead yourself - be ruined yourself”. In that sense there is no pain after one’s death. What is meant by this sort of death? Annihilation of the ego, though the body is alive. If the ego persists the man is afraid of death. The man mourns another’s death. He need not do so if he predeceases them (by waking up from the ego-dream, which amounts to killing the egosense). The experience of deep sleep clearly teaches that happiness consists in being without the body. The wise also confirm it, speaking of liberation after the body is given up. Thus the sage is awaiting the casting off of the body. Just as a labourer carrying a load on his head for the sake of wages bears the burden with no pleasure, carries it to the destination, and finally unburdens himself with relief and joy; so also the sage bears this body, awaiting the right and destined time to discard it.
~ Talks with Sri Ramana Maharshi, Talk 203.
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Post by Admin on Jan 26, 2020 21:27:22 GMT
Robert Adams Excerpt from: Satsang ‘No one came to this earth to suffer’
When I was in Benares, in India, I went to see a jnani that nobody ever heard of, named Swami Brahmadanda, which means 'The Staff of God.' He had three disciples that had been with him for about 50 years. He was about 90 years old. And I was invited to sit by him. I think I was the first westerner to get permission. So I sat with him a few days, listening to him say nothing. He was mostly silent.
On the third day that I was with him he announced to his disciples, three of them were devotees, that his body is in pain, that it’s arthritic, but that he has work to do. He hasn’t finished his work on this plane. So he’s going to leave his body tomorrow at 3:00, and take on the body of a younger person. He said somebody would slip on the street, it was raining, and crack his head, and I will take up that body. I listened as I usually do, and we couldn't wait for tomorrow to come to see what happened. Nobody cared about the fact that he was going to die. We wanted to see if he could do what he said.
So at about 3:00 he was sitting in the lotus posture, he actually stiffened up, and he did die! I felt his pulse; no pulse. I pinched him. Nothing happened. His body was an empty shell. We fooled around with his body for about a half hour to see if we could bring him back to life or whatever. Nothing.
We heard a commotion outside. We went out and sure enough, a young man from Benares had slipped on the wet street and hit his head. There was a crowd gathered and there was a doctor there. He was pronounced dead. All of a sudden, he got up and ran into the forest. No word was ever heard from him again. Explain that one.
There are many unusual things going on in this world. Most Westerners never experience those things or come in contact with people who have.
There is also the story of a great saint who was passing through a town. And in that particular town there was a snake, a boa constrictor, who used to devour the children. They beseeched the saint. They said, "Master, please help us. We’re all afraid this boa constrictor is going to kill our children again and again. Can you do something for us?" So the master said, "Yes I will."
He went up to the snake and spoke snake language and said, "Snake, I want you to stop devouring these little children in this town. Leave them alone. Promise me that you will." And the snake said, "Yes, I promise." He couldn’t say otherwise to the great sage.
Six months passed. The sage was going through the town again. He saw a crowd of children, forty or fifty of them, playing in a circle. He went to look. And there was the snake, in the middle of the circle, all bloody. The children were throwing rocks at him, kicking him. The snake was nearly dead. The sage chased the children away and went over to the snake and said, "What’s the matter with you? Why do you allow yourself to be beaten like this? Why don’t you defend yourself? So the snake said, "Oh master, I listened to you, I can’t help it, when you told me not to harm the children. I have become helpless.." Then the sage said, "You foolish snake, I told you not to bite. Did I tell you not to hiss?
And this story is simply the fact that most of us think we ought to not get into a temper and fight because we’re spiritual. The truth is, we can make a lot of noise and do nothing. We can put on an act. Sometimes when I go to the bank to get a loan I put on a three piece suit with a tie, and act normal. They throw me out anyway, but at least I try.
The reason I’m telling you this story is because this particular saint who did this thing with the snake was seen at four places at one time, in various different cities in India. People said he couldn't have been there at this time, because he was here. And in another city up North, they said, "No, he was here." So the question again is, can certain sages can be in three or four places at the same time?
The answer is yes. This is a rare, but very possible phenomena. When you realize your omnipresence, when you have an inkling who you are, that’s all you have to know, who you really are, that you are not the body-mind phenomena, that you are absolute reality, consciousness, that you are undivided. That alone allows you to be everywhere at the same time, because you are everything. Perhaps that is why the people on the toilet were able to see me, yet I’m unaware of it. I don't have to be aware of it, due to the fact that to be aware of it I would have to be somebody else. I would have to be the person who was aware, and the person who appeared somewhere else. But there is only one. And those of use who have faith in sages and saints, can actually talk to them and see them in physical presence, yet perhaps they have been dead for many years, or they’re also somewhere else in a different country. All these things are possible.
I’ve also mentioned one day here, many times I have visions where I am walking with Ramana Maharshi along the Ganges. And we’re discussing simple things like the weather. This is just another example of the possibility of being in two or three places at the same time. A vision is not a dream. A vision is an actual experience. It is a phenomena happening in the phenomenal world. Anything is possible. Never believe that something is impossible, because it limits you. Even if you haven't experienced anything yourself, have faith in yourself, that within you are all possibilities.
Of course, the first thing you should realize is that there will never been a time when you disappear, or die, because there was never a time when you were born. You have always existed as consciousness, and you will always exist as consciousness. And even if a person is a skeptic, and he says, "Well I’m not consciousness, that’s ridiculous. I’m conscious but I’m a body, because I can feel myself and I am conscious of your body, because I see you and I can feel you."
So when you identify with your body you’ve got problems. Who can tell me why? Why do you have problems when you identify with the body?
The body is never the same and you will always be disappointed. The body is skinny at one time, and you say, "I’m too thin." The body becomes fat, you say, "I’m too fat." The body loses its hair, you say, "I am going bald, I‘ve got to do something." The body becomes ill, you say, "I’ve got creaks in my bones." You’re never happy. You never understand what’s going on.
And if you live just to make money and you have lots of possessions, there is nothing wrong with that. I always like to say, possess what you want but never be possessed by your possessions, for if you think something is yours everything has to change. It might be yours for a short time. Then you have to give it up, either voluntarily or forcefully. And you’re always crying, you’re always bitching, you’re always complaining, you always think something’s wrong, but the only thing that is wrong is in your thinking. You are allowing your mind to dictate to you and tell you what’s what. When you finally wake up slightly, you begin to understand that the mind is not your friend. The mind is only a conglomeration of thoughts about the past and worries about the future. That’s all your mind is. Thoughts! Thoughts about the past and the future. If you listen you become disturbed for you bring the past into the present, and then you become concerned about the future.
Then we finally say to ourselves, "Who is the watcher? Who is this person that has been watching the mind?" We honestly have to say, therefore, "I don't know. I don't know who I am. I have no idea who has been watching, but I have to admit I have been watching. All these years I thought that when I said I, I was referring to my mind. I believed my mind was I. But now as I watch myself getting angry, as I watch myself becoming depressed, or becoming happy, I realize that I am separate from my mind. Therefore, who am I? Where did I come from? It’s amazing that I am able to watch my mind doing all these things to me. But now I know that there is an I. Who is this I? I don't know. How can I find out?"
By becoming silent. Through silence. By allowing my mind to empty itself of all thoughts, and as I keep on watching my mind in action, without responding, I notice something very interesting happening to me. I notice that I feel happier. I feel more peaceful and I feel more powerful. I notice that I’ve lost my fears, my frustrations, and even my search for truth has slowed down, for I am beginning to understand that there is really nothing to search for. It’s all here. Everything I’ve always wanted is here. An amazing discovery. Yet I still don’t know who I am. But I’m beginning to understand that I do not have to know who I am. It‘s not necessary to know who I am. Do you follow? I doesn’t have to know who it is. I don’t have to go around searching for the I, or wondering who the I was that was watching the mind in action all these years. I simply have to become still. Be still and know that I am God. And the watching all these years has caused me to become still.
In other words, as you practice observation of your thoughts and mindfulness, your mind becomes quieter, and quieter and quieter. And to the extent that your mind becomes quieter and quieter, to that extent does your consciousness become revealed to you as absolute reality.
Now when we talk about absolute reality, or Parabrahman, there are no words, for everything I would tell you about that would be superfluous. We therefore learn to be quiet. We no longer get involved in complications. We keep our lifestyle simple. We actually stop worrying about the future, about our existence or about anything else. Something tells us from within that the same power that knows how to make apples grow on apple trees, flowers bloom so beautifully, mangos grow on mango trees, wheat grow in the fields, and yet there’s just enough sun, just enough rain, just enough of everything to sustain and maintain their growth, something tells me that the same power knows how to take care of me. I can therefore be myself, silent.
Silence is consciousness. I no longer have to make something happen, and I no longer have to worry about tomorrow. I no longer have to concern myself with what other people are doing. I can let go of all of this and I will be taken care of. The realization again comes to you that what you call your body is not your body, but is also consciousness. It appears as a body. As you keep evolving you keep seeing consciousness wherever you look, for you have seen yourself as consciousness and you know there is only ultimate oneness. Therefore everything must be yourself. Everything becomes yourself and you are that, and you’re at peace. From that moment on everything takes care of itself.
What appears to be your body comes under karmic law, the law of cause and effect. Remember, that’s an appearance, and your body, so-called, came to this earth for a specific purpose. It will fulfill its purpose without any help from you. That’s the important part I wish you would remember. You will be fulfilled without thinking, without wanting, without worrying, without any kind of concern. All your needs will be met. Everything will unfold the way it’s supposed to. There are no mistakes. No one came to this earth to suffer.
I know there are some of you who believe, "Well I must have committed some great sins in the past, perhaps in previous lives, because I’m sure suffering now." Are you really suffering? Is there such a thing? Think about that. The only reason you think you are suffering is because the world is not turning the way that you want it to. Isn’t that true? You think you should be this instead of that, you should live here instead of there, you should have this instead of that, and that’s what causes you to suffer. But when you become one-pointed, and focus your attention on your self, it is virtually impossible to suffer because suffering doesn’t exist.
Now you can see, perhaps, why people like Ramana Maharshi, Ramakrishna, Christ, and many others, who appeared to be suffering when they died, literally told their disciples, "No body suffers. I am not suffering. You are suffering because you see me suffering." That’s been difficult to understand up to now, but when you realize that you’re not your body and nothing is the way that it appears, it’s literally easy to understand.
Begin within yourself. Realize you are not the person you think you are. Try to understand every day, "I am not my body and mind. I am not anything I appear to be. But who am I? I must find out." And your factory of intelligence is within yourself. All the answers are within yourself. You begin, of course, in the morning, and you try to catch yourself in consciousness. Just before you wake up there’s a gap between sleeping and waking. That gap is your true reality. Try to catch yourself in that gap, just in the moment you open your eyes, before your mind takes over. It is absolute nothingness. That nothingness is the absolute reality. As soon as your mind takes over, I takes over, and that spoils it, for you’ve said to yourself, "I am awake." And then your day begins. I have to go to the bathroom, have to eat breakfast, have to get dressed, have to go to work. I have to do this and I have to do that, and you’re lost for the day. But if you saw yourself as consciousness and were able to see the gap between sleeping and waking, you will be in bliss all day, total bliss. Then, when you go to sleep you do the same thing.
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Post by Admin on Jan 29, 2020 2:20:36 GMT
If you are in the right state, whatever you see will put you into Samadhi. After all, Samadhi is nothing unusual. When the mind is intensely interested, it becomes one with the object of interest --- The seer and the seen become one in seeing, the hearer and the heard become one in hearing, the lover and the loved become one in loving. Every experience can be the ground for Samadhi.
~Nisargadatta Maharaj
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Post by Admin on Jan 31, 2020 2:08:06 GMT
Eckhart Tolle Bodhi tree: Article by ET ‘Radical state of being’
If you observe your own mind, you will see that thinking very rarely ceases. It is as if some demon built a radio into everyone’s head and removed the “off” switch. Most of our thinking is like those radio stations where there is constant chatter. It all sounds very important, and if you listened to it in a foreign language, you would think that they’re actually talking about something significant, because they put so much energy into it. But if you listen to what they are saying, it’s all pretty much meaningless.
Now this would be bad enough if the only problem was that you couldn’t get rid of the noise, but it goes beyond that. You identify with it, and soon your whole sense of identity comes from it: “This is me, and I am a little person with a little past and a little future.” So, an entity arises that is ultimately fictitious, a mental image of “little me,” which is based on an underlying fear. And you are continuously seeking some liberation from this littleness through becoming bigger, and you are also seeking liberation from fear. On top of all this, there is a deep sense that something is lacking. This stimulates a continuous search for fulfillment, security or prominence, a sense of being more fully alive, or of knowing who you are beyond all that your parents and society have told you.
Your image of yourself may be good in one minute, and bad in the next. It fluctuates between “I’m great” and “I’m dreadful” depending on what happens, for instance, if someone criticizes you. There is always a sense of insufficiency, or what I call “egoic consciousness”: a sense of self derived from the mind’s activity, which is an extremely limited sense of self compared to the reality of who you are. When you are trapped in this mind-made sense of self, you are trapped in consciousness that is conditioned by the past. The “little me,” I call it, that sometimes thinks it’s a “big me.” But even then, when it thinks, “I’m the master of the universe,” there is always the hidden fear that this is not so. And this is what creates all the insanity. the root of madness: trapped in the egoic mind
In order to maintain its fictitious state of identity, the little me needs to be in a state of opposition, or warfare. It needs to have a boundary around itself, so it says, “This is me and this is the other, which is not me.” Then a strong sense of separation develops between the image of the little me and the rest of the universe, which becomes threatening. This is indeed the very root of madness: it needs enemies. Enemies might come in the form of people or in the form of situations, but what it all means is that the little me also needs unhappiness, since it is fighting “what is.” It is so deeply internalized that most human beings are unaware that they are continually running away from “what is,” to some mentally projected future. And the little me says, “I will attain something in the future that will make me more complete, and more fulfilled. Instead of being a little me, I will become a big me. One day I’m going to make it!” People go to the end of their lives believing this. The best thing that can happen if you do make it in that limited sense—you become wealthy, or recognized as this or that by society—is for you to discover that the little me is still a little me and not yet satisfied. That would be a wonderful realization. But people who don’t make it are still attached to the illusion: “If I could only make it, I would be freed of all the unhappiness that I feel.” Again, if you’re lucky enough to make it, you are in a position to lose this last illusion, even though the loss will feel like despair. You still have that feeling of insufficiency, or “what now?”
People believe that their unhappiness is due to the content of their lives, that they will be happy if they obtain certain things. This is the belief, but it’s not true. You’ll be happy for a while, and then your old unhappiness will return in some other form. This is because unhappiness is about the structure of your thinking, and not the content of your life or thought. Realizing this is already the beginning of liberation. What a realization! As long as you are trapped in the egoic mind, you can never be free, no matter where you go, who you meet, what you achieve, or what planet or galaxy you reach—isn’t that amazing?
Sometimes when I talk about this, one or two people walk out. It is fascinating to watch, and it is because the unhappiness in them feels very threatened. “What’s he saying?” their little me says. “He’s trying to take away my unhappiness, and I’ve invested 20 or 30 years in it! How dare you say I can live without it!” You might react in this way, but if you do, just watch it. It’s not you. It is just your mind pattern, because it feels threatened. But if you recognize the truth of these words, ask yourself where the recognition came from. Not from the conditioned sense of yourself, but from the deeper level of your being where the unconditioned consciousness lives. The unconditioned consciousness is the vastness of consciousness itself, the very intelligence that runs your body despite the mad mind. Every cell has vast intelligence. But sometimes the mad mind interferes so much that the bodily energy cannot flow anymore. There can be so many negative emotions and such deep unhappiness that blockages occur and the body becomes ill. Always, we seek to end the unhappiness through time. “Time will get me out of my unhappiness,” we say, “I only need this or that, which could happen in the future.” This is an illusion. In other words, time, or the future, cannot free you from the little me and its unhappiness, its fear, and its sense that something vital is missing.
embracing life in the now
Interestingly, the mind structure operates in the same way for a so-called spiritual person as for a so-called materialistic person, since most so-called spiritual people carry their dysfunction into their spiritual work. They are spiritually unhappy, and they say, “One day I will be good enough at my meditation,” or, “One day I will attain enlightenment.” This approach is no different from the one that says, “I’m going to have $50 million in the bank, and then I’ll be somebody.“ Though seeing this dysfunction in your spiritual life may come as a shock, there is a way out, and that is to realize that the dysfunction of the human mind ceases to operate when the root of the dysfunction is removed. And that root is the mind’s refusal, or unwillingness, to open itself up to this moment, to embrace life now, and say yes to what is. That would be the end of the egoic, even if it sounds impossibly simple—just relinquish your warfare with life, because that is what constitutes the madness of the human mind. At that point, it is in a state of warfare with life itself, because life is inseparable from the now, the present moment. Nothing is ever outside of now; life and the now are one. But this mad, egoic state of consciousness believes it can win its fight. I don’t use the word God very much, because it is often misused, but the ego is in a state of warfare with God. It is a state of deep suffering.
Indeed, to talk about the end of suffering or the end of unhappiness is to speak in negative terms. It is more than just the end of unhappiness; it means entering a state of continuous deep peace, aliveness, a state where you are no longer trying to figure out how to hold your life together or control the future. You open yourself up to the power of the greater consciousness that lies beyond the limited human mind, which then can flow and live through you, and the intelligence that created the galaxies, the flowers, the blade of grass—everything—can then express itself fully through you. It is no longer restricted almost to zero by the madness of the little egoic entity, which is like a knot. When the human mind is no longer an egoic mind, it will be continuously inspired by that great intelligence, and will give form to all the insights, intuitions, realizations and creative ideas that arise from the deeper level within yourself. And the wonderful news is that this vast sanity and intelligence is to be found in every human being, no matter how mad they look from the outside. It cannot be destroyed, no matter how crazy humans become. saying “yes” to what is
That’s when your life suddenly flows with great ease, when it is no longer a struggle for survival against problems that seem to arise continuously—this goes wrong, that goes wrong.… That’s why Churchill defined history as “one damn thing after another.” But the moment you say yes to what is, and fully embrace it, you become flooded with an intense aliveness. People often feel it in every cell of their body. Wow! It suddenly feels good to be alive, and what is happening, or not happening, is no longer important. I am that beautiful life that I can feel now. I am one with the aliveness and intelligence that lives in every cell of my being. And if I take action, the action will arise out of the deep sense of connectedness with being that occurs when I accept the now, and the action will be 100 times more effective than action that arises out of my resistance to what is. God is closer to you than hands and feet, it has been said, and it’s true. Every flower is a celebration of the goodness of life. Look how it exists in its incredible beauty, open to the sky and the sun, like an act of worship. I’ve never found a flower that has a problem.
This is the simple truth and the simple transformation that all the great teachers talked about. Jesus said, “Take no thought of the morrow, the morrow will take care of itself.” If you remove the baggage of misinterpretation and mind interpretation that has accumulated on top of the original teachings, you will see their simplicity, and what they are saying is, surrender to what is. Surrender to the now, and then watch life unfold through you. That is the end of suffering, the end of unhappiness. Accept whatever arises in this moment as if you had chosen it, and your whole life will be miraculously transformed.
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Post by Admin on Feb 1, 2020 7:16:01 GMT
Janaka and Ashtavakra
In ancient India there was a King called Janaka, who was also a sage. One day Janaka was taking a nap on his flower-strewn bed with his servants fanning him and his soldiers standing guard outside his door.
As he dozed off, he had a dream in which a neighboring King defeated him in battle, took him prisoner, and had him tortured. As soon as the torture began, Janaka woke with a start to find himself lying on his flower-strewn bed with his servants fanning him and his soldiers on guard.
Once again he dozed off and had the same dream. And once again he woke up to find himself safe and comfortable in his palace.
Now Janaka began to be disturbed by several thoughts: While he was asleep, the world of his dreams had seemed so real. Now that he was awake, the world of the senses seemed real. Which of these two worlds is the real one, he wanted to know.
None of the philosophers, scholars, and seers he consulted could give him an answer. And for many years he searched in vain, till one day a man called Ashtavakra knocked at the door of the palace. Now, Ashtavakra means “entirely deformed or crooked,” and he got that name because that is exactly what his body had been from birth.
At first the King was not disposed to take this man seriously. “How can a misshapen man like you be the carrier of a wisdom denied to my seers and scholars?” he asked.
“Right from my childhood, all avenues have been closed to me – so I avidly pursued the path of wisdom,” was Ashtavakra’s reply.
“Speak, then,” said the King.
So this is what Ashtavakra said: “O King, neither the waking state nor the dream state is real. When you are awake, the world of dreams does not exist and when you dream the world of the senses does not exist. Therefore, neither is real.”
“If both the waking and the dream states are unreal, then what is real?” asked the King.
“There is a state beyond these two. Discover that. It alone is real.
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Post by Admin on Feb 1, 2020 7:17:13 GMT
Robert Adams Excerpt from: Satsang ‘It’s all a dream’
I always take my dog for a walk in the morning and I go to the park, where I meet interesting people. There's a little old lady who walks in the park with me every once in a while. She is very spiritually inclined, and we have discussions. This morning she asked me a very interesting question, we will focus on that.
She asked me, "Robert, you say that the world is phenomena and in continuous change, change, change. And you also say that consciousness is reality, the substratum of existence. Now, we can confirm that the world is changing because we can see it, but how can we confirm consciousness? How do we know that it is not changing?" And I thought it was a very interesting question. Now you know that you exist, don't you? Everyone is aware of their own existence. When you go to sleep, and you are in the state of deep sleep, you still exist, but the world does not.
And as far as you are concerned, the world only exists when you are awake. But once you go to sleep, the world no longer exists for you, and you are in a state of dream- less sleep. The state of dreamless sleep is like Jnana, self-realization, except you have con- sciousness. But there is no denying that you exist, for when you wake up you say, “I slept well."
The state of dreamless sleep is like a person who died. It gives you an idea of what happens to you when you die, so-to-speak. You are in a state of dreamless sleep, and you usually stay like that for about two to four hundred years, earth time, before you do any- thing else. So the first state of consciousness is dreamless sleep, and you exist in dreamless sleep.
And you also exist when you dream. Take a look at your dreams. A person dreams he is married, and his wife has cancer. She is dying of cancer. And they both come to see me. He says, "What should we do? My wife has had ten operations, and is dying of can- cer?" And l say, "The only proper thing to do is turn within, and not react to it, because everything is determined before birth." They look at me and say, "That's not a practical answer. We want something practical."
And l say, "That's the best l can do. It's a dream. Hold on. You will awaken soon." But that's not good enough for them, they are caught up in a dream. Now remember, you are dreaming the dream, everything is going on in the dream. In your dream there is a sky, there are flowers, there is a moon, there are people, just like the world.
And the dream seems to be external from you, but if you investigate, you see the dream is all taking place in your mind. While you are dreaming you still exist as the dreamer.
And in the dream somebody comes to you and tells you, "Look, there is going to be a recession. There is going to be a failure of the banks." And you've got money tied up in stocks and bonds, IRA accounts and everything else. Everything is going down. You ask, "What should I do?" You both decide, "Let's go see Robert." So you come to see me, and I say, “Well, you can do two things. You can take your money and we'll build a large ashram and help others see the truth that it's only a dream or give everything away to the poor, to the homeless, and you won't have any problems." So they both say, "What? Are you crazy?"
That is reminiscent of a story about Jesus. If you recall the story of when Nicode- mus came to him. Nicodemus was a Pharisee, and very wealthy. He was embarrassed to go listen to Jesus because his kind never heard anything like that. They never went out, they were snobs. He sneaked out one dark night, and he came to Jesus and said, "Master what should I do to enter the kingdom of heaven?" (Entering the kingdom of heaven sim- ply means, to be self-realized.) And if you recall, Jesus said, "Give all your worldly goods to the poor, and follow me." Nicodemus couldn't handle that and left. And that was the end of that.
So we go back to the dream, and we say to both people, "This is only a dream, can't you see? Do not take it so seriously." They both leave. Then somebody else comes to me in a dream, and he says, "Robert, I've got a lot of anger in me. I do not trust anybody. I have no friends. I feel inferior and have low self-esteem. What should I do?"
And I say, "Turn within, and you will become free and liberated, because it's all a dream." And he says, "I can't do that, I want a practical answer." And he goes away. So you're here having a dream all this time, but then you wake up, and it's all gone. It never happened. Your wife never had cancer. There never was a recession. And you were never angry. But you still existed while you were having a dream.
So now you existed during dreamless deep, and you existed during the dream, and now you are awake, and you still exist. So you see the part of you that exists is per- manent. It is the I-am, the Self. It is consciousness. Everything else is illusion, it comes and goes. It is always changing, changing, changing. You are real, what you appear to be is false. Identify with the real, not with the false. Do not accept anything you see as reality. The only freedom you've got is to turn within, and not react to any condition, and you will be safe. One day you will awaken from this dream, for this is also a dream, and you will be free.
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Post by Admin on Feb 1, 2020 7:48:16 GMT
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