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Post by Admin on Sept 29, 2021 17:17:18 GMT
"Why are the lives of the sages filled with miracles? Because they open their minds to truth and labor over it day and night. They are the awakened mind of the cosmos—through them the Infinite Light enters this world. So, of course, nature bows to them, the angels wait upon them, and everything is arranged to serve their mission. And so it is with any one of us who seeks the truth and clings to it with heart and soul."
Rabbi Tzvi Freemen
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Post by Admin on Oct 8, 2021 20:32:36 GMT
You know, if we understand one question rightly, all questions are answered. But we don't know how to ask the right question. To ask the right question demands a great deal of intelligence and sensitivity. Here is a question, a fundamental question: is life a torture? It is, as it is; and man has lived in this torture centuries upon centuries, from ancient history to the present day, in agony, in despair, in sorrow; and he doesn't find a way out of it.
Therefore he invents gods, churches, all the rituals, and all that nonsense, or he escapes in different ways. What we are trying to do, during all these discussions and talks here, is to see if we cannot radically bring about a transformation of the mind, not accept things as they are, nor revolt against them. Revolt doesn't answer a thing.
You must understand it, go into it, examine it, give your heart and your mind, with everything that you have, to find out a way of living differently. That depends on you, and not on someone else, because in this there is no teacher, no pupil; there is no leader; there is no guru; there is no Master, no Saviour.
You yourself are the teacher and the pupil; you are the Master; you are the guru; you are the leader; you are everything. And to understand is to transform what is.
K|Public talks
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Post by Admin on Oct 18, 2021 8:51:09 GMT
"I cannot show you God or enable you to see God because God is not an object that can be seen. God is the subject. He is the seer. Don't concern yourself with objects of senses. Find out who the seer is. You can't see God because you are God." ~ Ramana Maharshi
“The eye through which I see God is the same eye through which God sees me; my eye and God's eye are one eye, one seeing, one knowing, one love.” ~ Meister Eckhart
"You are looking for God. That is the problem. The God in you is the one who is looking." ~ Rumi
“By knowing yourself, you know God. By knowing God, you know yourself.” ~ Anandamayi Ma
“When you experience the true meaning of religion, which is to know God, you will realize that He is your Self, and that He exists equally and impartially in all beings. Divisions are imaginary lines drawn by small minds. Forget your dream-born mortal weakness. Wake up and know that you and God are one.” ~ Paramahansa Yogananda
“Why is it so difficult to find God? Because you’re looking for something you’ve never lost. The finding of God is the coming to one’s own self.” ~ Meher Baba
“Has it ever occurred to you that you are seeking God with His eyes? The truth is that you already are what you are seeking. You cannot find it because you are it. You can’t look at what’s looking. You can’t think about that which is prior to thought. The mind cannot comprehend what is beyond the mind.” ~ Adyashanti
"We go off in search of ourselves or God or the Atman or whatever, but it's the one thing we can't find – because we're already it. Jesus Christ knew he was God. So wake up and find out eventually who you really are. In our culture, of course, they’ll say you’re crazy and you’re blasphemous, and they’ll either put you in jail or in a nut house (which is pretty much the same thing). However, if you wake up in India and tell your friends and relations, ‘My goodness, I’ve just discovered that I’m God!’, they’ll laugh and say, 'Oh, congratulations, at last you found out.' The point is that God is what nobody admits to being, and everybody really is.” ~ Alan Watts
“You can't see God because you are God! How can you search for that which you are? No one is a 'part' of anything. My role is to apprise you of the fact that you are not a part, that you are the whole.” ~ Papaji
“All religions are the same. They all lead to God. God is everybody. See God in everyone. It is deception to teach by individual differences. The best form in which to worship God is every form. Everywhere I look I see only God, and that's why I'm always honoring everything.” ~ Neem Karoli Baba
"To imagine oneself a separate self is the ultimate blasphemy. It is normally considered that to say 'I am God' is blasphemous. However, what is truly blasphemous is to say 'I am a separate self'. With this thought, consciousness denies its own unlimited universal sovereignty. It relinquishes its freedom. It is not blasphemous to feel and say that I am the totality of experience. It is a position of love in which everything and everyone are included." ~ Rupert Spira
"The person is not God, the body is not God, but you are God. The reason you will not accept the fact that you are God is because of your orthodox upbringing. If I tell you you’re God, you think it’s blasphemy. That only shows me that you are identifying with your body. You believe you are a body, and there is a God somewhere up in the sky that you’ve got to pray to, and if he is in a good mood, he’ll give you a boon. If he’s not feeling too good that day, he will throw a lightning bolt at you. People still believe that. God is consciousness. And that is not outside of yourself. It is you. You are that.” ~ Robert Adams
“Even to say that God is close is not exactly right – because closeness, after all, shows a certain distance; closeness is distance. God is not close – God is you. You are God. So don't look for God in the churches, in the temples, in mosques. Look for him within. We have just to be a little calmer to feel him. The turmoil in the mind does not allow us to feel. And God is not a person – you cannot worship him; there is nobody to be worshipped. The worshipper is the worshipped. That's what Jesus means when he says again and again, ‘The kingdom of God is within you’. And the kingdom is such that it cannot be taken away from you. The whole existence is God. I want you to destroy duality completely. God is in the trees, in the rivers, in the moon, in the sun, and he is in you. Except God, there is nothing else.” ~ Osho
"God is not playing with you. God is playing as you. I know you and love you far too much to treat you as a mere person. I refuse to know you as less than God." ~ Mooji
“Invite your attention towards yourself seriously and you will come to know that there is no God except yourself. It is so simple... All you have to ‘do’ is realize that the body is not your identity. You are Ultimate Reality.” ~ Ramakant Maharaj
“Ultimately you are the proof that God exists, not the other way round. For, before any question about God can be put, you must be there to put it. "I am" itself is God. You yourself are God, the Supreme Reality.” ~ Nisargadatta Maharaj
“So long as God seems to be outside and far away, there is ignorance. But when God is realised within, that is true knowledge. You should love everyone because God dwells in all beings. All will surely realize God. All will be liberated. It may be that some get their meal in the morning, some at noon, and some in the evening; but none will go without food. All, without any exception, will certainly know their real Self.” ~ Ramakrishna
“The fool thinks, "I am the body"; the intelligent man thinks, "I am an individual soul united with the body." But the wise man, in the greatness of his knowledge and spiritual discrimination, sees the Self as the only reality and thinks, "I am Brahman."” ~ Shankara
"I and the Father are one." ~ Jesus
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Post by Admin on Oct 18, 2021 8:53:47 GMT
THERE IS NO SELF “Why are you unhappy? Because 99.9 percent of everything you think, and of everything you do, is for yourself—and there isn’t one.” ―Wei Wu Wei
The very motivation of ego is dissatisfaction. It is a bottomless hole that can never be filled. It proclaims the world revolves around itself and its demands. “Give me what I want. I want your endless, undivided attention. I am your jealous lover and sovereign authority. You belong to me!” Of course, it would never outright say something like that because then the jig would be up! We would see the suffering it creates. We would see its real mission. And talk about a control freak! The one operating from within our heads is determined to keep things exactly the way it wants at the risk of our well-being and success.
In Buddhism, this force is referred to as “The Hungry Ghost,” a mythical creature with a very fat belly and a long thin mouth ending in a tiny hole to suck out the energy it creates after it causes us to suffer. Never full and never satisfied, it is constantly on the lookout for more to consume. So how do we deal with this “Hungry Ghost?”
Realize there is no “you.” You aren’t who you believe you are. All the identities used to describe you are bogus. In fact, you are nothing. And from that nothing – everything arises. Such is the nature of the Universe: Bubbles on the surface of the water, coming in and popping out of existence. We can suffer if we take ownership of the bubbles – believing that bubbles coming in are great and bubbles popping out are tragic. But children know that delight is in the bubbling and in the popping. They go together.
Choose to stay out of the internal narrative. Even though it’s always there, like a big tar pit in your mind, you aren’t required to go swimming in it! You can choose to stay in Life where the real action is happening. Life is where you can make an impact and live fully. Tar pits are for drowning! Choose compassionate self-mentoring instead of self-love. I call self-love the ego’s infatuation with itself: “What’s in this for me? I’m taking care of #1. Me first. Oh, I’m so special. Let me hug myself while kissing the mirror. Was I an absolute jerk? So what! I forgive myself (so I can be a jerk again). Why? Because I deserve what I want from Life.” Self-love from this angle is obviously just the flip side of self-hate. Still the ego. Still yucky and not quite right. Still suffering. Compassionate self-mentoring is the understanding that you are part of life (not better than and not less than). It’s accepting yourself exactly as you are and assisting yourself to become anyway you want to be.
In lovingkindness, Alex
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Post by Admin on Oct 18, 2021 19:51:37 GMT
"You are worrying because of the intellect, but you have only to continue in that ‘I am’ with faith, you have nothing else to do. You are likely to miss that incident if you try to use your intellect. Just let it happen. Hold on to the feeling ‘I am’; don’t pollute that state by holding on to the body sense."
~ Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj
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Post by Admin on Oct 19, 2021 12:46:59 GMT
The real difference between the Sage and yourself is this. You believe the world to be real and the Sage knows the world as Brahman. The Sage knows the world is absolute reality, pure awareness. If you intellectually say, “I know the world is pure awareness. I know the world as Brahman. I know the world is absolute reality.” But when you say, “I know,” you’re not going deep enough, not going far enough. When the sage says, “The world is Brahman I know this.” The Sage is not seeing from a superficial experience but from a deep deep conviction. I know! But when you say 'you know,' you’re speaking like you speak about everything else. You say, “I’m hungry, thirsty, I need happiness in my life, I want this, I need that,” that’s the same power that says, “I know that the world is Brahman.” You know intellectually. It doesn’t do you any good to know. To know intellectually nothing will happen. You have to know with passion. You have to know deep deep inside, deep deep inside, very deep inside the world is Brahman. Unless you’ve been practicing you can’t do this, you’re just speaking words. You may go around telling everyone the world is Brahman but at the same time you’re looking out the window seeing if somebody stole your car. If you lost your job you’d be worried about your job. So you concern yourself with all the details of this world and you’re saying, “The world is Brahman.” If you really believed this world is Brahman how can you worry about these things? If you really knew this world is Brahman you’d be one of the happiest people on this earth, totally happy. For you’ll feel there’s nothing to hurt you because Brahman is love, bliss, joy.
Robert Adams Audio 1993-08-12
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Post by Admin on Oct 20, 2021 8:37:42 GMT
Do you know yourself enough to know what you can do, and what you cannot? You do not know your own powers. You never investigated. Begin with yourself now. ...................................... Before you agree or disagree, why not investigate the very idea of a body? 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. A body without a mind cannot be "my body." "My body" is invariably absent when the mind is in abeyance. It is also absent when the mind is deeply engaged in thoughts and feelings. Once you realize that the body depends on the mind, and the mind on consciousness, and consciousness on awareness, and not the other way round, your question about waiting for Self Realization till you die is answered. It is not that you must be free from the "I-am-the-body" idea first, and then realize the Self. It is definitely the other way round — you cling to the false, because you do not know the true. Earnestness, not perfection, is a precondition to Self Realization. ....................................... SRI NISARGADATTA MAHARAJ
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Post by Admin on Oct 20, 2021 18:46:45 GMT
That Yogi who is gladly absorbed in truth and self realization is said to be indissolubly united to spirit. Unchangeable, conqueror of senses, he looks with an equal eye an earth, stone and gold.
- Bhagavad Gita
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Post by Admin on Oct 20, 2021 19:35:14 GMT
Why look for God ? …. Look for the one looking for God … but then Why look at all ? … He is not lost … He is right here … Closer than your own breath! There is a force within, which gives you life – seek That. In your body lies a priceless gem – seek That. …if you want to find the greatest treasure Don’t look outside, look inside, and seek That.
_Rumi
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Post by Admin on Oct 22, 2021 6:40:57 GMT
"Actually the human body cannot keep silent. There's something else that enters the silence. It has nothing to do with your humanity. It's only after years perhaps of meditation in previous lives, that you can be mature enough to really know what this path is all about. When I give you these practices, it's not for you as a human being. You appear to be able to go through it as a human being, but I can assure you your humanity has nothing to do with it. When you enter the silence you enter a profound peace, bliss consciousness, pure awareness. That's what the silence is. It's not being quiet. It's beyond that. It's not just quieting your mind, like I say all the time. It's understanding that there's no mind to quiet. When you realize there's no mind, you automatically become silent. When you still think you've got a mind, you make every effort to quiet the mind, and you can't. How many of you believe you can quiet the mind through effort? You can't do that. It's not the effort that makes you quiet your mind. It's the intelligent understanding that you have no mind to begin with. Then you just keep still and everything takes care of itself."
~ Robert Adams
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Post by Admin on Oct 22, 2021 17:31:36 GMT
"Discover all you are not. Body, feelings,thoughts, ideas, time, space, being and not-being, this or that- nothing concrete or abstract you can point to is you. You must watch your Self continuously - particularly your mind - moment by moment - missing nothing. This witnessing is essential for the separation of the Self from the not-self. "
- Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj.
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Post by Admin on Oct 22, 2021 18:45:43 GMT
Questioner: What you say sounds convincing, but of what use is it to the private person, who knows itself to be in the world and of the world? Maharaj: Millions eat bread, but few know all about wheat. And only those who know can improve the bread. Similarly, only those who know the self, who have seen beyond the world, can improve the world. Their value to private persons is immense, for they are their only hope of salvation. What is in the world cannot save the world; if you really care to help the world, you must step out of it. Q: But can one step out of the world? M: Who was born first, you or the world? As long as you give first place to the world, you are bound by it; once you realize, beyond all trace of doubt that the world is in you and not you in the world, you are out of it. Of course your body remains in the world and of the world, but you are not deluded by it. All scriptures say that before the world was, the Creator was. Who knows the Creator? He alone who was before the Creator, your own real being, the source of all the worlds with their creators. Q: All you say is held together by your assumption that the world is your own projection. You admit that you mean your personal, subjective world, the world given you through your senses and your mind. In that sense each one of us lives in a world of his own projection. These private worlds hardly touch each other and they arise from and merge into the ‘I am’ at their centre. But surely behind these private worlds there must be a common objective world, of which the private worlds are mere shadows. Do you deny the existence of such objective world, common to all? M: Reality is neither subjective nor objective, neither mind nor matter, neither time nor space. These divisions need somebody to whom to happen, a conscious separate centre. But reality is all and nothing, the totality and the exclusion, the fullness and the emptiness, fully consistent, absolutely paradoxical. You cannot speak about it, you can only lose your self in it. When you deny reality to anything, you come to a residue which cannot be denied. All talk of gnana is a sign of ignorance. It is the mind that imagines that it does not know and then comes to know. Reality knows nothing of these contortions. Even the idea of God as the Creator is false. Do I owe my being to any other being? Because l am, all is. Q: How can it be? A child is born into the world, not the world into the child. The world is old and the child is new. M: The child is born into your world. Now, were you born into your world, or did your world appear to you? To be born means to create a world round yourself as the centre. But do you ever create yourself? Or did anyone create you? Everyone creates a world for himself and lives in it, imprisoned by one’s ignorance. All we have to do is to deny reality to our prison. Q: Just as the waking state exists in seed form during sleep, so does the world the child creates on being born exist before its birth. With whom does the seed lie? M: With him who is the witness or birth and death, but is neither born nor dies. He alone is the seed of creation as well as its residue. Don’t ask the mind to confirm what is beyond the mind. Direct experience is the only valid confirmation.
- Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj.
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Post by Admin on Oct 26, 2021 9:40:05 GMT
FAITH ===== There is something else that is very important for you to understand in order to become self-realized, and that is faith. You have to have faith in something that you yet do not understand. Faith is a powerful tool you use to climb the ladder to self-realization. You have to have faith in yourself, faith in the teaching, faith in the teacher, faith that something wonderful is about to happen to you. Yet I meet so many people that are so dogmatic, opinionated in their views. They have doubts, suspicions, all kinds of negative symptoms going through them, and they want to become self-realized. It is true you can go a long way with all of your bad habits. But I say to you, you can never awaken fully until you give them up, and faith helps you to give them up. There's a story about Makunda, one of the rishis, sages, of old. For some reason he decided to get married. He wanted to have a child. But no matter how he tried, his wife couldn't conceive. Two years passed, and he said “I'm going to pray to Shiva," one of the Gods. He prayed to Shiva and he said “Lord, your will is my will. I don't really know what's good for me, or what I really want. But you know what I want in my heart, and if it's right for me it will happen. If it isn't, it won't. But I have total faith in you that whatever happens is your will and it's good." He prayed like this for many years. Finally Shiva appeared to him and said “My son, never have I seen such faith. You forgot all about yourself, about your family, and you just wanted me. So I have appeared to you. Your desire will come to pass. You will have a child, but you must make a choice. You may have a child who is a half idiot and will live a long life, or a child with a fine intellect who will live a short life. You have to choose." Makunda said "I will choose the latter, the one with the sharp intellect.” And Shiva said “He will live to be sixteen years old. Then he will drop his body.” Makunda accepted and the time came to have the baby, they did. And at a very young age the intellect of the child was astounding. He was able to memorize all the Vedas when he was five years old. He was able to speak five languages. He was an astounding poet, writer. As he grew older his father became sadder and sadder. Finally he asked his father “Father, what's wrong? Why do you become so sad every time I have a birthday?" And Makunda explained to him the deal he made with Shiva. "You've only to live to be sixteen, and then you must go. The youth said “Shiva listened to you. Perhaps he'll listen to me," and he started to pray to Shiva every day. "Lord, I am yours, and do with me what you want. I have no desire. I know only that you brought me here, and when you're ready you will take me back. Do with me as you will. Your will, not mine, be done. I am yours." And again he said that prayer every day for a year. Finally Shiva appeared to him also and said “My son, you have the faith of your father. When someone prays to me thus, I have no option but to help him. So because of your faith, when you reach the age of sixteen, you will stay at that age forever." Now the moral of that story is the faith. Remember, Makunda was very advanced spiritually, and yet he had faith in a power, a presence, that he didn't see or feel. He surrendered to that power and that presence. That's what it takes for us to awaken. This is why people like Ramana Maharshi always said that devotion, faith and self-inquiry are the same thing. You can't just have dry self-inquiry. You have to feel love. You have to feel devotion. You have to put God first. Unless you put God first you're going to just have dry words, and the words will give you a sharp intellect. You will be able to recite all sorts of things, memorize books, hear lectures and remember them, yet you will never really awaken. This is why sometimes Advaita Vedanta can be dangerous to some people. Yet if they really read the books on Advaita Vedanta, they'll understand that they have to develop a tremendous faith. Think of some of the teachers that you know or heard about. Nisargadatta, he always prayed. He realized that he was consciousness. He was self-realized, but at the same time he chanted, he prayed, he had devotion. It sounds like a contradiction. For you may say “If someone is self-realized and he knows himself or herself to be all there is, to whom do they pray?" Try to remember that all spiritual life is a contradiction. It's a contradiction because words cannot explain it. Even when you are the self, you can pray to the self, which is you. Ramana Maharshi always had chanting at the ashram, prayers, devotional hymns. These things are very important. Many westerners, who profess to be atheists, come to listen to lectures on Advaita Vedanta, and yet nothing ever happens in their lives. As long as you do not have devotion, faith, love, discrimination, dispassion, it will be very difficult to awaken. Therefore those of you who become bored with practicing self-inquiry may become very devotional. Surrender everything. Give up your body, your thoughts, all the things that bind you, whatever problems you may believe you have. Surrender them to your favorite deity. You are emptying yourself out as you do this. Do a lot of it. Become humble. Have a tremendous humility. If you can just do that you will become a favorite of God and you’ll not have to search any longer. But of course the choice is always yours. What are you chasing in life? What are you going after? What are the things that interest you? Whatever you put first in your life, that's where your heart is. All of the things that have transpired in your life up to now, forget them. Be aware all of the time that there are no mistakes. There is nothing from the past that can interfere with your life if you become devotional and have faith in God. You'll be automatically protected from anything. And if you have enough faith, you can totally remove all karmic aspects of your life. You can transcend all of karma. You can make life easier for yourself, if you have faith.
~ The Collected Works of Robert Adams Volume 1
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Post by Admin on Oct 27, 2021 20:37:50 GMT
"Is there any time when you are not in the mind, when you stop your race after pleasures of the senses, when you simply see? Keep still and this guide disappears, simply with the question, “Who are you?” Then you will know what the mind is, and it disappears."
~ Papaji
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Post by Admin on Oct 27, 2021 20:50:21 GMT
KARMA ======= Student: When something good happens to a person, good or bad, we say it's his or her karma. But the fact of the matter is they're not individuals. So it can be said it's karma, but not it's his karma or her karma. Is that correct? Robert: As long as you believe in karma, then karma will always grab you, and turn you in all directions. But when you ask “For whom is there karma?" and realize it's only for the personal I, then there is no longer any karma. As long as you believe you are the body then karma exists for you also, for karma only exists for the body. Karma does not exist for the self. Karma only exists for the body and the mind. And when the body and the mind has been totally transmuted, where is there karma? It's gone. It never was.
~ The Collected Works of Robert Adams
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