Remembering
Yourself
True Inner Focus
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Keep
breathing, allow your body and stick to the truth.
What is true now? What is true now? What is true now?
Deep inside refuse to run.
Longing and loss and fear of the future
will give way to reality and the self.
Compassion and honesty with yourself will
show you your deepest truths. And in the light
of your uncensored awareness those truths
will dissolve. There will be nothing left.
Nothing to hold, nothing to keep, nothing
to resist, nothing to avoid, nothing to fear.
We cling and resist, cling and resist, cling and resist.
What we call life is clinging, wanting and resisting.
When all is allowed to be taken away, reality
remains. This is the desireless, the no longer
wanting, the recognition of the absolute.
At first it feels like infinite emptiness.
But infinite emptiness reveals the infinite, your true security,
the timeless, the choiceless, the immutable; the real.
"Gate gate paragate parasamgate bodhi svaha."
Gone, gone, gone beyond, completely gone beyond,
praise to awakening.
Utterly powerless,
utterly choiceless, utterly free.
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I didn't even notice the change straightaway. My mind was too busy catching up on why I was in a hospital at night, with a policeman sitting at the foot of the bed, when the last thing I could remember was feeling drowsy on the bus in the early morning and settling down for a comfortable snooze on what was scheduled to be a seven-hour journey across the jungle-covered mountains.
I'd suspected nothing, because the donor of the candy, a charming and well-dressed young man who'd been very helpful with our luggage had left the bus some miles back. With hindsight, I guess he decided that retreat was the order of the day when he saw that my partner, dream psychologist Dr. Ann Faraday, wasn't eating the candy he'd given her.
The fact that I'd undergone a radical consciousness shift began to become apparent only after everyone had settled down for the night and I was left awake, feeling as if I'd had enough sleep to last a lifetime. By stages I became aware that when I'd awakened a few hours earlier, it hadn't been from a state of ordinary unconsciousness at all. It was as if I'd emerged freshly made (complete with all the memories that constitute my personal identity) from a vast blackness that was somehow radiant, a kind of infinitely concentrated aliveness or pure consciousness that had no separation within it, and therefore no space or time.
There was absolutely no sense of personal continuity. In fact the sense of a stop in time was so absolute that I'm now convinced I really did die, if only for a few seconds or fractions of a second, and was literally resurrected by the medical team, though there were no brain-wave monitors to provide objective confirmation. And if my conviction is correct, it actually counts against rather than for the claim so often made by near-death researchers that personal consciousness can exist apart from the brain.
My impression is that my personal consciousness was actually snuffed out (the root meaning, according to some scholars, of the word nirvana) and then recreated by a kind of focusing-down from the infinite eternity of that radiant dark pure consciousness. An old nursery rhyme conveys it better than any high philosophy:
"Where did you come from, baby dear?
Out of Everywhere into here."
Moreover that wonderful eternal life of everywhere was still there, right behind my eyes, or more accurately, at the back of my head, continually recreating my whole personal body-mind consciousness afresh, instant by instant, now! and now! and now! That's no mere metaphor for a vague sensation; it was so palpably real that I put my hand up to probe the back of my skull, half wondering if the doctors had sawn part of it away to open my head to infinity.
Yet it wasn't in the least a feeling of being damaged; it was more like having had a cataract taken off my brain, letting me experience the world and myself properly for the first time, for that lovely dark radiance seemed to reveal the essence of everything as holy. (John Wren-Lewis: The Dazzling Dark) |
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"I entered my heart, and I remembered what I once knew. I remembered light coming from everywhere. I remembered peace coming from everywhere." (Lilly)
"The
boundary between my physical self and my
surroundings seemed to dissolve and my feeling
of separation vanished. . . . I felt as
if I had suddenly come alive for the first
time--as if I were awakening from a long
deep sleep into the real world."
(Wendy Rose-Neill)
"I saw that the universe is not composed
of dead matter, but is, on the contrary,
a living Presence." (Richard Maurice
Bucke)
"I seemed to comprehend the nature
of things. Neither time nor space existed
on this plane." (Claire Myers Owen)
"Then all schools are given up, all
effort ceases; in solitude and darkness
the vast step is made which ends ignorance
and fear forever."
(Nisargadatta Maharaj)
"Facing all fears and the loss of all,
the illusory difference between life and
death, between being and non-being dissolved,
and I have emerged into the silent bliss
of reality."
Seeing the world, Sensing the void.
What
you desire the most
and resist the most
is the same...
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The
Advaita Teaching of
Nisargadatta
Maharaj
Stay silent and attentive. Be earnest about
it.
Just
be aware of your being here and now.
Reality
will find you.
Tirelessly
I draw your attention to the one incontrovertible
factor – that of being. Being needs
no proofs – it proves itself. If only
you go deep into the fact of being and discover
the vastness and the glory, to which the
‘I am’ is the door, and cross
the door and go beyond, your life will be
full of happiness and light. Believe me;
the effort needed is as nothing when compared
with the discoveries arrived at.
Just live your life as it comes. Keep quietly
alert, inquiring into the real nature of
yourself. Perception is based on memory
and is only imagination. The world can be
said to appear but not to be. Only that
which makes perception possible is real.
You agree to be guided from within and life
becomes a journey into the unknown. Give
up all names and forms, and the Real is
with you. Know yourself as you are. Distrust
your mind and go beyond. Do not think of
the Real in terms of consciousness and unconsciousness.
It is utterly beyond both. It gives birth
to consciousness. All else is in consciousness.
Nothing you can see, feel or think is so.
Go beyond the personal and see. Stop imagining
that you were born. You are utterly beyond
all existence and non-existence, utterly
beyond all that the mind conceives. Question
yourself: Who am I? What is behind and beyond
all this? Soon you will see that thinking
yourself to be a person is mere habit built
on memory. Inquire ceaselessly.
How can Reality depend on experience when
it is the very ground, the very basis of
experience, the very fact of experience?
Just be aware of your being here and now.
There is nothing more to it. In reality
you are not a thing nor separate.
You are the infinite potentiality, the inexhaustible
possibility. Because you are, all can be.
The universe is but a partial manifestation
of your limitless capacity to become. You
are neither consciousness nor its content.
You are the timeless Source. Find
a foothold beyond mind and consciousness and all will be clear
and easy.
Your difficulty stems from the idea that
Reality is a state of consciousness.
When you want nothing, seek nothing, expect
nothing, then the Supreme State will come
to you uninvited and unexpected.
You are beyond space and time, uncaused,
the very matrix of existence, the Supreme
Absolute.
You are the all-pervading, all-transcending
Reality. Behave accordingly.
The actual
experience will dawn upon you in no time.
No effort is needed. Have faith and act
on it. All will happen by itself: You are
the subtle cause of the entire universe.
All is because you are. Grasp this point
firmly and deeply and dwell on it repeatedly.
To realize this as absolutely true is liberation.
What you need will come to you.
Behave as what I say is true
and judge by what actually happens. I know
the Source of all experience. From moment
to moment the little I need to know to live
my life I somehow happen to know. The Supreme
Absolute, the Self, is at the root of and
utterly beyond all. You are That.
There is no effort in witnessing. You understand
that you are the witness only, and understanding
acts. If in the state of witnessing you
ask “Who am I?” the answer comes
at once, wordless and silent. You find yourself
utterly beyond the subject and the object.
Both exist in you, but you are neither.
You, the Supreme Absolute, are the very
source of reality. Collect your energies
in one great longing. My words are true
and they will do their work. Enlightenment
is a certainty. It is your destiny.
Know life as pure radiation from the inexhaustible
Source. There is nothing to practice. To
know yourself, be yourself. Stop imagining
yourself to be this or that. Just be. Let
your true nature emerge. Don’t disturb
your mind with seeking. The very absence
of obstacles will cause Reality to rush
in. You will know the Light of Absolute
Awareness in all its clarity and the world
will fade out of your vision.
Investigate what you know to its very end
and you reach the unknown layers of your
being. Go further and the unexpected will
explode in you and shatter all. The crucial
question is: “Who am I?” Don’t be half-hearted. Believe me, you are the Supreme
Reality.
Adapted from ‘I Am That: Talks
with Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj’
Nisargadatta
I am quotes
Excerpts
from - I AM THAT
onewithlife.com
prior
to consciousness
I
am unborn
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"Maharaj:
Of course, there can be no causal connection between
practice and wisdom.
But the obstacles to wisdom are deeply affected
by practice."
Zen story of the would-be disciple having his head held
under water
by the Master
until he nearly dies. The Master then says:
“When you want awakening in the way you just wanted air - come and see me again.”
Awareness Play
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