Post by Reefs on Jul 21, 2013 10:26:29 GMT -5
"As long as you take yourself to be a person, a body and a mind, separate from the stream of life, having a will of its own, pursuing its own aims, you are living merely on the surface and whatever you do will be short-lived and of little value, mere straw to feed the flames of vanity... To be a person is to be asleep... How can a person limited in time and space, a mere body-mind, a gasp of pain between birth and death, be happy? The very conditions of its arising make happiness impossible. Peace, power, happiness, these are never personal states, nobody can say ‘my peace’, ‘my power’ — because ‘mine’ implies exclusivity, which is fragile and insecure...
The person is not Reality... Once you realize that the person is merely a shadow of the reality, but not reality itself, you cease to fret and worry. You agree to be guided from within and life becomes a journey into the unknown... The person is merely the result of a misunderstanding. In reality, there is no such thing. Feelings, thoughts and actions race before the watcher in endless succession, leaving traces in the brain and creating an illusion of continuity. A reflection of the watcher in the mind creates the sense of ‘I’ and the person acquires an apparently independent existence. In reality there is no person, only the watcher identifying himself with the ‘I’ and the ‘mine’...
Your being a person is due to the illusion of space and time; you imagine yourself to be at a certain point occupying a certain volume; your personality is due to your self-identification with the body. Your thoughts and feelings exist in succession, they have their span in time and make you imagine yourself, be- cause of memory, as having duration. In reality time and space exist in you; you do not exist in them. They are modes of perception, but they are not the only ones....
The person cannot be said to exist by itself. Unperceived, it is just not there. It is but the shadow of the mind, the sum total of memories. Pure being is reflected in the mirror of the mind, as knowing. What is known takes the shape of a person, based on memory and habit. It is but a shadow, or a projection of the knower onto the screen of the mind... The person is never the subject. You can see a person, but you are not the person. You are always the Supreme which appears at a given point of time and space as the witness, a bridge between the pure awareness of the Supreme and the manifold consciousness of the person.... Once you realize that whatever appears before you cannot be yourself, and cannot say ‘I am’, you are free of all your ‘persons’ and their demands.... You are not the person, but the pure and calm witness, and that fearless awareness is your very being, you are the being...
When you believe yourself to be a person, you see persons everywhere. In reality there are no persons, only threads of memories and habits. At the moment of realization the person ceases. Identity remains, but identity is not a person, it is inherent in the reality itself. The person has no being in itself; it is a reflection in the mind of the witness, the ‘I am’, which again is a mode of being... As long as you think yourself to be a person, God too is a person. When you are all, you see Him as all.... The self is universal and its aims are universal. There is nothing personal about the self... Reality is common to all. Only the false is personal.... The reward of self-knowledge is freedom from the personal self... Undeceive yourself and be free. You are not a person....
Does not the ego have its value? The person is of little use. It is deeply involved in its own affairs and is completely ignorant of its true being. Unless the witnessing consciousness begins to play on the person and it becomes the object of observation rather than the subject, realization is not feasible. It is the witness that makes realization desirable and attainable... The person by itself will not become the witness. It is like expecting a cold candle to start burning in the course of time. The person can stay in the darkness of ignorance forever, unless the flame of awareness touches it...
The witness is that which says ‘I know’. The person says ‘I do’. Now, to say ‘I know’ is not untrue — it is merely limited. But to say ‘I do’ is altogether false, because there is nobody who does; all happens by itself, including the idea of being a doer.... Things are as they are and nobody in particular is responsible. The idea of personal responsibility comes from the illusion of agency. ‘Somebody must have done it, somebody is responsible’... It is not the person that is doing sadhana. The person is in unrest and resistance to the very end. It is the witness that works on the person, on the totality of its illusions, past, present and future... The universe is full of action, but there is no actor. There are numberless persons small and big and very big, who, through identification, imagine themselves as acting, but it does not change the fact that the world of action is one single whole in which all depends on, and affects all...
Your real nature is not like what you appear to be. Give up the idea of being a person, that is all. You need not become what you are anyhow. There is the identity of what you are and there is the person superimposed on it... It is useless to fight the sense of being a limited and separate person unless the roots of it are laid bare... Liberation is never of the person, it is always from the person... The person is but a shell imprisoning you. Break the shell.... Just see the person you imagine yourself to be as a part of the world you perceive within your mind and look at the mind from the outside, for you are not the mind. After all, your only problem is the eager self-identification with whatever you perceive. Give up this habit, remember that you are not what you perceive, use your power of alert aloofness.... Nothing is wrong with you, but the ideas you have of yourself are altogether wrong... The dissolution of personality is followed always by a sense of great relief, as if a heavy burden has fallen off..."
- Niz
taken from "I AM THAT"
The person is not Reality... Once you realize that the person is merely a shadow of the reality, but not reality itself, you cease to fret and worry. You agree to be guided from within and life becomes a journey into the unknown... The person is merely the result of a misunderstanding. In reality, there is no such thing. Feelings, thoughts and actions race before the watcher in endless succession, leaving traces in the brain and creating an illusion of continuity. A reflection of the watcher in the mind creates the sense of ‘I’ and the person acquires an apparently independent existence. In reality there is no person, only the watcher identifying himself with the ‘I’ and the ‘mine’...
Your being a person is due to the illusion of space and time; you imagine yourself to be at a certain point occupying a certain volume; your personality is due to your self-identification with the body. Your thoughts and feelings exist in succession, they have their span in time and make you imagine yourself, be- cause of memory, as having duration. In reality time and space exist in you; you do not exist in them. They are modes of perception, but they are not the only ones....
The person cannot be said to exist by itself. Unperceived, it is just not there. It is but the shadow of the mind, the sum total of memories. Pure being is reflected in the mirror of the mind, as knowing. What is known takes the shape of a person, based on memory and habit. It is but a shadow, or a projection of the knower onto the screen of the mind... The person is never the subject. You can see a person, but you are not the person. You are always the Supreme which appears at a given point of time and space as the witness, a bridge between the pure awareness of the Supreme and the manifold consciousness of the person.... Once you realize that whatever appears before you cannot be yourself, and cannot say ‘I am’, you are free of all your ‘persons’ and their demands.... You are not the person, but the pure and calm witness, and that fearless awareness is your very being, you are the being...
When you believe yourself to be a person, you see persons everywhere. In reality there are no persons, only threads of memories and habits. At the moment of realization the person ceases. Identity remains, but identity is not a person, it is inherent in the reality itself. The person has no being in itself; it is a reflection in the mind of the witness, the ‘I am’, which again is a mode of being... As long as you think yourself to be a person, God too is a person. When you are all, you see Him as all.... The self is universal and its aims are universal. There is nothing personal about the self... Reality is common to all. Only the false is personal.... The reward of self-knowledge is freedom from the personal self... Undeceive yourself and be free. You are not a person....
Does not the ego have its value? The person is of little use. It is deeply involved in its own affairs and is completely ignorant of its true being. Unless the witnessing consciousness begins to play on the person and it becomes the object of observation rather than the subject, realization is not feasible. It is the witness that makes realization desirable and attainable... The person by itself will not become the witness. It is like expecting a cold candle to start burning in the course of time. The person can stay in the darkness of ignorance forever, unless the flame of awareness touches it...
The witness is that which says ‘I know’. The person says ‘I do’. Now, to say ‘I know’ is not untrue — it is merely limited. But to say ‘I do’ is altogether false, because there is nobody who does; all happens by itself, including the idea of being a doer.... Things are as they are and nobody in particular is responsible. The idea of personal responsibility comes from the illusion of agency. ‘Somebody must have done it, somebody is responsible’... It is not the person that is doing sadhana. The person is in unrest and resistance to the very end. It is the witness that works on the person, on the totality of its illusions, past, present and future... The universe is full of action, but there is no actor. There are numberless persons small and big and very big, who, through identification, imagine themselves as acting, but it does not change the fact that the world of action is one single whole in which all depends on, and affects all...
Your real nature is not like what you appear to be. Give up the idea of being a person, that is all. You need not become what you are anyhow. There is the identity of what you are and there is the person superimposed on it... It is useless to fight the sense of being a limited and separate person unless the roots of it are laid bare... Liberation is never of the person, it is always from the person... The person is but a shell imprisoning you. Break the shell.... Just see the person you imagine yourself to be as a part of the world you perceive within your mind and look at the mind from the outside, for you are not the mind. After all, your only problem is the eager self-identification with whatever you perceive. Give up this habit, remember that you are not what you perceive, use your power of alert aloofness.... Nothing is wrong with you, but the ideas you have of yourself are altogether wrong... The dissolution of personality is followed always by a sense of great relief, as if a heavy burden has fallen off..."
- Niz
taken from "I AM THAT"
