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Post by laughter on Sept 25, 2013 4:00:54 GMT -5
(From Chapter 93 of "I AM THAT", "Man is Not the Doer")
Niz: As long as there is the body and the sense of identity with the body, frustration is inevitable. Only when you know yourself as entirely alien to and different from the body will you find respite from the mixture of fear and craving inseparable from the "I am the body" idea. Merely assuaging fears and satisfying desires will not remove this sense of emptiness you are trying to escape from; only self-knowledge can help you. By 'self-knowledge' I mean full knowledge of what you are not. Such knowledge is attainable and final, but to the discovery of what you are, there can be no end. The more you discover, the more there remains to discover.
seeker: For this we must have different parents and schools, live in a different society.
Niz: You cannot change your circumstances, but you can change your attitudes. You need not be attached to the non-essentials. Only the necessary is good. There is peace only in the essential.
seeker: It is truth I seek, not peace.
Niz: You cannot see the true unless you are at peace. A quiet mind is essential for correct perception, which again is required for self-realization.
seeker: I have so much to do. I just cannot afford to keep my mind quiet.
Niz: It is because of your illusion that you are the doer. In reality things, are done to you, not by you.
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Post by laughter on Sept 28, 2013 5:05:32 GMT -5
(From Chapter 95 of "I AM THAT", "Accept Life as it Comes")
Q: How can I know whether I am able to start an assram unless I try?
Niz: 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. You must put in true worth before you can expect something real. What is your worth?
Q: By what measure shall I measure it?
Niz: Look at the content of your mind. You are what you think about. Are you not busy most of the time with your own little person and its daily needs?
The value of regular meditation is that it takes you away from the humdrum of daily routine and reminds you that you are not what you believe yourself to be. But even remembering is not enough -- action must follow conviction. Don't be like the rich man who has made a detailed will but refuses to die.
Q: Is not gradualness the law of life?
Niz: Oh, no. The preparation alone is gradual -- the change itself is sudden and complete. Gradual change does not take you to a new level of conscious being. You need courage to let go.
Q: I admit it is courage that I lack.
Niz: It is because you are not fully convinced. Complete conviction generates both desire and courage. And meditation is the art of achieving faith through understanding. In meditation you consider the teaching received, in all its aspects and repeatedly, until out of clarity confidence is born and, with confidence, action. Conviction and action are inseparable. If action does not follow conviction, examine your convictions -- don't accuse yourself of lack of courage. Self-depreciation will take you nowhere. Without clarity and emotional assent, of what use is will?
Q: What do you mean by emotional assent? Am I not to act against my desires?
Niz: You will not act against your desires. Clarity is not enough. Energy comes from love -- you must love to act -- whatever the shape and object of your love. Without clarity and charity, courage is destructive. People at ware are often wonderfully courageous, but what of it?
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Post by laughter on Oct 5, 2013 12:23:44 GMT -5
(From Chapter 97 of "I AM THAT", "The Mind and the World are Not Separate")
seeker: What comes first -- being or desire?
Niz: With being arising in consciousness, the ideas of what you are arise in your mind as well as what you should be. This brings forth desire and action, and the process of becoming begins. Becoming has apparently no beginning and no end, for it re-starts every moment. With the cessation of imagination and desire, becoming ceases and being this or that merges into pure being, which is not describable, only experienceable.
The world appears to you to be so overwhelmingly real because you think of it, all the time; cease thinking of it and it will dissolve into thin mist. You need not forget; when desire and fear end, bondage also ends. It is the emotional involvement, the pattern of likes and dislikes which we call character and temperament, that creates the bondage.
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Post by laughter on Oct 13, 2013 19:25:49 GMT -5
(From Chapter 97 of "I AM THAT", "The Mind and the World are not Separate")
Q: Without desire and fear, what motive is there for action?
Niz: None, unless you consider love of life, of righteousness, of beauty, motive enough.
Do not be afraid of freedom from desire and fear. It enables you to live a life so different from all you know, so much more intense and interesting that, truly, by losing all you gain all.
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Post by laughter on Oct 14, 2013 5:35:03 GMT -5
(From Chapter 98 of "I AM THAT", "Freedom From Self-Identification")
seeker: If I know myself, shall I not desire and fear?
Niz: For some time the mental habits may linger in spite of the new vision -- the habit of longing for the known past and fearing the unknown future. When you know these are of the mind only, you can go beyond them. As long as you have all sorts of ideas about yourself, you know yourself through the mist of these ideas; to know yourself as you are, give up all ideas. You cannot imagine the taste of pure water, you can only discover it by abandoning all flavoring.
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Post by laughter on Oct 19, 2013 22:05:52 GMT -5
(From Chapter 99 of "I AM THAT", "The Perceived Cannot be the Perceiver")
Niz: Nothing you do will change you, for you need no change. You may change your mind or your body, but it is always something external to you that has changed, not yourself. Why bother at all to change? Realize once and for all that neither your body nor your mind nor even your consciousness is yourself, and stand alone in your true nature beyond consciousness and unconsciousness. No effort can take you there, only the clarity of understanding. Trace your misunderstandings and abandon them, that is all. There is nothing to seek and find, for there is nothing lost. Relax and watch the 'I am'. Reality is just behind it. Keep quiet, keep silent; it will emerge or, rather, it will take you in.
Q: Must I not get rid of my body and mind first?
Niz: You cannot, for the very idea binds you to them. Just understand and disregard.
Q: I am unable to disregard, for I am not integrated.
Niz: Imagine that you are completely integrated, your thought and action fully coordinated. How will it help you? It will not free you from mistaking yourself to be the body or the mind. See them correctly as 'not you', that is all.
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Post by justlikeyou on Nov 4, 2013 19:49:20 GMT -5
"Unless you make tremendous efforts, you will not be convinced that
effort will take you nowhere. The self is so self-confident that
unless it is totally discouraged it will not give up. Mere verbal
conviction is not enough. Hard facts alone can show the absolute
nothingness of the self-image"
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Post by justlikeyou on Nov 4, 2013 19:50:13 GMT -5
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.
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Post by laughter on Jul 14, 2014 10:59:38 GMT -5
("I AM THAT", para's 3-6 of Chapter 8, "The Self Stands Beyond Mind")
seeker: How can I make my mind steady?
Niz: How can an unsteady mind make itself steady? Of course it cannot. It is the nature of the mind to roam about. All you can do is to shift the focus of consciousness beyond the mind.
seeker: How is it done?
Niz: Refuse all thoughts except one: the thought 'I am'. The mind will rebel in the beginning, but with patience and perseverance it will yield and keep quiet. Once you are quiet, things will begin to happen spontaneously and quite naturally without any interference on your part.
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Post by silver on Jul 29, 2014 18:16:59 GMT -5
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Post by silver on Jul 29, 2014 18:29:12 GMT -5
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Post by laughter on Aug 14, 2014 21:52:57 GMT -5
seeker: What you say reminds me of the dharmakaya of the Buddha.
Niz: Maybe. We need not run off with terminology. 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.
...
seeker: What is the relation between reality and its expressions?
Niz: No relation. In reality all is real and identical. As we put it, saguna and nirguna are one in Parabrahman. There is only the Supreme. In movement, it Is saguna. Motionless, it is nirguna. But it is only the mind that moves or does not move. The real is beyond, you are beyond. Once you have understood that nothing perceivable, or conceivable can be yourself, you are free of your imaginations. To see everything as imagination, born of desire, is necessary for self-realisation. We miss the real by lack of attention and create the unreal by excess of imagination.
(para's 5 and 6, and 39 and 40, from dialog 94 of "I AM THAT", "You are Beyond Space and Time")
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Post by laughter on Aug 14, 2014 21:55:37 GMT -5
seeker: The fully realised man, spontaneously abiding in the supreme state, appears to eat, drink and so on. Is he aware of it, or not?
Niz: That in which consciousness happens, the universal consciousness or mind, we call the ether of consciousness. All the objects of consciousness form the universe. What is beyond both, supporting both, is the supreme state, a state of utter stillness and silence. Whoever goes there, disappears. It is unreachable by words, or mind. You may call it God, or Parabrahman, or Supreme Reality, but these are names given by the mind. It is the nameless, contentless, effortless and spontaneous state, beyond being and not being.
(para's 21 and 22 from dialog 13 of "I AM THAT", "The Supreme, the Mind and the Body")
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Post by laughter on Aug 17, 2014 20:25:56 GMT -5
seeker: You say, reality is one. Oneness, unity, is the attribute of the person. Is then reality a person, with the universe as its body?
Niz: Whatever you may say will be both true and false. Words do not reach beyond the mind.
seeker: I am just trying to understand. You are telling us of the Person, the Self and the Supreme. (vyakti, vyakta, avyakta). The light of Pure Awareness (pragna), focussed as 'I am' in the Self (jivatma), as consciousness (chetana) illumines the mind (antahkarana) and as life (prana) vitalises the body (deha). All this is fine as far as the words go. But when it comes to distinguishing in myself the person from the Self and the Self from the Supreme, I get mixed up.
Niz: 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.
...
seeker: I can now understand that I am not the person, but that which, when reflected in the person, gives it a sense of being. Now, about the Supreme? In what way do I know myself as the Supreme?
Niz: The source of consciousness cannot be an object in consciousness. To know the source is to be the source. When you realize that you are not the person, but the pure and calm witness, and that fearless awareness is your very being, you are the being. It is the source, the Inexhaustible Possibility
...
seeker: I can now understand that I am not the person, but that which, when reflected in the person, gives it a sense of being. Now, about the Supreme? In what way do I know myself as the Supreme?
Niz: The source of consciousness cannot be an object in consciousness. To know the source is to be the source. When you realise that you are not the person, but the pure and calm witness, and that fearless awareness is your very being, you are the being. It is the source, the Inexhaustible Possibility
seeker: How is the Absolute experienced?
Niz: It is not an object to be recognized and stored up in memory. It is in the present and in feeling rather. It has more to do with the 'how' than with the 'what'. It is in the quality, in the value; being the source of everything, it is in everything.
(para's 1-4, 11, 12, 17 and 18 from dialog 20 of "I AM THAT", "The Supreme is Beyond All")
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Post by laughter on Aug 17, 2014 21:12:27 GMT -5
seeker: The witnessing -- is it not my real nature?
Niz: For witnessing, there must be something else to witness. We are still in duality!
seeker: What about witnessing the witness? Awareness of awareness?
Niz: Putting words together will not take you far. Go within and discover what you are not. Nothing else matters.
(para's 40-43 of dialog 10 of "I AM THAT", "Witnessing")
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