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Post by laughter on Feb 19, 2013 19:39:56 GMT -5
Niz: I am now 74 years old. And yet I feel that I am an infant. I feel clearly that, in spite of all the changes, I am a child. My guru told me, 'That child, which is you even now, is your real self (svarupa).' Go back to that state of pure being where the 'I am' is still in its purity, before it became contaminated with 'this I am' or 'that I am.' Your burden is one of false self-identifications -- abandon them all. My guru told me, 'Turst me. I tell you: You are divine. Take it as the absolute truth. Your joy is divine, your suffering is divine too. All comes from God. Remember it always. You are God; your will alone is done.' I did believe him and soon realized how wonderfully true and accurate his words were. I did not condition my mind by thinking: 'I am God, I am wonderful, I am beyond.' I simply followed his instruction, which was to focus the mind on pure being, 'I am,' and stay in it. I used to sit for hours together with nothing but the 'I am' in my mind, and soon peace and joy and a deep all-embracing love became my normal state. In it all disappeared: myself, my guru, the life I lived, the world around me. Only peace and unfathomable silence remained.
seeker: It all looks very simple and easy, but it is just not so.
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Post by laughter on Feb 22, 2013 21:00:28 GMT -5
Niz: Everybody is glad to be. But few know the fullness of it. You come to know by dwelling in your mind on 'I am', 'I know', 'I love' -- with the will of reaching the deepest meaning of these words.
Q: Can I think 'I am God'?
Niz: Don't identify yourself with an idea. If by 'God' you mean the Unknown, then you merely say, 'I do not know what I am'. If you know God as you know yourself, you need not say it. Best is the simple feeling 'I am'. Dwell on it patiently. Here, patience is wisdom; don't think of failure. There can be no failure in this undertaking.
Q: My thoughts will not let me.
Niz: Pay no attention. Don't fight them. Just do nothing about them; let them be, whatever they are. Your fighting them gives them life. Just disregard. Look through. Remember to remember: 'Whatever happens -- happens because I am'. All reminds you that you are. Take full advantage of the fact that to experience you must be. You need not stop thinking. Just cease being interested. It is disinterestedness that liberates. Don't hold on, that is all. The world is made of rings. The hooks are all yours. Make your hooks straight and nothing can hold you. Give up your addictions. There is nothing else to give up. Stop your routine of acquisitiveness, your habit of looking for results and the freedom of the universe is yours. Be effortless.
(last two from Chapter 51 of "I AM THAT", "Be Indifferent to Pain and Pleasure")
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Post by laughter on Feb 24, 2013 19:57:26 GMT -5
seeker: How am I to fight desire? There is nothing stronger.
Niz: The waters of life are thundering over the rocks of objects -- desirable or hateful. Remove the rocks by insight and detachment and the same waters will flow deep, silent and swift, in greater volume and with greater power. Don't be theoretical about it; give time to thought and consideration. If you desire to be free, do not neglect the nearest step to freedom. It is like climbing a mountain -- not a step can be missed. On step less-- and the summit is not reached.
(from Chapter 53 of "I AM THAT", "Desires Fulfilled Breed More Desires")
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Post by justlikeyou on Feb 25, 2013 22:12:24 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 Feb 26, 2013 21:16:40 GMT -5
Q: Is the Universe a product of the senses?
Niz: Just as you recreate your world on waking up, so is the universe unrolled. The mind with its five organs of perception, five organs of action, and five vehicles of consciousness appears as memory, thought, reason and selfhood.
Q: The sciences have made much progress. We know the body and the mind much better than our ancestors did. Your traditional way, describing and analyzing mind and matter, is no longer valid.
Niz: But where are your scientists with their sciences? Are they not again images in your own mind?
Q: Here lies the basic difference! To me they are not my own projections. They were before I was born and shall be there when I am dead.
Niz: Of course. Once you accept time and space as real, you will consider yourself minute and short-lived. But are they real? Do they depend on you or you on them? As body, you are in space. As mind, you are in time. But are you mere body with a mind in it? Have you ever investigated?
Q: I had neither the motive nor the method.
Niz: I am suggesting both. But the actual work of insight and detachment (viveka-vairagya) is yours.
Q: The only motive I can perceive is my own causeless and timeless happiness. And what is the method?
Niz: Happiness is incidental. The true and effective motive is love. You see people suffer and you seek the best way of helping them. The answer is obvious -- first put yourself beyond the need of help. Be sure your attitude is of pure goodwill, free of expectation of any kind.
Those who seek mere happiness may end up in sublime indifference, while love will never rest.
As to the method, there is only one: you must come to know yourself, both what you appear to be and what you are. Clarity and charity go together -- each needs and strengthens the other.
Q: Compassion implies the existence of an objective world, full of avoidable sorrow.
Niz: The world is not objective and the sorrow of it is not avoidable. Compassion is but another word for the refusal to suffer for imaginary reasons.
Q: If the reasons are imaginary, why should the suffering be inevitable?
Niz: It is always the false that makes you suffer, the false desires and fears, the false values and ideas, the false relationships between people. Abandon the false and you are free of pain; truth makes happy, turth liberates.
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Post by laughter on Feb 27, 2013 20:58:44 GMT -5
Q: ... here and now, as I talk to you, I am in the body -- obviously. The body may not be me, but it is mine.
Niz: The entire universe contributes incessantly to your existence. Hence the entire universe is your body. In that sense, I agree.
...
Niz: ... now divest yourself of the idea that you are the body with the help of the contrary idea that you are not the body. It is also an idea, no doubt; treat it like something to be abandoned when its work is done. ...
(This and the last from Chapter 54 of "I AM THAT", "Body and Mind are Symptoms of Ignorance")
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Post by laughter on Mar 7, 2013 14:09:55 GMT -5
Q: There are affections in the dream which seem real and everlasting. Do they disappear on waking up?
Niz: In dream, you love some and not others. On waking up, you find you are love itself, embracing all. Personal love, however intense and genuine, invariable binds; love in freedom is love of all.
Q: People come and go. One loves whom one meets; one cannot love all.
Niz: When you are love itself, you are beyond time and numbers. In loving one, you love all; in loving all, you love each. One and all are not exclusive.
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Post by laughter on Mar 9, 2013 20:08:14 GMT -5
Q: How can non-action be of use where action is needed? Niz: Where action is needed, action happens. Man is not the actor. His purpose is to be aware of what is happening. His very presence is action. The window is the absence of the wall and it provides air and light because it is empty. Be empty of all mental content, of all imagination and effort, and the very absence of obstacles will cause reality to rush in. If you really want to help a person, keep away. If you are emotionally comitted to helping, you will fail to help. You may be very busy and be very pleased with your charitable nature, but not much will be done. A man is really helped when he is no longer in need of help. All else is just futility. Q: There is not enough time to sit and wait for help to happen. One must do something. Niz: By all means -- do. But what you can do is limited; the self alone is unlimited. Give limitlessly -- of yourself. All else you can give in small measures only. You alone are immeasurable. To help is your very nature. Even when you eat and drink you help your body. For yourself you need nothing. You are pure giving, beginningles, endless, inexhaustible. When you see sorrow and suffering, be with it. Do not rush into activity. Neither learning nor action can really help. Be with sorrow and lay bare its roots -- helping to understand is real help. (from Chapter 55 of "I AM THAT", "Give up All and You Gain All")
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Post by justlikeyou on Mar 10, 2013 9:55:47 GMT -5
"So many words you have learnt, so many you have spoken. You know everything, but you do not know yourself."
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Post by justlikeyou on Mar 11, 2013 10:27:09 GMT -5
" Learning words is not enough. You may know the theory, but without the actual experience of yourself as the impersonal and unqualified centre of being, love and bliss, mere verbal knowledge is sterile."
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Post by laughter on Mar 14, 2013 21:25:35 GMT -5
seeker: There is the background of experience, call it matter. There is the experiencer, call it mind. What makes the bridge between the two?
Niz: The very gap between is the bridge. That which at one end looks like matter and at the other as mind is in itself the bridge. Don't separate reality into mind and body and there will be no need of bridges.
Consciousness arising, the world arises. When you consider the wisdom and the beauty of the world, you call it God. Know the source of it all which is in yourself, and you will find all your questions answered.
seeker: the seer and the seen -- are they one or two?
Niz: There is only seeing -- both the seer and the seen are contained in it. Don't create differences where there are none.
(from Chapter 56 of "I AM THAT", "Consciousness Arising, World Arises")
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Post by justlikeyou on Mar 15, 2013 8:05:43 GMT -5
"Love is not just a word, it's the knowledge of the I Am"
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Post by laughter on Mar 19, 2013 13:01:17 GMT -5
seeker: I find it hard to grasp what exactly you mean by saying that you are neither the object nor the subject. At this very moment, as we talk, am I not the object of your experience, and you the subject? Niz: Look -- my thumb touches my forefinger. Both touch and are touched. When my attention is on the thumb, the thumb is the feeler and the forefinger -- the self. Shift the focus of attention and the relationship is reversed. I find that somehow, by shifting the focus of attention, I become the very thing I look at and experience the kind of consciousness it has; I become the inner witness of the thing. I call this capacity of entering other focal points of consciousness 'love'; you may give it any name you like. Love says, 'I am everything.' Wisdom says 'I am nothing.' Between the two my life flows. Since at any point of time and space I can be both the subject and the object of experience, I express it by saying that I am both, and neither, and beyond both. (Chapter 57, paragraphs 14 and 15 of "I AM THAT", "Beyond Mind, There is No Suffering")
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Post by laughter on Mar 23, 2013 20:38:20 GMT -5
Q: I have noticed a new self emerging in me, independent of the old self. They somehow coexist. The old self goes on its habitual ways; the new lets the old be, but does not identify itself with it.
Niz: What is the main difference between the old self and the new?
Q: The old self wants everything defined and explained. It wants things to fit each other verbally. The new does not care for verbal explanations -- it accepts things as they are and does not seek to relate them to things remembered.
Niz: Are you fully and constantly aware of the difference between the habitual and the spiritual? What is the attitude of the new self to the old?
Q: The new just looks at the old. It is neither friendly nor inimical. It just accepts the old self along with everything else. It does not deny its being, but does not accept its value and validity.
Niz: The new is the total denial of the old. The permissive new is not really new. It is but a new attitude of the old. They really new obliterates the old completely. The two cannot be together. Is there a process of self-denudation, a constant refusal to accept the old ideas and values, or is there just a mutual tolerance? What is their relation?
Q: There is not particular relation. They coexist.
Niz: When you talk of the old self and the new, who do you have in mind? As there is continuity in memory between the two, each remembering the other, how can you speak of the two selves?
Q: One is a slave to habits, the other is not. One conceptualizes, the other is free from all ideas.
(From Chapter 42 of "I AM THAT", "Reality Cannot Be Expressed")
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Post by laughter on Mar 25, 2013 21:00:53 GMT -5
(continuation of the excerpt rrom Chapter 42 of "I AM THAT", "Reality Cannot Be Expressed")
Niz: Why two selves? Between the bound and the free there can be no relationship. The very fact of co-existence proves their basic unity. There is but one self — it is always now. What you call the other self — old or new — is but a modality, another aspect of the one self. The self is single. You are that self and you have ideas of what you have been or will be. But an idea is not the self. Just now, as you are sitting in front of me, which self are you? The old or the new? Q: The two are in conflict. Niz: How can there be conflict between what is and what is not? Conflict is the characteristic of the old. When the new emerges, the old is no longer. You cannot speak of the new and the conflict in the same breath. Even the effort of striving for the new self is of the old. Wherever there is conflict, effort, struggle, striving, longing for a change, the new is not. To what extent are you free from the habitual tendency to create and perpetuate conflicts?
Q: I cannot say that I am now a different man. But I did discover new things about myself, states so unlike what I knew before, that I feel justified in calling them new. Niz: The old self is your own self. The state which sprouts suddenly and without cause, carries no stain of self; you may call it ‘god’. What is seedless and rootless, what does not sprout and grow, flower and fruit, what comes into being suddenly and in full glory, mysteriously and marvellously, you may call that ‘god’. It is entirely unexpected yet inevitable, infinitely familiar yet most surprising, beyond all hope yet absolutely certain. Because it is without cause, it is without hindrance. It obeys one law only; the law of freedom. Anything that implies a continuity, a sequence, a passing from stage to stage cannot be the real. There is no progress in reality, it is final, perfect, unrelated. ..... : How can I bring it about? Niz: You can do nothing to bring it about, but you can avoid creating obstacles. Watch your mind, how it comes into being, how it operates. As you watch your mind, you discover yourself as the watcher. When you stand motionless, only watching, you discover yourself as the light behind the watcher. The source of light is dark, unknown is the source of knowledge. That source alone is. Go back to that source and abide there. It is not in the sky or in the all-pervading ether. God is all that is great and wonderful; I am nothing, have nothing can do nothing. Yet all comes out of me -- the source is me; the root, the origin, is me. When reality explodes in you, you may call it experience of God. Or, rather, it is God experiencing you. God knows you when you know yourself. Reality is not the result of a process; it is an explosion. It is definitely beyond the mind, but all you can do is know your mind well. Not that the mind will help you, but by knowing your mind you may avoid your mind disabling you. You have to be very alert, or else your mind will play false with you. It is like watching a thief -- not that you expect anything from a thief, but you do not want to be robbed. In the same way, you give a lot of attention to the mind without expecting anything from it. Or, take another example. We wake and we sleep. After a day's work sleep comes. Now, do I go to sleep or does inadvertence -- characteristic of the sleeping state -- come to me? In other words, we are awake because we are asleep. We do not wake up into a really waking state. In the waking state, the world emerges due to ignorance and takes one into a waking-dream state. Both sleep and waking are misnomers. We are only dreaming. True waking and true sleeping only the jnani knows. We dream that we are awake; we dream that we are asleep. The three states are only varieties of the dream state. Treating everything as a dream liberates. As long as you give reality to dreams, you are their slave. By imagining that you are born as so-and-so, you become a slave to the so-and-so. The essence of slavery is to imagine yourself to be a process, to have past and future, to have history. In fact, we have no history, we are not a process, we do not develop or decay. See all as a dream and stay out of it.
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