Nisargadatta Maharaj

[Deleted]

M: 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.

[Reefs]

Aug 20, 2021 15:47:35 GMT -5 @robertc said:

M: 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.

Compare this to what Segal wrote:

SS: There are spiritual traditions that imply that the mind must be stopped for the vastness to be realized. The assumption is that the relative activity of mind correlates with awakening. Of course, if a practice is undertaken to quiet or stop the mind, the result may be a quiet mind. But the infinite is not perceived through or grasped by the mind. The infinite realizes itself.

Strict practices may encourage the creation of more ideas about what the awakened state looks like as the mind attempts to figure out or approximate it. But how can the mind approximate what it cannot grasp? The vastness is unimaginable. Although it is always present, the mind cannot recognize it because the infinite is not perceived through the mind. The infinite perceives itself.

The infinite reveals itself to the mind in mysterious, unimaginable, and ungraspable ways. But the mind, by its very nature, tends to reject what it cannot grasp. Thus, when it does encounter the vastness, it makes compelling attempts to devalue it.

The contact of the mind with the emptiness of no personal reference point should never be taken to be the direct experience of the vastness, which in any case does not go through the mind. Rather, it is the experience of the minds response to the vastness, and nothing more.

I have said before that there is no personal doer, but this should not be construed to mean that nothing gets done. In fact, there has never been a personal doer, yet it’s obvious that the car gets driven, the children get fed, relationships get taken care of. As the mind sees things getting done, it concludes that there must be a someone who does them, otherwise doing would not occur. But the vastness has never waited for the mind to recognize that there is no doer for doing to occur. Doing has always occurred out of a placeless origin that is confounding to a mind that thrives on interpretation and insinuation. The vastness itself does not interpret doing to mean that there must be someone who does. It sees quite naturally that doing arises out of the same placeless origin as everything else.

The vastness carries a non-personal desire to experience itself. This appears to be the purpose of human life—for the vastness to meet itself everywhere it turns. The notion of personal growth or inner development is contrary in every respect to the way the vastness exists. The quest to awaken implies a sense of futurity that precludes basking in what actually is right now. I am unable to see the value in any method of evolution that implies getting somewhere or becoming something different. As soon as one embarks on a path to somewhere, the awesomeness of what is, here and now, becomes unavailable. More important, the somewhere people are trying to arrive is actually not locatable, since it is everywhere all the time.

All ideas about accomplishing spiritual awakening are based on the assumption that there is a someone, a you, who can perform the practices and accomplish the goal. But this someone doesn’t exist. Take, for example, the popular spiritual notion that we need to “get out of the way so the infinite can just flow through us.” It is predicated on a nonexistent someone who can figure out how to surrender. We need to see that both spiritual and psychological practices, every single one of them, are based on taking ideas about who we are to be the truth of who we are. The idea that we are the doer behind our actions does not make us the doer, no matter how often we get hoodwinked into taking this idea to be truth.

Then there is the notion that we must stop the mind in order to be free. But who will stop the mind? Like everything else, the mind is just what it is. A mind that generates thoughts is not a problem; it is simply doing what minds do. The mind is made of the same vast emptiness as everything. Whether the mind is active or quiet, this emptiness never changes. Nor does the infinite wait for the mind to do or stop doing something in order for the vastness to reveal itself to itself. If the mind should stop, it simply does so as part of the unfathomable mystery.

To see things for what they are is to see with the eyes of the vastness itself. This seeing is always occurring, whether or not we are consciously aware of it. Rather than getting caught by the mind, the vastness sees all the ways the mind attempts to hoodwink us into believing that we are an individual “I” who runs the show of life. It sees how the idea of who we are muscles its way into the front row of the mind and insists it is not just an idea, but who we really are. And it sees the infinite everywhere (where else could it be?) and then sees everyone searching for it.

Of course, we have to be careful not to use “seeing things for what they are” as a technique to get rid of emotions or mind-states that the mind deems undesirable. There is no experience whose presence is an indication that you are not the vastness. Therefore, there is no need to get rid of anything. Suffering is caused not by the presence of certain circumstances or experiences, but by the mind’s interpretation of them.

After I speak to people about seeing things for what they are, they frequently go home and practice this “technique” rigorously, then conclude they have failed because what was seen didn’t go away. But the vastness has no goal of ridding itself of anything. The vastness, which is what we really are, never suffers. Therefore, it never asks that anything be eliminated for suffering to cease.


Suzanne Segal, Collision With the Infinite, Chapter 9

[Deleted]

Aug 21, 2021 1:49:30 GMT -5 Reefs said:

Aug 20, 2021 15:47:35 GMT -5 @robertc said:

M: 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.

Compare this to what Segal wrote:

SS: There are spiritual traditions that imply that the mind must be stopped for the vastness to be realized. The assumption is that the relative activity of mind correlates with awakening. Of course, if a practice is undertaken to quiet or stop the mind, the result may be a quiet mind. But the infinite is not perceived through or grasped by the mind. The infinite realizes itself.

[...]
Suzanne Segal, Collision With the Infinite, Chapter 9

Thanks, good counterpoint (in the sense of a musical line, not argument).  

"I" am interested in being still as Niz described, for various reasons, and I liked his somewhat poetic description of what sometimes happens. 

It seems like Segal's language sometimes slips into the thing she is advising against – "we need to see ...", "we have to be careful not to ...".  It can start to feel like tail-chasing; endless attempts to adjust language. One antidote to that is "just do it" as the saying goes, or maybe a quiet mind... haha.

[Reefs]

Aug 21, 2021 11:22:50 GMT -5 @robertc said:

Aug 21, 2021 1:49:30 GMT -5 Reefs said:

Compare this to what Segal wrote:

Thanks, good counterpoint (in the sense of a musical line, not argument).  

"I" am interested in being still as Niz described, for various reasons, and I liked his somewhat poetic description of what sometimes happens. 

It seems like Segal's language sometimes slips into the thing she is advising against – "we need to see ...", "we have to be careful not to ...".  It can start to feel like tail-chasing; endless attempts to adjust language. One antidote to that is "just do it" as the saying goes, or maybe a quiet mind... haha.

Yes, not really a counterpoint. Unlike Niz in the quote you posted, Segal just isn't making any concessions to the seeker. But Niz can talk like this, too.

It's very difficult to communicate this point of there being no self and no doer via language, because the way language works with its basic 'subject-verb-object' or 'subject-predicate' structure, by default a self and a doer is already assumed. And so in order to really get this point across, you sometimes see people switching voice, from active to passive, i.e. instead of someone 'verbing' something/someone, someone is 'verbed' by something/someone. And that not only sounds weird and cumbersome, it's not really helping either, because it just reverses roles in terms of doership. So in order to really get this point of no self and no doer across using language, you would have to totally break with the common rules of grammar and syntax. But then it will become unintelligible. So for the sake of keeping your utterances intelligible, you have to make certain concessions. Which means anything you say using words can - and very often will! - be used against you, hehe. So you always have to pay attention to context when quoting someone.

Now, Zen folks often try to bypass (spoken) language altogether and instead make funny noises or gestures. But in the end, spoken language or sign language, it's all the same futile attempt of trying to express the real via the symbolic, of trying to fit the ocean into a coffee cup. It has to fail. There's just no substitute for direct seeing.

[Deleted]

Maharaj: What is done under pressure of society and circumstances does not matter much, for it is mostly mechanical, mere reacting to impacts. It is enough to watch oneself dispassionately to isolate oneself completely from what is going on. What has been done without minding, blindly, may add to one's karma (destiny), otherwise it hardly matters. The Guru demands one thing only; clarity and intensity of purpose, a sense of responsibility for oneself. The very reality of the world must be questioned. Who is the Guru, after all? He who knows the state in which there is neither the world nor the thought of it, he is the Supreme Teacher. To find him means to reach the state in which imagination is no longer taken for reality. Please, understand that the Guru stands for reality, for truth, for what is. He is a realist in the highest sense of the term. He cannot and shall not come to terms with the mind and its delusions. He comes to take you to the real; don't expect him to do anything else.
The Guru you have in mind, one who gives you information and instructions, is not the real Guru. The real Guru is he who knows the real, beyond the glamour of appearances. To him your questions about obedience and discipline do not make sense, for in his eyes the person you take yourself to be does not exist, your questions are about a non-existing person. What exists for you does not exist for him. What you take for granted, he denies absolutely. He wants you to see yourself as he sees you. Then you will not need a Guru to obey and follow, for you will obey and follow your own reality. realise that whatever you think yourself to be is just a stream of events; that while all happens, comes and goes, you alone are, the changeless among the changeful, the self- evident among the inferred. Separate the observed from the observer and abandon false identifications.

Ch 47. Watch Your Mind, I Am That

[inavalan]

I find this Wiki quote interesting:

• Nisargadatta's teachings are grounded in the Advaita Vedanta interpretation of the Advaita idea Tat Tvam Asi, literally "That Thou Art", (Tat = "Absolute", Tvam = "You", Asi = "are") meaning "You are (actually) Absolute" (who think otherwise).
  ...
  It has been said that Nisargadatta´s style was direct, and even at times aggressive. He very rarely mentioned scriptures or quoted spiritual books. His teachings came from his own experience.

Followers keep saying "that" instead of "absolute" ... Lost in translation? More interesting?

=====
EDIT: The "I am" vs. "you are" allows a different interpretation of the message too. 

[justlikeyou]

Q: What benefit do I derive from listening to you?

M: I am calling you back to yourself. All I ask you is to look at yourself, towards yourself, into
yourself.

Q: To what purpose?

M: You live, you feel, you think. By giving attention to your living, feeling and thinking, you free
yourself from them and go beyond them. Your personality dissolves and only the witness remains.
Then you go beyond the witness. Do not ask how it happens. Just search within yourself.

Q: What makes the difference between the person and the witness?

M: Both are modes of consciousness. In one you desire and fear, in the other you are unaffected
by pleasure and pain and are not ruffled by events. You let them come and go.

Q: How does one get established in the higher state, the state of pure witnessing?

M: Consciousness does not shine by itself. It shines by a light beyond it. Having seen the
dreamlike quality of consciousness, look for the light in which it appears, which gives it being. There
is the content of consciousness as well as the awareness of it.

[inavalan]

Apr 19, 2023 19:45:40 GMT -5 justlikeyou said:

Q: What benefit do I derive from listening to you?

M: I am calling you back to yourself. All I ask you is to look at yourself, towards yourself, into
yourself.

Q: To what purpose?

M: You live, you feel, you think. By giving attention to your living, feeling and thinking, you free
yourself from them and go beyond them. Your personality dissolves and only the witness remains.
Then you go beyond the witness. Do not ask how it happens. Just search within yourself.

Q: What makes the difference between the person and the witness?

M: Both are modes of consciousness. In one you desire and fear, in the other you are unaffected
by pleasure and pain and are not ruffled by events. You let them come and go.

Q: How does one get established in the higher state, the state of pure witnessing?

M: Consciousness does not shine by itself. It shines by a light beyond it. Having seen the
dreamlike quality of consciousness, look for the light in which it appears, which gives it being. There
is the content of consciousness as well as the awareness of it.

 
I highlighted what I find significant in that quote. Everyone reading this quote, and even paying attention to those same highlights, will interpret through their own beliefs, according to their level of evolvement as personality (gestalt of consciousness). And that is okay.

[justlikeyou]

"The spray of the ocean contains innumerable droplets. But they are the ocean only when not separated from the ocean. On separation they are individual drops. Nevertheless, the salty taste of the water, whether of the ocean or of its droplets, is the same. Just as the salty taste is present in the entire ocean, the beingness or the sense of "I am" in the human form has the inherent capacity to be all-pervading."

[justlikeyou]

"There are no individuals; there are only food bodies with the knowledge "I Am". There is no
difference between an ant, a human being, and Isvara; they are of the same quality. The body of an
ant is small, an elephant's is large. The strength is different, because of size, but the life-force is the
same. For knowledge the body is necessary"

[justlikeyou]

"Do you realise that as long as you have a self to defend, you must be violent?"

[justlikeyou]

Q: According to the Theosophists and allied occultists, man consists of three aspects: personality,
individuality and spirituality. Beyond spirituality lies divinity. The personality is strictly temporary and
valid for one birth only. It begins with the birth of the body and ends with the birth of the next body.
Once over, it is over for good; nothing remains of it except a few sweet or bitter lessons.

The individuality begins with the animal-man and ends with the fully human. The split between the
personality and individuality is characteristic of our present-day humanity. On one side the
individuality with its longing for the true, the good and the beautiful; on the other side an ugly
struggle between habit and ambition, fear and greed, passivity and violence.

The spirituality aspect is still in abeyance. It cannot manifest itself in an atmosphere of duality. Only
when the personality is reunited with the individuality and becomes a limited, perhaps, but true
expression of it, that the light and love and beauty of the spiritual come into their own.

You teach of the vyakti, vyakta, avyakta (observer, observed and ground of observation). Does it
tally with the other view?

M: Yes, when the vyakti realises its non-existence in separation from the vyakta, and the vyakta
sees the vyakti as his own expression, then the peace and silence of the avyakta state come into
being. In reality, the three are one: the vyakta and the avyakta are inseparable, while the vyakti is
the sensing-feeling-thinking process, based on the body made of and fed by the five elements

[justlikeyou]

Forms disintegrate, but there is no difference in my experience. There is no difference between the
quality of the born and the unborn child, this is the great news of enlightenment. One is born or unborn,
the difference is only of birth or no birth, in reality, there is no difference. The born vanishes and again
becomes identical with the unborn. The difference is temporary, my body is similar to the unborn, and
so I am happy. This existence is momentary, why give it importance?

[inavalan]

May 2, 2023 19:37:25 GMT -5 justlikeyou said:

Forms disintegrate, but there is no difference in my experience. There is no difference between the
quality of the born and the unborn child, this is the great news of enlightenment. One is born or unborn,
the difference is only of birth or no birth, in reality, there is no difference. The born vanishes and again
becomes identical with the unborn. The difference is temporary, my body is similar to the unborn, and
so I am happy. This existence is momentary, why give it importance?

As I understand the context, that quote is about male / female. Standing alone, that extract could be misinterpreted.

"Because of your body-mind you cannot understand Purusha and Prakriti. Because of their activity, creation goes on, in reality there is no male and female. There is steel and there are so many products made out of it, it depends on the use as to which we want to put it. Consciousness is the same in all forms, but the behavior of each is different, which is decided at the time of birth, the differences last as long as the form is there.

Forms disintegrate, but there is no difference in my experience. There is no difference between the quality of the born and the unborn child, this is the great news of enlightenment. One is born or unborn, the difference is only of birth or no birth, in reality, there is no difference. The born vanishes and again becomes identical with the unborn. The difference is temporary, my body is similar to the unborn, and so I am happy. This existence is momentary, why give it importance? We believe it to be a long period, but it is momentary like a dream. A five minute dream, but a hundred years of life is contained in it. A movie depicts a life story, but it is the writer’s skill, is it real? Life is like that."

prakriti: (Sanskrit: nature, source) "female" 
purusha: (Sanskrit: spirit) "male"

[laughter]

May 2, 2023 20:49:18 GMT -5 inavalan said:

May 2, 2023 19:37:25 GMT -5 justlikeyou said:

Forms disintegrate, but there is no difference in my experience. There is no difference between the
quality of the born and the unborn child, this is the great news of enlightenment. One is born or unborn,
the difference is only of birth or no birth, in reality, there is no difference. The born vanishes and again
becomes identical with the unborn. The difference is temporary, my body is similar to the unborn, and
so I am happy. This existence is momentary, why give it importance?

As I understand the context, that quote is about male / female. Standing alone, that extract could be misinterpreted.

"Because of your body-mind you cannot understand Purusha and Prakriti. Because of their activity, creation goes on, in reality there is no male and female. There is steel and there are so many products made out of it, it depends on the use as to which we want to put it. Consciousness is the same in all forms, but the behavior of each is different, which is decided at the time of birth, the differences last as long as the form is there.

Forms disintegrate, but there is no difference in my experience. There is no difference between the quality of the born and the unborn child, this is the great news of enlightenment. One is born or unborn, the difference is only of birth or no birth, in reality, there is no difference. The born vanishes and again becomes identical with the unborn. The difference is temporary, my body is similar to the unborn, and so I am happy. This existence is momentary, why give it importance? We believe it to be a long period, but it is momentary like a dream. A five minute dream, but a hundred years of life is contained in it. A movie depicts a life story, but it is the writer’s skill, is it real? Life is like that."

prakriti: (Sanskrit: nature, source) "female" 
purusha: (Sanskrit: spirit) "male"

The choice of dichotomy is arbitrary. In the biggest of pictures, every dichotomy, no matter how seemingly fundamental to the function of life, is ultimately mind-made. This is not to dismiss the dichotomies of male/female or good/bad or alive/inert as insignificant or unimportant. It's simply to offer a different perspective on them. Niz was likely addressing the questioner's specific interest.