All Individuals Are Imaginary

There is no life without the five elements.  All the so called individuals owe their existence to the five elements.  All objects are made of two or more of the five elements.  Only when the elements come together to form sattva or food essence, there is the sense of being or the Atma (Self).  Although all living forms are time-bound, some forms like that of Markandeya have very long lives.

In nature and consciousness there is no law and order.  Man desires order, but has no control over nature.  Hence, he assumes law and order in nature.

The five elements, three qualities, Prakriti and Purusha all these are formless.  All forms made of these ten have imaginary existence.

I am getting my taste "I Am".  It was not there a hundred years back.  But now it is there.  My first job is to find out the "why and how" of this taste.

In this search for the Truth I found out that my "I" had no existence.  I found out that this "I" was not individual but the "Universal I".  The real "I" was of the entire existence, without any individuality.  With this finding, my search ended there.  What existed was not "I" but Brahman.  You feel that your existence is important.  Hence, everything is important to you.  If your existence loses its importance, nothing has any importance to you.

You know "you are" and you want to exist always.  You want company of your body indefinitely.  But it is a food body which has ageing and time limit.  How can it remain healthy forever?

Every human being appears to be made of two ends.  The first is an assumed end, the beginning of "I Am" and the second is the active end, which works for the sustenance of the first end.  Without the first,the second has no meaning.  The second depends upon the first and sustains it.  The second works as long as the first is.

As all individuals are imaginary, it is wrong to criticize the family affirs of anybody.  In reality is the affair of the Entire - the Brahman.  The astral body occupies the whole of existence. Although we restrict ourselves to the body, that is not our actual experience.  We always experience everything around us, in which our body also exists.  This applies to the waking, as well as the dream states.  That's why it appears as if we are trying to force ourselves to be bodies, against our actual experience which is otherwise.  It is not an individual who experiences the entire, but it is the entire, the manifest, that experiences the entire.  Every being is not separate, but it is always with the group of ten - five elements, three gunas, Prakriti and Purusha."

~ Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj ~
Excerpted from "NOTHING IS EVERYTHING"/All Individuals are Imaginary.

Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

My learning is limitless and my enthusiasm for all things spiritual is endless. I have many teachers from whom I have learned so much and I feel nothing but deep gratitude for their very presence.  Each Teacher is specialized in the area of his own enlightenment and awakening and so, there are so many different ways to come to the path of the heart and mind as ONE.  Eventually all teachings lead to Spirit, The Ultimate Reality.

Personally I am not rigid in my beliefs. In my heart I always see a seamless golden thread that runs through every tradition and teaching.  To be focussed only on one to the exclusion of all else feels right for many, but one really misses out a lot of gems from other teachings as well in the process.  In this world, we need to keep our mind active and questioning so that we will always be in a state of readiness and understanding. To "Know Thyself" is to know everything especially one's Self.  Without this knowledge one is rudderless and cast about endlessly from one extreme to another with no solid center.

Having said all of the above and while I continue to read and study from various teachings, my most favoured one are the ones that come from Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj.  He was an epitome of simplicity and though I never knew of him till only a few years ago, I feel like I have always known him. Here are some profound quotes.  If you so desire you can check out a lot more about him from the link  below  plus there's a lot of information available about him on the internet.  Enjoy.  May you be inspired by this simple Sage.

http://nisargadatta.org/index.html

QUOTES FROM "I AM THAT" by NISARGADATTA MAHARAJ

-- Go deep into the sense of ‘I am’ and you will find. How do you find a thing you have mislaid or forgotten? You keep it in your mind until you recall it. The sense of being, of ‘I am’ is the first to emerge. Ask yourself whence it comes or just watch it quietly. When the mind stays in the ‘I am’, without moving, you enter a state, which cannot be verbalized, but which can be experienced. All you need to do is to try and try again. After all the sense of ‘I am’ is always with you, only you have attached all kinds of things to it- body, feelings, thoughts, ideas, possessions and so on. All these self-identifications are misleading, because of these you take yourself to be what you are not --

-- 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 --

-- To know itself the self must be faced with its opposite the not-self. Desire leads to experience. Experience leads to discrimination, detachment, self-knowledge liberation. And what is liberation after all? To know that you are beyond birth and death. By forgetting who you are and imagining yourself a mortal creature, you created so much trouble for yourself that you have to wake up, like from a bad dream --

-- All this is temporary, while I am dealing with the eternal. Gods and their universes come and go, avatars follow each other in endless succession, and in the end we are back at the source. I talk only of the timeless source of all the gods with all their universes, past, present and future --

-- God is only an idea in your mind. The fact is you. The only thing you know for sure is: 'here and now I am'. Remove, the 'here and now' the 'I am' remains, unassailable. The word exists in memory, memory comes into consciousness; consciousness exists in awareness and awareness is the reflection of the light on the waters of existence  --

-- 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? --

-- Experience, however sublime, is not the real thing. By its very nature it comes and goes. Self-realisation is not an acquisition. It is more of the nature of understanding. Once arrived at, it cannot be lost. On the other hand, consciousness is changeful, flowing, undergoing transformation from moment to moment. Do not hold on to consciousness and its contents. Consciousness held, ceases. To try to perpetuate a flash of insight, or a burst of happiness is destructive of what it wants to preserve. What comes must go. The permanent is beyond all comings and goings. Go to the root of all experience, to the sense of being. Beyond being and not-being lies the immensity of the real. Try and try again --

-- There can be no experience of the Absolute as it is beyond all experience. On the other hand, the self is the experiencing factor in every experience and thus, in a way, validates the multiplicity of experiences. The world may be full of things of great value, but if there is nobody to buy them, they have no price. The Absolute contains everything experienceable, but without the experience they are as nothing. That which makes the experience possible is the Absolute. That which makes it actual is the Self --

-- Fearlessness comes by itself, when you see that there is nothing to be afraid of. When you walk in a crowded street, you just bypass people. Some you see, some you just glance at, but you do not stop. It is the stopping that creates the bottleneck. Keep moving! Disregard names and shapes, don't be attached to them; your attachment is your bondage --

http://nisargadatta.org/pages/quotes_i_am_that.html

The Living present ~ Talks With Nisargadatta Maharaj

Between the banks of pain and pleasure the river of life flows. It is only when the mind refuses to flow with life, and gets stuck at the banks, that it becomes a problem. By flowing with life I mean acceptance -- letting come what comes and go what goes. Desire not, fear not, observe the actual, as and when it happens, for you are not what happens, you are to whom it happens. Ultimately even the observer you are not. You are the ultimate potentiality of which the all-embracing consciousness is the manifestation and expression.

***

I am real for I am always now, in the present, and what is with me now shares in my reality. (…) A thing focussed in the now is with me, for I am ever present; it is my own reality that I impart to the present event.

***

Things and thoughts have been changing all the time. But the feeling that what is now is real has never changed, even in dream.

***

Desire is the memory of pleasure and fear is the memory of pain. Both make the mind restless. Moments of pleasure are merely gaps in the stream of pain. How can the mind be happy?

***

Q: Between the spirit and the body, is it love that provides the bridge?

M: What else? Mind creates the abyss, the heart crosses it.

***

(Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj/I Am that)

Obsession With The Body ~ Talks with Nisargadatta Maharaj

Questioner: Maharaj, you are sitting in front of me and I am here at your feet. What is the basic difference between us?

Maharaj: There is no basic difference.

Q: Still there must be some real difference, I come to you, you do not come to me.

M: Because you imagine differences, you go here and there in search of ‘superior’ people.

Q: You too are a superior person. You claim to know the real, while I do not.

M: Did I ever tell you that you do not know and, therefore, you are inferior? Let those who invented such distinctions prove them. I do not claim to know what you do not. In fact, I know much less than you do.

Q: Your words are wise, your behaviour noble, your grace all powerful.

M: I know nothing about it all and see no difference between you and me. My life is a succession of events, just like yours. Only I am detached and see the passing show as a passing show, while you stick to things and move along with them.

Q: What made you so dispassionate?

M: Nothing in particular. It so happened that I trusted my Guru. He told me I am nothing but my self and I believed him. Trusting him, I behaved accordingly and ceased caring for what was not me, nor mine.

Q: Why were you lucky to trust your teacher fully, while our trust is nominal and verbal?

M: Who can say? It happened so. Things happen without cause and reason and, after all, what does it matter, who is who? Your high opinion of me is your opinion only. Any moment you may change it. Why attach importance to opinions, even your own?

Q: Still, you are different. Your mind seems to be always quiet and happy. And miracles happen round you.

M: I know nothing about miracles, and I wonder whether nature admits exceptions to her laws, unless we agree that everything is a miracle. As to my mind, there is no such thing. There is consciousness in which everything happens. It is quite obvious and within the experience of everybody. You just do not look carefully enough. Look well, and see what I see.

Q: What do you see?

M: I see what you too could see, here and now, but for the wrong focus of your attention. You give no attention to your self. Your mind is all with things, people and ideas, never with your self. Bring your self into focus, become aware of your own existence. See how you function, watch the motives and the results of your actions. Study the prison you have built around yourself, by in advertence. By knowing what you are not, you come to know your self. The way back to your self is through refusal and rejection. One thing is certain: the real is not imaginary, it is not a product of the mind. Even the sense ‘I am’ is not continuous, though it is a useful pointer; it shows where to seek, but not what to seek. Just have a good look at it. Once you are convinced that you cannot say truthfully about your self anything except ‘I am’, and that nothing that can be pointed at, can be your self, the need for the ‘I am’ is over — you are no longer intent on verbalizing what you are. All you need is to get rid of the tendency to define your self. All definitions apply to your body only and to its expressions. Once this obsession with the body goes, you will revert to your natural state, spontaneously and effortlessly. The only difference between us is that I am aware of my natural state, while you are bemused. Just like gold made into ornaments has no advantage over gold dust, except when the mind makes it so, so are we one in being — we differ only in appearance. We discover it by being earnest, by searching, enquiring, questioning daily and hourly, by giving one’s life to this discovery.

~ Nisargadatta Majaraj ~

Excerpt from “That I Am”