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.

Spiritual Marriage

"And yet, one of the distinguishing features of that moment was that the marriage itself became part of the motivation to say, “I can’t stop here. I’ve got to go where I can meet this being where he is.”

If I’m going to be a married person in this world, I have got to know what true marriage is. That conviction was fierce within me. It just had to be. So, that was the drive. Then, after maybe five months passed, I attended my very first silent retreat, which was also Adya’s first retreat teaching as a teacher, in July 1997. I was the retreat leader in charge of the logistics of the event. A few days into the retreat he gave a talk on “stillness.” I knew that he was speaking from a perspective of stillness that I didn’t know. My mind had an idea of stillness, but I could tell it wasn't matching up with how he was speaking of it. And the way he was speaking of it was mysterious to me. It was unfamiliar but intriguing.

When the day ended and people had gone on to bed, I stayed in the hall to meditate and really dove into that question “What is stillness?” “What is it?” And that was the inquiry that brought me into direct experience of stillness, which flowered into a knowledge that that is Self. That is the nature of Self. Although stillness moves as form, it is the one constant. It is the One. Stillness is the perspective of permanence, of that which does not come and go, even as it comes and goes as form. I think, part of the inquiry that may be of interest to people was that I truly didn’t know what Stillness was. I had completely set aside any ideas that I had about it. And with all of my senses I followed the sense of stillness in my body, and really traced all movements within my body as I was sitting, until my body became more still than I’d ever known. And then my attention went to the outer world, and I sensed what Stillness was in the outer world."

Read the full article: http://www.adyashanti.org/mukti_teachings/spiritual_marriage.htm

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

Why is it that we are not content to be ourselves?

Why is it that we crave to be recognized, to be made much of, to be encouraged? Why is it that we are such snobs? Why is it that we cling to our exclusiveness of name, position, acquisition? Is anonymity degrading, and to be unknown despicable? Why do we pursue the famous, the popular? Why is it that we are not content to be ourselves? Are we frightened and ashamed of what we are, that name, position and acquisition become so all-important? It is curious how strong is the desire to be recognized, to be applauded. In the excitement of a battle, one does incredible things for which one is honoured; one becomes a hero for killing a fellow man. Through privilege, cleverness, or capacity and efficiency, one arrives somewhere near the top - though the top is never the top, for there is always more and more in the intoxication of success. The country or the business is yourself; on you depend the issues, you are the power. Organized religion offers position, prestige and honour; there too you are somebody, apart and important. Or again you become the disciple of a teacher, of a guru or Master, or you co-operate with them in their work. You are still important, you represent them, you share their responsibility, you have and others receive. Though in their name, you are still the means. You may put on a loincloth or the monk's robe, but it is you who are making the gesture, it is you who are renouncing.

~ Jiddu Krishnamurti ~

What is one escaping from?

Questioner: ...why does one run away? What is one escaping from?"From your own loneliness, your own emptiness, from what you are. If you run away without seeing what is, you obviously cannot understand it; so first you have to stop running, escaping and only then can you watch yourself as you are. But you cannot observe what is if you are always criticizing it, if you like or dislike it. You call it loneliness and run away from it; and the very running away from what is fear. You are afraid of this loneliness, of this emptiness, and dependence is the covering of it. So fear is constant; it is constant as long as you are running away from what is. To be completely identified with something, with a person or an idea, is not a guarantee of final escape, for this fear is always in the background. It comes through dreams, when there is a break in identification; and there is always a break in identification, unless one is unbalanced.

Questioner: Then my fear arises from my own hollowness, my insufficiency. I see that all right, and it is true; but what am I to do about it? You cannot do anything about it. Whatever you do is an activity of escape. That is the most essential thing to realize. Then you will see that you are not different or separate from that hollowness. You are that insufficiency. The observer is the observed emptiness. Then if you proceed further, there is no longer calling it loneliness; the terming of it has ceased. If you proceed still further, which is rather arduous, the thing known as loneliness is not; there is a complete cessation of loneliness, emptiness, of the thinker as the thought. This alone puts an end to fear.

~ Jiddu Krishnamurti ~

The Consistency of the Kingdom

THE LAWS OF MIND

10 To heal, then, is to correct perception in your brother and yourself by sharing the Holy Spirit with him. This places you both within the Kingdom and restores its wholeness in your minds. This parallels creation because it unifies by increasing and integrates by extending. What you project you believe. This is an immutable law of the mind in this world as well as in the Kingdom. However, the content is different in this world because the thoughts it governs are very different from the thoughts in the Kingdom. Laws must be adapted to circumstances if they are to maintain order.

11 The outstanding characteristic of the laws of mind as they operate in this world is that by obeying them-and I assure you that you must obey them-you can arrive at diametrically opposed results. This is because the laws have adapted to the circumstances of this world, in which diametrically opposed outcomes are believed in. The laws of mind govern thoughts, and you do respond to two conflicting voices. You have heard many arguments on behalf of "the freedoms," which would indeed have been freedom if man had not chosen to fight for them. That is why they perceive "the freedoms" as many instead of as one. Yet the argument that underlies the defense of freedom is perfectly valid. Because it is true, it should not be fought for, but it should be sided with.

12 Those who are against freedom believe that its outcome will hurt them, which cannot be true. But those who are for freedom, even if they are misguided in how to defend it, are siding with the one thing in this world which is true. Whenever anyone can listen fairly to both sides of any issue, he will make the right decision. This is because he has the answer. Conflict can seem to be interpersonal, but it must be intrapersonal first.

13 The term "intrapersonal" is an ego term because "personal" implies "of one person" and not of others. "Interpersonal" has similar error in that it refers to something that exists among different or separate people. When we spoke before of the extremely personal nature of revelation, we followed this statement immediately with a description of the inevitable outcomes of the revelation in terms of sharing. A person conceives of himself as separate largely because he perceives of himself as bounded by a body. Only if he perceives himself as a mind can this be overcome. Then he is free to use terms like "intramental" and "intermental" without seeing them as different or conflicting, because minds can be in perfect accord.

14 Outside the Kingdom, the law which prevails inside it is adapted to "what you project you believe." This is its teaching form, since outside the Kingdom teaching is mandatory because learning is essential. This form of the law clearly implies that you will learn what you are from what you have projected onto others and therefore believe they are. In the Kingdom there is no teaching or learning because there is no belief. There is only certainty. God and His Sons, in the surety of being, know that what you project you are. That form of the law is not adapted at all, being the law of creation. God Himself created the law by creating by it. And His Sons, who create like Him, follow it gladly, knowing that the increase of the Kingdom depends on it just as their own creation did.

15 Laws must be communicated if they are to be helpful. In effect, they must be translated for those who speak a different language. Nevertheless, a good translator, although he must alter the form of what he translates, never changes the meaning. In fact, his whole purpose is to change the form so that the original meaning is retained. The Holy Spirit is the translator of the Laws of God to those who do not understand them. You could not do this yourselves because conflicted minds cannot be faithful to one meaning and will therefore change the meaning to preserve the form.

16 The Holy Spirit's purpose in translating is naturally exactly the opposite. He translates only to preserve the original meaning in all respects and in all languages. Therefore, He opposes differences in form as meaningful, emphasizing always that these differences do not matter. The meaning of His message is always the same, and only the meaning matters. God's Law of Creation in perfect form does not involve the use of truth to convince His Sons of truth. The extension of truth, which is the Law of the Kingdom, rests only on the knowledge of what truth is. This is your inheritance and requires no learning at all, but when you disinherited yourselves, you became learners.

17 No one questions the intimate connection of learning and memory. Learning is impossible without memory, since it cannot be consistent unless it is remembered. That is why the Holy Spirit is a lesson in remembering. We said before that He teaches remembering and forgetting, but the forgetting aspect is only to make the remembering consistent. You forget in order to remember better. You will not understand His translations while you listen to two ways of perceiving them. Therefore, you must forget or relinquish one to understand the other. This is the only way you can learn consistency so that you can finally be consistent.

18 What can the perfect consistency of the Kingdom mean to the confused? It is apparent that confusion interferes with meaning and therefore prevents the learner from appreciating it. There is no confusion in the Kingdom because there is only one meaning. This meaning comes from God and is God. Because it is also you, you share it and extend it as your Creator did. This needs no translation because it is perfectly understood, but it does need extension because it means extension. Communication is perfectly direct and perfectly united. It is totally without strain because nothing discordant ever enters. That is why it is the Kingdom of God. It belongs to Him and is therefore like Him. That is its reality, and nothing can assail it.

( A Course In Miracles / Ch.7:III)

Human Nonsense

Spirit is our only Self, I or ME — boundless, immeasurable, timeless, spaceless, incorporeal. There is no mortal, human or material being, mind, self or body. There is but “ME” — IAM the One who is Real and Present.

When this new Revelation is seen and accepted, there will be no more sickness, sorrow, disease, pain or death. As the belief and teaching that we are mortals, humans or mankind is done away with, there will be no misbelief, misconception, erring teaching or wrong thinking.

Seeing that the One Self, “I” or “ME” reigns alone, and that there can be no other identity — whether as mind, consciousness or body — each one should reject and discard the beliefs and teachings which identify oneself as man, humanity or mankind; for within this very identification lies the subjection to suffering, disease and limitation.

Our deliverance, therefore, is not from suffering, worry, fear or old age, but that one ceases to believe or accept that he is a mortal or human being, and that his body is material or physical.

~ Lillian De Waters ~