Self Realization in Action

By Joel D Zenie

Self Realization or Enlightenment is what bestows reality upon those mystical experiences of youth and early adulthood.. where life is a meaningful journey and my own Self (as Witness) is at the creative, perceptive and active center of it all. This awareness is what makes each moment of life meaningful regardless of what is happening, pleasant or unpleasant, sacred or profane. Vedanta is not a practical philosophy nor a formula of success for making things happen in your material life. It does however, through meditation in action, make possible the perfect spontaneous response to what is happening now, and keeps the individual from losing self in externals (mentally, physically, environmentally and socially).

 This foundation of right action, a.k.a the basic Ground of Being, is essential for a happy and liberated existence in the present moment and assists you in gracefully going with the flow. The implementation of practical (often repetitive) action is what allows for something meaningful to concretely manifest. Creativity requires both this present moment Self Awareness and the willingness to both create and implement a structure, thus going with the flow while also planning/directing your course consciously.

Some Principles of Living in Spirit (The Heart Center):

1- Non identification with being spiritually evolved person and not identifying oneself as this or that religion. I am here and now, alive, awake and present... beyond this, I have no other self image or construct.

2- The loss of "spiritual ego" in the sense of believing you have "attained something special"... the recognition that the life force is always in motion and evolves ever onward, without rest.

3- Non-comparison of one's own spiritual progress with that of others, both on and off the Path of Knowledge.

4- Humility, Kindness, Compassion, Equanimity... while remaining centered in Self and focused fixedly (one pointedly) upon one's own Primary Purpose.

5- Never ceasing in the inquiry of "Who Am I?" and the Consciousness "I Am".

On Death

Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

Everyone has to die; so die as your true nature. Why die as a body? Never forget your true nature. It may not be acceptable to many, but it is a fact... this body has nothing to do with you. If you must have an ambition have the highest, so that at least while dying, you will be the Absolute. Decide that now firmly, with certainty and conviction. Giving up the body is a great festival.

Death is generally considered to be a traumatic experience, but understand what happens. That which has been born, the knowledge 'I am' which is the same everywhere, but which has gotten itself limited by the body, again becomes unlimited. A speck of consciousness is given up. Why the fear? How has this fear of
death crept in? That which cannot die somehow became convinced that it was going
to die. It is based on the concept that one is an individual who is born... all the fear arises from mere words told to you by someone. This is the bondage. It is like
someone gives you a drink and then tells you, "I have put poison in that drink, and in six months you will die.? Immediately you become very frightened because you
think that you will die. But then you meet a friend and he tells you not to worry. He says, "Here, drink this and there will be no death for you. First there is one concept which fills you full of fright, and then there is another concept which negates the first concept. Like this you get involved with the flow of maya and there are concepts, ideas, creations... pain alternates with pleasure... but all of it is just ignorance and misery. It is only when you search for your Self that you become aware that it is all a fraud.

Be still in your beingness. Then even it will disappear and you will merge
in Truth. All that needs to be done is to find out your real source and take up
headquarters there. From the Absolute standpoint, your beingness is only ignorance.
Nothing comes and nothing goes; it is a mirage. All there is is the Absolute, all there is is the Truth. The witness of the consciousness never comes into the realm of the consciousness. When you pursue this spiritual path of understanding the Self, all your desires just drop off... even the primary desire... to be. When you stay put in the beingness for some time, that drops off. Then you are in the Absolute... there is no movement for you. You are minding the show. Consciousness extinguishes itself, knowingness disappears, and you, the Absolute remains. That is the moment of death.

When this life force leaves the body, it will not seek permission from anything. It came spontaneously and will leave spontaneously. That is all that happens in what is called death. Death is the culmination of the experience 'I am'. After the termination of the 'I amness' there is no experience of knowingness or not knowingness. What did you know prior to your birth? Similarly, after death this
instrument is missing; without the body there is no experience. Eternity has no birth and no death, but a temporary state has a beginning and an end. Even when the
consciousness goes, you prevail - you always are - as the Absolute. As the consciousness you are everything that comes into manifestation. Whatever is, is you.
But, when you fully understand the knowledge 'I am' and all its manifestations, then
you will understand that, in truth, you are not that. You are the unlimited, which is not susceptible to the senses. By limiting yourself to the body you have closed
yourself to the unlimited potential which you really are. Treat the body like a visitor or a guest, which has come and which will go. You must know your position as a host very clearly while it is still here, and while it is here you must also know what your position will be after it leaves.

In spirituality there is no question of doing... only observing and understanding. But, if you try to understand spirituality through various concepts, like birth and rebirth, you will get caught up in them in a vicious cycle. And once you are caught up in them you are bound to have them. Out of concepts the forms are created. Right now, think of that last moment when the body will go - at that time with what identity are you going to quit? When you become aware of your true nature, then at the end of your life you will not be prepared to give even one paisa to extend your life. You will have lost all love for this manifested world and you will not want even this consciousness for five minutes more.

The vital breath leaves the body, the 'I amness' recedes and goes to the Absolute. That is the greatest moment, the moment of immortality. The 'I amness' was there, the movement was there, and now it is extinguished. Being alive is never as an individual, but simply being part of the spontaneous manifestation. Now that has subsided in death. The ignorant one will struggle and get frightened at the moment of death; most reluctantly he will give up the consciousness to a concept he has come to call time. But the jnani gives up the beingness to his own true nature; for him it is the happiest of moments.

Ascending

By Joel D Zenie

Though this world be a sinking ship, and this body going down with it, I fear not.. for the knowledge that I am not this body, nor of this world, becomes self evident. Reaching for the light of the Sun, ascending toward the Heavens, I see and feel the call to ultimate freedom, leaving behind all human fears, pain and suffering.

The Great Eastern Sun shines eternally with the promise of renewal and transcendence of yesterday. It reminds that pleasures of the senses, when indulged immoderately and to addiction, are what keep this Soul bound in darkness, with deep rooted attachments and the fear of losing all (including one's own essential being). As all materialistic/animalistic desire, with it's mix of pleasure and pain, is brought to light and seen through the wise eyes of Spirit, the desired object/image and all its associations dissolve instantly back into yesterday's consciousness.. a previous evolutionary stage that one need not repeatedly regress back into

As I look to the Sun it warms me and encourages deep inner faith, and as I look to the Moon it nurtures me along this treacherous yet joyous and meaningful Earthly journey.

Knowing

Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

Freedom from all desire is eternity. All attachment implies fear, for all things are transient. And fear makes one a slave. This freedom from attachment does not come with practice; it is natural, when one knows one's true being. Self-knowledge is detachment. All craving is due to a sense of insufficiency. When you know that you lack nothing, that all there is, is you and yours, desire ceases.

Before you can know anything directly, non-verbally, you must know the knower. So far, you took the mind for the knower, but it is not so. The mind clogs you up with images and ideas, which leave scars in memory. You take remembering to be knowledge. True knowledge is ever fresh, new, unexpected. It wells up from within. When you know what you are, you also are what you know. Between knowing and being there is no gap.

The "I am" in movement creates the world. The "I am" at peace becomes the Absolute. Of course you can [change the world you project]. But you must cease identifying yourself with it and go beyond. Then you have the power to destroy and re-create.

The dreams are not equal, but the dreamer is one. I am the insect, I am the poet - in dream. But in reality I am neither. I am beyond all dreams. I am the light in which all dreams appear and disappear. I am both inside and outside the
dream. Just as a man having a headache knows the ache and also knows that he is not the ache, so do I know the dream, myself dreaming and myself not dreaming - all at the same time. I am what I am before, during and after the dream. But what I see in dream, I am not.

All you can do is to grasp the central point: that reality is not an event and does not happen, and whatever happens, whatever comes and goes, is not really. See the event as event only, the transient as transient, experience as mere experience, and you have done all you can do. But as soon as there is some like or dislike, you have drawn a screen. I was undeceived, that is all. I used to create a world and
populate it. Now I don't do it any more. [Now I live] in the void beyond being and non-being, beyond consciousness. This void is also fullness; do not pity me. The mind ceased producing events. The ancient and ceaseless search stopped - I wanted nothing, expected nothing, accepted nothing as my own. There was no "me" left to strive for. Even the bare "I am" faded away. The other thing that I noticed was that I lost all my habitual certainties. Earlier I was sure of so many things, now I am sure of nothing. But I feel that I have lost nothing by not knowing, because all my knowledge was false. My not knowing was in itself knowledge of the fact that all knowledge is ignorance, that "I do not know" is the only true statement the mind can make.

Somehow it was very simple and easy in my case. My guru, before he died, told me: "Believe me, you are the Supreme Reality. Don't doubt my words, don't disbelieve me.
I am telling you the truth, act on it". I could not forget his words and by not forgetting, I have realized. Once the guru told me: "You are the Supreme Reality", I ceased having visions and trances and became very quiet and simple. I found myself desiring and knowing less and less, until I could say in utter astonishment: "I know nothing, I want nothing."

So many words you have learnt, so many you have spoken. You know everything, but you do not know yourself. For the self is not known through words, only direct insight will reveal it. Look within, search within.

I Am That ~ Selected Conversations

39. By Itself Nothing has Existence

M: Just like the one sun is reflected in a billion dew drops, so is the timeless endlessly repeated. When l repeat: 'I am, I am', I merely assert and re-assert an ever-present fact. You get tired of my words because you do not see the living truth behind them. Contact it and you will find the full meaning of words and of silence -- both.

Q: You say that the little girl is already the mother of her future child. Potentially -- yes. Actually -- no.
M: The potential becomes actual by thinking. The body and its affairs exist in the mind.

M: By itself nothing has existence. Everything needs its own absence. To be, is to be distinguishable, to be here and not there, to be now and not then, to be thus and not otherwise. Like water is shaped by the container, so is everything determined by conditions (gunas). As water remains water regardless of the vessels, as light remains itself regardless of the colours it brings out, so does the real remain real, regardless of conditions in which it is reflected. Why keep the
reflection only in the focus of consciousness? Why not the real itself?
Q: Consciousness itself is a reflection. How can it hold the real?
M: To know that consciousness and its content are but reflections, changeful and transient, is the focusing of the real. The refusal to see the snake in the rope is the necessary condition for seeing the rope.

Q: Only necessary, or also sufficient?
M: One must also know that a rope exists and looks like a snake. Similarly, one must know that the real exists and is of the nature of witness-consciousness. Of course it is beyond the witness, but to enter it one must first realise the state of pure witnessing. The awareness of conditions brings one to the unconditioned.

Q: Can the unconditioned be experienced?
M: To know the conditioned as conditioned is all that can be said about the unconditioned. Positive terms are mere hints and misleading.

Q: Can we talk of witnessing the real?
M: How can we? We can talk only of the unreal, the illusory, the transient, the conditioned. To go beyond, we must pass through total negation of everything as having independent existence. All things depend.

Q: On what do they depend?
M: On consciousness. And consciousness depends on the witness.
Q: And the witness depends on the real?
M: The witness is the reflection of the real in all its purity. It depends on the condition of the mind. Where clarity and detachment predominate, the witness-consciousness comes into being. It is just like saying that where the water is clear and quiet, the image of the moon appears. Or like daylight that appears as sparkle in the diamond.

Q: Can there be consciousness without the witness?
M: Without the witness it becomes unconsciousness, just living. The witness is latent in every state of consciousness, just like light in every colour. There can be no knowledge without the knower and no knower without his witness. Not only you know, but you know that you know.

Q: If the unconditioned cannot be experienced, for all experience is conditioned, then why talk of it at all?
M: How can there be knowledge of the conditioned without the unconditioned? There must be a source from which all this flows, a foundation on which all stands. Self-realisation is primarily the knowledge of one's conditioning and the awareness that the infinite variety of conditions depends on our infinite ability to be conditioned and to give rise to variety. To the conditioned mind the unconditioned appears as the totality as well as the absence of everything. Neither can be directly experienced, but this does not make it not existent.

Q: Everybody believes in God.
M: To me you are your own God. But if you think otherwise, think to the end. If there be God, then all is God's and all is for the best. Welcome all that comes with a glad and thankful heart. And love all creatures. This too will take you to your Self.

40. Only the Self is Real

Maharaj: The world is but a show, glittering and empty. It is, and yet is not. It is there as long as I want to see it and take part in it. When I cease caring, it dissolves. It has no cause and serves no purpose. It just happens when we are absentminded. It appears exactly as it looks, but there is no depth in it, nor meaning. Only the onlooker is real. Call him Self or Atma. To the Self the world is but a colourful show, which he enjoys as long as it lasts and forgets when it is over. Whatever happens on the stage makes him shudder in terror or roll with laughter, yet all the time he is aware that it is but a show. Without desire or fear he enjoys it, as it happens.

Questioner: The person immersed in the world has a life of many flavours. He weeps, he laughs, loves and hates, desires and fears, suffers and rejoices. The desireless and fearless jnani, what life has he? Is he not left high and dry in his aloofness?
M: His state is not so desolate. It tastes of the pure, uncaused, undiluted bliss. He is happy and fully aware that happiness is his very nature and that he need not do anything, nor strive for anything to secure it. It follows him, more real than the body, nearer than the mind itself. You imagine that without cause there can be no happiness. To me dependence on anything for happiness is utter misery. Pleasure and pain have causes, while my state is my own, totally uncaused, independent, unassailable.
Q: Like a play on the stage?
M: The play was written, planned and rehearsed. The world just spouts into being out of nothing and returns to nothing.

I Am That, Selections from Chapters 39 & 40
Sri Nisargatta Maharaj

If You Could Read My Mind

If You Could Read My Mind, ©1969 by Gordon Lightfoot

If you could read my mind, love,
What a tale my thoughts could tell.
Just like an old time movie,
'Bout a ghost from a wishing well.
In a castle dark or a fortress strong,
With chains upon my feet.
You know that ghost is me.
And I will never be set free
As long as I'm a ghost that you can't see.

If I could read your mind, love,
What a tale your thoughts could tell.
Just like a paperback novel,
The kind the drugstores sell.
Then you reached the part where the heartaches come,
The hero would be me.
But heroes often fail,
And you won't read that book again
Because the ending's just too hard to take!

I'd walk away like a movie star
Who gets burned in a three way script.
Enter number two:
A movie queen to play the scene
Of bringing all the good things out in me.
But for now, love, let's be real;
I never thought I could feel this way
And I've got to say that I just don't get it.
I don't know where we went wrong,
But the feeling's gone
And I just can't get it back.

If you could read my mind, love,
What a tale my thoughts could tell.
Just like an old time movie,
'Bout a ghost from a wishing well.
In a castle dark or a fortress strong.
With chains upon my feet.
But stories always end,
And if you read between the lines,
You'd know that I'm just tryin' to understand
The feelin's that you lack.
I never thought I could feel this way
And I've got to say that I just don't get it.
I don't know where we went wrong,
But the feelin's gone
And I just can't get it back!
-----------------------------------------------
One of those classic songs that I relate to today though it's particular storyline is not so relevant now as it was before.

Jdz

The Power of Humility

Essential Yoga Sutras of Patanjali
by Geshe Michael Roach & Christie McNally

I.1 I will now review for you
how we become whole.
Atha yoga-anushashanam.

Another meaning of yoga is to become whole. Ultimately we only become whole when we are truly capable of helping others with the things that really matter: when we can help them understand how they came into this world, and what life is for, and whether it has to end with losing everything.

This then, says Master Patanjali, is why I write my short book. He wants us to know, from the very beginning, that his book contains something of ultimate importance, something worth the precious hours of our life.

And I will only review, says the Master, what I have heard from my holy teachers. He attacks his own pride: I have nothing new to tell you, and there is nothing here that I have made up myself. I am only a vessel for the wisdom of the ages, and I pass it on to you—tried, tested, and unadulterated.

And he says, “I will” write this book, for once a Master promises to do something, they do it—or die trying. All the great books of India begin with these three noble themes. Their power, their karma, stops all obstacles to the work we now begin.

TO BECOME WHOLE

I.2 We become whole by stopping
how the mind turns.
Yogash chitta virtti nirodhah.

These are perhaps the most important words of the entire Yoga Sutra.Here the Master tells us another meaning of yoga, which is learning to stop The Great Mistake.

And what is The Great Mistake? Our mind turns; meaning it turns things around the wrong way. A mother takes her small child to a movie. On the screen, a man is hurting a puppy.

The child cries out, and reaches to stop the man. Perhaps the child can even get up to the screen, and try to hit the man. But this doesn’t stop the man; it has nothing to do with the man. And the child hurts their own hand in the process.

Our mind makes this same kind of mistake, every day, every moment of every day. We need to stop the mistake, and that is yoga. Pain is real —yes—and it really hurts people. But we can only stop it if we can stop misunderstanding where it comes from. And this is what Yoga Sutra teaches us to do.