FROM A SITE VISITOR: I appear to be still “trapped” or entranced at the level of personality.
FROM ANOTHER SITE VISITOR YESTERDAY: So how to eliminate self once and for all?
F.: Ultimately, it must be seen by those who move along the “path” to Realization that there is no self to be rid of. There is only the belief in self to be rid of.
If one sees a mirage in the road ahead, swerves to avoid it, and flies off the side of a mountain, changing that scenario would not have required being rid of the mirage. The relative experience would have changed if only the mirage had been seen to be a mirage.
The belief that the body is the True Self, or any part of the Self, is false; the belief that the “mind” is the Self, or any part of the Self, is false; the belief that the personality—that any false persona—can possibly be the True Self, or any part of the Real Self, is false.
What is that True Self then, the recognition of which will eliminate belief in the false self? There is within most some sense of the True Self that occasionally surfaces into consciousness. Some tap into an awareness of the Real Self via visualization, which was referenced in an e-mail once received from a site visitor:
“I’ve been using your CD. After years of reading every Advaita Vedanta piece of writing that I could get my hands on, that CD actually allowed me to experience the separation from body, from mind, from the religious and spiritual roles I played. I actually experienced the movement beyond the beingness and the non-beingness. Then, at the end when the manifestation process happened as the energy moved into a “tunnel” and out of a “tunnel” and manifested in a form, I was that which witnessed, that which was the child, that which was the child programmed. I came to see how I was given the religious personas I had for years, how the mind took charge, and how eventually I ended up thinking I was nothing but the physical body itself.”
Of course, there was not really any “me” that experienced “the separation from body, from mind, from the religious and spiritual roles I played.” For anything to be able to “separate from” anything else would affirm duality, but his point can be taken as an example of what happens after subject-object witnessing begins but before Pure Witnessing happens.
The witness, the consciousness, in the first case can look at mirages and see that they are mirages. Are you at that level? Have You “seen” the false selves that you have been playing? Only if you have seen all of the false can the singular truth be Realized.
At that point, You will understand the pointer offered in last Wednesday’s post:
I am manifested…not born…not dying…not living. I just AM, for now. I do not abide at, though I do currently abide as...as THAT.
Please enter the silence of contemplation. (To be continued)
