An Advaita Vedanta realization, enlightenment, nisarga yoga site discussing non-duality (nonduality), your original nature, and dwelling in the natural state as taught by Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj.
FROM A SITE VISITOR: Thursday, you used the terms beyond the beingness and beyond the non-beingness. Can you explain. Thank you.
F.: [Continued from Tuesday] Next, why even discuss this beingness and non-beingness? Only in order to consider how the current manifestation might unfold were abidance to happen as THAT which is beyond beingness and non-beingness. A character in a Clive Cussler novel explained what happened during his trips to the ocean:
An inner feeling always overcame Pitt when he was alone and near the sea. It was as though his soul seeped out of his body, and he became a thing without substance, without form. His mind was purified and cleansed; all mental labor ceased and all thoughts vanished. He was only vaguely aware of hot and cold, smells, touch, and all the other senses, except hearing. He listened to the nothingness of silence…. Forgotten for the moment were all his failures, all his victories and all his loves, even life itself was buried and lost in the stillness. He lay dead and floated in the water… Finally, a small swell slapped at his face and he unwittingly inhaled a few drops of salt water.
In an e-mail exchange last Saturday with a frequent visitor to the site, this quote from Walt Whitman was offered:
“Has anyone supposed it lucky to be born? I hasten to inform him or her, it is just as lucky to die, and I know it.”
The concept of “luck” notwithstanding, to “die”—that is, to cast aside ideas and emotions and beliefs about beingness and non-beingness and to allow all belief about the body-mind-personality triad to die away—allows the manifestation to unfold in the manner described by Cussler’s character.
Whitman’s contemporary H.D. Thoreau spoke of the masses “who lead lives of quiet desperation.” Today, the typical relative existence has evolved into very noisy desperation, noise being a necessary tool of the ego that is used among the non-Realized to sustain false images.
As you look to the beingness and the non-beingness and the excerpt from the Cussler novel, why not consider how the relative existence could unfold, if abiding beyond the entrapment of dualistic beliefs:
An inner feeling always overcame Pitt when he was alone and near the sea. [In the vision offered on the meditation CD available at www.floydhenderson.com the seeker enters what the indigenous peoples of the Americas called “The Medicine Place,” a place less concerned with physical healing and more concerned with re-purifying, or unblocking, the consciousness. All seekers have access to that inner resource, to that medicine place. Generally, they find that it is a place where they can be alone, where they hear, but only hear natural sounds, where water is nearby, and where peace prevails as “mind” is allowed to fade away.]
It was as though his soul seeped out of his body, and he became a thing without substance, without form. You have no form, no physical or mental or emotional attributes, but note: that does not prevent Pitt from “feeling.”]
His mind was purified and cleansed; all mental labor ceased and all thoughts vanished. [In fact, the “mind” cannot be purified or cleansed. The latter part of the quote is closer to reality: “all thoughts vanish,” indicating not "a pure mind" but "a mind vanished."]
He was only vaguely aware of hot and cold [that is to say, he was almost entirely free of all duality.]
smells, touch, and all the other senses, except hearing. He listened to the nothingness of silence…. [See the note above on the CD. Sounds are heard, but they are natural. Eventually, even those give way to the total silence, a condition that can only happen in the absence of ego-states and their accompanying egotism. Talk-talk-talk is the tool of the ego.]
Forgotten for the moment were all his failures, all his victories [Again, the rejection of duality]
and all his loves [a rejection of that most-prized and most misunderstood of all concepts]
even life itself was buried and lost in the stillness [that is, freedom from belief in this life, from this beingness, is transcended]
He lay dead and floated in the water… Finally, a small swell slapped at his face and he unwittingly inhaled a few drops of salt water. [Indeed, such is the marker of abidance as that which is beyond the beingness and the non-beingness. All attachment to, and belief in, “this life” has “died,” but then Pitt still continues to function as the temporarily manifested consciousness continues].
If you are a seeker, what part of that manner of functioning spontaneously throughout the remainder of the manifestation would you not seek? Please enter the silence of contemplation. (To be continued)
