THE LOVE WHISPERINGS OF ADVAITA. PART 3– SITE CO-HOST: LOUISE STERLING

There is just ONE awareness expressing as I AM – which is the manifest, physically discernible form / movement /intelligence. This is the way all is. What splinters and shatters the Unicity is only the movement of thought:

I AM … separate
I AM … a demarcated, different, and unique individual
I AM … a seeker looking for a return to wholeness
I AM … a woman / man looking for a partner
I AM … a creative person wanting to express this creativity
Etc.

You are the ocean, but believe you are the small amount of water contained in a cup. Shatter the cup, and instantly You will see that in reality You are the ocean. How can the cup be shattered? It is an impossible task and completely effortless. The cup is just constructed of the thoughts you have about yourself as a separate individual. Currently, you believe these thoughts. You see yourself as a physical body, with a unique awareness functioning within a world of multiplicity. You have staked your claim, or “set up camp” as Maharaj would say, as a separate individual. From My point of view, if you are a separate individual searching for God, a separate individual searching for true love, or a separate individual searching for a beer at the local pub, there is no difference. Caught up in the world of forms, you focus on the object (God, true love, or beer). You cannot find yourself in any of these objects, whatever their appearance. Turn your gaze to the subject. See that in each example, the subject is the same:

A SEPARATE INDIVIDUAL … searching for God
A SEPARATE INDIVIDUAL … searching for true love
A SEPARATE INDIVIDUAL … searching for a beer at the local pub

Forget your grand vision of what you believe you are trying to accomplish. Accept once and for all that you have set up camp as a separate individual …and this is false. You believe you are the water in the cup desperately wanting to merge with the ocean. CHANGE YOUR STANCE. Forget that madness. You are only a separate cup because you are so committed to this line of thinking that you affirm it for yourself a million times a day. The door is already open – but you cannot see it because the thoughts are sticking a fictional “you” together. As you drop one or two thoughts, another ten stick to you. You will never escape by this route, because whatever you do entrenches this sense of separation. Give it up. Instead change your stance. Set up camp and stake your claim as the Absolute.

This is why Maharaj advises to stay with the I AM and to reject everything perceivable – Neti, Neti. You retreat from the sticky thoughts. When you do not touch them, they cannot stick to you. When the false thoughts stop sticking –in that empty space, uncluttered and silent – Reality can rush in. In other words, that cup will distintegrate through silent, detached observation. Perhaps it will slowly fade away; perhaps it will be eradicated instantly. Whether the disintegration is slow or rapid, the final moment will come when no cup remains. This is the peripetia – that marks the shift in camp from the view as the separate individual to the view as the Absolute. Can you see that in the stabilized state, the cup is absent –You are the ocean, there is no cup?

(This is where the neo-advaitan teachings are flawed. Can you see that Realization = no cup.? Realization does not mean that the cup still exists, but because intellectually it is understood to be constructed merely of thoughts, it can be ignored. No – the Nisarga Yoga offered here is a return to the thought-free, concept-free reality – no thoughts, no cup, no mind, no separation.)

As Maharaj explains:

The mistake of perception arises because the seeing is partial, because the seeing is only with the outer senses and a divided mind; it is not whole seeing from the source of seeing. That sense of existence, that sense of presence, that 'I amness', the unchanging subjective experience of self, cannot be seen by the senses, and, therefore, does not enter into the conceptions projected by the mind, which unceasingly carries on its objectification of everything. But, when the subjective is apprehended intuitively, then the concept of separate objects becomes untenable. Can the consciousness in you and the consciousness in me be different? Are they not separate only as concepts projected by the mind, and are they not in perfect unity when unconceived, when free of mind? And is not that knowing of the underlying unity, the very basis of love? And if all is subjective, if there is only unity, can there be any room for the objective? So-called objects are just illusory appearances in consciousness, appearances in the universal 'I amness', which by its name and its very nature is wholly subjective and permits no room for another, other than Self.

The invitation, as always, is to take these pointers into the silence; to rest in the natural intuitive knowing state, beyond the false sense of separation implied by cup of water and ocean, part and whole; beyond the dualism of subject and object, noumenon and phenomenon. Again and again, we return to the source, to the root, to the ground from which all dualities emerge – beyond being and unbeing.

To be continued.

Please enter the silence of contemplation.

(For extending teaching on the Advaitan Understanding – that guide You from the temporary fluctuating relative stance to abidance as Your Real Nature, see the links on the right hand side of this blog.)

Comments / clarifications may be sent to louise.advaita@gmail.com