An Advaita forum focusing on Realisation, enlightenment, non-duality, Real Love, peace, freedom, Your original nature, abiding naturally, the Oneness, the Nothingness, and Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj.
Here, there is nothing that is believed, so there is no one here who wants you to believe anything, either. Here, the invitation is to be free of all that you have been programmed, conditioned, acculturated, and domesticated to believe so that you can be free, period.
The mirror can do nothing to attract the sun.
It can only keep bright.
As soon as the mind is ready, the sun shines in. – Nisargadatta Maharaj
Imagine a vast room – enveloped in darkness. It is impossible to actually see the room, to examine what it contains. All is black. If a single candle is lit, the room will be partially illuminated. In the faded light, another candle may be discerned and lit, then a lamp, then another lamp, and so on. Slowly, more and more light will fill the room. While there is now more light in the room, it still has the character of darkness or night. Perhaps the artificial light in the room reveals heavy curtains covering every window, and these curtains are drawn back. Eventually, the sun rises, and the sunlight pours into the room through those unobstructed windows. The room is completely illuminated with natural light.
In this analogy – the room of course is the fiction-filled mind. The candles or lamps illuminating the room are pointers to truth. The sun that floods the room with light is the final understanding.
In this relative life, seekers attempt to empty that dark room by removing the darkness teaspoonful by teaspoonful. If each drop of darkness is a concept, how can that vast room be emptied by this method? A few ideas, concepts, beliefs may be discarded, but usually they are replaced with other ideas, concepts, beliefs. The room is too vast, the darkness too overwhelming. It is a hopeless exercise.
The Advaitin approach does not focus on the darkness – which is really just false understanding. Why search through what is false to find what is true? This is like looking for a pear on an apple tree. A futile pursuit.
As Maharaj explains: What you see as false, dissolves. It is the very nature of illusion to dissolve on investigation. Investigate - that is all. You cannot destroy the false, for you are creating it all the time. Withdraw from it, ignore it, go beyond, and it will cease to be.
These words are like lighting a candle in the darkened room. They are a pointer to truth. In other words, they are not themselves true as they are conceptual – and pitched towards a particular level of understanding; however they point to or direct AWAY from the false and TOWARDS truth.
Bound at the level of mind-body-personality, the seeker is entranced by the darkness. The person is hooked into the desires and attractions of the glittering experiences of the relative world and pushed and pulled by the fears and anxieties and troubles of the negative experiences.
At this level, the seeker will search for light within the darkness – looking for opportunities to grow, transform, find happiness, uncover truth, escape suffering, stabilize happiness; usually through attending courses, seminars, reading, devouring, and acquiring, or through adopting practices. All that is experiential is the false – so these activities are meaningless.
Most of the people vegetate, but do not live. They merely gather experiences and enrich their memory. But experience is the denial of Reality, which is neither sensory nor conceptual, neither of the body nor of the mind, though it includes and transcends them both. (Maharaj).
How can you find what is beyond experience? See, once and for all, that this question points outside of the playground of experience – there will never by a technique, book, course, or practice that takes you there, for these are themselves at the level of experience. This is not a logical conundrum – it is a pointer to freedom.
So – a pointer to truth is not a technique or a practice. It is a light that shines so that what is false can be seen and ignored or dissolved, creating the conditions for your true nature to be revealed. It is not something to be grasped on to, and repeated endlessly. All that is required is to take the pointer into silent consideration and allow it to have its effect. When the light is cast, the darkness evaporates. The false is no more, and the pointer is superfluous. Both are discarded.
Take for example, the pointer “I am not my personality”. This pointer, in silent reflection, will shine a light on the ebb and flow of desires and fears that are bound up with personality identification. You will see that while desires and fears may arise, they are not who you are. In this way, they lose their power to entrance and hypnotize you and draw you into the experiential maze of everyday life.
Remember, Maharaj explains that what is seen as false dissolves. When you know with complete certainty that you are not the personality – those false labels are seen as false and become irrelevant. Their power as ties that bind evaporates. In other words, the truth of the pointer persists – and those false notions that once imprisoned you are abandoned. You will never be fooled by them again.
In the absence of these false beliefs, what need is there any longer for their antithesis via the pointer: “I am not my personality”? No need at all. You are stabilized beyond the mind/body/personality construct. The pointer is discarded as it has no function. When you have reached Paris, do you need the directions to Paris? Of course not. The map can be thrown out.
The Advaitin Teachings are freely available to all who seek. However, most seekers are not ripe or ready. They are still entranced by the world of experience and do not wish to let go of it.
This is why those who are drawn to Advaita are often veterans of the spiritual / mystical game. They are not pushed and pulled by attraction and aversion to other teachers, methods, paths. They have tried the other methods and given up hope. They have stopped accumulating the false, and the mind is relatively stable and calm. The pointers are recognized – and therefore there is more chance they will have an effect.
Let’s end with some questions:
· Do you understand that the mind is filled with false concepts?
· Can you see how all false concepts block the understanding of your real nature?
· Do you understand how pointers to truth cast the light of understanding so that false concepts dissolve?
· Can you understand the effortless effect of the pointers to truth – no effort is necessary?
· Do you see how in the absence of the false, “reality can rush in”, and who you are can be known?
To be continued.
Please enter the silence of contemplation.
For extending teaching on the Advaitan Understanding – and the removal of the false that obscures Your Real Nature, see the links on the right hand side of this blog.
Comments / clarifications may be sent to louise.advaita@gmail.com
