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.
Also, as for Maharaj, you will find more of the message that he offered in his later talks. During his last years, he said of I AM THAT: "That book and whatever was expounded at that time was only relevant for that period. I am speaking differently today" and am "emphasizing different aspects." His final understanding, quite different from what he offered early on, is the basis of pointers offered to seekers well along the "path." Maharaj made clear at the end that the pointers in I AM THAT will take you to the midpoint of "the race"; only the pointers in his final talks point the way to "the finish line."
F.: A movie that is currently a popular rental in the U.S. (called a popular "hire" in some other countries) is entitled "Love and Other Drugs."
The word "drugs" is used in the title to reference the part of the film's subject matter that deals with all of the emotion-based motion / actions that persons experience around fear-or-desire-driven attachments, including:
making them far-too-hastily; avoiding them; fearing them; running away from them; running to them; and - time after time - forming them only to break them ... or forming them and suffering the consequences instead of breaking them.
The pace at which persons form attachments is astonishing as they can shift out of a formerly-peaceful state and enter at break-neck speed the mad race to find something external that they hope will make them happy or bring relief from whatever temporary obstacles they might be presently facing.
Some see the error of the way that they fell into during a time of fear or desire, so those will quickly break off the attachment after seeing that it is going to take a heavy toll and is going to block their former sense of lightness;
others will tolerate for an entire "lifetime" the misery of an attachment that they think is raising them to what they perceive to be the new heights of an elevated lifestyle or the higher high provided by a drug or what they take to be a drug-induced "higher level of consciousness."
[Nowadays, the number of persons touting the latter is increasing, not unlike those heady days in the 1970's when a variety of drugs were being credited with having "consciousness-elevating properties."]
In "Love and Other Drugs," a relationship without attachment sailed merrily along; when one party began to attach, the relationship became rocky; when that party began to detach, the other party suddenly processed the fear of attachment and was ready to move forward.
Such is the chaos that marks an existence that is caught up in the ever-changing flux of attaching and detaching as a result of personality-driven fear and desire. What is the answer?
Maharaj: "Let go your attachment to the unreal and the real will swiftly and smoothly step into its own."
For that to happen, there must first be an understanding of (a) the perverse functioning of the "mind" and (b) the relative consequences that will manifest in a "mind-driven-life"; also, there must be an understanding of (c) all of the false selves that rule from the "mind" where such emotionally-intoxicating mirages are stored and thought to be real.
Time and again the teachings remind seekers that they must know the false selves before being able to know the Real Self. How can one renounce toll-taking attachments if (1) such attachments are not seen or if
(2) the toll of such attachments is being denied or if (3) the toll is seen but justified by use of the many mechanisms that the excuse-making "mind" will employ - often unconsciously - to rationalize what amounts to senseless or even insane decisions?
Maharaj: "You cannot renounce. You may leave your home and give trouble to your family, but attachments are in the mind and will not leave you until you know your mind in and out. First thing first: know yourself. All else will come with it."
Know your self - your false selves which are the source of all fears and desires - and then know Your Self.
Maharaj: "Awareness is primordial; it is the original state, beginningless, endless, uncaused, unsupported, without parts, without change. Consciousness is on contact, a reflection against a surface, a state of duality. There can be no consciousness without awareness, but there can be awareness without consciousness, as in deep sleep. Awareness is absolute, consciousness is relative to its content; consciousness is always of something. Consciousness is partial and changeful, awareness is total, changeless, calm and silent. And it is the common matrix of every experience."
Questioner: "How does one go beyond consciousness into awareness?"
Maharaj: "Since it is awareness that makes consciousness possible, there is awareness in every state of consciousness. Therefore the very consciousness of being conscious is already a movement in awareness. Interest in your stream of consciousness takes you to awareness. It is not a new state. It is at once recognised as the original, basic existence, which is life itself, and also love and joy."
Questioner: "Since reality is all the time with us, what does self-realisation consist of?"
Maharaj: "Realisation is but the opposite of ignorance. To take the world as real and one’s Self as unreal is ignorance, the cause of sorrow. To know the Self as the only reality and all else as temporal and transient is freedom, peace and joy. It is all very simple. Instead of seeing things as imagined, learn to see them as they are."
How to reach the non-dual understanding of simultaneously knowing that You Are All and that You Are Nothing, for to be free of the fears and desires of personality, that must be understood? You must know You Are All (a.k.a., Love) and know that You are nothing (a.k.a., Wisdom).
Maharaj: "Being all, what am I to be afraid of? Water is not afraid of water, nor fire of fire. Also I am not afraid because I am nothing that can experience fear, or can be in danger. I have no shape, nor name. It is attachment to a name and shape that breeds fear. I am not attached. I am nothing, and nothing is afraid of no thing. On the contrary, everything is afraid of the Nothing, for when a thing touches Nothing, it becomes nothing. It is like a bottomless well, whatever falls into it, disappears."
Freedom from attachment must happen to be free of peace-robbing fears and desires. Recall the pointer from yesterday: the light is omnipresent. The seeming darkness notwithstanding, there is more light surrounding the moon than is striking its surface. Allow the light to illuminate and to allow You to see how your fears and desires will lead you to race into attachments and entanglements that will always eventually take hostage both your freedom and peace.
Again, one of Maharaj's key pointers in this regard: "There is no darkness in the midst of light. Self-forgetfulness is the darkness. When we are absorbed in other things, in the not-self, we forget the Self. There is nothing unnatural about it. But, why forget the Self through excess of attachment?"
Heavy, lightness-stealing consequences always follow those who race excessively into attachments that at first appear to be lightness-providing opportunities. Caught up in the storm of fear and desire, the selves convince themselves that lies are truth; only the Self can differentiate between the true and the false.
The word "drugs" is used in the title to reference the part of the film's subject matter that deals with all of the emotion-based motion / actions that persons experience around fear-or-desire-driven attachments, including:
making them far-too-hastily; avoiding them; fearing them; running away from them; running to them; and - time after time - forming them only to break them ... or forming them and suffering the consequences instead of breaking them.
The pace at which persons form attachments is astonishing as they can shift out of a formerly-peaceful state and enter at break-neck speed the mad race to find something external that they hope will make them happy or bring relief from whatever temporary obstacles they might be presently facing.
Some see the error of the way that they fell into during a time of fear or desire, so those will quickly break off the attachment after seeing that it is going to take a heavy toll and is going to block their former sense of lightness;
others will tolerate for an entire "lifetime" the misery of an attachment that they think is raising them to what they perceive to be the new heights of an elevated lifestyle or the higher high provided by a drug or what they take to be a drug-induced "higher level of consciousness."
[Nowadays, the number of persons touting the latter is increasing, not unlike those heady days in the 1970's when a variety of drugs were being credited with having "consciousness-elevating properties."]
In "Love and Other Drugs," a relationship without attachment sailed merrily along; when one party began to attach, the relationship became rocky; when that party began to detach, the other party suddenly processed the fear of attachment and was ready to move forward.
Such is the chaos that marks an existence that is caught up in the ever-changing flux of attaching and detaching as a result of personality-driven fear and desire. What is the answer?
Maharaj: "Let go your attachment to the unreal and the real will swiftly and smoothly step into its own."
For that to happen, there must first be an understanding of (a) the perverse functioning of the "mind" and (b) the relative consequences that will manifest in a "mind-driven-life"; also, there must be an understanding of (c) all of the false selves that rule from the "mind" where such emotionally-intoxicating mirages are stored and thought to be real.
Time and again the teachings remind seekers that they must know the false selves before being able to know the Real Self. How can one renounce toll-taking attachments if (1) such attachments are not seen or if
(2) the toll of such attachments is being denied or if (3) the toll is seen but justified by use of the many mechanisms that the excuse-making "mind" will employ - often unconsciously - to rationalize what amounts to senseless or even insane decisions?
Maharaj: "You cannot renounce. You may leave your home and give trouble to your family, but attachments are in the mind and will not leave you until you know your mind in and out. First thing first: know yourself. All else will come with it."
Know your self - your false selves which are the source of all fears and desires - and then know Your Self.
Maharaj: "Awareness is primordial; it is the original state, beginningless, endless, uncaused, unsupported, without parts, without change. Consciousness is on contact, a reflection against a surface, a state of duality. There can be no consciousness without awareness, but there can be awareness without consciousness, as in deep sleep. Awareness is absolute, consciousness is relative to its content; consciousness is always of something. Consciousness is partial and changeful, awareness is total, changeless, calm and silent. And it is the common matrix of every experience."
Questioner: "How does one go beyond consciousness into awareness?"
Maharaj: "Since it is awareness that makes consciousness possible, there is awareness in every state of consciousness. Therefore the very consciousness of being conscious is already a movement in awareness. Interest in your stream of consciousness takes you to awareness. It is not a new state. It is at once recognised as the original, basic existence, which is life itself, and also love and joy."
Questioner: "Since reality is all the time with us, what does self-realisation consist of?"
Maharaj: "Realisation is but the opposite of ignorance. To take the world as real and one’s Self as unreal is ignorance, the cause of sorrow. To know the Self as the only reality and all else as temporal and transient is freedom, peace and joy. It is all very simple. Instead of seeing things as imagined, learn to see them as they are."
How to reach the non-dual understanding of simultaneously knowing that You Are All and that You Are Nothing, for to be free of the fears and desires of personality, that must be understood? You must know You Are All (a.k.a., Love) and know that You are nothing (a.k.a., Wisdom).
Maharaj: "Being all, what am I to be afraid of? Water is not afraid of water, nor fire of fire. Also I am not afraid because I am nothing that can experience fear, or can be in danger. I have no shape, nor name. It is attachment to a name and shape that breeds fear. I am not attached. I am nothing, and nothing is afraid of no thing. On the contrary, everything is afraid of the Nothing, for when a thing touches Nothing, it becomes nothing. It is like a bottomless well, whatever falls into it, disappears."
Freedom from attachment must happen to be free of peace-robbing fears and desires. Recall the pointer from yesterday: the light is omnipresent. The seeming darkness notwithstanding, there is more light surrounding the moon than is striking its surface. Allow the light to illuminate and to allow You to see how your fears and desires will lead you to race into attachments and entanglements that will always eventually take hostage both your freedom and peace.
Again, one of Maharaj's key pointers in this regard: "There is no darkness in the midst of light. Self-forgetfulness is the darkness. When we are absorbed in other things, in the not-self, we forget the Self. There is nothing unnatural about it. But, why forget the Self through excess of attachment?"
Heavy, lightness-stealing consequences always follow those who race excessively into attachments that at first appear to be lightness-providing opportunities. Caught up in the storm of fear and desire, the selves convince themselves that lies are truth; only the Self can differentiate between the true and the false.
Why abandon the only tool available for relative constructiveness and allow one's selves to drive you to self-destructiveness? If you find that you were moving along the "path" and took a detour, return to the "path" so that, in the end, You can come home ... and stay.
Please enter the silence of contemplation. (To be continued)
