TODAY'S CONSIDERATIONS
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Next, quotations from Maharaj will be offered, excerpted from the book QUOTATIONS AND POINTERS dealing with NON-DUALITY, ADVAITA, NISARGA YOGA and more
The quotations and pointers from Maharaj which will be offered during the next few days will be arranged by category and subject matter. The quotes offered today will deal with:
REGARDING "KNOWLEDGE," "THE INTELLECT," AND "LEARNED IGNORANCE"
"You come here because you are ignorant, not because you are knowledgeable. This knowledge I give is only to remove ignorance."
"Realization is nothing more than being free of all learned ignorance."
"Those who come here with the idea of getting knowledge, even spiritual knowledge, come here as individuals aspiring to get something; that is the real difficulty. The seeker must disappear. When you know Your Real Nature, the knowledge 'I Am' remains, but that knowledge is unlimited. It is not possible for you to acquire knowledge. You are knowledge. You are what you are seeking."
"I am that knowledge 'I Am'."
"You understand what I say but you are afraid that whatever so-called knowledge you have collected is being devalued."
"You discover that there is nothing to discover."
"How did I get to the truth that I prevail everlastingly? I understand what My True Nature is. Nobody had told me how to do it. I did not seek this knowledge externally. It sprouted within me."
"There are two ways of receiving the knowledge [I AM]. One way is you are taught the knowledge, you receive it externally. Another way is, the knowledge grows from inside, intuitively."
"Some people come here for knowledge. I talk because the words naturally come out. There is no intention behind my talks that you should get knowledge."
"Ignorance will remain there for all time just as knowledge also will remain for all time. There cannot be knowledge without ignorance and there cannot be ignorance without the correlated knowledge. Both are the opposites in manifestation. One cannot remain without the other. Even this concept about knowledge is merely a concept. With a jnani, there is no concept of either ignorance or knowledge. The total absence of all knowledge or ignorance is that state prior to the arising of consciousness. But you try to interpret whatever I say with various concepts and you condition yourself with all these concepts."
"Any image you have of yourself is not true. True knowledge is to abide in your own Self. Try to understand all this knowledge which you are now gathering. The so-called knowledge you get elsewhere talks only about ignorance; it cannot talk about the Self, true knowledge. All of what is pursued by the mind, it is not true knowledge. True knowledge cannot be understood easily. If I had the experience 'I Am' before, would I care to enter the womb of my mother? Prior to entering the womb I did not know myself. There was no knowledge of 'I Amness'. "
"The factual state of affairs is open, very clear, but nobody wants to look at it. This is the place where the intellect gets annihilated."
"I do not follow the spirituality of the masses. In this place spirituality of the common type will not be doled out to you. You can never be lost; whatever you have lost, you have lost only the words. Through this 'I Am' comes the 'world knowledge'."
"You, with your wisdom, are stuck here; you are sticking to certain concepts. If you had no concepts, why should you come here? You study only those concepts which arise from within you. Those concepts which you do not like will not occur to you."
"All so-called knowledge is tainted by words, which is only ignorance."
"What I am expounding does not relate to worldly knowledge. You do not want to give up either 'worldly knowledge' or so-called 'spiritual knowledge', and yet, through these worldly concepts, you want to understand the riddle of your existence, and that is precisely why you are not able to understand."
"You are very adept at word-games. While I am talking about knowledge that is beyond this phenomenal world, you are trying to understand through worldly concepts and words. Give up all these concepts and inquire into the nature of your beingness. How did you happen to be? Ponder it! The real blessing of the Guru comes when your knowledge itself sprouts inside you."
"If you continue in the realm of intellect you will become entangled and lost in more and more concepts."
"You have a lot of knowledge but it pertains to the practical world. I will not talk about the worldly knowledge."
"You did not know your own existence after you were born. Nine months in the womb and for sometime afterwards that 'I am so and so' is absent. When you start recognizing your mother, then you also come to be aware of your own existence. That 'I Amness' comes sometime later. Mother teaches you, in ignorance, that you are the body and you begin to believe that. Your mind also starts slowly to develop. So right from the beginning, because of ignorance, the Absolute does not know itself; and because of the body, it started knowing that it is - 'I AM'."
"I have no use for traditions or traditional knowledge. If you do the slightest research on tradition you will see that it is all a concept. I am concerned with only one fact. Here I was in my wholeness, not even aware of my awareness, then suddenly this consciousness sprang up. How did it come about? That is the question which needs investigating."
"What you are doing is using your mind and intellect, but what I say is not based on the intellect, but rather on whatever comes up spontaneously in consciousness. You try to fix that knowledge which springs spontaneously from consciousness into the structure of concepts you have built out of the mind and intellect. This can never happen."
"This is the place where the intellect gets annihilated."
"You are bent on having knowledge at the most mundane level, but whatever knowledge you collect is bound to disappear."
"Whatever you have placed before me as knowledge are all mistaken concepts."
"When you come to the end of material world-knowledge, at that stage you transcend the observer and the observed. That means that you are in a true state of beingness. Thereafter you enter the state of transcending beingness, where the identities of the observer and observed disappear."
"Personalities only exist in body consciousness. The usual knowledge is concerned only with the body image. You are not the body, you are the consciousness."
"What I am expounding does not relate to worldly knowledge."
"While I am talking about knowledge that is beyond this phenomenal world, you are trying to understand through worldly concepts and words. Give up all these concepts . . . ."
"Ultimately, one must go beyond knowledge . . . ."
"I will not expound knowledge . . . ; a few words here and there will be all."
"Your idea of knowledge is something you can catch hold of, something you can feel and put into your pocket. This knowledge is not of that kind. When I know that I am knowledge itself, what can I hope to get?"
"When you get this knowledge you will realize that knowledge of this world and consciousness are not even worth your spit."
"You have come here with the idea that you are full of knowledge."
"You assume that you have knowledge. You have developed a pride that you have knowledge, so for testing yourself you have come here. Some others here have no pride that they are knowledgeable; you alone are claiming all the knowledge and pride."
"Just as a person continues going to work every day because he wants to receive his wages, so you keep coming here because you want to gain knowledge."
"Try to understand all this knowledge which you are now gathering. The so-called 'knowledge' you get elsewhere talks only about ignorance; it cannot talk about [authenticity]."
"Once it is known what is temporary and what one's original state is, no further knowledge is needed."
"Whatever you have placed before me as knowledge are all mistaken concepts."
"During these talks you have gotten very angry; this is in the zone of mind modifications - it is not a reflection of your consciousness. The one who understands that anger is the message 'I Am'. All your spiritual studies are conducted with your identification with the body-mind."
"When will I have no experience of this illness? Just as the sun sets, only when this consciousness sets will there be perfect health or no experience of this sickness. So long as the consciousness is there the sickness must be experienced. What is my pleasure or happiness? Nothing other than this knowledge 'I Am', this consciousness."
Thus his earlier advice:
"Go to zero concepts"
and his pointers that
"all my knowledge has gone into liquidation"
and
"I have no mind."
Again, "Realization is nothing more than being free of all learned ignorance."
To be continued.
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