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:
"OVERLAYING ABSOLUTE REALITY ON THE RELATIVE: WHAT THE POST-REALIZATION ABIDANCE IS LIKE"
"To me, nothing ever happens. There is something changeless, motionless, immovable, rock-like, unassailable; a solid mass of pure being-consciousness-bliss. I am never out of it. Nothing can take me out of it - no torture, no calamity."
"Are you sure we live in the same world? I do not mean nature, the sea and the land, plants and animals. They are not the problem, nor the endless space, the infinite time, the inexhaustible power. Do not be misled by my eating and smoking, reading and talking. My mind is not here, my life is not here. Your world, of desires and their fulfillments, of fears and their escapes, is definitely not my world."
"Of course facts are real! I live among them. But you live with fancies, not with facts. Facts never clash, while your life and world are full of contradictions. Contradiction is the mark of the false; the real never contradicts itself."
"As you stabilize in the consciousness, dispassion for the body and for the expressions through the body occurs spontaneously. It is a natural renunciation, not a deliberate one. It does not mean that you should neglect your worldly duties; carry these out with full zest."
Questioner: "Must not one be fit and eligible for realisation? Our nature is animal to the core. Unless it is conquered, how can we hope for reality to dawn?"
Maharaj: "Leave the animal alone. Let it be. Just remember what you are. Use every incident of the day to remind you that without you as the witness there would be neither animal nor God. Understand that you are both, the essence and the substance of all there is, and remain firm in your understanding."
"You can watch the body, so you are not the body. You can watch the breath, so you are not the vital breath. In the same way, you are not the consciousness; but you have to become one with the consciousness. As you stabilize in the consciousness, dispassion for the body and for the expressions through the body occur spontaneously. It is a natural renunciation, not a deliberate one. It does not mean that you should neglect your worldly duties; carry these out with full zest."
"I don't live by memory. I see the world as it is, a momentary appearance in consciousness."
"I live in a world of realities, while yours is of imagination. Your world is personal, private, unshareable, intimately your own. Nobody can enter it, see as you see, hear as you hear, feel your emotions and think your thoughts. In your world you are truly alone, enclosed in your ever-changing dream, which you take for life. My world is an open world, common to all, accessible to all."
Q.: "Even when I have an intuitive understanding of this, what is this reluctance to give up all that I am not?"
M.: "You have not stabilized firmly in that understanding. Your conviction should be such that no question at all should arise in the future about that. For example, a person is dead and has been cremated; it is all over. Is there any question about that? Like that, it will be all over."
"The person is always the object, the witness is the subject and their relation of mutual dependence is the reflection of their absolute identity."
"The mind shapes the language and the language shapes the mind. Both are tools, use them but don’t misuse them. Words can bring you only unto their own limit; to go beyond, you must abandon them. Remain as the silent witness only."
"This is the end of Yoga -- to realise independence. All that happens, happens in and to the mind, not to the source of the ‘I am’. Once you realise that all happens by itself . . . , you remain as witness only, understanding and enjoying, but not perturbed."
"Consciousness can never remain inactive; it will always be busy - that is its nature." [The question then becomes, "How can one address that constant activity and movement and then stabilize?"] Maharaj: "When you come here, you have certain expectations, certain aspirations, but after listening to my talks, you lose all that."
"Language-energy and vital-breath-energy should merge and stabilize; otherwise, if you allow them to go outward, they will be dissipated. If you want peace, stabilize at that point where you started to be. Stay put there."
"The person merges into the witness, the witness into awareness, awareness into pure being, yet identity is not lost, only its limitations are lost. It is transfigured, and becomes the real self, the sadguru, the eternal friend and guide."
"The witness that is enmeshed in what he perceives is the person; the [Pure] Witnessing that stands aloof, unmoved and untouched, is the watch-tower of the real, the point at which awareness, inherent in the unmanifested, contacts the manifested."
" . . . when it comes to thoughts and feelings, desires and fears you become acutely self-conscious. To me, these too are largely unconscious. I find myself talking to people, or doing things quite correctly and appropriately, without being very much conscious of them. It looks as if I live my physical, waking life automatically, reacting spontaneously and accurately."
"Those who have comprehended and who have reached a certain stage will not ask for anything, but everything will come to them spontaneously. There will be no wish for it; nevertheless, it will be there. This does not happen for an individual — it happens for the universal manifestation, or for the one who has become one with his true nature. For the jnani, only witnessing is taking place."
"My dwelling place in the grosser world is gone now; presently it is in the subtler sphere, as in space."
" . . . You must sleep in order to wake up. You must die in order to live, you must melt down to shape anew. You must destroy to build . . . ."
"Just now I was lying down in the waking state, but with no perceiving or receiving of any words, something like a prior-to-words state. Now the last traces of personality or individuality have left me."
"The effect of these talks is that you will stabilize in the very source from which the words sprout. Abiding in the dynamic, manifest consciousness is abiding in the words of the Guru. The meaning of the mantra I have given you is that you are the manifest, dynamic principle, not the body. When you abide in that, you become that."
"You must become one with and stabilize in that [pure] consciousness; then, you transcend it. That consciousness is your only capital. Understand it."
"Are you ready to follow my example? I am dead to the world, I want nothing, not even to live. Be as I am. You are judging me by my clothes and food while I only look at your motives; if you believe to be the body and the mind and act on it, you are guilty of the greatest cruelty - cruelty to your own real being. Compared to it, all other cruelties do not count."
"Understand what consciousness is [and understand that] consciousness is not an individual. The basis and source of consciousness is in the material. What I say is still in the conceptual world, and you need not accept it as truth. Nothing in the conceptual world is true."
"When you go beyond awareness, there is a state of non-duality in which there is no cognition, only pure being. In the state of non-duality, all separation ceases."
"I used to sit for hours together, with, nothing but the 'I am' in my mind and soon peace and joy and a deep all-embracing love became my normal state. In it all disappeared -- myself, my Guru, the life I lived, the world around me. Only peace remained and unfathomable silence."
"Everybody dies as he lives. I am not afraid of death, because I am not afraid of life. I live a happy life and shall die a happy death. Misery is to be born, not to die. All depends how you look at it."
"When you stand motionless, only watching, you discover your self as the light behind the watcher. The source of light is dark, unknown is the source of knowledge. That source alone is. Go back to that source and abide there."
"The 'Ultimate state' is that state in which nothing exists - neither I, nor you, nor manifestation."
" . . . Life is to be lived; there is no time for analysis."
"When you have understood that all existence, in separation and limitation, is painful, and when you are willing and able to live integrally, in oneness with all life, as pure being, you have gone beyond all need of help."
"Just live your life as it comes, but alertly, watchfully, allowing everything to happen as it happens, doing the natural things the natural way . . . ."
"Once you know with absolute certainty that nothing can trouble you but your own imagination, you come to disregard your desires and fears, concepts and ideas and live by truth alone."
Q.: "In your daily life are you always conscious of your real state?"
M.: "Neither conscious, nor unconscious. I do not need convictions. I live on courage. Courage is my essence, which is love of life. I am free of memories and anticipations, unconcerned with what I am and what I am not. I am not addicted to self descriptions, soham and brahmasmi ('I am He', 'I am the Supreme') are of no use to me. I have the courage to be as nothing and to see the world as it is: nothing. It sounds simple, just try it!"
"Life is worthy of the name only when it reflects Reality in action. No university will teach you how to live so that when the time of dying comes, you can say: I lived well I do not need to live again. Most of us die wishing we could live again. So many mistakes committed, so much left undone. Most of the people vegetate, but do not live. They merely gather experience and enrich their memory."
"Once you realise that all comes from within, that the world in which you live has not been projected onto you but by you, your fear comes to an end."
" . . . Live without self-concern."
"Live in tune with things as they are and not as they are imagined."
"There is only life. There is nobody who lives a life."
"Just trust me and live by trusting me. I shall not mislead you. You are the Reality beyond the world and its 'creator', beyond consciousness and its witness, beyond all assertions and denials. Remember it, think of it, act on it. Abandon all sense of separation, see yourself in all and act accordingly. With action bliss will come and, with bliss, conviction. After all, you doubt yourself because you are in sorrow. Happiness, natural, spontaneous and lasting cannot be imagined. Either it is there, or it is not. Once you begin to experience the peace, love and happiness which need no outer causes, all your doubts will dissolve. Just catch hold of what I told you and live by it."
To be continued.
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