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:
"IDENTIFICATION / PERSONALITY"
"When you put on an identity that is not yours, you are afraid. When you are the pure 'I Amness' only, there is no fear. Presently you are this 'I Am', but this 'I Am' is not the truth. Whatever you are prior to the appearance of 'I Am', that is your true nature."
" . . . Based on hearsay, you formed your identity with a certain image. You may think that now you have become jnanis and that you know your identity very well, but most often this is a case of sensory deception. Whatever your image of yourself, it is nothing but a concept. Just understand what you are, and carry on your daily life to the best of your ability."
"You are still at the kindergarten level [of spirituality]. The only solution is for you to give up your identity with the body-mind." He said: "There is no separate identity; what IS is this consciousness, apart from that, no one can exist. When you are very quiet, you have arrived at the basis of everything."
"If you have any problems or questions with which you are concerned, you will find these problems and questions, are based on your identity with the body and mind as an individual. If that identification is not there, then no questions can arise."
"Once you realise that whatever appears before you cannot be yourself, and cannot say 'I am', you are free of all your 'persons' and their demands."
" . . . Self-identifications are patently false and the cause of bondage."
"All is myself."
"I do not identify myself with anybody in particular, for I am all - both the particular and the universal."
"A spark of truth can burn up a mountain of lies. The opposite is also true: the sun of truth remains hidden behind the cloud of self-identification . . . ."
"[The Realized man] looks at himself without indulging in self-definitions and self-identifications. He does not know himself as anything apart from the world. He is the world. He is completely rid of himself, like a man who is very rich, but continually gives away his riches. He is not rich, for he has nothing; he is not poor, for he gives abundantly. He is just propertyless. Similarly, the realised man is egoless; he has lost the capacity of identifying himself with anything. He is without location, placeless, beyond space and time, beyond the world. Beyond words and thoughts is he."
" . . . Self-identification with the outer causes is suffering."
"When I say I am free, I merely state a fact. If you are an adult, you are free from infancy. I am free from all description and identification. Whatever you may hear, see, or think of, I am not that."
"Don't identify yourself with the world and you will not suffer."
"You are afraid of what you are. Your destination is the whole. But you are afraid that you will lose your identity. This is childishness, clinging to the toys, to your desires and fears, opinions and ideas. Give it all up and be ready for the Real to assert itself."
"When all the false self-identifications are thrown away, what remains is all-embracing Love. Get rid of all ideas about yourself, even of the idea that you are God. No self-definition is valid."
"When the mind is quiet, we come to know ourselves as the pure witness[ing]. We withdraw from the experience and its experiencer and stand apart in [that is, as] pure awareness, which is between and beyond the two. The personality (based on self-identification . . . on imagining oneself to be something (i.e., 'I am this, I am that') continues, but only as a part of the objective world. Its identification with the witness snaps."
"You know you are, 'I Am'. The moment the feeling 'I Am' appears, the 'world' also appears."
"In the consciousness hierarchy there are three stages: 1. Jivatman is the one who identifies himself with the body-mind - one who thinks 'I am a body, a personality, an individual apart from the world.' He excludes and isolates himself from the world as a separate personality because of identification with the body and the mind. 2. Next only the beingness, or the consciousness, which is the world. 'I Am' means my whole world. Just being and the world. Together with the beingness the world is also felt - that is Atman. 3. The 'ultimate principle' that knows this beingness cannot be termed at all. It cannot be approached or conditioned by any words. That is the 'ultimate state'."
"When you put on an identity that is not yours, you are afraid."
He advised, die the death of false identity now to be at peace; then, You will have "come to the end of personality and there is no more human being. There is only impersonal consciousness."
"There is that intuitive sense of presence; you know you are present."
"When your individuality is dissolved, you will not see individual anywhere." You stop trying to "be something." You will understand that "whatever you try to become, that is not you."
To that end, he offered this caution: "All your questions come from your identification with the body. How can any questions relating to that which was prior to the body and consciousness be answered?"
“From my angle, you are nothing. You have no identity.”
"Now the last traces of personality or individuality have left me."
"Personality is merely a reflection of the real."
"Unmanifested, manifested, individuality, personality (nirguna, saguna, vyakta, vyakti): all these are mere words, points of view, mental attitudes. There is no reality in them. The real is experienced in silence [but] you cling to personality . . . ."
" . . . The personality is only an obstacle."
"The personality (vyakti) is but a product of imagination."
"It is the taking yourself to be what you are not that binds you."
"Your being a person is due to the illusion of space and time; you imagine yourself to be at a certain point occupying a certain volume; your personality is due to your self-identification with the body."
"How does personality, come into being? By memory. By identifying the present with the past and projecting it into the future. Think of yourself as momentary, without past and future and your personality dissolves."
"Self-limitation is the very essence of personality."
"The inner guru is not committed to non-violence. He can be quite violent at times, to the point of destroying the obtuse or perverted personality. Suffering and death, as life and happiness, are his tools of work. It is only in duality that non-violence becomes the unifying law."
"As long as you are enmeshed in the tribulations of a particular personality, you can see nothing beyond it."
"The dissolution of personality is followed always by a sense of great relief, as if a heavy burden has fallen off."
"It is like washing printed cloth. First the design fades, then the background and in the end the cloth is plain white. The personality gives place to the witness, then the witness goes and pure awareness remains. The cloth was white in the beginning and is white in the end; the patterns and colours just happened -- for a time."
"Just understand that it is not your personal action or choice. Do not get involved as the doer. Why do you get involved in all these concepts? First, find out what you consider yourself to be. Are you an entity? Get that problem solved instead of getting involved in all kinds of concepts. What are you? You cannot understand with your intellect; it is beyond the grasp of the intellect."
"The core of this consciousness is knowingness, to know "I Am". It is not a personality, not an individual. It is total manifestation. Beingness is there, it fills everything."
"All happenings are only in body consciousness. 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. There is no imprint of personality; it is the manifest consciousness which is functioning. This dynamic, manifest consciousness is always in a fluid state. What will happen no one can say. This dynamic consciousness does not have any concept that something good or bad is going to happen to it; it is just happening. No one is doing it."
"When you look at others, that other 'person' is just food essence, as yourself."
"All knowledge is like the son of a barren woman. Presently there are only beingness and the functioning. The individuality and personality are thrown overboard. There is no personality, so there is no question of birth, life, or death. What remains is only the consciousness without name or form. There is no individuality at all. The form needs a name, but when both are not there, then the consciousness remains only so long as the body is there, but without any individuality. The body is of as much use now as it was prior to the birth and after the death. How do you know me? You know me only on the acquisition of body form, name and form. Do you really see me as I am? I doubt it."
"There was a house, and in the house there was a person; now the person is gone and the house is demolished. The sum total is, whatever experiences you have, whether for a day or for years, it is all illusion. The experiences begin with knowingness. What is the most ingrained habit you have? It is to say 'I Am'. This is the root habit. Words and experiences are unworthy of you. This habit of experiencing will not go until you realize that all this domain of the five elements, and the experiences in the five elements, are unreal. This 'I-Amness' is itself unreal."
"You are not a personality. That birth principle which gives rise to the consciousness is not conditioned; it has come spontaneously and manifests as consciousness."
"The birth, the parents, all this is illusion. Taking the body as oneself is the accident. If you don't cling to the body as your identity, everything is all right."
"It is total freedom for one who does not identify with the body."
"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."
“When you travel in a car, are you the car?”
“Every organic being, whether an insect or a human, depends on food. All these flowers, this foliage, is our antecedent state.”
“Consciousness is present everywhere, but knowledge of that consciousness is dependent on the form.”
“Before this knowledge ‘I Am’ appeared on you, you were absolutely unattached. As soon as the knowledge dawned on you, you became attached to everything around you. Only that false ‘I’ is attached. Everything is just happening, and the false ‘I’ is taking the credit for doing things.”
“…You are the light.”
“In order to manifest itself, the consciousness needs a frame, a particular construct in which it can appear.”
"Understand that it is not the individual which has consciousness; it is the consciousness which assumes innumerable forms."
"Both experience and experiencer will disappear."
To be continued.
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