THE FOUR METHODS FOR TEACHING ADVAITA VEDANTA, Part Five

FROM A SITE VISITOR: [Please see “Part One” of this series for the visitor's initial comments]

F.: Next, the nisarga yoga approach shall be discussed. It has been employed by many Direct Path teachers and is observable in the teachings of Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj (especially via the pointers offered at the end of his teaching "career"). Many systems of yoga are used by various teachers or instructors: hatha yoga, kundalini yoga, power yoga, mantra-yoga, raja-yoga, bhakti-yoga, etc. The nisarga yoga is used with the Direct Path Method on this site. Many yogis or yoginis are involved with yogas that encourage going and doing and zooming and adherence to their prescribed practices "for life."

To the contrary, nisarga yoga encourages the use of any system only to the point of Full Realization; thereafter, the pointer is to merely witness natural living as it happens. Nothing in nature (except for programmed, conditioned humans) believes that it must live supernaturally and read, pray, implore, kneel, study, chant, hum, plead, ring, burn, meet, supplicate, tithe, serve, solicit, wish, hope, and proselytize in order to be happy or content or fulfilled or "good" or "better."

As a result of believing all of those activities are required for "right living," scores of systems of yoga have evolved. But if you were to study them after exposure to the Direct Path Method and the nisarga approach, all of their doingness would be promptly rejected; however, the long and arduous road taken by “floyd” led to exposure to most of the other types of yogas before nisarga yoga was found. At that point, all nonsense became recognizable as nonsense, but here are the experiences that happened along the way that led to abandoning the practices of the other yogas.

A. Some jogis/yoginis claimed to be able to connect persons with a god or gods or “Cosmic Mother” in order for persons to have another power source to tap into or in order for persons to become totally devoted to a Lord.
B. Why would one following the Direct Path/nisarga yoga dismiss that approach? There are no persons; there is no individuality, only the unicity; there is no god or “Cosmic Mother” or “Cosmic Father” or “Lord”; there are no multiple gods or goddesses; there is no “one” to gain power; it is duality to think "I worship him/her" or "I follow him/her"; and there is no “one” to gain, period.

A. Some claimed that their followers must practice self-disciplines daily.
B. Why would one following the Direct Path/nisarga yoga dismiss that approach? There is no need to practice anything once Full Realization happens; there is no “one” to practice; natural living happens, without practicing and without doingness, and all unnatural and supernatural living ends automatically; the self is false and cannot be disciplined because self prefers to destroy discipline; the Self, on the other hand, does not need disciplining.

A. Some yogis/yoginis claimed that persons must chant and/or activate their centers.
B. Why would one following the Direct Path/nisarga yoga dismiss that approach? Once a person Realizes fully and abandons personas, there is no do-er to chant or to activate or to do anything else. Instead, AS IF living happens spontaneously and naturally; human types have walked the planet for 14.5 million years and they never chanted and never had to activate their centers until the last few thousand years, so it is not “natural”; finally, that which is limitless and without bounds can have no “center.”

A. Some yogis/yoginis said that persons must unite their body and mind and emotions and spirit so that they can focus on nothing but “the Lord.”
B. Why would one following the Direct Path/nisarga yoga dismiss that approach? There is no “Lord”; body and mind and emotions and spirit are all illusions, so to try to unite them is as senseless as trying to go into the desert and connect four mirages; the entire notion of things being separate and needing to be united is dualistic; and "Advaita" means “not two” and deals with the unicity…not with the two-ness, the three-ness, the four-ness, etc.

A. Some yogis/yoginis claimed that there is a goal for all persons and the goal is to gain knowledge.
B. Why would one following the Direct Path/nisarga yoga dismiss that approach? Concepts are only used with the Direct Path Method to remove religious or spiritual knowledge (also know as, learned ignorance) and then all concepts are discarded and natural/nisarga living happens.

A. Some yogis/yoginis taught two-ness, that there is "a Lord" and "his beings."
B. Why would one following the Direct Path/nisarga yoga dismiss that approach? Again, "Advaita" means “not two” and deals with the unicity…not with the two-ness, the three-ness, the four-ness, etc.

A. Some yogis/yoginis focused on immediate cause and effect and on the related concept of karma.
B. Why would one following the Direct Path/nisarga yoga dismiss that approach? Advaitins know that the cause of all is all...that the cause of anything is everything that has happened before any given moment or happenings under discussion.

As far as being giving or kind in order for your karma to get you a payoff, to “give” in order to get is self-ish giving and reveals that self-absorption continues; to believe that a “Cosmic Record-Keeper” is balancing out all of that giving and receiving (and not knowing that “The Givers” are trying to manipulate the universe and gain) is naïve and driven by self; post-Realization, it is de-accumulation, not accumulation, that happens; and, finally, the Realized know that they were not even born once, so they surely cannot possibly be "born again." Please enter the silence of contemplation. ( To be continued)
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CONSCIOUSNESS/AWARENESS, Part Three

FROM A SITE VISITOR: Please explain consciousness as opposed to awareness. Thank you. Harish

F.: The excerpt from the book, CONSCIOUSNESS/AWARENESS: The Nature of Reality Beyond Self-Realization (Peace Every Day When Abiding as The Absolute), continues and the picture referred to is in the 3 May 2007 post:

Please review the picture posted yesterday. Next, for purposes of illustration, take the foreground in the picture to represent the I-Amness and the background to be the I AM THAT-ness. Take the foreground to represent Consciousness and the background to represent Awareness. Note that consciousness involves being conscious of (something) so consciousness is always, ultimately, about duality: “this” is conscious of “that.” (Thus, the seeker who thinks he/she is Fully Realized and is the unicity because he/she knows the True Self is mistaken. That seeker might be Self-Realized, but That Which Truly Is is beyond self-ness, Self-ness, beingness, non-beingness, and realizing. It is even beyond “conscious of-ness.”)

PLEASE NOTE: The (Peace Every Day When Abiding as The Absolute) referred to in the aforementioned title manifests when abidance “beyond conscious of-ness” happens. The relative existence comparison offered by Advaitins is "the deep sleep metaphor" wherein peace happens beyond relative consciousness. (Compare the “beyond conscious of-ness” to the awareness of the body’s need that automatically, spontaneously keeps the heart and the lungs functioning even as there is no “one” present to consciously “do” that. Also, understand the automatic, spontaneous functioning in order to understand how your relative existence can happen with no illusion of a “do-er” being present and with abidance happening even beyond conscious of-ness. That happens when abidance as the Absolute happens.)

To continue with the discussion of the picture from yesterday, the doingness in the foreground is marked by consciousness and a sense of duality. Persons unaware of the unicity believe that they are conscious of some vast multiplicity of things: houses, roads, crops, intersections, buses, mercatos, etc. In the background of the picture, which includes trees and clouds and mountains and sky and sunlight, there is no sense of duality. Why? There is no “one” to be conscious of anything, yet there is awareness. In what way is “Awareness without Conscious of-ness” present in the background?

Observe that there appears to be a variety of “cloud” formations, but see that “the clouds” are not the real. What is “real,” for the sake of this example, is H20. As for awareness, a series of two hydrogen atoms are aware of an oxygen atom, but there is no “one” that is present to be conscious of anything. Awareness is just happening, so Awareness is not dualistic in its nature. (Yes, this explanation is beyond what has been offered on the site to some seekers who were not ready for this level of discussion. By virtue of the fact that Harish asked, there is evidence that he might be.)

The H20 can manifest in various "forms" or "spaces" which persons try to separate with labeling into “rain, rivers, lakes, clouds, vapor, water, snow, snowmen, snowballs, snow cones, snow flurries, snow flakes, snow piles, slush, ice, steam, lakes, pools, waterfalls, streams, fog, ponds, hail, drizzle, floods, mist, swamps, oceans, seas,” ad infinitum, but it’s really all one thing, all H20, merely appearing to be different. (See why persons live in the delusion of duality? See why persons are not "in the world" and why "the world" is in them...in their wrongly-perceiving "minds" that take what they think they see to be real and that try to support "differentiation" through labeling?)

Similarly, consciousness can manifest via the spaces labeled as "plants, animals, humans, birds," etc., and though it’s really all consciousness manifested, it appears to the non-Realized to be multiple and different things. For any perception of rain, rivers, plants, or animals to happen, conscious of-ness must also happen, and as a result of inaccurate suppositions rooted in distorted perception, the illusion of duality manifests.

(Again, it should be seen why it is frequently repeated on this site that, ultimately, there is no “goal” of abiding as Consciousness. For full freedom to happen during the manifestation of consciousness, abidance must happen as the Absolute.)

As with the “atoms as clouds,” whereby awareness can happen without any “one” being conscious of, so it is as the Absolute. Awareness is, even as there is no “one” to be aware of. Thus Awareness involves no duality. To use the second analogy, the glue is considered “sticky” as it adheres one thing to another (so it is dualistic in its very nature) but that which is independent and eternal is the glue's fundamental essence of “stickiness” (which is non-dual in its nature).

In both the foreground and the background of the picture from yesterday, everything is merely happening; however, in the foreground where consciousness has been corrupted, consciousness takes itself to be something it is not and leads persons to believe that they are making things happen and that they are seeing separate things. Persons are taking themselves to be “do-ers,” are lacking an understanding of the unicity, and are, therefore, strapped with delusional thinking generated by an illusory "mind."

So Harish, are you beginning to understand why you were advised that “in the no-concept, non-dual reality, there is nothing ‘opposed to’ anything else” but that your question could be addressed by discussing the supposed “attributes” of Awareness and Consciousness? Glue sticks and Scotch tape and Post-It Notes can be discussed; while manifested, they can each exhibit the "attribute" of being sticky; but someday the atrophy process will happen and those elements will return to the universal pool of elements. Then, what remains? Not glue sticks and Scotch tape and Post-It Notes but only “stickiness.”

Now, please understand what can and what cannot happen with the Post-It Notes in order to understand what cycles and what does not. If you understand this, then you can be free of nonsensical beliefs such as the Dalai Lama's “New Orleans was struck by Hurricane Katrina because of the bad (dualistic) karma of the people” or such nonsense as “Harish is going to cycle and cycle and cycle again, until he gets it right (duality)”:

it could be that millions of old Post-It Notes might be processed through a pulper that chops the paper into small bits and then heats them in a mixture that breaks them down into fibrous strands of cullulose (which is merely organic plant material). Then, the pulp can be screened and, if necessary, de-inked and color-stripped. After bleaching, that can be processed in a manner that results in it again taking the form of paper which can, in turn, take the form of Post-It Notes again. But what cycled? The organic elements. Are these the same Post-It Notes that existed before? Of course not. Will all Post-It Notes be recycled? No. Can their “form” end permanently? Yes. Can the organic material used to make paper be destroyed? No.

If recycled, it is the same organic material which can cycle into a form that appears to be the same, but that material could as easily take the form and appearance of a legal pad, a magazine, or a book. (That is how trillions upon trillions of "humans and animals and birds" have cycled into and out of manifested form on the planet while the planet has experienced zero-gain and zero-loss: organic material is merely being cycled, and it all happens with a speck of energy manifesting via plants. In the relative, you are what you eat and nothing more. It happens spontaneously with no master-control or Master-control involved. With condolences to those who take themselves or their offspring to be "gifts from God," what is really going on, and on-going, is a simple and natural organic happening, not a supernatural happening.)

Conscious-energy cycles (or not) in the same manner as the Post-It Notes. In the case of the legal pad, the magazine or the book, the attribute of "being sticky" would not happen, yet “stickiness” still remains though the original "sticky note paper" does not remain in its previous form. (Dennis Waite makes this clear by noting that those who are inpeccable with their words will talk of "tably wood," not of a "wooden table.") Do you grasp fully the functioning of the totality? Do you understand completely what cycles, how it cycles, what does not cycle, what remains forever, and what is only temporarily manifested? Please enter the silence of contemplation. (Tomorrow: The Conclusion)

CONSCIOUSNESS IS, Part Three

FROM A SITE VISITOR: there’s all these contradictions, the part I don’t get is “there’s only consciousness” but at the same time “in the Absolute state there is no one to be consciousness of anything.” Then Maharaj talked about “even in the sleep state the consciousness still is conscious” but at the same time “even in the Absolute state there is consciousness or awareness but no one to be aware of it.” Then, “neither matter nor energy can be created nor destroyed” but “this is finite while that is infinite.” Help! Brad

F.: Also, understand that within that field, various atoms are moving, interacting, and being conscious of each other. Energy is moving in wave and particle form, so unmanifested consciousness is not “at-rest” in the sense that it is not in motion. It is. The term “at rest” (certainly misleading on one level) merely points at the non-manifested status of the consciousness at that point.

Moreover, do not think that there is some definable quantity of conscious-energy that is immobilized while in some larger system or field or pool of energy, “waiting” and positioned in a way that will allow it to be siphoned into some process that leads to manifestation or re-manifestation. Portions may manifest or re-manifest...or not. (Furthermore, as an example of the energy manifesting or not, note the difference in what happens when sunlight hits the surface of the moon vs. what happens when it hits the surface of a plant on earth.) Furthermore, the fact that some particles of previously-manifested consciousness might manifest again, and might not, nullifies such concepts as “karma” and “reincarnation.” I have not been born even once, so how could I possibly be “born again” or be born “multiple times”? Those two concepts are the result of body-mind-personality identification which always produce a desire for continuity.

So, at this very moment, there is a field or system of energy that can be called “the absolute”—pure, absolute, conscious-energy. Within that field, there is movement and interaction, at this very moment; however, when conscious-energy is not manifested in a temporary grouping of elements with a nervous system, the consciousness cannot be conscious of itself. Furthermore, do not take the Absolute to be some special “place.” It is merely a “system” of energy—infinite, limitless, and omnipresent—from which quantities of energy might move to adjacent regions. If that energy becomes “caught up” in a movement of energy that happens to strike a plant, then it can manifest temporarily, yet there is no governing body or entity that determines whether such a chance happening might occur or not.

To understand the cycling of consciousness “out of” or “into” a field or system, see what happens the moment that a bug is struck by the windshield of an automobile: much of the elemental structure remains on the glass (ash-to-ash, dust-to-dust); the air that was circulating as breath is instantaneously released and united with the universal pool of air; and the conscious-energy is instantaneously released into an omnipresent field…into that infinite pool of energy that can neither be created nor destroyed. The energy does not “go there” to some special place.

Next, understand that too much has been made of what is called “The Absolute.” It is nothing more than an all-pervasive body or system or field or pool of energy, energy that is not currently manifested via a group of elements with a nervous system. Yet IT IS. In the process of trying to assign “supernatural” or “extraordinary” or “heavenly” or “special” attributes to a field of energy, (a) most persons now take the Absolute to be a mystical, supernatural location and (b) persons who believe that it is “up there” or “out there” do not understood that it is all-pervasive.

As a result of religious and spiritual leaders having glorified an energy field, the Absolute is imagined by many to be a place—even a geographic place in some teachings—that is not “here” but which is “there” instead. All such distortions attempt to place limitations on the limitless; yet even John Paul II, as programmed as he was, was aware enough to say that “we must correct the geography of Gehanna: there is no literal heaven or hell…they are mental states, and you are in one or the other right now.” ("Gehanna" also known as "Gehenna," "gehenom" or "gehinom.")

[NOTE: An editorial in La Civilta Cattolica, a Jesuit magazine with close ties to the Vatican, also said at that time, “Hell is not a 'place' but a 'state,' a person's 'state of being’.” The pope and the magazine merely adumbrated what Christ had said: “No one will ever see the kingdom of heaven…it is within.” Yet those who are programmed with religious dogma and who are enamored with their belief in the dualities of “good vs. bad” and “punishment vs. reward” as well as their desire for eternal continuity of body and mind and personality will called themselves “Christians” while completely ignoring the later Advaita teachings of Christ, that there is no heaven, in order to cling to the desires of body and mind: "Yes we are Christians, but we do not consider all of the teachings of Christ. We'd rather cling to the dualistic notions of hell and heaven and hope we can avoid hell and earn the right to live forever in heaven."]

With the widespread distorted thinking among persons, however, the Absolute has been misconceived as “heaven,” as “the home of the gods or a god,” as “a place where persons will go for eternal bliss if they are good,” ad infinitum. The smashed bug is neither “at rest” nor enjoying “its place of final rest.” Neither are any humans who have ever walked the planet.

Here is all that happens when a human “dies” or when a bug is struck by the windshield of a car: a temporary “association of” or “involvement among” certain elements and energy and air comes to an end. Though that particular association ends, the elements do not end, the air does not end, and the energy does not end. What did come to “an end” with the smashed bug (or a "dead human") was an ever-changing combination of elements, air, and energy which were in a constant state of flux but perceived by persons to have had continuity. The fact is that no “same bug” will ever be again, and no “same human” shall ever be again, but the same elements and air and energy shall be forever.

But keep it simple now as you revisit one set of the teachings that were a quandary for you: “It’s all consciousness…there’s only consciousness” but at the same time “in the Absolute state there is no one to be conscious of anything.” Now you should be able to see from the example of the atoms that they are conscious of the presence of each other; that they move in relationship to each other; and that their movements influence the behavior of each other. However, even as atoms were conscious of the presence of other atoms, there was no “one”—no being with a nervous system—that could allow the consciousness to be conscious of the fact that it is; nevertheless, the consciousness still IS, though it is not conscious of the fact that it IS. The same is the case with "brad" prior to manifestation, and the same shall be the case with "brad" post-manifestation.

It has been shown how consciousness IS even though there is no witness of that consciousness when unmanifest. Therefore, the consciousness was and is definitely “there,” the atoms were and are conscious of the presence of each other, and they all acted and reacted, and now act, in a certain way as a result. Even in a pre-manifestation state, consciousness was functioning, even without any consciousness of consciousness. (So much for the concept of "sacred contracts.") The same happens each night as you sleep.

Even as you are not conscious while in deep sleep, consciousness continues to function and guides the brain and heart and other organs through their functions, automatically and spontaneously. You need not try to stay awake and be aware of your heart and lungs in order for them to work. Consciousness does that. Yet awake or asleep, you need not be conscious of the consciousness that is guiding the lungs to inhale and exhale and that is guiding the heart to contract and pump. That parallels abidance as the Absolute: as this manifested conscious-energy called “floyd” functions as consciousness that is conscious of, there is no “one”—no person—who is there and witnessing it. It’s all just happening, spontaneously, by itself. Please enter the silence of contemplation.
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