THE LOVE WHISPERINGS OF ADVAITA. PART 9 – SITE CO-HOST: LOUISE STERLING

The mind is filled with learned concepts, beliefs and opinions – none of which are your own. Apply logic, and you will see that this is true. All so-called knowledge has been acquired through language, and language by its very invention is created by others, and through its structure differentiates and separates. Understand, that one of your beloved concepts is that your mind is filled with your own learning, your own beliefs, your own opinions. Accept once and for all that they are not your own – this is all second-hand knowledge. When you accept that the mind is filled with fiction created by others, see how it functions for you. This fiction plays incessantly in the form of an internal dialogue of programmed tapes. These tapes never switch off; the tapes are steeped in duality – either they are propping you up as the hero of your individual tale, or they are tearing you down as not good enough. The tapes run in the same evaluative way in relation to everything perceived.

You will argue of course that it is impossible to function and survive in this world without a mind. This is not true. It is yet another idea you have learned second-hand and plagiarized for your own. Animals function naturally and spontaneously without a mind. Does the swallow need to study weather patterns and migration patterns to fly south to warmer weather in winter? Does the squirrel need to study the seasonal changes and effective methods of storage to gather acorns to feed on during the cold winters when food is scarce? Just these two examples are of highly complex behaviours which happen spontaneously and naturally when these animals are in a natural, wild setting. Let’s imagine what would happen if humans migrated south in winter. Imagine the books, the training courses, the navigation instruments, the “train-the-lead flyers” seminars; the migration stress-relieving power vitamins, and other nonsense that would be invented to accompany this migration. Imagine if humans gathered nuts to hoard for winter. Imagine the courses and books on effective nut collection and hoarding; the magazine articles on how to choose the most nutritional nuts; and the middlemen who would offer to collect and hoard the nuts for others – for a price. Can you see that where the consciousness is unconditioned, without attributes, the functions of being human simply happen effortlessly and naturally? After the fact, people have claimed intellectual ownership over these natural functions – and added all sorts of false dualistic notions which prevent humans from seeing the intuitive functioning. Where the consciousness is corrupted and conditioned, these natural functions are hidden from view with layer after layer of false mind-based nonsense.

Yesterday, the following pointer from Maharaj was shared:

Just as you do not need to worry about growing hair, so I need not worry about words and actions. They just happen and leave me unconcerned…

In the process of learned enculturation and conditioning, were you ever told that words and actions just happen? No. You were told that words and actions happen through the self-directed activity of the individual mind-body apparatus. This is unnatural functioning. For the jnani, there is no concern about whether the words are “right” or “wrong”, if the action is “loving”, “forceful” or involves “no-action”. The particular event and the word/action response are one movement in consciousness – there is no separation. In this relative world, which is only the temporary phenomenal aspect, there is simply the natural functioning of the Unicity. This temporary play will have its ups and downs. Not all swallows fly south in winter. A few may be injured which prevents flying and perhaps they may even die when the cold north winters come. Some may be pecked to death by ants. Some squirrels may hoard enough nuts for winter, or some may be eaten by wild cats. The major illusion is this futile attempt to stabilize on the side of what you believe is “happy” and “good”. Realize once and for all that the differentiation of “happy” and “good” are only possible because there is “unhappy” and “bad”. See clearly what you are asking for – you do not want non-duality; you want duality but only one half of it. Give it up. What is good and happy for you, may cause misery and difficulty for another. Who will win this hopeless game?

Freedom comes with the final acceptance that non-duality encompasses everything – the rain and the sunshine; the thoughts of “getting it” and the thoughts of “not getting it”, the dark and the light – there is no separation. You are not an object or individual in this manifest kaleidoscopic play; nor are you the kaleidoscopic play. From the ultimate subjectivity, the play of light and form can be witnessed. You are beyond what is physical; You are beyond what is non-physical. You are beyond all duality.

The LOVE whisperings of Advaita remind You that there is natural, spontaneous functioning; that the intuitive knowing can re-awaken and reveal this knowledge, just like the acorn contains the knowledge and imprint of the oak tree. The acorn does not require a book, a manual, a training course, a degree, or a mind for this innate spontaneous functioning to sprout and shoot into the oak tree. Why should it be different for a human being just because there is a capacity for words and action? Do You think this intuitive knowledge is the preserve of the learned and the great? Maharaj was a simple beedie-seller with no formal education, yet with the realization of true identity, the intuitive wisdom sprouted and was expressed. This innate wisdom and knowledge is already contained within You – ready to sprout.

To be continued.

Please enter the silence of contemplation.

(For the explanation of the cycling that explains how the beingness appeared and how the source and the end are the same point, see From the I to the Absolute – A Seven Step Journey to Reality. Click on the “Non-Duality Books” link on the right hand side of this blog.)

Comments / clarifications may be sent to louise.advaita@gmail.com

THE LOVE WHISPERINGS OF ADVAITA. PART 8– SITE CO-HOST: LOUISE STERLING

Without any efforts on your part, this physical body functions. The blood pumped by the heart circulates through the body. The lymphatic system removes toxins or stores them in tissues to minimize their negative impact. The senses function -- eyes “see”, the ears “hear”, the mouth “tastes”, etc. Old or damaged cells are broken down and eliminated; new cells form. All happens naturally and efficiently. The same is true for the massive pear tree outside the window of the new cottage. With no conscious volition, naturally and perfectly the tree grows, lives, produces leaves, bark, pears. In this series, You have been encouraged to shift Your view, to perceive with the gaze of eternity rather than with a limited body-bound perspective. Look at the functioning of the physical body and the pear tree, and see that from the non-dual viewpoint, every body, every living creature, every tree, every plant, EVERYTHING functions naturally, spontaneously, effortlessly. This is the already present reality. Maharaj explains it this way:

Yes, I appear to hear and see and talk and act, but to me it just happens as to you digestion or perspiration happens. The body-mind machine looks after it, but leaves me out of it. Just as you do not need to worry about growing hair, so I need not worry about words and actions. They just happen and leave me unconcerned, for in my world nothing ever goes wrong.

Do not make the mistake of believing that this functioning is bound up with a choice on the part of the limited individual. Do not imagine that because you feel some sense of “doership” that this makes your self-volitional actions a reality. All IS functioning spontaneously – whether “you” are Realized or not. What difference does it make then, you may ask? The reality is that the person identified with the conditioned or corrupted consciousness, and with a limited range of perception, suffers. Ego-bound, the “separate” individual is deeply affected by the “slings and arrows of fortune”. The instability of a persona-driven existence creates unbelievable stress. The bondage of separation; the intense pain of feeling separate or cut off from this naturally functioning flow of life – these are part of the package for the Non-Realized.

The Advaitan Teachings are the Ultimate Medicine; the antidote to suffering. The LOVE whisperings are those words that call to You, that remind You to identify with Your True state. This return to the state beyond knowing awakens the intuitive understanding in which the functioning of the Unicity is directly perceived. The intuitive sense of THAT – what is form-less, limit-less, beyond conception, prior to birth and death, beyond description –when overlaid on the relative provides this view of eternity, this non-dual state, and the end of suffering.

Does this mean the end of the ups and downs of the relative existence? Of course not. Life continues, the so-called individual continues to play the part cast. The spiritual chocolate-box picture of the Realized existence accompanied by saffron robes and angelic harps is a myth. However, in the total absence of individual volition, the role simply plays itself out – without the blood, sweat and tears that characterize the emotion-filled ego-driven Pre –Realized state. Some days the sun shines; other days it rains – with Realization these differences of weather are entirely irrelevant. Again, as Maharaj explains:

You are all drenched for it is raining hard. In my world it is always fine weather. There is no night or day, no heat or cold. No worries beset me there, nor regrets. My mind is free of thoughts, for there are no desires to slave for.

For many seekers, to abandon the network of desires and fears seems impossible. Remember – even the desire for freedom, for Realization is a desire. Even the fear of not reaching the Realized state is a fear. The total absence of selfhood, the dissolution of ALL desires and fears, may seem an impossible task. Have courage. Allow the intuitive knowing, the sense of trust in the functioning of the totality, these whispers of LOVE to embrace You. There is nothing to be afraid of. When everything is given, what is left to desire? Hear how Maharaj expresses this:  

If you imagine yourself as separate from the world, the world will appear as separate from you and you will experience desire and fear. I do not see the world as separate from me and so there is nothing for me to desire, or fear.

Let us end with a series of questions that may point to where you are clinging to some falsehood:

• Are You aware of the natural functioning of the physical body; the physiological process that take place without your intellectual understanding, volition, or self-directed planning?
  
  
• Are You able to discern that You are not this physical body -- that it functions spontanously and the body-mind apparatus is not Who You Are?
  
  
• Are You aware of the natural functioning of the natural environment; the functioning of everything in nature that takes place without your intellectual understanding, volition, or self-directed planning?
  
  
• Are You aware that the natural environment occurs within You; that You are not a body-mind apparatus located in the world?
  

• Are You in touch with the intuitive sense of the non-dual functioning of Noumenon and Phenomenon: I AM THAT; I AM?

• With this View of the functioning of the Unicity, are You able to abandon the final conceptual image of Realization, and the remaining desires and fears that You are clinging to?

To be continued.

Please enter the silence of contemplation.

(For the explanation of the cycling that explains how the beingness appeared and how the source and the end are the same point, see From the I to the Absolute – A Seven Step Journey to Reality. Click on the “Non-Duality Books” link on the right hand side of this blog.)

Comments / clarifications may be sent to louise.advaita@gmail.com

THE LOVE WHISPERINGS OF ADVAITA. PART 7 – SITE CO-HOST: LOUISE STERLING

The conditioned consciousness that appears to “run the show” you call “yourself” is not what it appears to be. Your sense of individuality is the pure consciousness – the “I AM” without attributes – to which has been added thousands of chemicals and flavorings. Just as water is pure and untainted, you can add a particular cocktail of chemicals and flavorings to produce an unlimited number of so-called “unique” beverages, for example: Coca Cola, Fanta, tea, coffee and so on. Every beverage appears “distinct” and “unique”, but its base is the same – pure water. The sense “I AM”, the pure consciousness before additives is like this.

You know yourself; you are familiar with this sense of being. Maharaj calls this your “working capital”. The Advaitan Teachings begin from this very simple and practical starting point. However, for the seeker who is not yet ripe, even discerning the sense “I AM” can be a very difficult task. The wild mind and emotions pull the seeker into identification with fears and desires at every turn. Nonetheless, through unwavering attention and dedication, it is possible to pull the senses back from this constant identification and rest purely in the sense “I AM”. You may notice the additives and flavorings, but you no longer identify with them. You are able to “set up camp” as the pure consciousness prior to conditioning. [Note: this is a beginner’s step, yet it is one of the temporary locations misidentified as the final destination. This is why the Teacher is essential – to identify the location and provide the pointers to move you to the next step of the “journey”.]

The particular flavorings and additives of the conditioned or corrupted consciousness appear unique, but, contrary to what ego-identified persons believe, in reality, they are not particularly special and different. Essentially, the flavorings are what you were told through language (via learned enculturation) from the moment that language was learned and acquired. (Prior to language, the human being rests in pure, unconditioned consciousness.) So, the flavorings consist of the false concepts you are taught about yourself: that you are born and will die, that the consciousness is individual and bound up with the body and the brain, gender, race, culture, economic and social class, etc (body identification). The flavorings also consist of what you are taught about the apparent “world out there”: science, physics, astronomy, religion, politics, etc (mind identification). Into the mix are also added the flavorings or traits of personality – fixed by the age of six and developed in response to the particular environmental mix e.g. personality styles and modelling of primary caregivers. For example, the “can do”, pushy, austere, career-driven “spiritual worker” with an inflated sense of rightness and entitlement exhibits these range of traits because they were learned in early childhood from meticulous, goal-orientated, self-involved, reformist, Germanic parents. This particular "personality" believes her attention to detail and action-orientated approach are unique and laudable personality traits enabling her to “serve God with authority and accuracy”. Actually, she is just acting out her conditioning like Pavlov’s dog. So it is for each person, pre-Realization. Each trait is programmed early on, and the rest of the relative lifetime is spent robotically reacting from this entrenched personality programming. [On this site, the offer is made to use the Enneagram Personality Analysis as a means to “see” your particular personality flavorings with a detached eye. When the seeker is ready to “see”, this analysis will provide an insight into the programming which has “run” you from the age of six or earlier.] The invitation is not to fix or repair the personality (unless serious dysfunction requires professional assistance), but instead to understand the flavorings so that rather than reacting to the habitual desires and fears of the personality, there can be witnessing and abidance in the state of unconditioned consciousness – the “I AM”.

See how Maharaj describes the so-called differences amongst people. Even your desire to reach for Realization is a function of the flavoring of personality:

I have separated myself from the food-body. Flowers come in different colors, but they are made up of the same five elements. Why should I worry about differences?, from the same five elements arise all the forms with different time limits, no one has control over that time limit. Different forms, as per their thinking have different activities. About you all, you have a liking for truth; it has arisen from your individuality, so you are after it.

Most people will live out this manifestation caught up in programmed reactive functioning, pushed and pulled along the roller coaster of desires and fears. They will identify with the conditioned /corrupted consciousness, and this will be the “felt experience” of the relative life. An infinitesimal number of seekers (less than one in a million) will find these Teachings and follow the directions laid out. Remember though – location as the unconditioned consciousness is a temporary location. It is not Who You Are.

As Maharaj explains:
Understand that the consciousness has arisen spontaneously in you, the Absolute. Once you are conscious of yourself you know you exist and you love this beingness; you do not want this beingness to depart from you, and it is this that makes you strive all day until sleep overcomes you, in order to keep the beingness satisfied. Then the guru tells you the true state of affairs, that this consciousness which you love so much is only an illusion. It is the basic cause of all unhappiness and your true state is before this consciousness arose. Understand this thoroughly, intuitively, beyond all words and concepts, but also know that if this understanding is just something happening in the intellect it will be of no use to you, because it will be at the level of phenomenal consciousness... concepts... and that consciousness is nothing but illusion. Whatever you know is imperfect, fraudulent. Go where you do not know. Recede into the source, into no form, no beingness; there you are perfect. Whatever you witness will not remain with you; it is imperfect. The one who recognizes the imperfect as imperfect is perfect; that one is complete in himself.

Have firm faith in the words of the guru. Nothing, nobody existed prior to you. When your beingness appeared then everything appeared. Understand that first moment when you understood that you are, the point at which everything arose. The source and the end are the same point.

To be continued.

Please enter the silence of contemplation.

(For the explanation of the cycling that explains how the beingness appeared and how the source and the end are the same point, see From the I to the Absolute – A Seven Step Journey to Reality. Click on the “Non-Duality Books” link on the right hand side of this blog.)

Comments / clarifications may be sent to louise.advaita@gmail.com

THE LOVE WHISPERINGS OF ADVAITA. PART 6 – SITE CO-HOST: LOUISE STERLING

Come to the conclusion: I am unborn,
I was unborn and I shall remain unborn. – Maharaj

The Advaitin Teacher is already the ocean – unconditioned awareness. What happens when the ocean encounters the sandstone rock? Naturally waves form and wash against the rock. Whether the waves crash and storm or gently lap, they gradually wear down the “rigid” apparent form of the sandstone rock. When eventually the final grains of sand cemented together come loose, the sandstone rock dissolves into its elements and merges with the ocean. In the absence of resistance, the ocean simply is. While at the surface there is constant movement, waves ebbing and flowing; no waves form in the depth of the ocean – the deep and silent and dark still point. The subject-object perceiving view; the appearance of duality is the false. The Truth that speaks, the LOVE that whispers will ALWAYS wash up against what is untrue – eroding, dissolving, dismantling; removing the impurities until only the clear, purified water of unconditioned awareness remains.

Now perhaps you see the outer form of the physical body, and the myriad of objects in this ocean of life, and to you they seem rigid and solid, like the sandstone rock. You forget,of course, that the “eyes of perception” are inextricably linked to the perceiving veils. How you perceive the world is a direct indicator of where you are located on the “seven step journey” offered on this site. Your words – which point to your perceiving view – are the equivalent of a neon sign describing your "location" flashing at the top of your head.

Right now, the veils of perception are hidden from your view; the way “you” perceive feels “just right”. You have no concept that the water you are swimming in is clouded with mud. In fact, you are so sure that you are “right” that you may well be motivated to present your particular point of view to the Advaitin Teacher – and to defend its “rightness”. Don’t be surprised if the Teacher does not play this “game”. There is ONE Reality – in the various descriptions that point to the final understanding there is no dispute. This Reality, this Realization of Your True Nature can be known directly when manifest, when (and only when) the veils of perception are removed. Can you see now the complete absurdity of offering your clouded perspective to the Advaitin Teacher, and expecting … what? Affirmation? Reinforcement? Praise?

If you are travelling by plane from Cape Town to London, the plane may stop-over in Amsterdam, Hong Kong or Paris. Imagine you get off in Paris and mistakenly think you are in London. You tell the Teacher: “This is great; now I am in London.” The Teacher knows Paris, because he has travelled through it before. He also knows London, because he lives there. What is the Teacher likely to say to you, when you announce with full confidence that you have arrived in London? Surely, the Teacher would say: “You have only completed part of your journey. You have travelled for many hours, you are seeing a new city – but this is Paris not London. You must board the plane again and continue your journey if you really wish to go to London,” Why would he lie to you? Why would he let you remain lost and confused? Why would he let you stop before your journey is complete? And finally, why would he allow you to hold on to a false picture that you have reached the final destination?

The waves that wash up again and again against the false understandings, the misidentifications and the confusions are the LOVE whisperings of Advaita. They are pointers – to what? They are pointers to your original state. They are not false signposts to cul-de-sacs in the relative.

If you are prepared to admit to yourself for once and for all that you are lost, that you have landed in a temporary location, but are not at the final destination, then you will find that the Teacher is willing to teach; that the ears are open to hear, that the intuition is ripe to understand. However, if you are convinced that you have “found”, it will not be possible for you to hear the pointers offered. For clarification on the conditions necessary for resonance with the Teachings, see the 25-part series entitled: WHY YOU MUST BE EMPTY IF YOU WOULD BE FULL, February 12, 2009.

In the light of this posting, perhaps you will see that you are lost. Perhaps you will understand that the LOVE whisperings of the Teacher are direct signposts to navigate you safely to your destination. With this is mind, reflect on the two pointers below. Understand what they are: pointers towards what is false and must be eliminated; pointers to Who You Really Are. Reflect on them with the emptiness and innocence with which you would receive directions if you were hopelessly lost in a strange city, and you were desperate to find the way home.

You are one drop if you consider yourself to be an individual. A drop of ocean is salty and the salty taste is the knowledge ‘I am’. Suppose that drop dries, the ocean does not care – a drop of ocean drying on the rock. Similarly in the five elemental play you are a drop, either survive or die, the elemental ocean is unconcerned. But how to understand this manifest nature? Be the taste, understand the taste. Millions of drops dry up but the ocean is unconcerned. Millions die but how the five elements are concerned? Because you limit yourself to the body, you suffer. – Maharaj

The invitation here is to abide as Your original nature; to abide with the peace and freedom that comes when the Oneness is known via the understanding of non-duality; to know Real Love and to taste throughout the manifestation the sweetness of that nectar; to be free of belief in all myths and superstitions and to be free of belief in all ideas and concepts (which are always based in ignorance); and then, eventually, to understand the Noneness—the Noneness of any personal self, Personal Self, personal being, Personal Being, person-like force, person-like law, person-like “cosmic something,” personal creator, personal sustainer, or personal destroyer that makes things happen. – Floyd


To be continued.

Please enter the silence of contemplation.

(For extending teaching on the Advaitan Understanding – that guide You from the temporary fluctuating relative stance to abidance as Your Real Nature, see the links on the right hand side of this blog.)

Comments / clarifications may be sent to louise.advaita@gmail.com