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I AM THAT >>> Ron > 09/24/2023
Posted by Holger:
Sunday, September 24, 2023 3:45 pm (California Time)
We are a small group of friends;
together we read some paragraphs in
Nisargadatta‘s I AM THAT
and then talk about it.
Feel warmly welcome
Please RSVP to Ron@Nondual.Community
and you will receive a free Zoom link ❤️
Greetings to One and All!
Chapter 42 on Sunday evening.
Below is a link to a youtube of quotes
from Nisargadatta on Meditation
(Contemplation/Reflection/Self-Inquiry)
read by Samaneri Jayasara.
The whole youtube is about 40 minutes.
We’ll listen to a few minutes of it
at the beginning and end of our session.
You may like to listen to it beforehand…
or you may like to wait.
Enjoy!
Peace Peace Peace
Chapter 42
Reality Cannot Be Expressed
Q: I have noticed a new self emerging in me,
independent of the old self.
They somehow co-exist.
The old self goes on its habitual ways;
the new lets the old be,
but does not identify itself with it.
NM: The new is the total denial of the old.
The permissive new is not really new.
It is but a new attitude to the old.
The really new obliterates the old completely.
The two cannot be together.
187
Q: One [the old] is a slave to habits…
the new just looks at the old.
It just accepts the old self along with everything else.
It does not deny its being,
but does not accept its value and validity.
NM: Why two selves?
Between the bound and the free
there can be no relationship.
The very fact of co-existence proves their basic unity.
There is but one Self – it is always now.
What you call the other self – old or new –
is but a modality, another aspect of the one Self.
The Self is single.
You are that Self and you have ideas of what
you have been or will be.
But an idea is not the Self.
188
Q: The two are in conflict.
NM: How can there be conflict
between what is and what is not?
Conflict is the characteristic of the old.
When the new emerges, the old is no longer.
You cannot speak of the new
and the conflict in the same breath.
Even the effort of striving
for the new self is of the old.
Wherever there is conflict, effort,
struggle, striving, longing for a change,
the new is not.
188
Q: What is the new like?
NM: The state which sprouts suddenly and
without cause, carries no stain of self;
you may call it ‘god’.
What is seedless and rootless,
what does not sprout and grow,
flower and fruit, what comes into being suddenly
and in full glory, mysteriously and marvelously,
you may call that ‘god’.
It is entirely unexpected yet inevitable,
infinitely familiar yet most surprising,
beyond all hope yet absolutely certain.
Because it is without cause, it is without hindrance.
It obeys one law only; the law of freedom.
Anything that implies a continuity, a sequence,
a passing from stage to stage cannot be the real.
There is no progress in reality,
it is final, perfect, unrelated.
188
Q: How can I bring it about?
NM: You can do nothing to bring it about,
but you can avoid creating obstacles.
Watch your mind, how it comes into being,
how it operates.
As you watch your mind,
you discover yourself as the watcher [witness].
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.
188
Q: Could you say more?
NM: Reality is not the result of a process;
it is an explosion.
It is definitely beyond the mind,
but all you can do is to know your mind well.
Not that the mind will help you,
but by knowing your mind
you may avoid your mind disabling you.
You have to be very alert,
or else your mind will play false with you.
189
Q: How does the mind play false?
NM: Both sleeping and waking are misnomers.
We are only dreaming…
We dream that we are awake,
we dream that we are asleep…
treating everything as a dream liberates.
As long as you give reality to dreams,
you are their slave.
The essence of slavery is to
imagine yourself to be a process,
to have past and future,
not to have history.
In fact, we have no history,
we are not a process,
we do not develop, nor decay;
also see all as a dream and stay out of it.
189
Q: What benefit do I derive from listening to you?
NM: I am calling you back to yourself.
All I ask you is to look at yourself,
towards yourself, into yourself.
189
Q: To what purpose?
NM: You live, you feel, you think.
By giving attention to your living,
feeling and thinking, you free yourself
from them and go beyond them.
Your personality dissolves and only the witness remains.
Then you go beyond the witness.
Do not ask how it happens.
Just search within yourself.
189-190
Q: What makes the difference
between the person and the witness?
NM: Both are modes of consciousness.
In one you desire and fear,
in the other you are unaffected
by pleasure and pain
and are not ruffled by events.
You let them come and go.
190
Q: How does one get established in the
higher state, the state of pure witnessing?
NM: Consciousness does not shine by itself.
It shines by a light beyond it.
Having seen the dreamlike quality of consciousness,
look for the light in which it appears,
which gives it being.
There is the content of consciousness
as well as the awareness of it.
190
Q: What about experiences?
NM: Don’t be all the time immersed
in your experiences.
Remember that you are beyond the experiencer,
ever unborn and deathless.
In remembering it, the quality of pure knowledge
will emerge, the light of unconditional awareness.
190
Q: At what point does one experience reality?
NM: Experience is of change,
it comes and goes.
Reality is not an event,
it cannot be experienced…
If you wait for an event to take place,
for the coming of reality,
you will wait for ever,
for reality neither comes nor goes…
See the event as event only,
the transient as transient,
experience as mere experience
and you have done all you can.
Then you are vulnerable to reality,
no longer armored against it,
as you were when you gave reality
to events and experiences.
But as soon as there is
some like or dislike,
you have drawn a screen.
190
Q: Is there a way to it?
NM: Everything can become a way,
provided you are interested.
Just puzzling over my words
and trying to grasp their full meaning
is a sadhana [spiritual practice]
quite sufficient for breaking down the wall…
On your side there is so much trouble.
On mine there is no trouble at all.
Come to my side.
You are trouble-prone.
I am immune.
Anything may happen –
what is needed is sincere interest.
Earnestness does it.
192
Please RSVP to Ron@Nondual.Community
and you will receive a free Zoom link ❤️
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Image Source:
“File:’I Am That’ by Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj, Book Cover.jpg”
by Vyacheslav Argenberg is licensed under CC BY 4.0.
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Created: September 23, 2023
Last modified: October 7, 2023
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