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Nothing can trouble you but your own imagination. 03/19/2023
Posted by Holger Hubbs:
Sunday, March 19, 2023 3:45 pm (California Time)
Please RSVP to Ron@Nondual.Community and you will receive a Zoom link ❤️
Namaste to One and All!
These are highlights from chapter 27-29 of I Am That read aloud…
for those who want to give their eyes a break from the written word.
Stella will send out the Zoom link at the usual time for this Sunday’s meeting.
Living is life’s only purpose.
Shanti Shanti Shanti
29 Living is Life’s only Purpose
Q: What is life’s purpose?
NM: It is like traveling a long and arduous road in an unknown country. Of all the innumerable steps there is only the last which brings you to your destination. Yet you will not consider all previous steps as failures… In reality each step brings you to your goal, because to be always on the move, learning, discovering, unfolding, is your eternal destiny. Living is life’s only purpose. 112
Q: What am I to learn?
NM: To live without self-concern. For this you must know your own true being (swarupa) as indomitable, fearless, ever victorious. 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. 113
Q: Why do some succeed and some fail in Yoga?
NM: Nobody ever fails in Yoga. It is all a matter of the rate of progress. It is slow in the beginning and rapid in the end. When one is fully matured, realization is explosive. It takes place spontaneously, or at the slightest hint. 113
Q: Does progress take time?
NM: All this is so in the mind only. As I see it, there is really nothing of the kind. In the great mirror of consciousness images arise and disappear and only memory gives them continuity. And memory is material – destructible, perishable, transient. On such flimsy foundations we build a sense of personal existence – vague, intermittent, dreamlike. This vague persuasion: ‘I-am-so-and-so’ obscures the changeless state of pure awareness and makes us believe that we are born to suffer and die. 113
Q: Will a realized man always behave in an exemplary way?
NM: Who sets the example? Why should a liberated man necessarily follow conventions? The moment he becomes predictable, he cannot be free. His freedom lies in his being free to fulfill the need of the moment, to obey the necessity of the situation. Freedom to do what one likes is really bondage, while being free to do what one must, what is right, is real freedom…I follow no rules nor lay down rules. I flow with life – faithfully and irresistibly. 114-115
Q: Is there some way of making out who has realized and who has not?
NM: He who knows himself has no doubts about it. Nor does he care whether others recognize his state or not. Rare is the realized man who discloses his realization and fortunate are those who have met him, for he does it for their abiding welfare. 114-115
Q: Can the destiny of people be interfered with?
NM: Their destiny is what happens. There is no thwarting of destiny. You mean to say everybody’s life is totally determined at their birth? What a strange idea! Were it so, the power that determines would see to it that nobody should suffer. 115
Q: Do past and future exist?
NM: In the mind only. Time is in the mind, space is in the mind. The law of cause and effect is also a way of thinking. In reality all is here and now and all is one. Multiplicity and diversity are in the mind only. 115
Q: Can we help another much?
NM: Surely I can help. You too can help. Everybody can help. But the suffering is all the time recreated. Man alone can destroy in himself the roots of pain. Others can only help with the pain, but not with its cause, which is the abysmal stupidity of mankind. 115
Q: Will this stupidity ever come to an end?
NM: In man – of course. Any moment. In humanity – as we know it – after very many years. In creation – never, for creation itself is rooted in ignorance; matter itself is ignorance. Not to know, and not to know that one does not know, is the cause of endless suffering. 116
Q: Is there no salvation for the world?
NM: What world do you want to save? The world of your own projection?…What business have you with saving the world, when all the world needs is to be saved from you? Get out of the picture and see whether there is anything left to save. 116
Q: What is the remedy for this disease?
NM: The description and causation are the remedy for a disease caused by obtuseness and stupidity. Just like a deficiency disease is cured through the supply of the missing factor, so are the diseases of living cured by a good dose of intelligent detachment (viveka-vairagya). 116
Q: People are as they are. Must they suffer?
NM: As long as they are as they are, there is no escape from suffering. Remove the sense of separateness and there will be no conflict. 116
Q: If both dream and escape from dream are imaginings, what is the way out?
NM: There is no need of a way out! Don’t you see that a way out is also part of the dream? All you have to do is see the dream as dream. 117
Q: If I start the practice of dismissing everything as a dream, where will it lead me?
NM: Wherever it leads you, it will be a dream. The very idea of going beyond the dream is illusory… The dream is not your problem. Your problem is that you like one part of your dream and not another. Love all, or none of it, and stop complaining. When you have seen the dream as dream, you have done all that needs be done. 117
Please RSVP to Ron@Nondual.Community and you will receive a Zoom link for Sunday ❤️
Photo by Priyam Saini.
ArtOfPriyam.com
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Created: March 16, 2023
Last modified: March 16, 2023
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