Neo-Advaita
Adyashanti
"This is radical emptiness—where everything is arising spontaneously. There is no more need to discriminate with the mind between what seems to be the right thing or the wrong thing to do." (Radical Emptiness)
"Without emotional investment in the ego's points of view, what's left of ego but a hollow shell with a little personality mixed in?
You breathe life into your ego in the form of emotional addictions. Emotion is the very life-force of ego. So the point of detachment isn't to detach from things, but to detach from your emotional bonds with things. And you don't simply let go of emotional bonds; you burn through them with investigative awareness. You see them for what they are: prisons, false structures holding you in spiritual infancy."
“Stop pretending to be someone, or something! You are no one, you are no-thing! You are not this body or this mind. This body and mind exist within who and what you are. You are pure consciousness, already free, awake, and liberated. Stand up and walk out of your dream.”
"You must choose between your attachments or happiness."
------
“If you prefer smoke over fire then get up now and leave.
For I do not intend to perfume your mind's clothing with more sooty knowledge.
No, I have something else in mind. Today I hold a flame in my left hand and a sword in my right.
There will be no damage control today. For God is in a mood to plunder your riches and fling you nakedly into such breathtaking poverty that all that will be left of you will be a tendency to shine.
So don't just sit around this flame choking on your mind. For this is no campfire song to mindlessly mantra yourself to sleep with.
Jump now into the space between thoughts and exit this dream before I burn the damn place down.”
------
"Without emotional investment in the ego's points of view, what's left of ego but a hollow shell with a little personality mixed in?
You breathe life into your ego in the form of emotional addictions. Emotion is the very life-force of ego. So the point of detachment isn't to detach from things, but to detach from your emotional bonds with things. And you don't simply let go of emotional bonds; you burn through them with investigative awareness. You see them for what they are: prisons, false structures holding you in spiritual infancy."
“Stop pretending to be someone, or something! You are no one, you are no-thing! You are not this body or this mind. This body and mind exist within who and what you are. You are pure consciousness, already free, awake, and liberated. Stand up and walk out of your dream.”
"You must choose between your attachments or happiness."
------
“If you prefer smoke over fire then get up now and leave.
For I do not intend to perfume your mind's clothing with more sooty knowledge.
No, I have something else in mind. Today I hold a flame in my left hand and a sword in my right.
There will be no damage control today. For God is in a mood to plunder your riches and fling you nakedly into such breathtaking poverty that all that will be left of you will be a tendency to shine.
So don't just sit around this flame choking on your mind. For this is no campfire song to mindlessly mantra yourself to sleep with.
Jump now into the space between thoughts and exit this dream before I burn the damn place down.”
------
title 1
Traditional Advaita
ramana maharshi
“Whatever draws the mind outward is unspiritual and whatever draws the mind inward is spiritual.”
"The more you prune a plant, the more it grows. So too the more you seek to annihilate the ego, the more it will increase. You should seek the root of the ego and destroy it."
"All unhappiness is due to the ego. With it comes all your trouble. If you would deny the ego and scorch it by ignoring it you would be free."
"The enemy hates the ego, which the seeker wants to kill; thus, like the anvil to the goldsmith, he is actually a friend."
'Remove the Ego and Avidya (Ignorance) is gone."
"If the ego does not rise...there is nothing external. For anything external to oneself implies the existence of the seer within."
"Reality is simply the loss of ego. Destroy the ego by seeking its identity. Because the ego is no entity it will automatically vanish and reality will shine forth by itself."
"All bad qualities centre round the ego. When the ego is gone, Realisation results by itself. The Self is free from all qualities. Qualities pertain to the mind only."
"Just drop all seeking, turn your attention inward, and sacrifice your ego mind to the One Self radiating in the Heart of your very being."
"The explorers seek happiness in finding curiosities, discovering new lands and undergoing risks in adventures. They are thrilling. But where is pleasure found? Only within. Pleasure is not to be sought in the external world."
“The enquiry ‘Who am I?’ is the principal means to the removal of all misery and the attainment of the supreme bliss.”
"The whole universe is only mental." - Talks with Ramana Maharshi
"Happiness is your nature. It is not wrong to desire it. What is wrong is seeking it outside when it is inside."
"The method is summed up in the words ‘Be still’. What does stillness mean? It means destroy yourself. Because any form or shape is the cause for trouble."
"Silence is most powerful. Speech is always less powerful than silence."
"Realisation of the Self is the greatest help that can be rendered to humanity. Therefore, the saints are said to be helpful, though they remain in forests. But it should not be forgotten that solitude is not in forest only. It can be had even in towns, in the thick of worldly occupations.”
“While God sustains the burden of the world, the spurious ego assumes its burden, grimacing like an image on a tower, seeming to support it."
"Peace is your natural state. It is your mind that destroys it."
“I do not consider anyone to be my disciple. I have never sought upadesh from anyone nor do I give ceremonial upadesh. If the people call themselves my disciples I do not approve or disapprove.”
"...That which is worth renouncing is the ego-mind; that in which it is worth taking refuge, to eliminate sorrow completely, is one's own source, the Heart.”
“The ego in its purity is experienced in intervals between two states
or two thoughts. Ego is like that caterpillar which leaves its hold
only after catching another. Its true nature can be found when it is
out of contact with objects or thoughts.”
"When there is no "I" there is no karma."
“If a person overlooks the faults of others, and sees only their merits, and thus keeps his mind serene, his whole life will be happy. To be unconcerned in all things, with the mind cool, free of desires and without hate, is beautiful in a seeker.”
“Solitude is in the mind of man. One might be in the thick of the world and maintain serenity of mind; such as one is in solitude. Another may stay in a forest, but still be unable to control his mind. He cannot be said to be in solitude. Solitude is a function of the mind. A man attached to desire cannot get solitude wherever he may be; a detached man is always in solitude.”
“The most valuable thing in the ocean lies on its floor."
"The person soaked in the “I-am-the-body” idea is the greatest sinner and he is a suicide. The experience of “I-am-the-Self” is the highest virtue. Even a moment’s dhyana (meditation) to that effect is enough to destroy all the Sanchita Karma.
It works like the sun before whom darkness is dispelled. If one remains always in dhyana, can any sin, however heinous (suicidal) it be, survive his dhyana?”
"The more you prune a plant, the more it grows. So too the more you seek to annihilate the ego, the more it will increase. You should seek the root of the ego and destroy it."
"All unhappiness is due to the ego. With it comes all your trouble. If you would deny the ego and scorch it by ignoring it you would be free."
"The enemy hates the ego, which the seeker wants to kill; thus, like the anvil to the goldsmith, he is actually a friend."
'Remove the Ego and Avidya (Ignorance) is gone."
"If the ego does not rise...there is nothing external. For anything external to oneself implies the existence of the seer within."
"Reality is simply the loss of ego. Destroy the ego by seeking its identity. Because the ego is no entity it will automatically vanish and reality will shine forth by itself."
"All bad qualities centre round the ego. When the ego is gone, Realisation results by itself. The Self is free from all qualities. Qualities pertain to the mind only."
"Just drop all seeking, turn your attention inward, and sacrifice your ego mind to the One Self radiating in the Heart of your very being."
"The explorers seek happiness in finding curiosities, discovering new lands and undergoing risks in adventures. They are thrilling. But where is pleasure found? Only within. Pleasure is not to be sought in the external world."
“The enquiry ‘Who am I?’ is the principal means to the removal of all misery and the attainment of the supreme bliss.”
"The whole universe is only mental." - Talks with Ramana Maharshi
"Happiness is your nature. It is not wrong to desire it. What is wrong is seeking it outside when it is inside."
"The method is summed up in the words ‘Be still’. What does stillness mean? It means destroy yourself. Because any form or shape is the cause for trouble."
"Silence is most powerful. Speech is always less powerful than silence."
"Realisation of the Self is the greatest help that can be rendered to humanity. Therefore, the saints are said to be helpful, though they remain in forests. But it should not be forgotten that solitude is not in forest only. It can be had even in towns, in the thick of worldly occupations.”
“While God sustains the burden of the world, the spurious ego assumes its burden, grimacing like an image on a tower, seeming to support it."
"Peace is your natural state. It is your mind that destroys it."
“I do not consider anyone to be my disciple. I have never sought upadesh from anyone nor do I give ceremonial upadesh. If the people call themselves my disciples I do not approve or disapprove.”
"...That which is worth renouncing is the ego-mind; that in which it is worth taking refuge, to eliminate sorrow completely, is one's own source, the Heart.”
“The ego in its purity is experienced in intervals between two states
or two thoughts. Ego is like that caterpillar which leaves its hold
only after catching another. Its true nature can be found when it is
out of contact with objects or thoughts.”
"When there is no "I" there is no karma."
“If a person overlooks the faults of others, and sees only their merits, and thus keeps his mind serene, his whole life will be happy. To be unconcerned in all things, with the mind cool, free of desires and without hate, is beautiful in a seeker.”
“Solitude is in the mind of man. One might be in the thick of the world and maintain serenity of mind; such as one is in solitude. Another may stay in a forest, but still be unable to control his mind. He cannot be said to be in solitude. Solitude is a function of the mind. A man attached to desire cannot get solitude wherever he may be; a detached man is always in solitude.”
“The most valuable thing in the ocean lies on its floor."
"The person soaked in the “I-am-the-body” idea is the greatest sinner and he is a suicide. The experience of “I-am-the-Self” is the highest virtue. Even a moment’s dhyana (meditation) to that effect is enough to destroy all the Sanchita Karma.
It works like the sun before whom darkness is dispelled. If one remains always in dhyana, can any sin, however heinous (suicidal) it be, survive his dhyana?”
Nisargadatta
"Transiency is the best proof of unreality."
No it is not.
"All perceivables are stains. The entire universe is a stain."
"The book of my conversations [I Am That] should not be taken as the last word on my teachings. I had given some answers to questions of certain individuals. Those answers were intended for those people and not for all. Instruction can be on an individual basis only. The same medicine cannot be prescribed for all."
His terse but potent sayings are known for their ability to trigger shifts in consciousness, just by hearing, or even reading them....
He was often the very opposite of the stereotypical gentle patient guru. He would challenge, contradict, criticize, scowl and shout in an effort to get his questioners not to understand him, but to understand themselves."
Q: "Even though people may be fictitious entities, nothing more than mere appearances in consciousness, how are we to live in the world, unless we do accept the different entities as 'real' enough in life?"
A: "The entity as such is totally fictitious and has no independence of its own; it is only a concept. But this fictitious entity must live its normal life. Where is the problem? Is it so very difficult to lead a normal life, knowing that living itself is a concept?"
"Once you have seen the false as false, the rest should be simple; as simple as an actor acting his role with zest, knowing that it is only a role that he is playing in a play or a movie, and nothing more. Recognizing this fact with conviction, apperceiving this position, is all the truth. The rest is play-acting."
"The ordinary man is afraid to die, because he is afraid of change. The jnani is not afraid because his mind is dead already."
"I have no form. I have no identity and exactly I also see you as my self. You are my self only, without form and without identity."
"I am not interested in answering questions that assume the existence of an individual person who inhabits a body. I don’t accept the existence of such an entity, so for me such questions are entirely hypothetical."
"There is nothing to practice. To know yourself, be yourself. To be yourself, stop imagining yourself to be this or that. Just be."
"The person is merely a shadow of the reality, but not reality itself."
“Have your being outside this body of birth and death and all your problems will be solved. They exist because you believe yourself born to die. Undeceive yourself and be free. You are not a person.”
"One who thinks he is a body and mind, he thinks he is being active, but one who has merged with the consciousness, there is no personality present"
"M:When the relationship with your teacher is right you grow. Above all, trust him. He cannot mislead you.
Q: Even when he asks me to do something patently wrong?
M: Do it. A Sanyassi had been asked by his Guru to marry. He obeyed and suffered bitterly. But his four children were all saints and seers, the greatest in Maharashtra. Be happy with whatever comes from your Guru and you will grow to perfection without striving."
"Of course not Samadhi is a state of mind, after all. I am beyond all experience, even of samadhi. I am the great devourer and destroyer: whatever I touch dissolves into void (akash)."
"Nothing can trouble you but your own imagination.” (classic gaslight)
"“There is only one meditation – the rigorous refusal to harbor thoughts.”
"The problem is not yours – it is your mind’s only. Begin by disassociating yourself from your mind. Resolutely remind yourself that you are not the mind and that its problems are not yours.”
“I ask you only to stop imagining that you were born, have parents, are a body, will die and so on. Just try, make a beginning-it is not as hard as you think.”
“Leave greatness to others. Become so small that no one can see you. This conviction results from growing devotion to the supreme reality.”
"The body itself is a disease."
"“Abandon the false and you are free of pain; truth makes happy, truth liberates.”"
"When effort is needed, effort will appear. When effortlessness becomes essential, it will assert itself. You need not push life about. Just flow with it and give yourself completely to the task of the present moment...” (LIE)
“How does the 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.”
"Emotional reactions, born of ignorance or inadvertence, are never justified."
“Truth is loving and lovable. It includes all, accepts all, purifies all." ^
"Liberation is never of the person, it is always from the person."
"Distrust your mind and go beyond."
"Creation itself is rooted in ignorance; matter itself is ignorance."
“In reality, nothing happens. Onto the screen of the mind, destiny forever projects its pictures, memories of former projections, and thus illusion constantly renews itself. The pictures come and go - light intercepted by ignorance. See the light and disregard the picture.”
“What is in the world cannot save the world; if you really care to help the world, you must step out of it.”
"You can be happy in the world only when you are free of it.”
“You cannot be alive, for you are life itself.”
“Trace your misunderstandings and abandon them, that is all. There is nothing to seek or find, for there is nothing lost."
“Know yourself as beyond space and time - in contact with them only at the point of here and now, otherwise all-pervading and all-containing, unapproachable, unassailable, invulnerable - you will be afraid no longer. Know yourself as you are - against fear there is no other remedy.”
M: A feeling too is a state of mind. Just like a healthy body does not call for attention, so is the unconditioned free from experience. Take the experience of death. The ordinary man is afraid to die, because he is afraid of change. The jnani is not afraid because his mind is dead already. He does not think: ‘I live’. He knows: ‘There is life’. There is no change in it and no death. Death appears to be a change in time and space. Where there is neither time nor space, how can there be death? The jnani is already dead to name and shape. How can their loss affect him? The man in the train travels from place to place, but the man off the train goes nowhere, for he is not bound for a destination. He has nowhere to go, nothing to do, nothing to become. Those who make plans will be born to carry them out. Those who make no plans need not be born.
Things are as they are and nobody in particular is responsible. The idea of personal responsibility comes from the illusion of agency. ‘Somebody must have done it, somebody is responsible’. Society as it is now, with its framework of laws and customs, is based on the idea of a separate and responsible personality, but this is not the only form a society can take. There may be other forms, where the sense of separation is weak and responsibility diffused."
"The idea of responsibility is in your mind. You think there must be something or somebody solely responsible for all that happens."
True awareness (samvid) is a state of pure witnessing, without the least attempt to do anything about the event witnessed. Your thoughts and feelings, words and actions may also be a part of the event; you watch all unconcerned in the full light of clarity and understanding. You understand precisely what is going on, because it does not affect you. It may seem to be an attitude of cold aloofness, but it is not really so. Once you are in it, you will find that you love what you see, whatever may be its nature. This choiceless love is the touchstone of awareness. If it is not there, you are merely interested — for some personal reasons."
(sure, it can be a warm aloofness)
"When you happen to desire or fear, it is not the desire or fear that are wrong and must go, but the person who desires and fears. There is no point in fighting desires and fears which may be perfectly natural and justified; It is the person, who is swayed by them, that is the cause of mistakes, past and future. The person should be carefully examined and its falseness seen; then its power over you will end. After all, it subsides each time you go to sleep. In deep sleep you are not a self-conscious person, yet you are alive. When you are alive and conscious, but no longer self-conscious, you are not a person anymore.
During the waking hours you are, as if, on the stage, playing a role, but what are you when the play is over? You are what you are; what you were before the play began you remain when it is over.
Look at yourself as performing on the stage of life. The performance may be splendid or clumsy, but you are not in it, you merely watch it; with interest and sympathy, of course, but keeping in mind all the time that you are only watching while the play — life — is going on."
"When the relationship with your teacher is right you grow. Above all, trust him. He cannot mislead you."
"when you realise your own being, your behaviour will be perfect—spontaneously."
"Complete self-surrender is liberation by itself.”
“Don’t try to reform yourself; just see the futility of all change."
“The way back to yourself is through refusal and rejection.”
"The mind cannot go beyond itself by itself. It must explode.”
“Reality is not the result of a process; it is an explosion.”
“Give up all and you gain all. Then life becomes what it was meant to be: pure radiation from an inexhaustible source. In that light, the world appears dimly like a dream.”
"It is just like your tape-recorder. It records, it reproduces – all by itself. You only listen. Similarly, I watch all that happens, including my talking to you. It is not me who talks, the words appear in my mind and then I hear them said.”"
"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."
“There is no such thing as a person. There are only restrictions and limitations. The sum total of these defines the person. You think you know yourself when you know what you are. But you never know who you are. The person merely appears to be, like the space within the pot appears to have the shape and volume and smell of the pot. See that you are not what you believe yourself to be. Fight with all the strength at your disposal against the idea that you are nameable and describable. You are not. Refuse to think of yourself in terms of this or that. There is no other way out of misery, which you have created for yourself through blind acceptance without investigation."
"You see now presently you are starting from the body-mind level. You are a person deeply entrenched in body-mind. You think that you are a human being. Your identity is limited to the body and whatever concepts you are continuously collecting up to now. That is your present identity.
Now when you start the spiritual course, you reject, I am the body, you reject, I am the concepts and you come to this “I am” only. When you think that “I am” only without words also, just the feeling of I am. You have discarded the body and conscious. At that level you are everything. You are not confined into this body also. Because of that feeling “I am”, the moment that feeling “I am” is there, everything is. The world is. If the “I am” is not, the world is not. I am and the world, simultaneously they appear. Therefore your “I am” is totally that world. That is that unity or unicity. When you discard your identity that you are the body and mind but you are only being that is that unity consciousness.
Now would you like to feel that unicity consciousness without the body and mind or would you like to get yourself entrenched in the body and mind and become burdened?
This is the basic principle. So I am telling you again and again, understand only this. Don’t try and collect more concepts. Understand this, assimilate this and be this. Give up your idea, that identity that you are the body and mind. Try to stabilize in a situation from where you can observe your body and mind."
“Things are as they are and nobody in particular is responsible. The idea of personal responsibility comes from the illusion of agency.”
“Let the dream unroll itself to its very end. You cannot help it. But you can look at the dream as a dream, refuse it the stamp of reality.”
"Why do you talk of action? Are you acting ever? Some unknown power acts and you imagine that you are acting. You are merely watching what happens, without being able to influence it in any way."
"I neither act nor cause others to act; I am timelessly aware of what is going on."
"Nothing is done by me, everything just happens. I do not expect, I do not plan, I just watch events happening, knowing them to be unreal."
"I watch all that happens, including my talking to you. It is not me who talks, the words appear in my mind and then I hear them said."
"Doership is a myth born from the illusion of "me" and "mine."
"I do not have the feeling that I am talking. There is talking going on, that is all. Do you really talk? You hear yourself talking and you say: I talk. I have no objections to the conventions of your language, but they distort and destroy reality. A more accurate way of saying would have been: "There is talking, working, coming, going." It is wrong to believe that anything in particular can cause an event. Every cause is universal."
agency^disassociation
"Pure being, filling all and beyond all, is not existence, which is limited. All limitation is imaginary, only the unlimited is real."
"Do not be afraid of freedom from desire and fear. It enables you to live a life so different from all you know, so much more intense and interesting, that, truly, by losing all you gain all. You must know your inner worth and trust it and express it in the daily sacrifice of desire and fear."
"To be a living being is not the ultimate state; there is something beyond, much more wonderful, which is neither being nor not-being, neither living nor not-living. It is a state of pure awareness, beyond limitations of space and time. Once the illusion that the mind-body is oneself is abandoned, death loses its terror, it becomes a part of living.“
"The very desire to live is the messenger of death, as the longing to be happy is the outline of sorrow. The world is an ocean of pain and fear, of anxiety and despair. Pleasures are like the fishes, few and swift, rarely come, quickly gone. The world cannot give what it does not have; unreal to the core, it is of no use for real happiness. It cannot be otherwise. We seek the real because we are unhappy with the unreal. Happiness is our real nature and we shall never rest until we find it."
“The world is but a show, glittering and empty. It is, and yet it is not. It is there as long as I want to see it and take part in it. When I cease caring, it dissolves. It has no cause and serves no purpose. It just happens when we are absent-minded. It appears exactly as it looks, but there is no depth in it, nor meaning."
“Freedom means letting go. People just do not care to let go of everything. They do not know that the finite is the price of the infinite, as death is the price of immortality. Spiritual maturity lies in the readiness to let go of everything. The giving up is the first step. But the real giving up is in realizing that there is nothing to give up, for nothing is your own.”
"The eyes have got the habit to see that which is not. You say, “This is a chair”, but it is not. The child will say, “This is water.” His parents will say, “No, no, it’s called an ocean.” They pour more ignorance into him. On the contrary, he is right, it’s nothing but water. He submits to their instructions.
"Ignorant people will always like ignorance and will not like knowledge. All the people around you are just full of ignorance and they want to support their ignorance. They don’t want to get rid of their ignorance. People don’t like to go and see a saint and also don’t like it when other people go because they’re afraid to lose a person from their circle."
“Happiness is never your own; it is where the “I” is not.”
"Take the idea "I was born". You may take it to be true. It is not. You were not born, nor will you ever die. It is the idea that was born and shall die, not you. By identifying yourself with it you became mortal."
"I am told I was born. I do not remember. I am told I shall die. I do not expect it. You tell me I have forgotten, or I lack imagination. But I just cannot remember what never happened, nor expect the patently impossible. Bodies are born and bodies die, but what is it to me?"
"Even the idea of being man or woman, or even human, should be discarded. . Abandon all self-concern, worry not about your welfare, material or spiritual, abandon every desire, gross or subtle, stop thinking of achievement of any kind. You are complete here and now, you need absolutely nothing."
"By all means attend to your duties. Action, in which you are not emotionally involved and which is beneficial and does not cause suffering will not bind you. You may be engaged in several directions and work with enormous zest, yet remain inwardly free and quiet, with a mirror like mind, which reflects all, without being affected."
“It is always the false that makes you suffer, the false desires and fears, the false values and ideas, the false relationships between people. Abandon the false and you are free of pain."
“Between the banks of pleasure and pain flows the river of life. If you spend much time on either bank you will miss out on life.” (yet above)
“The legitimate function of the mind is to tell you what is not."
"The state which sprouts suddenly and without cause, carries no stain of self."
"All you need is already within you, only you must approach your self with reverence and love. Self-condemnation and self-disgust are grievous errors." ???
“You may die a hundred deaths without a break in the mental turmoil. Or, you may keep your body and die only in the mind. The death of the mind is the birth of wisdom.”
“Inquire, investigate, doubt yourself and others. To find truth, you must not cling to your convictions; if you are sure of the immediate, you will never reach the ultimate.
"Your idea that you were born and that you will die is absurd – both logic and experience contradict it.”
"It is your restlessness that causes chaos.”"
“In my world, nothing ever goes wrong.”
“There is nothing to do, just be. Do nothing. Be. No climbing mountains and sitting in caves. I do not even say “be yourself” since you do not know yourself. Just be.”"
Your inner peace and joy you have to earn. It is much more difficult than earning money. No university can teach you to be yourself.” (what happened to there's no path and it's so simple and there's nothing to do?)
“There is a vastness beyond the farthest reaches of the mind. That vastness is my home; that vastness is myself. And that vastness is also love.”
"To be free in the world, you must die to the world."
“Forget the known, don’t be all the time immersed in your experiences.”
"“How can an unsteady mind make itself steady? Of course it cannot. It is the nature of the mind to roam about. All you can do is to shift the focus of consciousness beyond the mind.”" (irredeemable)
“You will get to your maturity quickly if you stay in the nothingness.” (they have been fed these by guys like him and then teach it to others, thinking that is what spiritual maturity is)
Do what you believe in and believe in what you do. The rest is a waste of time and energy.”
"If we are sensitive and intelligent, we need not suffer. Pain is a call for attention and the penalty of carelessness. Intelligent and compassionate action is the only remedy.”
“When you believe yourself to be a person, you see persons everywhere. In reality there are no persons, only threads of memories and habits. At the moment of realisation the person ceases.”
“As long as the mind is there, your body and your world are there. Your world is mind-made, subjective, enclosed within the mind, fragmentary, temporary, personal, hanging on the thread of memory.”
"“You have never been, nor shall ever be, a person. Refuse to consider yourself as one."
You have never been, nor shall ever be, a person. Refuse to consider yourself as one. But as long as you do not even doubt yourself to be Mr. So-and-so, there is little hope. When you refuse to open your eyes, what can you be shown?” (is that compassionate?)
"“The world does not yield to changing. By its very nature it is painful and transient. See it as it is and divest yourself of all desire and fear. When the world does not hold and bind you, it becomes an abode of joy and beauty. You can be happy in the world only when you are free of it.”"
"However, let us deal with your question. Avadhuta, Jnani, self-realized are all names of a state, the very basic assumption of which is the total negation of the separateness of an individual entity, and yet the question is based on an understanding that a Jnani is a 'person', and you want to know how such a person acts in this world. Do you see the contradiction in terms? As soon as there is self-realization, the difference between a self and the others disappears, and, of course, along with it the doership of the pseudo-personality. Therefore, once self-realization happens — do understand that 'one' does not 'acquire' self-realization—the sense of volition, or desire, or choice of action cannot remain.
Do try to understand the significance of what I have just said. If you have understood it, you will also have understood that there can he no self-realized 'person' and, therefore, there is no question of how a self-realized person acts in the world. What happens to the body? The response to external situations is spontaneous, intuitional, without the interference of the individual divided mind, and thus excludes any question of volitional activity"
mixed in with the beautiful...
M: In my world love is the only law. I do not ask for love, I give it. Such is my nature.
“When you desire the common good, the whole world desires with you. Make humanity’s desire your own and work for it. There you cannot fail.”
“The innermost light, shining peacefully and timelessly in the heart, is the real Guru. All others merely show the way.”
“Desire by itself is not wrong. It is life itself, the urge to grow in knowledge and experience."
"Nothing can block you so effectively as compromise, for it shows lack of earnestness, without which nothing can be done."
"Remembering your Self is virtue, forgetting your Self is sin."
"All you need is already within you, only you must approach your self with reverence and love. Self-condemnation and self-disgust are grievous errors." ???
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Maharaj's behavior described by his devotees
Interviews with Jean Dunn on Her Meetings with Nisargadatta:
"He makes dramatic, hostile gestures with his arms. He wants me to ask questions.
I repeat what I said yesterday…one can only ask for Grace.
There is more yelling. His disciples laugh. I keep silence but am extremely surprised, uncomfortable.
He shouts: Say something!
The power — I reply — that brought me here yesterday appears to be turning me away this morning.
He is now laughing at me.
Someone then asks Nisargadatta a question.
He replies. I am hoping the provocation-scene has passed and I am spared more embarrassment.
I reply: My intellect is telling me that what you have said must be right, but as I haven’t attained enlightenment it is still a concept.
More yelling: GET-RID-OF-ALL-CONCEPTS!
I am deeply disconcerted. I try a weak reply by saying:
I am beginning to think it is probably far better to be shouted at by an enlightened person than to be ignored by him.
He manages a quarter smile, waves his hand, we all rise, bow and struggle down the narrow staircase.
I am desperately trying to disappear, evaporate as quickly as possible. I am physically very very tired…this is not the perfect time to have to cope with Sufi-Zen situations."
Jean, a direct disciple explains her interpretations of his teachings:
" My aim in life is to lose an aim in life — that’s his teaching: there’s no purpose to this life, it’s just entertainment. That’s all."
"He gives no ethical guidance?
No. As long as you think you are a person and this world is real, then you live by certain rules. Once you understand the complete thing, your life lives itself…there are no rules, no good, no bad: I should do this, I shouldn’t do that. If you think about it, all this is taking place in this life span, in this span of consciousness, and when this consciousness goes, what difference does it make?"
"He had jerked the rug from under my feet and he kept on doing this until I lost any place to put my feet. He forces you to let go of all concepts."
"To round off, could you say what are the benefits gained from coming into contact with your guru?
I’ve gotten rid of the idea that there’s somebody going to benefit from something… (much hearty laughter)."
From Remembering Nisargadatta - David Godman
Maharaj initially didn’t seem to agree with the remarks that had been attributed to him in the book, but then he added, ‘The words must be true because Maurice wrote them. Maurice was a jnani, and the jnani’s words are always the words of truth.’
Sources
https://www.nonduality.com/asmi3.htm
https://www.byronevents.net/nisargadatta/that2.htm
Adi Shankara
"This is the heart of the matter: As long as you believe that only the outer world is real, you remain its slave. Just understand that what you see is not what is. Appearances will dissolve on investigation..."
"Utterly destroy the ego. Control the many waves of distraction which it raises in the mind. Discern the Reality and realize "I am That."
"Even after the Truth has been realized, there remains that strong... obstinate impression that one is the agent and experiencer... This has to be carefully removed..."
"The Self is the witness, beyond all attributes, beyond action. It can be directly realized as pure Consciousness and infinite bliss. Its appearance as an individual soul is caused by the delusion of our understanding, and has no reality. By its very nature, this appearance is unreal. When our delusion has been removed, it ceases to exist."
"... Everything, from the intellect down to the gross physical body, is the effect of Maya. Understand that all these and Maya itself are not the Self, and are therefore unreal, like a mirage in the desert."
"Who is free from sin? One who chants the name of God."
"What is the first and most important duty for a man of right understanding? To cut through the bonds of worldly desire."
"The scriptures even proclaim aloud: "There is in truth no creation and no destruction; no one is bound, no one is seeking Liberation, no one is on the way to Deliverance. There are none Liberated. This is the absolute truth."
"Thus, when the Sage who abides as Brahman, which is Pure Being, obtains his disembodied absolute state, he is never again reborn."
"I AM neither the mind, the intellect, nor the silent voice within; Neither the eyes, the ears, the nose, nor the mouth. I am not water, fire, earth, nor ether I am Consciousness and Bliss."
"The world has no existence apart from you."
"To know the picture as the play of light on the screen, gives freedom from the idea that the picture is real."
"This world is painted by you on the screen of consciousness and is entirely your own private world."
"You are not of the world, you are not even in the world. The world is not, you alone are. You create the world in your imagination like a dream. As you cannot separate the dream from yourself, so you cannot have an outer world independent of yourself. You are independent, not the world. Don't be afraid of a world you yourself have created."
"The world is but a reflection of my imagination. Whatever I want to see, I can see. But why should I invent patterns of creation, evolution and destruction? I do not need them. The world is in me, the world is myself. I am not afraid of it and have no desire to lock it up in a mental picture."
"What I appear to be to you exists only in your mind. I am a dream that can wake you up."
"The World I perceive is entirely private, a dream." leads to ^solipsism ^grandiosity
"Both sleep 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. By imagining that you are born as so-and-so, you become a slave of the so-and-so."
"Personal love, however intense and genuine, invariably binds; love in freedom is love of all."
"The essence of slavery is to imagine yourself to be a process, to have past and future, to have history. In fact, we have no history, we are not a process, we do not develop, nor decay; so see all as a dream and stay out of it."
"Nobody suffers in a play, unless one identifies himself with it. Don't identity yourself with the world and you will not suffer."
"Consider. The world in which you live, who else knows about it? Within the prison of your world appears a man who tells you that the world of painful contradictions, which you have created, is neither continuous nor permanent and is based on a misapprehension. He pleads with you to get out of it. You got into it by forgetting what you are, and you will get out of it by knowing yourself as you are. There is no reality in it. It cannot last."
"You see me apparently functioning. In reality, I only look. Whatever is done, is done on the stage. Joy and sorrow, life and death, they all are real to the man in bondage; to me, they are all in the show, as unreal as the show itself. I may perceive the world just like you, but you believe to be in it, while I see it as an iridescent drop in the vast expanse of consciousness."
"I do what seems to be necessary, but at the same time I know that nothing is necessary, that life itself is only a make-belief. "
"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. ...Wherever it leads you, it will be a dream. The very idea of going beyond the dream is illusory. Why go anywhere Just realize that you are dreaming a dream you call the world and stop looking for ways out. 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 a dream, you have done all that needs be done."
“As the mind becomes gradually established in the Self, it proportionately gives up the desire for external objects. When all such desires have been eliminated, there is the unobstructed realization of the Self.”
"Who but the Atman is capable of removing the bonds of ignorance, passion and self-interested action?"
"Utterly destroy the ego. Control the many waves of distraction which it raises in the mind. Discern the Reality and realize "I am That."
"Even after the Truth has been realized, there remains that strong... obstinate impression that one is the agent and experiencer... This has to be carefully removed..."
"The Self is the witness, beyond all attributes, beyond action. It can be directly realized as pure Consciousness and infinite bliss. Its appearance as an individual soul is caused by the delusion of our understanding, and has no reality. By its very nature, this appearance is unreal. When our delusion has been removed, it ceases to exist."
"... Everything, from the intellect down to the gross physical body, is the effect of Maya. Understand that all these and Maya itself are not the Self, and are therefore unreal, like a mirage in the desert."
"Who is free from sin? One who chants the name of God."
"What is the first and most important duty for a man of right understanding? To cut through the bonds of worldly desire."
"The scriptures even proclaim aloud: "There is in truth no creation and no destruction; no one is bound, no one is seeking Liberation, no one is on the way to Deliverance. There are none Liberated. This is the absolute truth."
"Thus, when the Sage who abides as Brahman, which is Pure Being, obtains his disembodied absolute state, he is never again reborn."
"I AM neither the mind, the intellect, nor the silent voice within; Neither the eyes, the ears, the nose, nor the mouth. I am not water, fire, earth, nor ether I am Consciousness and Bliss."
"The world has no existence apart from you."
"To know the picture as the play of light on the screen, gives freedom from the idea that the picture is real."
"This world is painted by you on the screen of consciousness and is entirely your own private world."
"You are not of the world, you are not even in the world. The world is not, you alone are. You create the world in your imagination like a dream. As you cannot separate the dream from yourself, so you cannot have an outer world independent of yourself. You are independent, not the world. Don't be afraid of a world you yourself have created."
"The world is but a reflection of my imagination. Whatever I want to see, I can see. But why should I invent patterns of creation, evolution and destruction? I do not need them. The world is in me, the world is myself. I am not afraid of it and have no desire to lock it up in a mental picture."
"What I appear to be to you exists only in your mind. I am a dream that can wake you up."
"The World I perceive is entirely private, a dream." leads to ^solipsism ^grandiosity
"Both sleep 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. By imagining that you are born as so-and-so, you become a slave of the so-and-so."
"Personal love, however intense and genuine, invariably binds; love in freedom is love of all."
"The essence of slavery is to imagine yourself to be a process, to have past and future, to have history. In fact, we have no history, we are not a process, we do not develop, nor decay; so see all as a dream and stay out of it."
"Nobody suffers in a play, unless one identifies himself with it. Don't identity yourself with the world and you will not suffer."
"Consider. The world in which you live, who else knows about it? Within the prison of your world appears a man who tells you that the world of painful contradictions, which you have created, is neither continuous nor permanent and is based on a misapprehension. He pleads with you to get out of it. You got into it by forgetting what you are, and you will get out of it by knowing yourself as you are. There is no reality in it. It cannot last."
"You see me apparently functioning. In reality, I only look. Whatever is done, is done on the stage. Joy and sorrow, life and death, they all are real to the man in bondage; to me, they are all in the show, as unreal as the show itself. I may perceive the world just like you, but you believe to be in it, while I see it as an iridescent drop in the vast expanse of consciousness."
"I do what seems to be necessary, but at the same time I know that nothing is necessary, that life itself is only a make-belief. "
"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. ...Wherever it leads you, it will be a dream. The very idea of going beyond the dream is illusory. Why go anywhere Just realize that you are dreaming a dream you call the world and stop looking for ways out. 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 a dream, you have done all that needs be done."
“As the mind becomes gradually established in the Self, it proportionately gives up the desire for external objects. When all such desires have been eliminated, there is the unobstructed realization of the Self.”
"Who but the Atman is capable of removing the bonds of ignorance, passion and self-interested action?"