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We are so engrossed
with the objects,
or appearances
revealed by
the light,
that we pay
no attention
to the light.
Ramana Maharishi
Forgetfulness of your real nature is the real death;remembrance of it is the true birth.
It puts an end to successive births. Eternal life is then yours.
How does the desire for eternal life arise?
Because the present state is unbearable. Why?
Because, it is not your true nature.
Had it been your real nature, there would be no desire to agitate you.
How does the present state differ from your real nature?
Truly, you are spirit.
Human beings consider themselves limited and that is the root of the trouble.
The idea is wrong. In sleep there was no world, no ego and no trouble.
Something wakes up from that happy state and says “I”.
To that ego the world appears.
It is the rise of the ego that is the cause of the trouble.
But trace the ego to its origin, and you will reach that undifferentiated happy source,
a state which is sleepless sleep.
The Self is ever there;
wisdom only appears to dawn, though it is natural.
Conscious death and conscious immortality (while still in the flesh)
is the purpose of evolution.
Sri Ramana Maharshi
“Q: Do I know myself through the mind, or is it independent of the mind?
Bob: The only instrument we have is the mind. So, it has to be understood that you can never grasp it with the mind. Because it contains the mind; the mind can never contain it.
Q: What about the feeling or the thought ‘I am”?
B: That is the primarily thought from which all dualism appears. As soon as there is ‘I am’, there must be ‘you’ or ‘the other’. That idea ‘I am’ is the cause of all seeming problems. That sense of presence is expressing itself through the mind, but prior to that thought, you know that you are, don’t you? You are not thinking ‘I am’ constantly all the time, are you? You know that you are sitting there. You are aware of being present, continually.
Q: What about the when I am in deep sleep? I am not aware.
B: The mind is in abeyance in deep sleep, but that effortless functioning is still going on. The mind is not there. That functioning is still breathing you. It is still causing the blood to flow around through the body. The fingernails continue to grow. All these do not stop because the mind is not there.
Consciousness, or the mind, stirs in that deep sleep, and you start to dream before you are awake. In this dream you create a world, and you see yourself taking an active part in it. It might be in a town, a city, a room or out in the country. You can dream of all sorts of things. There can be other people there. There could be cars, animals or anything, and you see yourself taking an active part. Yet, that body has not moved from the bed. All of this seeming world has been taking place in that little space between your ears. If you continued on from the night before just as it appears to do in the waking state, could you tell the difference between the dream state and the waking state?
So, is the world anything other than mind? What substance has the mind? What substance has a thought got? That ‘I am’ thought is what you believe yourself to be. Can the mind stand on it’s own? If you were not conscious, if that consciousness was not there, could you have a single thought?
Q: I don’t know!
B: Well, you just said that even in deep sleep, you were not aware o f it. No thoughts. The mind is dependent on consciousness or awareness or whatever you want to call it, that pure intelligence energy. So that must be primary, that must be the reality, not the ‘I am’ thought, not the ‘me’ as such.
Q: Is consciousness dependent on anything else?
B: That is also just a movement in awareness. All this world appears in that consciousness. All this world is the content of consciousness. So, it cannot be anything other than consciousness. There is nothing that you can think of, conceive of, perceive or postulate outside of consciousness. Even if you are talking about other universes or other solar systems, the moment you think about or talk about them, you have brought them into consciousness. When that ‘thinking and talking’ consciousness is out of the road, there is that pure intelligence there. It just shines of itself.
Q: So is consciousness a part of the universal?
B: The whole thing is universal, if you look at it closely. No parts. Awareness, the absolute, consciousness, mind are one and the same thing in different aspects. Like with water: you have water vapour or steam, then the liquid state of water and then there is ice. These are three different aspects of the one thing, water. So, it still never changes from that non-dual one-without-a-second. Grasp that fact and stay with that. It does not matter what appears. It is still only the One. Then that sense of separation can no longer be there.”
Sailor Bob Adamson “What is wrong with right now, unless you think about it?”
” Another thing we say is that you won’t find the answer in the mind, so it’s pointless looking there. In looking, is there any place that is outside of the mind? Every direction you look in is always in the mind. When you realise that you can’t get out of the mind by looking, what must happen? Wouldn’t there just be a natural full stop? In that full stop, the thought is paused for a brief moment. In that pause, when there’s no thought going on, you haven’t stopped seeing, you haven’t stopped hearing, you haven’t disappeared and you haven’t fallen apart. When there’s no conceptualizing going on, no thinking, you are prior to the mind. And that’s how simple it really is.”
Sailor Bob Adamson
“…There is a sense of presence with each and every one of you right now in the immediacy of this moment. It’s the presence of awareness, or the awareness of presence. Nobody sitting here can say I am not. Each one knows I am.
So that’s what we’re speaking to – the sense of presence that is expressing through the mind as the thought and that which is speaking to it. In actuality, it is that sense of presence speaking to itself. There will be a resonance in hearing it. The resonance happens because innately you already know it. You recognise that you are That and always have been.”
Sailor Bob Adamson
Q: I don’t know whether I can come to terms with the fact that I don’t exist.
Bob: Nobody says anything about non-existence. You are existence itself. There is only one existence, one presence, one power, one intelligence. Instead of confining yourself to that little pattern you call me, which in the scheme of things is nothing, you’re trying to work it out in the mind. Me can never come to terms with it. As Nisargadatta says, “You’re trying to grasp it with a concept – and you fail. And you are bound to fail.” He means you’ll always fail while you’re trying to grasp it with a concept.
But, full stop right now, without a thought, are there any concepts going on? Yet have you stopped seeing? Have you stopped hearing? Have you stopped being aware? In that instant without a concept, without a thought, before another concept arises, you realise that you are existence; you are the living-ness, the being-ness. Do you have to come to terms with that? You can only come to terms with it with another concept. It’s just as it is – unadorned, naked awareness – not adorned by concepts. As the poem says, “It’s closer than your breathing, nearer than your hands and feet.” you’ve never been away from it. Never could.
Taken from Only That – the life and teaching of Sailor Bob Adamson
by Kalyani Lawry
“If it’s not here now, it’s not real.
Life only happens now.
You are not your history. And if you’re not your history, that takes away all the problems to work on, doesn’t it? “
Hale Dwoskin
“Life is a dream for the wise,
a game for the fool,
a comedy for the rich,
a tragedy for the poor.”
Shalom Aleichem
“Only the dead can die, not the living. That which is alive in you is immortal. In reality there is only the source, dark in itself, making everything shine. Unperceived, it causes perception. Unfelt, it causes feeling. Unthinkable, it causes thought. Non-being, it gives birth to being. It is the immovable background of motion. Once you are there, you are at home everywhere.”
Nisargadatta
Beforeglow 