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Nonduality Highlights: Issue #3085, Saturday, February 23, 2008, Editor: Mark
Adams: Why is it important to let go of our life story in order
to access freedom?
Gangaji: In order to discover reality, there has to be a
willingness to let go of the concept of reality. Reality can't
even be compared to your concepts. Reality is beyond vast. Even
to know another person, you have to meet that person in the
Unknown. Whenever you really investigate something, you must let
go of everything preconceived to meet what is really here.
- Gangaji
23. The body does not say 'I'. No one will argue that even in
deep sleep the 'I' ceases to exist. Once the 'I' emerges, all
else emerges. With a keen mind enquire whence this 'I' emerges
. 24. This inert body does not say 'I'. Reality-Consciousness
does not emerge. Between the two, and limited to the measure of
the body, something emerges as 'I'. It is this that is known as
Chit-jada-granthi (the knot between the Conscious and the inert),
and also as bondage, soul, subtle-body, ego, samsara, mind, and
so forth.
25. It. comes into being equipped with a form, and as long as it
retains a form it endures. Having a form, it feeds and grows big.
But if you investigate it this evil spirit, which has no form of
its own, relinquishes its grip on form and takes to flight.
26. If the ego is, everything else also is. If the ego is not,
nothing else is. Indeed, the ego is all. Therefore the enquiry as
to what this ego is, is the only way of giving up everything.
27. The State of non-emergence of 'I' is the state of being THAT.
Without questing for that State of the non-emergence of 'I' and
attaining It, how can one accomplish one's own extinction, from
which the 'I' does not revive? Without that attainment how is it
possible to abide in one's true State, where one is THAT?
28. Just as a man would dive in order to get something that had
fallen into the water, so one should dive into oneself, with a
keen one-pointed mind, controlling speech and breath, and find
the place whence the 'I' originates.
29. The only enquiry leading to Self-realization is seeking the
Source of the 'I' with in-turned mind and without uttering the
word 'I'. Meditation on 'I am not this; I am That' may be an aid
to the enquiry but it cannot be the enquiry.
30. If one enquires 'Who am I?' within the mind, the individual
'I' falls down abashed as soon as one reaches the Heart and
immediately Reality manifests itself spontaneously as 'I-I'.
Although it reveals itself as 'I', it is not the ego but the
Perfect Being, the Absolute Self.
- Ramana Maharshi, verses 23-30 of Ulladu Narpadu (Forty Verses
On Reality), translated by Arthur Osborne
All you need is to get rid of the tendency to define yourself.
You will revert to your natural state spontaneously and
effortlessly. You will reach the Source of being, life and
consciousness.
Shift the focus of consciousness beyond the mind. Refuse all thoughts except one: Who am I? Just live your life as it comes. Keep quietly alert, inquiring into the real nature of yourself. Perception is based on memory and is only imagination. The world can be said to appear but not to be. Only that which makes perception possible is real. You agree to be guided from within and life becomes a journey into the unknown.
Give up all names and forms, and the Real is with you. Know yourself as you are. Distrust your mind and go beyond. Do not think of the Real in terms of consciousness and unconsciousness. It is utterly beyond both. It gives birth to consciousness. All else is in consciousness. Nothing you can see, feel or think is so.
Go beyond the personal and see. Stop
imagining that you were born. You are utterly beyond all
existence and non-existence, utterly beyond all that the mind
conceives. Question yourself: Who am I? What is behind and beyond
all this? Soon you will see that thinking yourself to be a person
is mere habit built on memory. Inquire ceaselessly.
- Nisargadatta Maharaj
Magic Glasses:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LfeXxkbgCVE