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Nondual Highlights Issue #2237 Sunday, August 21, 2005
This
issue is dedicated to Mia, a 14 year-old student at my new school
who died of an asthma attack Friday evening. May she (and all who
knew and loved her) find peace. -Mark
You, you only, exist
You, you only, exist.
We pass away, till at last,
our passing is so immense
that you arise: beautiful moment,
in all your suddenness,
arising in love, or enchanted
in the contraction of work.
To you I belong, however time may
wear me away. From you to you
I go commanded. In between
the garland is hanging in chance; but if you
take it up and up and up: look:
all becomes festival!
- Rilke, translated by Stephen Mitchell, deep thanks to Gloria
for forwarding this to me.
M: During your entire lifetime, you do not have any permanent
identity. Whatever you consider yourself to be changes from
moment to moment. Nothing is constant.
V: And what you think you are going to become changes too, with
time, in spite of yourself.
M: That change is also made possible by the child-conciousness.
Because of that, all these changes take place. That is why you
must grasp this principle.
If you really want to understand this, you must give up your
identification with the body. By all means, make use of the body,
but don't consider yourself to be the body while acting in this
world. Identify yourself with the consciousness, which dwells in
the body; with that identity, you should act in the world. Will
it be possible?
So long as you identify yourself as the body, your experience of
pain and sorrow will increase day by day. That is why you must
give up this identification, and you should take yourself as the
consciousness. If you take yourself as the body, it means you
have forgotten your true Self, which is the atman. And sorrow
results for the one who forgets himself. When the body falls, the
principle which always remains is You. If you identify yourself
with the body, you will feel that you are dying, but in reality
there is no death because you are not the body. Let the body be
there or not be there, your existence is always there; it is
eternal.
Now who or what has heard my talk? It is not the ear, not the
physical body, but that knowledge which is in the body; that has
heard me. So identify yourself with that knowledge, that
consciousness. Whatever happiness we enjoy in this world is only
imaginary. The real happiness is to know your existence, which is
apart from the body. You should never forget the real identity
that you possess. Consider a patient on his deathbed, certain to
die. Now when he first comes to know of his disease, say cancer,
he gets such a shock that it is permanently engraved in his
memory. Like that, you should never forget your true nature - the
true identity I have told you about.
- Nisargadatta Maharaj
The shock of the fear of death drove my mind inward and I said to
myself mentally, without actually framing the words, ‘Now
death has come; what does it mean? What is it that is dying?...
This body dies.’
I at once dramatized the occurrence of death. I lay with my limbs
stretched out stiff, as though ‘rigor mortis’ had set
in and imitated a corpse so as to give greater reality to the
inquiry. I held my breath and kept my lips tightly closed so that
no sound could escape, so that neither the word ‘I’ nor
any other word could be uttered.
‘Well then,’ I said to myself, ‘this body is dead.
It will be carried stiff to the burning ground and there burnt
and reduced to ashes. But with the death of this body am I dead?
Is this body I? It is silent and inert but I feel the full force
of my personality, and even the voice of "I" within me,
apart from it. So I am Spirit, transcending the body. The body
dies, but the Spirit that transcends it cannot be touched by
death. That means I am the deathless Spirit.’
All this was not dull thought; [rather] it flashed through me
vividly as living truth which I perceived directly, almost
without thought-process. ‘I’ was something very real,
the only real thing about my present state, and all the conscious
activity connected with my body was centered on that ‘I’.
From that moment onward, the ‘I’ or Self focused
attention on itself by a powerful fascination. Fear of death had
vanished, once and for all. Absorption in the Self continued
unbroken from that time on.
Other thoughts might come and go, like the various notes of
music, but the ‘I’ continued like the [single]
fundamental ‘struti’ note [in Indian music] that blends
with all the other notes. Whether the body was engaged in
talking, reading or anything else, I was still centered on ‘I’.
Previous to that crisis, I had no clear perception of my Self,
and was not consciously attracted to it. I felt no perceptible or
direct interest in it, much less any inclination to dwell
permanently in it.
- Ramana Maharshi, from Self-Realization
I am that very One that lives my body, that lives your body, and
I am absolutely energetic; I am in energy, I am as energy. And, I
am absolutely delightful, delightful in my trillions and billions
of modifications, and "how wondrous it is to be me!"
All that exists outside of me as a modification exists inside of
me as a modification. Simultaneously I can be all of that and
this one thing that I am.
VALERIE VENER, A Near Death Experience Opens the Door to an
Awakening Journey
This New Life is endless, and even after my physical death it
will be kept alive by those who live the life of complete
renunciation of falsehood, lies, hatred, anger, greed and lust;
and who, to accomplish all this, do no lustful actions, do no
harm to anyone, do no backbiting, do not seek material
possessions or power, who accept no homage, neither covet honor
nor shun disgrace, and fear no one and nothing; by those who rely
wholly and solely on God, and who love God purely for the sake of
loving; who believe in the lovers of God and in the reality of
Manifestation, and yet do not expect any spiritual or material
reward; who do not let go the hand of Truth, and who, without
being upset by calamities, bravely and wholeheartedly face all
hardships with one hundred percent cheerfulness, and give no
importance to caste, creed and religious ceremonies.
This New Life will live by itself eternally, even if there is no
one to live it.
- Meher Baba
"Death of a Child"
Sorry I didn't get to stay.
To laugh and run and play.
To be there by your side.
I'm sorry that I had to die.
God sent me down to be with you,
to make your loving heart anew.
To help you look up and see
Both God and little me.
Mommy, I wish I could stay.
Just like I heard you pray.
But, all the angels did cry
when they told little me goodbye.
God didn't take me cause He's mad.
He didn't send me to make you sad.
But to give us both a chance to be
a love so precious ... don't you see?
Up here no trouble do I see
and the pretty angels sing to me.
The streets of gold is where I play
you'll come here too, mommy, someday.
Until the day you join me here,
I'll love you mommy, dear.
Each breeze you feel and see,
brings love and a kiss from me.
By Sandy Eakle