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#2940 - Friday, September 28, 2007 - Editor: Jerry Katz
The Nondual Highlights - http://groups.yahoo.com/group/NDhighlights
One: Essential
Writings on Nonduality. http://nonduality.com/one.htm
Check availability at your local Borders Store: http://www.bordersstores.com/locator/locator.jsp?tt=gn
The
Secret One
A thousand flames,
But one Fire,
A thousand hearts,
But one Desire.
A thousand journeys,
But one Path,
A thousand conclusions,
But One Math.
A thousand sorrows,
But one Night,
A thousand insights,
But one Light.
A thousand branches,
But one Tree,
A thousand lovers,
But one Thee.
- Guy Finley
The following is from Charlie Hayes' blog: http://charlesdavidhayes.blogspot.com/2007/09/q-i-was-wondering-if-you-could-help-me.html
Q: I was wondering if you could help me with some
thinking that has been happening. If the mind cannot know the
nondual Source, what can know?
An answer did bubble up in some detail, as you will read
below. But I came back to the beginning because what occurred in
the space here is to ask you first, why do you want to know these
things? Let’s get down to it: Are you suffering? Will the
answers to arcane abstract questions like this end your seeking
and suffering? Who cares about this?
I enjoy these kinds of discussions but my main thrust here on my
site and with my talks and videos is to point out directly what
is causing suffering so you can root that sucker out and enjoy
the rest of your life without suffering, living in the freedom of
perfect peace and effortless ease.
So: ARE you suffering? Let’s get into that. Write back and
tell me what the suffering is like for you. And we’ll delve
into that. Meanwhile when you finish reading this e-mail, read
(or re-read) the essay on the front page of the website, “The
BASICS.” Read a few times. Read each time as though you
never read it before. (You haven’t ever read it “before.”
Each moment is new!)
Meanwhile here is what came up in response to your questions:
If the mind cannot know the nondual Source, what can know ?
Nothing can “know” the nondual Source, as there is
nothing OUTSIDE That to “know” That. It IS “NONDUAL!”
The idea that Source can be “known” is the mind’s
attempt to turn Source into a thing, an object that is known.
Source is neither subject nor object. To the mind it is No Thing.
Source is space-like Awareness, empty, meaningless, unbounded,
infinite … but all these words are absolutely insufficient
to describe Source which is patently indescribable.
What the mind will try (and always fail) to do is to grasp the
ungraspable. This goes on until it dawns on the seeker that the
mind is, quite simply, the wrong tool for the job. The mind is a
thing. Can a thing ever grasp NO thing? It’s akin to the eye
trying to see itself. It’s hopeless!
Is this just another thing that is kind of self-evident
always, or is knowing that you cannot know as far as that goes?
Yes, the Truth of your Being, that I AM that I am and that I AM
that YOU are, is Self-Knowing Awareness. But this truth is NOT
the words, concepts, thoughts. As Lao Tzu put it, “The Tao
(Source) that can be named is NOT the Eternal Tao (Source.)
The I AM you know beyond doubt. And, anything else must end up in
the beauty and silence of what I call “the gift of
unknowing!” So it’s getting to the heart of this when
it is seen by no one, seeing with N aked Awareness Itself, that
all the mind can EVER say in Truth is, I don’t know.”
I guess what I am really trying to figure out is: what is
realized when you realize the Self?
In a word? NOTHING.
What is “realized?” That there is nothing to realize.
Nothing. This is seeing by no one that there never was a division
in Source. You ARE what you seek. Already always awake here and
now. The seeking seems to divide Source into a subject seeker and
an object called self for it to realize. Enlightenment can be
said to be the simple knowing that there is nothing to get and no
one to get it.
But to the Ultimate Unknowable Source, these are all dead words
that are empty and meaningless, and the word enlightenment or the
words self-realization are pointing to MYTHS!
If you are interested in ending suffering and living in natural
freedom, ponder this: What or who is this “I” that says
“I am trying to figure this (un-figure-outable
nondual Being) out?" The mind is machinery. You,
when identified falsely as the mind-thinking-machinery, will
endlessly ask questions like these and try to grab and own That,
Source, which is OUTSIDE the mind! Seeing is happening. Seeing
thoughts is happening. That is Consciousness, your knowing
directly I AM before the thought arises that I am 'me,' is
Presence, Awareness, arising as seeing without a seer, knowing
without a knower, clarity without a subject or object.
The mind is a thought, “I” that as taken to be a solid
separate thinking feeling controlling entity, “I apart from
“Other,” then that thought-structure SEEMS to divide up
totality. But can a thought do anything? Can a feeling/thought
actually divide the Whole?
Do you actually come to know the Source of this I AM or is it
just realized that you can never know, so the search gets called
off and you get back to being?
What search? What Source? What being? Who would get back to that
which has never been left? Being IS. Unknowable, That is the
silence of deep sleep, pure Awareness before Consciousness arises
as the knowing “I AM” and then is translated by
Infinite Energy into the thought-form I AM “me.”
These are very good questions, it seems that you are on the
precipice of this and I’d say, as John Wheeler once said to
me, “get ready for a life free of suffering!”
For now, I’d say, write back and tell me the nature of the
suffering for you, and also I’d suggest you watch the video
series “This Is It” on YouTube…
HERE. There is also a link on the site to a dialogue wherein
the seeking and suffering ended for a guy named Paul. That one’s
on the audio/video page. The download is free.
"Earlier I was sure of so many things, now I am sure of
nothing. But I feel that I have lost nothing by not knowing,
because all my knowledge was false. My not knowing was in itself
knowledge of the fact that all knowledge is ignorance, that `I do
not know' is the only true statement the mind can make." - Sri
Nisargadatta Maharaj