Tag Archives: Ramana Maharshi

January 7, 2013 · 8:54 am

The Ultimate Happiness: A Conversation with Robert Adams

This article was published In the Fall Issue of Inner Directions, 1995.

Robert Adams: There is one thing I can tell you for sure. All is well. Everything is unfolding as it should. I can tell you that truly nothing is wrong anywhere. If you think you have a problem, that’s the mistake — thinking you have a problem. As soon as you stop thinking, everything will go right.
Questioner: Isn’t everything going right while you are thinking?
R: Yes, but you don’t know it. Some of us don’t think it is, saying, “I’ve got a problem,” or “I’m involved in some-thing I can’t handle which is bigger than I am,” or “Some-thing hurts me,” or “I feel anger.” But I can assure you, there is nothing wrong! All that you have to do is watch yourself. As soon as your mind starts thinking past your nose, grab it — not your nose, but your thoughts. You can grab your nose too if you want (laughter). Grasp your thoughts with your mind, and put a stop to them any way you can, either by observing the thoughts or by practicing self-enquiry and asking to whom they occur. Whatever you need to do, do not allow yourself to think. If your mind does not think, you will be exceedingly happy. You will have unalloyed happiness.
Some people ask me, “Robert, why don’t you just speak the highest truth all the time?” Some others tell me to speak in such a way that they can understand what I am talking about (laughter). So that is the dilemma. I do whatever I have to do. I plan nothing. Everything is extemporaneous. I have no rehearsals.
A man called me yesterday telling me he had been practicing for two weeks, took a seminar and paid seven hundred dollars, and is still not realized. I get calls like this all the time. What you say determines the answer I give you. But there is a standard answer. Think of the question, “When will I become self-realized?” Before I answer this one, I usually ask, “Please tell me what do you mean by `I’?” Then I further ask, “What do you mean by `Self-realization’?” They usually become silent, so I finally ask, “Who do you think the `I’ is? Who wants to become Self-realized?”
If you can’t do anything else, surrender to consciousness. By surrender, I mean surrender your ego, your problems, your emotions, your fears, your frustrations and anger. Give it all up. Say, “Take it, consciousness!”
Do not get carried away by your emotions. Stop in the middle and watch. Watch your emotions ruling you. Watch your fears controlling you. Watch your anger arise. Do not try to stop it, just watch and observe. Look intelligently and realize who it is that is getting angry. It is not you. It is not even your ego because there is no ego. It is not your body because there is no body. It is not your mind because there is no mind. Therefore, what is making you angry? Nothing.
I was talking about all the phone calls I’ve been receiving. People still ask what I think about this or that teacher, this or that person, or why shouldn’t they go to see other teachers as well? I really don’t know what to say. You have to do what you have to do. I can tell you that the more people you consult, the more confused you’ll become. I don’t care if you never come back here again because I am not looking for anything.
If you do find a teacher that you seem to have an affinity for, you should stick around for a while. If you run from teacher to teacher, you will become totally confused. Every teacher has his place. You will be attracted to the person you have to be with for as long as necessary. It depends on where your consciousness is.
Q: Robert, throughout the spiritual literature there are distinctions made between a gradual path and instantaneous enlightenment. A lot of this stuff about passing through stages — I can’t relate to it. It just doesn’t make any sense to me.
R: What can’t you relate to?
Q: Just the idea that you pass through one stage to the next stage.
R: This is for the person who is striving. The truth is there is nothing to pass through. It appears that some people, who need to understand these things and research them for themselves, will be helped to see where they are coming from. Perhaps you don’t need it.
Q: The state of happiness you talk about I would not call happiness. The state seems far above happiness. Happiness as the opposite of sadness.
R: You are right.
Q: Sadness could even come into that state you are I and it would only be something that was passing through with no identification.
R: You are right. As an example, I can cry at a funeral but I realize who is crying. I can have sadness if I want to but I am never really sad.
Q: The state of non-attached mind, that’s really the closest thing to it, isn’t it?
R: That’s true. I am looking for words to describe things. More importantly, there is always total happiness. It is not human happiness. For most people to be happy, there has to be a person, place, or thing involved in their happiness. In true happiness, there are no things involved. It’s a natural state. You will abide in that state forever.
Q: From the standpoint of practice, I have noticed that no matter what state arises, the problem is whether I am willing to let this go. Is it important for me to stay in my emotional state? The answer is that there is nothing you can do anyway as it comes and goes.
R: Act as if there is something you can do, even though there is nothing you can do. If you were passing a starving man in the room, don’t think there is nothing you can do. Give him a piece of bread.
Q: But in that state of mind arising, emotions arising, perceptions arising, there is nothing you can do.
R: Except watch. Just watch. Just observe. Another thing to consider is this: if you were here as a visitor, having only one meeting with me, and you would never see me again, I would expound the highest truth to you and take off. You would say how great that is. But when I see you twice a week or more, I begin to know you quite well, and everything I say is to help you grow because that is what is needed at that time, since I’m going to be with you again. To people who were with Ramana Maharshi as devotees, he didn’t expound absolute truth to them all the time. He would talk to them like an ordinary person. He would inquire about their welfare, their health, about their problems, and he would give them practical advice. He wouldn’t say, “Nothing matters because nothing exists.” They had problems. So he would talk to them in a practical manner.
Q: If we don’t see progress within ourselves and see we are continually getting upset, we shouldn’t let that bother us?
R: Keep observing, keep watching, keep focusing on the Self, and there will be nobody to ask who is bothered or who is not bothered. You only ask such a question when your attention is more on the bothering than it is on the Self. If you change your attention to the Self, see what happens.
Q: The question is, is that gradual?
R: For some people. It depends on how much time you give to it.
Q: We can’t just turn our emotions off. When I go to work sometimes, I find such an intensity there, with people snapping at each other, I get caught up in it. Of course I become aware, usually after the fact, asking myself, “will this disappear gradually by abiding in myself, or will I someday suddenly awaken?”
R: In the morning, when you first open your eyes, that’s the time to work on yourself. Ask yourself, “Who am I? How did I get here?” Reconcile yourself with yourself. If you do that upon first waking up, the whole day will be good, without these problems. Just don’t go straight to work. Get up an hour early if you have to. See yourself for what you are, and realize the truth. Focus on the self. Ask yourself, “Who Am I?” and wait. Concentrate on the source of “I Am,” or say to your-self, “I Am, I Am,” and then go to work. Then you will see changes. You will build up a power that you will carry with yourself all day long.
Q: To follow that “I” to its source, to find the “I” by self-enquiry and abide in it seems to mean non-existence, statelessness.
R: Don’t worry about being non-existent. Simply observe the “I,” and watch it going into the heart.
Q: It is not so much a following then, but that it happens by itself?
R: It happens by itself.
Q: When I contemplate “I Am,” does it mean that already I am the Self?
R: Yes it does.
Q: Robert, it’s because we have the concept we are not the Self that we miss the fact that we are abiding in the Self all the time. As Ramesh Balsekar has said, we only have the doubt we are not the Self, but the truth is we have always been it.
R: Exactly. When we don’t see that, we go through all these troubles and play all these games, until we realize we are the Self. Then that is it.
Q: If we don’t have the Self and are saying, “I am it,” what is to keep that from becoming a parrot-like repetition?
R: It doesn’t become a parrot-like repetition if you do it with your breath. When you inhale, say “I.” When you exhale, say “Am.” A subtle change of energy takes place within the Self, and you will become more peaceful, calm, and soon you will lose all identification with your body and mind. You will remain as “I Am.”
Q: Robert, when we do self-enquiry, actually that is the beginning step to find the “I.” When we develop a sense of abiding in the “I,” there isn’t much need of enquiry because we go straight to the abidance.
R: Self-enquiry has no beginning. If you practice “Who Am I,” it sounds simple, but is very powerful. Only say, “Who Am I?” then pause, then say it again, “Who Am I?” Never answer the question. Just keep repeating “Who Am I?” Eventually, something will happen.
Q: I’m asking, if you develop a sense of self-abidance, you can watch states come and go, watch identification with the ego, and then self-enquiry is not necessary if you can go directly to that.
R: If you are abiding in the Self, there is no ego to watch — there is only the Self. You watch the ego with the mind, not with the Self. If you abide in the Self, there is nothing else. You are finished. You’re cooked. Everything else is of the mind. When I say abide in the Self, I mean for-get everything and be yourself. There is nothing else to know at that point.

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Filed under Advaita, Ramana Maharshi, Robert Adams

Tagged as Advaita, awareness, Being, Consciousness, I Am, Meditation, Ramana Maharshi, Robert Adams, self-inquiry

December 17, 2012 · 9:05 am

The ‘Spiritual I’ – Lucy Cornelssen

There is another rather harmless mistake which happens regularly to beginners. Many of them are blessed with various glimpses of the higher life, which they have entered. These carry the stamp of a genuine change of consciousness, and of course the sadhaka is happy, and convinced that he has made real progress. There is no harm in it, because he soon has to face the fact that his ‘experience’ is fading away, never to return. When this happens again and again, he learns to understand these sparks as what they are, glimpses from another dimension which want to teach him to discriminate between, the different dimensions but which also lure him on in his spiritual endeavour. They only become a pitfall, when he, by vanity or impatience, gets stuck in one of them, taking it for final Realisation. Then his further progress is blocked.

The mark by which this pitfall is recognised is ‘I’ have realised…’ This ‘I’ can only be a ‘wrong I’, because it is not the ‘I’ that realises.

The duty of the sadhaka is to watch himself ceaselessly; he has to know what is going on within himself. There is a serious risk in doing this only when he looks too much at others. When he does, his ‘personal I’ at once makes comparisons; and the result will be: ‘I am holier than thou’.

With this idea he gives his ‘personal I’ a strong chance to develop into a ‘spiritual I’, which is much worse than his original quite ordinary ‘I’, strengthened by all his previous spiritual effort. The result is a spiritual pride, the worse the more advanced the sadhaka has become, because his attainments, serve only to confirm his ‘right’ to be proud of his success. But even if he perceives the gentle Voice from within, warning him against this trend going on in him and reminding him of the secret of real ‘attainment’, silent humility, and even if he is quite prepared to accept the warning, there is still the risk that the cunning ego now is concealing itself behind his pride in his humility!

There is only one remedy against these and all other pitfalls on the Path to Realisation: Alert Awareness, relentlessly focusing on the treacherous ego…I.

Luckily the sadhaka is not left alone in his secret struggle against himself on his lonesome journey towards his high destination. How could he ever reach It. Were It not already within himself? And It never fails to send signals of warning when the traveller is nearing a pitfall or has even been caught by one due to inadvertance.

His is a journey like that in fairy-tales, when the hero has to go through many adventures, to fight against many enemies and even demons, to win the princess at the end. The further he proceeds, the mightier the obstacles.

The most cunning pitfall on the path of the sadhaka is the last one, hidden in Realisation Itself.

The first Revelation of the Self is temporary. “Jnana, once revealed, needs time to steady itself.” (Talks, 141).

The danger is not in the sliding back; it is natural to most sadhakas and is met quite naturally by continuing one’s practice faithfully, which in its turn will lead to further Revelations of the Self until finally there is no sadhaka left, but the Self only.

If, on the other hand, the sadhaka tries to ‘hold on’ to that first Revelation, in spite of his Inner Guide warning him, (Who is holding on?), then the ego…I slinks again in where the Self is veiled again and distorts the Revelation of the Self into the cry of victory: ‘I have realised!’ Blindfolded by the Bliss of the final ‘success’ (‘whose success?’) he never stops to scrutinize his condition and thus never finds out the truth: That he became a yogabhrastha, one who has fallen out of his yoga, his ‘union’.

The new and definitive disguise of his ego…I is ‘the Guru’, and this last and most powerful pitfall never releases him, because he never recognises that he is its victim.

There are nowadays many whose Guru-pitfall caught them even much earlier on their path.

-Lucy Cornelssen

Excerpt From Hunting the ‘I’, Obstacles and Pitfalls, pages 38-40

Two related posts can be found at Awakening Before Enlightenment and Enlightenment, Before, During and After.

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Filed under Advaita, Lucy Cornelssen, Ramana Maharshi

Tagged as Advaita, awareness, Being, Consciousness, Enlightenment, Meditation, Ramana Maharshi, Samadhi, self-inquiry, witness, witnessing

December 14, 2012 · 8:14 pm

Overcoming The Ghost – Lucy Cornelssen

So what can we do?

There is only one way to overcome the ghost…to watch it. Do not fight, do not resist. Only try to watch it, quietly but ceaselessly. In other words, develop an unconcerned witness consciousness towards men, things and happenings without, but particularly towards yourself within. It means to carry on the calmness of the mind gained in your meditation to cover your whole day. You will distinctly feel it as an undercurrent of peace and detachment.

Of course, as soon as you succeed, the ghost-‘I’ will immediately try to hide itself in this witness-consciousness at the feeling ‘I am the witness’. This again is only a thought. But to be the witness without any I-consciousness is the pure mind at the threshold of Reality.

While following the transformation of your personal ‘I’ into the impersonal ‘witnessing’, you cut at the root of all your ‘personal’ shortcomings, vices and weaknesses, your passions and evil habits, because the root of all this unpleasant ‘you’ is just that personal ‘I’. Try to imagine yourself in the mood of the ‘unconcerned witness’ described above, and you will see that in that state it is impossible to think or act in a negative way, because in that mood you are, though only momentarily, beyond the personal ‘I’. Your sadhana is to keep yourself permanently in the state of ‘detached witnessing’ of all and everything, including the personal ‘I’ when and wherever it should try to raise its head.

In the silent Light of being witnessed it cannot survive. Such ‘witnessing’ will soon grow into pure Awareness, aware only of Itself.

In the words of Ramana Maharshi: “The Truth is that the Self is constant and un-intermittent Awareness.” (Talks, 454).

And in another context: “The essence of mind is only Awareness or Consciousness. When the ego, however, dominates it it functions as the reasoning, thinking or sensing faculty. The cosmic mind being not limited by the ego, has nothing separate from itself and therefore is only aware. This is what the Bible means by ‘I am that I AM’.” (Talks, 188).

Lucy Cornelssen

Excerpt from Hunting The ‘I’, Meditation, pages 31-32

Attention! Attention! – Dada Gavand

An interview with Dada Gavand by Suma Varughese

In his simple, serene way, Dada Gavand teaches to the world that watchful, attentive awareness alone can set the mind free

Sage-philosopher Dada Gavand has a stark and simple philosophy. Watch the patterns of your mind attentively and with awareness. That is all you need to reclaim your heritage of lasting peace and bliss.

So this was his paradise-a clearing in the Yeor Hills on the outskirts of hot and dusty Thane, near Mumbai. A few houses stand gracefully, and at ease, among the trees and the underfoot growth. Birdsong rippled through the air. Hens were scrabbling in the mud, as their chicks huddled under their wings. A few feet away, a black and white kitten, its tail curving in sheer joy of life, pretended to pounce on the hens, who pecked on, unperturbed. A young girl stood in an overgrown yard watching life go by. All was peaceful, simple, natural.

So was the picture book house we stopped at-a narrow two-storey building with sloping tiled roofs. White doves clustered around the gables, and swooped down to drink from the water-holder. Guava and other trees grew robustly in neat round concrete-lined beds. A sunshade with chairs was placed invitingly on one side of the garden. As we stood there and breathed in the visceral peace of the place, we had a precursor of the personality of the owner of the house.

The man who warmly welcomed us was not young. Eighty-five or thereabouts, he was lean and spry, with an alert, lively face, honed to its essence. His movements were fluid and quick and when he sat cross-legged as we talked, his torso was erect and still. He radiated a friendliness and an acceptance that put us at ease instantly. There were no trappings of conventional religion. No pictures of deities or saffron robes or agarbatti. No offerings of flowers and fruits. No genuflection either. He addressed us as matter-of-factly as a tutor would his students.

Dada Gavand is not an advocate of conventional religion, or of any of the tried and tested paths to enlightenment. His prescription is simple: attentive watchful awareness of the patterns of thought. This act alone is enough to vaporize the thoughts and set you free from the burden of the mind. If this is strikingly close to J. Krishnamurti‘s philosophy, it is not without reason. He spent some time with Krishnamurti before he moved on to forge his own inner journey.

Born in 1917 in Mumbai as Dattaram Madhavrao Gavand, his spiritual quest unfolded early. Though born in comfortable surroundings, he chafed at the convention and hypocrisy of society, and the dehumanizing impact of materialism. But he was the eldest and, on his father‘s untimely death, had to assume the responsibilities of taking care of his siblings, which included arranging for their marriages. On the third day of the marriage of the youngest sibling, Dada, as he was universally known, disappeared from home to seek his spiritual destiny. After eight months of solitary seeking and questioning at Mount Sajjangad, he experienced a mystical explosion in his inner domain, a sudden flow of timeless energy within, and a state of peace and ecstasy never known before.

After this, he stayed in semi-solitude for 14 years on Mount Mahabaleshwar. Since 1975, Dada has been sharing his understanding by extensive travel and lectures in the USA, Canada, Europe and of course India. Compiling his experiences and thoughts is his book Beyond the Mind that is about the deeper significance of living. Written in dialogic form, the book tries to answer ideas of liberation, sexuality, healing, imprisonment, expression etc. He has also held numerous meditation camps called Exploration into Oneself, but today he prefers to work with small groups and individuals in order to communicate on a personal level. Where he was once a keen sportsman and freedom fighter, he now writes poetry, excels in photography, and campaigns for freedom of the inner kind.

Excerpts from an intense interview:

What are the main tenets of your philosophy?

I don‘t have a set philosophy. Whatever I say is the outcome of the present moment. Besides, I don‘t trust words. The mind uses them, as it does everything else, to escape from the hard task of changing itself. The basic challenge of man is to discover that quality which is hidden within us and allow it to express itself. But this is difficult because of the blocks the mind sets up, such as the pre-occupation with things, even with reading spiritual literature.

What is the way to overcome these blocks?

There is no set answer. What is the hindrance blocking that quality? We need to be attentive to that block and that‘s the main challenge. Yogis and saints have found out several ways and techniques, but all are used by the mind to keep it busy. I believe only watchful awareness will set us free.

But can this approach work for all?

Why not? The conditioning of the mind is the same.

It is believed that different paths appeal to different temperaments.

By creating different paths we are creating separation and divisiveness. Conflicts arise because each thinks his path is the best.

What have been the significant events of your own spiritual journey?

I listened to masters, even read a few books. But I found that this was my own journey. Nobody can help. What is required is watchful, attentive awareness. It‘s a journey into the inner self, that‘s all. But we hesitate, and the mind is extroverted. It hesitates to take a turn, to enter within. The whole riches of the world, all the virtues, are basically inside. On the outside there is only the concept of virtues. Try to watch these concepts. The mind can never be virtuous or divine. All that is inside.

Can meditation help move the mind within?

Meditation is the fallout of attention-watchful attention. It‘s not a spiritual act. Meditation to me it‘s only a search into oneself, to dispel the patterns of thoughts, to enter the tranquility within.

Can the pursuit of this tranquility be balanced with the demands of a householder‘s life?

Oh, yes. We all need the basics of life for survival. But be balanced. Do not create more wants. We collect more and more of everything, including books. This last is intellectual greed. The mind becomes greedy for knowledge. This is the burden of intellect.

How do you get the mind to let go of this obsession with things?

Look at the world at large. What is so great about it? We never have the time to look at it quietly, independently. What we see is just the continuity of life. To me life is a discovery. We have to find that dynamism, energy.

What is the state of one who has reached inner tranquility?

Abundant peace and contentment. And whenever there is a challenge, there is a response, a creative response that does not resort to memory.

Looking at the world today, what do you think lies ahead for mankind?

The world was always like this. There is not much difference. Krishna, Ram, Buddha came and society digested them all, but it remains the same.

What do you think of the belief in a new age, when society as a whole will be transformed?

Only a human being can achieve enlightenment, not mankind. Only he who is honest, sensible, sensitive, and sincere can hope to achieve this state. And there are very few of such.

So there‘s no likelihood that mankind will attain lasting peace?

Man has always hoped for this. But it depends on each of us. The reality is that we can transform only ourselves. Nature wants man to transform, to become like it. To come back to the natural state is fulfillment. To become free of all obsessions-that is enlightenment.

Does being with nature provide a way within?

Become aware of nature. Become sensitive to it. An intellectual appreciation of it is not enough. We have worshipped the intellect too much. Now we have reached a dead end. The intellect has really obliged us. It has given us so much. But if we want to move further, this intellect is not going to oblige. Its function is over. The mind is secondhand activity, which is born of memory. People have spent so many years in searching for enlightenment. Is so much time necessary? That which is past is over. We avoid freshness of the moment by indulging in the past.

What was your own search like?

I came from a business family. We were fairly rich. But from an early age I was aware of the absurdity of the life we led. Everyone was copying everyone else. We were made by our surroundings-traditions, culture, family background, media. I saw that I was the result of environmental influences, nothing else. I saw people enslaved by social conditioning till the end of their lives. I wondered if another way of life was possible. A mighty intelligence had created the universe and here I was, living like a robot. I wondered if there was a deeper significance to life. At this stage, I visited many ashrams. I went to the Aurobindo ashram, I met Ramana Maharshi and Krishmanurti. I was with Krishnamurti for a while and then I told him that I no longer wanted to read his words or anyone‘s words. I wanted to discover for myself. And do you know what he said? He said: ‘‘I am so glad.” At these ashrams, I saw good people, happy, contented. What was that state of mind, to be contented? I soon came to know that no one could give me the answers. I had to discover them for myself. This whole outer is the manifestation of the mind. But there had to be something intrinsic. Where did that lie? I wondered about the energy that emerged from us, creating desires. We were using that energy for trivial reasons, merely dancing at the periphery of life. We need to ponder about these questions independently. Pondering is a sensitive activity. To look without ideas and opinions and without thought. Is it possible? And generally, there is no time for that. Thought activity is so strong.

When did you find answers to your questions?

There‘s a kind of breakthrough when the situation is right. It is not in our hands. It is a great blessing of nature. He who aspires will be helped by nature. But we must have that strong passion. Our passions are smaller. Born out of other things.

Is there God?

There is another dimension, which is divine, timeless. It‘s an energy. A very intelligent energy. To discover that is the touch of the divine. ‘God’ is a misused term. The mind creates concepts and goes after that. Thought is the barrier between you and the divine. Understand the designs of thought and be aware of them. And then you will dispel the thought patterns. That is important.

What is the relationship between spirituality and creativity? You, for instance, have created copious poetry.

Creation happens in the sensitivity of understanding. After that you are changed. You become highly sensitive. I never wrote poetry. It just came out of me. Suddenly a door had opened from within.

Post enlightenment, what is your role in life?

I have to live life. I don‘t have my own drives and ambitions. I have to live like a simple, humble entity.

This interview can be found online at lifepositive.com.

To read more from Dada Gavand look here.

Sunyata – A Rare-Born Mystic

Sunyata was born on small Danish farm in 1890 with the name of Alfred Julius Emmanuel Sorenson. At the time of his birth, his two sisters were 12 and 14 years old. As he was only educated up to the 8^th grade, he would often joke that he had escaped “headucation.” During his childhood, a big shock occurred when he was 14 and the family farm was sold to strangers who had no respect for the land. He began an apprenticeship in horticulture, and eventually moved to England where he became “a simple gardener.”

As a gardener, he worked from 6 in the morning to 6 in the evening in such big estates as Forty Hall, Sunbury Court, Hampton Court, and Dartington Hall. While he was working on the gardens of Dartington Hall in Devonshire, Ragindranath Tagore, the Indian poet, came to speak. Emmanuel (this means the “indwelling God” and was Sunyas’ favorite Western name for himself) played a Beethoven quartet for Tagore on an old gramophone; Tagore was so impressed with the quality of Emmanuel’s silence (lack of willfulness and ego desires) that he invited him “to come to India to teach silence.” But how can you teach something except by being It? Being It he was, and his arrival in India in 1930—in his 40^th year—marked the beginning of a new phase in his life’s drama. People immediately thrust titles upon him like ‘baba’, ‘saint’, and ‘guru’, but none of these names seemed true to his being. He did accept small gifts from people, but refused them if they were more than he needed at the time. For 45 years he was to live in India, where his work was simple to BE and his days as a gardener a thing of the past. Everything was given to him. In Sunyata’s words: “We live so close to Heaven.”

In order to better grasp the next chapter of this story, it is necessary to know something about Ramana Maharshi (1880-1950), the Sage of Arunachala, who was made famous in the West by Paul Brunton’s book A Search in Secret India. Ramana had realized the Self at the age of 16, and lived the rest of his life near the sacred hill named Arunachala. Paul Brunton had visited Ramana in the early 1930’s and was struck by the power of his silence. Although Emmanuel first heard of Ramana Maharshi from an American whom he met in Kashmir, he subsequently real Paul Brunton’s book, and decided to make the pilgrimage to visit Ramana.

Once he arrived there in 1936, Emmanuel soon realized that he had never before met this quality of consciousness in any living being. Later in his life, he said about this meeting:

Never before had I awared such integral Self-Radiance in any human form, such light of Silence. One was being fed just awaring him. At the first sight of him, I felt no excitement or even awe, no solemnity or ecstasy, simply a calm recognition, a glad contentment, and gratitude in his darshan.

When Emmanuel first arrived, Ramana asked him his name and nationality, and inquired about mutual friends and his sadhana (the Way he had come). Emmanuel was put up in one of the ashram guest houses and during his two week stay spent many of his days sitting in the back of the meditation hall soaking in the quality of Ramana’s radiance. Unlike most of the other Westerners who came to visit the ashram, Emmanuel did not ask even one question; other than his response to those few initial questions from Ramana, there was no verbal communication between them. Emmanuel was therefore quite surprised when later heard from Paul Brunton that (soon after his departure) Ramana had referred to him as janam-siddha—“one of the rare-born mystics.” When Emmanuel heard this phrase “rare-born mystic,” he had no idea of what a “mystic” was or what it meant to be one who was “rare-born.” Emmanuel soon acquired a copy of The Oxford Book of English Mystical Verse in the hope of finding out what it meant to be a “mystic”; at the same time he began to examine his own childhood to see why he had been able to so easily loosen his identification with ego-consciousness. It was this exploration that was the origin of the reflections called Memory.

It was during Emmanuel’s third visit to Ramana Maharshi in 1940 that he acquired the name that he was to use for the rest of his life. He was just sitting quietly in meditation when he awared an effulgence—a spiritual flood of light—especially radiated and directed upon his form and suddenly out of the Silence can an (unsolicited) telepathic message from Ramana Maharshi in the form of these five English words:

We are always aware sunyata.

What surprised him most in this message was the word “always”—although he had often transmuted Shakespeare’s phrase that “ripeness is all” into his own saying “awareness is all,” up to that moment he had never realized who he was is always “aware.” He also asked himself who is this “we”? Did it mean Ramana Maharshi and himself or did it include everone? Eventually he concluded that “we” is the indwelling, innerstanding Word, Logos, Sophia—the androgynous EmmanuEL. Another surprise was that Ramana, a Hindu sage, had used the Buddhis term “sunyata”, a term often translated as “the void” or “full solid emptiness”. The Buddhist doctrine of sunyata asserts that all beings and phenomena are free of any soul or intrinsic nature; this means that although people, things, and events appear on the outside to be real and substantial, they are actually—when innerstood—ephemeral and insubstantial. Sunyata took Ramana’s five words as recognition, initiation, mantra, and name. Thereafter, he referred to both himself and the hut in which he lived as “Sunyata”. Like a crystal that reflects many colors yet itself remains pure, clear, unaffected, that’s who he would always be, no-thing-ness. Tat twam asi, he was fond of saying—“ Thou art That”.

For the next four decades, Sunyata continued to live in his Himalayan hut not far from Almora. About his new home, he said, “I was contented in Denmark though I could see the others regarded me as an oddity. In England I felt freer. In India I felt at home. But in the Himalayas I feel closest to Heaven.”

During all these years in India, he was never employed, but found money being pushed on him. He was once offered 20 rupees a month ($2.50), but only accepted 5. Then in 1950, the Birla Foundation in New Delhi (shoes purpose is to assist saints and sadhus) asked him if he’d accept 100 rupees a month and he agreed to accept 20. “It was more than I needed at the time,” he admitted, “but I thought prices might rise.” It was later raised to 50 rupees where it remained for more than 20 years. Even after inflation made it hard to live on 50, Sunyata would never consider getting a raise through asking.

Living nearby to his Himalayan hut on Crank’s Ridge were such neighbors as the Tibetan Buddhist scholars Lama Anagarika Govinda and Dr. Walter Y. Evans-Wentz. He would often make pilgrimages to the plains of India during the winter season, and return to his hut—high in the mountains—when the plains began to sizzle with the summer heat. He became personally acquainted with such leaders of the Indian independence movement as Mahatma Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru. He also came to know Anandamayi Ma and Neem Karoli Baba and many realized beings who are virtually unknown in the West.

The story of Sunyata’s stay in India would not be complete without mentioning his plucky black-and-white dog name “Wuti”. Wuti was brought from Tibet in a sack along with a lion cub in 1950, and he became Sunyata’s constant companion for the next 9 years. Sunyata named him Wuti because that was the sound he made when he barked. And Indian saint named Anandamayi Ma looked at Wuti and announced, “This is not a dog.” Thereafter, she permitted Wuti into the inner sanctum of her ashram where no dogs were allowed. After Wuti died, Sunyata changed Wuti’s name to Wuji and used this term—Wuji—to refer to his own higher Self. When Sunyata was asked why he changed his name from Wuti to Wuji, he replied: “Adding ‘ji’ to a name is what is done in India to show respect—the dog needed less bark and more bite.”

Sunyata would have been happy and content to live in India for the remainder of his bodily-life. He never had any desire to go anywhere, let alone to America. In November 1973, a group of seekers from California associated with the Alan Watts Society went to India to visit Lama Govinda, Sunyata’s friend and neighbor. A local villager just happened to mention to this group that there lived a solitary hermit-type-ancient one who they might want to visit. They went to Sunyata’s hut and decided that he indeed was and Enlightened One. One of the group members told him “You’ll be in California next year.” Sunyata protested: “But I have nothing to teach and nothing to sell.” The gentleman replied: “That’s why we want you!”—and off he trotted. Eventually, one of these visitors sent Sunyata a round-trip plane ticket to California with the promise: “Reality-wise, Sunyata need not do anything.”

When he was invited to settle in America, Sunyata believed that his life was drawing to an end; here he was a man in his 80’s who had spent many of the last decades in silence. Over the years, however, he had developed a language to talk about his Reality and had discovered that there was an unusually good rapport with some of the spiritual seekers who had come from the West to visit India. “Prarabdha karma,” Sunyata once explained, “is the karma that cannot be changed in one’s lifetime.” So it was is prarabdha karma to first come to America at the tender young age of 84. One of the few places in America that had ever really interested him was — coincidentally — California. When he was a young man living in England, he had been exposed to the teachings of Theosophists who had spoken about a New Race of people being born in several geographical locations, one of which was supposed to be in California. If a New Race was being born, he wanted to be there for the birthing.

So for the last six years of his life, he made his home in California. “I take my home with me wherever I go,” he said. He made no effort “to do” anything—his mode was simple “to be”. Many people claimed that significant changes in their life would occur after meeting him. “I do nothing, it just happens,” he would always say.

“Every thing always happens rightly,” he would say to his fellow pilgrims, “all is right that seems most wrong.”

While crossing a busy intersection in Fairfax, California on the morning of Sunday, August 5^th, 1984, he was struck by a car. He was taken to nearby Ross Hospital, but by that evening he had entered into a coma. He lived another eight days, but never regained consciousness.

-From Sunyata: The Life and Sayings of a Rare-Born Mystic

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Tagged as Anandamayi Ma, awareness, Being, Consciousness, Ramana Maharshi, self-inquiry, Sunyata

January 12, 2012 · 5:28 pm

Enlightenment, before, during and after…. – Rani Willems

Enlightenment, before, during and after….

Every seeker wants Enlightenment.
Most people perceive that to be a state of ongoing bliss and oneness and believe that after that, life is easy and simple forever after, because of the eternal expansion into the beyond.

While it is true that there is something called “the enlightenment Experience” which has all of these characteristics, the true enlightened life is something quite different. The bliss is not the emotional experience we can know through the ego. It is beyond that. This truth is revealed overtime, bit-by-bit as we grow into who we are and lose our ego identity.

Some parts of the learning are guaranteed:
We have to first recognize who we are beyond our mind and body to the point that a shift of perspective, of context occurs, but then we have to crash and come down from the enlightenment high. We need the courage to admit that every experience wears off, even after a few years, that clarity can be lost again and that identification with the mind can come back. That nothing is permanent and that to reach higher peaks we need to pass through different valleys. Failing is an essential part of the path. When we have spiritual success our ego grows side by side, when we fail, it is diminished and is ground down.

The Enlightenment experience is the end of the search but surely the beginning of the path. (Or as I often say, the search moves from the horizontal to the vertical dimension.) Often it takes the loss of that experience, for us to be truly committed to the discipline of the spiritual life. We have seen paradise. We have tasted the natural state and now it is gone. What is left is that we are constantly confronted with our failing, our fears, clinging and despair. We must open, and open deeper into the pain and fear, letting it cook us, break us and pulverize us, so we can truly disappear as a separate self. When we do not have the proper understanding, the proper context, the valleys are very difficult to move through.

What follows is my own experience of this process. May it be of help to other travelers on the path.

By the mid-nineties my life looked like I had made it. At least on the outside. I lived in India in a very beautiful area outside of town. I was a respected member of the ashram that I was a part of. I loved the work I did as a therapist; the relationship I was in was wonderful, rewarding and fun. At least that was what I was telling myself. The house we had built up was splendid; we had several servants, cats, dogs, fishponds etc. We lived the successful life of the neo sannyasin. Daily meditation was comfortable; I had come to settle in the comfort of knowing how to leave the mind behind and experience bliss. I had found a good refuge from pain. What more could I ask for?

I told myself I was fulfilled, denying the fact that I was always feeling inferior to my lover because I brought in a lot less money, denying that I felt deeply insecure about my capacities as a therapist and denying so many other little facts. In fact denial had become my way of life and I can see in retrospect that I vaguely knew it always, but it was too threatening to admit it to myself. Compensation was an art that I had mastered since early childhood.

Then one day my lover left. The hole I fell in was profound; it was as if every time I fell into that hole it became deeper. Determined to finish with it once and for all (ego always thinks in terms of permanent elimination) I dove into it for about a year and did some intense therapy, until I rediscovered the Awareness intensive group. In this group you ask yourself the koan: “Who am I” from very early morning till late at night. The “results” were amazing. For the next year I participated in each and every one of these 3 or 7-day groups. Usually it would take me 24 hours of struggling before I would pop into another dimension; the realm of oneness, clarity and peace. I got addicted to the highs, as they would lift me straight out of all my unresolved pain. I learned how to “do” it. Popping koans became my specialty. For a while I would come down as soon as the group was over but then it started to happen that the highs would not go down anymore. The clarity would not leave me anymore and peace was more or less permanently present. In other words I had accumulated a lot of energy (shakti). Now greater breakthroughs and greater revelations came. I was finally free from all my suffering!! I had found a way out!! I even remember now some thoughts that were immediately dismissed like: “Now I never have to worry about money anymore, I have what everyone wants.” “Now I never have to bother about sex and relating anymore because I am beyond them.”

The ego was always lurking just by the side and in a way I knew it but I was too ignorant about the true mechanics of the mind to fully realize what that meant. I told myself that I was staying clear of ego because I was aware of it. I looked in Osho’s words for a context to understand my precise situation but did not find much. Maybe I did not know how to formulate the question because I thought that I was already enlightened but I found nothing much that was truly helpful. I felt very alone and thought that this is what he meant when he said that in the end you are alone and I decided to trust my experience.

For a while I met with a woman who had declared herself enlightened and she helped me clear away some doubt. On top of it she gave me all the conformation I was looking for! (This is exactly what the mind wants: confirmation, and so unconsciously we look for someone who will give it to us.) However the most dominant experience was one of joy and peace. The shift was dramatic and profound. I wanted to share it immediately with whoever wanted to hear it. There was a very genuine and naive sense of wanting to help others out of their suffering. The intention was clean and innocent as far as I could see. Not knowing that as long as there is ego our intention is never 100% pure.

Someone later described people who declare their enlightenment prematurely as little girls who dress up in their mother’s clothes and wear high heels pretending they are adults. It was a bit like that, now that I look back. I felt like a kid with a bag of candy that I wanted to share. And even though friends avoided me like the plague eventually people showed up who wanted to hear what I had to say. Many seekers today (like I had been myself) want only one thing and that is to be lifted out of their pain with a shortcut, and shortcuts I had!

Of course they were in awe. I was generating a lot of cosmic energy; everyone in the room could feel it and whomever I talked to or looked at, shifted for some time into a state beyond the mind. I was blown away by it as well. I was loved and revered. I finally felt worthy of that love as well. Pride started to slip in. After all this person that had been humiliated so often (me) had made it and was someone. I saw the pride but told myself that because I was seeing it, it did not matter. Everything was anyway all happening in the ONE and therefore temporary. My fame grew fast, more and more people attended the satsangs and had great awakening experiences. They were the proof of my “rightness.” My ego swelled up again a little more.

From time to time the old insecurity knocked on my door but I would not open. I did not want to acknowledge that it was there. You have to understand the very delicate situation one is in. You feel like you have transcended suffering, which had been the motive for the search all along. And then to realize that this is not true is not an easy feat. The ego will fight it. The soul has an imprint of ego protections that is centuries old. It does not give way that easily.

For many years on the path, all we want from the search is freedom from suffering. Only much later is our intention pure and clean enough for us to only want what is, howsoever painful or uncomfortable it may be. So I felt very expanded because the awakening was strong and I could channel huge amounts of energy and did not really know that they were all passing through and were therefore colored by the ego. All the while my ego was expanding beyond its wildest fantasies, without me being very aware of it. It became more and more transparent and smart and spiritual, it told itself it is nobody and it is not there!!! And it succeeded very well at fooling even itself. This ego is very smart. Because I kept sharing every pitfall I saw with my students, I thought that I was free of it. Not seeing that sharing was not enough for the ego to lay low. That it needs absolute dedication and willingness to stay vigilant at all times. That it needs the scalpel of the surgeon all the time!! The thing is through the sharing I believed that I WAS being honest and vigilant. And to some extend of course that was also true.

The enlightenment experience is always a mixture of clear and honest intention and a power hungry ego. If we do not have an alive teacher at the time of awakening, we are in great trouble. We simply cannot travel alone at this point; precisely because we can hardly see the ego by ourselves.

My fame kept growing and tirelessly I traveled the planet, thinking I was doing something very good for humanity. Now I see that it was the old primal story all over again: I needed to help everyone who was in pain otherwise I had no right of existing. Burn out came after two years. I had to stop. The body collapsed and I was shocked to find the first thing that arose when the doctor said I needed to rest was: “Who will love me now?” In a way that was the beginning of the fall. Of course honest as I was, I shared all this with the students in satsang, showing how much ego is still accompanying this awakening experience. I shared my pain and errors and found to my amazement that not many wanted to hear the truth if it did not sound blissful.

Over the four years that I was teaching, I found that rarely someone wanted to hear the truth. Many people come to this type of satsang because they want to be told that there are shortcuts and often they want to adore someone. Not many want to hear about the painstaking work of purifying our minds and healing our pains. In fact, in the satsangs, the jokes about working on yourself are plentiful.

The beauty as well as the difficulty of our time is that spiritual knowledge and secrets are available at the click of a mouse. All the scriptures are public. In the past this was not the case, information was given only in relation to the students/disciples advancing in practice and experience. Now we do not have to practice meditation or do any hard work in order to receive the teaching and so the danger is that we only absorb the teaching in a mental way.

In the meantime I had moved into a relationship (after much initial protest from my side) and this provided another reality check. I was not as beyond as I thought I was. Learning to love and be loved provided and still provides endless lessons. I took a year off and met with a lot of old childhood pain and present loneliness. First only my old friends had despised me but I had been welcomed with open arms into the satsang community, but now also the satsang community threw me out. I was not supposed to feel pain and be honest about it. Finally though, I was being able to welcome it and feel it without further manipulation. I took some months in silence and started to feel again the need to meditate. (Of course in the years of being nobody there had been no one to meditate.) Still all the while I still enjoyed mostly the bliss and peace of being at one.

Then the real hit came. My best friend and working partner was diagnosed with cancer. For some months we kept it up, saying that it was okay. That we felt no fear or pain, that dying was as good as living and that everything that comes must also go again. But then we cracked, both of us. I spent the last weeks at her side, nursing her at home until she died in my arms. That split me right in two. There was simply so much pain. I was overwhelmed by it, consumed by it, helpless with it and bewildered by the fact that I was feeling all this again. My sharing became again more honest, I no longer pretended anything anymore or offered miracles and shortcuts. Of course people came less and less. Slowly I saw that what was left was a handful of sincere seekers whom I actually had not much more to offer than my friendship and limited wisdom and experience.

I realized that I was longing for guidance. I was looking left and right in old and new teachings until I found what I was looking for in my new teacher Aziz. His Zen hits were painful and not always welcomed but over time I understood more and received for the first time a map of reality that resonated with me. My own master had been too wide, too rich for me to see a clear and practical path. He spoke about so many practices and left it to me what to choose. This had brought me were I was. I felt and feel a deep respect and gratitude for him but I needed more. I needed personal guidance from an alive teacher. Now I found this very precise teaching that resonated in my soul as a reflection of reality. He guided me in my practice and taught me a complete new way of meditation. He also told me to stop teaching but I was afraid to stop. It was my only source of income. I believed that I needed the money, I needed the recognition and I needed somehow the position (more for myself than for others). But above all I needed to NOT let myself know THAT IT WAS OVER. That I had had an amazing opening and enlightening experience. One that lasted for years even and that bit-by-bit it had slipped away.

Slowly I have come to understand that corruption lives in all of us and that it is not entirely possible to not be corrupt. After all we do most everything we do for ourselves. By keeping the meetings going I could still tell myself that it was not over. I could continue to dream a bit more and tell myself that it would pick up again. Or worse I would blame it on the low quality motivation of the seekers that it was not happening anymore.

But life is generous when the intention is honest. I prayed daily for truth and sincere prayers are always heard. I moved to the west, to the country I was born in, and found it extremely difficult to adjust to that culture after 16 years in India. There came a time where there was no more money. Friends and family needed to keep us afloat. Now I truly crashed. The entire shadow side of the personality appeared. The ego had grown stronger (it keeps growing side by side with our realizations, the more powerful we become the more powerful the ego also becomes). The super ego came back with a vengeance. The self-torture and self-blame returned with the force of a tornado. The Shadow was here, presenting itself loud and clear. I thought that I had met my shadow a long time ago but never to this depth. Shadow exists in relation to light, the more light, the bigger the shadow I found out.

All of a sudden I was identified again with almost each and every single thought. I was emotional from morning till night, apart from the hours that I meditated. And meditate I did, and pray, and move my body to ward off the depression till it could not be warded off anymore. I was in hell and realized that the healing had to happen right here in hell. The money was finished, I started to take a cleaning job and was ready to take any job still dreaming to some extend that after this all was over a new miracle would happen and I would be magically lifted out of here again. And life would be forever good.

But truth does not live in the presence of hope. Giving up our hopes is one of the many prices we have to pay for the priceless pearl. The ego screamed and screamed. It simply did not want to part with the glorious times. My entire life with all its undigested and denied pains came for another round. Thoughts of suicide were my companions. Without the support of my partner and some dear friends, family and a good healer, it would all have been a lot more difficult. The love that I received was so supportive and healing.

Nevertheless I was really lost and only partly grasped what was going on. I needed help. One thing was clear, that there was no way out but only a way through, my only interest became to stay present in the pain and whatever emotion presented itself. I felt lower than I had ever been, and it started to glimpse that: to go down is to go up. I was grateful that Aziz came to the west for another silent retreat! However, at the end of that one-week he announced that he was going to live in seclusion and would no longer be available as a guide and teacher!

Once again on my own and not fully realizing what was happening I prayed for help. My great luck was that a book fell into my lap called “Halfway Up the Mountain” by Mariana Caplan. It brought all the missing pieces in the understanding. This book was about me. It was my story in detail. Here I read about each and every pitfall I had fallen into. It gave me a positive context and sufficient information about the process I was going through. Reading that book was like being in retreat. It reminded me again and again that there was a healing power in this crisis. My dignity was restored again when I started to understand that this is a mechanical response in the mind and not a personal failure or trip. My suffering became more dignified. I learned that disillusionment is not only necessary on the path but a true gift of the Grace of God. It is like you are being weaned off the breast of God and allowed to walk. Of course you fall left and right like any toddler does but eventually you will find balance and walk.

The fall from paradise seems in truth an integral part of the enlightenment process. In fact some teachers say that you have to earn it to deserve it. When we realize that the path we are on is not at all what we thought it would be, and that reality is something completely different than all our illusions about it, we are shocked. This is not an easy transition to make. It is extremely painful and it feels like being skinned alive. And yet this pain magically opens us deeper to what and who we are. Enlightenment comes to life when we embrace our endarkenment in the very same way. We realize deeply that our human reality will always be here, that pain will always be here, that suffering is an integral part of human life. Either we suffer unconsciously or we do it consciously. We realize that the freedom we thought we had found in the bliss and joy of the Enlightenment high is not the real freedom at all. It is much deeper. It is truly accepting what IS.

By the time I had finished reading the book the let go was complete. I closed down all teaching activities, cancelled my ticket to India and am ready for a new chapter in this adventure called life. This time it can happen right here where I am. And I truly do not know anything about where this is going.

No hope and no plan.
Om shanti.
Rani

Presently Rani is back as a spiritual guide / facilitator.
info@rani-willems.org

Here is her website.

As seen on Sannyas News

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Filed under Advaita, Rani Willems

Tagged as Advaita, awareness, Consciousness, Enlightenment, Love, Osho, Ramana Maharshi

November 14, 2011 · 8:34 am

Shiva’s Self-Remembering – Osho

Oh lotus-eyed one, sweet of touch, when singing, seeing, tasting, be aware you are and discover the ever-living.

Civilization is a training in how to become unreal. Tantra is the reverse process – how to prevent yourself from becoming unreal, and if you have already become unreal, how to touch the reality which is hidden within you, how to contact it again, how to be again real. The first thing to be understood is how we go on becoming unreal, and once this process is understood many things change immediately. The very understanding becomes mutation.

Man is born undivided. He is neither a body nor a mind. He is born undivided, as one individual.

He is both body and mind. Even to say that he is both is wrong. He is body-mind. Body and mind are two aspects of his being, not two divisions – two polarities of something which we may call life, energy or anything – X, Y, Z – but body and mind are not two things.

The very process of civilization, education, culture, conditioning, starts with the division. Everyone is taught that he is two, not one, and then, of course, one begins to be identified with the mind and not with the body. The very thinking process becomes your center and the thinking process is just a periphery. It is not the center because you can exist without thinking. Once you existed without thinking: thinking is not a necessity to exist. If you go deep in meditation YOU will be, and there will be no thinking. If you become unconscious YOU will be, but there will be no thinking. Moving into deep sleep YOU will be, but there will be no thinking. Thinking is just on the periphery; your being is somewhere else – deeper than thinking. But you are being taught continuously that you are two, body and mind, and that, really, you are the mind and you possess the body. The mind becomes the master and body becomes the slave, and you go on struggling against the body. This creates a rift, a gap, and that gap is the problem. All neurosis is born out of that gap; all anxiety is born out of that gap.

Your being is rooted in your body, and your body is not just something separate from existence. It is part of it. Your body is the whole universe. It is not something limited, finite. You may not have observed it, but try to observe where your body really ends – where! Do you think that your body ends where your skin ends?

If the sun which is so far away just goes dead, instantly you will be dead here. If the sun rays stop coming, you will be no more here. Your body cannot exist without the sun being there so far away. The sun and you are somehow deeply related. The sun must be included in your body; otherwise you cannot exist. You are part of its rays.

In the morning you see flowers open: their opening is really the rising of the sun. In the night they will close: their closing is the setting of the sun. They are just rays that are spread out. You exist here because there, so far away, the sun exists. Your skin is not really your skin. Your skin goes on spreading; even the sun is included. You are breathing: you can breathe because the air is there, the atmosphere is there. Each moment you exhale and inhale the atmosphere in and out.

If for a single moment there were no air, you would be dead. Your breath is your life. If your breath is your life, then the whole atmosphere is part of you. You cannot exist without it. So where does your body really end? Where is the limit? There is no limit! If you observe, if you go deep, you will find there is no limit. Or, the limit of the universe is your body limit. The whole universe is involved in you, so your body is not just your body; it is your universe and you are grounded in it. Your mind too cannot exist without the body. It is part of it, a process of it.

Division is destructive, and with the division you are bound to become identified with the mind. You think, and without thinking there is no division. You think, and you become identified with your thinking. Then you feel as if you possess the body. This is a complete reversal of the truth. You do not possess the body; neither is the body possessing you. They are not two things. Your existence is one, a deep harmony of opposite poles. But opposite poles are not divided, they are joined together. Only then can they become opposite poles. And the opposition is good. It gives challenge, it gives stamina, it creates energy. It is dialectical.

If you were really one, without opposite poles within, you would be dull and dead. These two opposite poles, body and mind, give you life. They are opposite and at the same time complementary – and basically and ultimately one. One current of energy runs in both. But once we get identified with the thinking process, we think that we are centered in the head. If your legs are cut, you will not feel that YOU are cut. You will say, “My legs are cut.” But if your head is cut, YOU are cut. You are murdered.

If you close your eyes to feel where you are, immediately you will feel you are in your head. You are not there – because when for the first moment you entered life in your mother’s womb, when the male and female atoms met, there was no head. But life was started. You were there, and there was no head. In that first meeting of two alive cells, you were created. The head came later on, but your being was there. Where is that being? It is not in your head. Really, it is nowhere – or everywhere in your body. It is nowhere; you cannot pinpoint where it is. And the moment you pinpoint it you miss the whole thing. It is everywhere. Your life is everywhere; it is spread out all over you. And not only all over you; if you follow it, you will have to go to the very ends of the universe. It is everywhere!

With the identification that “I am my mind,” everything becomes false. You become unreal because this identity is false. This has to be broken. Tantra techniques are to break down this identity. The effort of tantra is to make you headless, uncentered, everywhere or nowhere. And why does humanity, why do human beings become false and unreal with the mind? Because mind is an epiphenomenon – a process which is necessary, useful, but secondary; a process which consists of words, not of realities. The word ‘love’ is not love; the word ‘god’ is not God. But mind consists of words, of a verbal process, and then love itself becomes less significant than the word ‘love’. For the mind, the word is more significant. God becomes less significant than the word ‘God’. For the mind it is so. Words become more meaningful, significant. They become primary, and we start living in words. And the more you live in words the more shallow you become, and you will go on missing the reality which is not words. Reality is existence.

Living in the mind is as if someone is living in a mirror. In the night, if you go to a lake and the lake is silent and there are no ripples, the lake becomes a mirror. You can look at the moon in the lake, but that moon is false – just a reflection. The reflection comes from the real, but the reflection is not real. Mind is just a reflecting phenomenon. The reality is reflected in it, but reflections are not real. And if you get caught in reflections, you will miss reality completely. That is why, with the mind, with mind reflections, everything wavers. A slight wave, a slight wind, will disturb your mind. Reality is not disturbed, but the mind is disturbed by anything. Mind is a reflecting phenomenon, and we are living in mind.

Tantra says come down. Descend from your thrones; come down from your heads. Forget the reflections and move towards the reality. All the techniques which we are discussing are concerned with this: how to be away from the mind so that you can move into reality. Now we will discuss the techniques.

The first technique:

“Oh lotus-eyed one, sweet of touch, when singing, seeing, tasting, be aware you are and discover the ever-living.”

We are living, but we are not aware that we are or that we are living. There is no self-remembering. You are eating or you are taking a bath or you are taking a walk: you are not aware that you are while walking. Everything is, only you are not. The trees, the houses, the traffic, everything is. You are aware of everything around you, but you are not aware of your own being – that you are. You may be aware of the whole world, but if you are not aware of yourself that awareness is false. Why? Because your mind can reflect everything, but your mind cannot reflect you. If you are aware of yourself, then you have transcended the mind.

Your self-remembering cannot be reflected in your mind because you are behind the mind. It can reflect only things which are in front of it. You can just see others, but you cannot see yourself. Your eyes can see everyone, but your eyes cannot see themselves. If you want to see yourself you will need a mirror. Only in the mirror can you see yourself, but then you will have to stand in front of the mirror. If your mind is a mirror, it can reflect the whole world. It cannot reflect you because you cannot stand before it. You are always behind, hidden behind the mirror.

This technique says while doing anything – singing, seeing, tasting – be aware that you are and discover the ever-living, and discover within yourself the current, the energy, the life, the ever-living. But we are not aware of ourselves.

Gurdjieff used self-remembering as a basic technique in the West. The self-remembering is derived from this sutra. The whole Gurdjieffian system is based on this one sutra. Remember yourself, whatsoever you are doing. It is very difficult. It looks very easy, but you will go on forgetting. Even for three or four seconds you cannot remember yourself. You will have a feeling that you are remembering, and suddenly you will have moved to some other thought. Even with this thought that “Okay, I am remembering myself,” you will have missed, because this thought is not self-remembering. In self-remembering there will be no thought; you will be completely empty. And self-remembering is not a mental process. It is not that you say, “Yes, I am.” Saying “Yes, I am,” you have missed. This is a mind thing, this is a mental process: “I am.”

Feel “I am,” not the words “I am.” Don’t verbalize, just feel that you are. Don’t think, FEEL! Try it. It is difficult, but if you go on insisting it happens. While walking, remember you are, and have the feeling of your being, not of any thought, not of any idea. Just feel. I touch your hand or I put my hand on your head: don’t verbalize. Just feel the touch, and in that feeling feel not only the touch, but feel also the touched one. Then your consciousness becomes double-arrowed.

You are walking under trees: the trees are there, the breeze is there, the sun is rising. This is the world all around you; you are aware of it. Stand for a moment and suddenly remember that you are, but don’t verbalize. Just feel that you are. This nonverbal feeling, even if for only a single moment, will give you a glimpse – a glimpse which no LSD can give you, a glimpse which is of the real. For a single moment you are thrown back to the center of your being. You are behind the mirror; you have transcended the world of reflections; you are existential. And you can do it at any time. It doesn’t need any special place or any special time. And you cannot say, “I have no time.” When eating you can do it, when taking a bath you can do it, when moving or sitting you can do it – anytime. No matter what you are doing, you can suddenly remember yourself, and then try to continue that glimpse of your being.

It will be difficult. One moment you will feel it is there, the next moment you will have moved away. Some thought will have entered, some reflection will have come to you, and you will have become involved in the reflection. But don’t be sad and don’t be disappointed. This is so because for lives together we have been concerned with the reflections. This has become a robot-like mechanism. Instantly, automatically, we are thrown to the reflection. But if even for a single moment you have the glimpse, it is enough for the beginning. And why is it enough? Because you will never get two moments together. Only one moment is with you always. And if you can have the glimpse for a single moment, you can remain in it. Only effort is needed – a continuous effort is needed.

A single moment is given to you. You cannot have two moments together, so don’t worry about two moments. You will always get only one moment. And if you can be aware in one moment, you can be aware for your whole life. Now only effort is needed, and this can be done the whole day. Whenever you remember, remember yourself.

“Oh lotus-eyed one, sweet of touch, when singing, seeing, tasting, be aware you are and discover the ever-living:”

When the sutra says “Be aware you are”, what will you do? Will you remember that, “My name is Ram” or “Jesus” or something else? Will you remember that you belong to such and such a family, to such and such a religion and tradition? To such and such a country and caste and creed? Will you remember that you are a communist or a Hindu or a Christian? What will you remember?

The sutra says be aware you are; it simply says “You are”. No name is needed, no country is needed. Let there be simple existence: you are! So don’t say to yourself who you are. Don’t answer that, “I am this and that.” Let there be simple existence, that you are.

But it becomes difficult because we never remember simple existence. We always remember something which is just a label, not existence itself. Whenever you think about yourself, you think about your name, religion, country, many things, but never the simple existence that you are.

You can practice this: relaxing in a chair or just sitting under a tree, forget everything and feel this “you-areness.” No Christian, no Hindu, no Buddhist, no Indian, no Englishman, no German – simply, you are. Have the feeling of it, and then it will be easy for you to remember what this sutra says: “Be aware you are and discover the ever-living.” And the moment you are aware that you are, you are thrown into the current of the ever-living. The false is going to die; only the real will remain.

That is why we are so much afraid of death: because the unreal is going to die. The unreal cannot be forever, and we are attached to the unreal, identified with the unreal. You as a Hindu will have to die; you as Ram or Krishna will have to die; you as a communist, as an atheist, as a theist, will have to die; you as a name and form will have to die. And if you are attached to name and form, obviously the fear of death will come to you, but the real, the existential, the basic in you, is deathless. Once the forms and names are forgotten, once you have a look within to the nameless and the formless, you have moved into the eternal.

“Be aware you are and discover the ever-living”: This technique is one of the most helpful, and it has been used for millennia by many teachers, masters. Buddha used it, Mahavira used it, Jesus used it, and in modern times Gurdjieff used it. Among all the techniques, this is one of the most potential. Try it. It will take time; months will pass.

When Ouspensky was learning with Gurdjieff, for three months he had to make much effort, arduous effort, in order to have a glimpse of what self-remembering is. So continuously, for three months, Ouspensky lived in a secluded house just doing only one thing – self-remembering. Thirty persons started that experiment, and by the end of the first week twenty-seven had escaped; only three remained. The whole day they were trying to remember – not doing anything else, just remembering that “I am.” Twenty-seven felt they were going crazy. They felt that now madness was just near, so they escaped. They never turned back; they never met Gurdjieff again.

Why? As we are, really, we are mad. Not remembering who we are, what we are, we are mad, but this madness is taken as sanity. Once you try to go back, once you try to contact the real, it will look like craziness, it will look like madness. Compared to what we are, it is just the reverse, the opposite. If you feel that this is sanity, that will look like madness.

But three persisted. One of the three was P. D. Ouspensky. For three months they persisted. Only after the first month did they start having glimpses of simply being – of “I am.” After the second month, even the “I” dropped, and they started having the glimpses of “am-ness” – of just being, not even of “I”, because “I” is also a label. The pure being is not “I” and “thou”; it just is.

And by the third month even the feeling of “am-ness” dissolved because that feeling of am-ness is still a word. Even that word dissolves. Then you are, and then you know what you are. Before that point comes you cannot ask, “Who am I?” Or you can go on asking continuously, “Who am I?” just continuously inquiring, “Who am I? Who am I?”, and all the answers that will be provided by the mind will be found false, irrelevant. You go on asking, “Who am I? Who am I? Who am I?” and a point comes where you can no more ask the question. All the answers fall down, and then the question itself falls down and disappears. And when even the question, “Who am I?” disappears, you know who you are.

Gurdjieff tried from one corner: just try to remember you are. Raman Maharshi tried from another corner. He made it a meditation to ask, to inquire, “Who am I?” And don’t believe in any answers that the mind can supply. The mind will say, “What nonsense are you asking? You are this, you are that, you are a man, you are a woman, you are educated or uneducated, rich or poor.” The mind will supply answers, but go on asking. Don’t accept any answer because all the answers given by the mind are false. They are from the unreal part of you. They are coming from words, they are coming from scriptures, they are coming from conditioning, they are coming from society, they are coming from others. Go on asking. Let this arrow of “Who am I?” penetrate deeper and deeper. A moment will come when no answer will come.

That is the right moment. Now you are nearing the answer. When no answer comes, you are near the answer because mind is becoming silent – or you have gone far away from the mind. When there will be no answer and a vacuum will be created all around you, your questioning will look absurd. Whom are you questioning? There is no one to answer you. Suddenly, even your questioning will stop. With the questioning, the last part of the mind has dissolved because this question was also of the mind. Those answers were of the mind and this question was also of the mind. Both have dissolved, so now YOU ARE.

Try this. There is every possibility, if you persist, that this technique can give you a glimpse of the real – and the real is ever-living.

-Osho

Excerpt from The Book of the Secrets (Vigyan Bhairav Tantra), Chapter 35

An audio file of this discourse can be downloaded from Osho.com, or you can read the entire book online at the Osho Library.

Many of Osho’s books are available online from Amazon.com
and in the U.S. from OshoStore-Sedona and Osho Here and Now.

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Tagged as awareness, Being, Consciousness, Gurdjieff, I Am, Meditation, Osho, Ramana Maharshi, self-inquiry, self-remembering, Shiva, witness, witnessing

September 30, 2011 · 4:51 pm

Till the Self reveals Himself – Lakshmana Sarma

The first step in the Quest of the real Self is to understand that Self is not the body — physical or mental. The reason for this is two-fold. On the one hand the body is unconscious and hence cannot be the self, finite or otherwise. On the other hand we are sure that the Self — whatever it may be — can exist without a body. We know that this is so in sleep. Few people can even imagine the possibility of the Self ceasing to exist during sleep. Those that do so are the over sophisticated ones; their perplexity on this point is dealt with in a long talk given by the Sage to a doubter, which will be given later. Thus the ego itself is a proof that we exist. We are not the ego; we are That from which the ego takes its rise. That must be found by seeking the Source of the ego. Revelation tells us that if and when we find that Source, we shall find not only the Self, but also the Reality that underlies the world-appearance; and this will be the case, because the Self and the Reality are one and the same.

The ego is thus seen to be the arch-deceiver, the true Satan or Ahriman. He is the only enemy of God and man. He is the enemy of right knowledge. He is the inventor of murder and lying. He is the cosmic Macbeth, who is constantly murdering Peace, which is true Happiness. He is the impostor who has usurped the seat of the real Self. Therefore he is debarred from entrance into the State of Deliverance, the Kingdom of Heaven that is in us, taught by Jesus.

The Sage has told us that the ego is all the evil there is, while egolessness is all the good there is. From the ego, which is ignorance, proceed all the evils that beset life. All that is good and worthy of reverent cultivation belongs to egolessness.

Apart from the ego there is neither death nor rebirth. This vicious circle of deaths and rebirths is sustained only by the primary ignorance which is the ego. The ego itself is death, because he is the negation of the Truth, which is Life. He must not only be dethroned, but must be put to death. For there is no safety so long as he survives.

The ego must become considerably attenuated for the teaching of the Sages to be understood. This is clear from the following utterance of the Sage. He was explaining the true inwardness of the current notion that a disciple must, after finding a Guru, remain with him for a long time, serving him faithfully, and surrender himself utterly to the Guru, and that the latter would then teach him the great secret, ‘Thou art That.’ The Sage explained it as follows: “The true meaning of what is here called surrender is the complete wearing away of the ego-sense, which is individuality. And this is a necessary condition for the disciple being able to receive the teaching; for if there be no surrender in this sense, the teaching is sure to be misunderstood. Even with the limited egoism that now exists, man is liable to outbreaks of fury, to be tyrannical, fanatical and so on. What will he not do, if he be told that he himself is that Great Being? He would not understand that teaching in its true sense, but would take it to mean that his individual soul, the ego, is that Great Being. This is not at all the true sense of the teaching, because the ego is simply non-existent.”

The true meaning of the teaching is that though the soul as such is a non-entity, there is in it an element of reality, namely the light of consciousness proceeding from the real Self, and experienced by us as ‘I am’. This light of consciousness does not belong to the soul; it belongs to the Self, the Reality, It must therefore be surrendered to Him. When that surrender is complete, then that Self alone will remain. And if individuality be thus lost, it is well lost. For this loss of individuality is not a loss. It is the loss of the greatest of all losses, the loss of the self; it is therefore the highest of all possible gains, the gain of the real Self. The effect of this surrender is thus described in the ancient lore: “As the rivers flowing into the ocean, and therein losing name and form, become one with the ocean, so does the Sage, losing name and form, become one with the Supreme Being, who is the transcendental Reality.”

Even leaving aside the truth that the ego is unreal, it has to be said that what the Sage has lost is just a mathematical zero, while what he has gained is the Infinite Reality. This is expressed by the Sage as follows — in one of his hymns to Arunachala: “What profit hast thou got, O Arunachala, taking me — of no worth here and hereafter — in exchange for Thyself, the greatest of all gains?”

This surrender to the real Self, to become final and perfect, needs to be effected by the Quest of the real Self in the manner taught in a later chapter. And since surrender is the culmination of devotion, the seeker of Deliverance needs to cherish devotion to the real Self. When this devotion becomes perfect, then it will be possible to enter on and persist in the Quest till success is won — till the real Self reveals Himself.

By “WHO” (Lakshmana Sarma)

Excerpted from Maha Yoga, Chapter Six, The Soul

You can download a PDF file of the entire book here: http://pgoodnight.files.wordpress.com/2011/05/maha-yoga.pdf

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Tagged as awareness, Being, Christ, Consciousness, ego, I Am, Lakshmana Sarma, Meditation, Ramana Maharshi, self-inquiry

July 30, 2011 · 12:42 pm

Awakening before Enlightenment

We hear the term ‘awakening’ thrown about today like a rag doll. And as is the case with almost all spiritual terminology, there seems to be levels and levels of meaning for the word ‘awakening.’ It is important to first recognize that we are not necessarily using a common language. When I see what the word ‘awakening’ is being used to point at, from the plethora of spiritual teachers that exists today, it is evident that it is being used to denote many different things.

And it is not just the spiritual teachers who use ‘awakening’ with different meanings; you can find references from the Enlightened Masters as well. There are times in the many books of Osho where he is referring to ‘awakening’ as the final enlightenment and sometimes he is pointing to a step that precedes enlightenment. I find the same situation in the works of J. Krishnamurti, Nisargadatta Maharaj, Ramana Maharshi and Meher Baba. Although if one looks carefully at the context in which the words are being used it is not as confusing as it seems.

However, in writing this I am not interested in repeating the words of those remarkable Enlightened Ones, but rather this understanding that I wish to share is one that has been taking shape over the last twenty years and is only now become sufficiently stabilized that I feel willing to express openly.

Before we even begin to look at the different meanings we might ascribe to ‘awakening’ let us first acknowledge that all individuals are moving through their awakening at a different pace. It is clear that we did not all begin at the same point. This is illustrated when we see that a sage like Ramana Maharshi realizes his enlightenment at the age of sixteen seemingly without effort. In contrast is the experience of Nisargadatta Maharaj in whom enlightenment happened much later in life. Some were prepared from their very childhood for such an event and some worked through their own efforts at removing the obstacles to the ‘natural state’. Some of us have lived a life centered in meditation from a young age and some of us have stumbled upon it much later in life perhaps after some major crisis that turned our world upside down. So it is important to understand that just because we have not had a certain understanding does not mean that one of our fellow travelers has not and it is equally important to note that if we have experienced some insight or transformation it is not likely that many will understand what we are talking about.

So let us begin with what each of us (at least anyone who is reading this) has probably experienced. For some of us it might have come like a bolt of lightning, for others it may have always been intuited as truth. And that is that life, the world, is very much different than what we were conditioned to believe. Many may describe this realization as an awakening and indeed it is. This awakening would demark the beginning of the journey. It would denote a tremendously important change of direction and priorities in one’s life.

Having changed direction in life, we embark on searching out information, knowledge, understanding and perhaps a teacher to help guide us along the way. We may be fortunate and come across that guide early on or for some it may take many years. And some may not find the guide in whom trust is a natural and spontaneous flowering and so may just wander from teacher to teacher. Regardless even without a guide, and certainly with, it is possible after introduction to meditation, after reading the words of those who have known the greatest mystery, after the necessary inner work, it is possible to come to an “intellectual understanding” of the lay of the spiritual land. Jean Klein refers to it as a “geometric understanding.” One can almost visualize the obstacles that lie before. This understanding often can come as a flash and could certainly be described as an ‘awakening.’ But here, it is important to note, that this intellectual understanding is not the same as being understanding, is not the same as knowingness, it is more like knowledge.

Next we come to what seems to me to be more worthy of such a moniker as ‘awakening.’ This is when one realizes oneself to be out of the mind’s conditioning. The “goose is out.” Here one is being out of the mind and is able to see the mind clearly as an object of perception. It is not that the mind has disappeared, no, but one is not living within the mind. And it is here that witnessing really emerges. In fact this is the witness. The mind is still present but one is not captive to its many grips. But it is important at this stage to allow witnessing its full force through meditation. It is here that the ‘emptying of consciousness’ must take place. If one is not mindful it is extremely easy to slip back into the clutches of the mind. But one is also able to see the horizon. One knows what needs to happen. One cannot make ‘it’ happen but one does need to create the opportunity and with this awakening the taste is known and so it is natural that real earnestness arises.

For what follows we will have to take the words and expressions of those who have known as a hypothesis. We can accept the hypothesis and in our laboratory of meditation discover for ourselves if it is indeed true. The Enlightened Masters have all said that there does come a complete annihilation of the separate ego-mind, one that is irreversible and surely it is ‘this’ that deserves the name “Enlightenment.”

So here we come to the point that has been the fuel for this inquiry for all these years. Without exposure to the presence of an Enlightened Master and, unfortunately for some even with, it is very easy to believe that the “awakening of the witness” is the end of the journey, is itself enlightenment. Some fellow travelers might very well believe that there is no ending of the mind, because that is the limitation of their own experience. They become teachers and this then becomes part of their teaching, thus misdirecting their students. Just as importantly, their unfolding stagnates, believing that they have reached the end thus not allowing the space for “the emptying of consciousness” to take place. This is where the exposure to a fully enlightened master should prove extremely helpful. The master does not allow us to make our house in the sand. He continually goads us to keep on to the very end. May we all continue to the very end, charaiveti, charaiveti (go on, go on to the very end).

-purushottama

Below I am including some links to a few postings that could illustrate much more deeply what is being said.

A Geometrical Understanding-Jean Klein

Minor Explosions-Osho

The Stages of the Path-Meher Baba

Spiritual Snakes and Ladders-Osho

Attainment-Ramana Maharshi

The Emptying of Consciousness-J. Krishnamurti

Flowering, Awakening, Self-Realization and Enlightenment-Osho

Charaiveti, Charaiveti-Osho

To read more from Purushottama, you can look here.

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Tagged as Advaita, awakening, awareness, Being, Consciousness, Enlightenment, Jean Klein, Krishnamurti, Meher Baba, Nisargadatta Maharaj, Osho, pseudo-awakening, Ramana Maharshi, self-inquiry, witness, witnessing

July 3, 2011 · 6:23 pm

I Don’t Belong to Any Path – Osho

I took sannyas from Swami Shivand of Rishikesh after reading his book Brahmacharya and other books of his.

After some years, I was attracted to Sri Ramana Maharshi and thereafter to Sri Aurobindo due to his integral approach to the divine. From 1959 onwards I was doing meditation on the lines indicated by Sri Aurobindo and the Mother.

Thereafter J. Krishnamurti’s approach attracted me, now yours.

I enjoy and feel happy whenever I read Sri Aurobindo’s works, since he emphasizes living a full life and realization of Integral Divine and gives much emphasis to physical transformation.

You also emphasize not to negate life but to live fully, and have given a new meaning to sannyas.

Hence I am here to embrace this also.

I wonder whether I am on the right path or drifting?

What is this multifarious attraction in me?

Could you help me with a right path if I am drifting?

The first thing to be understood: Before one can come to the right door, one has to knock on many doors. Life is an adventure – of courage, daring, and basically it is trial and error. One has to go astray many times to come to the right path. And when I say the right path, I don’t mean that Sri Ramana’s path is not right, but it must not have been right for the questioner; otherwise there is no need.

Once you have come to the right path for you… and it is always a question of the individual, it has nothing to do with Ramana, Aurobindo or me; it is a question of you. If you have come to me and you feel at home, then your journey has finished. Now there is no need to drift any more, now you can settle and start working – because in drifting work is impossible.

It is as if you start constructing a house and just in the middle you are attracted to something else and you leave it and you start another house; and just in the middle again you are attracted to something else. Then you will live like a vagabond. The house will never be completed. One has to settle somewhere, one has to commit somewhere, one has to take the fatal decision. But it is not difficult. If you have courage, it happens.

One has to be available to many sources. It is good that you have been to Shivanand, to Ramana, to Aurobindo. It shows you have been seeking – but it also shows that nowhere could you feel at home. So the journey continues. The journey has to continue until you come to a point where you can say: Yes, I have arrived. Now there is no need for any more departures. And you can relax. Then the real work starts.

Whatsoever you have been doing is just moving from one place to another. The journey is exciting, but the journey is not the goal. One becomes enriched by the journey. You must have become enriched being open to so many sources; you must have learnt many things – but still the journey continues. Then you will have to seek again and again.

Now you are here. Try to see and try to understand: do you fit with me, or do I fit with you?

Sometimes it is possible that you may have learnt only one thing – how to drift again and again, how to go away again and again. It can become a mechanical habit. Then you will be gone from here also. So don’t allow mechanical habits to lead you. If you don’t fit with me it is perfectly good to go away, because then your being here is going to be a sheer wastage of time for you. But if you fit, then take courage and be committed – because only after the commitment does real work start, never before it.

You think you have been to Shivanand and you think you have been initiated by him, but the initiation has not happened yet, otherwise you would not have been here. Initiation means a commitment: that now one has looked all around – now this is the place to settle. Shivanand may have initiated you, but you have not taken the initiation yet. You have been just a visitor. You have not become intimate with any system of growth.

It is as if the plant has been removed from one place to another again and again. The plant cannot grow; the plant needs that it should settle on one ground so that roots can go deep. If you go on removing the plant again and again, the roots will never grow; and if roots cannot go deeper, the plant cannot go higher.

Hence commitment. Commitment means: now this is the soil for me and I am ready to settle for it. It is risky because, who knows, a better soil may be available somewhere else. So the risk is there, but one has to take that risk some day or other. If you go on and on just waiting for something better, something better, the time may be lost, and by the time you have arrived you will be dead.

The real thing is work. It is good to go around, have a look, visit many places, many people – but don’t make it a habit. That habit is dangerous. It won’t allow you roots. And if roots are not there, the tree cannot be alive, flowers are not possible; fragrance will not spread from you, your life will remain empty.

So the first thing: don’t make your past a pattern to be repeated in the future. Now you are here: don’t do the same thing to me as you have been doing to Shivanand, Ramana, Aurobindo. You don’t know what you have done.

It happened:

A great painter, James McNeill Whistler, is reported to have displayed a just-completed painting to Mark Twain.

Mark looked at the painting judiciously from a variety of angles and distances while Whistler waited impatiently for the verdict.

Finally, Mark leaned forward and, making an erasing gesture with his hand, said, “I’d eradicate that cloud if I were you.”

Whistler cried out in agony, “Careful! The paint is still wet!”

“That’s all right,” said Mark coolly, “I’m wearing gloves.”

You must be wearing gloves. You think you were initiated by Shivanand, but it has not happened. Your gloves won’t allow it. You must be living in a capsule, closed. You must be clever, logical, cunning. You have been on the alert not to be committed anywhere deeply. Hence, before the commitment happens, you move.

You say: “I took sannyas from Swami Shivanand of Rishikesh after reading his book, Brahmacharya, and other books of his.”

Now, if you are impressed by a book written on brahmacharya, it shows much about you. You must have something of a problem concerning sex. It has nothing to do with brahmacharya or Shivanand. You must be obsessed somehow with sex – hence the appeal of brahmacharya. You must have been repressing sex. You must have been brought up with wrong ideas about sex; hence you become impressed by Shivanand’s book on celibacy.

It is not that you are impressed by Shivanand – you are still following your own mind. You could not surrender to him. The phenomenon that you call initiation was intellectual; by reading the books, not by being in the presence of the master. You must be an intellectual, calculating, theorizing. This won’t allow you to move in a deep relationship – and the relationship between a master and a disciple is the deepest, deeper than the relationship between a lover and the beloved.

You may have been impressed by what Shivanand has written, but deep down you search for it again and again. It is not Shivanand that you are impressed, influenced by. You have certain ideas in your mind; wherever you find those ideas appreciated, you feel good. With me it is going to be dangerous. I am not going to appreciate any of your ideas; they are all rubbish. I say that even without knowing what your ideas are, because that is not needed. Unless you are aware, all your ideas are rubbish. So it is not a question of saying that this idea is rubbish and that is good. To me, all thoughts are rubbish; only awareness is valuable. And awareness has no ideas in it. It is a simple, pure light of consciousness.

So it is going to be difficult with me. You may have come to the man now who can shake and shock you. With Shivanand, you thought you were with Shivanand, but basically, deep down, you felt that Shivanand was with you; that’s why you lingered there a little while. This is not going to be so here with me. I am not going to be with you, remember; you have to be with me. I am not going to be with you, I repeat, you have to be with me.

So I am not going to fulfill your expectations in any way. If you have theories, I am against them already without knowing them, because I am against mind and my whole emphasis is how to become a no-mind.

But the questioner seems to be too much in the head: then he became interested in Sri Aurobindo, “because he emphasizes living a full life and realization of the integral divine.” You have some fixed ideas, so whosoever seems to be following your ideas you become impressed by. In fact, you remain impressed only with your own ego. You have been playing an ego game. You have been on an ego trip – that’s why Shivanand, Ramana, Aurobindo, nobody could help you.

As far as I know, if somebody comes back from Ramana, then there must be something very deeply wrong. With Shivanand it is not much of a problem, with Aurobindo also it is not much of a problem. Shivanand is just ordinary. Aurobindo is a great intellectual – a mahapundit, a great scholar. So if somebody comes away, nothing is lost; you have not lost much because there was nothing in the first place to be gained. But if you have come away from Ramana, that shows something deep like a cancer in your soul, because persons like Ramana are very rare – thousands of years pass, then sometimes that quality of being arises. Ramana is like a Buddha, a Jesus, or a Krishna – a very rare phenomenon. But I know why you could not get in tune with Ramana – because of your Shivanands and your Aurobindos. To get in tune with a Ramana means to drop your ego completely. Great courage is needed.

Now you are here. If you are really a seeker, then gather courage and drop the ego and the past. Forget the past; it has been nothing but a nightmare. And don’t go on repeating it; otherwise, you can go on repeating to the very end of time, changing from one person to another. This can become a habit; this shows simply your restlessness. Otherwise to come back from Krishnamurti would have been almost impossible. There is no need.

So now become aware of your basic trouble: something in you is betraying your whole effort; something in you is continuously causing clouds around your intelligence. Your awareness is not sharp.

It happened:

The little girl was invited to dinner one night at the home of a friend. The hostess, knowing that many children don’t like spinach, asked if she liked it.

“Oh yes,” the little girl replied. ”I love it.”

When the platter was passed, however, she refused to take any.

“But, dear,” said the hostess, “I thought you said you liked spinach.”

“Oh, I do,” explained the child, “but not enough to eat it.”

Going to Shivanand, Aurobindo, Ramana, Krishnamurti – and you have some idea that you like and you love these people, but your liking is not enough. You don’t love enough; otherwise you would have eaten them and they would have transformed you.

Become aware! As it is you have wasted a long time already. You can also go from this door empty-handed, but remember, the responsibility is yours. If you take courage I am ready to give you whatsoever can be given. But for visitors nothing can be given, and even if it is given they will not be able to understand.

If you are tired of your journey, going from one place to another, from one person to another, if you are really tired, then here I am ready to give you whatsoever you are seeking – but you will have to fulfill one condition, and that is: a total commitment. Unless you become part of my family, nothing can be given. I would like to give you something even then, but you will not be able to take it; or, even if you take it, you will think it is nothing – because your mind will continuously befog you. It won’t allow you to understand, it won’t allow you to see directly. It won’t allow you to see what type of game you have been playing with yourself.

Up to now it has been a drifting. Become aware how much you have wasted. Many opportunities were there but you have missed them. Now don’t miss this opportunity! But I know: the mind gets in a rut, it becomes a pattern. You go on repeating the same thing again and again, because you become very efficient in repeating it. Now get out of that vicious circle. I am ready to help if you are ready to take my help. And such a help as this cannot be forced on you. You have to take it or not take it. Your freedom has to decide it; it is your choice.

And don’t ask: What is the right path? All paths are right or wrong. It is not a question of deciding which path is right. The only thing to be decided is which path fits you. Of course, Ramana has a certain path – very simple, absolutely nonintellectual. The head was not required at all on that path; the head was to be dropped. If you had allowed him, you would have been beheaded by him. The head was not part of his path. It is a path of the heart.

Just the opposite is Krishnamurti. The path is absolutely true, but the head has to be used and transcended, not to be dropped. That’s why Krishnamurti appeals tremendously to intellectuals – nothing of the heart; everything is analysis, dissection. He is a great surgeon; he goes on dissecting. You give him any problem – he does not, in fact, answer it; he simply dissects it. And if you are listening with deep participation, sympathy, it will be possible that through his dissection he gives you an insight – not the answer, but the insight – and that is your insight. He simply dissects the problem. He is a rare intellectual man; gone beyond intellect, but has gone through it. Ramana bypasses intellect, he never passes through the intellect; his path is of the heart. Krishnamurti’s path is of intellect, of the head, of understanding, dissection, analysis.

Shivanand is not yet enlightened. He has no path – stumbling in the dark. A traditional man, he can make you knowledgeable, but he cannot help you towards the ultimate understanding. A good man, a very good man, but just a good man, not yet a Jesus or a Buddha, not yet a Krishnamurti or Ramana – a simple man. If he becomes enlightened some day in some life, he will be like Ramana – his path will not be of the head. But he is not yet realized.

And then there is Aurobindo: his path is as yet the path of an unenlightened person, moving towards it but yet in the dark. The morning is not very far away, but it has not happened yet. If some day it happens, then he will be a man like Krishnamurti; he will go through the head – a great scholar, he has much appeal for those who like logic-chopping, hair-splitting.

And here I am: all paths are mine, or no path is mine. I am more concerned with individuals. When you come to me, I don’t have a certain path to give you. I look at you to find which path will be suitable for you. I have no fixed path; I have wandered on all the paths, and all paths are true. If it fits, then any path can lead you to the ultimate. If it doesn’t fit, then you can go on struggling, fighting, but nothing is going to happen; you are trying to pass through a wall. You will be hurt, wounded, that’s all; nothing is going to happen.

I don’t belong to any path, hence all paths belong to me. And I am more concerned with the individual seeker. If I see that devotion, worship, prayer, will be helpful to you, I teach you that. If I see meditation will be helpful to you, I teach that. If I see that just understanding, pure awareness, will be helpful, I teach that. If I feel that awareness is going to make you very tense, does not fit with your type, then I teach you to be lost completely in something, absorbed completely in something. Dancing, get into it so much that you become the dance and there is nobody watching it; don’t create any separation and division between you, become the act.

Hence I am going to be very, very contradictory, because to one person I will say something, to another I will say something else, sometimes even just the opposite, diametrically opposite. So whatsoever I have said to you, somebody may come and say to you: Osho has said something else to me. Don’t listen to anybody. Whatsoever I have said to you, I have said to you. Otherwise, you will be confused.

Millions of paths go towards God. In fact there is nowhere else to go. Wherever you are going, you are going towards God. All paths lead to him. But when you are seeking, only one path can lead you. If you start walking on all paths together, you will be lost. One has to choose a path. So please don’t repeat your old pattern.

Now it will be very difficult. I am hurting your ego knowingly – because when I say Aurobindo is not enlightened, I immediately can feel what is happening to you. It is not a question of Aurobindo – whether he is enlightened or not enlightened, who bothers? It is his problem; it is not my problem, it is not your problem. But if you have been following Aurobindo and I say he has not yet become enlightened, your ego is hurt. You, and following an unenlightened person? – never, it is not possible!

When I say Shivanand is good but ordinary, mediocre, of course you will feel hurt because you have been initiated by Shivanand, and how is it possible? – You, so intelligent, being initiated by a mediocre man? No, it is going to hurt, but I do it knowingly.

I will create every sort of trouble for you so that if you stay, you really stay. If you decide to stay, it will be a real decision to stay with me. I am going to be hard. Shivanand, Ramana, Krishnamurti, Aurobindo, it seems, have been too compassionate towards you; hence you could drift.

I will make every effort so that you can go away. I will create a struggle within you, a friction, because that is the only way now; otherwise your old habit will go on functioning. If you come and ask for sannyas from me, I am not going to give it to you easily… because you have been taking things very easily. This sannyas is going to be arduous.

-Osho

From The Search, Chapter Four

An audio file of this discourse can be downloaded from Osho.com, or you can read the entire book online at the Osho Library.

Many of Osho’s books are available online from Amazon.com and in the U.S. from OshoStore-Sedona and Osho Here and Now.

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