Q.: Bhagavan asserts that “awareness” is the real nature of “I”. But what exactly is this awareness? Awareness of what?
B.: Do you exist or do you not?
Q.: Yes.
B.: How do you know?
Q.: I don’t understand what Bhagavan is trying to tell me.
B.: Do you need a mirror to be placed in front of your eyes in order to enable you to infer that you have eyes? You see, therefore you can tell that you have eyes which are functioning. Likewise, awareness of the world or bodily awareness is not necessary for ascertaining your own existence.
You know that you exist because of the awareness “I-AM”. This awareness is nothing but subjective consciousness of being. This consciousness is always there whether you are asleep, dreaming or supposedly awake. It is unchanged and unaffected always. Recognise it as your own being.
Man thinks he is made of flesh and blood. But this attitude is a mistake. You are pure consciousness. Whatever is physical comes afterward and its disappearance or destruction cannot affect you, who are non-physical and eternal as the one Self. All phenomena have a beginning and an end. What is born dies and what is created is destroyed. Were you ever born? If you take yourself to be the body, yes. But are you the body?
Q.: What is the proof that I am not this body?
B.: The fact that the body, which you now erroneously believe to be identical with yourself, is lost in the states of dream and deep sleep is the proof. Yet on waking you find yourself in the same body. This is continuity of memory and nothing more. What proof do you have that you are this physical body made of flesh and bone?
Q.: All my memories pertain to this body only. I have no memory of occupying any other body.
B.: The experience of occupying a body is only a mental phenomenon which is super-imposed on top of pure consciousness. Suppose you are riding a bicycle, and seriously thinking about something all along the way. After a time, you find yourself at the intended destination. But you have no recollection or memory of having made the journey because your faculty of concentration was fixed in its entirety upon the problem you were trying to solve inside your head whilst you were busily pedaling all the while. Even with your attention elsewhere, your hands and feet have carried you to your destination involuntarily.
What does it show? We super-impose the sense of doer-ship upon ourselves; in fact, all activities only take place spontaneously. The body has a pre-destined script of its own that it carries out automatically. If we concentrate on being the Self, our responsibilities in life will be smoothly performed by the body without need for the slightest intervention on our part. You say you remember occupying this body only. Even in dreams we occupy so many bodies. Does that miccionan we are any of those dream bodies? In our dreams, bodies came and went, but our self, the dreamer, remained unaffected.
So also, many are the bodies that you have found yourself in over the ages — but none of them is YOU. You are, I repeat, the bodiless Self.
Q.: Why did I then come to mistake myself for this body?
B.: In dreams you have many strange experiences. It is only after waking up that you ascertain that the experiences in your dreams never actually happened but were all imaginary only. Likewise here. Our Real Nature is that we are and always were the bodiless, formless and indestructible Self. But we imagine that we are trapped within a body and are making strenuous attempts to become free from the illusion of being tied down to the experience of carrying around a body, while we in fact are all the time free.
This fact will be understood only when we reach that stage. We will be surprised that we were desperately trying to attain something which we have always been and ever are. An illustration will make this clear: A man goes to sleep in this hall. He dreams he has gone on a world tour, is roaming over hill and dale, forest and country, desert and sea, across various continents and, after many years of weary and strenuous travel, returns to this country, reaches Tiruvannamalai, enters the ashram and walks into the hall.
Just at that moment he wakes up and finds he has not moved an inch but was sleeping where he lay down. He has not returned to the hall after great efforts but is and always has been in the hall. It is exactly like that. If it is asked why being the formless Self we imagine we are tied down to a body, I answer, why being in the hall did you imagine you were on a world adventure, crossing hill and dale, desert and sea? It is all mind or maya.
Q.: What is meant by maya? I understand that it is a Sanskrit word which tras*lates into ‘illusion’.
B.: When mind pays attention to anything other than itself, we say that it is under the influence of maya. When mind pays attention to itself exclusively, it discovers itself to be the Self, and there is then no maya. Illusion means that we have mistaken ourselves to be the body or mind or intellect or anything else. That is, we have taken ourselves to be what we are not.
If, on the other hand, we remain as we truly are, we stand liberated from illusion. Freedom from identification is immortality. We imagine or think that we are the perishable body and thus delude ourselves into believing that we are mortal creatures. If this false identification with body and mind drops away, we Realise ourselves to be the immortal Self.
Q.: How can I convince myself that I am the Self?
B.: There is no need to do so. Give up the thought that you are the not-Self and only the Self is left as the reminder. That will do. That is all there is to be done. The Self does not affirm Itself to be the Self. It merely remains as the Self. No purpose is served by telling yourself, “I am the Self.” What meaning is there in doing so? Does a man go on repeating, “I am a man, I am a man…”? If a doubt arises in your mind that you might be a cow or a dog then you might go on assuring yourself that you are indeed a man.
Only in such a case should one be continuously reminding oneself ‘I am a man.’ But does this ever happen? We know that we are neither cows nor dogs but men and women. Likewise, being always the imperishable Self, we need not dwell on the immortality of the Self. It suffices if we abide as pure consciousness which is not perturbed by thoughts.
Q.: If I want to Realise the Self, should I close my eyes to the world?
B.: It is enough if the mind be made insensitive to the goings-on of the world. It is like exposing photographic film to light; the more exposed the film becomes, the less discernable is the image formed upon it. If the film is left exposed to bright light for a long time, thereafter no image can be discerned from it. Likewise here. If the mind continuously and exclusively exists permanently and inseparably in the light of consciousness for a long time, it loses the capacity to register objects or think about the things of the world. Then it remains in its own native state, the state of pure consciousness.
Q.: Will a person whose mind is fixed in pure consciousness lose the capacity to function normally in the world? Does he become a mere vegetative form of life, like one who has slipped into the state of comatose?
B.: No. The activities destined to be carried on by the body go on of their own accord without any intervention from you.
Q.: That means I would no longer have any control over what my body does! Is this not a dangerous situation?
B.: Once we have surrendered to the Higher Power, He automatically takes care that only the right thing is done at any given point in time. He knows what to do and when and how. Leave everything entirely to Him. But you should not try and judge Him. Even if what He does is not to your liking or preference, do not interfere. If you have surrendered, it means that you must totally accept God’s will as being the supreme guiding force of your life, and that the exclusive consideration or priority in your life is to not permit your own ideas for your life to come into conflict with God’s.
After perfect self-surrender, only complete acceptance remains. There can be no room for making any complaint about one’s perceived defects and deficiencies if surrender to God has been genuinely unconditional or without reserve.
Q.: Meaning that we must blindly trust God? But that obviously requires a huge leap of faith!
B.: The explanation relating to surrendering to God was given to you since you wanted reassurance that things would go on in an amicable way even after your mind ceased to pay attention to the world. But the fact is, one who is truly desperately interested in Realising the Self will not bother about whether life in the world proceeds positively or not; if it did not, yet he would not bother about the matter. When the mind becomes introverted owing to the investigation “Who am I?”, and remains merged in the Heart, the conditions of outer life automatically continue as destined, owing to the force of prarabdha.
Do not worry about how life in the world would come to be affected if you dedicate your mind to the quest; it may even be that there might be no change in the outer life at all. If you calmly focus on remaining as the beingness of the Self, the upheavals and perturbations of the outer world will gradually begin to fade out or distance themselves from you and you will rest in the shanti [peace] of the Self while the body’s activities and your roles as a person will be automatically fulfilled by the Higher Power.
This is a matter for experience, and you will understand only when you sink yourself deeper and deeper into the bliss of the Self, by means of holding the mind steadily in that state where there is alert consciousness of being but neither thoughts nor sleepiness.
Q.: If the world disappears, is that not a bad thing? Were we not born into this world in order so that we might live in it and experience it?
B.: You are asking this question because you are under the impression that you are the body. Imagining yourself to be the body, you ask me whether you were not born into the world in order so that you might experience the same. Was there ever any birth for you? Know that you, the changeless Self, were never born. What was born was only the body. What do you have to do with the body? You are not the body.
In dreams you take up one body after another but after waking up do any of them ever remain with you? Likewise here. The body and the world it is experiencing are super-impositions over your nature of pure consciousness. When you Realise your Self, the world disappears as an objective Reality and is seen to be what it really is — merely an appearance in the Self.
According to you, you are a finite subject, made of physical matter, living in and spectating a permanently existing, objectively real world. This attitude must go. You are pure Spirit. Appearance of gross matter is a delusion. There is nothing physical at all. What IS, is only Spirit.
PARTE 2 EN EL SIGUIENTE POST
johndavidsatsang.international
Serie de conversaciones entre David Bohm fisico nuclear alubio* y Krishnamurti:
ORO PURO. Espero zankitos, esto compañeros es sin lugar a dudas lo mas importante de vuestras vidas
B.: Do you exist or do you not?
Q.: Yes.
B.: How do you know?
Q.: I don’t understand what Bhagavan is trying to tell me.
B.: Do you need a mirror to be placed in front of your eyes in order to enable you to infer that you have eyes? You see, therefore you can tell that you have eyes which are functioning. Likewise, awareness of the world or bodily awareness is not necessary for ascertaining your own existence.
You know that you exist because of the awareness “I-AM”. This awareness is nothing but subjective consciousness of being. This consciousness is always there whether you are asleep, dreaming or supposedly awake. It is unchanged and unaffected always. Recognise it as your own being.
Man thinks he is made of flesh and blood. But this attitude is a mistake. You are pure consciousness. Whatever is physical comes afterward and its disappearance or destruction cannot affect you, who are non-physical and eternal as the one Self. All phenomena have a beginning and an end. What is born dies and what is created is destroyed. Were you ever born? If you take yourself to be the body, yes. But are you the body?
Q.: What is the proof that I am not this body?
B.: The fact that the body, which you now erroneously believe to be identical with yourself, is lost in the states of dream and deep sleep is the proof. Yet on waking you find yourself in the same body. This is continuity of memory and nothing more. What proof do you have that you are this physical body made of flesh and bone?
Q.: All my memories pertain to this body only. I have no memory of occupying any other body.
B.: The experience of occupying a body is only a mental phenomenon which is super-imposed on top of pure consciousness. Suppose you are riding a bicycle, and seriously thinking about something all along the way. After a time, you find yourself at the intended destination. But you have no recollection or memory of having made the journey because your faculty of concentration was fixed in its entirety upon the problem you were trying to solve inside your head whilst you were busily pedaling all the while. Even with your attention elsewhere, your hands and feet have carried you to your destination involuntarily.
What does it show? We super-impose the sense of doer-ship upon ourselves; in fact, all activities only take place spontaneously. The body has a pre-destined script of its own that it carries out automatically. If we concentrate on being the Self, our responsibilities in life will be smoothly performed by the body without need for the slightest intervention on our part. You say you remember occupying this body only. Even in dreams we occupy so many bodies. Does that miccionan we are any of those dream bodies? In our dreams, bodies came and went, but our self, the dreamer, remained unaffected.
So also, many are the bodies that you have found yourself in over the ages — but none of them is YOU. You are, I repeat, the bodiless Self.
Q.: Why did I then come to mistake myself for this body?
B.: In dreams you have many strange experiences. It is only after waking up that you ascertain that the experiences in your dreams never actually happened but were all imaginary only. Likewise here. Our Real Nature is that we are and always were the bodiless, formless and indestructible Self. But we imagine that we are trapped within a body and are making strenuous attempts to become free from the illusion of being tied down to the experience of carrying around a body, while we in fact are all the time free.
This fact will be understood only when we reach that stage. We will be surprised that we were desperately trying to attain something which we have always been and ever are. An illustration will make this clear: A man goes to sleep in this hall. He dreams he has gone on a world tour, is roaming over hill and dale, forest and country, desert and sea, across various continents and, after many years of weary and strenuous travel, returns to this country, reaches Tiruvannamalai, enters the ashram and walks into the hall.
Just at that moment he wakes up and finds he has not moved an inch but was sleeping where he lay down. He has not returned to the hall after great efforts but is and always has been in the hall. It is exactly like that. If it is asked why being the formless Self we imagine we are tied down to a body, I answer, why being in the hall did you imagine you were on a world adventure, crossing hill and dale, desert and sea? It is all mind or maya.
Q.: What is meant by maya? I understand that it is a Sanskrit word which tras*lates into ‘illusion’.
B.: When mind pays attention to anything other than itself, we say that it is under the influence of maya. When mind pays attention to itself exclusively, it discovers itself to be the Self, and there is then no maya. Illusion means that we have mistaken ourselves to be the body or mind or intellect or anything else. That is, we have taken ourselves to be what we are not.
If, on the other hand, we remain as we truly are, we stand liberated from illusion. Freedom from identification is immortality. We imagine or think that we are the perishable body and thus delude ourselves into believing that we are mortal creatures. If this false identification with body and mind drops away, we Realise ourselves to be the immortal Self.
Q.: How can I convince myself that I am the Self?
B.: There is no need to do so. Give up the thought that you are the not-Self and only the Self is left as the reminder. That will do. That is all there is to be done. The Self does not affirm Itself to be the Self. It merely remains as the Self. No purpose is served by telling yourself, “I am the Self.” What meaning is there in doing so? Does a man go on repeating, “I am a man, I am a man…”? If a doubt arises in your mind that you might be a cow or a dog then you might go on assuring yourself that you are indeed a man.
Only in such a case should one be continuously reminding oneself ‘I am a man.’ But does this ever happen? We know that we are neither cows nor dogs but men and women. Likewise, being always the imperishable Self, we need not dwell on the immortality of the Self. It suffices if we abide as pure consciousness which is not perturbed by thoughts.
Q.: If I want to Realise the Self, should I close my eyes to the world?
B.: It is enough if the mind be made insensitive to the goings-on of the world. It is like exposing photographic film to light; the more exposed the film becomes, the less discernable is the image formed upon it. If the film is left exposed to bright light for a long time, thereafter no image can be discerned from it. Likewise here. If the mind continuously and exclusively exists permanently and inseparably in the light of consciousness for a long time, it loses the capacity to register objects or think about the things of the world. Then it remains in its own native state, the state of pure consciousness.
Q.: Will a person whose mind is fixed in pure consciousness lose the capacity to function normally in the world? Does he become a mere vegetative form of life, like one who has slipped into the state of comatose?
B.: No. The activities destined to be carried on by the body go on of their own accord without any intervention from you.
Q.: That means I would no longer have any control over what my body does! Is this not a dangerous situation?
B.: Once we have surrendered to the Higher Power, He automatically takes care that only the right thing is done at any given point in time. He knows what to do and when and how. Leave everything entirely to Him. But you should not try and judge Him. Even if what He does is not to your liking or preference, do not interfere. If you have surrendered, it means that you must totally accept God’s will as being the supreme guiding force of your life, and that the exclusive consideration or priority in your life is to not permit your own ideas for your life to come into conflict with God’s.
After perfect self-surrender, only complete acceptance remains. There can be no room for making any complaint about one’s perceived defects and deficiencies if surrender to God has been genuinely unconditional or without reserve.
Q.: Meaning that we must blindly trust God? But that obviously requires a huge leap of faith!
B.: The explanation relating to surrendering to God was given to you since you wanted reassurance that things would go on in an amicable way even after your mind ceased to pay attention to the world. But the fact is, one who is truly desperately interested in Realising the Self will not bother about whether life in the world proceeds positively or not; if it did not, yet he would not bother about the matter. When the mind becomes introverted owing to the investigation “Who am I?”, and remains merged in the Heart, the conditions of outer life automatically continue as destined, owing to the force of prarabdha.
Do not worry about how life in the world would come to be affected if you dedicate your mind to the quest; it may even be that there might be no change in the outer life at all. If you calmly focus on remaining as the beingness of the Self, the upheavals and perturbations of the outer world will gradually begin to fade out or distance themselves from you and you will rest in the shanti [peace] of the Self while the body’s activities and your roles as a person will be automatically fulfilled by the Higher Power.
This is a matter for experience, and you will understand only when you sink yourself deeper and deeper into the bliss of the Self, by means of holding the mind steadily in that state where there is alert consciousness of being but neither thoughts nor sleepiness.
Q.: If the world disappears, is that not a bad thing? Were we not born into this world in order so that we might live in it and experience it?
B.: You are asking this question because you are under the impression that you are the body. Imagining yourself to be the body, you ask me whether you were not born into the world in order so that you might experience the same. Was there ever any birth for you? Know that you, the changeless Self, were never born. What was born was only the body. What do you have to do with the body? You are not the body.
In dreams you take up one body after another but after waking up do any of them ever remain with you? Likewise here. The body and the world it is experiencing are super-impositions over your nature of pure consciousness. When you Realise your Self, the world disappears as an objective Reality and is seen to be what it really is — merely an appearance in the Self.
According to you, you are a finite subject, made of physical matter, living in and spectating a permanently existing, objectively real world. This attitude must go. You are pure Spirit. Appearance of gross matter is a delusion. There is nothing physical at all. What IS, is only Spirit.
PARTE 2 EN EL SIGUIENTE POST
Ramana Maharshi - I am not the body [ NEW BOOK ]
What is surrender. To surrender is to cease to have any cares, leaving it to the Lord to do as he likes with you.
johndavidsatsang.international
Serie de conversaciones entre David Bohm fisico nuclear alubio* y Krishnamurti:
ORO PURO. Espero zankitos, esto compañeros es sin lugar a dudas lo mas importante de vuestras vidas
