I always seem to feel separate one way or another.
Is the separateness always present, for instance when you hear or see something? No! The separateness is perceived. It is present only as long as it is perceived. Irrespective of what the separateness is made of, whether it is beliefs, thoughts, or bodily sensations, where is it when something else is present, for instance when you are reading a book or watching television? It is not perceived. Understand that there are many moments, for instance right now, when separateness is not perceived.
I hear what you are saying but I find it difficult to take on board.
You don’t have to take it on board. Who is there to take it on board or not? We don’t have to say, “Yes” or “No” to the truth, because truth is truth. For instance, even in relative truth, the sun rises every morning, whether we say, “Yes” or “No” to this fact. The truth is independent of whatever we think about it or whatever we tell it to be. When you are looking at a landscape, thinking, watching television, reading a book, and so on, there’s no separation. Perhaps it comes and goes but when you are really experiencing whatever it is, when you are listening to these words for instance, there is no separation. Is consciousness present during these moments? Of course! So you well know moments during which consciousness is not tied to the sense of separation, to the ego. The ego comes and goes.
You have understood this intellectually, but it is more than intellectual. It is your actual experience that, like the images in the mirror, the ego comes and goes, because it is a perceived object made of a thought or a feeling. All that needs to be done is to remain as awareness. This awareness is freedom. Understand that you are this freedom in which everything is allowed to come into existence.
When one is lost in a book or in the television, it doesn’t seem to be very satisfying; it’s not enough somehow.
I am not encouraging you to get lost in books or television. I used the example to show that although consciousness is always present, the feeling that we are separate is not. In this way we understand that consciousness is independent of the ego. This is very important. We can dissociate the ego from awareness. If you are not happy reading books, don’t read them. If you are not happy doing anything, don’t do it. Nobody forces you. This “follow your bliss” attitude will lead you towards bliss. Read the book as long as it makes you happy. When the book no longer makes you happy, put it aside. Don’t keep reading out of habit. Happiness is the highest good. It is sacred.
The problem is not the first time we have happiness. The problem is when we try to repeat it, when we try to reproduce it. We shouldn’t repeat things. The first time is fine but not the second!
A friend of mine told me that he had a hundred LSD experiences. During the first he had a wonderful mystical experience. The following ninety-nine experiences were a waste of time and energy. Follow your bliss. Follow your happiness, knowing that happiness is always the place of the heart, the place of God. However, God is very mischievous and keeps changing the place where it appears! We can never predict where it will appear next and this keeps us open and awake. All we can do is be ready for any appearance. Being ready for God to appear anywhere and in any form is called, “Abiding in the Self, abiding in the source.”
You say we should abide in the Self, in the source, for God to appear. Are God and Self the same?
Of course they are the same. That which appears in the source is the source. God is everything.
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Krishnamurti said that if one human being realized his true nature, then it would have an impact on the whole human consciousness. How could one human being influence consciousness?
When we understand that we are not a personal entity, we stop reacting to aggression or unlovingness. We welcome it and let it dissolve within us. We are like a black hole. Such a black hole is very efficient. We need them in society. They gradually influence their surroundings. Whenever we welcome, at the same time we radiate love. We may not be aware of it in the beginning, but this is exactly what happens. When we are in welcoming, we are radiant with love, and love has this transforming power. Therefore, be a black hole. If you think you are somewhere, there must be someone there. Don’t think of yourself as realized or non-realized. Just be this black hole. Understand this benevolent welcoming as your own true nature. Then the appearance or disappearance of old belief systems will be no more than a cloud crossing the blue sky. Don’t worry about the clouds. It is a kind of perfectionism and Puritanism that wants us to be perfect as a person. Forget it! The body is not perfect; it is going to die. The mind is not perfect. It does not always make the right decisions. Don’t try to be what you cannot be. Just be what you already are. You are perfection already, so don’t try to be perfect with the body. Be what you are, which is perfection. Then see that everything, including your own mistakes, is an emanation from perfection.
I’m not telling you to be arrogant about your mistakes by saying, “God does it all.” You may think so, but still apologize to the other person if appropriate, even though you realize that nobody did it, nobody as a person, that is. Be loving towards those who have not always been right, because you also have not always been right. Understand that so-called teachers are also human beings. Allow them the freedom to make mistakes. Allow yourself the freedom to make mistakes.
One of the greatest sages in history, the Sixth Patriarch of China, Hui Neng, was once asked, “Can you see your Buddha nature?” This was a code for, “Are you enlightened?” He didn’t say, “Yes” or “No” but rather, “All I can see are my own mistakes.” By answering in that way, he was first of all teaching the student that our true nature cannot be seen. He was also showing true humility by acknowledging that as a human being he was not above the fray. By acknowledging his own mistakes and by his humility, he was transcending.
If we expect a human being to be perfect, it means we are expecting ourselves to be perfect. We are looking for the impossible. It means we are missing the mark and we somehow know it deep inside. We cannot make imperfection perfect. We cannot change what is limited and make it limitless. That which is limitless has always been limitless. That which is perfect has always been perfect. See that we are that, not the limited body-mind. That is the path to perfection. Beware of teachers who tell you, “I am perfect as a human being.” They are challenging you, so put them to the test.
Ramana Maharshi was always very patient and gentle, although he could be firm. Nisargadatta Maharaj was always losing his temper and was very impatient. If it is true that both were realized beings and that once you’ve realized your true nature you are quite indifferent to outside events, how are we to understand this loss of temper in Nisargadatta?
Even before his self-realization, Ramana Maharshi was a very gentle being. The story goes that his peers would beat him up and he wouldn’t respond. However, I have heard that sometimes he would get angry and throw apples at people, even after his realization.
But Nisargadatta Maharaj is the one that interests me. Is it as if one light is filtering through body-minds which have different colors, and that the purer the body-mind, the more light it lets through?
This kind of explanation is an attempt to formulate something that cannot be put into words. They may be helpful for a certain person at a certain time but ultimately we have to go beyond all concepts. There are many ways of expressing one’s feelings. Everything is ultimately the truth. Those who have realized the truth become beacons, and some are more powerful than others. Some sages find that their perceptions are not harmonized so they don’t have a feeling for beauty. Others find their minds are not harmonized, so they don’t have clarity. For others, their feelings are not harmonized so they don’t radiate love. It doesn’t mean they are not sages. They all radiate all of these qualities to a certain extent, but it is manifested in different ways depending on how far this understanding has permeated the mind, the body, and the world.
The important thing is to implement this understanding of consc
iousness in all realms of our life, to transpose what we have understood at the intellectual level to the level of feeling and sensing, so that everything becomes integrated in our life. When this occurs our feeling, sensing, and thinking will be harmonized with the source.
Both Ramana Maharshi and Nisargadatta have gone and there is no division in that which remains. There is only one Self and only one sage. As long as we think of ourselves as separate people, we will see a separate person in the teacher or the sage. That is not the experience of the sage. The sage experiences himself or herself as consciousness and there is only one consciousness. It seems mysterious, but it gets clarified the moment we understand that we are all one single consciousness that expresses itself in an incredible, extraordinary diversity from moment to moment.
If one believes that other people are part of consciousness, do we not have a duty to be compassionate towards other people and to try to make the world a better place to live in?
If it were your experience that there is only one consciousness, this question wouldn’t arise. You say, “If one believes that other people are part of consciousness . . .” We are not part of consciousness, we are consciousness, the same consciousness. We all have this invisible witness in common and it is this witness that we call “I.” It is not your private witness. This has to be clearly understood. To begin with, take it as a possibility. Compassion comes at a later stage. Compassion is a natural consequence of understanding who we are. We cannot be compassionate without first finding out who we are. Until such a time, don’t try to be compassionate. Be compassionate towards yourself by finding out who you are. That is true compassion and it is also the most efficient compassion. It is the fastest way to help the world. If we do not know who we are, our actions will come from ignorance and they will only add to ignorance. When we know who we are, we realize that the world doesn’t need to be saved. First find your true nature and then see whether there is still a world that needs saving. When we find out who we are, the world as we normally conceive of it disappears, for it is no longer experienced as being separate or outside of ourselves.
Ramana Maharshi says the mind receives reflected light from consciousness and this seems to accord with the Platonic analogy of the cave. However, the Ashtavakra Gita suggests forgetting this question of reflected consciousness. I respect the Ashtavakra Gita and Ramana Maharshi, but am confused about these two perspectives.
In these images, consciousness is the source of light. Like the sun it is self-luminous and autonomous. It generates its own light. However, although the moon resembles the sun and seems to illuminate objects, it is not in fact self-luminous. It derives its luminosity from the sun. In the same way the mind derives its cognitive power, its faculty of knowing, from the source, from consciousness. In this analogy luminosity stands for consciousness. In the same way that the sun shines with its own light and needs no other source of light to be seen, so consciousness knows itself by itself. To say that the mind, which is represented by the moon, is not self-luminous, means that it is not conscious by itself. It is seen but it cannot see. The mind appears to have consciousness of its own and to know things, just as the moon appears to have its own light and to illuminate objects.
However, the moon is illumined by the sun, in the same way that the mind, thoughts, are illumined by consciousness. Consciousness is the perceiver. The moon seems to illumine objects on earth during the night, but it doesn’t illumine them by its own light. It is sunlight, reflected by the moon, which illumines these objects. The moon is in fact an object that, like all other objects, is itself illumined by the sun. It is in fact consciousness and consciousness alone that enables objects to be known.
In order to clarify this further, Ramana Maharshi also used an ancient Advaitic tool apart from self-inquiry and other skillful means, which was to distinguish between the perceiver and the perceived. He would clearly say that the Self is the perceiver and that everything else, including the ego, is perceived. He also said that it is enough for the truth seeker to understand this distinction, in order to get back to perceiving. Only consciousness, the Self, truly has the perceiving power. The mind only seems to have it, just like the moon.
What do you make of the notion of avatars?
Everything is an avatar.
There is a notion that certain beings . . .
This notion is also an avatar. Everything that is manifested is the Self manifesting itself. These ideas about avatars are concepts. It is better to understand that everything is the Self, because that abolishes all distinctions. It takes us directly to the truth. Everything is God, so everything is an avatar of God. Everything is the Son of God. Everything that appears is the Self coming out of the void.
But you just made a distinction between the perceiver and the perceived.
Yes, that was for a different question! That question was a theoretical one about how to see that two sides of the same truth are in fact one, in order to understand that there is no inconsistency between the teachings of the Ashtavakra Gita and the teachings of Ramana Maharshi. When we say that we are the perceiver and not the perceived, it is in order to go to the experience of pure consciousness, of Turiya. Usually, we believe that we are the body-mind, so the truth seeker has to be reminded that the body-mind is perceived. That which perceives is “I,” consciousness. Everything that is perceived is an object.
It is necessary to make this distinction because we usually identify with an object, a fragment. We don’t think, “I am the table, I am my clothes, I am my car.” However we do think, “I am this body and the rest is not me.” We identify with a fragment of our experience. In order to remove this identification, the Advaita tradition uses a two-step process. In the first step it says, “You are not that which is perceived, you are the perceiver.” In this step we reject everything that is perceived as not being ourselves. We reject the table, the car, the clothes, the body, and the mind, and this leads us to the experience of pure consciousness. Then, as the universe of names and shapes reappears, it is understood to reappear in the light of consciousness, out of consciousness, as a projection of consciousness. Therefore, the second step is, “Everything is consciousness. Consciousness is the source and substance of everything.” It is not like the sun that seems to illumine things that are already there, but rather that without consciousness they simply don’t exist, nothing exists, so they are nothing other than consciousness. Everything is consciousness. The metaphor of the ocean is more appropriate in this case. All objects are like waves that arise out of this ocean, are made of the same substance as the ocean, and dissolve back into it. Therefore, they are always one with it.
In the first step, only “I” is consciousness and the rest is perceived. This step is an effective way of loosening our identification with objects, including the body and the mind. However, when objects reappear, some duality will still remain between “I” as consciousness and that which appears. Having discovered “I,” a second step is therefore necessary in which everything that appears is understood and experienced to be consciousness, “I.”
It is important to understand this because sometimes, when we are only referring to the first stage, it might appear that credibility is being given to the idea of the existence of a subject and an object. This is not the case. It is simply that, at that moment, we are only talking about one part of the process. This first part of the process does not represent a complete understanding of the true nature of our experience, and yet for most people it is a necessary staging post.
Sometimes I experience ecstatic or very peaceful states, but they do not last, and the rest of my life seems bland and uninteresting by comparison.
You feel that things need to be changed. You feel that things are not satisfactory as they are, that they are not unfolding as they should. Don’t worry about things. Although these states, these samadhis, have a mystical quality to them, they are objective experiences. They are very refined objects, but nevertheless they are still objects. They are t
raps. Just as, on the path of knowledge, powers or siddhis are at some point a trap, so also are samadhis. Siddhis are the active part of the trap and samadhis are the passive part. Samadhis are the last layer of ignorance, anandamayakosha, the layer of the illusion of bliss. If we are attached to bliss, we kill bliss. As William Blake said, “He who binds himself to a joy does the winged life destroy.”
I had an experience thirty years ago in which I was blissfully happy, everything was so vibrant, but it vanished and I have never experienced it again.
It takes time to understand that the happiness in a happy state never comes and goes. Whatever was happy in that happy state thirty years ago, is still present right now. It is happiness itself. You objectified it and attached it to an experience that happened thirty years ago. To be hypnotized by the past prevents us from being knowingly this happiness in the present. Understand that the perfume of this experience is still present. It has never left you. In fact it is precisely because it has never left you, that you keep thinking about it.
I have had other experiences in which everything is not vibrantly happy but peacefully happy, and everything just flows. There is no feeling of restlessness or ego. I was just referring to that particular one because it was so vibrant.
Nevertheless, the moment we see happiness as an objective experience after the fact, we make an object of it and want it to reappear in an identical manner. However, this will never happen because it is always different. On the other hand, it is manifesting itself all the time. We cannot tell happiness where and how to manifest itself. God knows best what we need, where to appear, when to appear, and how to appear. The one who refers to these past experiences is the one who still has the nostalgia. It is the same illusion. That which remains when this illusion is seen for what it is, is God.
The Perfume of Silence Page 11