"The very first step in understanding what this is all about is giving up the concept of an active, volitional 'I' as a separate entity and accepting the passive role of perceiving and functioning as a process." - Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

Saturday, May 30, 2015

Stay As The Self

Sri Tandavaraya Swami

Master: Do not doubt that unreal meditation can grant real final deliverance. During meditation the image meditated upon by hearsay is not real, but when it materializes and is seen face to face, it becomes real. If you ask how unreal meditation leads to real and everlasting deliverance: each one is reborn in accordance with the last thought of his previous life. Persons are reborn in the forms they meditated upon. But should one meditate upon the Self in order to do with away with any kind of rebirth, then one becomes the Self. This is sure and certain.

Disciple: If those who meditate on attributeless brahman become That, O Master in human form! where is the need for enquiry or for knowledge?

Master: Meditation upon Brahman is based on hearsay; however, it becomes a fact of experience in due course. This experience is called the everlasting enquiry, knowledge or jnana or deliverance. This is the final conclusion.

Disciple: If modal consciousness (after destroying ignorance) be left over in the all-perfect Self, how can there be the experience of undivided being?

Master: Just as cleaning nut powder carries down the impurities in water, and settles down with them, so also modal consciousness destroys ignorance and perishes with it.

Disciple: What is the nature of the wise, liberated here and now?

Master: They are free from thoughts and therefore live happily, like an undisputed suzerain of the whole world, or like a babe. The ideas of bondage and release vanish for them altogether, so much so that they laugh at those who speak of such things. For, are they not to be laughed at, who say that a mosquito took in the ether and vomited it forth?

The son of a barren woman and the man seen in the psot wore flowers gathered in the sky, wrangled over the price of the silver in mother-of-pearl, in the city of the Gandharvas, armed themselves with the horns, fought and stabbed each other, died together and turned into ghosts. No man of sense will be excited on hearing this story. Since maya itself is unreal, all its creation must likewise be unreal. Can the progeny be of a different species from the mother's? Therefore, do not heed heaven or hell, good or bad; but stay as the Self which is sat-chit-ananda-purana (Perfection).

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सर्वभूताधिवासं यद्भूतेषु च वसत्यपि।
सर्वानुग्राहकत्वेन तद्स्म्यहं वासुदेवः॥

That in whom reside all beings and who resides in all beings,
who is the giver of grace to all, the Supreme Soul of the universe, the limitless being:
I AM THAT. -- Amritabindu Upanishad