My writings

Humility, Vulnerability, Surrender and GRACE | Holy Bhagavan Sri Ramana, the Self Within! Bhakti, poetry

~ Tom Das ~ 2 Comments

by Tom Das

(Please see if the following is helpful for you…)

Total and utter humility and total self-honesty are keys to liberation:
Realise how fragile you are, how little you really know, and how vulnerable you are to suffering.

Your beliefs, your ego, your defences, your conceit and your thought patterns convince you that you will be safe, that you can weather the storm…but admit the truth! That you are totally helpless and totally vulnerable to immense suffering and calamity. Admit it.

At any moment you are liable to crack open, break down and become a nervous wreck. Be truthful with yourself – admit it.

So…

Instead…

Be small, be vulnerable, be humble…

And then you can,
With tears of pining despair flowing,
Admit how much you want to be with HIM,
SAFE IN HIS ARMS:

Take refuge in HIM
– only in HIM are you safe:
Withdraw from the many objects into the SUBJECT,
HIM,
– ‘Out there it is unsafe’…

Therefore,
Timid, vulnerable, cowing,
Withdraw within,
Fearful and quivering,
TAKE REFUGE in HIS PRESENCE
Wherein he will cleanse you and MAKE YOU WHOLE.

Guru Bhavagan Sri Ramana has told us:

“O heart of mine, it is not wise to stay out.
Safe it is to stay within. Conceal yourself from maya
Which plans to draw you out to destroy you.
Stay within.”
(Guru Vachaka Kovai verse 187)

and

“For those who ever think of and cling to the Feet of
the Sadguru, who is the blazing flame of pure Jnana,
through the Grace obtained by such Guru-bhakti, their
minds will become clear and they will achieve Mei-
Jnana [True Knowledge].”
(Guru Vachaka Kovai verse 305)

Abide with HIM, the SELF within,
Immerse yourself in HIS GRACE,
Drown and anihilate your ego-self, the SOLUTE
in HIM, the DIVINE SOLVENT.

As Guru Bhavagan Sri Ramana has told us:

“Worship of [ie. surrender to] the Feet of the Guru,
with Guru-bhakti, is the real mantra, which will
destroy all the rising vasanas and bestow Jnana,
in which there will be no fear of Maya’s delusion.
Thus should you know.”
(Guru Vachaka Kovai verse 306)

You – the ego – who are the source of all suffering and pain,
DISSOLVE YOURSELF in HIM
So that ONLY HIS RADIANT PRESENCE remains

Abiding silently as SELF WITHIN
is to BE WITH HIM
-This is the highest WORSHIP OF HIM

As Bhagavan Sri Ramana says:

“Extinguishing the triple fire,
The Guru’s Feet have given us shelter.
To abide there and control the mind
From craving for the world of sense
Is worship of those Flowery Feet.“
(Guru Vachaka Kovai verse 318)

Do NOT allow the world to take you away from him
Do NOT allow the world to prevent you from BEING WITH HIM
Do NOT allow the world to prevent you from BEING IN HIS BLISSFULL EMBRACE
Do NOT allow the world to prevent you from WORSHIPPING HIM EVERY SPARE SECOND YOU HAVE

Do NOT allow your thoughts to take you away from HIM
Do NOT allow your thoughts to prevent you from WORSHIPPING HIM IN SILENT BLISS
Do NOT allow your thoughts to stop you WITHDRAWING INTO YOURSELF and taking HIM AS REFUGE

Tell yourself:
I will NOT allow the world to take me away from HIM
I will NOT allow my thoughts to take me away from HIM
I will NOT allow the mind and world to take me away from MY WORSHIP OF HIM,
MY BEAUTIFUL REFUGE WITHIN

BE WITH HIM
Be in his PRESESNCE
BE STILL
and
BE WITH HIM

DISSOLVE YOURSELF IN HIM
So ONLY HE,
The Residue,
Remains.

Tell yourself:
I will allow myself to DISSOLVE IN HIM until ONLY HE REMAINS

Holy Mount Arunachala,
The FORM OF THE SELF,
Holy BHAGAVAN SRI RAMANA,
The FORM OF THE SELF,

May I gaze upon thy form,
outwardly and inwardly,
May I take refuge in thee,
May I entrust myself to your BLISSFULL EMBRACE,
WITHIN
And become one with YOU
Destroying myself
Discovering myself
So that only YOU remain

As Maha Guru Sri Bhagavan says:

“By coming near to the Sadguru
and by depending completely upon His Grace,
with great Guru bhakti,
one will have no misery in this world
and will live like Indra.”
(Guru Vachaka Kovai verse 324)

!Om Namo Bhagavate Sri Arunachala Ramanaya Om!
!Om Namo Bhagavate Sri Arunachala Ramanaya Om!
!Om Namo Bhagavate Sri Arunachala Ramanaya Om!

Mocking, judging and ridiculing others Vs Compassion and Empathy

~ Tom Das ~ 1 Comment

Mocking, judging, or ridiculing others who have a different view to you – even when there is truth in your perspective – can point to a deeper lack of empathy and genuine understanding within yourself. It can reflect unprocessed emotions such as hurt, anger, frustration, or confusion, and it can also reflect a lack of understanding in what is actually going on in the world around you and in other people’s experiences.

This kind of ridicule also fosters ‘othering’, a subtle form of dehumanising those with different perspectives and different values to your own. Instead of opening space for dialogue or empathy, it widens divides and reinforces distance between people, keeping us more polarised rather than bringing us together. It escalates rather than de-escalates. It spews out more mess, rather than helping to clean up.

Rather than speaking and acting out of frustration and anger (or other negative emotions), it is often more healing and productive to pause, reflect, and process what is happening – both within yourself and also in trying to understand the experiences of others. If you want to help ‘clean up’ rather than ‘create more mess’, it is especially important to understand where other people are coming from in these situations: their experiences, their ideas, their values, their hurts, their frustrations, their grievances, etc, so take your time…

Be Still for a while. Be curious. Notice any resistance and rigidity/fixity in yourself. See if it helps you to replace condemnation and judgement with openness, curiosity, humility and emotional vulnerability. Learn about the other, listen, truly listen (and learn).

If you allow it, this process will eventually take you to LOVE and COMPASSION.

Others may still disagree with you, and you may disagree with them too! And some may ‘other’ you and even be rude towards you, but approaching interactions this way allows you to be clear in yourself. It allows you to go forth with empathy and compassion, peaceful and grounded; it allows you to be able to engage without fueling division and hatred, without adding to the mess in this already (apparently) messy world. It (hopefully) allows you to be able to respond more wisely rather than simply react.

Yes, there is a place for strength! Yes, there is also a place for limits and boundaries! But let us try to do this from a Place of Peace rather than of negativity, othering and frustration.

May peace be with you

❤🙏❤

This is a path of love: Advaita and Non-duality

~ Tom Das ~ 1 Comment

This is a Path of Love.

Even the path of knowledge and the non-dual teachings are truly only a path of love.

That Love comes from within. It is a genuine Love, not just a concept of Love or Oneness. It is also called Peace or Bliss or the Heart ❤️

Be Still and Know.
Be Still and Receive.

🙏🙏🙏
❤️❤️❤️

The music of the Self, which is always playing in your Heart

~ Tom Das ~ 1 Comment

The music of the Self, which is always playing in your Heart, can only be heard with the inner ear when the mind is extremely still.

This music dissolves all suffering, all duality and all doubt.

This music reveals the infinite love that you are, beyond all words, concepts and descriptions.

By Bhagavan’s Grace may this great truth be revealed to you.

🙏🙏🙏

Discover directly in your Heart | I Am

~ Tom Das ~ Leave a comment

When the mind becomes very quiet, it can become possible to realise that all gross and subtle perceptions are actually illusory and only the substratum-self is real.

If you lovingly, happily, repeatedly and consistently go towards this sense I AM, eventually you will merge into that, destroying your illusory sense of individuality (ie. ego).

What is then discovered is so much more than ‘the background of consciousness’ or ‘awareness’ or ‘being’…

…it is beyond all words and concepts and cannot be described…

…to put it into words one could say it is total infinite love and fulfillment

…but actually it is more than this too…

It is your ever-shining Self. You are That, now and always, but this is not to be believed by the ego-mind, but to be discovered directly in the Heart

~ Tom Das

🙏🙏🙏

Spiritual Bypassing and Self-Enquiry | True Spirituality | Go within

~ Tom Das ~ Leave a comment

It is certainly true that many people bypass and suppress their psychological issues and emotional issues through engaging with various forms of so-called spirituality.

It is also true that it is possible to overindulge in emotionality and sentimentality to the point that it adversely affects your ability to function on a day-to-day level, making you overly sensitive and reactive to your emotions.

Balance is obviously important here. It is possible to both feel too little and to feel too much.

Ultimately spiritual teachings do teach us to transcend emotional issues, but this is not the same as suppression and bypassing, both of which are generally unhelpful on our path.

If we do not actually transcend and go beyond our emotions (and our thoughts and sense perceptions), we have not really entered into the spiritual realm, and are just operating on the psychological level only. There is nothing wrong with this, it is just that this is not genuinely liberating in the truly spiritual sense of the word.

For liberation, that ever-blissful realm that is prior to birth of the body and which survives death must be discovered, otherwise suffering, duality and fear will continue, as will the illusion of the separate self. This can only be done by discovering the Truth of Oneself within.

In peace and love.

🙏🙏🙏

THE ENTIRE NON-DUAL ‘PATH’ EXPLAINED

~ Tom Das ~ Leave a comment

The entire path to liberation is explained here in this text called The Path of Sri Ramana, which you can download for free here:

The entire path explained: the Path of Sri Ramana (Parts 1 and 2; PDF downloads)

If you read it carefully, all the teachings are there for you. Nothing else is needed. However many, for some reason, do not read it clearly and do not understand the teachings. Their mind skips over key sentences and paragraphs. Their ego or minds will not allow them to see what is clearly written on the page! I have come across many seekers like this!

So, even more detail is given and the teachings are further explained here, in this very slim text called Sadhanai Saram, which means ‘the essence of the spiritual practice’, also available for free download:

The entire path explained: the Path of Sri Ramana (Parts 1 and 2; PDF downloads)

Even though everything is clearly spelt out, some people for some reason still don’t understand the teachings! Their minds will not let them read the words plainly and interpret them correctly! Their egos reinterpret the words according to their own views – in that case you should read this text too, The Most Direct Means to Eternal Bliss’:

The Most Direct Means To Eternal Bliss by Michael Langford

Of course the true teaching can never be fully given in a book or in words, but these are great pointers nonetheless – they are some of the best texts on liberation ever written imho.

🙏🙏🙏

Does the body give rise to consciousness or consciousness give rise to the body? | Advaita Vedanta | Non-Duality

~ Tom Das ~ Leave a comment

Fact: as long as the body continues to appear in your experience, you will never be 100% sure if it is the body that gives rise to consciousness, or (eternal unchanging) consciousness that gives rise to the body.

This is why all the great sages have advocated the need to turn inwards, away from all sense objects thoughts and phenomena, for deep and total silence of mind and thoughts, so the true nature of what you are can be intuited (without the mind or body or sense objects/world being present), and in this way the birthless deathless eternal and changing self can be realised (again, without the mind. Realisation is not for the mind or by the person).

🙏

THE POWER AND NATURE OF THOUGHT | Law of Attraction | Advaita | Non-Duality

~ Tom Das ~ Leave a comment

It is open for everybody to discover, when the mind is very still and turned inwards towards the sense ‘I’, which is not a thought, that it is thought that gives rise to the body and is there prior to the body and what we usually call the mind.

The first thought is the ‘I thought’, and it precedes the creation of the body.

Just as we commonly conceive that the mind projects a dream, it is actually the ‘I thought’ that gives rise to or projects the three states of waking, dream and deep sleep. These three states together with the ‘I thought’ are all unreal and illusory, and these must all go for liberation to occur and our true nature to be intuited or realised.

The ‘I thought’ is also known by various other names, such as ignorance, ego, original sin, Maya, the devil, delusion, Brahma, Isvara, ‘the first act of creation’ and the mind to name a few.

This is what is being shared here.

🙏❤️

Why this talk of ‘turn within’?

~ Tom Das ~ Leave a comment

Q. Why this talk of ‘turning within’ to realise the Self? There is no within

Tom: There is no within or without. But when one is identified with the body, the self is indicated as being within. When the self is realised, then it is seen there is no within/without. Before realisation, when body-mind still (apparently) appears, to say ‘there is no within or without’ is merely conceptual wordplay and a belief system in operation

🙏