non-duality

Ramana Maharshi: Once you realise the Self, it becomes your direct and immediate experience. It is never lost.

~ Tom Das ~ 5 Comments
Ramana Maharshi sitting
‘Once you realise the Self, it becomes your direct and immediate experience. It is never lost.’
Ramana Maharshi

Time and time again I hear from spiritual seekers that they glimpsed the Self, they experienced that ecstasy, but it slipped through their fingers and fell away. Their question to me is how to get it back again. This is the wrong question, this is the wrong way, as it is based on a fundamental misunderstanding of the path.

Everything that comes can also go. Everything that comes, all experiences that have been attained, are not the Self.

The Self is no particular experience. It is always here, fully manifest, fully evident. Everything that is perceived is It. It is not different from whatever is being perceived to be happening.

Realising that ‘this is It’ is Self-realisation. It is simply seeing what already is the case. When it is seen, there is no desire to reach a new experience, and a seeing that everything happens spontaneously without the presence of a separate doer-entity. Here suffering falls away as the simple truth of no-doer is seen.

Actions, thoughts and desires continue to manifest themselves, spontaneously, but there is nobody doing it, just like the wind blowing or digestion happening. Things happen, no doer.

As long are you are alive, you always are, you always exist. No matter what happens, you are. This knowledge of (your) being is Self-knowledge. It is not something to attain, just something to be ‘acknowledged’. It is not separate from whatever is perceived to be happening. How can this ‘knowledge’ be lost?

Spiritual knowledge cannot be learnt

~ Tom Das ~ 1 Comment
green sloping hills.jpg
“There will come a time when one will have to forget all that one has learned.” 
from ‘Who am I’ by Ramana Maharshi

Ultimate truth is simply that which never changes. It is here, now, everywhere and always already in its full glory. It is not separate from whatever is happening or from what is currently being experienced. Ultimate truth does not require you to believe in it or even do anything for it. Just drop all wrong thoughts and whatever remains is It. It cannot be caught in concepts.

The main role of the spiritual path is not to learn about ultimate truth, as it cannot be accumulated, but to discard falsehood. Seeing through false assumptions is what is called ‘spiritual knowledge’. It is not knowledge in the conventional sense at all really.

Conventionally speaking, learning is about accumulation of knowledge, but spiritual learning is more like pruning a hedge or chipping away at a block of stone to reveal a beautiful sculpture beneath. Put simply, spiritual learning is unlearning. Spiritual knowledge is seeing through false ideas.

“The state of Self-realisation, as we call it, is not attaining something new or reaching some goal which is far away, but simply being that which you always are and which you always have been. All that is needed is that you give up your realisation of the not-true as true.”
Ramana Maharshi

Anything that is learnt as being true is in the realm of relative knowledge. Anything that is learnt can also be forgotten whereas the Ultimate neither comes nor goes. Any statement posited as being true can be questioned and doubted leaving with it the bitter taste of uncertainty.

The Ultimate cannot be conceptualised. Conceptualisation itself relies on the Ultimate for its existence. All statements of truth rely on supporting structures and logic, eg. underpinning scientific or philosophical reasoning. The Ultimate truth stands by itself without needing outside support. It is none other than what you truly are. Look and you shall see.

Ramana Maharshi: To remain as you are, without question or doubt, is your natural state

~ Tom Das ~ 1 Comment

Ramana reclining

To remain as you are, without question or doubt, is your natural state
Ramana Maharshi

This is still an instruction for the spiritual seeker: ‘to remain as you are’.

With liberation, questions and doubts are irrelevant, as the natural state is simply whatever is. Nothing can obstruct it. It is always here and manifests as whatever is arising. It can never be obstructed and is always in plain sight.

However for the seeker, ie. the person that takes themselves to be the author of their thoughts and actions, the instruction to remain as you are and not worry about or get entangled with thoughts, questions and doubts, is one of the highest and most refined spiritual teachings available.

Be still, forget all concept of who you are, notice things as they happen. Regardless of what is happening, you know that you are, never what you are, only that you are.

When the mind and its concepts are no longer being believed, what use is there to talk of separation or no separation, self or no-self?

Bhagavad Gita: the most secret teaching

~ Tom Das ~ Leave a comment

BG fix your mind on me.png

Lord Krishna states this is his most secret teaching: to love Him, to devote ourselves to Him, to be with Him knowingly.

He is already in each of our hearts, He is already everywhere and everything, everything is already done by Him.

Here knowledge, scripture and philosophy all crumble as, through our devotion, the heart opens. All are consumed by Him, and all we are left with is Him in all His glory.

We never were. All there ever was was Him.

❤ ❤ ❤

As Jesus said when asked:

“Teacher, which is the great commandment in the Law?”
And he [Jesus] said to him,
“You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.This is the greatest and first commandment.”
Matthew 22:36-38

❤ ❤ ❤

Also, as Shankara sung in his Bhaja Govindam:

“Worship Govinda, worship Govinda, worship Govinda,
Oh fool! Other than chanting the Lord’s names, there is no other way to cross the life’s ocean.”
(Govinda is another name for Krishna. Literally it means ‘protector of cows’ referring to Krishna’s youth as a cow herd.)

❤ ❤ ❤

So, all that’s left for me do to is bow down and praise Him

❤ ❤ ❤

Hare Krishna!

Om Namah Shivaya!

May all beings be happy and well!

Praise be to God!

❤ ❤ ❤

See also:

Was Jesus ever born?

The pre-eminent form of worship

 

Poetry: the all knowing ego

~ Tom Das ~ Leave a comment

Punch and judy.JPG

The ego thinks it has all the ‘answers’,
Thinks it knows exactly how the enlightenment game works,
Thinks it knows which practice is best,
All its concepts lined up.

Of course it has no clue.

Pride means it pretends to know what it doesn’t,
Clinging to what it hopes will work,
According to its limited understanding.

Who can blame it?

My advice: realise first, talk later.

Humility and realisation

~ Tom Das ~ Leave a comment

humility flower.jpg

An important part of the teaching is to realise the limits of our ability to know or understand things. Often we think we know or understand things only to later find that we were deluding ourselves. The very ideas we think we know to be true are the same ones that keep us trapped and prevent realisation occurring.

The very ideas we think we know to be true are the same ones that keep us trapped and prevent realisation occurring.

Remember that realisation does not mean arriving at a new understanding: it is actually the realisation that the beliefs we held about ourself, specifically the ‘I am the doer’ belief, do not have the evidence required to support them. If we just follow the evidence, we will not make claims that are unjustified, and we preserve our humility and integrity. Any understanding we subsequently develop will have strong foundations.

Being humble just means not pretending to know something that you don’t. Similarly if you think you know something but are not completely sure, it means admitting that uncertainty. In that space of doubt, there is room for something true to emerge and be seen. In acknowledging the limitations and assumptions of our thought processes we are entering into what is actual and true.

In that space of doubt, there is room for something true to emerge and be seen.

To put it differently, humility is a form of honesty, and it is this being completely honest with ourselves that forms a firm foundation from which this teaching can take root, grow and thrive.