self-realization

Beyond self-realisation

~ Tom Das ~ 3 Comments
face illusion flower
There is nobody here

No sadhanas are required
No sadhana (spiritual practice) can lead to self realisation. No map can take you to where you already are, and no practice can transform you into that which you always have been.

All sadhanas such as meditation, mindfulness, mantra, puja, selfless service and devotion – all sadhanas are for the illusory individual. They are an extension of greed/egotism. It is this web of illusion, all hinged upon the idea of being a person with a body and mind, that prevents the obvious from being ‘seen’. Continue reading →

Ramana Maharshi: Self-realisation is non-verbal

~ Tom Das ~ 3 Comments

Ramana smiling

‘I did not yet know that there was an essence or impersonal Real underlying everything, and that Ishwara (God) and I were both identical with It.

Later at Tiruvannamalai, as I listened to the Ribhu Gita and other sacred books, I learned all this and found that the books were analysing and naming what I had felt intuitively without analysis or name.’

Ramana Maharshi and the Path of Self-knowledge, p. 16

Ramana Maharshi, that great 20th century sage, explains in the above quote that his experience of Self-realisation was non-verbal. Though already self-realised at the time, he did not describe his experience in terms of that which changes (the transient) and that which never changes (the eternal), as is often traditionally done. It was only later, when listening to others read the scriptures, did he realise that his state had also been experienced and analysed by others before him, and that their traditional exposition described his own experience. Continue reading →

YOU ARE THAT WHICH KNOWS THE BODY, MIND, WORLD, AND CONSCIOUSNESS

~ Tom Das ~ Leave a comment

What most people take themselves to be, the body-mind entity, is in fact a series of perceptions, images and sensations within consciousness, bound together by the (false) concept “I”.

The world too, as we experience it, is nothing but a play of consciousness, images and sensations rising and falling, creating the impression of a world. Continue reading →

A Quaker Silence

~ Tom Das ~ 5 Comments

AssemblyOfQuakers

I went to Quaker meeting for worship today on Easter Sunday. We sit in silence for an hour, and if anyone is moved to speak they do so. The idea is that it is the Silence that speaks, not the ego, Silence being that ever-present Presence, also known as God (or whatever other word you want to use).

‘Not by reading do you get the truth. Be quiet, that is truth. Be still, that is God.’
from Face to Face with Sri Ramana Maharshi, ch. 100

Continue reading →