A human being is part of the whole called by us universe, a part
limited in time and space. We experience ourselves, our thoughts
and feelings as something separate from the rest. A kind of optical
delusion of consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for
us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few
persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from
the prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all
living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty. The true
value of a human being is determined primarily by the measure
and the sense in which they have obtained liberation from the self.
We shall require a substantially new manner of thinking if humanity
is to survive.

-Albert Einstein

Balsekar

All effort at controlling thoughts, appetites and desires cannot but strengthen them along with the ego. Whatever has to go must fall off by itself. All that you are concerned with, all that you are, is the impersonal functioning of understanding. So let that understanding work through witnessing without judgement, knowing that there is nothing else that you can do. Meditation and all such methods and efforts are distractions from simply abiding in the natural state which is one's limitless, real being.

When I was searching about,

(not too long ago) looking for something, didn't know
what it was at the time, I went down to London on
the train to listen to Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee giving a
talk on Rumi, Llewellyn is the present Shaykh in the
lineage, (inherited from Mrs Irina Tweedie,) of
The Golden Sufi Order, as he was speaking, questions
built up one by one in my mind which I intended to
ask him after the talk. . .

He was sitting on the edge of the stage, I went to
him and sat down beside him and said, "Llewellyn,
I had a hundred things to ask of you, but I can't
now think of one single question. He was eating
dates at the time, he answered, "forget the
questions, Tom, have a date."

Tom McFerran

Wei Wu Wei

A myriad bubbles were floating on the surface of a stream.
'What are you?' I cried to them as they drifted by. 'I am a
bubble, of course' nearly a myriad bubbles answered, and
there was surprise and indignation in their voices as they
passed.

But, here and there, a lonely little bubble answered, 'We are this stream', and there was neither surprise nor indignation in their voices, but just a quiet certitude."

Wei Wu Wei

Ask the Awakened

You stop to point to the moon in the sky,

but the finger's blind unless the moon is shining.

One moon, one careless finger pointing --
are these two things or one?

The question is a pointer guiding
a novice from ignorance thick as fog.

Look deeper. The mystery calls and calls:
No moon, no finger -- nothing there at all.

By Ryokan
(1758 - 1831)

Reality

Any reality that can be conceived by an individual entity is based on a belief or personal absoluteness in temporality which is a complete misapprehension in itself. The individual human just cannot accept the fact that his individuality and, more importantly, his individual volition or free-will is nothing more than an illusion.

There is a single, immanent Reality which is at once the source, the substratum and the true nature of everything that is manifested as the universe. This indivisible Reality is directly experienced by every sentient being as the subjective awareness of self, the consciousness of existing and being present.
Ramesh S. Balsekar

chinese

One of my chinese students in China give me a Christmas card at Christmas past. On one side she had written these words presumably copied from some text. I just wondered if you had heard these words before or thought they might be of interest/relevance. (Strange christmas card verse I thought )

"Happiness is accompanied by sorrow and it would turn sunny after rain as well. If rain remains after rain and sorrow remains after sorrow, please take these farewells easy and turn to smilingly look for yourself who is never to appear."
~Anonymous
From "Non-Duality Highlights" Jerry Katz, Editor

American Advaita: Winter Solstice, 2007

One must have a mind of winter
To regard the frost and the boughs
Of the pine-trees crusted with snow;

And have been cold a long time
To behold the junipers shagged with ice,
The spruces rough in the distant glitter

Of the January sun; and not to think
Of any misery in the sound of the wind,
In the sound of a few leaves,

Which is the sound of the land
Full of the same wind
That is blowing in the same bare place

For the listener, who listens in the snow,
And, nothing himself, beholds
Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is.
-Wallace Stevens

Whenever you notice that some form of negativity has arisen within you, look on it not as a failure, but as a helpful signal that is telling you: "Wake up. Get out of your mind. Be present."

- Eckhart Tolle, from The Power of Now,

The Seperation

True worship is effortless, supreme meditation in the continuous, unbroken awareness of the within, the indwelling presence. It requires no effort because there is nothing in it to be attained which one does not already possess.

What is generally understood to be prayer is nothing more than one fictitious entity called 'me' begging for something from another fictitious entity called 'God'.
~ Ramesh S. Balsekar

Nothing

Nothing sings in our bodies
like breath in a flute.
It dwells in the drum.
I hear it now
that slow beat
like when a voice said to the dark,
let there be light,
let there be ocean
and blue fish
born of nothing
and they were there.
I turn back to bed.
The man there is breathing.
I touch him
with hands already owned by another world
Look, they are desert,
they are rust. They have washed the dead.
They have washed the just born.
They are open.
They offer nothing.
Take it.
Take nothing from me.
There is still a little life
left inside this body,
a little wildness here
and mercy
and it is the emptiness
we love, touch, enter in one another
and try to fill.

~Linda Hogan

being no one, going no where, having nothing

"Spiritual maturity is being ready to let go of everything.
Giving up is a first step, but real giving up is the insight
that there's nothing to be given up, since nothing is your
property."
~Nisargadatta

As awareness bends back on itself,

a breathtaking, eternal reality shines forth, pristine and untroubled by everything that has happened in the created world.

Remarkably one has been transported to the instant "before the beginning" of all creation while the familiar world is seen as an expression of an implicit void.

The infinite sense of awe and wonder is amplified when the silent question of how can this be?, is followed by the startling, all-encompassing presence of grace.

When awareness turns to the "world" it may be shocking to realize that people are not who they appear to be, but whether they know that is an open question.

All searching for tangible evidence of who they are ends in the same, formless mystery that one discovers when looking at one's "own" awareness and being.
- Michael Regan

i thank You God for most this amazing
day:for the leaping greenly spirits of trees
and a blue true dream of sky;and for everything
which is natural which is infinite which is yes

(i who have died am alive again today,
and this is the sun's birthday;this is the birth
day of life and love and wings:and of the gay
great happening illimitably earth)

how should tasting touching hearing seeing
breathing any-lifted from the no
of all nothing-human merely being
doubt unimaginable You?

(now the ears of my ears awake and
now the eyes of my eyes are opened


~ e.e. cummings ~

(Complete Poems 1904-1962)

Vicki Doesn't Live Here Anymore (With Apologies to Alice)

I don't live in my mind anymore. I visit there, but only when I fall
asleep. I don't mean on the bed; I mean when I fall into a lower state
of consciousness than awareness. Awareness is my home and it isn't for
sale at any price. I would gladly list my mind but there would be no
takers. Who wants a ramshackle little piece of property that is gray
and divided into lobes. Not much chance of a makeover there.

For Sale by Owner: Dilapidated mind. Needs new roof and synapses. Can
be had for a song (the one that goes through my mind day and night).

I used to think that my mind was smart, even brilliant. Back in the
day it was. But now it can't even remember who's on Larry King Live
after just hearing it promoted thirty seconds ago. And yet it
remembers every injustice it has suffered since birth. And is waiting
to get even. Oh, my mind is a dangerous and stupid place to live. I am
sure there is lead paint on every window sill.

There is one room in my mind that has never been opened. It is called
The Room of Prejudice. Next to it is one with no door at all. It's The
Room of Resentment. It's used so often that one fine day I just took
the door off the hinges and threw it away.

I used to think that the mind was a terrible thing to waste; now I
know better. It's a terrible thing to use if you don't know what you
are doing. The only time you should visit your mind is when you are
accompanied by awareness. Then a very strange thing happens. It
disappears. Just like Judge Crater....just like Amelia Earhart and
Jimmy Hoffa. Just like a warm plate of brownies or clothes at a nude
beach. Gone.

I am not sure why I wrote this essay except out of gratitude for
finally moving upstairs. Of course, the mind still bothers me but I
just knock on the ceiling and tell it to shut the heck up.

~Vicki Woodyard

In two, there is only One.

In “you” and “I,” there are not two, but One.
In delusion, only One; in recollection, only One.
What work remains but to know?
~Ivan H. Granger

Once you realize that there is nothing in the
world which you can call your own, you look
at it from the outside as you look at a play
on the stage, or a picture on the screen,
admiring and enjoying, but really unmoved.
As long as you imagine yourself to be
something tangible and solid, a thing among
things, actually existing in time and space,
short lived and vulnerable, naturally you
will be anxious to survive and increase.
~Nisargadatta

"Not Seeking"

If someone were to ask me for advice on this 'search' for completeness, I would say something like the following: All the contrived 'postures' and 'attitudes' of my seeking led me nowhere, except around and around on a circuit of endless mentations. Only with the expansive openness of 'not seeking' did a clear view dawn in me. Many helpful hints and examples (of it) were thrown my way by Teachers and Life itself. This intrinsic knowing shines through the ignorance of seeking. What is not apparent for some is that this intrinsic knowing is already here. Its fullness is seemingly diminished (ignored) by mind stuff in the psychological posture of a 'person' that is 'seeking'. And so I would say, relax back into your own true nature of openness. From this openness, a view dawns that all is well.

- Gilbert Schultz

The "Jewel Above All Jewels" Sutra*

Becoming aware of That Which Is
Aware puts you in a different
relationship to yourself and life,
one in which you are free to
respond naturally and spontaneously
according to what the moment
demands rather than out of your
conditioned ideas and beliefs. This
is a remarkable and life-altering
shift - this simple shift to being
aware of yourself as Awareness.
Moving from the ego to essence
is simply a shift of attention away
from thought onto That Which Is
Aware of Thought.
- Gina Lake

*(My Title, GB)
Image of Vetiver Grass

what is

It is futile to seek human reason, purpose or meaning in the events of life, which are in fact impersonal and not human at all.

The intuitive apprehension that is real faith is based on a certain inescapable inevitability, a relaxed acceptance of WHAT IS that is totally free of any doubt or opinion.

A Net of Jewels
Ramesh S. Balsekar