|
|
Post by Reefs on Aug 8, 2013 5:34:19 GMT -8
Niz for Dummies (1) - Realization
"Realization is of the fact that you are not a person. Therefore, it cannot be the duty of the person whose destiny is to disappear... At the moment of realization the person ceases. Identity remains, but identity is not a person, it is inherent in the reality itself... Unless the witnessing consciousness begins to play on the person and it becomes the object of observation rather than the subject, realization is not feasible. It is the witness that makes realization desirable and attainable...
For realization, understanding is essential. Action is only incidental. ... There are no steps to self-realization. There is nothing gradual about it. It happens suddenly and is irreversible. You rotate into a new dimension, seen from which the previous ones are mere abstractions. Just like on sunrise you see things as they are, so on self-realization you see everything as it is. The world of illusions is left behind....
Realization is but the opposite of ignorance. To take the world as real and one’s self as unreal is ignorance, the cause of sorrow. To know the self as the only reality and all else as temporal and transient is freedom, peace and joy... Self -realization is beyond the mind... To know that the known cannot be me nor mine, is liberation enough. Freedom from self-identification with a set of memories and habits. To know the source as source and appearance as appearance, and oneself as the source only is self-realization... Just as every wave subsides into the ocean, so does every moment return to its source. Realization consists in discovering the source and abiding there....
Experience, however sublime, is not the real thing. By its very nature it comes and goes. Self-realization is not an acquisition. It is more of the nature of understanding. Once arrived at, it cannot be lost. On the other hand, consciousness is changeful, flowing, undergoing transformation from moment to moment. Do not hold on to consciousness and its contents...
All experience is illusory, limited and temporal. Expect nothing from experience. Realization by itself is not an experience, though it may lead to a new dimension of experiences. Yet the new experiences, however interesting, are not more real than the old. Definitely realization is not a new experience. It is the discovery of the timeless factor in every experience. It is awareness, which makes experience possible. Just like in all the colors light is the colorless factor, so in every experience awareness is present, yet it is not an experience..."
- Niz
taken from "I AM THAT"
|
|
|
|
Post by Reefs on Aug 8, 2013 5:38:42 GMT -8
Niz for Dummies (2) - Earnestness
"Earnestness is not a yearning for the fruits of one’s endeavors. It is an expression of an inner shift of interest away from the false, the unessential, the personal... You give reality to concepts, while concepts are distortions of reality. Abandon all conceptualization and stay silent and attentive. Be earnest about it and all will be well with you.
Earnestness, not perfection, is a precondition to self-realization. Virtues and powers come with realization, not before... Be honest with yourself and nothing will betray you. Virtues and powers are mere tokens for children to play with. They are useful in the world, but do not take you out of it. To go beyond, you need alert immobility, quiet attention.
Only be earnest and honest... It is the earnestness that liberates and not the theory... What was born must die. Only the unborn is deathless. Find what is it that never sleeps and never wakes, and whose pale reflection is our sense of ‘I’... It is earnestness that will take you through, not cleverness — your own or another’s .... Earnestness, the sign of maturity.
Don’t be misled by the simplicity of the advice. Very few are those who have the courage to trust the innocent and the simple. To know that you are a prisoner of your mind, that you live in an imaginary world of your own creation is the dawn of wisdom. To want nothing of it, to be ready to abandon it entirely, is earnestness. Only such earnestness, born of true despair, will make you trust me...
How long will it take to get free of the mind? It may take a thousand years, but really no time is required. All you need is to be earnest... it is earnestness that is indispensable, the crucial factor. Sadhana is only a vessel and it must be filled to the brim with earnestness... Earnestness is the golden key... After all, the realized man is the most earnest man. Whatever he does, he does it completely, without limitations and reservations. Integrity will take you to reality."
- Niz
taken from "I AM THAT"
|
|
|
|
Post by Reefs on Aug 8, 2013 5:40:55 GMT -8
Niz for Dummies (3) - Persons
"As long as you take yourself to be a person, a body and a mind, separate from the stream of life, having a will of its own, pursuing its own aims, you are living merely on the surface and whatever you do will be short-lived and of little value, mere straw to feed the flames of vanity... To be a person is to be asleep... How can a person limited in time and space, a mere body-mind, a gasp of pain between birth and death, be happy? The very conditions of its arising make happiness impossible. Peace, power, happiness, these are never personal states, nobody can say ‘my peace’, ‘my power’ — because ‘mine’ implies exclusivity, which is fragile and insecure...
The person is not Reality... Once you realize that the person is merely a shadow of the reality, but not reality itself, you cease to fret and worry. You agree to be guided from within and life becomes a journey into the unknown... The person is merely the result of a misunderstanding. In reality, there is no such thing. Feelings, thoughts and actions race before the watcher in endless succession, leaving traces in the brain and creating an illusion of continuity. A reflection of the watcher in the mind creates the sense of ‘I’ and the person acquires an apparently independent existence. In reality there is no person, only the watcher identifying himself with the ‘I’ and the ‘mine’...
Your being a person is due to the illusion of space and time; you imagine yourself to be at a certain point occupying a certain volume; your personality is due to your self-identification with the body. Your thoughts and feelings exist in succession, they have their span in time and make you imagine yourself, be- cause of memory, as having duration. In reality time and space exist in you; you do not exist in them. They are modes of perception, but they are not the only ones....
The person cannot be said to exist by itself. Unperceived, it is just not there. It is but the shadow of the mind, the sum total of memories. Pure being is reflected in the mirror of the mind, as knowing. What is known takes the shape of a person, based on memory and habit. It is but a shadow, or a projection of the knower onto the screen of the mind... The person is never the subject. You can see a person, but you are not the person. You are always the Supreme which appears at a given point of time and space as the witness, a bridge between the pure awareness of the Supreme and the manifold consciousness of the person.... Once you realize that whatever appears before you cannot be yourself, and cannot say ‘I am’, you are free of all your ‘persons’ and their demands.... You are not the person, but the pure and calm witness, and that fearless awareness is your very being, you are the being...
When you believe yourself to be a person, you see persons everywhere. In reality there are no persons, only threads of memories and habits. At the moment of realization the person ceases. Identity remains, but identity is not a person, it is inherent in the reality itself. The person has no being in itself; it is a reflection in the mind of the witness, the ‘I am’, which again is a mode of being... As long as you think yourself to be a person, God too is a person. When you are all, you see Him as all.... The self is universal and its aims are universal. There is nothing personal about the self... Reality is common to all. Only the false is personal.... The reward of self-knowledge is freedom from the personal self... Undeceive yourself and be free. You are not a person....
Does not the ego have its value? The person is of little use. It is deeply involved in its own affairs and is completely ignorant of its true being. Unless the witnessing consciousness begins to play on the person and it becomes the object of observation rather than the subject, realization is not feasible. It is the witness that makes realization desirable and attainable... The person by itself will not become the witness. It is like expecting a cold candle to start burning in the course of time. The person can stay in the darkness of ignorance forever, unless the flame of awareness touches it...
The witness is that which says ‘I know’. The person says ‘I do’. Now, to say ‘I know’ is not untrue — it is merely limited. But to say ‘I do’ is altogether false, because there is nobody who does; all happens by itself, including the idea of being a doer.... Things are as they are and nobody in particular is responsible. The idea of personal responsibility comes from the illusion of agency. ‘Somebody must have done it, somebody is responsible’... It is not the person that is doing sadhana. The person is in unrest and resistance to the very end. It is the witness that works on the person, on the totality of its illusions, past, present and future... The universe is full of action, but there is no actor. There are numberless persons small and big and very big, who, through identification, imagine themselves as acting, but it does not change the fact that the world of action is one single whole in which all depends on, and affects all...
Your real nature is not like what you appear to be. Give up the idea of being a person, that is all. You need not become what you are anyhow. There is the identity of what you are and there is the person superimposed on it... It is useless to fight the sense of being a limited and separate person unless the roots of it are laid bare... Liberation is never of the person, it is always from the person... The person is but a shell imprisoning you. Break the shell.... Just see the person you imagine yourself to be as a part of the world you perceive within your mind and look at the mind from the outside, for you are not the mind. After all, your only problem is the eager self-identification with whatever you perceive. Give up this habit, remember that you are not what you perceive, use your power of alert aloofness.... Nothing is wrong with you, but the ideas you have of yourself are altogether wrong... The dissolution of personality is followed always by a sense of great relief, as if a heavy burden has fallen off..."
- Niz
taken from "I AM THAT"
|
|
|
|
Post by Reefs on Aug 8, 2013 5:43:23 GMT -8
Niz for Dummies (4) - The 'I am'
"It is not the ‘I am’ that is false, but what you take yourself to be. I can see, beyond the least shadow of doubt, that you are not what you believe yourself to be. Logic or no logic, you cannot deny the obvious. You are nothing that you are conscious of... You have not really understood that you are dreaming. This is the essence of bondage — the mixing of the real with unreal. In your present state only the sense ‘I am’ refers to reality; the ‘what’ and the ‘how I am’ are illusions imposed by destiny, or accident... All I can say truly is: ‘I am’, all else is inference....
People differ. But all are faced with the fact of their own existence. ‘I am’ is the ultimate fact; ‘Who am I?’ is the ultimate question to which everybody must find an answer... Give up all questions except one: ‘Who am I?’ After all, the only fact you are sure of is that you are. The ‘I am’ is certain. The ‘I am this’ is not... All you know is second-hand. Only ‘I am’ is first-hand and needs no proofs. Stay with it... whatever thoughts come to you in connection with the ‘I am’, empty them of all meaning, pay them no attention.
‘I am’ is ever afresh. You do not need to remember in order to be. As a matter of fact, before you can experience anything, there must be the sense of being. At present your being is mixed up with experiencing... You cannot say from your own experience that you are not. You can only say ‘I am’. Others too cannot tell you ‘you are not’... To know that you are is natural...
Before the mind — I am. ‘I am’ is not a thought in the mind; the mind happens to me, I do not happen to the mind. And since time and space are in the mind, I am beyond time and space, eternal and omnipresent... All states of mind, all names and forms of existence are rooted in non-inquiry, non-investigation, in imagination and credulity. It is right to say ‘I am’, but to say ‘I am this’, ‘I am that’ is a sign of not inquiring, not examining, of mental weakness or lethargy...
Beyond the mind there is no such thing as experience. Experience is a dual state. You cannot talk of reality as an experience. Once this is understood, you will no longer look for being and becoming as separate and opposite. In reality they are one and inseparable, like roots and branches of the same tree. Both can exist only in the light of consciousness, which again, arises in the wake of the sense ‘I am’. This is the primary fact. If you miss it, you miss all...
Just be. Do not try to be quiet; do not make ‘being quiet’ into a task to be performed. Don’t be restless about ‘being quiet’, miserable about ‘being happy’. Just be aware that you are and remain aware — don’t say: ‘yes, I am; what next?’ There is no ‘next’ in ‘I am’. It is a timeless state... Go back to that state of pure being, where the ‘I am’ is still in its purity before it got contaminated with ‘this I am’ or ‘that I am’. Your burden is of false self-identifications — abandon them all... When I say: remember ‘I am’ all the time, I mean: ‘come back to it repeatedly’....
Nothing you do will change you, for you need no change. You may change your mind or your body, but it is always something external to you that has changed, not yourself. Why bother at all to change? Realize once for all that neither your body nor your mind, nor even your consciousness is yourself and stand alone in your true nature beyond consciousness and unconsciousness. No effort can take you there, only the clarity of understanding. Trace your misunderstandings and abandon them, that is all. There is nothing to seek and find, for there is nothing lost. Relax and watch the ‘I am’. Reality is just behind it. Keep quiet, keep silent; it will emerge, or, rather, it will take you in...
All ambitions are for the sake of the ‘I am’. If you want to make real progress you must give up all ideas of personal attainment. The ambitions of the so-called Yogis are preposterous. A man’s desire for a woman is innocence itself compared to the lusting for an everlasting personal bliss. The mind is a cheat. The more pious it seems, the worse the betrayal... Why play with ideas? Be content with what you are sure of. And the only thing you can be sure of is ‘I am’. Stay with it, and reject everything else. This is Yoga."
- Niz
taken from "I AM THAT"
|
|
|
|
Post by Reefs on Oct 9, 2013 4:02:28 GMT -8
Niz for Dummies (5) - The Gnani
“Because you imagine yourself to be a person you take the gnani to be a person too, only somewhat different, better informed and more powerful. You may say that he is eternally conscious and happy, but it is far from expressing the whole truth. Don’t trust definitions and descriptions — they are grossly misleading… The gnani may laugh and cry according to circumstances, but inwardly they are cool and clear, watching detachedly their own spontaneous reactions. Appearances are misleading and more so in the case of a gnani. The mind cannot understand, for the mind is trained for grasping and holding while the gnani is not grasping and not holding...
The gnani is the supreme and also the witness. He is both being and awareness. In relation to consciousness he is awareness. In relation to the universe he is pure being... The gnani is beyond life and death. What we take to be inevitable — to be born and to die — appears to him but a way of expressing movement in the Immovable, change in the changeless, end in the endless. To the gnani it is obvious that nothing is born and nothing dies, nothing lasts and nothing changes, all is as it is — timelessly. A gnani is aware of himself as neither conscious nor unconscious, but purely aware, a witness to the three states of the mind and their contents… The gnani does not die because he was never born...
The ordinary man is personally concerned, he counts his risks and chances, while the gnani remains aloof, sure that all will happen as it must; and it does not matter much what happens, for ultimately the return to balance and harmony is inevitable. The heart of things is at peace… A gnani may meet with difficulties, but they do not make him suffer… People are afraid to die, because they do not know what is death. The gnani has died before his death, he saw that there was nothing to be afraid of. The moment you know your real being, you are afraid of nothing. Death gives freedom and power. To be free in the world, you must die to the world. Then the universe is your own, it becomes your body, an expression and a tool. The happiness of being absolutely free is beyond description. On the other hand, he who is afraid of freedom cannot die…
The gnani cannot be known, because there is nobody to be known. When there is a person, you can tell something about it, but when there is no self-identification with the particular, what can be said? Just as you cannot say anything about the universe because it includes everything, so nothing can be said about a gnani, for he is all and yet nothing in particular. You need a hook to hang your picture on; when there is no hook, on what will the picture hang? … There are no important events for a gnani, except when somebody reaches the highest goal. Then only his heart rejoices. All else is of no concern. The entire universe is his body, all life is his life. As in a city of lights, when one bulb burns out, it does not affect the network, so the death of a body does not affect the whole…
Gnanis are not made; they realize themselves as such, when they return to their source, their real nature. I cannot make you into what you already are. All I can tell you is the way I traveled and invite you to take it… There are no distinctive masks of gnana. Only ignorance can be recognized, not gnana. Nor does a gnani claim to be something special. All those who proclaim their own greatness and uniqueness are not gnanis. They are mistaking some unusual development for realization. The gnani shows no tendency to proclaim himself to be a gnani. He considers himself to be perfectly normal, true to his real nature. Proclaiming oneself to be an omnipotent, omniscient and omnipotent deity is a clear sign of ignorance…”
- Niz
taken from "I AM THAT"
|
|
|
|
Post by Portto on Oct 10, 2013 6:00:57 GMT -8
^^^ Isn't it supposed to be "jnani" instead of "gnani" ?
|
|
