Feb’ 2016
This chapter expands on the views raised in chapter 12 – ‘What Am I’, then to ‘How do I know myself?’ The very quest to ‘know myself’ is a contradiction of terms. As a question from the point of view of duality it is like asking an ‘eye’ to see ‘itself’. The self that you are cannot be seen as something separate, apart from the self to be known.
Are you made of several selves, that one can know another? Let go of any ‘ideas’ about yourself as something that can be studied and known. Anything that can be in any way observed cannot be the self, the ‘I am’ that is seeing. ‘Not this, not that’ is the movement of ‘self-enquiry’. Letting go of all that is not ‘the self’, the truly real, leads to unbounded ‘knowing’; the eternal, formless, boundless presence; the one without a second. That you are is unquestionable… however, to realize that, that you are is the greatest prize of all.
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Perhaps you take the thoughts, mind and body as the ‘self’ that you want to know. How can that be known? Only the changeless can be known. What you were a moment ago is no longer that in a moment hence. The mind, thoughts and body are in eternal flow, an expression of life; nature playing itself out. If you are trying to freeze and capture the flow, like trying to capture a beam of light, or a water-mill trying to capture the watery life force upon which it depends, you are doomed to restlessness.
Without knowing it your state of restlessness is really in the search for yourself; longing for the perfectly lovable. It is like a man standing in his own home and asking for the way home. In ignorance you are looking for yourself in the world of the other, of opposites and contradictions. Pleasure and pain, good and bad, high and low, progress and regress, rest and strife – they all come and go together. Along with the appearance of your world, a world you perceive as separate from you, so the world of opposites and contradictions will also appear.
And, it might seem that there are periods of perfect harmony, of bliss and beauty, but only for a moment; a mind’s eye glimpse of universal beauty and harmony, love made visible, as a wave on the sea, a flower in bloom, a snowflake in a winter fall.
Self-knowledge, true knowledge, is ever fresh. It wells up from within. When you know what you are, you also are what you know. Between knowing and being, there is no gap. The ‘being’, life and energy of a river is in its flow, not in bits that can be caught and studied. An aircraft depends of unrestricted flow or air beneath its wings for lift and flight. The water mill depends on unrestricted flow for energy and drive, and so does life itself.
What is perfect returns to the source of all perfection, and the opposites play on in Nature’s playground. It is only your mind in its attempt to capture, hold and preserve images held in memory that prevents self-knowledge. Hearing, remembering, and verbal statements are not knowing. Before you can know anything directly, nonverbally, you must know the knower that you are. So far, you took the mind for the knower, remembering to be knowledge, but it is just not so. The mind clogs you up with the fixation of captured images and ideas, which are but scars on your memory; dark clouds that hide the Sun, the light of wisdom.
In reality, there is no such thing as mind. There are ideas and some of them are wrong. Abandon such ideas for they obstruct true knowing. To test for wrong ideas they are usually of assertions, of this and that. Denials are usually right – ‘not this, not that’. Only by denying attachment, either by attraction or rejection of the particular; pure choicelessness, can one truly live. Life depends on unrestricted flow… assertion is bondage. To question and deny your tendency to reach out and grasp, or repel the particular is necessary. It is the essence of spiritual revolt, and without revolt there can be no freedom. To embrace all in choiceless, unconditional acceptance as yourself is freedom. “Love they neighbour as thyself”.
As for yourself, there is no second or higher self to search for. You are the highest self, the only self, give up the false ideas you have about yourself. Both faith and reason tell you that you are neither the body, nor its desires and fears, nor are you the mind with its fanciful ideas, nor the role society compels you to play, the persona you are supposed to be. Give up the false and the true will come into its own. You say you want to know yourself? You are yourself – you cannot be anything but what you are. Is knowing separate from being?
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Consciousness with an object we call witnessing. When there is also self-identification with the object, caused by desire or fear, such a state is called a person. In reality there is only one state; when distorted by identification with the particular; name and form, it is called a person, when coloured with the sense of being it is the witness; when colourless and limitless it is called Awareness; not bound by ideas of self. Whatever you can know with your mind is of the mind, of consciousness, not you; about yourself you can only say: ‘I am, I am aware’. The boundless awareness of pure being.
You may say that you do not know yourself, but how do you know that you do not know yourself? Your direct insight tells you that ‘I am’ that you know first, for nothing exists to you without your being there to know existence. You imagine you do not know yourself because you cannot describe yourself. You can always say: ‘I know that I am’ and you will rightly refuse as untrue the statement: ‘I am not’. But whatever can be described cannot be yourself, and what you are cannot be described. You can only know yourself by being, without any attempt at self-definition and self-description.
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You may find being alive a painful state, but you, the ‘I’, the self that you are cannot ‘be’ alive for you are life itself. It is the person you imagine yourself to be that suffers, not you. Dissolve it in awareness. It is merely a bundle of tethered ideas, of memories and habits. From the consciousness of the unreal to self-awareness – your real nature – there is a chasm which you will easily cross, once you have mastered the art of present-centred-consciousness, of pure awareness.
A person appears to come into being exactly as a shadow appears when light is intercepted by the body, so does the person arise when pure self-awareness is obstructed by the ‘I am the body’, idea. And as the shadow changes shape and position according to the lay of the land, so does the person appear to rejoice and suffer, rest and toil, find and lose; dancing to the pattern of destiny.
Once you have understood that you are nothing separate, perceivable or conceivable, that whatever appears in the field of consciousness cannot be yourself, you will apply yourself to the eradication of all self-identification as the only way that can take you to a deeper realization of self. You literally progress by rejection: Not this, Not that. To know that you are neither in the body nor in the mind, though in and beyond both, your very soul, is already self-knowledge.
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The personality we believe ourselves to be is just tethered experiences, reflected in memory… by identifying the present with the past and projecting it into the future. Think of yourself as momentary, without past and future, eternally present, and the personality dissolves. Then, what remains? The word ‘remain’ does not apply… ‘I am’ is ever afresh, as the moments of a river in flow is ever fresh. You need not remember in order to be. As a matter of fact, before you can experience anything, there must be the sense of being. At present you mix up your being with experiencing. All you need is to detach your being from the flow of experiences. Once you have known pure being, without being this or that you will discern it as the changeless and timeless spirit and soul within all experiences. Names and forms will no longer mislead you.
Imagine a thick jungle full of heavy timber. A plank is shaped out of the timber and a small pencil to write on it. The witness reads the writing and knows that while the pencil and the plank are distantly related to the jungle, the writing has nothing to do with it. It is totally super-imposed and its disappearance just does not matter. The dissolution; letting go of personality, is followed always by a sense of great relief as if a heavy burden has been lifted.
The stage beyond the witness is like washing printed cloth. First the design fades. Then the background, and in the end the cloth is plain white. ‘The personality gives way to the witness, then the witness goes and pure awareness remains. The cloth was white in the beginning and is white in the end: the patterns and colours just happened – for a time.
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When the body is no more, the person disappears completely without return, only the awareness and the ‘Great Unknown’ remain. ‘Awareness is that which ‘Knows’. 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 no-body, independent of the will of nature, who does; all happens by itself, the play of nature, including the idea of being a doer. The universe is full of action without there being an actor who ‘does’.
Ref: Ch:4 Nature, accept it as it is…
‘All things emerge and exist by nature’s qualities, and perish by themselves subject to no plan or purpose but for nature’s flow toward harmony and rest. All parts are one with all. To know the part is to know all as the chariot is one with all its parts’. All parts depend on the Central-Hub, the Golden-Mean, for its manifest existence’. ~ Tao-Te-Ching
‘It is only the qualities that act. He who understands that, and shuns not the qualities with an attitude of indifference, attains divine nature and remains calm’. – B’Gita Ch: 14
There are innumerable 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 upon which all depend, and affects all. The stars affect us deeply and we affect the stars. Step back from action to awareness, leave action to the body and the mind; it is their domain, and by the will of nature. Remain as conscious presence till witnessing dissolves in supreme awareness.
It is not action, but understanding that is essential. Action is only incidental. A person of steady understanding will not refrain from action. Action is the test of truth. Continuous testing is also essential. If you do not test yourself all the time, you will not be able to distinguish between reality and fantasy. Observation and close reasoning help to some extent, but reality is paradoxical. How do you know that you have realised unless you watch your thoughts and feelings, words and actions, and wonder at the changes occurring in you without your knowing why and how? It is exactly because they are so surprising that you know that they are real. The foreseen and expected are rarely true.
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To attain perfection, presence of mind is all that is required. Do your work in the world as you understand it and according to nature’s bequest, but inwardly be present, and silence will follow. Then all will come to you. Do not rely on the outcome of your work for realisation… it may appear to profit others, but not you. Your hope lies in facilitating silence of mind (present centred consciousness), quietness of heart. Realised people are very attentive, very quiet.
NaturesDestiny 