Dear Holger, I’m thankful for your websites and this one in particular. I’m thankful for your many postings summarizing and supplementing our meetings. I am thankful for the postings in your own words because they inspire me to express myself instead of remaining silent. I am thankful for the diversity in our meetings, the times when I feel uncomfortable. I am also and especially thankful for the times when I feel a resonance with my fellow seekers.
David, I don’t understand your comment.
Can “me” ever be satisfied?
Are you looking into the past to find yourself?
There is only one reality, seemingly veiled by our own mind activity.
How can we see the distraction game “me” plays with itself to avoid its dissolution?
I am glad both of you have explanations that satisfy you. However, they don’t really satisfy me. My view is that after a person reaches self-realization, the language they use to describe what life is like for them is colored by how they grew and lived before self-realization.
Rupert practiced gyana yoga for 20 years before he became immersed in nonduality. His first practice was “tantric” in the sense that he experienced samadhi in order to eliminate samskaras (also called vasanas, kleshas, skandhas, kriyas, stresses, or “dense knots of contraction”). So naturally, Rupert would see the distinction between eliminating samskaras and awakening, and advocate both.
In the case of Nisargadatta, he probably had no instruction in eliminating samskaras, only in achieving self-realization.
This explanation occurs to me because I am on both paths concurrently. I practice both samadhi dhyana and being aware of being aware (atma vichara).
David, I’m open to what you’re saying and would like to learn more. I’ve read Ramana Maharshi and Nisargadatta for years and studied Zen for years (my “practice” was minimal, though I meditated at the Austin Zen Center and read numerous books). I know my experience and training is more limited than yours.
I was also a practitioner in the Science of Mind religion, but I don’t really count that: I decided, after a few years, that all I really believed from it was that it was possible to be at one with God and that meditation was important.
I’m currently reading Rupert’s The Nature of Consciousness.
In the glossary of I Am That, Samskara is defined at “mental impression, memory,…residual impression. You don’t think Nisargadatta eliminated those when he was self-realized?
Added to my previous reply: Swami Sarvapriyananda agrees that some reach enlightenment but without sufficient preparation, so that their relative behavior does not reflect their status: starting at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YhYKqblybXs&t=5410s .
Bill, Learning is a wonderful part of most spiritual paths. You seem to minimize your own experiences, but they appear to have taught you the basic understandings of nonduality, which is valuable beyond measure.
No, I doubt that Nisargadatta and probably many other sages eliminated the residual impressions of relative experience, due to the nature of their path. My actual evidence is little: his frequent emotionality in expressing himself and severity and anger with some questioners (which are omitted from all his books) and his neglect of his body and others’ bodies in his owning of bidi (small cigarette) stores and in his smoking, which stopped only at his death from throat cancer.
But when I look very closely at the life and behavior of some teachers, such as Rupert and Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, I see a transformation that moved very much more deeply than in just the shift of identification from the separate self to steady and universal awareness.
My view is that dissolving the impressions or internal stresses of the body is a largely independent issue from awakening to the truth of reality. “Independent” means one can reach either goal or both, depending on many relative factors. As Adi Shankara taught, the remains of ignorance (layshavidya) can continue even in unity consciousness (the eighth flavor of the human reflection of consciousness).
I think https://www.disco-tent.com/ is a very fine introduction to nonduality. You are definitely on your way to becoming a good teacher and helping others, if you wish to go in that direction. This struggling world needs all the help it can get. The rebus is, of course, disco-n-tent, clever.
Thank you David,
I don’t want to become anything, just to do each moment what feels ‘right’ (more gut than head).
“Awakening reveals that there is no one that awakens and that all is the Self”.
I know that some people believe that opinions and beliefs are to be avoided, but I can’t agree with such a rigid view, so, yes, I do in fact believe that ego is a source of problems for the person and universal self is the source of solutions to the person, and actually the ultimate irreducible reality of every aspect of life.
Thank you David for shining light on that.
Now we add ‘Universal Self’ to it as well.
There is ‘impersonal’ and ‘personal’.
Is there a confused / dysfunctional aspect, or is there only an overlooking of our true nature?
‘Human’ as a discernment from ‘animal’?
Can we say: There is a beauty in coming together and thinking as one; I, personally have undoubtedly uncounted blindspots and shortcomings, but it is not a problem.
Thank you for this beautiful essay. I’m sure I speak for everybody when I say that you are welcome in our meetings whenever you feel like attending. Anything you have to say will be listened to without judgement, and advice from fellow seekers is always available. We enjoy being a helpful group whenever the chance arises. Otherwise, we just remind each other of the practical philosophy of life that we are already very familiar with from various nonduality teachers, and have fun.
Thank you for reading the piece, David, and for your kind comments. I am getting more comfortable with the Zoom meetings, starting for feel like it’s a group of friends, though I mostly listen. I often go away with a deeper understanding of the Awareness just by experiencing the presence of people who are in that state.
From bill2smith on I found our small meeting very insightful.
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