Transcend all teachings and just be without mind


Nisargadatta, the antithesis of a polite Ramana.  Jees, angry, blunt, irritable.





This is exactly what I say, only I call it living from the heart.  As Nisargadatta says, when you do that, whatever knowing or action is needed at that moment comes to you.

Self-Inquiry, Ramana-style, and the householder

An excellent discussion of Ramana/Robert's method of self-inquiry, of going backwards into the self, by David Godman,


Notice this is almost exactly Nisargadatta's method of attending to the I Am-sensation.  Ramana emphasizes attending to the I-"thought" as a person normally associates the thought I with an attribute or action in everyday life, while Maharaj focuses on the feeling of I Am, and the affect of love associated with the self.  This opens a broader highway for the self to investigate itself, because you bring in the power of emotion into the going back process.


He then discusses the self-inquiry process for the householder with children, a job and home as not different.  You do what you have to and practice self-inquiry when you remember, and if possible, sitting secluded from time to time.

Below are photos of some of the 16 feral cats I feed each night.  I work with a few trappers to get new cats spayed or neutered, but some of these guys are hard to trap.


The photos below are in the order I feed them each night. I prepare the plates at home before going out.  The less neighbors see you, the better, because there are always people close by who dislike cats, or cats in their yards.


In an alley behind Vons in Northridge are three, unrelated brown tabbies.  The two large males eat in one location, and the very fat and very friendly female eats in another.

This third location has six cats.  Six months ago there was only the old, large black and white male cat.  Then kittens of various ages began showing up.  One, the Tortie-colored female (black/brown and orange) came up to me out of nowhere six months ago, and in the loudest voice I have ever heard in such a small cat, yelled at me with the loudest "Meow" possible, demanding I feed her too. Two of the males and at least one of the females has not been fixed yet.  This is in a Spanish neighborhood near the Vallarta market near Roscoe in Northridge.

Then, on a postage stamp sized open ground area in front of a donut shop on Reseda, there is this pretty, but fairly old Tuxedo-colored male.  He is getting close to letting me pet him. The shop owners when they are there have never complained.

The cat below is fed on a slab supporting a large transformer for a small shopping center.  The slab is in front of a 99 Cent store.  I was not able to photograph a black and white cat who often dines here.

Below is a huge and affectionate Persian cat, who I have to feed when he or she shows up, otherwise he will eat food I leave out for a true feral.  This cat is likely an indoor/outdoor cat of some neighbor.  The feral I feed here will not make an appearance when this large one is present.  This last cat (not shown) was Jimmy's favorite, and is a female who is not very friendly.  She tends to bite her feeder on the ankle if she dawdles in feeding. She has been in the neighborhood according to one colony manager, for over ten years.

Last is a photo of Marie.  What a remarkable saint.  She feeds between 140-150 cats a night in 27 different locations.  Three locations have 20 or more cats.  I'll post those photos some day when I can get someone to ride with her to take photos and a video for our wearesentience website.  She does not want anyone to see her face.  She believes she could get into trouble in Animal Services if she were ever recognized.  Apparently she thinks Animal Services peruses everything I write.

Our wearesentience organization  usually gives Marie 15-20 bags of hard food a month and maybe 15 cases of canned food.  Another feeder, Rosa, gets maybe six bags and six cases a month. Rosa feeds about 100 cats, and helps trapping and spay/neuter a lot.


Yet another colony manager, who, like Rosa, does a lot of trapping, has recently been diagnosed with stage four intestinal cancer.  She also fed over 100 cats a night and we are trying to figure out how to spread the load.


I think if I were to make snap judgements, the Tuxedos (black and white) cats are the most affectionate. Gopi, Charlie, and Dustin were or are my lap cats.  The Calico females all tended to be shy and greatly overweight.  The Torties have the most extraordinary personalities, far bigger than their bodies.

A normal rain year in Los Angeles has about 14" of rain. It snowed once for about 90 seconds during the 30 years I lived here.  This year we have had only 6" of rain, and the rainy season is just about over.


BUT TODAY IT POURED.  THE PHOTOS BELOW ARE FROM MY FRONT AND BACK YARDS. IS IT THIS GREEN BACK EAST?

‎"Animals help patients keep their mind off their problems," says Jean S. Uehl, the director of nurses. "The love the patients get from the animals is unconditional." One particular stroke patient was withdrawn and rarely smiled, until she began to play with the resident cat. The patient and the cat became closely bonded to each other, and when the cat had kittens, "they became like the patient’s babies," according to Uehl. The kittens played and slept on a tray on the resident’s wheelchair and slept in a chair near her bed whenever they could. The kittens brought the resident out of her shell and she began to talk and smile. "The kittens in particular get all the residents’ attention," says Uehl. "Everyone always wants to know where they’re at and what they’re doing." When there are kittens in the building, a number of residents stay busy all day, following them, playing with them, and keeping an eye on them. ~ From HealthyPet.com

This is what Robert Adams said on the subject of running from one teacher to another, endless reading of spiritual books, discussion in forums such as Facebook and emails, travel to exotic places seeking perfect meditation venues, etc.:


In Advaita Vedanta, the knower is the last to go. What comes after the knower? Silence! There is nothing else.


Just think how much knowledge you've gathered all these years. Reading so many books. Seeing so many teachers. Having so many discussions, debates, arguments. Can't you see now this is what's been holding you back? This is what has been holding you back. You have believed that you're the knower and that you have to become a knower to become free.


Yet no one has to know anything for there is absolutely nothing to know. Why is there nothing to know? Because there is only omnipresence, infinity, absolute reality and there is no name for this. (Here Robert is talking about what comes after Self-Realzation, knowing Turya, Brahman. He is talking about the final condition.)


In other words, you cannot know absolute reality. You cannot know pure awareness. As long as there is someone who knows about it, it doesn't exist. It's only when you put an end to knowing that you become the Self. The Self has no shape, no form, no identity. It is no thing. Yet you are that. What are you going to do about it?


(Instead of abiding in it…), when most of you walk out this door you'll start discussions, arguments. You'll start thinking about your outside world. You'll start thinking about your body, your material happiness, or your material suffering. And you'll be back where you started.


What I'm saying to you is if you could only learn to be quiet, in your mind. If your mind learns to keep quiet, it will become weaker and weaker and you will notice that all the actions you are doing, and all the concepts you are talking have absolutely nothing to do with you.


Yet you will continue to do things, go places, experience this so-called life, but you are doing absolutely nothing. For there's no one left to do anything. There's no one left to get sick, there's no one left to be healthy. There's no one left to be poor, there's no one left to be rich. There's no one left to possess anything and there's no one left not to possess anything.


There's just no one left, and this is what gives you freedom. And the only way you can get to that place is to keep quiet. To be silent.


(Again, Robert is talking about the final state, going beyond Turya. According to the quotes from Siddharameshwar that I have been posting, the I Am, Turya, Brahman, is the pure knowing state, and eventually even knowledge has to go.
This is even after self-inquiry is finished. But, he even says that his practice of silence, not traveling, not reading, not discussing, can take you all the way. In a sense, by remaining silent, just by looking within, you are emulating the final state. You have to remember Robert here is not talking to advanced students, but is really just talking like this to have them turn their attention away from books, gurus and travel, and turn inwardly towards the Self of all.)


The Knower is the last to go! - 9th January, 1992

I just got an email from a friend and student saying he is going to Nepal for 6 months to spend time in a monastery in order to go “deep.”  He plans on doing this even now that his practice  at home got better. Part of his desire to travel was a breakup with his fiance.  He wrote:

“I am glad to tell you that my mediation sittings are deepen itself again. This morning I was clearly aware of a changing in the body awareness. My body felt like a thing, a living subtle vibrating energy. It didn't feel like me. It was subtle, spacey and objective. I was only in wonder looking at this phenomena. Thoughts are there but the mind did feel strong and like a rock. And in the background there was a continuum sense of beingness. This all passing by in less then half a hour. I tell you this only to express my joy of feeling connected again with something deeper in myself.“

He wanted me to bless his journey.

Another student wrote from India, writing of an experience of love with a woman that happened there and the sense of I Am that arose from it:

“Then she left and I was utterly amazed how devastated I actually felt. It really was painful and I wondered what to do with that. I started to feel the grief and sadness, really sit with it. Then it transformed into this immense beauty and devotion to existence itself. It was like nothing I ever experienced and I still get chills of bliss right now just writing about it. There was a clearer view, a more FELT view of the "I am". And instead of grief now came a warm gratitude to her for blessing me with this.”

He does not realize that this ingoing he is experiencing is partially due to his breakup, and the ingoing of the love energy previously directed outwards to another.


R. left for Thailand from his home after being a student devoted to self-inquiry, “In order to experience life and grow.”  He has been going in and out of happiness since, but then abruptley left our satsang because of a personal crisis and his desire to find a woman and more experiences before enlightenment.

Another student is teaching English in Vietnam and visiting Buddhist temples.

Another dear student abruptly decided to go the the jungles of Peru to take some psychedelic plant with a shaman for a number of complex reasons.

Yet another student just spent a month in India and thinks to go back two more times during the next year.

I just don’t get it.

What you all are seeking is YOU.  YOU are always there. Being with your Sadguru—the human guru who knows who he or she is—can help YOU and you recognize and be YOU, but all the traveling to monasteries, shamans, monks, foreign retreats, jungle visits, etc., all occur on the level of the body and mind, and experiences of the body and mind.


Much of the seeking above is really seeking the love of another human in a romantic relationship, or the result of a breakup of a romantic relationship with all the loving energy of the I Am, now no longer having an external object, and the love turns inward on its own self, but the mind tells the person that can only be found in some exotic land in some exotic spiritual institution. 

You can explore your inner world of visions, energies, archetypes, emotions, “guided finds” also known as impulses, listening to talks, having new teachers, new experiences, etc., and what will you have found?  ONLY MORE OF THE SAME! Anything that happens on the level of the body, or the mind, such as knowledge, experiences such as love, sex, psychedelics, drugs, and meditation experiences, are just on the level of the body and mind.

There is no freedom here.  There is only endless, empty exploration which may seem exciting while you are doing it, but after a dozen years of such seeking, what will you do?

It is only by going deep into yourself that you will find what you seek.  Go deeper than the body, deeper than the mind and thoughts, books, lectures and the next guru.  Deeper into the Void and emptiness, and deeper still into the I Am experience.  Go deeper into YOU.  You can do it alone, but it tends to get boring because everyone wants to go too quickly without exhausting the teachings of each level of the Void and of the I Am.

Being in the presence of someone who knows the Self is the best practice. All of the other seeking is bullshit.

All of my in-print, collected satsangs and blog entries are now available at the below link thanks to Matthew Brown:


http://www.wearesentience.com/index.html 

Finding that which is beyond even Brahman

The quote below is from page 73 and 74 of me "Master of Self-Realization." The way it is translated, it is he sort of ambiguous. It talks both about clarifying the causal body state in order to discover Turya, or the (King of knowledge state), the Supra Causal Body, but it also talks about going beyond knowledge altogether to find the ultimate cognizer, which will be known once the pursuit of knowledge ceases. As long as one looks from a place of lacking, and attempting to fill that lacking by means of the mind, one can never rest in Turya, or beyond even that, in the para-Brahman state, the absolute, the witness of all. When one ceases all mental activity, all seeking, all Samadhis, one is already in that para-Brahman state, the witness, but unable to witness oneself or even realize there is a witness to be witnessed. One just IS; the pure subject.

This section warns against searching within the world of objects, ideas, spiritual teachings, and going into the forest and jungle (meaning in modern terms, special retreats, workshops, guru shopping, but in classical terms was actually going to the jungle and forest in profound individual retreat) in searching for this IS, because the searching will drag you back to the subtle body, the intellect, the impulses, the imagination and images, and the self (Turya), will never be found, just as that which is beyond Turya, will never be found.

You see, it is all within YOU, and is not going to be found ultimately even with the guru. You cannot search from without. You cannot find it in books, workshops, dream analysis, psychoanalysis, the collective unconsciousness or drugs. It is already within you, just as you are in ordinary mind.

From the Master of Self-Realization:

This is the condition of the one that is himself Brahman and yet is in search of Brahman. Where and how can He find Himself? His exact position is such that he is the one who knows everyone but is not known by anyone. The one who tries to know Him does not know that His own true nature is "pure consciousness" so He wanders about in the forest and jungle (searching for that which has never been lost). How amazing this is. How can He, the one who is known only after "the capacity for knowing" has been transcended, be known? Unless one becomes steady within oneself, leaving behind having the desire to know, one cannot have the "knowledge of Brahman." (Comment: this is a new way of knowing, not by knowledge of the intellect her mind, but the more sure knowledge of just being.)

When the Subtle Body gets destroyed and one comes to the Causal Body, the one who is trying to know Brahman with the subtle intellect does not become steadied in the causal body. Instead He gets pushed back to the Subtle Body by force from the Causal Body and once again comes under the sway of imaginings, concepts, impulses, desires, and doubts. If an aspirant dreams, employing the use of words or the mind, he will never progress to (the place or state) where speech and mind cannot enter. Instead, he will go to a lower plane. The aspirant cannot remain as an aspirant, but has to become a Siddha (One Who Is Accomplished). For this, one has to cross over the steps of all four bodies. By constant study, one has to enter on the platforms of the four bodies, and clean and clarify them through investigation. Only then can the "Truth of the Self" be invoked and become fully established.

-------------------------------------------------

I am making emphasis on this point for one very important reason.

When I first started my spiritual quest in 1968, I did so with the pure mind and very clear direction of doing self-inquiry. I knew this was my path, and I took with me Ramana’s short book "Who Am I?,” As well as Philip Kapleau’s book the "Three pillars of Zen" that contained the story of Bassui, who only practiced self inquiry, the “Who am I?” koan. Those two books were my guide, and that is all that I did. I had in enormous numbers of kundalini experiences, seeing clearly the void, having many physical body transformation experiences, as well as daily seeing the brilliant bright light of consciousness itself, which every afternoon constantly sucked me down into itself; but out of fear I ran away.

Eventually I was to go to the Mt Baldy Zen center to study with Zen master Sasaki who forbade his students from using that koan.  He stated it was far too difficult.

Thereafter I lost my way for many, many, years. Many years of useless pursuits, wanderings, seeking different teachers, different Zen Masters, Muktananda, chanting, bhakti yoga, and then psychotherapy for seven years, until I met Robert, 18 years after I lost my single-minded pursuit of Self by means of the "Who am I?" Question. I was lost and drifted for 18 years of wasted effort. Even after I met Robert, it took another six years of the practice of self-inquiry to have my awakening experiences.

However, the form self inquiry took for me after meeting Robert was different from the form that I practiced in the 1960s, which was more focused on peering into and watching the light of consciousness, the emptiness form of the void, and filling that voidness with the bliss chanting. Had I known what I know now, I would've added loving another, whether God worship or human worship, to better fill out the sense of I Am with its own energy of self loving.

Thus I implore you, do not get distracted from the straight and narrow, and short but difficult path of just watching yourself, being with yourself, loving yourself, and trying to catch hold of the sight of the I Am, then loving it and worshiping it.

This is why I always emphasize just having one guru, one teaching, and that teaching being reflecting on one's own self, loving oneself, seeing the I Am, and loving the I Am. Please do not waste two decades of your life in fruitless searching in the jungles of the spiritual marketplace, because it will only suck you back from the void, and more deeply fixate you in your mind, impulses, emotions, imaginations and searchings of the intellect for decades. This is what happens to most people, the search goes on, and on, and on with no clear direction or purpose, just following books and impulses, and decades pass with nothing happening, and most give up entirely unless they are rescued in the last half of their life by a true Sadguru, or by consciousness itself. But one can never count on such grace.

Below is an incredibly important article and link regarding the results of a long term study on the deleterious effect of eating red meat on mortality.  Eating just 3 ounces of red meat a day, cow, pig, lamb, increased mortality rates above the base level by 20%.  Eating nuts and legumes instead for protein, actually decreased mortality by amounts from 10 to 20% below that base rate, meaning a vegetarian has a 40% less chance of dying during the same period of time than a red meat eater.


For any compassionate person interested in ending the barbarism of meat eating, this information needs to be broadcast loud and far.

http://www.latimes.com/health/la-he-red-meat-20120313,0,565423.story

• ALSO
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By Eryn Brown, Los Angeles Times

March 12, 2012, 4:28 p.m.

Eating red meat — any amount and any type — appears to significantly increase the risk of premature death, according to a long-range study that examined the eating habits and health of more than 110,000 adults for more than 20 years.

For instance, adding just one 3-ounce serving of unprocessed red meat — picture a piece of steak no bigger than a deck of cards — to one's daily diet was associated with a 13% greater chance of dying during the course of the study.

Even worse, adding an extra daily serving of processed red meat, such as a hot dog or two slices of bacon, was linked to a 20% higher risk of death during the study.

"Any red meat you eat contributes to the risk," said An Pan, a postdoctoral fellow at the Harvard School of Public Health in Boston and lead author of the study, published onlineMonday in the Archives of Internal Medicine.

Crunching data from thousands of questionnaires that asked people how frequently they ate a variety of foods, the researchers also discovered that replacing red meat with other foods seemed to reduce mortality risk for study participants.

Eating a serving of nuts instead of beef or pork was associated with a 19% lower risk of dying during the study. The team said choosing poultry or whole grains as a substitute was linked with a 14% reduction in mortality risk; low-fat dairy or legumes, 10%; and fish, 7%.

Previous studies had associated red meat consumption with diabetes, heart disease and cancer, all of which can be fatal. Scientists aren't sure exactly what makes red meat so dangerous, but the suspects include the iron and saturated fat in beef, pork and lamb, the nitrates used to preserve them, and the chemicals created by high-temperature cooking.

The Harvard researchers hypothesized that eating red meat would also be linked to an overall risk of death from any cause, Pan said. And the results suggest they were right: Among the 37,698 men and 83,644 women who were tracked, as meat consumption increased, so did mortality risk.

In separate analyses of processed and unprocessed meats, the group found that both types appear to hasten death. Pan said that at the outset, he and his colleagues had thought it likely that only processed meat posed a health danger.

Carol Koprowski, a professor of preventive medicine at USC's Keck School of Medicine who wasn't involved in the research, cautioned that it can be hard to draw specific conclusions from a study like this because there can be a lot of error in the way diet information is recorded in food frequency questionnaires, which ask subjects to remember past meals in sometimes grueling detail.

But Pan said the bottom line was that there was no amount of red meat that's good for you.

"If you want to eat red meat, eat the unprocessed products, and reduce it to two or three servings a week," he said. "That would have a huge impact on public health."

A majority of people in the study reported that they ate an average of at least one serving of meat per day.

Pan said that he eats one or two servings of red meat per week, and that he doesn't eat bacon or other processed meats.

Cancer researcher Lawrence H. Kushi of the Kaiser Permanente Division of Research in Oakland said that groups putting together dietary guidelines were likely to pay attention to the findings in the study.

"There's a pretty strong supposition that eating red meat is important — that it should be part of a healthful diet," said Kushi, who was not involved in the study. "These data basically demonstrate that the less you eat, the better."

UC San Francisco researcher and vegetarian diet advocate Dr. Dean Ornish said he gleaned a hopeful message from the study.

"Something as simple as a meatless Monday can help," he said. "Even small changes can make a difference."

Additionally, Ornish said, "What's good for you is also good for the planet."

In an editorial that accompanied Savedthe study, Ornish wrote that a plant-based diet could help cut annual healthcare costs from chronic diseases in the U.S., which exceed $1 trillion. Shrinking the livestock industry could also reduce greenhouse gas emissions and halt the destruction of forests to create pastures, he wrote.

eryn.brown@latimes.com

AMENDED:


Below is A NEW AND CORRECTED link to Matthew's 525 page text of all my Satsangs over the past 14 months.  Matthew says other documents are available for download on this page also.


http://www.mediafire.com/?v2lsmn3b78gmg

 

Coming shortly.  Matthew Brown has compiled all of my Satsang talks with photos into a 525 page pdf that will be posted on Scribd soon.  I will provide the link shortly.  It is really well-done and I thank him so much.

Lakshmi and I. She does not want to leave my chest.  She is so happy and so am I!

Ed,

As far as I see inner, outer, feelings, thoughts, sensations and experience of subject are really objects. It is all just one unity of experience. And different I's are part of that experience. This is clear. But all I can see is just this one experience. I don't see any way I could move beyond this because all things happen in this oneness . I don't see how I could possibly see the watcher of this experience, because all looking and seeing are part of this experience. I don't know how I could go in any way beyond this one view of unity.

M.H.


REPLY:


Yes, all "things" happen in this oneness, and they are objects indeed. 


What of the subject?


That experiences are objects is absolutely true, but what of the witness who cannot be grasped, the one who evaluates?

Don't you see, even saying it is all a unity is said ABOUT the unity of experience, and therefore is said as an evaluation from without. It is a metastatement that may appear to be only another thought like all others, but it is said from the perspective of one who observes as from without.

The various 'Is' are the one subject showing into the unity.  They are the singularities where the self can be seen. It is strange that "you" observe separate Is and not just one I, the absolute subject who stands in a different dimension.

The Majesty of Self!

Even after one first and even continuously known the self for a long while, it is easy to forget who you really are when you are too concerned with the world.

I remember when our Sangha started its latest dissolution phase on January 2, I felt upset and confused the first day and possibly even the second. But then, the pull came from within to go deep inside once again, and for three days I felt near continuous ecstasy and bliss, but still really on the surface, permeating my body and my sense of presence.

As the loses continued, and I dropped Satsang too because so few were coming, there was a sense of aloneness and even sadness.  I no longer had as many emails to respond to, nor had I a need to prepare for Saturday evening Satsangs.  Instead, I just performed a backlog of medical reports and sort of enjoyed a vacation from doing.

Then this morning, ‘It’ came back, the I-sense came back in a very powerful way, which had been lost in involvement in the world, Satsangs and relationships, as well as a lostness in my inner states as a reaction to these external events. It is not as if I lost the sense of I-ness completely, but it was never at the center of my sense of being. I witnessed my I-sense, but it was distant and not me.  Pleasurable, but not me.

But this morning I felt it as a strong pull to go within, to immerse myself into the deepest part of myself, deep, deep below the level of surface consciousness.  I felt pulled down inside and it was impossible to resist the call of Self, of the sense of me, which is really the state of Turya shining through the ignorance, the darkness and Void of the Causal Body, through the intellect, mind and sense perceptions of the subtle body, and of course, entirely separate from this physical body of Ed.

It was as if I had been lost in a fog of appearance, and the “real me” of the ‘I Am’ emerged out of the fog, much like the brilliant beam from a lighthouse is suddenly observed from a few hundred yards away when there is a brief break in the fog.

Yes, I am THAT I AM!

The feeling is really indescribable in words.

I felt a great happiness and joy, but not on the surface.  It was a joy buried deep within myself, deeper than the mind, deeper than the darkness of deep sleep, or the sleepiness of the dream state.  Yes, the real me was shining through all those more superficial layers of consciousness, as a deep light inside, with a sense of fullness, completeness and joy.

The surface flowings of emotions, thoughts and energies meant nothing now.  I was pulled within into a deep silence, and the mind, body and Void were seen as really nothing worth bothering about, only pictures and noise giving the lighted fog the appearance of existence and meaning, but my attention was no longer on the show, but on “me,” so deeply buried within.

Yes, I was still occupied in the world.  I was sitting at a Firestone dealer, getting some repairs done on my car.  I was aware of the passing time, the television blaring with the Jerry Springer show, and people talking all around me, but this was only 10% of my attention.  The rest flowed just to me, my sense of I Am, and that certain knowledge that I am that ‘I Am’, and with it a complete sense of fulfillment as well as a recognition of who I am and that the world really was not that important.  I was entirely beyond the world with just a fingertip of involvement therein.

But the experience itself is indescribable.  It cannot be put into words because words are only about external things, like food, automobiles, or closer to the heart, about ideas, relationships, emotions, etc., which emerge from the causal body and flame out into magical display in the world of the mind, intellect and body, known as the subtle body, but which I call the “imaginal world.”

Once again I knew what Robert experienced when he felt distracted; his main attention was always on his immortal sense of Self, the I Am, and understanding this, one realizes that one is even beyond I Am, a total mystery, standing alone, immaculate, complete.  This understanding cannot be experienced or known by mind in any way.  Mind and intellect cannot touch it or describe this heart of the heart. Therefore one is left just experiencing the majesty of one’s own Self!


From the Ashtavakra Gita:

Yesterday                                                                                       1

I lived bewildered,

In illusion.

But now I am awake, Flawless and serene, Beyond the world.

From my light                                                                                                              

The body and the world arise.

So all things are mine, 0r nothing is.

Now I have given up                                                                                                3

The body and the world,

I have a special gift.

I see the infinite Self.

As a wave,                                                                                                                    

Seething and foaming,

Is only water

So all creation,

Streaming out of the Self, Is only the Self.

Consider a piece of cloth.                                                                                     5

It is only threads!

So all creation,

When you look closely, Is only the Self.

Like the sugar                                                                                                               

In the juice of the sugarcane,

I am the sweetness

In everything I have made.

When the Self is unknown                                                                                    7

The world arises,

Not when it is known.

But you mistake

The rope for the snake.

When you see the rope, The snake vanishes.

My nature is light,                                                                                                       

Nothing but light.

When the world arises I alone am shining.

When the world arises in me,                                                     9

It is just an illusion.

From me the world streams out                                                 10

And in me it dissolves,

As a bracelet melts into gold,

A pot crumbles into clay,

A wave subsides into water.

I adore myself.                                                                                                             

How wonderful I am!

I can never die.

The whole world may perish, From Brahma to a blade of grass, But I am still here.

Indeed how wonderful!                                                                                           12

I adore myself.

For I have taken form But I am still one.

Neither coming or going, Yet I am still everywhere.

How wonderful,                                                                                                          

And how great my powers!

For I am without form, Yet till the end of time I uphold the universe.

Wonderful!                                                                                      14

For nothing is mine,

Yet it is all mine,

Whatever is thought or spoken.

I am not the knower,                                                                                                1

Nor the known,

Nor the knowing.

These three are not real. They only seem to be When I am not known.

For I am flawless.

Two from one!                                                                              16

This is the root of suffering. 0nly perceive

That I am one without two, Pure awareness, pure joy, And all the world is false. There is no other remedy! 

Through ignorance 

I once imagined I was bound.

But I am pure awareness.

I live beyond all distinctions, In unbroken meditation.

Indeed,                                                                                            18
I am neither bound nor free.

An end to illusion!

It is all groundless.

For the whole of creation, Though it rests in me,

Is without foundation.

The body is nothing.                                                                                                
The world is nothing.

When you understand this fully,

How can they be invented? For the Self is pure awareness, Nothing less.

The body is false,                                                                                                       

And so are its fears,

Heaven and hell, freedom and bondage.

It is all invention.

What can they matter to me? I am awareness itself