Self-Knowledge and Self-Realization

From Salzman and Caraway:

Once you have been around the Advaita scene for a while, you start to learn the rules. Here are a few of them:

1. Never refer to yourself when speaking, always speak from the 3rd person, absolute viewpoint. If you do say “I” or “me”, you will be questioned with “Who?”

2. Never show any feeling about anything. Being numb is a sign that you’ve really “got it”. When your mother or wife or child or husband dies, just realize that that was only a form and nothing real and move on with your day.

3. Never react to anything. If you react to anything in life, like a brick falling on and crushing your foot, it shows that you are identified with the physical body and not the absolute awareness as you should be. If you react to someone calling you a “baboon faced imbecile”, it shows that either you are identified with a self image that is hurt by that statement or, that you do indeed have a baboon face…

4. Know that everything is OK just as it is. When you see a forest being chopped down to make place for a condo, smile and take it in stride. When the nuclear reactor that you are downwind from melts down, leave your windows open and know that breathing the radioactive fallout is the way things were supposed to happen. Know that coal power is just Brahman’s way of spreading his beloved mercury to all of his beloved subjects.

5. The guru/teacher is the one on the high chair with a special footrest so you can kiss his feet in gratitude for being SOOO AWESOME! He/she will also generally seem like they are on downers because they are SO CHILLED OUT. They exude peace and perhaps a floral scent or maybe the smell of a bacon cheeseburger with extra onions if they just ate one. They might have a really cool, light colored robe or something that looks like a post-modern, Bauhaus priest outfit (Tolle!). Remember—THEY have the answers and YOU don’t! Doesn’t it seem like a good idea to put a picture of them on your wall or around your neck so you can remember, at all times that they are SOOO AWESOME?!

6. Call life an “illusion” as often as possible—it will help you sleep at night. Tell people they aren’t real every chance you get and then savor the bewildered look on their face—if they only knew what you knew! Bask in the knowledge that you are part of an elite vanguard of universal oneness and look haughtily down on seekers who haven’t “let go of themselves” yet. Remember: “We’re all one, some of us are just more one than others…”