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HOW AM I TO KNOW IF THERE IS ANY PROGRESS IN MY SPIRITUAL SEARCH?
One of the foreign visitors, who had been coming to Maharaj for quite some time, began quietly:
Perhaps I am speaking from a body-mind identity but there is a question, a problem, which has been troubling me for so long that I cannot keep it bottled up any longer. I have talked about it to some of the seekers here and I know that they too have the same problem. However, now I am not speaking for them but only for myself.
The problem is: How am I to know if there is any progress in my spiritual search? Occasionally, particularly during meditation, I do have a glimpse of what I am searching for, but only a glimpse and that too only on rare occasions. How am I to know if I am progressing?
Maharaj : The problem apparently is about 'progress'. Now, who is to make the progress, and progress towards what? I have said this repeatedly and untiringly that you are the Conscious Presence, the animating consciousness which gives sentience to phenomenal objects; that you are not a phenomenal object, which is merely an appearance in the consciousness of those who perceive it. How can an 'appearance' make any 'progress' towards any objective? Now, instead of letting this basic apperception impregnate your very being, what you do is to accept it merely as an ideological thesis and ask the question. How can a conceptual appearance know whether it is making any conceptual progress towards its conceptual liberation?
Maharaj took a match box in his hand and held it up. He asked: Is this you? Of course not. Does it need time to understand this? Apperception of this fact is immediate, is it not? Why then should it take time to apperceive that you are not the phenomenal object called the body-mind?
Remember, you are the animating consciousness that gives sentience to the phenomenal objects.
Please understand, said Maharaj, that apperception is prior to the arrival of consciousness which is the basis of intellect. Apperception is not a matter of gradual practice. It can only happen by itself instantaneously — there are no stages in which deliberate progress is made. There is no 'one' to make any progress.
Perhaps, one wonders, could it be that the surest sign of 'progress' — if one cannot give up the concept — is a total lack of concern about 'progress' and an utter absence of anxiety about anything like 'liberation', a sort of' 'hollowness' in one's being, a kind of looseness, an unvolitional surrender to whatever might happen?
One of the foreign visitors, who had been coming to Maharaj for quite some time, began quietly:
Perhaps I am speaking from a body-mind identity but there is a question, a problem, which has been troubling me for so long that I cannot keep it bottled up any longer. I have talked about it to some of the seekers here and I know that they too have the same problem. However, now I am not speaking for them but only for myself.
The problem is: How am I to know if there is any progress in my spiritual search? Occasionally, particularly during meditation, I do have a glimpse of what I am searching for, but only a glimpse and that too only on rare occasions. How am I to know if I am progressing?
Maharaj : The problem apparently is about 'progress'. Now, who is to make the progress, and progress towards what? I have said this repeatedly and untiringly that you are the Conscious Presence, the animating consciousness which gives sentience to phenomenal objects; that you are not a phenomenal object, which is merely an appearance in the consciousness of those who perceive it. How can an 'appearance' make any 'progress' towards any objective? Now, instead of letting this basic apperception impregnate your very being, what you do is to accept it merely as an ideological thesis and ask the question. How can a conceptual appearance know whether it is making any conceptual progress towards its conceptual liberation?
Maharaj took a match box in his hand and held it up. He asked: Is this you? Of course not. Does it need time to understand this? Apperception of this fact is immediate, is it not? Why then should it take time to apperceive that you are not the phenomenal object called the body-mind?
Remember, you are the animating consciousness that gives sentience to the phenomenal objects.
Please understand, said Maharaj, that apperception is prior to the arrival of consciousness which is the basis of intellect. Apperception is not a matter of gradual practice. It can only happen by itself instantaneously — there are no stages in which deliberate progress is made. There is no 'one' to make any progress.
Perhaps, one wonders, could it be that the surest sign of 'progress' — if one cannot give up the concept — is a total lack of concern about 'progress' and an utter absence of anxiety about anything like 'liberation', a sort of' 'hollowness' in one's being, a kind of looseness, an unvolitional surrender to whatever might happen?
Go back to your essence being now!
No psychoanalysis here, just a pill-free freedom.
Nothing is a reading of what you are.
You are not this thing or that thing.
You are no-thing actually.
I wish to meet you, not your story.
It will be a beautiful meeting, a sweet union.
Come out of this fickle hiding place.
Don’t keep hiding inside this human form and its dramas.
I know who you are. You are a Buddha.
No psychoanalysis here, just a pill-free freedom.
Nothing is a reading of what you are.
You are not this thing or that thing.
You are no-thing actually.
I wish to meet you, not your story.
It will be a beautiful meeting, a sweet union.
Come out of this fickle hiding place.
Don’t keep hiding inside this human form and its dramas.
I know who you are. You are a Buddha.
The body and the mind are limited and therefore vulnerable; they need protection which gives rise to fear. As long as you identify yourself with them you are bound to suffer; realise your independence and remain happy. I tell you, this is the secret of happiness. To believe that you depend on things and people for happiness is due to ignorance of your true nature; to know that you need nothing to be happy, except self-knowledge, is wisdom.
Peace is the inner nature of humankind. If you find it within yourself, you will then find it everywhere.
Understanding requires not just a moment of perception, but a continuous awareness, a continuous state of inquiry without conclusion.
There is only one Self and we're all that. So whatever you do to anybody else, you're doing to yourself. To go further into this, if you see me as a human being, if you see me as a body, you're making a big mistake. I see you as the Self, as consciousness. There is only consciousness. When you abide in consciousness, you become free.
Is there a mind in the first place? What you call mind is an illusion. It starts from the 'I'-thought.
Without the gross or subtle senses, you cannot be aware of the body or the mind. Still, it is possible for you to be without these senses. In such a state, you are either asleep or aware of the Self only. Awareness of Self is ever there. Remain what you truly are and this question will not arise.
Without the gross or subtle senses, you cannot be aware of the body or the mind. Still, it is possible for you to be without these senses. In such a state, you are either asleep or aware of the Self only. Awareness of Self is ever there. Remain what you truly are and this question will not arise.
When you look into the eyes of the Beloved, you become absorbed into emptiness itself. You lose your duality, you become One beyond even the concept of oneness. One must find the truth of one's own Self and be That. Unless you know yourself, you will not know what true love is. Love and Truth are One.
How mysterious are the ways of God! This journey to Rajkot is a wonder even to me. Why am I going, whither am I going? What for? I have thought nothing about these things. And if God guides me, what should I think, why should I think? Even thought may be an obstacle in the way of His guidance. The fact is, it takes no effort to stop thinking. The thoughts do not come. Indeed there is no vacuum - but I mean to say that there is no thought about the mission.
The one who follows the thought is also a thought! The one who follows the thought IS in thought. When you know that both are thoughts, you are home. You are not at home, you ARE home. Then allow thoughts to arise and allow them to be followed. You remain as That unmoved and unconcerned Being. This is the highest understanding.
If you want to be free, nobody can stop you.
When you get on the path correctly, after a while it becomes effortless. In the beginning there seems to be a little effort you have to take, because you’re breaking away from your old patterns, and as you continue it becomes effortless, easier and easier. It becomes a pleasure. It becomes a joy and you’re always doing it, effortlessly, so the effort is only the beginning stages. It’s not really effort, but when you break into a new habit, the old wants to still stay there and take over. So you still have to push it out as you inquire: “To whom does it come? Who feels miserable?
intelligence is intuitive
you needn’t learn to love
unless you’ve been taught
to fear and hate
you needn’t learn to love
unless you’ve been taught
to fear and hate
You have forgotten that this is a dream. You believe it’s real and because you believe it’s real you suffer accordingly.
If peace is really what you want, then you will choose peace. If peace mattered to you more than anything else and if you truly knew yourself to be spirit rather than a little me, you would remain nonreactive and absolutely alert when confronted with challenging people or situations. You would immediately accept the situation and thus become one with it rather than separate yourself from it. Then out of your alertness would come a response.
You are the knower of your body, senses and mind, but the knower can never be known, because you are it and there’s nobody to know it. It can never become an object of observation because it is your totality.
As salt dissolves in water so does everything dissolve in pure being. Wisdom is eternally negating the unreal, to see the unreal is wisdom. Beyond this lies the inexpressible.
To be identified with your mind is to be trapped in time: the compulsion to live almost exclusively through memory and anticipation. This creates an endless preoccupation with past and future and an unwillingness to honor and acknowledge the present moment and allow it to be. The compulsion arises because the past gives you an identity and the future holds the promise of salvation, of fulfillment in whatever form. Both are illusions.
I have met many highly intelligent and educated people who were also completely unconscious, which is to say completely identified with their mind. In fact, if mental development and increased knowledge are not counterbalanced by a corresponding growth in consciousness, the potential for unhappiness and disaster is very great.
Love the animals, love the plants, love everything. If you love everything, you will perceive the divine mystery in things. Once you perceive it, you will begin to comprehend it better every day. And you will come at last to love the whole world with an all-embracing love.
Just quietly vanish inside yourself, disappear.
So beautiful.
Your form is still here, but inside: Nobody.
Inside: Cooked.
But don’t tell anybody that.
Just be the peace of this world,
the light and joy that shines from the indivisible Self.
So beautiful.
Your form is still here, but inside: Nobody.
Inside: Cooked.
But don’t tell anybody that.
Just be the peace of this world,
the light and joy that shines from the indivisible Self.
Elimination and purification, renunciation of all that is foreign to your nature is enough. All else is vanity.
The word “Samadhi” is used to mean trance as a practice, as a technique, being one of the eight Angas of the Ashtanga Yoga of Patanjali. It is a Sadhana; it is something that is practised. But, quite often, the same word “Samadhi” is also used in the sense of the culmination of Yoga or the ultimate objective or goal of Yoga; then it denotes a state of superconsciousness, a state transcending all mind-activity. Therefore, it will not be wrong to say that in the Yoga Shastra the term as such is used to mean both a practice as well as a state of superconsciousness. As a practice or a technique, it is referred to by various names as Asmita Samadhi, Savitarka Samadhi, Savichara Samadhi and so on. In English sometimes, writers have been in the practice of alluding to these as the lower Samadhis. When the Arurukshu Yogi—a Yogi who has already climbed sufficiently well up on the ladder of Yoga and has reached a very high state—goes on practising Samadhi, diligently and with great exertion, without giving up, without tiring, with sustained zeal, with Vairagya and great regularity, with great tenacity of purpose, for months and years, then he ascends into higher and higher states of Samadhi. The Samadhi in such a high state is referred to as Nirbija Samadhi or Nirvikalpa Samadhi or Asamprajnata Samadhi. When the word “Samadhi” is used in this way to refer to the Nirbija Samadhi or Asamprajnata Samadhi, then it means the superconscious state. They even go so far as to say that it is a state of non-dual consciousness. That is a matter of opinion. When the term “Samadhi” is used to indicate the Savitarka Samadhi or the Savikalpa Samadhi or other lower Samadhis, then it means trance which is a technique and a practice. When one reaches the level of the Asamprajnata Samadhi or the Nirvikalpa or Nirbija Samadhi, sometimes the Yogi goes on practising such a state until he becomes so much established in that state of consciousness that even when he comes back into the waking state, down from the deep inward state, where he is not aware of the body or the time or the surroundings, even when he comes back into the normal state, his awareness continues to be qualified by the same state of non-duality. In other words, he is so much established in that state of spiritual consciousness or awareness that even while he is moving and acting, he still remains in that state of inner awareness, and they call this the state of Sahaja Samadhi. Sahaja means natural. So, in Sahaja Samadhi, the state of non-dual consciousness becomes to the Yogi his natural state, and not a state which he tries hard to reach and then reaches only to come back to the waking state after a while. Rather, the state of non-dual consciousness becomes normal to him. The Yogi thus gets established in Sahaja Avastha. But, the Sahaja Avastha is a rare phenomenon and is itself the fruit of intense practice of the other stages and gradations of Samadhi. It is only after intense practice of Savitarka Samadhi, Savichara Samadhi and Asmita Samadhi and the continued practice of being in a state of Nirvikalpa Samadhi that the Nirvikalpa Samadhi becomes natural to the Yogi, that it becomes continued and unbroken in all the three states, namely, waking, dream and deep sleep. Thus, in the Sahaja Avastha, even in the waking state, even in the midst of activity, the Yogi rests in non-dual consciousness.
Source: THE PHILOSOPHY, PSYCHOLOGY AND PRACTICE OF YOGA, Chapter 16
Source: THE PHILOSOPHY, PSYCHOLOGY AND PRACTICE OF YOGA, Chapter 16
Sahaja samadhi encompasses the other samadhis— savikalpa and nirvikalpa—and it goes beyond, beyond. Samadhi is like a big building with many floors. When one is in sahaja samadhi, he is the owner of the whole building. He has the height of nirvikalpa, and the heights far above that, and at the same time he has achieved the perfection, wealth and capacity of all the other floors. On the one hand he has encompassed within himself all the Doors, and on the other hand he is above them. Nirvikalpa is like one height, say the thirtieth floor; it is very high, but it has only its own limited capacity. It cannot bring any of its capacity to the basement. If one has nirvikalpa, he is afraid to go down into the basement, because he may not be able to go back up again. But sahaja consciousness is above the thirtieth floor and, at the same time, it can be in the basement also. Sahaja samadhi will not be satisfied with thirtieth floor; it will be satisfied only when it touches the basement, the first floor, the second floor, all the floors. The power of sahaja samadhi is such that it can take one to any floor.
Source: The Summits of God-Life: Samadhi and Siddhi
Source: The Summits of God-Life: Samadhi and Siddhi
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