no(thing, every(thing

 

Emerald Nebula

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‘Nothing is me,’ is the first step. 'Everything is me’ is the next. Both hang on the idea: 'there is a world’. 

When this too is given up, you remain what you are – the non-dual Self (Awareness). You are it here and now, but your vision is obstructed by your false ideas about your self.


—Nisargadatta Maharaj

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You create a dream-body for yourself in the dream and act with it. The same is falsified in the waking state. At present you think you are this body and not the dream-body. In your dream this body is falsified by the dream-body. So you see neither of these bodies is real because each of them is true for a time and false for other times. 

That which is real must be real always. 

The ‘I’-Consciousness is present all through the three states. That alone is real. The three states are false. They are only for the mind. It is the mind that obstructs your vision of your true nature, which is Infinite Spirit (Awareness) .

Why go to birth and death to understand what you daily experience in sleeping and waking? When you sleep, this body and world do not exist for you and these questions do not worry you, and yet you (Awareness) exist, the same you (Awareness) that exists now while waking. 

It is only when you wake up that you have a body and see the world. If you understand waking and sleep properly you will understand life and death. Only waking and sleeping happen daily so people don’t notice the wonder of it but only want to know about birth and death.


—Sri Ramana Maharshi

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You must be ready to accept the possibility that there is a limitless range of awareness for which we now have no words; that awareness can expand beyond range of your ego, your self, your familiar identity, beyond everything you have learned, beyond your notions of space and time, beyond the differences which usually separate people from each other and from the world around them.


—The Tibetan Book of the Dead

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The goal of life is to match your heartbeat to the beat of the universe, 

to match your nature with Nature.

—Joseph Campbell 

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