needful things

 

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When the world arises in me, 
It is just an illusion: 
Water shimmering in the sun, 
A vein of silver in mother-of-pearl, 
A serpent in a strand of rope. 

From me the world streams out 
And in me it dissolves, 
As a bracelet melts into gold,
A pot crumbles into clay,
A wave subsides into water.


—Ashtavakra Gita 2: 9-10

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The very idea of going beyond the dream is illusory. Why go anywhere? 

Just realise that you are dreaming a dream you call the world, and stop looking for ways out.

—Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

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Things that rain, and things that grow. They are all that hold my interest. 

(Until the things that rain have grown, and the things that grow have poured.)


—Takashi Hiraide

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merrily, merrily

  

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You want to know yourself. For this, keep steadily in the focus of consciousness, the only clue you have: your certainty of being. 

Be with it, play with it, ponder over it, delve deeply into it, till the shell of ignorance breaks open and you emerge into the realm of reality.

Know yourself to be the changeless witness of the changeful mind. 

That is enough.


—Nisargadatta Maharaj

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It is you who pervade this universe, and this universe exists in you. 

You are truly pure Consciousness by nature. 

Be not petty-minded.

—Ashtavakra Gita

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Let us go forth, the tellers of tales, and seize whatever prey the heart longs for, and have no fear. 

Everything exists, everything is true, and the earth is only a little dust under our feet. 


―W. B. Yeats

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the witness is the door

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Awareness is primordial; it is the original state, beginningless, endless, uncaused, unsupported, without parts, without change. Consciousness is on contact, a reflection against a surface, a state of duality. There can be no consciousness without awareness, but there can be awareness without consciousness, as in deep sleep.

Awareness is absolute, consciousness is relative to its content; consciousness is always of something. Consciousness is partial and changeful, awareness is total, changeless, calm and silent. And it is the common matrix of every experience.

Whatever depends, is not real. The real is truly independent. Since the existence of the person depends on the existence of the world and it is circumscribed and defined by the world, it cannot be real.

As long as you cling to the idea that only what has name and shape exists, the Supreme will appear to you non-existing. When you understand that names and shapes are hollow shells without any content whatsoever, and what is real is nameless and formless, pure energy of life and light of consciousness, you will be at peace – immersed in the deep silence of reality.

The source of consciousness cannot be an object in consciousness. To know the source is to be the source.

The witness-consciousness is the reflection of the real in the mind. The real is beyond. The witness is the door through which you pass beyond.
 

Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

I Am That, 1973

largerloves

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You are the solitary Witness of All That Is,

Forever Free.

Your only bondage is not seeing this.

—Ashtavakra Gita

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We are creatures of each other, causing and bearing each other’s burden. —Sri Nisargadatta

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Whoever you are: in the evening step out
of your room, where you know everything; 
yours is the last house before the far-off:
whoever you are.

With your eyes, which in their weariness
barely free themselves from the worn-out threshold, 
you lift very slowly one black tree
and place it against the sky: slender, alone.

And you have made the world. And it is huge
and like a word which grows ripe in silence. 
And as your will seizes on its meaning,
tenderly your eyes let it go…


—Rainer Maria Rilke
The Book of Images

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The body is not you, the name is not you.

The body is the food you have consumed;
the taste of the food is the knowledge ‘I am’.

That is Self, the feeling ‘I am’,
that is the love to be. 

How amazing, how incredible, it has no name, but you give many names to it. 

It is the Self, the love to be. 
That love to be is all pervading. 

Before you conceptualize anything, you are. 

Even before the knowingness, you are.


—Sri Nisargadatta

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You have long been bound thinking: 

‘I am a person’.

Let the knowledge: ‘I am Awareness alone’ 

be the sword that frees you.

—Ashtavakra Gita

 

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