A person is neither a thing nor a process, but an opening through which the Absolute can manifest.

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In East Asia generally, the notion of a Supreme Being, so essential to Western religions, is replaced by that of a Supreme State of Being, an impersonal perfection from which beings including man are separated only by delusion.


―John Blofeld
Taoism: The Road to Immortality


 

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When the mind that is subtle goes out through the brain and the sense-organs, the gross names and forms appear; when it stays in the Heart, the names and forms disappear. Not letting the mind go out, but retaining it in the Heart is what is called ‘inwardness’ (antarmukha). Letting the mind go out of the Heart is known as ‘externalisation’ (bahirmukha).

Thus, when the mind stays in the Heart, the ‘I’ which is the source of all thoughts will go, and the Self which ever exists will shine.

Whatever one does, one should do without the egoity ‘I’.
If one acts in that way, all will appear as of the nature of Siva.

'Who am I?’ is not a mantra.

It means that you must find out where in you arises the I-thought which is the source of all other thoughts. But if you find this vichara marga (self enquiry) too hard for you, you can go on repeating “I, I” and that will lead you to the same goal.

There is no harm in using ‘I’ as a mantra.

It is the first name of God.


—Ramana Maharshi

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question

Asahel Curtis - Two mountaineers (identified as Jack and Miss Nettleton) sit on rocks, 

with arms around each other and backs to camera, on (or near) the summit of Mt Rainier, 1909

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When Papaji met Ramana Maharshi, and asked him, "Have you seen God?" Maharshi replied, "Anything that you see cannot be God. 

Whatever you see must be an object of your senses. God is not an object of your senses. God is the one through whom all things are seen, tasted, touched, heard and smelt, but He himself cannot be seen because He is the seer, not an object of sight."

Name and form are past bondages. The fact is, that which IS, is only one. It is omnipresent and universal. We say ‘here is a table’, ‘there is a bird’, or ‘there is a man’. There is thus a difference in name and form only, but That which IS, is present everywhere and at all times. That is what is known as asti - Existence, omnipresent. 

To say that a thing is existent, there must be someone to see — a Seer. That intelligence to see is known as bhati - Consciousness. There must be someone to say, ‘I see it, I hear it, I want it’. That is priyam - Love. All these three are the attributes of nature — the natural Self. They are also called Existence, Consciousness, Bliss (Sat-Chit-Ananda).

Talk of the ‘witness’ should not lead to the idea that there is a witness and something else apart from him that he is witnessing. The ‘witness’ really means the light that illumines the seer, the seen and the process of seeing. Before, during and after the triads of seer, seen and seeing, the illumination exists. 

It alone exists always.


—Ramana Maharshi

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questions

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Philosophers maintain that the future is similarly nothing more than a mental construct, an anticipation, a grouping of thoughts. 

Because thinking itself occurs strictly in the “now”—where is time?

Does time exist on its own, apart from human concepts that are no more than conveniences for our formulas or for the description of motion and events? 

In this way, simple logic alone casts doubt on whether there exists anything outside of an “eternal now” that includes the human mind’s tendency to think and daydream. 

Physicists, for their part, find that all working models for reality—from Newton’s laws and Einstein’s field equations through quantum mechanics—have no need for time. They are all time-symmetrical.

—Robert Lanza M.D.

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Of time you would make a stream upon whose bank you would sit and watch its flowing. 

Yet the timeless in you is aware of life’s timelessness,
And knows that yesterday is but to-day’s memory and to-morrow is to-day’s dream. 

And that that which sings and contemplates in you is still dwelling within the bounds of that first moment which scattered the stars into space.

—Khalil Gibran

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question

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Are we not at peace in the interval when one thought ceases and another does not yet arise?


—Ramana Maharshi

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Whenever you entrust your heart to a thought,

something will be taken from you inwardly

Whatever you think and acquire, the thief will

enter from that side where you feel safe

So busy yourself with that which is better, so

that something less may be taken from you.


—Rumi
Mathnawi II:1505-1507

William Chittick version

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