… doubts rise in our minds …

Here are a few paragraphs from “The Chasm of Fire” by Irina Tweedie. (It is an abridged version of the far longer “Daughter of Fire”.) This book — actually both editions of this book — relates, in diary form, a fascinating and inspiring true story of a woman’s experience with a Sufi Master in India.

This selection is an excerpt of a conversation between Tweedie and her guru, Bhai Shia, on February 8, 1966.

Here is the passage:

Tweedie: I mentioned that Babu Ram told me a story which seems quite pointless to me. The story of a guru of Raipur who had beaten a young disciple to death; and then resurrected him to be a wali (a Sufi Master)

Bhai Shia: “I was present then, when it happened, and my Revered Guru and others were there, too. The boy was the son of a disciple, and the whole family were disciples of his: father, mother, uncles, all of them. They were all sitting there, and also the Master, the Teacher of the boy. The boy had a natural smiling face; he seemed always to smile like my Revered Father who also had this expression. The Master looked at the boy, and said, ‘Why are you smiling?’ And the boy kept smiling.

“So, with his stick in his hand, the Master began to beat the boy till the stick was broken. The boy kept the smile on his face. When the stick broke, The Master grabbed the heavy piece of wood with which wrestlers practise; and he continued to beat and beat till the head entered the shoulders, and the shoulders entered the body. One could not recognize who it was; nothing was there; just a mass of broken bones and flesh and blood everywhere.

“Then he stopped, and said to the relatives of the boy, ‘What is this? Am I not at liberty to do as I like?’

“‘Yes,’ they said, ‘We belong to you for life or death; you can do with us as you like.’

“‘Yes,’ he said, ‘I can do what I like,’ and went inside. Some say he was sitting chewing betel nut.

“Then he came out. ‘What is this?’ he asked. ‘Who is lying there?’

“Pointing to the mass of flesh which had been a human being, the guru ordered with commanding voice, ‘Get up!’

“And the boy got up, and was whole. and not a scar was seen on him.”

My immediate reaction on reading that account was, of course, you gotta be kidding! But, on reflection, I do not doubt that it occurred. I recall the numerous “miracles” attributed to Neem Karoli Baba, Ramakrishna, Sarada Devi, Sathya Sai Baba, Muktananda, numerous Christian saints (in the Roman Catholic Church, canonization requires two miracles attributed to her/his intercession post mortem), and many, many others. And I do not doubt those. Indeed, it has become Nancy’s and my experience that miracles, even in our own lives, are more common than ever we thought possible. (No, we have not shared them with others on TZF, nor will we share them, here or anywhere.)

And then I got to wondering: Does this event explain the “post mortem” appearance by Jesus to Mary Magdalene, Thomas, and the rest? That is, the Resurrection? Jesus was surely as advanced, adept, accomplished (I am not sure what word fits here) spiritually as the guru of Raipur in Tweedie’s account. If he could do it, then Jesus certainly could do it!

Just to remind ourselves, here are a few verses about Jesus’ resurrection:

Now when she (Mary Magdalene) had said this, she turned around and saw Jesus standing there, and did not know that it was Jesus. Jesus said to her, ‘Woman, why are you weeping? Whom are you seeking?’ She, supposing him to be the gardener, said to him, ‘Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have laid him, and I will take him away.’ Jesus said to her, ‘Mary!’ She turned and said to him, ‘Rabboni!’ (which is to say, Teacher). (John 20:14-16)

And behold, Jesus met them and said, ‘Hail!’ And they came up and took hold of his feet and worshiped him. Then Jesus said to them, ‘Do not be afraid; go and tell my brethren to go to Galilee, and there they will see me.’ (Matthew 28:8-10)

Then he says to Thomas, ‘Put your finger here, and look at my hands; take your hand, and put it in my side.’ (John 20:27)

While they were talking about this, he himself appeared among them, and says to them, ‘Peace be with you.’ And while for sheer joy they still didn’t believe, and were bewildered, he said to them, ‘Do you have anything here to eat?’ (Luke 24:36)

Mysteries upon mysteries.

Sweet Dreams?

So the Lord God caused the man (Adam) to fall into a deep sleep …. (Genesis 2:21-22)

So, God put Adam to sleep.

Nowhere in the Bible does it say that God awakened Adam.

Is Adam still asleep? If so, is Adam dreaming?

This question is raised here and there in forums on the internet, and responses tend to be sarcastic. Here is a sample:

Neither does it say that he drank some water, or ate food, or taught his kids to honor God. Not every single word or action of biblical figures can be written down, or we would have to carry our bibles in a wheel barrel.

Well, yea, but the Bible is full of endless, repetitive, extraneous details, particularly the Tanakh, the Old Testament. Why not this detail? And, besides, is it really just a detail?

God is no Fool. Having created us, He could guess that none of us would wonder about Adam drinking water. But He would know that sooner or later some of us would wonder about Adam awakening from his God-induced sleep. How did it happen? When did it happen? What was Adam’s reaction upon awakening?

Happily, about a thousand pages on, the Bible does tell us when God awakened Adam:

As soon as Issa (Jesus) was baptized, he went up out of the water. At that moment heaven was opened, and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and alighting on him. (Matthew 3:16)

The man Issa, the infant born of Mary in Bethlehem or more likely Nazareth, is a dream character in God-as-Adam’s dream. The dream ended for that character when an awakening (God-induced Awakening) caused him to Realize his identity as the sleeping Adam, which is “God-asleep” (so to speak).

Just so, a dove landed on the dream character’s shoulder, and woke him up.

Yes, it’s a metaphor. Of course it’s a metaphor. Our entire lives are a metaphor.

Until we awaken. Then it is Real.

So, Awakened, Issa, the former dream character, realized (remembered) “I and the Father are one.” (John 10:30)

Are and always have been. And the Awakened Issa (Jesus) has been Teaching us that ever since as Christ.

“…no one can see the kingdom of God unless they are born again.” (John 3) Is “born again” a synonym of “Awakened”? And in Japanese, Kensho, and, in Sanskrit, Nirvikalpa-Samadhi? It is all right in front of us, for eyes that see, ears that hear. (Matthew 11:15)

Thus, each of us is still living as a character in Adam’s dream, and will continue doing so until a dove lands on our shoulder (or some other Divine metaphor), and, like the dream character Issa (Jesus), we Awaken to our True Identity, which is: I and the Father are One.

Man is the only creature
that refuses to be what he is.

Albert Camus

How do I know?

How do I “know” that my world (what I call “me” and ”my life”) is, as all the Teachers insist, not Real?

Because after decades as a seeker, I am thoroughly convinced that everything that can fit into my mind is not Real, that what is Real is Beyond the mind. And me and my world fits into my mind. My world is not beyond; my world is here.

(Why have I just put “know” inside quotation marks? Because another thing I am, after all these decades, thoroughly convinced of is that the only way to Know a thing, to truly Know anything, is to Be it It. And knowing is not Knowing; knowing is not Being; neither is being.)

But I digress. Yes, digress is precisely what Stefan is doing; not just now, but all the time. Indeed, digressing is precisely why Stefan thinks he is Stefan!

Anyway, all this mental fussing keeps me here, keeps Stefan and his world apparently real. The only way to end that is to stop fussing, which means to stop making mental noise, which means to be silent. Not just quiet, but silent. Actually, truly, stop the mind from thinking.

Mental distraction is the veil, the Veil. Thoughts are the Veil. The mind is the source of thoughts. Hence, the mind distracts.

There is no such thing as a “Truly Spiritual” thought. Even the word spiritual is itself just a thought. I know that because before writing it (both with and without the capital S) just now, even while writing it just now, I was thinking. After all, how can I write a word, how can I do anything at all with a word, without having it in my mind, thinking it?

Hence, words are thoughts, any words, all words.

There is real and there is Real. real is not Real. real is a thought. real is a series of thoughts. Thought is a product of the mind. Hence, real is a product of, the proof of, the mind.

Real is Silent. Nothing true can be said about Real other than that. And even that, even the word “silent” does not describe Silence because Silence —True Silence— is not a word; True Silence is beyond words; True Silence is unspeakable.

Stefan knows all this to be true.

But Stefan does not Know it (or any of this) to be True. That is, none of this is True in “Stefan’s life” because Stefan’s life itself is not True, not Real.

In effect, all of this mental fussing is like wondering whether the water in a mirage is warm or cold. There is no water in a mirage for exactly the same reason there is no Stefan.

Yes, over the decades on the spiritual path, Stefan has come to know a lot of things. But not to Know them. For to Know this stuff is to BE it. knowing is in the mind; BEING is beyond the mind.

And the way to BE is …

I don’t know, Stefan doesn’t know.

Every effort to answer that question is thought-induced. Actually, the answer just written (I don’t know) is the right answer. But to expect Stefan to stop Stefan’s thoughts is … nonsense.

And yet, there have been instants. Short instants and increasingly, long instants.

How did they happen? Why did they occur?

Again, I don’t know.

Suddenly, inexplicably, causelessly, Stefan’s mind is SILENT, thoughtless. Thought becomes absent, revealing Silence. Revealing ever-present Silence.

Why did thought suddenly stop? Yea, yea, I know, I must have been meditating. But so what? It has “happened” even when I am not meditating. And yet, surely the spiritual path has something to do with it. Doesn’t it?

If so, are we to believe Paul was meditating on the road to Damascus (Acts 9)? Really? Paul had just come from stoning Stephen to death. Is stoning a spiritual posture?

Here’s what I know: Thought stops; there is Silence; thought returns.

Clearly, the mantra is, “For the Love of God, Stefan, shut up!”

But hearing the mantra, the mind leaps in, eager to agree. “Yea, Stefan, silence. That’s the ticket. C’mon, let’s think about it.”

(Eventually, the Teachers assure us, thoughts will not return. On time, by Grace, like ripe plums dropping from a branch.)

… talk is in your world. In mine — there is eternal Silence.

Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

Who were you then?

Here’s a question: What if, after taking me to my mother in her hospital bedroom, a nurse later, when returning me to the natal ward, placed me, accidentally, inadvertently, in the wrong crib. And the error has never been discovered (until today?). Clearly, I would have evolved into a different person than the Stefan I am today. A different name, different experiences, different memories and expectations, perhaps a different nationality and language and homeland. A different set of religious and spiritual values.

Hmm. That raises the question: Did that actually happen? Are Marian and Guido not my real birth parents? Should my name not be Stefan, but Yakov, or Filipo, or Juan? Do I care? Does it matter?

And, more importantly, as a seeker (because whoever I was and am, whichever was my crib, I am now indelibly a seeker), who is the “I” to whom this error occurred? In other words, as we are consistently urged to ask by the Teachers, “Who Am I?” And, come to that, who is the seeker? Is it Stefan, or is it whoever Stefan was before being named, and formed into, Stefan?

That is, to whom did this mistaken crib event happen? Not Stefan, not Yakov. The eventual Stefan or Yakov was still just a nameless organism. “Stefan” did not exist yet. But the organism existed, was alive, and did have an identity … in the crib, before it was placed in the crib, before it was born into the world, even after it dies from the world. Who is it?

At Exodus 3:14, Moses quotes God affirming “I Am Who I Am”. Scriptures of various, perhaps even all, religions insist God is our Father, our Creator, our Source; so, what is true of God is true of us (even, say, of stones?). Thus, “I Am Who I Am” applies to each of us, even to every thing; and it is the answer to the question “Who Am I?” urged on us by Nisargadatta, Ramana, and countless other Teachers. Now, we can say it, we can write it; I mean, I just did. But do we know what it means. Are we able consciously to BE it?

That is the function of the spiritual endeavor! Somewhere within me, even while lying in the wrong crib, I must have known I was an I who was alive. If I did not know precisely, at least I had an inkling. And that knowing is still there. That is the source of Stefan’s being alive, Yakov’s too. In a sense, that is Stefan’s Life. Search it. Find it. Resurrect it. Be it.

Is this what the Gospels Teacher was talking about: Born again! Is this the immortal Life, the Life that was then, is now, and will forever be? Even the Life that is, to use Nisargadatta’s word, Witnessing Stefan’s world (or Yakov’s world)?

… the Prince and the Pauper by Samuel Clemens under the name Mark Twain …
is about two boys who were born on the same day where one was wanted, one was not.
Each boy was not happy with his own life at an older age, so they switched places.

Mark Twain
(see here)

Were you not present at your birth?
Will you not be present at your death?
Find him who is always present ….

Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

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The following is the gist of a conversation Nancy and I had together this morning. (September 3, 2021)

“Stefan” lives in what he calls “my life.” Likewise, “Nancy” lives in what she calls “my life.” Those two lives are not the same lives. Similar, close, related, but not the same.

The Nancy whom Stefan knows is the Nancy who lives in what he calls “my life.” The Stefan she knows is the Stefan who lives in what she calls “my life.” Those two “Stefans” (the Stefan who lives in what he calls “my life,” and the Stefan who lives in what Nancy calls “my life”) are not the same Stefan. Ditto the Nancys: The Nancy in Stefan’s life, and the Nancy she calls “me” are not the same “person.” In each case, they are, again, similar, close, related, but they cannot be the same, because they are different “people” living in different lives.

Thus, Stefan does not know, cannot know, the Nancy whom she calls “me" and who lives in what she calls “my life.” Indeed, Stefan has never actually met her. Likewise, she does not know, cannot know, the Stefan that he calls “me” and who lives in what he calls “my life.” And Nancy has never met him.

As long as Nancy and Stefan each perceive themselves as “me” living in “my life,” they cannot TRULY know each other … or anyone else … or, come to that, even themselves!

So, when Stefan says to Nancy, “I love you” what he means is “I love the Nancy who lives in my life” for it is in fact that Nancy whom he is speaking to. It does not mean that he loves the Nancy whom Nancy calls “me.” And that is not because he does not love that Nancy. It is because he has never met her. He cannot meet her. He will never meet her. Ditto re Nancy: When Nancy says to Stefan, “I love you,” what she means is “I love the Stefan who lives in my life.” In fact, she have never met, she cannot ever meet, the Stefan whom Stefan calls “me” and who lives in what what Stefan calls “my life.”

That’s the human condition. As long as each of us says to ourselves “I am me, you aren’t,” clinging to our egoic identity, this is the way it is, and will be. But it is conversations like these that chip the wall, tear at the veil.

The Teachers tell us that when we reach Realization, we die (or, as Jesus put it a little more delicately, we are born again). That is, at “my” Realization, the Stefan he calls “me” dies, and the life that he lived in what he called “my life”), dissolves. Ditto when Nancy reaches Realization: The Nancy whom she called “me” and the life she called “my life,” dissolves. All that’s left is All There Is: The Self.

And, the Realized person is not, of course, a person. From “there,” in Realization, we do not exist as a “person.” There, there is no “me” and no “my life.” And there are no “others.” There is only the Self. And it is of course Self-Realized. That is, the Self-Realized simply Realizes Its Self.

Note: In this morning’s conversation regarding Self-Realization, we did not consider the Sanskrit term jivanmukta – “one who is still in the body but has freed himself from the bonds of ignorance … and has attained liberation.” That’s a topic for another day’s conversation.

One day in Paradise, Adam sees Eve for the first time.
“I am Adam,” he says to her.
“Yes, I know,” Eve replies, “so am I.”

“In The Beginning”

Everyone lives in his own world. …
The mind that projects the world colors it in its own way.

“Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj
in “I Am That“

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One morning, many, many decades ago, in ninth grade I think it was, in school in Rome, Italy, where I grew up, a teacher called her class together with this pronouncement: Omnes viae Romam ducunt!

Although none of us in the class was able to translate the Latin into English immediately, we all knew from her delivery, and especially the exclamation point, which we could hear, that whatever it was, we were to take it seriously. And that is probably why I still remember the event.

That sentence translates to All roads lead to Rome. At the time of the Roman empire, a period many of us in the class were convinced the teacher had come from, that was probably more or less true. The Romans made the roads, so it figures that the ultimate intended destination of all of them would be Rome itself.

Something, I do not remember what, brought that line to mind a few days ago. Thinking about it triggered this alteration: Omnes religiones ad Deum ducunt. All religions lead to God … to the Divine, to the Supreme.

Many of us, even most of us, while in our spiritual youth are convinced that our religion, our path, is the only true and certain way to God. And that is probably as it should be. Virtually all of the Teachers Nancy and I have encountered, whether in books or the flesh, agree that a seeker’s eventual success hinges on his or her earnestness and enthusiasm. In the beginning, that inevitably includes some form of exclusivity. I remember a joke about a priest and a pastor arguing over the merits of their chosen paths. After a heated exchange of words, one suggests to the other, in a peace-making gesture, that their respective ways are fundamentally the same; it is just that each of them follows it differently. To that, the other replies, Thank you for saying that. You’re right, we do each tread the same path to God," adding, after a brief pause, You in your way, I in His.

To me, religions — or to use the expression I prefer, spiritual traditions — are like languages. The differences among languages are essentially cultural and geographic. They sound different, their accompanying expressions and gestures are different, their idioms differ, but their purpose is always the same: to enable communication among their users, and in doing so, they all say basically the same thing.

I recognize it will undoubtedly discomfort some TZF visitors to read my writing so, and I regret that, but after years of studying various religions, I am convinced that they are effectively identical. The Infinite One — be She, He, or It known to us as God, Brahman, Kali, Adonai, the Supreme, the Infinite One, or some other, or simply Nameless — says to each of us, Seek Me, Know Me in a language ― spoken, written, and sensed — that we are able and willing to understand. That is, God’s knowledge of us is intimate, and so speaks to us in a manner deliberately tailored to who and what and where we are at that moment. Eventually each of us obeys the call, and in the end, we are likely neither aware nor caring what language we first heard it in.

Indeed, no matter how we discover it; no matter how we consider it; no matter whether we agree with it or like it, the inescapable fact is, All Roads Lead To God! God being Infinite, there is nowhere else any road — any religion — can lead.

There is no God but God,
and God is All There Is.
TZF — The Simple Way

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God is not me. God is I. There is only one I. God.

When Stefan says I am it has no meaning. It is literally, totally, fully meaningless. It is just noise. Barely even that.

Stefan is all of but nothing more than a collection of memories, expectations, and thoughts; that is to say, memories–expectations–thoughts. They are worth nothing. They are not alive. They are not a thing. They appear only to themselves, and it is only they themselves that take themselves seriously.

The collection of memories–expectations–thoughts convinces itself that it is a Thing. A Person. That it has a Name and a Life and a Being.

The collection of memories–expectations–thoughts dares to mimic God. It says I Am.

It says, I Am Stefan.

The collection of memories–expectations–thoughts is nothing. It is no thing; it never will be a thing. God did not Create it. Somehow by some inexplicable means, it made itself.

What God did not Create does not Exist. Therefore, the collection of memories–expectations–thoughts does not Exist. And if it does not Exist, it is an illusion. It is a nothing perceived as a thing. The very definition of a mirage.

Stefan is a mirage.

Until … until … until … Stefan dies.

Not physical death. Not the death of the body. Physical death is meaningless, a waste of time. Ignore it. Forget it. The only things that notice physical death or care about physical death are other mirages, others like Stefan, who, like Stefan, do not, never have, never will Exist.

The death that matters, that counts, that makes a difference, is the death of the collection of memories-expectations-thoughts that has somehow convinced itself that it is a thing, even a person.

When the collection is gone, the mirage disappears, What is left is what is there Now, what was always There, and will always be There: God.

Only God.

Just to be clear, there is No God but God, and God Is All There Is.

Whatever we think we are, wherever we think we are, whatever we think we know, whatever we think we perceive, is not. God is.

Live with It.

Let there be Light.
Genesis 1:3

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There is (potentially, or is it hypothetically?) an infinite number of body-mind personalities—stefan, nancy, you, everyone else. There is only One Self.

The apparent “we” is That.

Hence, Self Realization.

Even stones are conscious and alive.
Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj (cf Luke 19:40)

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“There is nothing to do. Just be. Do nothing. Be. No climbing mountains and sitting in caves. I do not even say ‘be yourself,’ since you do not know yourself. Just be. Having seen that you are neither ‘the outer’ world of perceivables, not the ‘inner’ world of thinkables, that you are neither body nor mind — just be.

“There are no steps to self-realization. There is nothing gradual about it. It happens suddenly, and is irreversible. You rotate into a new dimension, seen from which the previous ones are mere abstractions. Just like on sunrise you see things as they are, so on self-realization you see everything as it is. The world of illusions is left behind.

“… There can be progress only in the preparation (sadhana). Realization is sudden. The fruit ripens slowly, but falls suddenly, and without return

“… there is no becoming. You merely discover what you are. All moulding oneself to a pattern is a grievous waste of time. Think neither of the past nor of the future. Just be.

“… The only proper place is within. The outer world neither can help nor hinder. No system, no pattern of action will take you to your goal. … concentrate totally on the now, be concerned only with your response to every movement of life as it happens.” (Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj in “I Am That”)

Like the Man said, “As God is my witness: No one can experience God’s imperial rule without being reborn from above.” (John 3:3 ASV)

Here’s a question:
· Did you dream while asleep last night?
· Did you and the characters and the stuff in the dream seem alive or real? That is, did you know at the time that they were all dream characters, not really real?
· If not, when did you realize they were all dream characters, not really alive? Presumably, when you awoke.

Some traditions teach that the lives we are living now are like dreams; that we and the characters in our lives and all the stuff in our lives, are illusions, all no more actual than the stuff in our dream last night. And we and they will seem real to us, even though they are not, until we achieve a spiritual awakening, sometimes referred to as Self Realization or Born Again (John 3.3). Then, and only then, will we know Reality as It Truly Is, the I AM. It is impossible to put into words now. The closest we can come is in metaphors, explaining as if …

The best service you can do is to keep your thoughts on God. Keep God in mind every minute. Neem Karoli Baba in “Miracle of Love”

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The Veil

The world (the universe) is the Infinite Self seeing Itself separatively, precisely because separatively, as I write in “In The Beginning”, is the only way an Infinite Being can see Itself.

And the means of doing that is the creation of a Veil (Matthew 27 et al).

The Veil “separates” the Infinite Being’s infinite-ness into “separate parts.” so that the Infinite Being can see Itself separately, as separate selves.

Thus, Adam is the Infinite Self perceiving Itself as Adam and Eve – which is to say, as you and me and everyone and everything else. What makes that possible is the Veil.

Again, the Veil is the means which the Infinite Self created in order to “neutralize” Itself from Its infinite-ness, so that It could perceive Itself.

The ability to perceive a thing as a thing requires the ability to separate one thing from other things. An Infinite Being lacks that ability. Everything It looks at is Itself, and like Itself, wholly Infinite precisely because It is Infinite, and therefore wholly the Same. Thus, an Infinite Being cannot make distinctions because, again, making distinctions demands the ability to separate, to discriminate, to recognize dissemblance.

The function of the Veil is to “de-infinitize” the Infinite so that it can see itself as a universe inhabited by, packed with, stuff.

The purpose of the spiritual process is to remove the Veil while at the same time keeping the ability to see the Infinite Being separatively but simultaneously recognizing, knowing, that all the apparently perceived parts are in fact the Infinite Being Itself, not separate beings or forms. That is, to be able to see a mirage simultaneously as a bubbling spring and as a hillock of desert sand, and know all the while that neither is really Real as it appears.

By the spiritual process we Remember Who We Are (and have always been) and we – actually I, for there is no we – can perceive our self as the Self. There there is no sense of a separate I. There there is One I, the I, and That becomes apparent to every Self-Realized seeker who, upon Realization instantly and simultaneously ceases to seem to itself as a self separate and distinct from anyone or anything else.

And thus, the universe we seem to be living in is, in fact, an illusion, just as all the Teachers keep insisting. It is the One seen as many, and always has been.

Teachers, those who have Realized this Truth – those who have “seen” this Truth and therefore for whom the Veil is gone (torn, to use the Biblical term) are the Infinite Self reminding us of all this. Again, they are, in effect, saying to us “Remember Who You Are.”

Is there really a Veil, or even a veil? Of course not. All of this is a metaphor for an ineffable Reality.

The intimacy of this “system,” if that is what it is, is breathtaking.

And, behold, the veil of the temple was rent in twain from the top to the bottom …
Matthew 27:51 KJV

Where is the Kingdom of Heaven?
Within you (Luke 17:21)
What does that make you?
A temple (1 Corinthians 6:19)
Where was the Veil torn?
In the temple (Matthew 27:51)
There is only life.
There is nobody who lives a life.
Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

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We Are Nameless

In the words of the Gospels Teacher:
“Unless one is born again he cannot see the Kingdom of God ” (John 3:3)

At birth, an infant opens its eyes, and sees … itself.
Everything it sees is itself.

Its adoring parents, its loving friends, its gracious nurses and caring physicians, even its well-intentioned priest, dutifully celebrate the child’s birth, and immediately begin to teach it diversity: “I am Mommy, and you are Lucy.” “I am me, and you aren’t.” In a word, “We are all separate. Even God is separately God. Get used to it.”

Why do we do it? It is the human condition. We get a pet, we give it a name, and suddenly, it is no longer just a cat. It is Tiger or Paws, separate and unique from every other cat, separate and unique from every other form. Separate and unique from “me.”

And we do it to ourselves. We are born Divine, at One in God, and we turn ourselves into humans, into “me,” from Infinite to bounded.

“You are originally unlimited and perfect.
Later you take on limitations, and become the mind.”
Sri Ramana Maharshi

The Infinite and Indivisible Divine One, aware of the unfolding damage we effect, manifests Itself as Teachers and Reminders of the Truth, and appears about us or within us as often, as frequently, as evidently as necessary.

“Suffer little children to come unto me, and forbid them not: for of such is the kingdom of God. Verily I say unto you, Whosoever shall not receive the Kingdom of God as a little child shall in no wise enter therein.” (Luke 18:15)

Clearly, by “born again” He meant for us to undertake the spiritual process earnestly within ourselves, until we come to see ourselves as we did in the beginning, with eyes uncluttered by the ego-sense, as One with the ineffable Absolute Truth.

“For now we see through a glass, darkly.”
Paul The Apostle

“You need not correct yourself — only set right your idea of yourself. … It is not what you do, but what you stop doing, that matters.”
Sri Nisagadatta Maharaj

“My me is God: nor do I know my selfhood except in God.”
Saint Catherine of Genoa

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“This wine is my blood.”
And he took bread,
and when he had given thanks,
he broke it and gave it to them, saying,
“This is my body,
which is given for you.”
Matthew 26:28, Luke 22:19

The question for us as seekers is,
Who Is Speaking?

Surely it is the One
The Very One
Brahman Allah Yahweh God
The Infinite Indivisible Consciousness
That I Am

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I AM THAT I AM

The infinite indivisible consciousness
has put on this appearance of diversity.
Vasistha’s Yoga (page 345)

The mind is the veil
which is the ego
which is the I-thought
which is diversity perceived
which is “I am me, and you aren’t”

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The Beginning …

Out of the Absolute Supreme
there arises the Mind
which generates the appearance of a world, a universe,
called, let’s say, Mind-landia,
inhabited, let’s say, by “me”
who is, like Mindlandia itself, only an appearance,
an image in an imaginary imagination.

Mindlandia is like a bubble
in the Ocean of the Absolute Supreme.
The apparent bubble and its apparent contents
are, like everything else, none other than the Absolute Supreme,
but here surrounded by an apparent Veil
which the Spiritual Process must undo
to pop the bubble,
which when popped ceases to exist,
having never actually existed at all.

His Prophet is He, and His sending is He, and His word is He.
He sent Himself with Himself to Himself. …
There is no difference between the Sender and the thing sent,
and the peson sent, and the person to whom he is sent.
The very existence of the prophetic message is His existence.
There is no other, and there is no existence to other.

Ibn ’Arabi

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I AM
The Supreme Self
appearing
for no reason
as an apparently distinct embodied self
(namely, you)
living an apparently mortal life
in an apparently material world
for an apparent while.

The Holy Sprit’s Voice
is as loud as
your willingness to listen.

A Course in Miracles (Text)

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The mind is …

Here is Ramana Maharshi in response to a question posed at his ashram, Arunachala, about the nature of the mind:

The mind is only a bundle of thoughts. The thoughts arise because there is the thinker. The thinker is the ego. The ego, if sought, will vanish automatically. The ego and the mind are the same. The ego is the root-thought from which all other thoughts arise.

The truth cannot be seen by physical eyes which can only see material objects. When you see with your subtle eyes, you will behold the creation as it is, the truth.

Vasistha’s Yoga

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In The Beginning …

The ABYSS is. No adjectives apply to it. It just, simply, always IS.

EVERYTHING about the ABYSS is INEXPLICABLE

In some inexplicable manner there evolves out of NOTHING out of NOWHERE for no reason a DESIRE to know “Who Am I?” which becomes …

… the MIND which is “God” which is the “Creator” which is the Devil which is the “Ego” which is “I am me” …

… the Mind “creates” (imagines) within itself a universe composed of “life” as we know it, and…

… implants in its creation (life) the desire to discover “Who Am I?”…

… that is, to ANSWER the ORIGINAL QUESTION generated by the ORIGINAL DESIRE …

… and then the Mind hides.

NOTHING ELSE IS REAL.
NOTHING ELSE IS ACTUALLY HAPPENING.
NOTHING ELSE MATTERS.

I AM THAT I AM
I will become what I choose to become
I create what(ever) I create

Exodus 3:14

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And again

“Stefan” is not a person, “Stefan” is not even a personality. “Stefan” is a label. A label attached to the basket of thoughts, memories, expectations, dispositions, tendencies, preferences, etc. that has evolved over the “timeless” existence of the “basket” that first came into being as an I-thought, a bubble of lifelessness rising out of Infinite Eternal Indivisible Inexplicable LIFE. The I-thought is the bubble’s first thought of itself as a self distinguishable from LIFE out of which it bubbled. Here, think of a wave that forms on the face of the ocean. It is not distinguishable from the “rest” of the ocean, but somehow it develops the thought “I am a separate wave, separate from other waves, separate from the ocean.” The wave seems to itself to be distinguished, to be separate, from all the other waves, even from the ocean itself.

This basket, which for now contains only the one thought, the I-thought (“I am some body, I am some thing, different and separate from other bodies, other things”), is the mind. It becomes attached to, or itself generates, a body. That “body” may be any sort of form — a tree, a stone, a worm, a horse, a human.

Whatever form it is, will end because, being a form, it has a beginning: It was born, and everything that is born will, must, have a death, must die. BUT the basket does not die. It continues past the form’s demise. And it attaches to, it generates, a “new” form, a new body, and that body comes to life with all the thoughts, memories, predispositions already present in the basket. And, during its lifetime new thoughts, memories, predispositions are added to the basket, which again, on its death, eventually becomes attached to another, new form. And on and on and on.

Thus, over the passage of time the basket accumulates additional thoughts, memories, expectations, predispositions, generated during its association with whatever form it is associated with at any given time. So, if the form is a worm, added to the basket may be the sense “Drenching rain is the pits,” and, if it later becomes a horse “the grass is always greener on the other side.” Like that, one form after another, constantly generating, collecting, amassing new thoughts, new memories, new expectations, all built upon the original, primordial, governing I-thought: I am me, and you aren’t. Clearly, we are not aware of the previous, inherited contents of the basket that define us (some claim that hypnotism will expose them; also, some yogis can become aware of them), but they are there nonetheless, and in inescapable ways, they define us.

All the while, as seekers, we must keep ourselves constantly aware that all of this is unreal, an appearance, not a reality. The Reality, all of the Teachers agree, is none other than the One Than Which There Is No Other. But, the fact is, it is in the nature of an appearance to appear real. Like a mirage. And, God help us, it does appear real.

Until finally, inexplicably, a spark is struck that arouses within the original bubble that, “in the beginning,” rose out of Infinite Eternal Indivisible Inexplicable LIFE, a spark that inspires within us the initial wonderment “Who am I?” and sets into motion the spiritual process, a process that leads ultimately to the elimination of the basket, the erasure of the current label, and the extinguishing of the current form. What’s left is what was always there: Infinite Eternal Indivisible Inexplicable LIFE. In the words of Ibn ’Arabi, “thou art not thou, thou art He without thou.”

This world is an optical illusion like the blueness of the sky. It is ignorance. Enough of even this effort to purify that ignorance! If this world-appearance which is unreal continues to appear, let it: it can do no harm.

Vasistha’s Yoga

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The Un-making of A Basket

Some while ago, I wrote here about the making (and the eventual un-making) of the vessel or basket of thoughts, biases, notions, and so on, which evolves into the personality each of us calls “me.” Reading again last evening in Nisargadatta, this image came to mind:

A new born infant lies in a crib in a hospital’s maternity ward. The baby’s sense of awareness is pure, crystal clear, unobstructed. To borrow from St. Paul, this child is observing the world through a “glass clearly,” and everything she or he sees is perceived as herself or himself. There are no boundaries, no distinctions, no sense of separation, no perception of being alone, no possibility of loneliness.

Over time, the baby’s devoted parents, doting family, loving priest, school teachers, scout leaders, friends, colleagues, and the like, impose on him or her a basket of thoughts, beginning with the “I thought” (I am Stefan, and you aren’t), and from there all of the stuff all of us regard as knowledge, all of which generates, encourages, reinforces, informs our sense of separative egoic existence.

All the while, our original pristine awareness continues to reside within, except now it is increasingly obstructed by the shape of our evolved personality. Our priorly native awareness is warped by desire and fear, and again with St. Paul, we now see through a glass darkly. What was crystal clear and welcoming in the beginning is now foggy, confusing, off-putting, sometimes terrifying. In a word, the world as we have come to know it.

And so here we are, you and I, today, on the spiritual path, undoing all of that: eliminating or erasing or dismantling or transcending the separate and separative personality, its thoughts, desires, fears, opinions, expectations, memories, notions, and re-establishing the overriding priority of the natural state that is the Truth of All That Is.

In the words of the Gospels Teacher, we must die to our acquired self and be born again to our True Self. Every tradition I have come across says essentially just that; the words, the metaphors, the analogies, the instructions, are different, but the fundamental, inescapable message is always the same: Discover "Who Am I?" and let That Be.

It is like washing printed cloth. First the design fades, then the background, and in the end, the cloth is plain white. The personality gives place to the witness, then the witness goes, and pure awareness remains. The cloth was white in the beginning, and is white in the end. The patterns and colors just happened — for a time.

Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

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It’s An Addiction …

… to the separative, egoic “I am me, and you aren’t” personality.

That is, it is not that I am addicted but that “me”, the thought “I am me” is the addiction. Stefan is not addicted; “Stefan” is the addiction.

The I is addicted to“me”, to thinking of itself as me and of things as mine, including ”This is my life!”

The mind is a basket of thoughts, memories, expectations, beliefs that individually and collectively distill to the ego, that comprise the label “Stefan”.

Remember, there is no such thing as a person, as a personal self. “I am me” is a meaningless falsehood, an empty construct of the mind. And use of it, dependence upon it, attachment to it, is an addiction.

And like all addictions, however pleasant, amusing, fulfilling, fun it may be in the beginning, it is ultimately the source of all our discomfort, pain, and suffering, including and especially our fear of death.

To be sure, there is an I, a True I, that is Brahman or God or the Infinite One Than Which There Is No Other. But it has no name, no label, no characteristics that “me“ is capable of understanding. It is infinitely far beyond everything “me” knows or can know. It exists Now (which is not a time-related concept), meaning it has always existed and it will always exist.

Consider the words of Ibn ’Arabi, “Thou are not thou, thou art He without thou.” In this context, the phrase “without thou” are the operative words. That is, Self-Realization, the Awakening or re-Awakening to an Awareness of He, requires (that is undoubtedly the wrong word) stefan must be recognized and acknowledged for what it is: nothing. The addiction, the attachment, to the label “stefan” must die.

That is what the spiritual process as described, defined, and informed by every spiritual tradition is about.

Every form of addiction is bad,
no matter whether the narcotic be alcohol, morphine or idealism.
Carl Gustav Jung

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I Don’t Know, and I Can’t Find Out

The following is from the Introduction to “The Long Discourses of the Buddha” by Maurice Walshe and Venerable Sumedho Thera: “In fact, it has been said by one witty scholar that all we have to go on is our misconception of Nirvana, because until we have realized it we cannot know it as it really is.”

Every spiritual tradition I have come across reaches ultimately for the same Ineffable Phenomenon, known by various labels, including Nirvana, Illumination, Realization, Self-Realization, Christ Consciousness, and so on, and in every instance, it is effectively Irrational, by which I mean it is beyond the capacity, the limits, the scope, the horizons, of our mind to understand, to describe, to grasp, to define. We say this is because the Condition is Infinite, and we think then that we have put the matter to rest. In fact, we have done no such thing. Although we can wrap words around the idea of infinity, we cannot get a hold on it with our finite minds, and so it remains as far beyond our comprehension as ever.

Here’s the thing. From everything I have read or heard or experienced, this State or Condition or Phenomenon, is so decidedly Other that there is no point whatsoever in our trying to describe it. If we had any sense, we would leave it alone. But we are unable to do that because we think of Nirvana, or this Watchmacallit, as the Goal of our spiritual undertaking. As we see it, it is what we are going to become, or achieve, or acquire, at the end of our journey. Again, as we see it, it is our promised reward: “the promised land,” infinite bliss, eternal life, or some other good stuff. Of course, we generate and embrace that view; after all, if there’s nothing in this sadhana for me, what’s the point?

And in those words lies the problem: “for me.” The egoic mind, that which defines and informs me and my life for each of us, as (please substitute your name here) I am Stefan, and you are not, understands the spiritual process as an undertaking at the conclusion of which I am Stefan, and you are not is going to become something Enormous. Stefan will achieve Nirvana or Self-Realization or Whatever, and as such Stefan will have infinite power, infinite knowledge, infinite good looks! The Teachers all insist that is nonsense, that the I am Stefan person will achieve nothing; it will be, in the view of some traditions, eradicated, in others recognized never to have existed at all. Again from the text cited above, Since the individual ‘self’ entity is not ultimately real, it cannot be said to be annihilated by Nirvana, but the illusion of such a self is destroyed.

The acquisition of knowledge is a duty
incumbent on every Muslim, male and female.
The Sayings of Muhammad

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Self-Enquiry

The following is a long excerpt from The Teachings of Ramana Maharshi in His Own Words by Arthur Osborne.

The mind is merely thoughts. Of all thoughts the thought ‘I’ is the root. Therefore, the mind is only the thought ‘I’. Whence does this thought ‘I’ arise? Seek for it within; it then vanishes. This is the pursuit of Wisdom. Where the ‘I’ vanishes, there appears an ‘I-I’ by itself. This is the Infinite (Purnam).

If the ego is, everything else is also. If the ego is not, nothing else is. Indeed the ego is all. Therefore the inquiry as to what this ego is, is the only way of giving up everything.

“The state of non-emergence of ‘I’ is the state of being THAT. Without questing for that state of non-emergence of ‘I’ and attaining It, how can one accomplish one’s own extinction, from which the ‘I’ does not revive? Without that attainment, how is it possible to abide in one’s true state, where one is THAT?

“Just as a man would dive in order to get something that had fallen into the water, so one should dive into oneself with a keen, one-pointed mind, controlling speech and breath, and find the place whence the ‘I’ originates. The only enquiry leading to Self-Realization is seeking the source of the word ‘I’. Meditation on ‘I am not this; I am not that’ may be an aid to enquiry, but it cannot be the enquiry. If one enquires ‘Who am I?’ within the mind, the individual ‘I’ falls down abashed as soon as one reaches the Heart, and immediately Reality manifests itself spontaneously as ‘I-I’. Although it reveals itself as ‘I’, it is not the ego but the perfect Being, the Absolute Self.>

The more I study religions
the more I am convinced that man never
worshipped anything but himself.
Richard Francis Burton

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Clones Are We?

The other evening, Nancy and I watched the first episode of the television series Orphan Black. Well, I should say we watched part of the first episode. It seemed to us too violent for our simple minds, so we turned it off. But before we did so, it became apparent to us that the story is about clones, and that reminded me of Ibn ’Arabi’s powerful instruction, Thou art not thou, thou art He, without thou. If God is Infinite, as surely God must be, then thou art He has to mean thou art wholly, entirely, completely He. In other words, the He in the line thou art He is wholly, entirely, completely He without any differentiation, separation, distinction from any other He. That is, a clone, or Clone.

Well, not exactly, because clones, while identical replicas, are separate. That is, there is the original, and there is the clone. Two. Not so as regards He, for here there is only One, the One.

But still the suggestion does serve as a device to rattle the mind, which is always a good exercise for a seeker.

Think about it. Perceiving everyone in our life, everyone and everything, animate and inanimate, in our reality, as a Clone of He has to be a healthy practice.

Wait … did I say inanimate”? Yes, what we call inanimate, too, every bit of it, is a Clone. Recall Jesus’s and Ramana’s remarks about stones (see here). Similarly, I have read that some interpret Qur’an 2:24 to mean that all creation is animate, meaning presumably all without exception. Years ago, I had occasion to ask a Tibetan monk how Buddhism defines sentient beings, (he had used that term numerous times in a talk); he responded, people and animals. I did not think then to ask where stones fit into Buddhism!

But I digress … Again, yes, perceiving Clones as a practice is not enough, because it has limitations, and so it must be, it will be, eventually abandoned; but that is true, isn’t it, of every practice?

Anyway, the next day, Nancy and I had tea made from loose leaves, not tea bags. After finishing a cup, I observed the leaves left at the bottom of the cup, and those who claim to read tea leaves, and tell fortunes thereby, came to mind.

Well, why not? If the tea leaves, too, are He, then the Secrets of all the Universe are therein to be seen 8230; by those with eyes to see.

So, what this Clone meditation device can teach us is, when we look upon an other, any other, remember that what is happening is He looking upon Himself. Just as, drawing on one of my favorite lines from Ibn ’Arabi, speaking of the Prophet and the Qur’an, >He sent Himself with Himself to Himself.

Light! More Light!
Final words of
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

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Don’t Mind Me

The last few entries here have generated a line of thought which Nancy and I had occasion to explore with a long time friend of TZF who visited the other day.

Here, edited for brevity, it is: I am convinced the mind is the residence or seat of desire, and that it is desire that formulates (if not creates) how we project ourselves, how we behave, indeed perhaps our personality itself. Just so, whether we “change our mind” or change our desire, the outcome is about the same: a change in behavior, in how we seem, in our personality.

Thus, desire shapes the mind that shapes us. Or the mind chooses desire that shapes us.

Anyway, these and other thoughts about the mind and desire generated this sequence: The mind absorbs or accomodates or adopts or becomes (I am not sure what verb should apply here) a desire which generates fear (that the desire will not be fulfilled or will be fulfilled improperly or will be counterproductive or …) which generates suffering which generates anger (at myself, at someone else, at life generally, at God, at ….).

Mind->desire->fear->suffering->anger.

If that makes sense, then when we’re angry or suffering or fearful, we need to consider and recognize that it all began with a desire. Find the desire, identify it, and that will defuse the rest. We may still be uncomfortable, but at least we will know the real reason for our discomfort.

In the book “In The Beginning,” I propose that the story of the Garden of Eden is about God’s wanting to perceive Himself separatively, to know what it is to be able to perceive I am me, and that is a tree. To do that, He had to generate the desire >I want to be me, implant it in an apparently separate mind, and set it loose. The rest is history, our history.

As we churn this stuff, we must not let ourselves forget Ibn ’Arabi: Thou art not thou, thou art He without thou. That is, the apparently separate mind is just that, apparently separate. We are He, the sense of separation, the Veil, is He, and the outcome (we and our lives) is He. In a word, the Eden event was produced from start to finish with a Divine Wink.

 

More tears are shed over answered prayers than unanswered prayers.
Ste Teresa of Avila

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It’s not your karma …

A few mornings ago I awoke considering the similarity (the identity?) between Ibn ’Arabi’s assertion Thou are not thou, thou art He, without thou, and I and the Father are One (John 10:30), both of which sound a lot like Nisargadatta (There is no such thing as a person), Ramana, and so many others. That process led to a consideraton of the Hindu and Buddhist concept of karma and its fundamental presumption that I am a person separate and unique from other persons (and of course from God). The logic is unavoidable: To accumulate my own distinct sum of actions generating consequences specific to me, that is, my own karma, I must be a separate person.

But how can I have my own karma if there is no such thing as a person, if I am not a person?

I tossed that apparent contradiction about in my head for some long while. I even got to the point where I prayed for forgiveness for my karma, the karma I had generated.

And then, I heard, clear as crystal, It’s not your karma. It’s My Karma.

As I heard it, the capitalization of the letters em and kay was just as apparent as the words themselves: I could see them: My Karma.

There it was, unmistakably: It’s not your karma, Stefan. It’s My Karma.

To be sure, it makes sense. If there is no such thing as a Stefan, if Stefan is an illusion, then clearly there is no such thing as Stefan’s karma.!

Stefan is an illusion, so of course Stefan’s karma is an illusion. You, too, whoever you are.

Let those words run loose in your mind for a few minutes, and observe as the ramifications reach out in every direction.

To me, it sounded like a ripping of the Veil (again, Ibn ’Arabi: nothing veils other than He), a tear of the Curtain (Matthew 27:51).

A few words, an overwhelming image.

Now, this obviously requires the shift in perspective that the spiritual path is fundamentally all about (There is no God but God, and God is All There Is), but It’s not your karma, Stefan. It’s My Karma brings it into an unforgiving focus. By unforgiving here, I mean there is no room left for yea, but this and yea, but that. For me, this one demands a clean sweep. The mind cannot do it because as I have said and written many times, I am convinced the mind is the heartbeat of the illusion, and so cannot erase itself. But it can read the handwriting on the wall.

The next day, Nancy and I talked about this for a couple of hours, over breakfast and in the car enroute to an appointment. It has been rattling around in my brain ever since. And likely will continue to do so.

This is one of those Moments that change everything.

Update: Inevitably, all of the above applies to the question of reincarnation

Who among us has not wondered, Is there reincarnation? Who was I in a previous life? Who will I be in my next life?

What is true about karma must be true about reincation: It is not you who incarnates. It is I Who Incarnates.

Likewise, It is not you who reincarnates. It is I Who Re-Incarnates.

Once again, we can know all of this by reading or hearing about it; we can even absorb it by meditating on it or otherwise spiritually ingesting it. But none of that will render it Known to us.

We cannot Know It until we Are It. That is, until the perception I am me, and you are not is irretrievably dissolved, the Veil removed, the Curtain torn. And That can be Accomplished only by God, the One, the I Than Which There Is No Other.

In a word, the Veil can be removed only by the One Who Put It There, the One Who is It.

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The Heart’s Desire

Consider this quotation from Lao Tsu:

The nameless was the beginning
of heaven and earth;
The named was the mother
of the myriad creatures.
Hence always rid yourself of desire
in order to observe its secrets;
But always allow yourself to have desires
in order to observe its manifestations.
These two are the same

A couple of days ago, Nancy and I watched (again!) a DVD I Am That I Am by Stephen Wolinsky talking (brilliantly) about the Teachings of Sri Nisargadatta. Later that evening, there came to mind the lines quoted above from Lao Tsu, and particularly the word desires in them.

Instead of a basket of thoughts (see here), or maybe as well as a basket of thoughts, is it a basket of desires? And if so, is it possible (in an infinite universe, of course it's possible!) that what I am is simply (!) undifferentiated awareness that somehow from time to time (whatever that may mean in this context) latches onto a floating by desire, and instantly becomes that desire by indentifying itself with it. That is, the desire, every desire in the basket, contains or includes a unique I which I then adopt as mine and me.

Gurdjieff, I think it was, talked about our having multiple I’s which he used to explain why our behavior is so inconsistent: we are, in effect, more than one personality, although not in a clinical sense. In other words, as I understand the argument, each of us behaves not necessarily according to a well-defined, consistent set of standards, but instead our reactions, our performances, are defined or informed by the conditions or circumstances in which we find ourselves, not by any concrete standard “within” us. In a word, the I that I think I am is pliable, constantly (or at least frequently) changing, and therefore so, in effect, am I.

Further to this basket of desires idea: Perhaps each and every desire contains or includes not only its own I whose traits and characteristics are consistent with the desire, but includes also specifications that design, configure, inform the world associated with the desire, the world in which the desire lives, manifests, is executed. Thus, the world, the reality, we perceive at any given momet (including the people, things, activities within it) is consistent with, is shaped by, the desire we have adopted as our personality, and are pursuing (inhabiting, incarnating). We see the entirety that each of us call >my life through the I (eye) of the desire we are enlivening.

In the lines above, Lao Tsu tells us that having desires, or as I might be suggesting here, being desires (adopting or accepting the desire’s I as our own), enables us to observe manifestations, but to know the secrets we need to be free of desires (of any sense of being a self, a me). That’s in line with the Teaching of Nisargadatta, Ramana, et al.

These Lao Tsu lines are from the Wang Pi (sometimes Wang Bi) text which I came across recently. The more common text (translation) apparently is the Ma Wang Tui text. I do not know what the significant historical or critical differences are between the two; but I know this, one line leapt out at me when I first read the Wang Pi: These two are the same! In other words, whether we are observing (being) with desires or without desires, we are perceiving (being) the same thing. Of course, that idea appears throughout TZF, but nowhere as clearly as in that line by Lao Tsu in the Wang Pi text.

These two are the same. The Ma Wang Tui text (which I believe is more common) translates those words These two have the same origin; a Gia Fu Feng & Jane English translation has it, These two spring from the same source.

To be sure, those latter two are close in meaning to the former, but they are not quite as powerful, as attention-getting, as startling as the simple expression, These two are the same. No matter how intently, no matter how devotedly, no matter how sincerely we struggle spiritually, we are going to end up in the same place we started: Right Here. Because the One and the other are the Same, the Same One. (Compare Ibn ’Arabi Thou art not thou, thou art He without thou.)

Two weeks later:

In the context of the Lao Tsu quotation above, think of the mind as the line between rid yourself of desires and allow yourself to have desires; or, in Ibn ᾿Arabi’s language, it is the mind that is the veil (that which conceals or obscures His existence in His oneness). Thus, it is the mind that latches on to a desire, incorporates or assumes its I, and which then we take on as ourself, and behave accordingly. Or is it that desires themselves are the veil (the Veil)? In other words, is there any difference, any space, between my mind and my desire (at any given moment)? I am beginning to think not. As my mind changes, my desire changes; as my desire changes, my mind changes. When I am rid of desire(s), I am rid of (my) mind. Is it possible to have a mind and not have a desire? At the very least, there would remain the desire to be. Rid ourself of every desire, and we rid ourself of ourself.

And all of this “activity” takes place on what we might call this side of the line, this side of the Veil, because it is on this side that the mind resides, on this side that multiple I's can surface, each associated with, each manifesting, it’s specific desire. On the other side (or is it Other Side?) of the Veil, there is only His “I” … and so there are no desires, no mind. From the perspective of His side of the Veil, there is no Veil: If the Veil is desire (AKA mind), and desire has dissolved (coincidentally erasing or dissolving “the line”), then all that remains is “His oneness” — which is all there ever was anyway … except “veiled” by desire.

And the beat goes on.

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The Very Stones

I have written suggesting that, as seekers, we do well to assume that, when speaking or writing, Teachers choose their words carefully, obliging us to hear or read them

Well, last evening, reading Ramana Maharshi in The Teachings of Sri Ramana Maharshi, I came across a line that I do not recall having seen before … never mind that Nancy and I have each read this book several times, underlined and margin-noted numerous passages. This line takes place in a discussion between Ramana and a seeker about the effects on the mind of the foods we eat, and so predictably the subjects of vegetarianism and non-violence arise. Here is a piece of it:

Questioner: Are there restrictions for the realized man with regard to food?
Answer: No. He is steady and not influenced by the food he takes.
Q: Is it not killing life to prepare a meat diet?
A: Ahimsa (non-violence) stands foremost in the code of discipline for the yogis.
Q: Even plants have life.
A: So too the slabs you sit on!

So too the slabs you sit on! Who can read that line, and not have leap immediately to mind this passage from the Gospels:

And some of the Pharisees in the multitude said to him, “Teacher, rebuke your disciples.” He answered, “I tell you, if these were silent, the very stones would cry out.”

Ramana and Nisargadatta and others like them tell us repeatedly that from the perspective of their Self-Realized Position, their body is the Universe, not the physical human organism we believe them (and of course ourselves) to be. In other words, for them the universe is itself alive, one single, undifferentiated living organism, and It is They, They are It. (Actually, they would not use the plural pronoun “They”, because from their perspective there is only One, only I.)

Here are the words of Nisargadatta, speaking of the Nature of a gnani (sometimes jnani), one who has united Love of God and Knowledge of God, one like himself: The entire universe is his body, all life is his life.

Our instinct, our first inclination, is to take words like these of Nisargadatta and those of Jesus and Ramana as metaphor or even poetry. On reading such lines, we insist to ourselves that Jesus and Ramana do not really mean that stones and slabs are alive, not literally. I mean, look at them, we say: They are obviously lifeless.

But by whose definition of life?

Are we to believe ourselves, we who do not even know or understand the true nature of our own life, of our own nature?

Here’s Lesson 3 from A Course in Miracles: I do not understand anything I see.

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The Vessel

Reading in Nisargadatta’s I Am That this morning — Like water is shaped by the container, so is everything determined by conditions. As water remains water regardless of the vessels, as light remains itself regardless of the colors it brings out, so does the real remain real, regardless of conditions in which it is reflected.Like water is shaped by the container … What container?

Here’s what transpired in my mind as I wrestled with Nisargadatta’s words first thing this morning.

There is no such thing as Stefan. That’s clear. Stefan is not a thing, meaning — despite appearances — it is not an entity with shape or form or measurements or substance.

An assortment of thoughts, memories, and expectations evolved, maybe one after another, maybe simultaneously, which, leaning against one another, merging into one another, reinforcing one another, enclose an area of space which has taken the shape of a Stefan.

This empty vessel, or we might say, this vessel which contains within its apparent dimensions only empty space, is not a vessel in the sense of a jar or a bottle or even a bag. It is empty space only apparently enclosed by an assortment of thoughts, memories, and expectations. It is those thoughts, memories and expectations, not any solid vessel-making material, which form this apparent vessel.

This non-vessel vessel first began to appear at the appearance of the idea of Stefan’s mother and father. From there, evolved supporting ideas — Stefan’s pediatrician, C baby carriage, Stefan’s kindergarten, and so on through the so-called past, to the so-called present and into the so-called future, a continuous stream of supporting ideas — again, thoughts, memories, and expectations — which link together into a shape, a shape called Stefan.

But the shape is empty. That is, it has taken the form of a vessel, of a Stefan, and so it looks like a thing, but there is nothing in it. Thus, we might say that a sugar bowl contains sugar, a beer bottle contains beer; but the shape Stefan contains only the space that was already, priorly there when the initial ideas about it evolved and formed among themselves into a shape that seemed to be a vessel.

>We are not talking about a thing here; we are talking about an idea of a thing.

As the Hindu, I think it is, metaphor has it, the vessel is a sieve put into the ocean. The sides of the sieve seem to contain something unique (the contents of this sieve), but in fact the sieve does not really contain anything, and certainly not anything different or unique from what is outside the sieve. The appearance of a container and of a thing contained is an illusion.

So, as I say elsewhere on TZF: Silence your thoughts, discard your memories, release your expectations. Do that, and what happens? The vessel collapses. The sieve dissolves. The jar breaks, revealing the emptiness inside that was always not there.

The apparent vessel creates the appearance of something, of someone, inside it. Remove the vessel, and naught remains.

In the words of Ibn ’Arabi: … thou never wast nor wilt be, whether by thyself or through Him or in Him or along with Him.

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The Making of The Vessel

With joy in their hearts, a man and a woman are looking through the glass at a newly born baby in a hospital crib in a roomful of newly born babies in hospital cribs. The man is the father and the woman is the mother of the newly born baby at which they are staring. The man and the woman are holding hands.

What is it? the man asks, with great affection.

“What do you mean, what is it? the woman replies, with equal affection. It’s not an it. He’s a boy, silly. Didn’t you see that precious little bud between his legs when he first came out!

It’s a son? I have a son! the man said, with evident pride. We need a name for him.

I think we should name him Arthur, the woman suggests. My favorite uncle’s name was Arthur.

Arthur! the man exclaims, with apparent distaste, My son’s name is most certainly not Arthur. Arthur is the name of a cuckold.

What are you talking about? the woman asks.

The man replies, You know, what’s his name, Lancelot and Genevieve.

You mean Guinevere, the woman says. It’s Lancelot and Guinevere. What on earth have they to do with our son?

Guinevere, Genevieve, the man answers, What’s the difference? What matters is, Arthur was a cuckold, and my son is not a cuckold.

You Italians, you’re are all the same, the woman observes, too much pride.

Maybe so. But as long as I am Italian, my son is Italian, the man insists, and his name is not Arthur. His name is Stefan. Stefan means crown, and this boy is my crowning glory. Besides, the feast day of Santo Stefano is December 26, the day after Christmas. That makes my son a neighbor of the Christ child.

Maybe his name is Stefan, the woman agrees, but your son is not Italian. He was born in New York, and that makes him American. And never you mind about your saints. My son is an Episcopalian.

Oh, no. We agreed, our child should be allowed to find his own way to God, the man responds, Encouraged, not directed. No clerics.

The mother returns to her hospital room. As she does so, she murmurs, You’re right, we said that, but now I don’t know. We want what is best for him.

The man and the woman set off down the corridor. They are no longer holding hands, although they will again soon enough.

With one voice, the babies in the other cribs join together, and exclaim, Welcome to the world, Stefan. It is not clear whether they are saying it with joy or sorrow.

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Throw Away The Peel

Okay, in a nutshell, here’s the thing.

The summer of 1974, before I had consciously set out on this slippery slope, there crossed my path a Teacher. Almost immediately, I made him mine. At the time, he and I exchanged only a brief greeting, and since then, I have been in his physical presence less than two dozen times, during which we have exchanged no more than a hundred words. He never gave me a “spiritual” name, no mantra, no secret handshake, no beads, no password, no prescribed diet, no special instructions of any kind. On the surface, it appeared an ordinary enough, even a shallow, relationship. But on the inner, it was intense. At least, so it seemed to me. I dreamed of him frequently; I sensed his presence often. In my heart, I called on him all the time. He was my Guru. I accepted him as such, and I walked my path accordingly. Along the way, there have been phenomena, experiences, auditions, visions, revelations, realizations. Even miracles.

All the while, I read and studied and practiced and embraced the teachings of many Teachers and traditions; and I loved, and I still love, them all, with enthusiasm. I felt no conflict between my devotion to my Guru and my devotion to the others. I knew, on the inner, that they were all one and the same. In Ramakrishna’s words, God alone is the Guru. I knew that to be true, and I accepted its wonderful implications.

Then, decades later, I learned that my Guru had for decades almost certainly been participating in morally questionable sexual practices, and possibly engaging in other, less than honorable pastimes. In a word, the man — like the rest of us — is clay, head to toe, and always was.

Of course, I am angry. And disappointed. At first, at him and in him, then at and in me. But then, I realize it had to be thus. I remember the recent experience of a neighbor in our small, rural community. An elderly woman, she lived alone in the old country farmhouse in which she had been born, a house far too big for her now and well beyond her physical and financial ability to maintain. One day, while she was in town shopping, the house caught fire. She returned just in time to watch the last flames burn out. By then, virtually all the town’s folk were at the scene, consoling her. Nonsense, she insisted, God knew the house was too much for me to care for, and He also knew that I wouldn’t ever leave it. So, He burned it down for me.

Just so, God knew I would never leave my Guru, so She burned him down for me.

One of my favorite Sufi stories tells about the Teacher who brings home an injured bird, lovingly cares for it until it is fully restored, and then releases it. But the bird won’t leave. It flies around from room to room, but not away. So, the Teacher opens wide a window, and when the bird happens to fly by it, he shouts, banging together pots and pans loudly, making a fearsome racket. The bird, startled, inadvertently goes out the window. The Teacher slams it shut.

Just so, lest I harbor any lingering doubt, my window too is slammed shut. By U.G.

Right on cue, U.G. Krishnamurti comes crashing into my life, vaulting into my heart, and turns confusion into disorder. Nail by nail, timber by timber, he dismantles all that’s left of my spiritual structure. No consolation here; U.G. rakes the ashes, just to be sure there’s nothing left unburned.

At about the same time, I come across a website where is written Sri Sri Ravi Shankar says religion is like the peel of a banana, and spirituality is the banana, and I am reminded of a story my (body’s) father used to tell us about his boyhood. Passing a fruit stand, he saw a banana for the first time. He asked his older sister what it was, and she told him it was a banana, and very delicious at that. Of course, he wanted one; so she bought him one. When he asked how to eat it, she said, teasing as siblings will, >Just bite off pieces, like an apple. And so he did. He ate the banana, peel and all.

I had done the same. Like him, I ate the peel. To be sure, the willingness to do so, the commitment, the surrender to it, the discipline it required, all served me. But that was yesterday. Today, I have to spit it out, because there is no nourishment in the peel.

And when the peel is gone, what is left?

U.G. talks about having the courage to stand alone. To me, that means standing without any underpinning. Of course, all along I knew that was coming, for I had read the books. I had even written about it, taught it. I even thought I was doing it. And in a way maybe I was.

But not really. Over the decades, I had built a scaffolding, level over level, and I was living at the top of it. It was well built, of good and sturdy stuff, the result of honest and dedicated labor. And it gave me great height, with an extraordinary view. It might have been enough, except that it wasn’t really real. At least, not real enough, because standing on that structure, however high, I wasn’t really standing on the ground.

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More tears are shed over answered prayers than unanswered prayers.

Saint Teresa of Avila

All Together Now

The other evening before bed, reading TZF’s excerpt from Ibn ’Arabi’s “Whoso Knoweth Himself” for the umpteenth time, these words hit me like a bolt of lightning: “His Veil is only a part of His oneness; nothing veils other than He. His veil is only the concealment of His existence in His oneness”.

Concealment of His existence in His oneness! Therein lies the fundamental, ever-present, constantly evolving, endlessly frustrating, infinitely promising struggle of every spiritual seeker.

A translation I came across somewhere a long time ago of chapter 24, verse 35, of the Qur’an teaches that God speaks to man in metaphors. You can say that again.

In one of my favorite passages of the Bhagavad Gita, Arjuna (who is you and I) asks Krishna (God) to show Himself to him. Krishna responds these eyes of yours cannot see Me (11:8, in the Nikhilananda translation). So, Kirshna gives to Arjuna a Divine eye, thus enabling him to see Him. And what does he see? Just what he saw before, except with a difference, and the difference is what the spiritual process — what enlightenment, realization, Christ Consciousness, Buddha Nature, and so on, are all about: What Arjuna with his human eyes had seen as many, he now sees as One: There, in the person of the God of gods, Arjuna beheld the whole universe, with its manifold divisions, all gathered together in one.

Manifold divisions now One. Manifold is many and various. One is one.

This is the “cloud of unknowing” (from the extraordinary book of the same title). Here is what’s on TZF’s definitions page about that: The cloud of unknowing … is that which forever hides perception of the One, God, from our every separative, egoic faculty. That is, however clever we may become, as long as we think, in effect, I am me, and God is an other, there must exist an invisible, impassable boundary between us. For, it is indelibly true that in the One, there are no others, and so, the only way truly to Know It, is to Be It. There is Surrender, which is Union.

The cloud of unknowing is the veil of concealment. Or is it the other way around?

Consider this venerable story: After a few years of spiritual study, a seeker, convinced she has deciphered life’s secrets, strides up to heaven’s gate and bangs on the door. “Who’s there?” thunders a voice from within. It is I, she replies, with certainty. There’s no room for you here, responds the voice, with finality. Surprised and disheartened, the seeker returns to her books and her fasts and her practices. Some time later, she tries again, but with the same result. Eventually, after repeated failures, she gives up. She turns away from all she knows, and she cries — at first, in anger, then confusion, until finally in surrender and in joy. Now, she knocks on the door again. Who’s there? asks the voice. It is You, the seeker replies. The door opens.

At John 8:21 (and elsewhere), Christ, the Self-Realized Jesus, says to his disciples, Where I am going, you cannot come. Where Christ is going, where Christ IS, there is room for only One, the One. Christ knows himself to be the One (The Father and I are One), but the disciples still perceive themselves separatively, to be me not you — I am Andrew, not you, I am Bartholomew, not you, I am James, not you, I am Mary Magdalene, not you. So they can’t go There; because they’re stuck here.

The premise of my book In The Beginnning is that the Genesis story of the Fall is a metaphorical explanation of why the One (God) appears to us (humanity) as not One but many. In that story we are told that Adam and Eve ate from a tree whose fruit had been forbidden to them, a fruit that imparted to them the knowledge of good and evil, and that the punishment for having disobeyed God — for having committed Original Sin — is expulsion from Paradise, what we now call my life. Here is some of what I write about that:

Consider, for example, the name of the tree, The Knowledge of Good and Evil. That single word and in the name gives away its secret to those whose ears will hear. In the beginning, when there was only One Thing, there was no word and. Of what use would it have been? The word and is a conjunction, and conjunctions serve to join or connect things. Where there is only one thing, there is nothing to connect. In the beginning, there was only God, no God and … anything. …span>

But eating of the fruit of this tree imparted the knowledge of and, a knowledge heretofore excluded from, or forbidden to, Paradise. Hence, we call it the forbidden fruit, a fruit whose effect is the world we know, the world of things, the world of and, a world denied or, again, forbidden, to the One. …

Notice too in this context that in Genesis, God delegates to Adam the function of naming every living creature. To God in His Wholeness, there is no need for names. In Truth, there is only One living creature, God, and it is nameless, at least to Itself. After all, what use to name It? Who would address It? There is no other. It is only from the perspective of those with the knowledge of and, those who see the One as many, that things need to be named, to be distinguished each from another, to be addressed. To God it is all One, Himself. It’s All the Same to Me, God might say; but as Adam, it is quite another story. To Adam, it is boys and girls, and cats and dogs, and chickens and foxes …

My argument in that book is that the Fall was Intentional, part of the Grand Plan of Creation. I suggest there that the purpose of the Fall was the creation of self-consciousnes, leading ultimately to Self-Consciousness or Self-Realization (Resurrection after The Fall).

In my other book, Take Off Your Shoes, I write about how it is that we see the One as many. That is, the other book is about the why; this book is about the how:

Consider the simple prism, an ordinary piece of multifaceted glass. As any school child knows, if we hold a prism up to a source of white light, and view the light through the glass, what was a single color will suddenly be seen quite differently: as a spectrum of separate, distinct colors. What was one (the single color white) now appears as many (purple, blue, green, yellow, orange, and red). Explaining this phenomenon in the classroom, we say that the prism has refracted or broken down the white light into its component parts. But, having said that, we must take care not to conclude that the parts exist independently of the whole. That is, the colors are not themselves separate, self-sustaining things which exist apart from the white light. They are not really parts at all. They are aspects of the whole and inseparable from it. The individual, apparently separate colors are just another way of seeing the one white light. Indeed, they are white light, seen differently. The spectrum purple-through-red is not a thing of itself, but simply white light viewed through a prism, and to demonstrate that point we have only to remove the prism, and the “other” colors disappear. They never really could exist at all without the white light, and they certainly were not separate entities, although in the glass they seemed to be. Again, the apparent separate and distinct reality of the spectrum is created by the prism (one color seen as many). Notice, too, that during our use of the prism, the white light is not itself actually changed, does not cease to exist as it was before or after our use of the prism, and in a very real sense, it is all that was ever really there. (Compare Paul at 1 Corinthians 13:12: For now we see through a glass, darkly ….)

Once again without seeking to understand why it might occur, suppose that one aspect of Creation were to hold up before its eyes a similar prism, and then view itself and the rest through that piece of glass. Instantly, the One would be seen as many. The Whole, artificially broken into its apparent component parts, would suddenly look to the viewer as separate, varied, and distinct elements. Where there had been just white, there would now seem to be purple, blue, green, yellow, orange, and red. The One would not have become many, but it would appear as many (just as white light does not become the spectrum, it is seen as a spectrum). And, continuing with this illustrative device, suppose our viewer forgot for a moment that he was looking through a prism (perhaps in his fascination with the colors); he might eventually forget the exercise altogether, and come to believe that the colors are real in and of themselves, that they are all that there is, and that the image created by the prism is not just a refraction of something else but the universe itself. The universe would then be seen not as the single source of light that it is, the one stuff which is creation, as in “Let there be light”, but as the spectrum which it seems to be. What is one is now — appears now to be — many, and as the prism itself is forgotten, so is the source and nature of the spectrum, and we come to accept as self-sufficiently real and complete what is neither.

At TZF’s The Sacred Riddle, a Voice in the night asks, If I Am Infinite, who are you?

Ibn ’Arabi declares, Thou art not thou; thou art He, without thou.

In the image of the prism metaphor, God holds the glass to His Eye, looks at Himself, and sees not One, but many.

God, the One than Whom There is No Other, perceives Himself as you and me and cats and dogs and trees and mountains and houses and barns. With Ibn ’Arabi, He knows that barns are not barns, that they are He, without barns; but He perceives them as barns, precisely and only because He is perceiving Himself through the prism, which too is Himself. In the prism, He is barns. The prism, like the veil, like the cloud of unknowing, is Himself; He disguises or conceals Himself from Himself by Himself. The prism — and its manifold image of Himself — exists because He exists.

And when He removes the prism from His Eye, lifts the veil, dispels the cloud, drops the dark glass, the removal itself is Himself. He removes Himself from Himself by Himself. And what remains? Himself — there being no thing else.

As we ponder and consider these questions, which as seekers we must do, we do well to remember, God speaks to Himself in metaphors.

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You’ve Got Personality

At birth, the human physical body is simply an organism. It comes equipped with all the urges, instincts, and imperatives of all other organisms – hunger, thirst, survival, and so on.

At the body’s birth, and often beginning even before then, the parents weave a basket of thoughts about their new creation. They give it a name, make plans for it, talk to it, express its beauty, remark on whom it looks like, and so on. Slowly but surely, the basket fills.

The life that is manifesting through (in? as?) the baby organism is no more aware of the basket than it is of any other specific thing. It is simply aware. It is not aware of itself as a separative self or of any thing else as separate persons or things. Again, simply aware. Still undifferentiated awareness.

The life manifesting through the new body may appear to the body’s parents to be aware of itself as a separate body, but if so, that is a symptom of the parents’ projecting onto the new body their own sense of separative self. That is, they perceive in their creation what they perceive in themselves: a separate and separative self.

Over time, in the natural course of things, the parents impress on the growing organism the basket of thoughts which they have weaved. Other figures join in this process – siblings, aunts, uncles, neighbors, priests, doctors, and so on.

Eventually, somehow, the undifferentiated awareness becomes differentiated. It identifies with the basket of thoughts, and through the basket of thoughts, with the organism, the body.

To undifferentiated awareness, the basket is perceived as (accepted as? expressed as? manifested as?) “me” and “mine”, and attaches to the body. Thus, the body is perceived as “me” and “mine”, and other bodies are perceived as “not me” and “not mine”. Undifferentiated awareness as differentiated awareness introduces duality, separation.

The basket of thoughts is the personality. When I say, “I am Stefan”, what I mean is, I identify with the basket of thoughts (memories, expectations, and so on) originally weaved by Stefan’s parents, and that now, taken all together, compose what I call “me”. Here, the key question for a seeker is, Who is the “I” that says, “I am Stefan”?

The undifferentiated or universal self becomes (sees itself as) the differentiated or personal self. “I AM” becomes “I AM this” or “I AM this person”. The body is experienced as “me, not you” and “mine, not yours”. Here, I suppose we might say, the personality is the how and the physical body is the what.

All the while, the physical body continues being what it is, simply a physical organism. It has no idea what “Stefan” is, and doesn’t care. Neither does it know, or care, that “Stefan” has identified with or as the body. The body’s sole interest (if that’s the word) is to exercise its biological imperatives. In a word, to survive. Not for any reason, but simply because that’s what biological organisms do.

Also, the basket of thoughts, what I am calling here the personality, has no conscious awareness. It is not “alive”. It is not aware of being. It simply is what it is, a conglomeration of thoughts.

The connection between the personality (the basket of thoughts, memories, expectations, etc.) and the physical organism (the body) is provided entirely by the differentiation of undifferentiated awareness.

I don’t know exactly what that last sentence means, or how it occurs, but I am certain it is true, and that the way out of the limitations and suffering and so on which identification with the personality and the body imposes on whatever it is I actually am, is to disengage from identification with the personality. Release my attachment to the basket of thoughts, and I will be free.

But I won’t be a me. The concept of me and my (as in, me not you, mine not yours) is one of the thoughts in the basket (My baby! Look at me!). Instead, I will revert to undifferentiated awareness, where (if that’s the word) I was (?) before the basket of thoughts called Stefan. I will be aware, I will probably even be aware of being. But I will not be aware of being any particular person or thing or whatever. In fact, I will not be aware of there being any particular person or thing or whatever. Simply aware.

The basket of thoughts, the personality, will still continue. I suppose, like everything else physical, it has a lifespan. But it will not be “me”. And the body will continue, completely oblivious to all of this metaphysical stuff, until it dies of whatever kills it.

None of that does or will affect I. It (IT?) always is and always will be. Undifferentiated awareness that somehow differentiates.

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I AM I

Consider this: The One and only Constant that is the Universe is Life. Not my life. Life. Uninterrupted, uninterruptible, beginningless, endless, infinite, constant, immutable, nameless, shapeless, timeless, boundaryless, indescribable, ineffable. And like that.

Life is the One and Only I. It consists of nothing (no thing). It is simply Being. Not a Being. Being.

There is really no point to our thinking about it, trying to envision it, to define it. It will not fit into our minds. Every thought we have of it, every word we express about it, is a metaphor. Just so, metaphor is the language of every True Teacher because every True Teacher is speaking about some where, some when, some thing that is not expressible.

Metaphor — or analogy — does not mean “not real.” A metaphor, like an analogy, is a device to explain or describe something abstract, something that does not lend itself to words, something that is too big for words, too big for our mind. A metaphor, again like an analogy, is a symbol representing something else. So, if a father speaking about his child were to say, “(what’s-her-name) is an angel,” that would be — at least in every family I have known — a metaphor. And that is precisely how the mind was designed: to describe the indescribable; to utter the ineffable; to label the nameless; to diversify the indivisible. That is why Teachers like Jesus/Issa speak to us in metaphors and analogies. Parables too are like that. Just so, even God speaks in parables to mankind (Qur’an 24:35).<

The Infinite I, being Life, provides a semblance of “life” to the mind named “Stefan” and the mind named “Nancy” and the mind named (your name).

The mind’s life is not Real. Only I, only Life, is Real. No thing else. So, the mind — my mind, your mine — is the appearance of Life. It is what Life looks like when viewed through a glass darkly (1 Corinthians 13:12) or behind a veil (Mark 15:38, Luke 23:45, Vasistha’s Yoga 375, 691)

The mind creates the appearance of Life by crafting “Stefan” and “Stefan’s life.” “Stefan” is not a person. There is no such thing as a person. “Stefan” is the name of a mind that perceives itself as a person named “Stefan” living in a country named the United States in an astrological universe created and overseen by a god named “Allah, Brahman, God, Yahweh.” All of that, and all the rest, is a metaphor. It does not exist; none of it exists; except in the mind, which itself does not really exist — except to itself.

Just so, there is no astrological universe. “Astrological universe” is a metaphor for What Is. Our minds are far too small to accomodate even a hint of What Is. That is why the mind is created with such an extraordinary imagination. An extraordinary imagination is what it takes to create a convincing appearance of a person living a person’s life.

Again, just to be clear, there is Life. That’s it. Everything else is a futile, sometimes amusing, nearly always genuine, attempt to understand That, to explain That. We will keep doing so until we Stop, until our search — my search, your search — for an answer to the inquiry “Who Am I?” is resolved, until, in the words of the Gospels Teacher, “It is Accomplished.”

Some traditions consider the mind’s generated reality to be a dream.

As in, “Row, row, row, your boat, gently down the stream. Merrily, merrily, merrily, life is but a dream.”

To that, some insist that if “this” were a dream, we would know it. Dreams are by definition self-evident. Aren’t they?

Last night, asleep, I dreamt a story. It was in color; it was elaborate; it was populated by people who spoke intelligibly; it took place in an ordinary environment; it involved issues I recognized. While the dream was unfolding (that is, while I was asleep), it seemed every bit as real as what I am doing right now, typing this page of HTML coding about dreaming. But the entirety took place nowhere else than in my mind, where dreams happen.

Indeed, dreams do not seem dreamlike … until we awaken.

Who among us has not heard said, or said ourselves, “Don’t be afraid. It was just a dream.”

All the Teachers insist that the same is true of our lives. Just like our dreams, our lives seem real, seem to be actually be happening as we seem to be experiencing them … until we Awaken.

As Mark Twain wonders, Which is the dream?

A few days ago, I wrote here about God putting Adam to sleep in Genesis, and the apparent absence of any Bible verse announcing God awakening Adam. That raises the question that asks, is “this life,” Stefan and Stefan’s life, Adam’s dream? And if so, will it continue until Adam is awakened (Awakened)? Is that what “happens” at Self-Realization: An aspect of Adam that is dreaming Stefan awakens, and the dream character “Stefan” and his life disappears. Oops, ciao, Stefano! Just a thought: Is that the awakening of Stefan?

That raises this question: Was Mary’s son Issa, the boy born in Bethlehem, a character in Adam’s dream who manifested as Christ when the Issa aspect of Adam was Awakened by the Dove that landed on his shoulder (Matthew 3:13)?

It’s complicated. Until it’s not.

Awakening is Self-Realization which is Satori, Bodhi, which tears the veil, removes the glass, and Restores Awareness to What Is, Always Has Been, Always Will Be. In Christian language, that may be Born Again, although I have heard that term used variously. Ultimately, I And The Father Are One John 10:30 says it exquisitely, perfectly.

Illumination abolishes darkness. Awakening erases the mind’s projection. The metaphor is undone. The Truth is Accomplished.

Like the Man said, Let There Be Light (Genesis 1:3).

The awakening or the enlightenment
happens by itself,
just like the sun’s brilliance at noon.
Vasistha’s Yoga

A Divorce Made in Heaven
or Divorce Divine Style?

The other day reading a news item about a divorce, I was reminded of this piece written on TZF long ago, which I have now updated here.

At Matthew 19:4, Jesus/Issa says, Have you not read that he who made them from the beginning made them male and female, and said, for this reason a man shall leave his father and mother, and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh? So they are no longer two but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let not man put asunder.

For obvious reasons, those words have been, and continue to be, the indisputable basis for the prohibition of divorce in many Christian sects.

But is that what Jesus/Issa intended?

Here and there, I have suggested that as seekers we do well to assume that, when speaking, Issa chooses his words carefully, knowing (hoping) that his disciples and others, including us, are listening intently and with earnestness. Just so, on the subject of divorce, I observed today — for the first time, I confess — that Issa does not specifically prohibit divorce; rather, he prohibits man from putting asunder what God has joined.

However absurd the suggestion may be, I heard myself wondering whether it is possible that Issa actually meant for us, as regards divorce, to read more than we have into his distinction between what God can do and what man may do.

Is it possible that Issa is telling us that man (we) may not effect a divorce not because divorce is forbidden, but because man did not effect the marriage. God did. Focus for a moment on the words what God has joined together, let not man put asunder. Notice that Issa does not say, what God has joined together cannot be put asunder; he says, what God has joined together, man cannot put asunder.

Here, then, is the question that no one seems ever to have asked: Can God put asunder what God has joined? Is that what Issa meant by making a distinction between what God has done and what man may do?

Has any Christian sect ever asked that question? If not, why not? Did it never occur, for example, to England’s Henry the Eighth, when the Pope in Rome refused his request for a divorce, simply to parse Issa’s words differently? Evidently not, and so His Majesty had to establish his own church.

What I am asking is, could one devise a religious divorce ceremony, a ceremony similar in sanctity and soberness and pomp and circumstance to the marriage ceremony, to which, as in the marriage ceremony, God is specifically invited, but in which God is asked by a married couple not to perform a joining but instead to put asunder what He earlier joined in an earlier ceremony?

I know, it’s preposterous. But is it unreasonable?

Happily, divorce is not an issue in my life. But any who are struggling with the presumed religious aspects of divorce, and specifically of the supposed unbreakability of marriage vows, might want to try this: Come together the two of you, holding hands if you can, and call upon God asking that He (in this circumstance, perhaps She is the better, more flexible, pronoun) meet with you once again in a marital ceremony, only this time to undo what the two of you called upon Her to join before. With humility and honesty, thoroughly explain to Her the problems the two of you have encountered, why they matter, and why you are unable to resolve them. This is a sacred ceremony; make it so. Then do it. Why would that not work?

 

 

For a TZF item on marriage, please click here.