Exploring Knowledge in Direct Experience
The pursuit of truth comes from a deep longing for wholeness, for completeness. Truth is not to be used to achieve something else – to be subverted for any other goal or end. Truth is an end of its own. There is a sense of restfulness implied in truth & honesty – no longer needing to upkeep any falseness. The pursuit of truth is, of course, hindered by any kind of posturing: superimposed motives, forced efforts, belief structures, and conditioning. Consider that the nature of what is meant by “truth” is something that is already the case - it simply is the way things are, without effort – only needing to be seen directly, without the preconditioning, expectations, and judgments of our memory-self.
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In this exploration, we can limit our scope to unbiased direct experience. This is the first tenet of the “direct path” approach to truth. This “direct path” approach has been taught in the past by Jean Klein, Nisargadatta Maharaj, Ramana Maharshi, the founders of Tibetan Buddhism, and many others. Conventional knowledge says “I am body and mind. I was born and I die.” Conventional knowledge is based on the physical and objective world as supreme. The deep spiritual teachings take a different stance. They realize that the only way one can know the world is through the subjective tool of the mind – and the knowing tool itself is, in our direct experience, inseparably linked with all world-experience. Therefore, all world-knowledge and all experience is inherently biased. As a result, in order to perform an honest exploration of personal truth, one must inquire into the very means of knowing, the mind itself. To do this, one puts aside hearsay, second-hand knowledge, conventional explanations, and intellectual complication – and limits onesself to examining simple and direct experience.
Direct experience is a mesh of thoughts, sensations, and perceptions, inseparable – constantly changing. One way to describe and break down our experience is as the five senses – taste, touch, sight, hearing, smell — and two more subtle ways of experiencing: thought, and emotions. All of these sensations or perceptions take place in one experience, or one consciousness. This consciousness can only know the seemingly-solid 3d “external” world through these ever-changing sensations.
We can explore and notice that when we close our eyes, we may find it easier to be peaceful. The world in our mind becomes sparser and we are able to let go of the thoughts and worries of “the world”. Many different religions assert, in their own way, that the true nature of our consciousness is undivided and unlimited – borderless and formless. It is said that we are all born of God, and that God is unlimited and formless. We may notice that in order for an object to take on a reality in our consciousness, a thought of this object is required, which then gives it form and limitation. Before the thought, with eyes closed, the world within is actually less colored by the mind, and becomes a formless open eternity, an open expanse of peacefulness ~ then a thought comes in…and seems to disturb!
This is where exploration comes in. What is a thought? Do they need to be erased completely for peace to exist? Who is erasing a thought (Is it another thought saying it wants to erase…)?
This exploration isn’t merely intellectual conjecture – it’s meant to be done continuously as thoughts, sensations arise. It is meant as an experiential inquiry. The direct result is integration and insight. It causes an actual experiential integration of our thoughts, sensations, and perceptions – these things which we have said are “me.” My thoughts, my sensations, my emotions, my vision….This is what composes “me.” What happens if we were to discover that thoughts arose spontaneously out of Grace, and disappeared in that same Grace – if emotions were perfect and pure always, arising and subsiding as mysteriously as thoughts…these discoveries might change our view of ourselves…
To be continued….
in joy, R
Above all things, Connectedness with the Self
Our minds, from a young age, are trained to give authority to the “outside.” When one’s nature turns religous or spiritual, so many new people and things arise to seize the outer authority role: gurus, priests, leaders, books, Gods to pray to, Mantras to recite. The best of these direct us back to ourselves, over and over. They remind us that it is our notion of lack, our constant searching, and our giving away of self-authority to the “without” that keeps us from the treasures “within.” Religion is not words, leaders, and books – It is our own very personal moment-by-moment truth given spontaneously from within. It is found in self-listening, which deepens into a true knowledge-experience of God within.
This video features Panache Desai.
The Quintessence of My Teaching
This dialogue took place about a year before Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj’s death, when he was 83 years old.
Note from Roger: This dialogue is a VERY clear tangible pointer towards what is meant by “the true Self.”
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Nisargadatta Maharaj: During your entire lifetime, you do not have any permanent identity. Whatever you consider yourself to be changes from moment to moment. Nothing is constant.
Visitor: What you think you are going to become changes too, with time, in spite of yourself.
Maharaj: That change is also made possible by the child-conciousness. Because of that, all these changes take place. That is why you must grasp this principle.
If you really want to understand this, you must give up your identification with the body. By all means, make use of the body, but don’t consider yourself to be the body while acting in this world. Identify yourself with the consciousness, which dwells in the body; with that identity, you should act in the world. Will it be possible?
So long as you identify yourself as the body, your experience of pain and sorrow will increase day by day. That is why you must give up this identification, and you should take yourself as the consciousness. If you take yourself as the body, it means you have forgotten your true Self, which is the atman. And sorrow results for the one who forgets himself. When the body falls, the principle which always remains is You. If you identify yourself with the body, you will feel that you are dying, but in reality there is no death because you are not the body. Let the body be there or not be there, your existence is always there; it is eternal.
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The Cell
All creative possibilities are within you,
All the beauty and pain in the world is within you.
All the worlds of the universe are within you.
No pain, no experience, no love, no knowledge, no thought is outside of you.
To look at an aspect of our experience,
and to repeat to one’s self any thought that assumes”This is real” makes it persist in its form.
To act from any thought that assumes “This is real” makes it persist in its form.
But not a thing here,
Not a thing that can ever be known,
is ultimately of any substance. Nothing persists forever.
And so,
to begin to know the one and only thing that persists forever,
repeat to oneself, and act from,
“Not a consequence, thought, experience, object, sensation – nothing can affect my true Self.”
It is all mind. It is all your mind, my mind, our mind – tossing around personal worlds that do not fundamentally exist.
We share things with eachother – and we believe that each of us is sharing and recieving something real and necessary.
This is the energy that upkeeps the personal illusion of division.
Nothing is real.
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We all want Love.
Ask a man on the street, any man or woman – and of course, everyone will say “Yes.”
So it is not for lack of want that there is so little love in the world.
It is for lack of living truth.
From man to man, and woman to woman,
there is a great variety in one’s capacity of power and love,
From the common man to the saint.
An individual’s life is formed around their desires. We must realize that all desires in their simplest form are desire for one thing – the Supreme source.
Once we realize this, we can refine all our habitual desires, aiming them towards the source – God – the blissful Self of our heart – the Here and Now.
Then we do not need more manufactured thoughts in form of books, newspapers, self-help or psychiatry,
No need for any manufactured sensations in relationships, friendships or aspirins,
No need for anything – no talks, no listeners, no entertainment,
These things pale in substitution for the true Self – the Supreme source.
All things beautifully and endlessly spawning out of creation,
No matter how much you dwell on them, none of them will persist.
Living truth is what’s truly wanted.
Realize that who you are is not dependent on the forms that could appear – no thought, experience, object, sensation. No thing lasts. And therefore no thing is of any ultimate consequence. No extreme pain, no extreme joy, no army of enemies, no enormous problem, nor extreme boredom – No thing.
If this aligns with your understanding, then dive deep and experience the true Self. Meditate on the feeling in the inner body, and maintain that awareness. It will deepen into true & constant knowingness of the Self.
Perform this meditation immediately to serve as an experiential pointer for what is meant by inner body:
http://flv.oprah.com/podcast/ane/week6/bonus_MP3_inner.mp3
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One Simple Change
Here is a simple and direct teaching on Self: http://www.greatfreedom.org/onesimplechange.html
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(Left) A picture of the book’s author, Candice O’Denver.
Download the book as a pdf file to read or print.
Download the book as a pdb file for your handheld (palm, iphone etc.).
Audiobook for free download.
~ R
