In my spiritual journey, I consider myself an “empty flute” through which flows the music of my gurus Shri Raman Maharishi and Shri Nisargadatta Maharaj.
Silence of Shri Raman Maharishi silently entered my heart and ended the illusion of separation forever.
Words of Shri Nisargadatta Maharaj killed me as a person and firmly established me in the magic and mystery of supreme source.
Guru is the divine “grace” that reveals “you are you”.
G-grace
U-you R-are U-you
MESSAGE OF MAHARISHI & MAHARAJ
Your difficulty lies in your wanting reality and being afraid of it at the same time. You are afraid of it because you do not know it. The familiar things are known, you feel secure with them. The unknown is uncertain and therefore dangerous. To live in the known is bondage, to live in the unknown is liberation.
Most of us die wishing we could live again. So many mistakes committed, so much left undone. Most of the people vegetate, but do not live. They merely gather experience and enrich their memory. You give reality to concepts, while concepts are distortions of reality. You are dragging down reality to the level of experience. How can reality depend on experience, when it is the very ground of experience. Don’t ask the mind to confirm what is beyond the mind. It is not experience that you need, but the freedom from all experience. There is no such thing as the experience of the real. The real is beyond experience. All experience is in the mind. You know the real by being real. Direct experience is the only valid confirmation.
Abandon all conceptualization and stay silent and attentive. Don’t judge and divide – Go beyond, go back to the source, go to the self that is the same whatever happens. Learn to look without imagination, to listen without distortion: that is all. Stop attributing names and shapes to the essentially nameless and formless, realize that every mode of perception is subjective, that what is seen or heard, touched or smelt, felt or thought, expected or imagined, is in the mind and not in reality, and you will experience peace and freedom from fear.
Real does not depend on memories and expectations, desires and fears, likes and dislikes. All is seen as it is. Instead of seeing things as imagined, learn to see them as they are. When you can see everything as it is, you will also see yourself as you are. In reality nothing is lacking and nothing is needed, all work is on the surface only. In the depths there is perfect peace. All your problems arise because you have defined and therefore limited yourself. When you do not think yourself to be this or that, all conflict ceases.
When you have understood that all existence, in separation and limitation, is painful, and when you are willing and able to live integrally, in oneness with all life, as pure being, you have gone beyond all need of help. To see reality is as simple as to see one’s face in a mirror. Only the mirror must be clear and true. A quiet mind, undistorted by desires and fears, free from ideas and opinions, clear on all the levels, is needed to reflect the reality. Be clear and quiet, alert and detached, all else will happen by itself.
Watch your mind with great diligence; for there lies your bondage and also the key to freedom. You begin by letting thoughts flow and watching them. The very observation slows down the mind till it stops altogether. Once the mind is quiet, keep it quiet. Don’t get bored with peace, be in it, go deeper into it. It has nothing to do with effort. Just turn away, look between the thoughts, rather than at the thoughts. When you happen to walk in a crowd, you do not fight every man you meet — you just find your way between.
All reminds you that you are. Take full advantage of the fact that to experience you must be.
All hangs on the idea ‘I Am’.
Examine it very thoroughly. It lies at the root of every trouble. It is a sort of skin that separates you from the reality. The real is both within and without the skin, but the skin itself is not real. This ‘I am’ idea was not born with you. You could have lived very well without it. It came later due to your self-identification with the body. It created an illusion of separation where there was none. It made you a stranger in your own world and made the world alien and inimical. Without the sense of ‘I Am’ life goes on. There are moments when we are without the sense of ‘I am’, at peace and happy. With the return of the ‘I am’ trouble starts.
If you seek reality you must set yourself free of all back-grounds, of all cultures, of all patterns of thinking and feeling. Even the idea of being man or woman, or even human, should be discarded. The ocean of life contains all, not only humans. So, first of all abandon all self-identification, stop thinking of yourself as such-and-such, so-and-so, this or that. Abandon all self-concern, worry not about your welfare, material or spiritual, abandon every desire, gross or subtle, stop thinking of achievement of any kind. You are complete here and now, you need absolutely nothing.
A person is a set pattern of desires and thoughts and resulting actions; there is no such pattern in my case. Liberation is never of the person, it is always from the person. The personal self by its very nature is constantly pursuing pleasure and avoiding pain. The ending of this pattern is the ending of the self. The ending of the self with its desires and fears enables you to return to your real nature, the source of all happiness and peace.
No particular thought can be mind’s natural state, only silence. Not the idea of silence, but silence itself. When the mind is in its natural state, it reverts to silence spontaneously after every experience or, rather, every experience happens against the background of silence.
In your world the unspoken has no existence. In mine — the words and their contents have no being. In your world nothing stays, in mine — nothing changes. My world is real, while yours is made of dreams. You people are rich with your ideas of possession, of quantity and quality. I am completely without ideas. You identify yourself with everything so easily; I find it impossible.
I look, but I do not see in the sense of creating images clothed with judgements. I do not describe nor evaluate. I look. I see you, but neither attitude nor opinion cloud my vision. And when I turn my eyes away, my mind does not allow memory to linger; it is at once free and fresh for the next impression.
I have no shape, nor name. It is attachment to a name and shape that breeds fear. I am not attached. I am no-thing, and nothing is afraid of no thing. On the contrary, every-thing is afraid of the Nothing, for when a thing touches Nothing, it becomes nothing. It is like a bottomless well, whatever falls into it, disappears. There is nothing I feel separate from, hence I am all. No thing is me, so I am no-thing.
An awakened whole individual is neither ordinary, nor extra-ordinary. He looks at himself without indulging in self-definitions and self-identifications. He does not know him-self as anything apart from the world. The realized man is egoless; he has lost the capacity of identifying himself with anything. He is without location, placeless, beyond space and time, beyond the world. Beyond words and thoughts is he.
The realized man has died before his death, he saw that there was nothing to be afraid of. The moment you know your real being, you are afraid of nothing. Death gives freedom and power.
To be free in the world, you must die to the world.
Then the universe is your own, it becomes your body, an expression and a tool. The happiness of being absolutely free is beyond description.
No true teacher indulges in opinions. He sees things as they are and shows them as they are. If you take people to be what they think themselves to be, you will only hurt them, as they hurt themselves so grievously all the time. But if you see them as they are in reality, it will do them enormous good.
If they ask you what to do, what practices to adopt, which way of life to follow, answer:
“Do nothing, Just be”.
In being all happens naturally. Be nothing, know nothing, have nothing.
This is the only life worth living, the only happiness worth having. Unless you make tremendous efforts, you will not be convinced that effort will take you nowhere. The self is so self-confident, that unless it is totally discouraged, it will not give up.
There is nothing to practice. To know yourself, be yourself. To be yourself, stop imagining yourself to be this or that. Just be. Let your true nature emerge. Don’t disturb your mind with seeking. There is nothing to seek and find, for there is nothing lost. Relax and watch the ‘I Am’. Reality is just behind it. Keep quiet, keep silent; it will emerge, or, rather, it will take you in. Delve deeply into the sense ‘I am’ and you will surely discover that the perceiving center is universal, as universal as the light that illumines the world.
Only the changeable can be thought of and talked about. The unchangeable can only be realized in silence. Once realized, it will deeply affect the changeable, itself remaining unaffected.
I AM THAT
Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj was an Indian spiritual teacher of Advaita (Nondualism) and a Guru, belonging to the Navnath Sampradaya. Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj deviated from the formal Navnath Sampradaya lineage style of teaching by giving informal discourses for the benefit of Western devotees. His discussions are not for academic scholars. He is a rebellious spirit, abrupt in his style of discussion, provocative, and immensely profound, cutting to the core and wasting little effort on inessentials.
He very rarely mentioned scriptures or quoted spiritual books. His teachings came from his own experience.
The scene for these talks was a small upstairs room at his humble flat in Khetwadi, Mumbai, India used for his own meditation and also for daily chanting’s.
A simple man, Nisargadatta was a house-holder and a petty shop-keeper selling bidis – hand-made leaf-rolled cigarettes.
According to Sri Nisargadatta, the purpose of spirituality is to know who you are. He talked about the ‘direct way’ of knowing the Final Reality, in which one becomes aware of one’s original nature through mental discrimination, breaking the mind’s false identification with the ego, knowing that “You are already That”.
In 1973, the publication of his most famous and widely-translated book, “I AM THAT”, an English translation of his talks in Marathi by Maurice Frydman, brought him worldwide recognition and followers. This collection of the timeless teachings of one of the greatest sages of India, Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj, is a testament to the uniqueness of the seer’s life and work and is regarded by many as a “modern spiritual classic”.
“I AM THAT” preserves Maharaj’s dialogues with the followers who came from around the world seeking his guidance in destroying false identities. It was his mission to guide the individual to an understanding of his true nature and the timelessness of being.
His terse but potent sayings are known for their ability to trigger radical shifts from philosophical mind-games to the purity of consciousness, just by hearing or even reading them.
Shun Yo 