The Seer

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For most spiritual seekers, the belief that personal identification
obstructs self-realization gives rise to the drive to get rid of the
personal story. But this is still just another part of the story. It
is so important to recognize this. Attempting to get rid of the story
is just another tangent of the story, another example of the power of
mind to control.

I have often seen in spiritual circles that instead of a real
examination of our storylines, there is a tendency to suppress the
story. In that suppression, the story may seem to be removed, but
there is still no peace. You cannot rest in the beauty and
transcendence of yourself while suppressing the story of yourself.

The story is still going on, but since you identify yourself as a
spiritual seeker, you push it out of conscious awareness. Spiritual
conditioning has simply taken the place of worldly conditioning. The
story is still operating, but now it operates subconsciously. And you
are confused as to why you still suffer.

Continued suffering is proof that your story is still being told. If
you are willing to not label that suffering as bad, then you can be
willing to simply see what the story is.

From: The Diamond in Your Pocket by Gangaji>

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In the Sept/Oct Advaita Fellowship Newsletter, Wayne Liquorman writes:

I am periodically taken to task for not having a teaching style more like some of my preceptors - most notably, Nisargadatta Maharaj. Maharaj was famous for speaking from the standpoint of the Absolute. He would say things such as, “I was never born and I will never die” and “I am awake even when I am asleep.” Such assertively non-dual statements sometimes had the effect of shocking his listeners into a profound, transcendent Seeing.

I am sympathetic to this approach but I have rarely been comfortable using it. I feel much more at home when I am meeting my listeners where THEY are…most of them believing that they were born and will die and that they are asleep while asleep. From this point of “obvious” truth we can then proceed to examine the more profound, underlying nature of this “one” who lives and dies and sleeps.

No one can deny that there is EXISTENCE here. The nature of that EXISTENCE can (and has been) debated endlessly. But this EXISTENCE is self-proving. It is not a philosophical debating point but a self-affirming Truth. It is here at the center when you pull off the onion-like layers of your apparent self - the self that lives and dies and sleeps and wakes.

We are the victims of our beliefs. When you “believe” the pointers of a teacher such as Maharaj the inevitable result is a kind of nihilism in which all that is apparent (including yourself) is denied as meaningless and illusory. When you believe the pointers of a teacher such as myself the inevitable result is the sense of having a progressively deeper and truer knowledge about the nature of Existence.

So pick your poison. With a little luck…either one will kill “you.”

With much love,
Wayne

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Awareness is peace. It’s prior to, during and after all experience. It’s the constant underlying state — The Natural State. It’s the underlying essence of everything. If you’re reading these words then you are aware right now. In your daily experience, you’re always aware of something — whether it’s your daily activities, or it’s a series of thoughts about your career, your relationships, your finances. And you are always present as awareness watching, noticing.

What we want in life is peace, love, and the sense that everything is okay, isn’t it? Find out for yourself. Because if that’s what you want, it’s already here. It’s free. There are no requirements. No requirements at all. You don’t have to make any money. You don’t have to have any relationships. You don’t have to have a career. You need nothing! Absolutely nothing. It’s free! It’s absolutely free. It’s what you are — awareness.

Just notice, I am aware. Notice the awareness that you are — not the concept of awareness. If you can hear anything, see anything, feel anything — it’s the awareness that’s hearing, seeing, and feeling. Awareness is timelessly present. It’s not yesterday, it’s not tomorrow. It’s always now. You don’t have to wait five minutes, nor can you go back in time five minutes. It’s this point of timeless, spaceless awareness that’s always seeing, hearing, tasting, touching, smelling.

The experience that arises in awareness is absolutely irrelevant — it does not touch the peace. Whether I lose every penny I have, or I win the lottery — I am untouched as awareness. Because I am here watching, feeling, sensing.

This awareness is absolutely free. It doesn’t cost anything. You don’t have to invest time manipulating your relationships, your career, or your finances. You don’t have to do anything! It’s free. This is the resolution to all psychological suffering. This awareness is what I am. So, knowing what I am, what we are — we are the peace, the love, the sense that everything is okay — this is what I am. This is what we are.

by Stephen Wingate

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Nearly always, a “miserable experience” arises from the evaluation of “things,” but the equanimity everyone wants resides beyond “things” with the Real — and the Real is That which is being this consciousness of things.

For a time one seems bound to the belief that his misery is “out there,” even while his agony is the “awful feeling of fear and foreboding within.” One may believe an errant member of a family is the cause the agony, but it’s the agony of that belief which is felt within as a disturbance of one’s equanimity.

To eliminate the agony, for the past ten thousand years we have been doing everything possible to change the suspected cause of it ”out there” with the husband, daughter, business or something else.

We have believed that if we could see an external situation change, automatically we would feel the restoration of some degree of equanimity; and we did, perhaps, for short time, until something else “out there” failed to gee-haw.

Now listen: This procedure puts us and leaves us at the mercy of “thing”! This makes the ‘feeling within” tributary to appearances without. This is self-imposed slavery.

The presence (or absence) of something we see is good or bad only as we are of the opinion that it is good or bad. The image has no value of its own. We have given it value (hence power) based on its desirability — “I like it; or don’t like it.” Yet, all enlightened instruction speaks of the joy to be experienced when desire is overcome. Can one conceive of a more immediate way to overcome the desire for things than to recognize their valuelessness and then to perceive the impossibility of being one who desires

We have been told that Heaven, Tranquillity, is within. Heaven is opinionless, desireless Awareness. As long as we look to people, things, or conditions for happiness, we are making “heaven” tributary to the object of perception. One who stands identified as tranquil Awareness itself finds people, things and conditions tributary to his harmonious Identity.

Tranquility is our Identity. We are not another identity attempting to experience the absence of desire. If we believe we find happiness and harmony, then we must believe we can lose them. In addition, we must believe they are absent (or can be) at the moment. We can no more be absent from Identity than light can be absent from light.

From: A Guide To Awareness And Tranquillity pp 188, by William Samuel

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Question: Does any appearance (thought, feeling, sensation, object, state or experience) exist independent or separate from presence-awareness?

Comment: Everything that we ever know or experience appears within presence-awareness. You have never had a single thought, feeling, sensation or any other experience outside of awareness.

In other words, this presence-awareness is the necessary precondition for anything else to be. Without this conscious presence nothing else is.

Because objects of experience and the presence of awareness are never known independently of each other, they must be, in essence, the same undivided substance or principle.

Just as waves are nothing but water or gold ornaments are nothing but gold, so are all appearances nothing but that one undeniable beingawareness. All that appears, including the seeker him or herself, is only that.

From, You Were Never Born by John Wheeler

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Not long after I noticed that the respected non-duality Web site www.advaita.org.uk/ described the Melbourne-based ‘Sailor’ Bob Adamson as “arguably, the greatest non-duality teacher alive”, Rosemary and I were planning an outback 4WD trip into central Australia, and I figured that as we would already be about 70% of the way to Melbourne — why not spent some time with Bob.

Bob went to India and spent the whole of 1976 with Nisargadatta Maharaj, the great Indian Teacher, and has been teaching in Australia ever since. Transcripts of Bob’s talks in book-form have been published and are available from Gurukula.

Bob, who is now 79 and gives three talks per week at his own home in Deepdene, about 6 km east of Melbourne. In A Hitchhikers Guide to the Universe by Douglas Adams, the answer to the question “What is the answer to Life, the Universe and Everything” turns out to be 42. If you catch a train (streetcar) from the CBD to alight right outside Bob’s place -­ you will be getting off at tram stop 42!

While we were there the average attendance was about 15. Bob’s talks are quite informal and these are followed by questions from the attendees. Bob then responds and dialogues begin and often a lot of fun too. Bob said that it normally takes people about 7 talks to get to grips with his teaching, and fortunately, this just happened to be the number we attended.

Bob is also available for private talks to personally help clear up any doubts or misunderstandings on the teaching, and both Rosemary and I had two sessions with him each. We found these very helpful indeed.

Bob uses the analogy that the sea usually looks blue, but if you ask someone to go and get a bucket of blue water from the ocean — they will just laugh. They know that seawater is not blue and are not fooled by the illusion that it is.

We, though, have a sense of a separate self — the so called “little me” — but it is an illusion too, it’s insubstantial, there’s no Aliveness at its core, and it is comprised totally of thoughts. It’s apparent power comes ONLY from the belief in it, but what happens if that belief crumbles?

The answer is that self centered thinking falls away, and with it, personal problems and mind-made suffering. The “me” drops out of the equation, just like the blue water. There is no belief in it any more. It has lost its power. Thoughts still come and go — and that is fine. They are just the passing content of awareness.

Bob talks a lot about the investigation into finding out if there really is a “me” there. Nothing can be found apart from the Aliveness that you are. If that occurs and there is no “little me” there — was there ever a “me” there? It is the direct SEEing of this that is the key.

The common thread of all the great teachings is the non conceptual recognition of our true nature. The seeing that the separate entity that we take to be ourselves does not actually exist in any substantial way is one part of it. The othr part is the actual direct recognition of our true nature — and the alleged “me” is the primary barrier to this.

Bob stresses that this is not about enlightenment, awakening, or self-realization, not about an “attainment” as there is no-one there to “achieve” anything.. No blinding flashes, no “fireworks”, no visions, no eternal ecstatic bliss, not this, not that — just the understanding and the end of seeking. The tram, so to speak, stops right Here, right Now.

Rosemary and I left Bob’s place and continued out journey back to Perth, via northern Queensland, and the Northern territory -­ the “short cut” home. We discussed Bob’s teaching every day and every night and it was our central focus from the time we left Melbourne ­ all the way home. And still is.

You might want to check out Bob’s Web site

Mike Graham

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If I am perfectly contented now, it is because I have ceased to be any kind of Container at all, but instead am content with my content.

Peace is our very nature, not something we come across. It’s where we are, nearer than all else. We don’t come to it; we come from it. To find it is to allow ourselves to go back to the place we never left.

At the Center is always perfection … off-Center is always imperfection. One thing alone can be relied on through all circumstances, and that is their Core of Peace.

The seer may often find himself in a tragic and sad and puzzling and troublesome world, but he never (so long as he’s seeing) lacks peace of mind. His basic anxiety has gone. Seeing that he is indeed Peace Itself, he is at rest.

From: Open to the Source, by Douglas Harding

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Aham-Brahma-Asmi — I am Brahman (God); Tat-Twam-Asi — THAT You Are

These statements from the Indian scriptures have caused considerable confusion among spiritual seekers because their inner meaning has not been comprehended.

Every twam is not Tat: every you (the form) are not THAT (the Formless). THAT is every you, THAT will always be there without you, but you cannot be there without THAT.

Unless this is very clearly understood, every seeker will want to be one with THAT and will, therefore, be frustrated. What is to be very clearly understood is that every human being, in his or her daily living, must continuously remain connected (in awareness) to THAT Source and never be disconnected from it.

The individual entity — the Ego — gets disconnected from the Source whenever he considers himself or the ‘other’ as the doer of some action, and blames and condemns him for some action.

The connection finally ends when the body dies and the Ego no longer exists as a separate entity.

To remain continuously connected to the Source in one’s daily living means doing whatever is necessary to be done in any situation as if one is the doer — and, therefore, to witness whatever is happening as something that is precisely supposed to happen according to the Cosmic Law, without regrets about the past, without any complaints in the present, without any expectation in the future, and, importantly, without condemning anyone for anything — neither himself nor the other.

Ramesh Balsekar

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Mankind says NOW isn’t good enough. So, he leaves it, he thinks, to go scampering around in the imaginary world of not-now. Exactly so, he says this Center-Peace is not good enough. Ecstasy and elation are bound to be so much better, he believes. Don’t believe it! They aren’t.

It is the belief of a “better” and a “worse” that has humanity bouncing back and forth like a puppet on a string, swinging between valley and mountain, life and death, sickness and health, poverty and wealth. Who can convince another to stop at the NOW? To stop at Tranquillity? To stop at the center called Sufficiency?

It happens that Now-Tranquillity and Now-Sufficiency is this Identity we are. It is time to stop desiring the positive, “good” side of the old misidentity. It is not good that we want, neither wealth nor health, not even illumination.

Ours is the Identity that is unjudged and unjudging. This instant — this NOW — Tranquillity am I! Peace am I! Sufficiency am I! Love am I! The One Identity am I; and there is no other “I” but Isness being Itself! Here Identity stands as I!

From: A Guide to Awareness & Tranquillity, by William Samuel

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Satsang is the invitation to step into the fire of Self-discovery. This fire will not burn you; it will only burn away what you are not.

Mooji