Karma-phala-tyaga (giving up the fruits of action) is a most frequently recurring idea in the Gita. ‘For a man with body consciousness it is not possible to give up work,’ says Sri Krishna. ‘He who gives up the fruits of the work is indeed a tyagi.’ Not even a fool would act unless prompted by a motive, says the well-known adage. So, how to reconcile between this adage and Sri Krishna’s golden maxim that we have the right only to work, not to the fruits thereof? (2.47) There are motives and motives for work. The more selfish the motive, the more attached we become to work. Selfless work, too, has its inevitable result: purification of mind. We have this much choice while doing work: (1) be anxious about the fruits of work, be attached to the work and be swayed by success or failure in work; or (2) concentrate all our mental energies on the work in hand, certain that the work will bear fruit; and cultivate detachment from work.
Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.” |
Winston Churchill A |
This could be part of the reason that depression is so hard to deal with.
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The mood of the Gauḍīya Vaiṣṇavas is that they are not interested in associating with people who worship anyone other than Śrīmatī Rādhikā. They will not even look at Kṛṣṇa without Her. ❞
— Srimad Narayana Goswami Maharaj
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AD SHAI
This was the shock of my life.
A story of relative me: several years ago I was obsessed with figuring out the truth. I was listening to non-dual teachers and studying ACIM at the time, that kept repeating “there is no world.” One night, after so much struggle to understand it, I went to sleep and before waking observed this:
- No knowing or not knowing, no experience, no awareness
- Awareness
- Spirit
- The world
What blew me away… the shock of my life at the time… was that the world was an appearance. I was baffled that it wasn’t real, wasn’t solid; that is was inconsequential. That day was a strange day, digesting what no one had EVER taught me. Even though non-dual teachings pointed to it, seeing it for myself was entirely different: The world wasn’t real! All my teachers who taught me were themselves not real. I felt totally alone, and this was pointing me towards true non-duality. It was still a relative understanding, though.
I’m talking about how I experienced it then. Telling a story, in which the world seemed like a cherry on top of a cake — it was very small relative to my being.
Let me now explain the 4 levels I wrote down.
- The absolute absence… does NOT equal non-existence. Existence is never non-existent, it is just unaware that it is.
- Awareness is the light coming on. The first sense of I. No body, no person, no world, not even Spirit just yet. Just Being.
- Spirit. So here there is already space and that which fills it (information). This is the level we often experience as dreams. Time and space are not as limited as what we call “the physical”. If it happens that you’re conscious on this level, you become aware of the absence of limitation. As you think it, it happens.
- The body; the world. Anything to explain?
Through the years I’ve seen that these levels are all always there. They don’t come and go. What I AM simply has Action — which is the the side of presence through which it knows itself; and Stillness, which is the side of absence of any sort of knowing whatsoever, including I (awareness). Two sides to the coin that you are. And they are both present always.
If all 4 levels are always there, that means that the deep deep sleep is here now. That is to say I don’t know what I AM. If I define myself as awareness, I am an object again. Any definition whatsoever cannot be me. Any knowing.
So knowing will be there, but by knowing I don’t know anything. Knowing is simply entertainment, a possibility of mySelf manifested.
When I first saw that the world is a projection (actually this wasn’t the first time, but the most vivid one), I took it personally. That’s why I love Karl Renz who says, “if you wake up, don’t take it personally”. The ‘I’ immediately took over this pure seeing and started to analyze “what does this mean for me?” It always wants to know “what can I get out of this?” It always wants to turn it into an advantage. Again Karl Renz saves the day by saying: “The absolute advantage is being That which never needs an advantage.”
What ‘I’ did at first was be awake IN the dream.
Only years later was that advantage seen as just another way to suffer — because the one who needs an advantage is always in a state of lack. This stance of “I’m awake, you’re asleep” is useless. Still two. So later — in the very illusory relative story — it became being awake as the dream. I Am That I Am.
Lastly, I want to say that these states are NOT special. I don’t know what “awakened sleep” would be because everyone sleeps the same. Nobody remembers deep deep sleep (#1) because there is no memory there. How can there be if there is no knowing nor not-knowing? There is literally nothing to remember. And nobody has ever complained about their absence! Then the level of pure awareness (#2) — again, people just call this “I had no dreams. Slept so good!” Spirit (#3) — like I said is often experienced as dreams. But many of these dreams are another form of you that is less dense, hence spirit.
These levels are simply: (Unspeakable)→ I → I AM → I AM this. I is light. I AM is the context (space and time). I AM this is form. Like a room that is absolutely dark (#1), then a light comes on (#2), then the space of the room is known (#3), then the objects contained in the room are known (#4).
Interestingly people don’t normally make anything of having had dreamless sleep. They know they were there, and yet never inquire into that. What/who was there exactly? And I never hear anyone say “I had dreamless sleep.. there were no forms at all, and still I was. I must not be this form I take myself to be.” How does this never occur to people? I would say because the moment the 4th level — world/body — wakes up, the identification as form/body is there again and most people don’t question it.
If we are to be precise, what you are never sleeps or wakes up. These 4 states pass through it, AS it. That is the meaning of I Am That I Am. Whatever state — I Am That. Because I am not a particular state. No particular position (not even awareness). Sometimes during the day I daydream. Being a past student of Gurdjieff I thought this is ‘bad’ and means I can’t be what I Am… I am not self-remembering, not aware. Luckily, you don’t need anything to be what you can never not be. No state is it. So when I daydream I am as Spirit, and I still am what I am. I Am That I Am. I can never not be me. Many people identify with one of these states, and you will hear them say “I am awareness” / “I am light” (this refers to “I am the light of the world”); or “I am spirit”; or, of course “I am Daniel, this one who was born and will die.” Some may even say “I am the void” or “I am nothing”. But what you are can’t be one thing and not another. That’s separation. What you are is present throughout all of it. It’s the Always. The Uninterrupted. Once you discriminate it’s not it.
So I have no clue what I am, and all these 4 states I am.
The difficulty of this for a seeker is that it is so utterly effortless, the mind can never grab it. It needs nothing from ‘you’. Not even for ‘you’ to be aware. It doesn’t care. Because it doesn’t even need awareness to be.
These 4 levels, by the way, can be detailed further and then you may get the 10 spheres of Kabbalah. These just talk about absolute aspects of the absolute.
In one sentence: awakened or not, I don’t sleep any different. It was always like this. The only thing is once it happened that I paid attention to the shifting from one level to another, namely deep deep sleep to deep dreamless sleep, and the shifting from that to spirit and world. Then I tried to identify with ONE of these states. Then I realized I Am That I Am. That is, I cannot be lost in any of these states. I cannot be lost period.
Deep deep sleep points to that you don’t even need awareness to be what you are. Even there you are not lost. Every night we are so happy that the multiverse is about to be annihilated. We know it’s peace, even though there is no one there to experience it. And yet… we fear death…
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The absolute absence… does NOT equal non-existence. Existence is never non-existent, it is just unaware that it is.
The above bit is what no one questions & takes for granted and does not even talk about, is the culminating point of all there is: NO-THING !
JUST ONE INFINITE EXISTENCE . NO DIVISIONS IN IT . ONE ONLY .
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Most land in awareness. They take that position. The pointer is: what you are can never not be. There is nothing that needs to be cultivated — including awareness — in order to be what you can never not be. That’s the joke. The ‘I’ thinks it’s a state, a separate state. That’s where it always misses.
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Very interesting. I can't verify the accuracy of what you are saying, and at times cannot understand, but for the most part intuitively I do understand (By understand I think I mean I don't disagree!). It rings true somehow.
Your last sentence, “and yet we fear death.“ made me wonder. I decided then to test that — to see whether i did fear death. So I went within, and searched for that fear, that thought. Sure enough it was there but it didn't bother me. Then I looked down at my wrinkled arms (looking pretty old!) and recalled seeing my father, my sister and my brother after each of them had died. I contemplated their bodies as they lay there. (Three separate occasions) Next I imagined myself dead, and looked at my arms, seeing them dead, and I laughed! Big grin! I'm laughing now.
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God gives and forgives; man gets and forgets.A
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