Beyond Nonduality with Jac O Keefe

[JustinS]

“How does one describe a quality of divinity that is beyond consciousness, beyond existence, beyond even the subtlest division?

We can use the word Divinity itself. True Divinity. Totality. A profoundly “exquisite delicacy” that is prior to differentiation or distinction as Lorne Hoff put it. It is uncaused and can only be known by collapsing the dynamics of consciousness and merging with it. Brahman is the knower of Brahman.

As the sage Shankara framed it:
“Brahman is real
the world is not real [the half truth]
Brahman is the world”

Put another way:
“The whole world is nothing but Brahman, the supreme.” (Mundaka Upanishad 2.2.12)

In other words, the world appears to us because it is Brahman, not because it has reality in itself. It is as if Brahman has a brief musing and the result is the vastness of space and time and universes and beings. This is a very different perspective than prior in Unity (Atman) when the world is mySelf, arises from me and I contain it.

We so underestimate the divine.”
Davidya

http://davidya.ca/2015/10/31/the-divinity-of-brahman/

Edited March 10, 2018 by JustinS

[JustinS]

“No need for anything but this - 

Presicely where I am and what i am

Is life complete - surpassing bliss

In this alone, all things belong

Where all is right and nothing wrong.”

- John Butler

[Timotheus]

Beautiful.

"Trying" to abide in there or to surrender would look like that

 

[JustinS]

"The nature of the I is to be lacking in some way, because it runs separation. So it will always have that feeling of lacking something. It's death is it's freedom, but it can't enjoy the freedom because it's dead. There's a paradox in it, and that's just how it works. So the I will throw up whatever it can throw up, stuff that thought that it thought it had resolved, lack of trust, or whatever painful actions that it has to take. It will throw up whatever it can, of course, it is dying. A lot of things suffer just before they die." 

[Sahil Pandit]

@JustinS So much value in this thread 

[JustinS]

@Sahil Pandit Truth is this stuff wouldn't be much of a value to anyone. Nothing to gain from this, but to lose everything. The self will want to avoid this stuff like a plague or use it to dig itself deeper. In a sense this stuff should devalue you or only give you some pointers. 

 

Edited March 11, 2018 by JustinS

[JustinS]

Mind Is Restlessness Itself. ~ I Am That (Nisargadatta Maharaj) 

Questioner: I am a Swede by birth. Now I am teaching Hatha Yoga in Mexico and in the States.

Maharaj: Where did you learn it?

Q: I had a teacher in the States, an Indian Swami.

M: What did it give you?

Q: It gave me good health and a means of livelihood.

M: Good enough. Is it all you want?

Q: I seek peace of mind. I got disgusted with all the cruel things done by the so-called Christians in the name of Christ. For some time I was without religion. Then I got attracted to Yoga.

M: What did you gain?

Q: I studied the philosophy of Yoga and it did help me.

M: In what way did it help you? By what signs did you conclude that you have been helped?

Q: Good health is something quite tangible.

M: No doubt it is very pleasant to feel fit. Is pleasure all you expected from Yoga?

Q: The joy of well-being is the reward of Hatha Yoga.

But Yoga in general yields more than that. It answers many questions.

M: What do you mean by Yoga?

Q: The whole teaching of India -- evolution, re-incarnation, karma and so on.

M: All right, you got all the knowledge you wanted. But in what way are you benefited by it?

Q: It gave me peace of mind.

M: Did it? Is your mind at peace? Is your search over?

Q: No, not yet.

M: Naturally. There will be no end to it, because there is no such thing as peace of mind. Mind means disturbance; restlessness itself is mind. Yoga is not an attribute of the mind, nor is it a state of mind.

Q: Some measure of peace I did derive from Yoga.

M: Examine closely and you will see that the mind is seething with thoughts. It may go blank occasionally, but it does it for a time and reverts to its usual restlessness. A becalmed mind is not a peaceful mind. You say you want to pacify your mind. Is he, who wants to pacify the mind, himself peaceful?

Q: No. I am not at peace, I take the help of Yoga.

M: Don't you see the contradiction? For many years you sought your peace of mind. You could not find it, for a thing essentially restless cannot be at peace.

Q: There is some improvement.

M: The peace you claim to have found is very brittle any little thing can crack it. What you call peace is only absence of disturbance. It is hardly worth the name. The real peace cannot be disturbed. Can you claim a peace of mind that is unassailable?

Q: l am striving.

M: Striving too is a form of restlessness.

Q: So what remains?

M: The self does not need to be put to rest. It is peace itself, not at peace. Only the mind is restless. All it knows is restlessness, with its many modes and grades. The pleasant are considered superior and the painful are discounted. What we call progress is merely a change over from the unpleasant to the pleasant. But changes by themselves cannot bring us to the changeless, for whatever has a beginning must have an end. The real does not begin; it only reveals itself as beginningless and endless, all-pervading, all-powerful, immovable prime mover, timelessly changeless.

Q: So what has one to do?

M: Through Yoga you have accumulated knowledge and experience. This cannot be denied. But of what use is it all to you? Yoga means union, joining. What have you re-united, re-joined?

Q: I am trying to rejoin the personality back to the real self.

M: The personality (vyakti) is but a product of imagination. The self (vyakta) is the victim of this imagination. It is the taking yourself to be what you are not that binds you. The person cannot be said to exist on its own rights; it is the self that believes there is a person and is conscious of being it. Beyond the self (vyakta) lies the unmanifested (avyakta), the causeless cause of everything. Even to talk of re-uniting the person with the self is not right, because there is no person, only a mental picture given a false reality by conviction. Nothing was divided and there is nothing to unite.

Q: Yoga helps in the search for and the finding of the self.

M: You can find what you have lost. But you cannot find what you have not lost.

Q: Had I never lost anything, I would have been enlightened. But I am not. I am searching. Is not my very search a proof of my having lost something?

M: It only shows that you believe you have lost. But who believes it? And what is believed to be lost? Have you lost a person like yourself? What is the self you are in search of? What exactly do you expect to find?

Q: The true knowledge of the self.

M: The true knowledge of the self is not a knowledge. It is not something that you find by searching, by looking everywhere. It is not to be found in space or time. Knowledge is but a memory, a pattern of thought, a mental habit. All these are motivated by pleasure and pain. It is because you are goaded by pleasure and pain that you are in search of knowledge. Being oneself is completely beyond all motivation. You cannot be yourself for some reason. You are yourself, and no reason is needed.

Q: By doing Yoga I shall find peace.

M: Can there be peace apart from yourself? Are you talking from your own experience or from books only? Your book knowledge is useful to begin with, but soon it must be given up for direct experience, which by its very nature is inexpressible. Words can be used for destruction also; of words images are built, by words they are destroyed. You got yourself into your present state through verbal thinking; you must get out of it the same way.

Q: I did attain a degree of inner peace. Am I to destroy it?

M: What has been attained may be lost again. Only when you realise the true peace, the peace you have never lost, that peace will remain with you, for it was never away. Instead of searching for what you do not have, find out what is it that you have never lost? That which is there before the beginning and after the ending of everything; that to which there is no birth, nor death. That immovable state, which is not affected by the birth and death of a body or a mind, that state you must perceive.

Q: What are the means to such perception?

M: In life nothing can be had without overcoming obstacles. The obstacles to the clear perception of one's true being are desire for pleasure and fear of pain. It is the pleasure-pain motivation that stands in the way. The very freedom from all motivation, the state in which no desire arises is the natural state.
Q: Such giving up of desires, does it need time?

M: If you leave it to time, millions of years will be needed. Giving up desire after desire is a lengthy process with the end never in sight. Leave alone your desires and fears, give your entire attention to the subject, to him who is behind the experience of desire and fear. Ask: 'who desires?' Let each desire bring you back to yourself.

Q: The root of all desires and fears is the same -- the longing for happiness.

M: The happiness you can think of and long for, is mere physical or mental satisfaction. Such sensory or mental pleasure is not the real, the absolute happiness.

Q: Even sensory and mental pleasures and the general sense of well-being which arises with physical and mental health, must have their roots in reality.

M: They have their roots in imagination. A man who is given a stone and assured that it is a priceless diamond will be mightily pleased until he realises his mistake; in the same way pleasures lose their tang and pains their barb when the self is known. Both are seen as they are -- conditional responses, mere reactions, plain attractions and repulsions, based on memories or pre- conceptions. Usually pleasure and pain are experienced when expected. It is all a matter of acquired habits and convictions.

Q: Well, pleasure may be imaginary. But pain is real.

M: Pain and pleasure go always together. Freedom from one means freedom from both. If you do not care for pleasure, you will not be afraid of pain. But there is happiness which is neither, which is completely beyond. The happiness you know is describable and measurable. It is objective, so to say. But the objective cannot be your own. It would be a grievous mistake to identify yourself with something external. This churning up of levels leads nowhere. Reality is beyond the subjective and objective, beyond all levels, beyond every distinction. Most definitely it is not their origin, source or root. These come from ignorance of reality, not from reality itself, which is indescribable, beyond being and not-being.

Q: Many teachers have I followed and studied many doctrines, yet none gave me what I wanted.

M: The desire to find the self will be surely fulfilled, provided you want nothing else. But you must be honest with yourself and really want nothing else. If in the meantime you want many other things and are engaged in their pursuit, your main purpose may be delayed until you grow wiser and cease being torn between contradictory urges. Go within, without swerving, without ever looking outward.

Q: But my desires and fears are still there.

M: Where are they but in your memory? realise that their root is in expectation born of memory and they will cease to obsess you.

Q: I have understood very well that social service is an endless task, because improvement and decay, progress and regress, go side by side. We can see it on all sides and on every level. What remains?

M: Whatever work you have undertaken -- complete it. Do not take up new tasks unless it is called for by a concrete situation of suffering and relief from suffering. Find yourself first, and endless blessings will follow. Nothing profits the world as much as the abandoning of profits. A man who no longer thinks in terms of loss and gain is the truly non-violent man, for he is beyond all conflict.

Q: Yes, I was always attracted by the idea of ahimsa (non-violence).

M: Primarily, ahimsa means what it says: 'don't hurt'. It is not doing good that comes first, but ceasing to hurt, not adding to suffering. Pleasing others is not ahimsa.

Q: I am not talking of pleasing, but I am all for helping others.

M: The only help worth giving is freeing from the need for further help. Repeated help is no help at all. Do not talk of helping another, unless you can put him beyond all need of help.

Q: How does one go beyond the need of help? And can one help another to do so?

M: 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. You can help another by precept and example and, above all, by your being. You cannot give what you do not have and you don't have what you are not. You can only give what you are -- and of that you can give limitlessly.

Q: But, is it true that all existence is painful?

M: What else can be the cause of this universal search for pleasure? Does a happy man seek happiness? How restless people are, how constantly on the move! It is because they are in pain that they seek relief in pleasure. All the happiness they can imagine is in the assurance of repeated pleasure.

Q: If what I am, as I am, the person I take myself to be, cannot be happy, then what am I to do?

M: You can only cease to be -- as you seem to be now. There is nothing cruel in what I say. To wake up a man from a nightmare is compassion. You came here because you are in pain, and all I say is: wake up, know yourself, be yourself. The end of pain lies not in pleasure. When you realise that you are beyond both pain and pleasure, aloof and unassailable, then the pursuit of happiness ceases and the resultant sorrow too. For pain aims at pleasure and pleasure ends in pain, relentlessly.

Q: In the ultimate state there can be no happiness?

M: Nor sorrow. Only freedom. Happiness depends on something or other and can be lost; freedom from everything depends on nothing and cannot be lost. Freedom from sorrow has no cause and, therefore, cannot be destroyed. Realise that freedom.

Q: Am I not born to suffer as a result of my past? Is freedom possible at all? Was I born of my own will? Am I not just a creature?

M: What is birth and death but the beginning and the ending of a stream of events in consciousness? Because of the idea of separation and limitation they are painful. Momentary relief from pain we call pleasure -- and we build castles in the air hoping for endless pleasure which we call happiness. It is all misunderstanding and misuse. Wake up, go beyond, live really.

Q: My knowledge is limited, my power negligible.

M: Being the source of both. The self is beyond both knowledge and power. The observable is in the mind. The nature of the self is pure awareness, pure witnessing, unaffected by the presence or absence of knowledge or liking. Have your being outside this body of birth and death and all your problems will be solved. They exist because you believe yourself born to die. Undeceive yourself and be free. You are not a person.

Edited March 11, 2018 by JustinS

[JustinS]

“If you feel emptiness as an experience than mind is active and will soon replace emptiness with fear. This is not about feeling emptiness but being emptiness. It cannot try to be it. You are it. You cannot think your way into emptiness. You can only think your way into your thoughts.

The golden key here is effortlessness. After all, what is natural requires no techinque, and no action on your part. Switch off the movie in the interested of your mind no matter how realistic it appears. Stop actively thinking. Think into what is unchanging. This is not something to do. It is effortless and it is the not doing of anything that invites the natural state to present in your consciousness. 

Effortlessly be that that observes all and then go where ultimate seeing stems from. Be there and rest there. Totally, natural.”

Jac O’Keeffe (Born to Be Free)

[Nexeternity]

I want the enlightenment!  

Nice posts 

 

 

[JustinS]

@Nexeternity Who is it that just thought that thought of wanting enlightenment?  How is that thought any different than of a thought of wanting ice cream on a hot summer day? Thoughts, whether seeking pleasure or pain all have the same basic characteristic of being just a concept; but in this case it's believed in. 

Haha I guess make sure it's the first and last thing you would want besides all else. Do everything you've got to do in order to become enlightenment until there is no more tricks in the bag to pull out. When the mind finally realizes for absolute certainty that it has no way out of this sham, then self inquire until the mind spirals in utter confusion into it's demise and is seen through by YOU, which is prior to duality, and it is recognized as YOU, then give up all effort. 

Oh than you're going to love this one. 

 

[JustinS]

Jac: The mind sees objects good, bad, I see it this way, I could see it that way, okay it's all concepts, we see things how they operate. Absolute is seeing, but there is nothing seen. That seeing comes from that but there is nothing seeing, because there is only that.

Interviewer: There is no naming.

Jac: There is no naming, the mind comes in with naming. Quality control, subject object. 

Interviewer: So without the mind there is no naming so that seen just happens and everything is just there. Everything is everything it's just one. 

Jac: Bingo, so take that away. Take mind away. "It's one" is actually saying it's one, what's one, what's it? There is only it, so there is no one. There is no one! Oneness too is a concept. Oneness is already mind, it's already too late. It's gone in to the sense of one therefore not two....too late! 

Interviewer: Wow..

Jac: You see so the Absolute is total perfection and it's total stillness, and the second I open my mouth I'm talking rubbish! because I have to use concepts because the mind is the thing between the Absolute and words. 

Edited March 11, 2018 by JustinS

[JustinS]

"Your two stations, dual and nondual, are limited perspectives, created by your life story. Believing either perspective is living under a spell."

"The phenomenon experience of freedom is the uninterrupted flow of pure consciousness living a life through your form. Freedom in action is being fully human."

YOU are not consciousness. There is no consciousness! OMG! (Finally got to use this word in an absolute appropriate context)

 

 

Edited March 12, 2018 by JustinS

[JustinS]

Usually, when we think of someone drawing a line, making their stand, we think they’re committing themselves to an all or nothing battle; here and now, on this spot, live or die. That’s the kind of ultimatum Brett was describing. She made it sound like a fight, like put up your dukes, but it’s really not. It’s the  end of fighting, the end of a lifelong struggle. Drawing this line doesn’t mean battle stations, red alert, defcon one and all that. It’s not that kind of battle. It means we have to lower our shields, not raise them.

An objective observer might look at the vast majority of spiritual seekers today and classify them as spiritually self lobotomized. They set out to find life and discover truth, and wind up sitting in a dark room repeating a meaningless syllable, eyes closed, brain silenced, convinced that they’re actually making a great journey. That’s how easily and effectively we are on undone, and it’s because the enemy is within, running the show, redeploying all of our mental and emotional resources against us. Instead of adopting a war like posture, we must, counterintuitively, lower our shields and defenses. This seems confusing until we understand that we are both the protagonist and the antagonist in this conflict,  both attacker and defender.

This is the paradoxical nature of the struggle. We can’t win by fighting. The very thing that fights, that resists, is the thing we seek to overthrow. Only by vanquishing ego can we prevail. Only in surrender can we find victory. This is the part so few get, and fewer get beyond. This is the part where everything starts sounding all sagely or zenny or Orwellian, but that can’t be helped. If you want to say that religions and spiritual teachings share a core truth, it can only be this: Surrender is Victory. 

Jed Mckenna

Edited March 12, 2018 by JustinS

[JustinS]

"In our spiritual practice we spend years pulling back from stuff, disconnecting, disconnecting..

...you've got to go back in, you know it's an illusion. But the patterns of disconnecting from things can be so strong that we can be tentative about reconnecting.

What do we do now? Okay, we go back in and test out the things that used to create an I. Test out, go back in, participate whatever you used to do and see what suits your system now. 

Embrace it, let there be total inclusivity, total inclusivity. So that nothing is of a no-no. Nothing is pulling back from it. Go the opposite direction. 

If it recreates a sense of an I, great, you've found something that wasn't dropped completely. It might..leave space for that too. Total inclusion.

That's the freedom part. That's moving towards liberation. 

So awakening, Self-Realization is pulling back, from awakening to liberation involves from being totally inclusive."

- Jac 

 

[JustinS]

"You might want to think about this," says Bob, looking at me over the top of the pages he's holding. "These amateurs and hobbyists, as you call them, are your audience."

"My audience?"

"Well, your intended audience," he clarifies. "It might not be wise to alienate them like this."

"If I have an intended audience," I reply, "it's people who know they're stuck and want to get unstuck, not people who don't know they're stuck and just want to pass the time and pass judgment."
He sighs with exasperation. We've been having more or less this same conversation for several days. 

"And who do you suppose is the difference?", says Bob.

"The former would receive criticism with gratitude, and the latter as a personal attack. Awakening is a process of breakthroughs, and breakthroughs don't come from incense and candlelight and inner peace. You look at spiritual aspirants as those most likely to achieve awakening, but Maya has them so bamboozled that those who seem the most advanced are simply the ones who are burrowing downward the fastest."

"But, Jed, honestly, you can't say things like that -"

"Sure I can. This isn't my pet theory, this is what I see, and if I see it, then it's there for anyone to see. All they have to do is look. I can say that, can't I? Open your eyes? Be honest. Take a look?"

"Your'e making this all seem too cut-and-dried, It's not that simple."

That's why I like having Bob around. He says things like that.

"It's exactly that simple," I reply, not for the first time. "Waking up from the dreamstate is a very straightforwards business. It doesn't take decades. It doesn't look like tranquility or like a calm, peaceful mind. It doesn't look like saving others or saving the world or even saving yourself. It doesn't look like a thriving marketplace where merit is determined by popular appeal or commercial success. Waking up looks like a massive mental and emotional breakdown because that's exactly what it is, the granddaddy of all breakdowns. That's the only way it works. I know there are thousands of books out there that say otherwise, and I can tell you that they were all written by Maya."

Jed Mckenna (Spiritual Warfare) 

[JustinS]

"Believing happens and it has to imagine itself -- in the movie; believing that anything is better than silence invariably will lead into suffering; silence is not boring; "silence is boring" can only be said in the movie."

- Jac

[JustinS]

"Awakening is a shift in perspective. Simply put, it’s the full seeing that what you are was never caught up in story in the first place. When the personal "I" is active it is imagined that there will be phenomenal freedom for the "I," as if the "I" will enjoy being out of its own story. But when the story falls there is a seeing that the "I" was never more than story."
~Jac O'Keeffe

[JustinS]

"The I actually doesn't exist only in the moments it appears to exist, the moment that a thought is believed to be true. It's not that the I exists and it attaches to thoughts. It's like the I only exists when a thought is to be believed, it's part of the program. So the space between thoughts, there is no I. But we imagine an I continuing and then the I grabs thoughts. There is a space between thoughts, but it's not noticed. It takes an I to notice."

~ Jac

[JustinS]

"Drop your attachment to waking up cause it's feeding everything else. How it is, is how it is. Something is unraveling itself for you, just watch it unraveling itself instead of "I'm making this happen." It's like hold on, less intensity. Just soften the whole things so that something can relax. In the relaxing what I'm tricking you to do is surrendering to the flow that is unraveling you anyway. I'm actually talking about surrendering to it and having control over it. 

The pull to wake up, you can't stop it anyway. You're not going to be able to stop this, you've gone too far. It's got it's own momentum. So then in the kicking back and in the removing the plug of desire or the pressure to wake up, let's see what balances out. Some kind of middle road will come in."
~ Jac