Showing posts with label Eternal Witness. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Eternal Witness. Show all posts

February 1, 2017

#immortality



The material universe and the physical body that I experience through my senses are only one aspect of reality.

All material things are made up of atoms.

Atoms are composed of subatomic particles moving at lightning speeds through huge empty spaces.

Subatomic particles are not material things; they are fluctuations of energy and information in a huge void.

Subatomic particles flicker in and out of existence depending on whether I am watching them or not.

Before my decision to observe them, subatomic particles are probability amplitudes or mathematical ghosts in a field of infinite possibilities .

When I make the choice to observe the subatomic world of mathematical ghosts, the ghosts freeze into space-time events or particles that ultimately manifest as matter.

My physical body and the body of the physical universe are both proportionately as void as intergalactic space.

The essential nature of my material body and that of the solid appearing universe is that they are both nonmaterial. They are made up of non-stuff.

My material body and the body of the Universe both flicker in and out of existence at the speed of light.

My nervous system cannot process these quantum events at the speed at which they are really happening, so it decodes the energy and information soup of the Universe into the experience of solid three-dimensional material bodies.

When I decide to observe the quantum soup of the Universe, made up of non-stuff, it manifests in my awareness as a physical body that I experience as mine, and other bodies that I experience as the Universe.

In my decision to become an observer, I create the experience of my physical body and also that of the physical Universe.

My brain is made up of the same non-stuff or void that exists everywhere. It is a decoding instrument that moves through a vibrating dance of energy and information, and, as a result of this interaction, I start to experience material and solid things.

My brain is a sensor that tunes in to a non-local, omnipresent vibrating field of infinite frequencies.

My body is an experience that I have in space and time. It has a location in space, and it exists in time. It has a beginning, a middle, and an ending.

My world is a continuum of experiences and is therefore comprised of space-time events. It exists as objects in space that have beginnings, middles, and endings.

My brain is an instrument that I use to have experiences.

Where is the me that is using this instrument (called the brain) to have these experiences called the body, which gets born, moves through space and time, and then dies?

Me is the experiencer behind every experience, the thinker behind every thought, the seer behind every scenery, the observer behind every observation.

The experience changes, but the experiencer remains the same. The thought comes and goes, the thinker is always there; the scenery transforms, but the seer remains unchanged, eternal. The real me is the seer, not the scenery.

I cannot experience the experiencer by using my senses, because when I use my senses I begin to have experiences, and then I am no longer with myself, I am with my experience.

I cannot experience the experiencer by thinking thoughts because when I am thinking thoughts I can no longer be with myself, the thinker.

Thoughts are experiences. The thinker is the experiencer. Perhaps the thought is the thinker in disguise, and the experience is the experiencer in disguise.

This is the dilemma.
Is the thinker the thought?
Is the experiencer the experience?

Could the seer be the scenery?
Could the thinker be the thought?

Let us examine both experiencer and experience.

All experiences are space-time events.

They are in the world of dimensions.

My body occupies space. It has height, width, volume. It exists in time. It is time bound.

Even thoughts are flickering space-time events. They occur for a flicker of an instant and have a beginning, a middle, and an end. For a flicker of an instant, they occupy a space and a location in awareness.

Therefore all experience is time bound.

The experiencer, on the other hand, being the silent, non-changing witness in every experience, is timeless.

The experiencer is dimensionless.

The experiencer occupies no space.

Since the experiencer is there before the experience and is there after the experience, it is always there, and being always there, it is eternal.

Eternal, unbounded, spaceless, timeless, dimensionless, the experiencer is Spirit.

Spirit is the real me.

Nonmaterial and dimensionless, Spirit can neither be created nor destroyed.

Spirit is spaceless, timeless, and dimensionless. Fire cannot burn it and water cannot wet it, wind cannot dry it, weapons cannot kill it, eternal and unbounded and nonchanging, without beginning and without ending; it is nowhere in particular and everywhere in general. This spirit is the essential me.

How can I find Spirit?
Not by thinking.
Not by doing.
Only by Being.

Only through silence, only by Being can I know myself.

When I am not using memories, when I am not anticipating, when I am just being, then I am just awareness. Then I experience myself as the timeless factor in the midst of time-bound experience.

As Spirit I know that my persona changes, I don't.

I look into the mirror, and I see the change in my persona from ten years ago. But the Me that is looking is unchanged.

It is the prison of memory that creates the boundaries of space-time and causation.

When I escape the prison of memory, I experience the boundless in the midst of boundaries.

Memories are frozen pictures of space-time events.

The me who experiences the memories is the nonchanging space between these space-time events.

I notice the spaces between my thoughts. Thoughts come and go. The spaces are always there.

I am now noticing the spaces between written words, spaces between objects, spaces between thoughts, spaces between sounds, spaces between musical notes, spaces inside a cup, around it, and outside it. I am noticing spaces, spaces everywhere. They are all the same spaces, and they are always there. Before the thoughts came, after they left, the space is. Before the music was born and after it died, the space is. Before the words were uttered and after the speech was silent, the space is. Before and after death, the space is.

The space always is, and in this space I am.

Before birth I am.
After death I am.
I always am.

When I quantify space I create time.
Time is a way of measuring space.

When I quantify time I create space. Space is a way of measuring time.

When I quantify myself I create a person.

When I notice the spaces between sounds and the spaces between words and also the spaces between my thoughts and the background silence behind everything, I realize that all these spaces are the same space.

This space is the entry point. It is the transformational vortex, the corridor, the window to Spirit.

Spirit is beyond the void of space. This realm, beyond the void, is not an empty nothingness; it is the womb of creation.

Nature goes to the same place to create a galaxy of stars, a cluster of nebulas, a rain forest, a human body,
or a thought. That place is Spirit.

Personal time is born in the spaces between personal memories.

Cosmic time is born in the spaces between cosmic memories.

Spirit is the potentiality for space-time events.

Spirit moving within itself creates space-time events and becomes matter.

Spirit and matter are one.
Observer and observed are one.
Seer and scenery are one.

The seer, the observer, the experiencer, the thinker, the field, the witness, and pure awareness are all different words to describe Spirit.

Spirit (the observer) has no height, no width, no length, no breadth, no volume, no space, no duration. It is eternal, unbounded, ineffable and abstract.

Spirit is invisible. It is soundless. It is without texture, without taste, without smell. It is dimensionless, spaceless and timeless.

Spirit is ME.

Spirit is the immeasurable potential of all that was, is, and will be, and it is ME. It is the Field.

When the Field vibrates it creates waves.

The vibrating Field...with its waves of intelligence, information and energy...is the invisible source of the fabric of the space-time continuum.

Waves of intelligence are vibrations of Spirit. Waves of intelligence are also my thoughts and all thoughts everywhere.

Since I am the Field, all thoughts are my thoughts. Some thoughts are experienced more personally. I call them mine.

Some thoughts I experience less personally. I call these other people's thoughts and also the thoughts of animals and Nature.

Some thoughts I experience inside my personal body, and some I experience outside my body. Some are personal, others are impersonal; however, all thoughts are equally mine.

Vibrations in the Field are thoughts in consciousness. They are quantum events in the space-time continuum. These are the ways the observer becomes the process of observation and the experiencer becomes the process of experience. This is the mind in action.

When these vibrations condense or freeze, matter is born. Frozen vibrations are matter. Frozen vibrations are the birth if matter. They are the birth of the web of space-time events. These are the "things" that occupy space and have duration in time.

Matter is the birth of particles from waves. All particles are frozen waves. All material bodies are condensations of frozen vibrations.

Matter is the world of material objects. It is the scenery, the object of experience, the observed.

Spirit moving within itself creates mind, and mind attending to itself precipitates into matter.

The observer observes itself and becomes the observed.

The seer sees itself and becomes the scenery. The seer is the Spirit. The seeing is the mind. The scenery is the world.

Seer, scenery, and seeing are One.
Spirit, mind, and matter are One.

Creation is the self interacting with itself and experiencing itself. Sometimes it is the seer, sometimes it is the seeing, sometimes it is the scenery.

All that exists is me interacting with myself and experiencing myself as Spirit, mind, and matter.

I experience myself subjectively as the mind and objectively as the body and the world.

The body, mind, and world are just different manifestations of myself as different forms and phenomena.

I am that which is beyond and before and after all forms and phenomena.

I am that. You are that. That alone is.

Physicists describe four forces of Nature. These are the strong interaction, the weak interaction, electromagnetism, and gravity.

The strong interaction holds the nucleus of the atom together.

The weak interaction is responsible for radioactive decay and the transmutation of elements.

Electromagnetism gives rise to heat, light, electricity, and magnetism.

Gravity holds the planets together and makes the world go around.

These four forces (electromagnetism, gravity, strong and weak interactions) are the matrix of the material universe.

The four fundamental forces of Nature come from one Unified Field. The Unified Field is the source of creation...the dancer.

The Unified Field is the field of dimensionless reality. It is the potentiality for all the information, energy, and matter in the Universe.

The Unified Field is the ground state of all there is. It is the potentiality for space-time and space-time events.

The curvature of space-time is called gravity. It is part of the dance, the process of creation.

The friction within space-time is electromagnetism, which is heat, light, electricity, and energy. It is also part of the dance...the process of creation.

The condensation of space-time as weak and strong forces creates matter...the earth, water, fire, air, and space. It is the expression of the dance or that which is created.

Earth, water, fire, air, and space are matter in its solid, liquid, metabolic, gaseous, and quantum mechanical forms.

Since the Unified Field is the ground state of everything and since the Spirit is also the ground state of everything, the Spirit and the Unified Field are One.

The Unified Field is the consciousness of Nature.

The forces of Nature...heat, light, electricity, magnetism, strong and weak forces, and gravity...are "the mind of Nature."

The material universe is the body of Nature.

Since I and the Unified Field are One in our ground state, I am the witness in the Unified Field, my thoughts or mind are just a different manifestation of the same forces of Nature that we call heat, light, electricity, magnetism, and gravity. My body is just a different manifestation of the same body that I call the Universe.

I am the thinker, the thought, the word, and the flesh. I am the field, the wave, and the particle.

I am the ground state, the forces of Nature, and the material world.

I am the dancer, the dancing, and the dance.

I am the creator, the process of creating, and that which is created.

I am infinite forms and phenomena.

I have invented space. I have created time. I manifest as gravity , which holds the planets and makes the world go around.

I am the source of all energy and all its forms.

I am everything I observe and the observer as well.

I am Existence.

As Existence I am before the beginning, during the middle, and after the end of all forms and phenomena. I am the chair I sit on and the clothes I am wearing and the mountains that I see and the stars and distant galaxies. I am everything in general and anything in particular.

When I see light and color, I am light and color. When I hear sound and music, I am sound and music. I am everything I taste, touch, smell, feel, and see. I am electricity, I am heat, I am cold. I am laughter, I am tears. I am the anger in angry people. I am the jealousy in jealous people. I am the hate in hateful people. I am the love in loving people. I am the compassion in compassionate people. I am everything as it is.

I have no need to attack myself or anybody. I have no need to forgive myself or anybody, because there is nothing to forgive. I have no need to defend myself or anybody. I have no need to hurt myself or anybody.

I am totally defenseless. In my total defenselessness is my invincibility.

I totally surrender to what is because I am what is.

In my world, I am whatever is. There is nothing to forget, nothing to forgive, nothing to remember, no grudges to hold, no conflicts to fight, no one to spite; even in conflict there is no conflict.

In my world there is lightheartedness and carefreeness and silent joyfulness.

In my world there is life in all its moods, in all its contradictions, and in all its manifestations.

I accept this Life as Life itself. Because I accept Life as Life, in my world, nothing ever goes wrong. In my Being is the Universe.

Personality is time bound. It comes about when the present is identified with the past and projected into the future.

Attention devoid of memory or anticipation is life-centered, present moment awareness. Life-centered, present moment, choiceless awareness is timeless.

Time exists only as the continuity of memory using the ego as an internal reference point.

My original state is always present but not in manifestation.

There is no bondage except for the idea of a separate "ME" or "MINE."

The world happens only as an appearance in consciousness. The physical world of form and phenomena is the totality of the known manifested in the infinity of the unknown unmanifest consciousness.

I do nothing. Being manifests, and living happens.

I am that consciousness. You are that consciousness. All that exists is consciousness.

I am infinite, immortal, enlightened.
Infinity, immortality, enlightenment are my natural state.

My natural state is usually overshadowed by the turbulence of the mind. When I go past the dark alleys and passages of my mind, I come to the core of my Being.

At the core of my Being I am in touch with the light and the love and the knowingness that are the inherent properties of my natural state.

At the core of my Being is a principle, an intelligence that generates, orchestrates and organizes the activity of my mind and of my body.

When I am in touch with the intelligence (or principle) at the core of my Being and I become intimate with it, I realize that this same principle is at the core of all Beings and orchestrates and organizes the mind and body of all that lives and moves and breathes.

This principle, this pure intelligence or pure awareness, is the real me. This me projects itself as the personal body/mind and the Universal body/mind.

Curving back within myself, I project myself again and again with infinite, unbounded potential.

I am the animating force of life in all that lives and moves and breathes in all Beings.

I am the light of love that is unity
consciousness.

I am the light of knowingness where Creator, creating, and created are one.

At the deepest core of my Being is an intelligence that is orchestrating the activity of my mind and my body.

When I get in touch with the divine intelligence at the deepest core of my Being, and become intimate with it, I realize that the same intelligence is orchestrating the activity of other minds and other bodies...and in fact, all the activity in the Universe.

This intelligence at the deepest core of my being, and of other Beings, and of the Universe, has been called GOD by many spiritual traditions.

At the deepest core of all Being is the generator, organizer, and dispenser of all the activity that exists in the Universe.

The Creator is the source...the Generation of all information and energy and matter.

The creating is the process...the Organizer of all information and energy and matter.

The created is the outcome...the Dispenser of all information and energy and matter.

GOD is the Totality.
Generator, Organizer, Dispenser.

Be still and know that you are GOD of all Reality.


- From: Everyday Immortality by D. Chopra






August 19, 2016

I Am The Infinite Ocean







Yesterday
I lived bewildered,
In illusion.

But now I am awake,
Flawless and serene,
Beyond the world.

From my light
The body and the world arise.

So all things are mine,
Or nothing is.

Now I have given up
The body and the world,
I have a special gift.

I see the infinite Self.

As a wave,
Seething and foaming,
Is only water.

So all creation,
Streaming out of the Self,
Is only the Self.

Consider a piece of cloth.
It is only threads!

So all creation,
When you look closely,
Is only the Self.

Like the sugar
In the juice of the sugarcane,
I am the sweetness
In everything I have made.

When the Self is unknown
The world arises,
Not when it is known.

But you mistake
The rope for the snake.

When you see the rope,
The snake vanishes.

My nature is light,
Nothing but light.

When the world arises
I alone am shining.

When the world arises in me,
It is just an illusion,
Water shimmering in the sun.
A vein of silver on mother-of-pearl,
A serpent in a strand of rope.

From me the world streams out
And in me it dissolves,
As a bracelet melts into gold,
A pot crumbles into clay,
A wave subsides into water.

I adore myself.
How wonderful I am!

I can never die.

The whole world may perish,
From Brahma to a blade of grass,
But I am still here.

Indeed how wonderful!
I adore myself.

For I have taken form
But I am still ONE.

Neither coming or going,
Yet I am still everywhere. . .

I am the infinite ocean.

When thoughts spring up,
The wind freshens, and like waves
A thousand worlds arise.

But when the wind falls,
The trader sinks with his ship,

On the boundless ocean of my being
He founders,
And all the worlds with him.

But, Oh how wonderful!

I am the unbounded deep
In whom all living things
Naturally arise,
Rush against each other playfully,
And then subside.

From: The Heart of Awareness 
A translation of the Ashtavakra Gita by Thomas Byrom









I want to tell you about a very special 20 year old Vedanta Society devotee. Four years ago, at the tender age of 16, a beautiful sweet soul, "Kamal" came to live with the nuns at the Santa Barbara Vedanta Society temple. After finishing high school early he was granted a rare, (for an American teenager) three year, full scholarship to Vivekananda University near Kolkata run by the Ramakrishna monks. His major of concentration was "Sanskrit" and "Vedic Culture". 

While in India,  Kamal decided to start a blog about his adventures as a way to keep in touch with family and friends.    
                                          
http://ripkynkamal.blogspot.com

Take a read through his blog. The posts are very informative with lots of photos and antidotes about local customs and his new Indian life. He was a very brave and wise spirit, old beyond his years, and everyone at the Vedanta temple was so proud of his maturity and high achievements. We all had hopes he would become a full fledged monk of the Ramakrishna order someday. 

I pray his writings will inspire you like they have me. We will miss his passing but we take great comfort in knowing that he has returned to that infinite ocean of unchanging love. Now enjoying the bliss of samadhi with Holy Mother, Thakur & Narendra. Shiva, Shiva, Higher Birth!!



_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

EMAIL FROM KAMAL



From: Ripkyn Murphy <kamal.ripkyn@gmail.com>
Date: Saturday, June 23, 2012
Subject: Re: [India] New comment on Hey Mom, So I'm here at the University. They put....


Dear Andra,

Thanks so much for putting the idea of starting a blog in my head, I think that will be the easiest way to let people know what's going on with me. Thanks also for linking my blog with yours, hopefully some people can find it and get something out of reading it. I looked at your blog and was very impressed, it's very well done and has a lot of great information on it. Vedanta needs more people like you who are willing to use the internet to spread the word to people who are searching for it.

Stay in Touch,
Kamal












In the words of Swami Vivekananda: 

"One day a drop of water fell into the vast ocean. 
When it found itself there, 
It began to weep and complain just as you are doing. 
The great ocean laughed at the drop of water. 
"Why do you weep?" it asked. "I do not understand. 
When you join me, you join all your brothers and sisters, 
The other drops of water of which I am made. 
You become the ocean itself. 
If you wish to leave me, 
You have only to rise up on a sunbeam into the clouds. 
From there you can descend again, 
A little drop of water, 
A blessing and a benediction to the thirsty earth."

- His Eastern and Western Admirers, Reminiscences of Swami Vivekananda, Advaita Ashrama, 1964







June 8, 2015

Purifying Fire of Austerity


The Soul That Does not Live in God is not Alive


Spring makes red and white flowers appear on the trees,
But the spring that is the origin of colors is colorless.

Understand what I have said, and give up all talk;
Run to the Origin without color and unite yourself to it.

Annihilate yourself before the One Existence
So that thousands of worlds leap out of you

And your pure existence flames out of itself
And goes on and on birthing different forms.

Of course, none of these forms will last.
Happy is the one who knows this mystery!

Happy is he who gives his life to know this!
He leaves this house for another far more radiant.

You cannot understand this mystery through reason;
The Way to Knowledge winds through suffering and torment.

If you do not feel pain, you do not look for healing.
The soul that does not live in God is not alive.

She seems like a soul, but does not deserve the name:
She has not been made alive by the Beloved.

The soul is given life by the four-elements
Like a lamp that burns through the night:

The light is from oil and wick, it is not eternal.
While the oil exists, the lamp burns, but then goes out.

The one made alive by God will never die.
He lives through God and not through gold or bread.

God is the Light, the Eternal Source of Lights.
The Light is causeless, as is His fiery radiance.

Like gold, God’s value comes from His pure, perfect essence.
- Poem by Sultan Walad (Rumi's eldest son)





March 30, 2015

Shine On


I am awestruck by the wisdom of fortune cookies these days. Is the Dalai Lama secretly writing these messages? Really, these are profound words from the mouths of cookies. Given at the end of a Chinese meal, their heady wisdom a conversation starter to be sure. Today, a clever note in a fortune cookie gave me much to reflect upon. This simple message of truth sounded like something my Swami would have said, reminding me of a fundamental Vedantic principle. That is, consciousness is the SHINE. It is the source of illumination, the very light by which the material world is reflected to our eyes. Apart from objects we see in the waking world, consciousness never, ever, changes. Irregardless of whether we are in the waking world or in dream sleep, the eternal conscious witness is always present in all three states: waking, dreaming and sleeping. Cosmic consciousness watches for eons and eons apart from the body mind complex. Blazing forth like a thousands suns, shining forever as pure, perfect, God consciousness. The God who shines love within, is the same God who reflects love without. And that's the way this fortune cookie crumbled today!



Melting into the Light, I am the unattached Light that shines.
The Light shines, the Light which is Brahman.
That which I am is nothing but Brahman.
I exist and I exist as the Light of Brahman.
I myself, offer myself, into the infinite Light which is myself.
OM peace, peace, peace be unto us all.