Satsang with Nome - Absolute Silence - Q&A 1

[Guest guest]

Questioner.: In meditation during my trip (to Tiruvannamalai), I was

examining, once more, the sheaths. I sense more strongly that the

body is only awareness. The senses are only awareness. So it is with

prana, the breath, and with thoughts. Even this idea of a separate

person is only awareness. It was so strong that hearing the traffic

and the taxis going down the road beeping their horns, it seemed that

it was just Brahman going down the road. It seemed very much as the

right direction. I want to become very solid in this Self-Knowledge.

 

N.: In what way for you is the Knowledge of the Self lacking?

 

Q.: There are still left over ideas.

 

N.: What kind of ideas?

 

Q.: Ideas of separation, that there is this and that.

 

N.: What constitutes the separation?

 

Q.: (laughing) The ideas of separation.

 

N.: So, it is not a real separation, but only an idea of it.

 

Q.: That's the only thing that I can find for sure.

 

N.: An idea exists only in your mind. It's not reality. It's merely

imagined. Within the mind is imagined all that you have mentioned,

whether seen as one or as multiple, inclusive of the so-called outer

world, the body, the prana, and the cognitions. In the rope mistaken

to be a snake by illusion, whether we say that all the parts of the

snake are really the rope, or the snake is really a rope, the

emphasis is on the rope. The rope alone is there, and the snake and

its parts are not there at all. The individual and the objective

sphere of his experience are not truly existent. You may regard such

as the Self merely misperceived, whether seen as one or multiple.

 

If it is just the Self misperceived, trace the source of that

misperception. Someone seems to be as if unstable in Self-Knowledge.

Who is that someone? (silence)

 

Descriptions of the five sheaths, panca-kosa, are made in the course

of spiritual instruction simply to refine the discernment regarding

oneself. The sheaths are not real entities. If contemplation upon

them causes you to inquire, "For whom are these?" it is very

worthwhile. If it causes you to disidentify from all that is not the

Self, it is good.

 

Q.: From your instruction I got the sense that the best answer to

this is the Silence where there is no thought and where no "I"

arises. Anything else is unnecessary.

 

N.: (silence)

 

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Not two,

Richard