Awakenings

[Guest guest]

RAMANA MAHARSHI and the Path of Self-Knowledge by Arthur Osborne

 

p.18 ...but a sudden violent fear of death overtook me. ....I just

felt `I am going to die' and began thinking what to do about it.

 

" The shock of the fear of death drove my mind inwards and I said to

myself mentally, without actually framing the words: `Now death has

come; what does it mean? What is it that is dying? This body

dies.' .... `But with the death of this body am I dead? Is the body

I? It is silent and inert but I feel the full force of my

personality and even the voice of the " I " within me, apart from it.

So I am Spirit transcending the body. The body dies but the Spirit

that transcends it cannot be touched by death. That means I am the

deathless Spirit.' .... `I' was something very real, the only real

thing about my present state, and all the conscious activity

connected with my body was centred on the `I'. From that moment

onwards the `I' or Self focused attention on itself by a powerful

fascination....Absorption in the Self continued unbroken from that

time on.

 

 

RELAXING INTO CLEAR SEEING by Arjuna Nick Ardagh

 

p.4... " Oh, that's right, I have to kill the ego! " ...Suddenly, in

an instant out of time, reality turned inside out. I burst out

laughing, and continued for twenty minutes, unabated, alone in my

hotel room. It became suddenly obvious that there is no such entity

as " ego " or " mind " – it is only an appearance. It became irrefutably

clear that the person I had taken myself to be, with all his

problems, concepts and memories, does not actually exist at all, and

never has. What remained untouched was a vastness of consciousness

in which thoughts arise and fall, happening of them selves to nobody

in particular. Although circumstances remained exactly as they had

been the night before, no " problem " could be found anywhere....Life

was unfolding perfectly, without the sense of there being anyone

there to interfere with it.

 

THE WAY OF HARMONY by Jim Dreaver

 

p.221....I woke up one spring morning feeling depressed. .....As I

lay in bed I got really present, and put the question to myself, " So,

who is depressed? " and probed deep into the interior of my own

consciousness to find this " me " who insisted he felt depressed. Of

course I couldn't find it. " I " and " me " don't exist, except as

concepts, appearances, in the mind. As my awareness opened and

expanded, the three thought-forms- " I-feel-depressed " - dissolved,

and " I " (as awareness, as consciousness) felt perfectly okay! ....I

got out of bed, sat for a while in meditation, and reflected upon

this sense of ease and expansion I now felt, and the process of self-

inquiry that had led me to it. Then I went happily about my day.

Once we have seen that we are not the " person " , the

psychological/emotional entity we used to think we were, all seeking

falls away (who is there to seek?) and there is no going back. This

is the core insight in a nutshell.

 

 

WHO CARES by Ramesh S. Balsekar

 

P23. It is only a direct withdrawal into impersonality that is more

likely to bring about the startling transformation known as

metanoesism whereby there is a sudden and immediate conviction that

the identification with a separate individual entity never did really

exist and was essentially nothing but an illusion.

 

 

(Elsewhere) by Ramesh Balsekar: In Self-enquiry, " Who am I? " – or –

Who is there to suffer –or- Who wants to know – or...., the basis is

not for the " me " to ask the question and expect to get an answer, but

to FEEL the absence of an entity, any phenomenal entity

which .....has no independent existence of its own.