NMT (No-Me Teaching) new series 24:

Prior to excerpting the other Ramana Maharshi disciple in the text below we continue the series: Fine-Tuned Universe 16, the premise that a small change in several of the dimensionless fundamental physical constants would make the Universe incapable of Life.

Fine-Tuned Universe 16:

[In the unreal reflection called the "Universe", a product of an unreal Mind, even there, Infinite Intelligence is evident and inspiring.]

Early Speculation:

Hoyle (not originally an Intelligent Design advocate) pondered whether these and many, many other fortuitous coincidences would someday be shown to have been necessary outcomes of the Universe’s structure, [OR] an infinite Steady-State Universe could accommodate diverse regions with every allowable permutation of these constants (an early Ensemble hypothesis).

The curious placing of the levels in C¹² or O¹⁶ need no longer have the appearance of astonishing accidents. It could simply be that since creatures like ourselves depend on a balance between Carbon and Oxygen, we can exist only the portions of the Universe where these levels happen to be correctly placed. In other places the level of  O¹⁶ might be a little higher, so that the addition of a – particles to C¹² was highly resonant. In such a place creatures like ourselves could not exist.       Fred Hoyle’s early Anthropic-Ensemble model

Earlier still was Wallace’s similar 1903 speculation:

Of course, there may be, and probably are, other universes, perhaps of other kinds of Matter and subject to other Laws.                  

For the most part, TOE candidates like String & M–theory are beyond our scope, though mention is made from time to time as we proceed. But in the spirit of early TOE predictions, Max Born (who probability amplitude into wavefunctions) foresaw in the 1920’s that the extremal principal in paths Least-Action (as seen in refinements of Newton’s physics, Fermat’s Refraction, etc.) would later guide search for a TOE and so it has in String & M–theory.

Pierre Maupertuis and mathematician Leonard Euler in the early 18th century initiated an ongoing tradition of organizing Laws of Physics within a Principle of Least Action [as in the later Fermat Refraction Principle of Least Action and as in “action” used by Planck, Einstein] which Max Born recommended for a TOE theory of everything.  Such a TOE (of wider scope than the GUT–plus–Relativity sense) might from first principles explain a, b, and other Rees’ Numbers; as well as Numbers and Ratios enumerating and connecting Photons, Dark Matter, Dark Energy and related repulsive High-Temperature scalar fields, Universe & Expansion lumpiness and homogeneity (to 0.001 %), all from a Big Bang Universe portion only an octillionth of a meter across (as regards the visible Universe, whereas fluctuations can be inferred theoretically for beyond-the-visible regions of the Universe, beyond 13.7 B Light-years due to Inflation).

A fantastic Multi-Verse proclamation, or perhaps even long-odds are easy to glibly accept, regarding Constants of Physics, for those not motivated to grant the issue long study and attention, and then again also for those who do so attend but remain intransigent in Physicalist Realism. But for anyone not so entrenched, and curious enough to look at the much published reviews, a WAP, Weak Anthropic Principle (constants fit us because we’re here), veers toward stronger SAP, Strong Anthropic Principle that something is up. Somehow the Universe accommodates us quite by some kind of intention by something/somebody or other. Here was a more sophisticated Paley-watch demanding a Watch-maker. So it was for Hoyle later on:

I do not believe that any Scientist who examined the evidence would fail to draw the inference that the Laws of Nuclear Physics have been deliberately designed with regard to the consequences they produce inside the Stars. If this is so, then my apparent random quirks have become part of a deep-laid scheme. If not we are back again at a monstrous sequence of accidents.             Fred Hoyle, Ensteinian Deist turned Anthropist

Some more selected verses from the other Ramana Maharshi disciple:

The Self is Peace and Happiness. Realizing Peace and Happiness within you is the true realization of the Self. You cannot distinguish between Peace. Happiness, and the Self. They are not separate aspects. You have this idea that Peace and Happiness is within you, so you make some effort to find it there, but at the moment it is still only an idea for you. So, ask yourself, "To whom does this idea come ?  Who has this idea ?"  You must pursue this line if you want to have the idea replaced by the experience. Peace is not an idea, nor is it something that comes and goes. We are always That. So, remain as That. You have no Birth and no Death, no bondage and no freedom. It is perpetual Peace, and it is free from all ideas. The "I am the Body" idea is what is concealing it. This is what has to go.

The idea "I am the Body" is not there during sleep. Everyone enjoys sleeping, and the reason we enjoy it is because there are no thoughts there. It is there during sleep. Everyone enjoys sleeping, and the reason we enjoy it is because there are no thoughts there. It is the thoughts that arise subsequently that cause us all our trouble. There is no separate entity during sleep because no thought has arisen to create the image of one. When waking comes, this first rising thought, ‘I am the body’, brings separation, doubts 72 and confusion. If you can be without it in the waking state there will be_ the knowledge, ‘I am Ramana, I am Arunachala. Everything is myself.‘ Ram, Krishna, etc., are all you. It is just this limiting ‘I am the body’ thought that keeps this knowledge, this awareness from you. In the waking state, the jnani has no limiting thoughts, no ego that identifies with a name and a fonn. His state is crystal clear. Ramana Bhagavan had no ego, no limiting thoughts, which is why he knew himself to be this peace, this happiness.

Grace is always present, always available, but for it to be effective, one must be in a state to receive it and make full use of it. If you want to take a full cup of water from

a lake, you have fully to immerse the cup first. If you want to fill your mind with grace, submerge it fully in the Self. In that place the Grace will manifest in you as Peace and Happiness.

"When the sun comes up, does darkness disappear suddenly or gradually ?" Bhagavan, speaking on this topic, once remarked: "Someone mistakes a rope hanging in the darkness for a snake. He then asks how many years it will take for the snake to die."  If the Mind does not exist, it cannot die either quickly or slowly.

All the information the Mind accumulates & all the experiences it collects are ignorance, false knowledge.  Real knowledge cannot be found in the Mind or in any external location.  Don't be interested in the words that the Mind is serving up for you.  It is putting them there to tempt you into a stream of thoughts that will take you away from the Self.  You have to ignore them all & focus on the light that is shining within you.

The substratum upon which the false idea of the Mind has been superimposed is the Self.  When you see the Mind, the Self, the underlying substratum, is not seen. It is hidden by a false but persistent idea.  And conversely, when the Self is seen there is no Mind.

This habit of believing the 'I am the body' idea has become very strong because you have reinforced & strengthened it over many lifetimes.  This will go if you meditate on your real Self.  The habit will melt away, like ice becoming water.

The Mind only gets dissolved in the Self by constant practice.  At the moment the, "I am the body" idea disappears, just as darkness disappears when the Sun rises.

The body is not the Self; the Mind is not the Self. The real 'I' is the Self, & nothing ever happens to or affects the Self.

The above themes & 1600 pages more are freely available as perused or downloaded PDF’s, the sole occupants of a Public Microsoft Skydrive “Public Folder” accessible through:  

www.jpstiga.com/

http://jstiga.wixsite.com/nonduality/

or with Caps-sensitive:

http://sdrv.ms.YPOgkX/

Duplicates have been available on:

jstiga.wordpress.com/

[But from now on, they will be different & still usually daily.]

NMT (No-Me Teaching) new series 22:

Prior to excerpting the other Ramana Maharshi disciple in the text below we continue the series: Fine-Tuned Universe 15, the premise that a small change in several of the dimensionless fundamental physical constants would make the Universe incapable of Life.

Fine-Tuned Universe 15:

[In the unreal reflection called the "Universe", a product of an unreal Mind, even there, Infinite Intelligence is evident and inspiring.]

Carbon Nucleo–Genesis:

Now to sample a more sophisticated Anthropic observation (in the sense that no Carbon, no Life) careful reasoning called for availability of a hitherto unknown nuclear energy level for the Carbon nucleus, specifically 7.656 MeV predicted by Fred Hoyle and later experimentally verified. Hoyle claimed such a state allowed the previously unimagined nucleo-synthesis in early Main Sequence Stars. Plentiful alpha particles:

a  =  He₄²⁺  or simply  He₄

could combine in fusion:

He₄  +  He₄   ==>   Be₈

and then because a low level meta-stable nuclear energy level (7.656 Me) presented a close departure point for the combination:

He₄  +  Be₈   ==>   C₁₂

which in turn also found a resonant Oxygen nuclear energy level (7.1187 MeV) to allow:

He₄  +  C₁₂   ==>   O₁₆

Thus the elements Carbon and Oxygen had fast and easy synthesis routes and therefore relatively high Stellar abundance (for heavy elements that is) so necessary for Life. But Fine-Tuned  precisely available intermediate metastable states had to exist, just as similar Fine-Tuning made Helium a  particles stable (hence their ejection from radioactive elements) and plentiful (25% of Matter). Beryllium did not much stick around but Carbon and Oxygen could transition to other stable energy levels and remain. But even the interplay between Carbon  &  Oxygen had to be Fine-Tuned  as if by tweaking the Electro-Magnetic  &  Strong nuclear force coupling constants.

Rather steep inter-crossing curves (on a logarithmic abundance scale at that) made for quick slide to excess of deficient Oxygen. If Oxygen started high, like the top-left abundance curve above, with Carbon lower, a small change (percents in the Fine-Structure constant, tenths of a percent in the Strong nuclear force constant) would have made Intelligent Life impossible. Unlike say, Saturn’s larger-than-Earth moon Titan, with lakes, rivers, and oceans of hydrocarbons (~ cold, small molecule gasoline) the plentiful Oxygen on our planet affords us water, characteristic minerals, and the possibility of our kind of Life.

Fine-Tuning in the above process would not have allowed a 4% change in the Fine-Structure constant, from ¹/₁₃₇  to ¹/₁₃₁ for instance nor a smaller change in the Strong nuclear force coupling constant by as little as 0.4%, say from 1.001  to  1.005, for instance.

Some more selected verses from the other Maharshi disciple:

If you spend your life with worldly thoughts, these will be the thoughts that fill your Mind at the moment of your death. But if you life is devoted to sadhana, to

attaining an inner Peace, then, at the moment of your death, this will be the State that you die in.

Your thoughts arise on a moment-to-moment basis because of your vasanas, but it is a mistake to think that you can do nothing about them. You can be interested in them, or you can ignore them. If you show interest in them, they will persist and you will get caught up in them. If you ignore them and keep your attention on the Source, they will not develop. And when they don’t develop, they disappear.

In Who Am I ? Bhagavan compared this process to laying siege to a fort. If you cutoff, one by one, the heads of the thoughts as they come out of the fort of the Mind, sooner or later there will be none left. The way to do this is by Self-Inquiry. As each thought rises, you ask yourself, "To whom does this thought appear ?"

If you are vigilant in doing this, the forest of thoughts will lessen and lessen until there are none left. When the thoughts have gone, Mind will sink into its Source and experience that Source.

Little conversations may be going on. A crowd of people may be congregating around. None of this is your business, but there is always a possibility that you will get interested in some or all of these activities and forget the reason why you are out on the street yourself. Don’t get excited by anything you see and hear. Just walk steadily towards your destination. Your vasanas are all the sides how's in your head that can drag your attention away from your main business, which is being aware of the Self. If you have no interest in them, you will walk straight to your goal. If something temporarily distracts your attention, bring yourself back by asking yourself, "Who is interested in all this ? Who is getting interested in this distraction ?" This will deflate the distracting desire and it will bring you back to an awareness of your true purpose. Remember, nothing that happens in the Mind is "you", and none of it is your business. You don’t have to worry about thoughts that rise up inside you. It is enough that you remember that the thoughts are not you.

Whatever kind of thought arises, have the same reaction: ‘Not me; not my business.’ It can be a good thought or a bad thought. Treat them all the same way. To whom are these thoughts arising ? To you. That means that you are not the thought. You are the Self. Remain as the Self, and don’t latch onto anything that is not the Self.

If you remain as the Self, no vasanas and no karma will touch or affect you. If you remain in the Mind, thoughts of one sort or another will bother you all the time. If the thoughts "I should meditate" or "I should realize" arise, ask yourself, "To whom are these thoughts arising ?"

Why do you need to think about your Body and your Mind so much ? If you are the Light, there is no Darkness. If you are the Self, there is no thought, no Body, and no Mind to give you any trouble. Any number of thoughts may come. Let them. But remember all the time, "I am the Self."

You are not the vasanas, you are not the thoughts, you are the Self. Keep that awareness and don't worry too much about what is going on in your Mind, and what it means.

Don't allow any mis-identifications to settle on you. Don't think, "I am sitting here." Don't think, "I am doing, I am acting, I am sitting." You are the Self, not the Body. Even your vasanas are the Self. All is your Self. There are no distinctions, no differences in the Self. Nothing is separate from the Self. You cannot find a single atom, a single thought that is apart from the Self. All is the Self. All these doubts that are troubling you arise simply because you are enmeshed in the "I am the Body" thought and all the confusing consequences that it brings. It is more productive to keep the awareness "I am the Self" than to be analyzing the usefulness of effort. Sadhana, effort and practice, and any ideas you may have about them, are concepts that can only arise when you believe that you are not the Self, and when you believe that you have to do something to reach the Self.

Even the sequence, "To whom has this thought come ? To me," is based on ignorance of the Truth. Why ? Because it is verbalizing a state of Ignorance; it is perpetuating an erroneous assumption that there is a person who is having troublesome thoughts. You are the Self, not some make-believe person who is having thoughts. If you remain in the Self, as the Self, no harm can come to you. In that State, whatever comes to you will not be a problem. There is no Duality when you remain as the Self; no thoughts about what you should or should not do, and no thoughts about what can be done or what can’t be done. The main thing is not to go out of the Self. When you have switched on the light, darkness cannot come, not even if you desire it.

When this thought, "l am not meditating," or "I am not in the Self," arises, just ignore it and go back to the Self. When thoughts such as these arise, look at them and think, "Not me, not my business," and go back to the Self. Don’t waste energy on thinking or evaluating how well or how badly you are doing in our meditation. Whatever thoughts come, ignore them. You have to ignore anything that is connected to the Body-Mind idea, anything that is based on the notion that you are the Mind or the Body. If you can do this, the rising thought will not disturb or distract you. In a split second, it will run away. All thoughts are distractions. including the thought "I am meditating."

If you are the Self, darkness will not overcome you. Whatever thoughts arise in that State won’t affect you. If you are the Self, no destiny will affect you. If you tear your shirt, does that mean that you are also torn ?  No. Something has happened to something that is not you. Similarly, the Body and the Mind will experience pleasure, happiness, misery, and so on, all according to the karma that has been brought into this life. But the Self has no attachment, no detachment, no happiness, no unhappiness and no karma.

The Body is not the Self; the Mind is not the Self. The real "I" is the Self, and nothing ever happens to or affects the Self. Thoughts will come as long as the potential for them is inside you. Good thoughts, bad thoughts, they will all keep coming. There is nothing you can do about this flow, but at the same time, this flow of thoughts need not be a problem. Be the Self, be the Peace that is your Real Nature, and it will not matter what comes up.

Walk, eat, drink, sleep, meditate, but never think that you are the one who is doing these things. The thought that you are doing something is the thought that is poisoning your life. Because once you think that you are doing something, you will start to think that you need to be doing something else to put yourself in a better situation. You don't have to do anything to experience the nectar of the Self. All you need to do is drop the idea that you are doing anything at all. You need to change your vision, your perspective.

When you live in the Mind and see a World outside you that is separate and apart from you, you will make plans, you will worry, you will have doubts. These doubts keep coming up in you because you are not dwelling in the Source, the Substratum. In that place there is Oneness, a Oneness in which all distinctions, all separation is absent. If you abide as the Self, you will see the World as the Self. In fact, there will be no World at all. No World, no Maya, no Mind, no distinctions of any kind.

It is like the state of seeing only wood in the carved elephant, only threads in the dyed cloth. In that state of being and knowing the Self, ideas of right and wrong, things to do and things to avoid doing, will vanish. You will know that they were just mental concepts. In that state you will know that Mind is the Self, Bondage is the Self, everything is the Self. With that vision, nothing will bind you; nothing will cause you misery. The Self may appear as the manifest World, as different separate objects, but the underlying Reality, the only real substance is the Self in which they are all appearing and disappearing. Things and people may appear in this Substratum, and you may use them or interact with them, but your Peace will never be disturbed.

When you abide as the Self, there is no one left to choose and decide. Life goes on automatically. You will pick up the things that are needed, and not pick up the things that are not needed. What you pick up and what you don’t pick up will not be a consequence of what you like or dislike. These preferences will not be there any more. This perspective will be yours when you give up or cease to believe the idea "I am different from the World’. Giving up this thought is a great sadhana in itself. Abandoning this false idea will be enough to give you Peace. When the thought is there, the World seems to be full of good people and bad people, all busily engaged in doing what appear to you to be good things and bad things. When the thought is absent, you know them all to be your own Self. In that state you won’t like them, dislike them or judge them, or be aware of them as being other than your own Self. This absence of likes, dislikes and judgments will leave you in your original natural state of

Peace. Teeth and tongue are both parts of you, and they both function in harmony, without fighting or struggling. When there is the knowledge that Mind and Self are one, there will be no fights, no struggles, and no attempts to judge or attain. To have this Harmony, place the Mind in the Self and keep it there. This is the real meditation. _ However, until you reach this State in which there are no distinctions and preferences, you should use a little Discrimination with regard to who and what you associate with.

Avoid bad company and bad thoughts, and try to keep the conviction that nothing is separate from you. During sleep you have no likes and dislikes. Jnanis and babies manage this while they are awake. Baby mind is good; jnani mind is good; "I am the Body" Mind is very, very bad.

The "I am the Body" thought is just as poisonous as a cobra. "All is my Self. All is the nectar of my own Self." These are the great affirmations that counter the "I am the Body" thought. Holding on to one of these sayings is the equal of millions of punyas. If we continuously meditate on the Truth of these statements, if we hold on to the Truth that they are pointing towards, countless punyas will accrue to us.

The above themes & 1600 pages more are freely available as perused or downloaded PDF’s, the sole occupants of a Public Microsoft Skydrive “Public Folder” accessible through:  

www.jpstiga.com/

http://jstiga.wixsite.com/nonduality/

or with Caps-sensitive:

http://sdrv.ms.YPOgkX/

Duplicates have been available on:

jstiga.wordpress.com/

[But from now on, they will be different & still usually daily.]

NMT (No-Me Teaching) new series 20:

Prior to excerpting the Ramana Maharshi disciple, Master Nome in the text below we continue the series: Fine-Tuned Universe 13, the premise that a small change in several of the dimensionless fundamental physical constants would make the Universe incapable of Life.

Wisdom for the Ages:

Things are more like they are now than there ever were before.                 

Pres. Dwight D. Eisenhower

Prediction is difficult, especially about the Future.                        

Yankee catcher, Yogi Berra

The Future isn’t what it used to be.   Yogi Berra

I think we can all agree, the Past is no more.                                                

Pres. George W. Bush

I have opinions of my own – strong opinions – but I don’t always agree with them.                        Pres. George W. Bush

If you’re killed, you’ve lost a very important part of your Life.                

actress, Brooke Shields

At the end of the Universe, you have to use the Past tense a lot.             

Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

Eternity is very long, especially toward the end.                             

comedian, Woody Allen

Fine-Tuned Universe 13:

[In the unreal reflection called the "Universe", a product of an unreal Mind, even there, Infinite Intelligence is evident and inspiring.]

Tracing Homo sapiens back 200K yrs compared to the Universe age of 13B yrs, we find ourselves arriving in the last 0.002% of the Universe’s history. But if humans are still be around when this 13B yr old Universe reached the age of 1T yrs (trillion after billion), those descendents would have claimed a history of their own that is  1,000 B – 13 B  +  0.0002 B =  987.2 B yrs, This is comparable to the 1,000 B yr age of the Universe itself at that time. In comparison, they could look back at our time and see us in a “very special” ground-floor status. Now for some time an extended Copernican Principle (which is nearly opposed to Anthropic Principles) is “reluctant” (to say the least) to cast Humanity in any “special” situation at all, including “ground-floor status” or anything of the sort. When Nicolaus Copernicus took Man from the Center of the Universe and put the Sun there instead (a half step to later Cosmology), those carrying forward their Copernican Principle extended this “non-specialness” to parry Anthropic Principles in general and the “descendent-deemed specialness” we would acquire as “ground-floor” proto-Humans.

Copernicus taught us the very sound lesson that we must not assume gratuitously that we occupy a privileged central position in the Universe. Unfortunately there has been a strong (not always subconscious) tendency to extend this to a questionable dogma to the effect that our situation cannot be privileged in any sense.                Brandon Carter

Early Anthropism:

Brandon Carter supported Richard Gott’s resulting Doomsday Hypothesis whereby a statistical argument claimed 95% confidence that Humanity terminates between 5K and 7.8M yrs from now. Otherwise we now would be prior to some 97.5% of succeeding humans. Statistics sees placement in the 2.5% front-knee of Probability or the 2.5% final-knee. So much more likely is it to be found in the middle 95% that Doomsday is thus foretold, just to satisfy the Statistical imperative. While this may seem far-fetched, the Multi-Verse Hypothesis and all extreme defenses of Physicalist–Realism share this incredible fanatical allegiance to Arithmetic at all costs. Of course the 5K and 7.8M yr Doomsday prediction is quite “lax” in that Ray Kurzweil exponential advance models give high Probability to either Destruction or attainment of a “super” Post-Human civilization within the 21st century. To get a further view (albeit playful) Gott sets pre-post Probability boundaries like the 5K– 7.8M yrs above for various institutions based on their current existence and past record. Taking just the front-ends loosely as Statistical “guarantees” (such as Humanity getting 5K yrs), Gott assigned over a hundred years to Stonehenge but only about 50 years to Christianity, China’s Great Wall, and the Roman Pantheon. But the Internet and Microsoft, being so recent, get Statistical “guarantees” of less than a year, and the U.S. less than 6 years. Such is the Doomsday Hypothesis which has however been taken up as a “crash-dummy” model-example by which to analyze (in terms of Self-Selection bias, etc.) various Futurist projections.

Dicke must be credited with the shift of attention from numerological coincidences to the Fine-Tuned delicate balance and interactions within Cosmic Evolution. In the end, Robert Dicke not only redirected the Anthropic numbers hunt from these large numbers toward the more promising narrow range cases, but he began the process of formalizing Observer Bias. John Barrows offers a mundane comparison to “every day” Statistics.

"There are Lies, Damn Lies, and then Statistics."                   Mark Twain & others

Barrows described the common comparison made between church-going and good health. Besides obvious economic-correlates, Barrows suggests the inclusion of Observer-bias here in that the survey skews the sample by excluding the very sick who simply can’t get to church. Another instance is the weaving back and forth between lanes on a crowded multi-lane highway by many drivers. Whatever lane they are in, the other seems to suddenly be faster. On a large scale some logical basis supports part of that impression since slower lanes have a greater density of vehicles. Thus the odds always greater that any given vehicle is the slower lane, though this explains less than the Psychological part. For most surveyed have also thought others in the peer group were happier, that they themselves used to be happier, and that they themselves will be happier in the Future. So like the impatient drivers, these latter of Observer-selection bias.

As early as 1903, the Alfred Wallace, from whom Charles Darwin appropriated natural selection, had recorded striking Anthropic insights prior to modern Geology, Atomic Theory, Relativity, awareness of other Galaxies and so on. He speculated (without adequate basis) on the nature and duration of the Sun’s heat for:

"Maintaining the requisite Temperature of a Sun such as ours, during the long periods demanded for continuous Life-development. The enormous extension and mass of the original Universe of diffused Matter is thus seen to be of the greatest importance as regards this ultimate product of Evolution."

Wallace deduced that Cosmic processes had to fall within certain ranges:

:… or will not be, Time enough for the development of Life."

He continues:

"… we can dimly see the bearing of all the great features of the Stellar Universe upon the successful development of Life. These are, its vast dimensions, the form it has acquired in the mighty ring or the Milky Way, and our position near to, but not exactly in, its center."

Wallace evaluates (with so naming it) Fine-Tuning that he deems “in the highest degree improbable” and suggests that:

"… such a vast and complex Universe as that which we known exists around us, may be required … in order to produce a World that should be precisely adapted in every detail for the orderly development of Life culminating in Man."

John Barrows’ own phrasing is that:

"… the actual values of the constants of Nature help make Life a possibility in the Universe. Moreover, they sometimes appear to allow it to be possible by only a hair’s breadth."

Some more selected verses from the other Maharshi disciple:

You should only work enough to maintain the body. Try to avoid unnecessary activities. Less work is good. Devote yourself to your sadhana all the time. You dissipate your desire for the Self by undertaking all kinds of useless activities that waste your time and lead to attachments. You think that your life is endless and that you can put off meditation till a later date. With this kind of attitude, you will die filled with regrets, not filled with Peace. Always be aware of the Self while you work. While you are doing that work keep your thoughts a hundred per cent on the Self. You are what you think you are. You become what you think. If you think of the Self all the time, that is what you will become. If you live and die with thoughts of work and family, you will I be reborn in a place with more work and more family business l to worry about.

If you spend your life with worldly thoughts, these will be the thoughts that fill your Mind at the moment of your death. But if you life is devoted to sadhana, to attaining an inner Peace, then, at the moment of your death, this will be the State that you die in.

Your thoughts arise on a moment-to-moment basis because of your vasanas, but it is a mistake to think that you can do nothing about them. You can be interested in them, or you can ignore them. If you show interest in them, they will persist and you will get caught up in them. If you ignore them and keep your attention on the Source, they will not develop. And when they don’t develop, they disappear.

In Who Am I ? Bhagavan compared this process to laying siege to a fort. If you cutoff, one by one, the heads of the thoughts as they come out of the fort of the Mind, sooner or later there will be none left. The way to do this is by Self-Inquiry. As each thought rises, you ask yourself, "To whom does this thought appear ?"

If you are vigilant in doing this, the forest of thoughts will lessen and lessen until there are none left. When the thoughts have gone, Mind will sink into its Source and experience that Source.

Little conversations may be going on. A crowd of people may be congregating around. None of this is your business, but there is always a possibility that you will get interested in some or all of these activities and forget the reason why you are out on the street yourself. Don’t get excited by anything you see and hear. Just walk steadily towards your destination. Your vasanas are all the sides how's in your head that can drag your attention away from your main business, which is being aware of the Self. If you have no interest in them, you will walk straight to your goal. If something temporarily distracts your attention, bring yourself back by asking yourself, "Who is interested in all this ? Who is getting interested in this distraction ?" This will deflate the distracting desire and it will bring you back to an awareness of your true purpose. Remember, nothing that happens in the Mind is "you", and none of it is your business. You don’t have to worry about thoughts that rise up inside you. It is enough that you remember that the thoughts are not you.

Whatever kind of thought arises, have the same reaction: ‘Not me; not my business.’ It can be a good thought or a bad thought. Treat them all the same way. To whom are these thoughts arising ? To you. That means that you are not the thought. You are the Self. Remain as the Self, and don’t latch onto anything that is not the Self.

The above themes & 1600 pages more are freely available as perused or downloaded PDF’s, the sole occupants of a Public Microsoft Skydrive “Public Folder” accessible through:  

www.jpstiga.com/

http://jstiga.wixsite.com/nonduality/

or with Caps-sensitive:

http://sdrv.ms.YPOgkX/

Duplicates have been available on:

jstiga.wordpress.com/

[But from now on, they will be different & still usually daily.]

NMT (No-Me Teaching) new series 18:

Prior to excerpting the other Ramana Maharshi disciple in the text below we continue the series: Fine-Tuned Universe 11, the premise that a small change in several of the dimensionless fundamental physical constants would make the Universe incapable of Life.

Fine-Tuned Universe 11:

[In the unreal reflection called the "Universe", a product of an unreal Mind, even there, Infinite Intelligence is evident and inspiring.]

"It may be necessary for the Universe to have the enormous size and complexity which modern Astronomy has revealed, in order for the Earth to be possible habitation for living beings."                             Eric Mascall

Large Numbers:

Eminent Physicists such as Paul Dirac  & Arthur Eddington essentially embarrassed themselves in the eyes of their peers when they dabbled in a virtual numerological fascination with coincidental relationships that could be drawn between fundamental constants in Physics. A more contemporary set of insights began with Robert Dicke’s early 1960’s studies of Einstein’s Gravity and the constant G.  His early deduction was that the Dirac–Eddington large numbers: 10⁴⁰, 10⁸⁰,  & 10¹²⁰ related to the number of particles in the Universe (Eddington claimed the number of Protons was 10⁸⁰). Indeed and there was a WAP Weak Anthropic Principle (as it was later termed by Brandon Carter) “backwards” dependence on the existence of Intelligent Life. The numbers of particles and related size of the Universe would over the course of Time range from far less to far more than we see today. And yet the large number coincidences include Time  & Size:

present Universe temperature in terms of Planck Temperature           –          10^–30

present Universe age in Planck Time-units                                         –          10⁶⁰

present Universe size in Planck Length-units                                      –          10⁶⁰

present Universe mass in Planck Mass-units                                       –          10⁶⁰

present Universe density in terms of Planck Density                           –          10^–120

Needless to say, however valid the striking “round-number” quality of the numbers, this must rely on our arbitrary decimal 10-base system for values and ratios of this sort. Unless we want to include 10-digit anatomy into the Anthropic Principle basket, not much can be made of this. The narrow-range coincidences that followed these early speculations have more potential significance. Then again the run of 10⁶⁰’s in 3 of the Planck units have some relative impact, as well as the fact that square root of (1/10⁶⁰) yields the Temperature term, while the square yields the Density term.

An earlier Universe could not have supported Life, nor could a much older Universe. For the former scenario, Billions of years of Main Star sequence are required by Stellar nucleo-synthesis for heavier (than Helium) life-critical elements C, N, O, and P. Numerous more complex, anthropic, narrow-range, coincidental requirements further append, such as Neutrino characteristics and availability as just one aspect of super-nova dispersion of those heavier elements. For the latter issue, our Sun for instance will “soon” (in cosmic Time) grow too cold for Life on Earth even as a Red Giant our Sun expands to engulf the Earth.

So the fact that we are here today to discuss the matter “necessitates” that the numbers we see today are as they are. This Goldilocks fit between ourselves and our “nest” could alternatively be described in terms of the age of the Universe, the value of fundamental force parameters, the nature of the Big Bang, and so on. Thus the incredible coincidences we see in Physics do “depend” on us because unless they happen to be what they are, we wouldn’t be here to discuss it all. As to how such “coincidences” (including many more amazing ones to be soon mentioned) can be understood in Probability, 3 options remain:

            1) sheer freak – Chance

            2) kazillions of other universes exhibit all possible combinations, and we simple are in the one, or one of those that permit Intelligent Life a – Multi–Verse ensemble

            3) the game is fixed –  Intelligent Design by a deity or cosmic intelligence, advanced alien fabricating physically or virtually in a computer simulation, those later  aliens possibly some Future physical beings (other than our virtual descendents).

            Naturally, from these 3 alternatives we find 3 camps: the apathetic skeptic who accepts the long odds without further curiosity; the spatial or serially temporal Multi-Verse & Many Worlds speculators (isn’t that asking a lot, a kazillion unprovable universes?); those who insist Design must remain on the table and cannot be rejected, out of hand, due to personal bias.

            Similar as it is to previous speculations by Dirac, Eddington, and others, Dicke’s calculated prime-time star-life, supporting Life and supporting more of a rationale, proceeded as:

            t^*   @    (h c/G M_p²) (h/ M_p c² )   @   10⁴⁰  x  10^–23  sec   @  10 Billion yrs

Dicke’s insight totally turned around the many critics of Dirac  &  Eddington linking of the “large numbers” with current age of the Universe. This seemed so arbitrary to Physicists like Edward Milne who saw no special uniqueness in our own Time. Nor did Dicke validate the Dirac –Eddington misapplication of the Universe’s current age, but instead put the Anthropic coincidence on a solid basis, while at the same time setting the stage for others to carefully scrutinize nucleo-synthesis in super-novae  &  earlier all the way back to the Big Bang. From investigations of this sort many truly narrow-range coincidences did come to light.

So we are throw back to the hypothesis that 10⁴⁰ is simply the largest number the almighty God could write during the 1^st Day of Creation. an atheist satire from jokester George Gamow,

Some more selected verses from the other Maharshi disciple:

The Self is Peace and Happiness. Realizing Peace and Happiness within you is the true realization of the Self. You cannot distinguish between Peace. Happiness, and the Self. They are not separate aspects. You have this idea that Peace and Happiness is within you, so you make some effort to find it there, but at the moment it is still only an idea for you. So, ask yourself, "To whom does this idea come ?  Who has this idea ?"  You must pursue this line if you want to have the idea replaced by the experience. Peace is not an idea, nor is it something that comes and goes. We are always That. So, remain as That. You have no Birth and no Death, no bondage and no freedom. It is perpetual Peace, and it is free from all ideas. The "I am the Body" idea is what is concealing it. This is what has to go.

The idea "I am the Body" is not there during sleep. Everyone enjoys sleeping, and the reason we enjoy it is because there are no thoughts there. It is the

there during sleep. Everyone enjoys sleeping, and the reason we enjoy it is because there are no thoughts there. It is the thoughts that arise subsequently that cause us all our trouble. There is no separate entity during sleep because no thought has arisen to create the image of one. When waking comes, this first rising thought, ‘I am the body’, brings separation, doubts 72 and confusion. If you can be without it in the waking state there will be_ the knowledge, ‘I am Ramana, I am Arunachala. Everything is myself.‘ Ram, Krishna, etc., are all you. It isjust this limiting ‘I am the body’ thought that keeps this knowledge, this awareness from you. In the waking state, the jnani has no limiting thoughts, no ego that identifies with a name and a fonn. His state is crystal clear. Ramana Bhagavan had no ego, no limiting thoughts, which is why he knew himself to be this peace, this happiness.

Grace is always present, always available, but for it to be effective, one must be in a state to receive it and make full use of it. If you want to take a full cup of water from

a lake, you have fully to immerse the cup first. If you want to fill your mind with grace, submerge it fully in the Self. In that place the Grace will manifest in you as Peace and Happiness.

"When the sun comes up, does darkness disappear suddenly or gradually ?" Bhagavan, speaking on this topic, once remarked: "Someone mistakes a rope hanging in the darkness for a snake. He then asks how many years it will take for the snake to die."  If the Mind does not exist, it cannot die either quickly or slowly.

All the information the Mind accumulates & all the experiences it collects are ignorance, false knowledge.  Real knowledge cannot be found in the Mind or in any external location.  Don't be interested in the words that the Mind is serving up for you.  It is putting them there to tempt you into a stream of thoughts that will take you away from the Self.  You have to ignore them all & focus on the light that is shining within you.

The substratum upon which the false idea of the Mind has been superimposed is the Self.  When you see the Mind, the Self, the underlying substratum, is not seen. It is hidden by a false but persistent idea.  And conversely, when the Self is seen there is no Mind.

This habit of believing the 'I am the body' idea has become very strong because you have reinforced & strengthened it over many lifetimes.  This will go if you meditate on your real Self.  The habit will melt away, like ice becoming water.

The Mind only gets dissolved in the Self by constant practice.  At the moment the, 'I am the body' idea disappears, just as darkness disappears when the Sun rises.

The body is not the Self; the Mind is not the Self. The real 'I' is the Self, & nothing ever happens to or affects the Self.

The above themes & 1600 pages more are freely available as perused or downloaded PDF’s, the sole occupants of a Public Microsoft Skydrive “Public Folder” accessible through:  

www.jpstiga.com/

http://jstiga.wixsite.com/nonduality/

or with Caps-sensitive:

http://sdrv.ms.YPOgkX/

Duplicates (but with graphics) have been available on:

www.blogger.com     as  "Being-as-Consciousness, Non-Duality - new & final version" with link:

http://being-as-consciousness.blogspot.com/

Duplicates  have been available on:

jstiga.wordpress.com/

[But from now on, they will be different & still usually daily.]

NMT (No-Me Teaching) new series 16:

Prior to excerpting the other Ramana Maharshi disciple in the text below we continue the series: Fine-Tuned Universe 9, the premise that a small change in several of the dimensionless fundamental physical constants would make the Universe incapable of Life.

Fine-Tuned Universe 9:

[In the unreal reflection called the "Universe", a product of an unreal Mind, even there, Infinite Intelligence is evident and inspiring.]

Most scientists (as Atheists) favor Multi-Verses. They only ask: "What sorts could there be ? And how might their existence help us to understand those Life-supporting features of our own Universe, that would otherwise appear to be just very fortuitous coincidences ?"  These questions are not ultimately matters of opinion or idle speculation. Multi-Verses are thought to be necessary for an underlying "Theory of Everything" TOE that would join Gravity to the GUT Grand Unified Theory of the other 3 Forces: Strong & Weak Nuclear & Electro-Magnetic.

A TOE may require many properties of the Universe to have been selected at random, by Symmetry Breaking, from a large collection of possibilities [Multi-Verse, dubiously supported by "iffy" observations of the COBE and WMAP satellites]. The Universe’s Vacuum State may be far from unique.

Inflationary Cosmological models contains many apparent "coincidences" that may allow the Universe to support complexity & Life. If we were to consider a Multi-Verse of all possible Universes, then our observed Universe appears special in many ways. Modern Quantum Mechanics provides ways in which these possible Universes that make up the Multi-Verse of all possibilities can actually exist.

Once you take seriously that all possible Universes can or do exist, then a slippery slope opens up before you. It has long been recognized that technical civilizations, only a little more advanced than ourselves, will have the capability to simulate [VR] Universes in which self-conscious entities can emerge & communicate with one another. They would have computer power that differed from ours by a vast factor [as in interactive VR simulations like The Matrix movie]. Instead of merely simulating their weather or the formation of Galaxies, like we do, they would be able to go further and watch the appearance of Stars and Planetary systems. Then, having coupled the rules of Biochemistry into their Astronomical simulations they would be able to watch the evolution of Life & Consciousness – ???? I doubt that), all speeded up to occur on whatever timescale was convenient for them [like micro-seconds ].

Just as we watch the Life cycles of fruit flies they would be able to follow the Evolution of Life, watch Civilizations grow and communicate with each other, argue about whether there existed a Great Programmer in the Sky who created their Universe and who could intervene at will in defiance of the laws of Nature they habitually observed.

Once this capability to fully simulate a Universe is achieved, fake Universes [including "nostalgia" Universes set in our own time] will proliferate and will soon greatly outnumber the real ones. Thus, Nick Böstrom has argued that a thinking being, here and now, is more likely to be in a simulated "nostalgia" Universe reality than in a real Universe. Motivated by this alarming conclusion, here have even been suggestions as how best to conduct ourselves if we have a high probability of being simulated beings in a simulated reality. [Qualified Non-Duality says much the same.]

Some suggest that you should act so as to increase the chances of continuing to exist in the simulation or of being "re-simulated" [dreaded Re-incarnation ???] in the Future.

"If you might be living in a simulation then all else equal you should care less about others, live more for today, make your World look more likely to become rich, expect to & try more to participate in pivotal events, be more entertaining & praiseworthy, & keep the famous people around you happier & more interested in you." [Sounds like a fair description of an inflated Ego – the opposite to the goal of Non-Duality & Liberation from the false notion of any Ego.]

In response, Paul Davies has argued that this high probability of living in a simulated reality is a reductio ad absurdum for the whole idea that Multi-Verses of all possibilities exist. It would undermine our hopes of acquiring any sure knowledge about the Universe.

[Actually, Nick Böstrom's thesis does not require a Multi-Verse at all.  Rather it suggests a different kind of "Multi-Verse" within our own one singular Universe, our own World, planet Earth. All that is required is going past Ray Kurzweil's so-called Singularity where Technology & augmented IQ of the Elite has advanced to allow simulations like & beyond "The Matrix" movie. Simulated Multi-Verses can be created but no physical Multi-Verse is required for a Bayesian-like Probability to make our existence as Simulations the most probable.] Next time: more on the Davies abjection & Simulated Universes.

Some more selected verses from the other Maharshi disciple:

You stumble around in the darkness of your Mind, not knowing that you have a torch in your hand. That light is the Light of the Self. Switch it on and leave it on and you will never stumble again. You are all here because there is a desire in you to realize the Self. This desire does not arise randomly or accidentally in some people and not in others. It is there because of the punyas you have accumulated from previous births, punyas that may have come from meditation, charitable works, and so on. These punyas will manifest as a desire for freedom, a desire to do earnest sadhana, a. desire to find a good teacher in whose presence the Truth will be taught and revealed. If someone is destined to be a jnani in this life, it means that he has come to this final birth with a mountain of punyas to his credit. These punyas will take him to a real Guru, to a real Satsang, and in this environment he will do sadhana and achieve the goal. If one does not have this mountain of punyas from the Past, there will be no desire for Freedom, no desire to look for a Guru who can deliver it. Such a person may meet a Guru and that Guru may even give him good advice, but the determined resolve to put that advice into effect will not be there.

The fierce determination to succeed and the Discrimination that allows one to ignore Worldly entanglements only arise in those who have accumulated these punyas. Other people may hear the words of truth, but although they accept that they are true, the inclination to act on them will not be there.

Wet wood does not catch fire easily, but if you dry it for a long time in the Sun it will be much more combustible. Other materials such as camphor, gasoline, kerosene and gunpowder will ignite as soon as they are touched by a flame. Devotees can be classified in the same way: some ignite as soon as they meet a Guru or hear the truth for the first time; others need a period of drying out before they are ready to catch fire. Those who are damp or wet can dry themselves out by sadhana, by having a strong determination to be aware of the Self at all times. Self is readily available all the time but we cannot be aware of it or even put our attention on the thought of it because our vasanas are continuously leading our interest and attention in other directions. That is why it is so important to have the awareness, "I am not the Mind. I am the Self." You have forcibly to drag your wandering attention back to the Self each time it shows an interest in going anywhere else. Don’t be interested in the words that the Mind is serving up for you. It is putting them there to tempt you into a stream of thoughts that will take you away from the Self. You have to ignore them all and focus on the Light that is shining within you. When I was serving Bhagavan in the 1930's and 40's, I obeyed only him. For me, he was the Light, and everything else was the chattering Mind trying to lead me astray. I ignored the words and advice of everyone else in the Ashram and kept all my attention on Bhagavan and his instructions to me.

If there is no external Light such as Bhagavan to guide you, you have to look within to find the Self. You will not benefit from looking anywhere else, from doing anything else, or from listening to any other voice. Walking round and round a temple, doing rituals to a deity — activities like these will not bring you any nearer to the Self. The pujas, the japas, the rituals - these are just for beginners. Meditation is the syllabus in a higher class. We need not waste our time by indulging in the activities of the infant class again and again. Here, in this class, l ask you to put all your attention, all your interest on realising the final teaching: "I am not the Body or the Mind. I am the Self. All is the Self." This is Bhagavan’s Final teaching. Nothing more needs to be added to it. Keep good company while you pursue this Knowledge and all will be well.

You must believe the Guru and you must also believe your own experience because the Gum is not telling you to add another belief to your Mind. He is instead telling you to look at your own experience of yourself, and in doing so, disregard everything else.

Ram Tirtha used to tell of a man who was a little mad lived in a small village with his wife. His friends liked to tease him and make fun of him because they all thought he was stupid. One day, one of them said, "We have some bad news for you. Your wife has become a widow." He believed them and started crying out in grief, "My wife has become a widow! My wife has become a widow!" Some of the people he passed on the street laughed at him and said, "Why are you mourning ? You are very much alive. How can your wife be a widow if you yourself are alive to complain about it ?" "My closest friends have told me this," he replied, "and I trust them. They are very reliable people. If they are saying that my wife has become a widow, it must be true." We would think that a man who behaved like this was utterly stupid because he chose to believe the words of others instead of his own experience.

But are we any better ? We believe, on the basis of indirect information provided by the Senses, that we are the Body. The experience of "I am", of the Self, is present in all of us, but when the mischievous Senses gang up on us and try to make us believe something that is patently untrue, we believe them and ignore our direct experience. Then we grieve about our State, lamenting, "I am bound; I am unenlightened; I am not free." And even when the Guru comes along and says, "You are the Self. You are free. Why do you insist on believing this misinformation that the mischievous senses are giving you ?", still you do not believe the truth. You tell him, "The Senses have always given me reliable information in the past. I have learned to trust them. What they |tell me must be true."

And so you go on grieving and complaining, even when your direct experience and the words of the Guru agree with each other and reveal the truth.

The above themes & 1600 pages more are freely available as perused or downloaded PDF’s, the sole occupants of a Public Microsoft Skydrive “Public Folder” accessible through:  

www.jpstiga.com/

http://jstiga.wixsite.com/nonduality/

or with Caps-sensitive:

http://sdrv.ms.YPOgkX/

Duplicates (but with graphics) have been available on:

jstiga.wordpress.com/

[But from now on, they will be different & still usually daily.]

NMT (No-Me Teaching) new series 14:

                                                                                       Annamalai Swami 

You have to make an enormous effort to realize the self.  It is very easy on the way to stop and fall back into ignorance.  At any moment you can fall back you have to make a strong determined ever to remain on the peak when you 1st reach it, but eventually a time will come when you are fully est. in the self.  When that happens, you cannot fall.                     Annamalai Swami

100 Billion
[for a while, the following will preface all these blogs – so please skip over if seen before]
In order to hint at how serious this Blog is, let the author unequivocally state that the Knowledge here imparted, none of it original, none to be credited to the author, that Knowledge is THE MOST VALUABLE treasure that exists. If hypothetically offered 100 Billion dollars to forgo this Knowledge, that offer or any other would be disregarded in the blink of an eye.  Even with all the good that might be accomplished with $100B, this Knowledge is beyond the World & comes from beyond the Mind. This is no hyperbole.

Prior to excerpting the other Ramana Maharshi disciple in the text below we continue the series: Fine-Tuned Universe 7, the premise that a small change in several of the dimensionless fundamental physical constants would make the Universe incapable of Life.

Fine-Tuned Universe 7:

[In the unreal reflection called the "Universe", a product of an unreal Mind, even there, Infinite Intelligence is evident and inspiring.]

Barrow & Tipler stated that the Anthropic Principle seemingly "imposes" a "selection effect" on the Universe.  The ancient Greek Sage, the yearly Eleatic philosopher Parmenides suggested a Multi-Verse to interpret the subjective element of Sense Perception. Like many Eleatic ideas, the Multi-Verse speculation found its way into later Philosophy schools, most famously the Eleatic-Zeno Dialectic "elenchus" method, the Platonic Academy & Aristotle's Peripatetic Lyceum.

Barrow& Tipler referred to a number of groups of anthropic principles including the Weak Anthropic Principles (WAP) & the Strong Anthropic Principle (SAP).  That Strong Anthropic Principle (SAP).in turn, had at least 3 different interpretations. Common to these principles and their interpretations is the idea that human beings must be "constituents" in any Cosmology that human beings might theorize.  Of the 3 SAP interpretations, Barrow and Tipler divide "Purposive" arguments into 2 types, called

Teleological arguments and Eutaxio-Logical arguments. Neither is given much credence outside religious circles, and certainly not in mainstream Science. The one Teleological argument was further divided into 2 kinds: those of Anthropocentrism & Finalism.

The Anthropocentric assumption held that each thing has our benefit as its purpose.  Contrariwise, Teleological & Finalistic arguments saw  all entities (including human beings) as having some Ultimate Purpose,

Eutaxio-logical arguments are the standard Intelligent Design arguments, such as "Paley's Watch" whereby such a fantastically Fine-Tuned Universe had ti be made by Somebody.  Such weighed heavily, Cause & Effect. Causality claimed that order has to have some resulting Purpose.

.

Of the other Anthropic Principles, the "weak" WAP's hold that values of all physical and cosmological quantities take on values restricted by the requirement that there exist sites where Carbon-based Life can evolve and by the requirement that the Universe

be old enough for it to have already done so. Those necessary conditions, if occurring, accommodate those conditions that will account naturally for our being here.

Such  WAP's have the same sort of self-evidence that "I exist" & have been mistaken for Tautologies, that is, redundantly obvopius "equations" like "X  =  X". What we must discover about Stars & Galaxies, the development of the heavier elements from Hydrogen & Helium, Stellar life-times, the Age & Size of the Universe, etc. are all "conditioned" by the fact of our being here.

The stellar production of Beryllium from Helium, & of Carbon from Helium & Beryllium caused Fred Hoyle to predict lize that unless Carbon resonated extremely close to about 7.7 MeV, [as mentioned in an earlier Blog]. Much less Carbon would have been produced  observed to exist & Carbon-based Life could not have evolved). Hoyle and others then proved the predicted resonance. proof, prediction itself holds some weight on Science.  But Barrow & Tipler claimed that the extremely close fit "confirmed a WAP, Weak Anthropic Principle."

Some more selected verses from the other Maharshi disciple:

Constant meditation is the only way. If you bring the light into your room, the darkness immediately goes away. You have to see that the light is not put out. It has to be continuously burning so that there is no darkness. Until you get firmly established in the Self, you have to continue with your meditation. Doubts take possession of you only if you forget yourself.

When you forget the state of being yourself, then is the time to Inquire, "Who forgets the Self‘ ?"  "Who is in doubt ?"  "Who is having the confusion ?"  Inquire in this way. Discard all that is not you and come back to yourself.

Give up all your desires, your likes, dislikes and preferences. If you are truly the whole, which part of yourself will you like or dislike ?

If a disciple serves a Guru, the Guru does not gain anything from it, but the disciple, by his service, becomes purified and fit to receive the Truth. A ship may be taking you to the other shore of the ocean, but the ship itself is not gaining anything from you.

At the same time the Guru resides within us as the Unmanifest Self. From the inside, he is pulling us towards him. This pushing and pulling is the Guru’s Grace. For the Guru’s Grace to work on us, we have to Surrender. We have to give up all the things of this World, and all other Worlds, and direct all our attention towards the Self.  If we want anything in this World or the next, our energy will be dispersed in these desires, and to fulfill these desires we shall have to reborn again and again.

Don’t forget your Self wherever you go. If you can manage this, you will not need anything else.

"What you are really looking for is you yourself. You cannot achieve success in this by going on external searches because you yourself are the one that is being looked for. Your Real Nature is Peace. Forgetting this, you have lost your Peace and you are searching in the outside World where there is no Peace to be found."  This is the teaching of Bhagavan, my Guru. I am passing it on to you.

You must understand who you are and what you are, and then you must remain as that. If you can manage this, this itself will suffice. Right now you are under the impression that you are your Body and your Mind, but the truth is, you are the Self. Let go of the "I" that you imagine yourself to be and catch hold of the real "I", the Self.  You are holding onto the idea that you are your Body and your Mind. Having assumed this, you are now looking for an external God so that you can worship him. Though such worship may be beneficial, it will not take you beyond the realm of the Mind. While you hold onto the idea that you are a person inside a Body, whatever you see will be a manifestation of your own Mind. You cannot transcend the Mind by worshipping your own external projections.

The above themes & 1600 pages more are freely available as perused or downloaded PDF’s, the sole occupants of a Public Microsoft Skydrive “Public Folder” accessible through:  

www.jpstiga.com/

http://jstiga.wixsite.com/nonduality/

or withs Caps-sensitive:

http://sdrv.ms.YPOgkX/ 

Duplicates have been available on:

jstiga.wordpress.com/

[But from now on, they will be different & still usually daily.]

NMT (No-Me Teaching) new series 12:

"In saying "I had a Dream; I was in Deep Dreamless Sleep; I am Awake," you admit you were there all the time.  It is like a Cinema.  The Screen is always there but various pictures appear on the Screen and then vanish. Nothing affects the screen, since you remain ever your own Self in all 3 States.  If you know that the 3 States will not trouble you. Just as nothing affected the Screen, things that happened during the Waking, Dream, & Deep Dreamless Sleep States do not affect you and you remain your own Self."                                                                                                            Ramana Maharshi
100 Billion
[for a while, the following will preface all these blogs – so please skip over if seen before]
In order to hint at how serious this Blog is, let the author unequivocally state that the Knowledge here imparted, none of it original, none to be credited to the author, that Knowledge is THE MOST VALUABLE treasure that exists. If hypothetically offered 100 Billion dollars to forgo this Knowledge, that offer or any other would be disregarded in the blink of an eye.  Even with all the good that might be accomplished with $100B, this Knowledge is beyond the World & comes from beyond the Mind. This is no hyperbole.
Prior to excerpting the other Ramana Maharshi disciple in the text below we continue the series: Fine-Tuned Universe 5, the premise that a small change in several of the dimensionless fundamental physical constants would make the Universe incapable of Life.
Fine-Tuned Universe 5:
[In the unreal reflection called the "Universe", a product of an unreal Mind, even there, Infinite Intelligence is evident and inspiring.]
The Anthropic Principle says that the Universe appears "designed" for the sake of human Life. The emergence of humans requires physical constants, laws, and properties that fall within certain narrow ranges, Fine-Tuning.
One factor is the ratio of the Gravitational force constant to the Electro-Magnetic force constant. The ratio must hold to one part in 10⁴⁰ (one part in ten thousand trillion trillion trillion) without eliminating the possibility for Life – this ratio being one of some 38 such Anthropic Fine-Tuned Parameters. Of these, the most sensitive is the Space Energy Density (the self-stretching property of the Universe). Its value cannot vary by more than one part in 10¹²⁰ and still allow for the stars and planets that Life requires.
Evidence of specific "preparation" for human existence shows up in the characteristics of the Solar System, as well, some 150 Fine-Tuned characteristics. The odds that any given planet in the Universe [given that planets became possible] would possess the necessary conditions to support Intelligent Life are now estimated as one in 10¹⁷³ .
Roughly 15 Billion years represents a minimum preparation time for advanced life. But in just 10 Million years or less, Earth will lose its ability to sustain human Life. In fact, this estimate of the human habitability time window may be grossly optimistic. In all likelihood, a nearby supernova eruption, a climatic perturbation, a social or environmental upheaval, or the genetic accumulation of negative mutations will doom the species to extinction sometime sooner than twenty thousand years from now. Some take a mere 100 years to be generous, at least for civilized human Life after Environment decay, poverty, war & disease.
Some more selected verses from the other Maharshi disciple:
If the meditation is not continuous enough, the other part of the Mind becomes predominant. You have to overpower this Mind that is taking you away from yourself.
We can all be like this if circumstances demand it. There are occasions when a show of anger is needed. We can play the role of being angry, but at the same time we can know that we are just acting out a role that is needed at a particular moment.
Jnani's usually come to their last births with a mountain of punyas [merits] on account of what they have done in their previous lives. The Jnani cannot experience all these punyas himself, but those who come into contact with him can receive them as blessings. The same thing can be said for all the papams [de-merits] that the Jnani brings to his final life. A poor man can suddenly become rich if a millionaire takes a liking to him and gives him a lot of money. Those who come to a Jnani and do selfless service to him find themselves becoming spiritual millionaires when they receive the Jnani's unused punyas. And those who come to abuse and insult the Jnani end up receiving all his unused papams. This is an automatic process. The Jnani does not pick and choose the people who are going to be the recipients of these punyas. This transfer happens automatically. Devotees grow spiritually by receiving all these blessings. They reach heights that would be difficult or impossible to reach through their own efforts. My own life illustrates this. When I was very young I stayed alone, doing all kinds of spiritual practice by myself. I doubt that I could have experienced the truth of the Self through my own efforts. Fortunately, grace brought me to Bhagavan, and through Bhagavan’s Grace I had the opportunity to serve him. My proximity to Bhagavan and the work I did for him made me ready for the Truth.
I learned this lesson about the necessity of being in the Jnani's Presence early on. After a few weeks there I found myself disappointed by the attitude of many of the people I found around Bhagavan. They seemed to be more interested in gossiping than in doing meditation. I knew that Bhagavan was a great man, but I didn't feel comfortable living with people whom I thought were not taking the spiritual life very seriously. I decided to leave the Ashram and meditate by myself. My attempt to run away was not successful. Bhagavan’s grace and power brought me back from Polur, the place I had run away to. As I sat in front of Bhagavan on my first day back, Bhagavan looked at me, and while he was looking I began to hear the words of one of the verses from Ulladu Narpadu Anubandham resonating in my Heart: I "The Supreme State which is praised and which is attained here in this life by clear Inquiry, which rises in the Heart when association with a sadhu is gained, is impossible to attain by listening to teachers, by studying and learning the meaning of the scriptures, by virtuous deeds, or by any other means."
I had never read this work before, so I don’t know how these words managed to repeat themselves inside me. No one else heard them except me. The verse praises association with a Jnani, saying that association with such a being is far more productive for sadhaks than doing spiritual practice by oneself. After hearing these words I got the courage to stay and serve Bhagavan.
I just listened to what my Guru told me, and I carried out his instructions to the best of my ability. Then, one day in the hall, Bhagavan turned to me and said, "Your karmas are over."  I had this great opportunity to surrender to a Guru like Bhagavan, to trust him and to serve him. It didn’t happen through my own efforts. This kind of thing happens very rarely, for beings such as Bhagavan don’t appear very often. If you want to learn, you have to go to school. If you want Jnana, you have to go to a Jnani I want to speak some more about the Grace of the Guru. Bhagavan told me that the Guru is the Self who is within. The Self manifests in a form and pushes the Minds of devotees towards the Self.

The above themes & 1600 pages more are freely available as perused or downloaded PDF’s, the sole occupants of a Public Microsoft Skydrive “Public Folder” accessible through:  

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[But after this one, they will be different & still usually daily.]