the Mahavakyas  –  great proclamations

Prajnanam Brahma

"Consciousness is Brahman"

Aitareya U. 3.3, Rig V

 Ayam Atma Brahma

"This Self is Brahman"    

Mandukya U. 1.2, Atharva V.

Tat Twam As

"That Thou Art"

Brihadaranyaka U. 1.4.10, Yajur V.

Aham Brahmasmi

"I am Brahman"

Chhandogya U. 6.7.8, Sama V.

In one possible sequence, the one above, the gist of the Mahavakyas:

Consciousness is the actual nature of Absolute Reality, nothing else actually exists, but rather only seems to appear in that Consciousness.  The self of all, of you & I, is just that same Brahman, Consciousness.  Precisely, That is what you are.  "I am Brahman" (Consciousness) is the inescapable conclusion.

[Attempting to resume this Blog after physical limitations, only to lapse again, this time there is resolve to follow-through.]

Dakshina

All is Karma, All is Grace,

Living Dharma, All is Space.

What follows is Dakshina, offering to God, as Guru.  Dakshina–murti is also the name given to the primal Guru, as form taken on by Absolute Shiva, Supreme God or Brahman.  The non-sequential lineage of Dakshina–murti includes the Sage Ribhu of the Ribhu Gita, or Song of Ribhu.  Like included ins Guadapada who pronounced Advaita Vedanta’s acme school of Ajata-Vada, the most UQND Un-Qualified Non-Duality. Guadapada was the guru of the guru of (param-guru) of Shankara & in the 20^th century, Ramana Maharshi.  Herein is only their Teaching & that enunciated by Ramana’s disciple Master Nome.  The author can claim none of the essential content, but only some quirks of wording & occasional analogies & interpretations.  But just that is the humble Dakshina, offering to Dakshina–murti & his lineage.  By the Grace of those gurus, what follows can help in the inevitable attainment of compete Enlightenment, Awakening to the True Reality of the Self.

[The little chant under the heading comes from Neem Karoli students, with the meaning taken here to be that all of "daily life" is inescapable, earned Karma, so remain Detached.  But at the same time, all is also Grace.  Dharma in this case means spiritual practice, while "Space" is increasing merger with & as Formless Brahman.]

We can scratch the surface of Master Nome’s wisdom by reviewing some aphorisms appearing early in his teachings. He following are some examples., collected under a number of central topics.

HAPPINESS

Desire is the urge to be happy. The sense of Happiness in any experience does not come from the thing experienced. Happiness is within.  When Desire is faced inwardly, it yields Wisdom.

WORLD

Illusion is that which is not.  All that is objective is illusion.  The World is unreal.  Do not be afraid to let go of a World that does not really exist.  It is better to say the World is in you than you are in the World.  There is no World (any objective thing), & there is no one to experience or know it.  There has never been a single objective thing. All objective things change, that which is Real does not change.  It is you who say that anything is real. the object does not declare its own reality. To known the Reality, know yourself. Any object of experience has no more existence separate from the Self than printed letters from a page of paper, or waves from water. An unreal Body performs unreal actions in an unreal World.

DREAM

Ego, manifestation, form & ignorance: these are like an optical illusion, a mirage, a Dream without substance, the life-history of a fictional character.  Regard all manifestation as an hallucination or as a Day-dream lasting but a moment.  Consider the World to be a Dream, & discover the absence of the Dreamer. Regard all Thought as an empty echo & the World as a Dream. Know the World to be unreal & yourself as not a character in it, & the Dream is over. To expect the perception of forms - the World, Body, Senses, & Thought - to disappear at its own level to transcend them is like expecting the Dream character in one’s Dream to see the Dream forms - Dream World, Dream Body, Dream Senses, & Dream Thoughts - disappear within the Dream, before waking up. When the forms - the World, Body, Senses, & Thought - vanish, the Reality of pure, transcendent Being alone remains. Even when the World is thought of as appearing, the Reality of pure, transcendent Being alone remains.

SPACE

The World, Time, Space, life, death, objective things, the Mind, ignorance, bondage, & an experiencer of these are just concepts.  Concepts are unreal Absolute Being alone is. The conception of Space requires misidentification with the Body. The conception of Time requires misidentification with Thought. The Self is neither the Body nor Thought. It is Spaceless & Timeless. As Space is endless, clear, formless, embracing all, bound by none, all-pervading, ungraspable, & has no within or without, so it is with the Self.

TIME

Now is not a Time. Here is not a location. Here & Now is formless, real Being.  The past & future have no reality. The fleeting present moment is also an illusion. Timeless Consciousness is conceived as Time & all that Time measures.  When does Time begin ? When there was no Time. But if there was no Time, no then or now, did it begin at all ?

CAUSALITY

The Absolute (the Self) is neither Caused by anything else nor does it Cause anything else. Infinite, there is nothing beyond it produced by it. The Cause is always seen in the Effect. The Effect is just the Cause appearing as such. In Truth, there is only one Cause. The ultimate Cause of all, the Absolute is itself uncaused. Causality is itself illusory.  There is no Cause for illusion; for illusion is unreal, & for an unreal Effect there cannot be a real Cause.

EGO

The Ego has no form of its own. Strip it of its covering, & nothing remains of it.

Superimpose Being: the Ego seems existent. Superimpose Consciousness: the Ego seems sentient, a second knower. Superimpose Bliss: Happiness seems external. Go back the way you came. All illusion if ignorance. Ignorance is misidentification. All mis-identification is the Ego. The Ego is nonexistent. The Ego is a false assumption assumed by no one. All the known is for the “I,” but the “I” does not exist at all. All illusion is based upon the Ego, & all illusion is contained in the Ego - but the Ego itself is an illusion !  No one has seen an Ego at any Time. An Ego is an absence. The Ego cannot be produced by the Self, cannot be produced by anything in the Universe, & cannot be self-produced. So, where is bondage ?  All illusion is for the Ego, based upon the Ego, & contained within the Ego. Self-Realization is the Knowledge of the absence of the Ego & the utter unreality of illusion. Upon the Ego is based all ignorance & misidentification. The discovery of the absence of the Ego is the end of all ignorance & misidentification. With the imagined rise of the Ego, all else appears, with the disappearance of the Ego, all else is not.

MIND

The entire Universe is in the Mind & the Mind does not exist. Be free from Thought’s definition, from the notion of a second knowing principle, & from the notion of a differentiated Mind. This is merger of the Mind.

BODY

To see the World, one must stand as the Body. To see the Body one must stand as the Mind. To see the Mind one must stand as the Ego. Who are you ?  If the Ego is not, creation is not.  An incalculable number of cells are given the name “Body,” & such is considered an existent entity. Remove one cell at a Time & see what actually is the Body. A name, such as "body" does not make "body" a reality. There is no inner & no outer. It is ignorance to assume the Body is the boundary line between them. The self is not the Body & has no inside or outside. The Body is objective, divisible, changeful, & dependent for its very appearance. The Self is non-objective, indivisible, changeless, non-dependent & self-existent. How can the 2 be confounded ?  The bodiless Self is birthless, locationless, & deathless. The Self comes from nowhere & goes nowhere.

EXPERIENCE

All experience is of the nature of the experiencer.  The sense of reality in every experience does not come from the things experienced. The Self is the source.

REALITY

Do not mistake a definition for Existence itself. Being is forever undefined but realized as “I”. Both the appearance & disappearance of a thing or a Thought are forms. The Formless is neither. No form can yield the Formless, forms can give rise only to other forms. Neither dualism nor a concept of unity is the Non-dual Truth. Non-objective Being is neither a multiplicity, nor one-in-many, nor many-in-one. The Absolute is not a part of Reality relative to other things. Being is seamless. Where there is plurality, one sees only false appearance, where there is Non-Duality, one see clearly & truly. There cannot be Non-Duality with forms viewed as forms, & there can be no duality in the Formless. There cannot be 2 that are formless. The Formless is real & infinite. There are no forms within the Formless & none beyond the Formless. All forms arise from, appear in, & dissolve into the seamless, indivisible, formless Reality. The Absolute is formless & non-dual. There is nothing outside it & no “outside.”  Nor is there anything within the Absolute. 

BEING

Being & Consciousness are one & the same. That which is real ever is, continuously. What is discontinuous is never real. Every form is dependent on something else to be experienced. Being, which is Consciousness, is non-dependent. What is dependent is unreal. What is self-existent is real. In relation to all things, Consciousness is the Witness. Seen clearly as it is, Consciousness is formless, & there has never been an objective thing; there is neither knower nor anything known. Being can never change its nature. Being has no attributes. It is the Void, Brahman, forever free of definition. It is called the Self because it is your very Being, who you are. It is called Being because it always is, Timelessly, & can never cease or be destroyed. It is called Consciousness because it is nonobjective & can never be a known or unknown object. It is called Supreme Love because it surpasses all emotion & is indivisible. It is called Bliss because it is full with exquisite perfection that can never be flawed or deficient. It is called God because it is nothing else. It is called Eternal, for it is uncreated & imperishable. It is called the Absolute because its Existence is non-dependent & it is not in relation to anything. What is this formless undefined Self in itself. That which is Real does not depend on anything else to be or to be experienced. This is Being. Again & again examination of the dependent in this way will emphasize the Self as the residual Reality. Changeless Being is the root of peace. Space-like Consciousness is the root of Freedom. The Bliss of the Self is the root of joyful Love.

 

CONSCIOUSNESS

Consciousness can never be a known or unknown object. The known depends on the knower & does not exist apart from the knower. Consciousness is self-luminous. None knows it. It knows all. It knows itself.  Thought is only Consciousness, yet Consciousness is not Thought.  The World in the Senses, the Senses in the thinking process, thinking within Consciousness; Consciousness is vast & formless, this is the clear perspective. The origin of the Universe is the origin of one’s present experience. It is Consciousness.

All things originate from That which is not a thing. All Thoughts derive from That which is not any of them. That is formless, inconceivable Consciousness. There is no experience apart from Consciousness. All experience rises, appears, & dissolves in Consciousness, which has no rise, appearance, or dissolution.  Consciousness alone appears as all experience. Known as it is, Consciousness has no appearance whatsoever. That which illumines Thoughts, sensory perceptions, & all experience is known by none of these. It is Consciousness, formless, & infinite.

He who knows the Truth of the Self has neither birth nor death, neither attachment nor fear, for he is one with Consciousness. Only Consciousness can know itself. Nothing else can do so. First, see that Consciousness contains all that is ever experienced. Then, see that Consciousness is forever unmodified & there is no all for it to contain.

That which knows the presence or absence of Thoughts is neither the presence or absence of Thoughts. Neither the presence or absence of Thoughts obscures or clarifies that Knower. Consciousness, which is the Knower, is never defined by the known. That is ever still, that in which the 3 states of Waking, Dreaming, & Deep Dreamless Sleep, along with all that they contain, appear as the illusion of motion. Likewise illusory is form in the Formless, or a modification in That which is unchanging.  This is the Reality of infinite Consciousness.

Consciousness requires no light other than itself to illumine itself.

The entire manifestation is rightly said to be only one small corner in the infinite, formless Consciousness. Examining a corner to see what actually is the corner, it reduces itself to a single conceptual dot. That dot is the notion of an “other,” a “2^nd”. In Ultimate Truth, as there are no corners in Space. There is not a sing objective thing in the Reality of the Self.

SELF

Negate the attributes superimposed on the Self & the concepts about the

Absolute, & realize their identity. The Self is in all sentient beings, the Consciousness which is their Being; in all things, the unseen Existence which is; in all locations, the Space; in all Space, the vastness; in all Time, the endlessness, in every heart, the Love.

Veiling & differentiation are the characteristics of ignorance. As dimension of depth of the image in a mirror does not truly exist, so differentiation does not exist in the one Self.

MEDITATION

Meditate on Consciousness without an object. If you ask yourself what do you know for certain, you will release all ideas & form & abide in ever-existent Being.

[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 ]