Mind & Happiness 13

This individual Consciousness – our feeling "I am a person, a separate Individual, a Mind or soul confined within the limits of a Body" – is merely an imagination, a false & distorted form of our pure Consciousness "I exist", but it is nevertheless the root cause of all Desire & all Suffering.

Unless we give up this individual Consciousness, this false notion that we are separate from God, we can never be free of Desire, nor of Suffering, which is the inevitable consequence of desire.  True Self-Surrender is therefore nothing but giving up the false notion that we are separate from God.  In order to give up this false notion, we must know who we really are.  And in order to know who we really are, we must attend to the Consciousness that we feel to be "I".

Though the Consciousness that we now feel to be "I" is only a false Consciousness, a limited & distorted form of the Real Consciousness that is God, by attending to it keenly we can know the real Consciousness that underlies it. That is, attending keenly to this false form of Consciousness is similar to looking closely at a Snake that we imagine we see lying on the ground in the dim light of dusk.  When we look closely at the Snake, we discover that it is in fact nothing but a Rope.

Similarly, if we keenly attend to the limited & distorted individual Consciousness that we now feel to be "I", we will discover that it is in fact nothing but the Real & Un-limited Consciousness "I exist", which is God.  Just as the illusory appearance of the Snake dissolves & disappears as soon as we see the Rope, so the illusory feeling that we are a separate individual Consciousness confined within the limits of a Body will dissolve & disappear as soon as we experience the

pure Non-Dual Consciousness, which is the Reality both of our Self & of God.

We can thus achieve complete & perfect Self-Surrender only by knowing our self to be the Real Consciousness that is devoid of all duality & separateness.  Without knowing our True Self, we cannot surrender our false self, & without surrendering our false self, we cannot know our True Self.

Self-Surrender & Self-Knowledge are thus inseparable, like the 2 sides of one sheet of paper. In fact, the terms "Self-Surrender" & "Self-Knowledge" are just 2 ways of describing one & the same state – the pure Non-Dual State of Consciousness devoid of Individuality.

The above themes & 2500 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 

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"There is no Creation, no Destruction, no Bondage, no longing to be freed from Bondage, no striving for Liberation, nor anyone who has attained Liberation. Know that this to be Ultimate Truth." 

 –  the "no creation" school of Gaudapada, Shankara, Ramana, Nome – Ajata Vada

for very succinct summary of the teaching & practice, see:  www.ajatavada.com/