B2 - Nisargadatta Maharaj is my guru

Nisargadatta Maharaj is my guru. I never met the man.

Some will think that’s absurd. They may be correct—I’m not speaking for them or others.

Thirty years ago, a psychological therapist summed up my personal conditioning this way: your mother taught you to be absolutely afraid of the world and your father completely failed to introduce you to the world.

I was obsessed in knowing the world. I didn’t trust the world to teach me about itself.

So I read books. I became obsessed with certain viewpoints until ultimately I discovered their weakness. I moved on to another book. Another viewpoint.

The first time I read Nisargadatta’s I Am That, I was enthralled, but I stopped midway at some point—I was appalled at something I had read. But his words kept haunting me. Six months later, I had forgotten why I had been horrified, reread the chapter in question, and couldn’t find anything repulsive—only wisdom. So, in my second attempt, I finished reading the book.

For a third act, I read Ramesh Balsekar’s Pointers from Nisargadatta, the Jean Dunn translations, and the Robert Powell translations. Meanwhile I was rereading I Am That and tweeting phrases under my @Nisargadatta_M avatar—which continues to this day. To paraphrase one of my earlier teachers: something is happening but I don’t know what it is. Exactly! There is no viewpoint.

I still read books for recreation as well. It was in such a manner I began reading Gurdjieff’s Beelzebub’s Tales to His Grandson. It wasn’t pleasurable, so I stopped. Of course, that’s Gurdjieff’s point. So I’m not speaking for him or others.

One thing I did appreciate from the first page of Gurdjieff’s three-volume Coyote tale is the first page, Friendly Advice, in which he advises one should read his “written expositions thrice.” The first is in a mechanized way. The second is as one person to another. And the third is to “fathom the gist.” I did read his Friendly Advice three times.

Nisargadatta says to his listeners, and therefore to the reader, that he, Nisargadatta Maharaj, is Consciousness speaking to Consciousness.

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Blurgh One

It’s been five years on Twitter this month. Enough! Time to blog again. Blurgh?

Words. You can’t live with them and you can’t stop eating them.

And everyone loves their pet theories. Then they put them to sleep.

See! All is viewed through this lens of consciousness. The universe appears in this consciousness. This consciousness is god. I love it madly. 

Who loves it?

But science says this consciousness is a phenomenon of the brain, a product of the material world. See?

Wait, who says this? 

Ha! Consciousness says this. Who else?

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profisee 50 - lost in the dichotomy paradox

pure subjectivity must objectify itself

before it can know itself—

but gets lost in the object

until it hears itself calling—

like zeno's dichotomy paradox—

the intellect always solves

only half of what you really are—

intuition must dissolve you

with the other half…

.

identity, enlightenment, and non-doing pseutra

consciousness is the unmanifested absolute manifested—awareness becoming aware of its awareness

the body-mind is an instrument created by consciousness from consciousness for the functioning of consciousness—awareness aware of awareness

it is an aspect of the functioning of consciousness to misidentify itself with the body-mind, dividing itself from itself and so see itself

enlightenment is the spontaneous functioning of consciousness dis-identifying itself from the body-mind—awareness is aware of its awareness

consciousness misidentifying & disidentifying with body-mind is a spontaneous functioning of consciousness and there’s nothing ‘you’ can do

‘you’ have 2 options for doing—follow your bliss or think your way thru—surrender or fight—love or conditioning—either way you’re being done

profisee 49 - unsaying consciousness

there’s a me here that could say—

you don’t have consciousness

but consciousness has you—

but we are consciousness—

so there’s only i

profisee 48 - four scientific unknowns

what science doesn’t know:

what came before the big bang—

missing 95% mass of the universe—

grand unified theory—

how and whys of consciousness—

six more imajins [from zuni to matsushima]

6

on the road to zuni,

i see a white buffalo—

it’s rising in the sea of tranquility

chanting—

you are the moon

you are the moon

you are the moon

7

anasazi ruins fill

a cavernous canyon wall—

thru the desert floor flows

a lively current—

a raven soars on

satori

with its silent unknown call

8

in the hollow of a maple tree

a screech owl sits silently—

it blends with the bark perfectly—

seven birders look thru scopes

just to see it be

9

down from south rim i stop—

the desert silence is absolute—

as if the sage had soaked

the world away—

and only i were left

to be that emptiness

10

a dock on a midnight lake—

this scintillating stillness—

the moon beholds

the eye of the universe—

and we two vanish

into quicksilver depths

11

invoking matsushima bay—

an opalescent peacock is slipping by

a phosphorescent dragon—

two forms passing in the emptiness—

ah beauty! ah truth!

five imajins

1

driftwood flowers blossom

in a sea of buddha nature—

on the beach, natives search

for grains of sand…

2

in the desert

there's this single candle—

all around is nothing

but creosote and sage—

it is burning incessantly

but it burns without a flame

3

there's a house that sits on a bluff

above the sea—

its windows look out upon

a precipice of sky—

when its doors fly open

no one is at home

4

out of nowhere came

the mountain—

it fills the sky with a vacancy

of rock and clarity—

even the undertaker laughs

at such transparent

presence

5

coyote is crossing

the interstate—

it’s headed for the other side

below sky city—

an attentive focus narrowly avoids

a black infiniti

profisee 47 - as universe so you

the light of consciousness

freezes into the material

and then in a process known

as evolution

melts

as above so below

the light of consciousness

freezes into the ego

and then in a process known

as self-inquiry

melts

as ice is never not water

the light of consciousness

is always

the light of consciousness

profisee 46 - that fifteen-second spot

the desire

to know what one is—

the intelligence

to know what one isn't—

the maturity

to know one is unknowable—

the simplicity

to just be

that