Who Am I?

              Why does a date-palm lose its leaves in autumn?            Why does every beautiful face grow in old age            Wrinkled like the back of a Libyan lizard?            Why does a full head of hair get bald?            Why is the tall, straight figure            That divided the ranks like a spear            Now bent almost double?            Why is it that the            Lion's strength weakens to nothing?            The wrestler who could hold anyone down            Is led out with two people supporting him,            Their shoulders under his arms?            God answers,            "They put on borrowed robes            And pretended they were theirs.            I take the beautiful clothes back,            So that you will learn the robe            Of appearance is only a loan."            Your lamp was lit from another lamp.            All God wants is your gratitude for that.                                        -Rumi (“Mathnavi”)  

What can I do? I do not know myself. I am neither Christian nor Jew, neither Zoroastrian nor Muslim, I am not from east or west, not from land or sea, Not from the shafts of nature nor from the spheres of the firmament, Not of the earth, not of water, not of air, not of fire. I am not from the highest heaven, not from this world, not from existence, not from being. I am not from India, not from China, not from Bulgar, not from Saqsin, Not from the realm of the two Iraqs, not from the land of Khurasan I am not from the world, not from beyond, Not from heaven and not from hell. I am not from Adam, not from Eve, not from paradise and not from Ridwan. My place is placeless, my trace is traceless, No body, no soul, I am from the soul of souls. I have chased out duality, lived the two worlds as one. One I seek, one I know, one I see, one I call. He is the first, he is the last, he is the outer, he is the inner. Beyond "He" and "He is" I know no other. I am drunk from the

  M: The daily life is a life of action. Whether you like it or not, you must function. Whatever you do for your own sake accumulates and becomes explosive; one day it goes off and plays havoc with you and your world. When you deceive yourself that you work for the good of all, it makes matters worse, for you should not be guided by your own ideas of what is good for others. A man who claims to know what is good for others, is dangerous. " Q: How is one to work then? M:" Neither for yourself nor for others, but for the work's own sake. A thing worth doing is its own purpose and meaning. Make nothing a means to something else. Bind not. God does not create one thing to serve another. Each is made for its own sake. Because it is made for itself, it does not interfere. You are using things and people for purposes alien to them and you play havoc with the world and itself. "

Question: A day must come when the show is wound up; man must die; the universe comes to an end. Maharaj: "Just as a sleeping man forgets all and wakes up for another day, or he dies and emerges into another life, so do the worlds of desire and fear dissolve and disappear. But the Universal Witness, the Supreme Self never sleeps and never dies. Eternally, the Great Heart beats and at each beat a new universe comes into being. " Q: Is He conscious ? M:" He is beyond all that a mind conceives. He is beyond being and not being. He is the Yes and No to everything beyond and within, creating and destroying, unimaginably real. " Q: God and the Mahatma, are they one or two? M:" They are one. Q: There must be some difference. M: "God is the All-Doer, the Jnani is a non-doer. God himself does not say 'I am doing all''. To Him things happen by their own nature. To the Jnanis, all is done by God. He sees no difference between God and natu

Nisargadatta Maharaj Visitor: I am a painter, and I earn my money by painting pictures. Has it any value from the spiritual point of view? Maharaj:' When you paint, what do you think about? " V: When I paint, there is only the painting and myself. M:" What are you doing there? " V: I paint. M:" No, you don't. You see the painting going on. You are watching only, all else happens. " V: The picture is painting itself? Or, is there some deeper 'me', or some God who is painting? M:" Consciousness itself is the greatest painter. The entire world is a picture. " V Who painted the picture of the world? M:" The painter is in the picture. " V: The picture is in the mind of the painter and the painter is in the picture, which is in the mind of the painter, who is in the picture! Is not this infinity of states and dimension absurd? The moment we talk of a picture in the mind, which itself is in the picture, we come to an endless succ

The standard-brand religions, whether Jewish, Christian, Mohammedan, Hindu, or Buddhist, are — as now practiced — like exhausted mines: very hard to dig. With some exceptions not too easily found, their ideas about man and the world, their imagery, their rites, and their notions of the good life don’t seem to fit in with the universe as we now know it, or with a human world that is changing so rapidly that much of what one learns in school is already obsolete on graduation day. There is a growing apprehension that existence is a rat-race in a trap: living organisms, including people, are merely tubes which put things in at one end and let them out at the other, which both keeps them doing it and in the long run wears them out. Most philosophical problems are to be solved by getting rid of them, by coming to the point where you see that such questions as “Why this universe?” are a kind of intellectual neurosis, a misuse of words in that the question sounds sensible but is actually as me

I’ve been thinking about your line of Blake, which I strangely haven’t encountered before despite his works being more to my taste than more overly religious writing. I had a look on line and found this  https://uh.edu/engines/CD-EnergyIsEternalDelight/track1.html  which I don’t find satisfactory. I would prefer to read someone like Aldous Huxley on the subject as he would interpret the C18th language and idioms in a way that resonates more with me.  Ayako at her family shrine  I quoted the line to Ayako and of course she agreed with it immediately - though she is tempering her Chi Gong exercises these days as she - I think - correctly understands that excessive energy is hard to control and that one can be swept away with delight (in particular, spiritual pride is always waiting to carry us down). We talked of the harmonious balance of ying and yang -  ‘the still point of the turning world’ - and the dangers of religious fervour. She still abhors the proslytizing Catholics who took ro

Nisargadatta Maharaj Visitor: "Kindly tell us how you realised" Maharaj:" I met my guru when I was 34 and realised by 37." V: "What happened? What was the change? M:" Pleasure and pain lost their sway over me. I was free from desire and fear. I found myself full, needing nothing. I saw that in the ocean of pure Awareness, on the surface of the Universal Consciousness, the numberless waves of the phenomenal world arise and subside beggininglessly and endlessly. As Consciousness, they are all me. As events they are all mine. There is a mysterious power that looks after them. That power is Awareness, Self, Life, God, whatever name you give it It is the foundation, the ultimate support of all that is. And it is so intimately ours! abstract the names and shapes of the phenomenal world and the ground of being becomes obvious. Be free of name and form and the desires and fears they create, then what remains? " V: "Nothingness". M: " Y

"Realisation is but the opposite of ignorance. To take the world as real and one's Self as unreal is ignorance, the cause of sorrow. To know the Self as the only reality and all else as temporal and transient is freedom, peace and joy. It is all very simple. Instead of seeing things as imagined, learn to see them as they are. When you can see everything as it is, you will also see yourself as you are. It is like cleaning a mirror. The same mirror that shows you the world as it is, will also show you your own face. The thought ' I Am' is the polishing cloth. Use it." Nisargadatta Maharaj

N.MAHARAJ: Visitor: As a child, fairly often I experienced states of complete happiness verging on ecstasy. Later, they ceased. But, since I came to India they reappeared, particularly after I met you. yet, thes states, however wonderful, are not lasting. They come and go and there is no knowing when they will come back. Maharaj:" How can anything be steady in a mind which is not steady? " V: How can I make my mind steady? M:" How can an unsteady mind make itself steady? Of course it cannot. It is the nature of the mind to roam about. All you can do is to shift the focus of Consciousness beyond the mind. " V: How is it done? M" Refuse all thoughts except one, the thought ' I Am'. The mind will rebel in the beginning, but with patience and perseverance it will yield and keep quiet. Once you are quiet, things will begin to happen spontaneously, without any interference on your part. " V: Can I avoid the protracted battle with my