HOW AM I TO KNOW IF THERE IS ANY PROGRESS IN MY SPIRITUAL SEARCH?
One of the foreign visitors, who had been coming to Maharaj for quite some time, began quietly:
Perhaps I am speaking from a body-mind identity but there is a question, a problem, which has been troubling me for so long that I cannot keep it bottled up any longer. I have talked about it to some of the seekers here and I know that they too have the same problem. However, now I am not speaking for them but only for myself.
The problem is: How am I to know if there is any progress in my spiritual search? Occasionally, particularly during meditation, I do have a glimpse of what I am searching for, but only a glimpse and that too only on rare occasions. How am I to know if I am progressing?
Maharaj : The problem apparently is about 'progress'. Now, who is to make the progress, and progress towards what? I have said this repeatedly and untiringly that you are the Conscious Presence, the animating consciousness which gives sentience to phenomenal objects; that you are not a phenomenal object, which is merely an appearance in the consciousness of those who perceive it. How can an 'appearance' make any 'progress' towards any objective? Now, instead of letting this basic apperception impregnate your very being, what you do is to accept it merely as an ideological thesis and ask the question. How can a conceptual appearance know whether it is making any conceptual progress towards its conceptual liberation?
Maharaj took a match box in his hand and held it up. He asked: Is this you? Of course not. Does it need time to understand this? Apperception of this fact is immediate, is it not? Why then should it take time to apperceive that you are not the phenomenal object called the body-mind?
Remember, you are the animating consciousness that gives sentience to the phenomenal objects.
Please understand, said Maharaj, that apperception is prior to the arrival of consciousness which is the basis of intellect. Apperception is not a matter of gradual practice. It can only happen by itself instantaneously — there are no stages in which deliberate progress is made. There is no 'one' to make any progress.
Perhaps, one wonders, could it be that the surest sign of 'progress' — if one cannot give up the concept — is a total lack of concern about 'progress' and an utter absence of anxiety about anything like 'liberation', a sort of' 'hollowness' in one's being, a kind of looseness, an unvolitional surrender to whatever might happen?
- Posted on behalf of Gunny
One of the foreign visitors, who had been coming to Maharaj for quite some time, began quietly:
Perhaps I am speaking from a body-mind identity but there is a question, a problem, which has been troubling me for so long that I cannot keep it bottled up any longer. I have talked about it to some of the seekers here and I know that they too have the same problem. However, now I am not speaking for them but only for myself.
The problem is: How am I to know if there is any progress in my spiritual search? Occasionally, particularly during meditation, I do have a glimpse of what I am searching for, but only a glimpse and that too only on rare occasions. How am I to know if I am progressing?
Maharaj : The problem apparently is about 'progress'. Now, who is to make the progress, and progress towards what? I have said this repeatedly and untiringly that you are the Conscious Presence, the animating consciousness which gives sentience to phenomenal objects; that you are not a phenomenal object, which is merely an appearance in the consciousness of those who perceive it. How can an 'appearance' make any 'progress' towards any objective? Now, instead of letting this basic apperception impregnate your very being, what you do is to accept it merely as an ideological thesis and ask the question. How can a conceptual appearance know whether it is making any conceptual progress towards its conceptual liberation?
Maharaj took a match box in his hand and held it up. He asked: Is this you? Of course not. Does it need time to understand this? Apperception of this fact is immediate, is it not? Why then should it take time to apperceive that you are not the phenomenal object called the body-mind?
Remember, you are the animating consciousness that gives sentience to the phenomenal objects.
Please understand, said Maharaj, that apperception is prior to the arrival of consciousness which is the basis of intellect. Apperception is not a matter of gradual practice. It can only happen by itself instantaneously — there are no stages in which deliberate progress is made. There is no 'one' to make any progress.
Perhaps, one wonders, could it be that the surest sign of 'progress' — if one cannot give up the concept — is a total lack of concern about 'progress' and an utter absence of anxiety about anything like 'liberation', a sort of' 'hollowness' in one's being, a kind of looseness, an unvolitional surrender to whatever might happen?
- Posted on behalf of Gunny
This is so pertinent. We all talk about progress on this journey. Perhaps what we are truly calling progress is the bettering of our Ego-self (mind and body self) from being moved easily by any stimulus to being able to distance oneself from outwardly activities which then stop acting like stimuli that can shake one's peace. This is definitely not the same as "reaching closer to the Self" as we would like to believe :-) rather this is improving on one's Ego, which I wouldn't complain about coz it does bring peace with it. However, the ultimate waking up will probably happen in it's own time.
ReplyDeletehow can you reach closer to the self when you are the self
ReplyDeleteits just a matter of mistaken self identity...the moment you disassociate yourself as your mind/ego..you are awakened to yourself..as in your mind is awakened to your real self
:)))
its so simple !!
Agreed fully. But that's the whole game. It's really simple once you've reached the realization. It's just like we find any puzzle easy once we have successfully solved it. But during the process of solving it, it doesn't seem simple nor is it that simple coz we face several missing links and blind spots. This reminds me of that Indian man in Mooji's Satsang who thought he was enlightened. He really thought he was operating from his Self but Mooji saw through him and said "i am not touched by you". The power of unbiased and honest observation of oneself, I feel, are imperative. :-)
ReplyDeletewell the process is a process...but the goal is so simple !! thats the beauty of it
ReplyDeletethe process is whatever you make of it..but looking at from a big picture perspective...the result is so simple
its like walking around with an apple that you think is an orange...and you are trying to see it as an apple..and u need to work on your illusions...but the apple has always been an apple..there is no discovery process involved in that...it is what it is....so simple :)
Exactly. And all the awakened souls say the exact same thing. We are already sitting where we should be, yet we make is as if the destination is miles and miles away and that we need to DO something to reach there! Just wake up, as they say ;-)
ReplyDeleteyou cant really wake up from anesthesia no matter how much you try, here the anesthasia is your mind/ego...so whatever you perceive will always be the the mind/ego framework..so there is no wake up as such..but just being cognizent of the framework at work..and knowing the distortions taking place must give rise to a space...that space is said to be undefinable and for obvious reasons...as the moment you try to define it you fall in mind/ego framework..hahaha oh the limitations of the spoken language...i finally understand what that means...yeeee :)
ReplyDeleteWell put. It is a liberating realization indeed. And yes, words distort the totality of an experience/ realization/ feeling/ thought. Better to fill life with less of them :)
ReplyDeleteno i feel... life should be full of words, but the true nature of words should never be forgotten..
ReplyDeletelife should be lived with all its splendour without forgetting that the self does not really enjoy nor suffer...it just witnesses
but life is an experience...an experience that should be filed with diversity and interactions with all other forms of the consciousness (i did not want to use the word self though its the same as that would just make it more unbelievable for the mind :) )
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ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteWonderful exchange of thoughts and concepts here... Goes to the essence of who we are and why we are.
ReplyDeleteSince we try to convey all our experiences through words, what exactly is the nature of our words, language and vocabulary
Words are mere approximations of our feelings, they never can convey the full essence of our feelings. Words begin to lose their power of communication as they try to "condense" more complex feelings and experiences...and at a spiritual level we end up with silence being the best conveyor of the ultimate experiences as words garble and "reduce" those to a common denominator so that many people can understand. After all, language, by definition, is a tool which is "understood" by all humanity while intense spirituality is not a common experience at all.
Words are at their best when they convey external events or simple concepts - usually linked to events which happen outside of our bodies and are conveyed to all of us through our senses. As words try to convey the "meaning" of our internal experiences and get de-linked with the external events, they begin to fail.
In mathematical terms ( the ultimate objective logic, devoid of subjective words), I might summarize the power of words to convey real meaning as below:
Meaning of words = 100 - power of internal experiences
(result ranges from 100 = 100% coherence, to 0 = 0% coherence)
here, Power of Internal Experiences ranges from 100 to 0, so a level 100 reflects a situation of Samadhi, which is totally devoid of all external influences)
Formula example for the state of Samadhi is :
ReplyDeleteMeaning of words=
= 100 - Power of internal experiences
= 100 - Power of the internal experience of Samadhi
=100 - 100
= 0 meaning 0% coherence ( that is, however much we try to verbalise the state of Samadahi, we will never even close to describing it.)
This formula is just a theoretical representation of the concepts we are talking about because there is no objective method to measure the "Power of internal Experiences".
In fact, even external stimuli have different affects on different people, example: a beautiful sunrise may have a soulful impact of 50 on a person while on another non-aesthetic person it might only be close to 10, so to say :)