Preetom

See it for yourself Let being reveal itself whatever it wants to show you. The using of higher cognitive functions like conceptualizing and fictitious additive reality building is not the problem in itself, it's the belief and conviction we put into them and our regard for them as TRUTH without investigation; That sure backfires on us. Birds chirp, dogs bark etc in order to express and communicate between themselves or between them and their surrounding. Wouldn't it be a tremendous hassle for dogs if they had the 'higher capabilities' for believing and holding on to every single of their 'woofs'? Then humans would probably have a serious rival when it comes to neurosis haha...

Exactly! If you doubt it, that's a legitimate doubt. In this sense, you can't be sure of any perception or information. If you had 8 senses instead of 5, you might experience a completely different appearance of this Universe. Similarly, it would be the same case if you had 3 senses instead of 5. We can't never be sure whats really 'out there'. But does the knowledge I AM AWARE come from people's words? Can any thing invalidate that? So to answer your question, yes the appearance and human constructs might be hoax, 'spiritual stuff' might be hoax; but that knowledge I AM aka Consciousness is not a hoax/trick.

@winterknight As you've read drik drishya viveka yourself, I would like to hear your thoughts on the 6 vedantic meditations mentioned at the last part of the text. Everytime I've tried them, it feels like self-inquiry. Feeling the I AM and discriminating everything the I AM is not along the way...

1) When you cease to imagine things, do 'you' cease to exist? 2) In between two thoughts, do 'you' cease to exist? 3) When a thought or sensation passes away, do you feel that a part of yourself has evaporated as well? 4) How much thought, language, god, chakra, science, books, 'common sense', money, other people do you need to simply notice that you are aware?

Do you notice the common thread in all these experiences? Is there any particular sound, sight or sensation that is staying constant without any fluctuation? But isn't there a common experience of 'being aware' in all of them? Any god, human right, law, justice, nation, money, chakra, sensations etc can trick us. In fact we can never know what's really out there; whether our perception is really tricking us or not. But that sense of primordial I AM or I AM AWARE; that is infallible. No experience or perception can overturn that. The very denial of it, establishes and confirms the presence of it! If there is one 'thing' you can call as absolute knowledge even in the midst of constant trickery, it is this I AM AWARE knowledge. That is Consciousness. You can rest in that

@moon777light 1) Are you aware of the soles of your feet? 2) Are you aware of the sensations in your chest? 3) Are you aware of the sounds around you? 4) Are you aware?

Are you aware right now?

Remember that self inquiry is not a mind suppressing or concentration meditation on a single object. It is about being aware of the presence of the subject(awareness) with respect to any object(thought) that arises...and seeing how the subject remains unaffected and still no matter what...over and over again @Aakash Self inquiry as originally prescribed is supposed to be done all throughout the day as much as possible. In the beginning stage, having a sitting practice helps to get a 'feel' of it. After a while, it is encouraged to do it even while doing daily activities.

A question might arise why self-inquiry is the way that it is and not something else. Why is it particularly about awareness being aware of itself without conjuring up other things? We can be clear about it if we ask, ''what is it that knows anything at all?''. It's ONLY Awareness that can know. It is NOT a thought, a model, a body, a brain, a sensation, a scientific theory, a complex logical argument, a spiritual belief etc that has the knowing capacity; Only Awareness possesses this knowing capacity. In fact, the very word 'Awareness' means presence of That which is aware or which is pure knowing itself. So if Enlightenment is discovering the nature of Awareness, what can we rely on? ONLY Awareness can provide 'knowledge' about anything. That's why Awareness has to lock on itself to know itself for what it actually is; not what it imagines it to be. It's the thoughts and sensations that imagine Awareness to be what it is not. And during self-inquiry, we are seeing through that error exactly, over and over again. Remember this point everytime you start getting lost in thoughts and clever arguments. Another corollary to this principle is, take your stand as Awareness to explore yourself in self-inquiry. It's not the body that knows, it's not the thoughts that know; it's ONLY Awareness that can know and all the above mentioned objects themselves are 'known' by Awareness. This is exactly why no thought or model or 'thing' can ever reveal the TRUTH of Awareness; they can only conjure their own judgments, opinions and limitations on Awareness. It may sound so obvious when formulated like this but notice how many times we circle around the most common traps. See how this contemplation and line of reasoning melts all the gross and subtle identification with forms over time...

@Max_V You are onto something really cool! See it from this angle..Reality Vs Appearance. An appearance is everything that it's Reality is NOT! For example.. 1) TV Screen(Reality) Vs The Movie(appearance): Never in the movie, the screen itself appears. The movie is basically everything the screen is not. 2) Play of Light(Reality) Vs The Mirage of a pond(Appearance): That illusory pond appears as other than a play of light. 3) Absolute Reality/Self(Reality) Vs Universe(appearance): This universe appears as everything that the Self is inherently NOT. The Self (Reality) ----------------------------------------------The Universe(appearance) 1) Infinite Limited in space 2) Ever present/eternal Bound in Time 3) Unaffected Subject to causality 4) Immovable Movement 5) Unchanging Constantly changing 6) Non-dual Dual with multiplicity and diversity 7) Self-luminous Can't exist objectively on itself 8) No level/facet/parts Can be integrated or disintegrated in parts 9) Truth A lie in itself alone. But Truth when recognized as the Self. 10) The 10th commandment just to make it sound official

Well according to some 24th dimension propaganda, it is using honey and milk to awaken the dragon. I don't know...

You're misunderstanding my post. By Awareness, I'm referring to the Self which has no level. And no 'thing' or 'human body' exclusively possess Awareness. Notice that in order to make any legitimate claim, there has be a 'knowing' first. If you say ''No body-mind, no awareness'', then the question is how do you 'know' that as a fact? You are either talking from experience, or you are speculating and depended on beliefs and hearsay. Do you see that your very denial of Awareness actually establishes the presence of Awareness before anything else?

Tell me about that horror story where X always believed he circulated his blood in his body and freaked out that his blood might stop circulating once he knew that he wasn't in control of circulating his blood

Other times, it's just that we might be executing that pretending act better

If you think about it, there is actually no way to verify if we are EVER on the same ground when communicating through language. We pretend that we are.. freaky stuff indeed...

@tsuki @Sashaj And knowing all this, we will still fall into traps and circle in the maze as @purerogue mentioned. It is inevitable and part of learning this game. But I was talking about building this infallible premise where one can come back over and over again, no matter how many times he is lost in the maze. Hope that made sense

@Sashaj @tsuki I understand your concerns. We pretty much all know that no 'practice' can lead to Enlightenment, yet we must play this game called self-inquiry to realize that. Self-inquiry is a 'game' and so one should play it by the rules. Or else, as Leo mentioned in the video, people can waste a lot of time and effort doing stuff technically wrong and then giving it all up and Worse, starting a crusade against the game. To make this game called self-inquiry effective, you must start with experience; not with a belief or assumption(however grand that scientific or spiritual belief is). That premise is acknowledging the supremacy and irreducible nature of Awareness. It's not a phenomena that knows, it is ONLY Awareness that knows. And the very purpose of self-inquiry is to harness this discrimination process over and over again. One's attitude while doing self-inquiry should not be like, ''I , this body-mind named such and such is now gonna practice self-inquiry''; that person will get lost in all sorts of thoughts and delusion. One's attitude should be like, ''I, Awareness am the only knowing element here and I'm gonna explore my experience through self-inquiry now WITHOUT referring to thoughts and beliefs as they are clearly not the knowing element here''. One can easily waste tons of hours doing spiritual practices in the wrong manner. That's why most gurus of the direct path pop the cherry from beginning and instruct students to sit in meditation as Awareness; not as a body-mind with a personal history.

Whatever little question/strategy/formula you take, the purpose of self-inquiry is to take one to that stage of Awareness being aware of itself and staying there more and more with stable focus. The questions, timing, discrimination process may and will vary from person to person. I ain't feeding anyone shit here

exactly! It's like when we watch a movie, we are looking at nothing but the screen. When we are told to notice the screen, no extraordinary event takes place. We were always looking at the screen, yet it seems so elusive

Well said. Amen It is! No wonder it is called the direct path and not many people can stomach this

I understand. I can summarize Shankara's instruction like this. Before Self-Realization: Discrimination and Dispassion (plus some other virtues) to see through ignorance and realize the Self. After Self-Realization: Constant abidance as the Self (no other means or action involved)

The basic theme of Jnana yoga(or the direct path) is once you realize the Self, you're only 'job' is to constantly abide there. Everything that needs to happen, all modifications and further insight will happen by itself. Through this self abidance, all delusion and constriction evaporates, leaving Reality as it is. There are no 'levels' in that self-realization but the body, mind, world do take time to readjust through layers and levels. But the one thing to be clear is, there is no ego that is making those body-mind-world shifting. So it seems from the outside that you are 'developing' but to you yourself, you remain as nothing but the Self. This also reminds me something I read by Eckhark Tolle. He talked about how the ego-mind clings to ideas like 'growth' or development and can't give them up. He gives examples of economists who can't help but calling periods of regression as 'negative growth'. He basically tries to show how cancerous ego can be haha So basically, I generally conclude that there IS growth and development from the on-lookers and they can make development models etc. But the self-realized one who abides in the Self, in his own experience, he doesn't recognize or experience any such thing. Hope that makes sense.

Whatever that line of development is, see that if it is in 'time', then that means it is ego and delusion all over again. To call things after Enlightenment as 'development' can be misleading. The basic premise is Reality is already perfect as it is. It is our delusion, clinging and unclear seeing that makes up all this friction and suffering. When one relinquishes all that, Reality flows like always. It is not like an 'entity' somewhere making plans and vision and working towards making Reality perfect; toiling towards making Reality as infinite love, bliss, wisdom etc..this just sounds absurd. Also if you wanna bring in the ox herding analogy, see that after the 5th stage (Taming the bull aka real unbroken abidance aka Enlightenment), there is no place for effort, doing, plans etc as we normally understand these terms. There is no ox herder working his butt off and reaching to 10th stage after stage 5. His days are long gone after stage 5 lol

@SoonHei It's so easy to fantasize about 'Infinity'. Have a look at it this way. With the word 'Infinity', the mind immediately conjures up the idea of something extended forever infinitely. But thats not really infinite. If you say infinite love, then that automatically conjures up it's counter part infinite hatred. True 'Infinity' means not having ANY objective quality whatsoever aka Absolute NO-THINGNESS. It is this no-thingness that enables the Self to appear as any shape or form and YET not become exclusively that form once and for all. If you think about an infinite red carpet, that is inherently limiting because that carpet can't be blue anymore. The truly 'infinite' carpet would be colorless and without objective qualities aka no-thing aka the Self! Do you see how that truly infinite 'no-thing' can't have any part or facet..?

You can read 'Vivekchudamani' by Shankara that expands on these topics. I'm reading it now. You can find free PDFs in Google. See past some cultural baggage(like male body is superior than females etc) and take away what helps. Regarding the endpoint, the most hallmark sign of the Enlightened one is his/her unbroken identification with Brahman(which is Reality itself) and NEVER any exclusive identification with limited body-mind or other objects. In the final analysis, the self-realized sees this very universe as pure Consciousness and thus doesn't acknowledge any 2nd element in Reality. Even the concepts of Brahman and non-brahman are given up, which were helpful in the path. About post Enlightenment characteristics, there aren't any action or particular doing that verify it. It's more like complete absence of clinging, delusion, neurotic passion, doubt, fear, suffering, hatred etc... Self-realization makes one progressively lose these things. It's not really about making a goal and work to develop something, that's what egos do best. You can see why the most advanced teachings are expressed in negation and deconstruction. If you tell me to develop something like 'compassion', I'll immediately make an idea out of it and chase that idea like a silly dog for decades. You see what I mean?