Regarding suffering in Dream /Waking state : Bhagwan Ramana Maharshi

Another visitor, who said that he was from Sri Aurobindo’s Ashram, asked Bhagavan: “But we see pain in the world. A man is hungry. It is a physical reality. It is very real to him. Are we to call it a dream and remain unmoved by his pain?”

Bhagavan Ramana Maharshi: From the point of view of jnana or the reality, the pain you speak of is certainly a dream, as is the world of which the pain is an infinitesimal part. In the dream also you yourself feel hunger. You see others suffering hunger. You feed yourself and, moved by pity, feed the others that you find suffering from hunger. So long as the dream lasted, all those pains were quite as real as you now think the pain you see in the world to be. It was only when you woke up that you discovered that the pain in the dream was unreal. You might have eaten to the full and gone to sleep. You dream that you work hard and long in the hot sun all day, are tired and hungry and want to eat a lot. Then you get up and find your stomach is full and you have not stirred out of your bed. But all this is not to say that while you are in the dream you can act as if the pain you feel there is not real. The hunger in the dream has to be assuaged by the food in the dream. The fellow beings you found in the dream so hungry had to be provided with food in that dream. You can never mix up the two states, the dream and the waking state. Till you reach the state of jnana and thus wake out of this maya, you must do social service by relieving suffering whenever you see it. But even then you must do it, as we are told, without ahamkara, i.e., without the sense “I am the doer,” but feeling, “I am the Lord’s tool.” Similarly one must not be conceited, “I am helping a man below me. He needs help. I am in a position to help. I am superior and he inferior.” But you must help the man as a means of worshipping God in that man. All such service too is for the Self, not for anybody else.You are not helping anybody else, but only yourself.

Mr. T.P. Ramachandra Aiyar said in this connection, “There is the classic example of Abraham Lincoln, who helped a pig to get out of a ditch and in the process had himself and his clothes dirtied. When questioned why he took so much trouble, he replied, ‘I did it to put an end not so much to the pig’s trouble, as to my own pain in seeing the poor thing struggle to get out of the ditch’.”

Bhagwan Ramana Maharshi on JK's Choiceless Awareness

 11-1-46 Afternoon

A young man from Colombo asked Bhagavan, “J. Krishnamurti teaches the method of effortless and choiceless awareness as distinct from that of deliberate concentration. Would Sri Bhagavan be pleased to explain how best to practise meditation and what form the object of meditation should take?”

Bhagavan Ramana : Effortless and choiceless awareness is our real nature. If we can attain it or
be in that state, it is all right. But one cannot reach it without effort, the effort of deliberate meditation. All the age-long vasanas carry the mind outward and turn it to external objects. All such thoughts have to be given up and the mind turned inward. For that, effort is necessary for most people. Of course everybody, every book says, “Summa iru” i.e., “Be quiet or still”. But it is not easy. That is why all this effort is necessary. Even if we find one who has at once achieved the mauna or Supreme state indicated by “Summa iru”, you may take it that the effort necessary has already been finished in a previous life. So that, effortless and choiceless awareness is reached only after deliberate meditation. That meditation can take any form which appeals to you best. See what helps you to keep away all other thoughts and adopt that method for your meditation.

Bhagwan Ramana Maharshi

Take Those Rocks Out of Your Head!

Take Those Rocks Out of Your Head!

by Guy Finley

Key Lesson: Your thoughts can no more tell you what is true about your possibilities than can a set of stream-side boulders know the nature of the waters that rush by them.

The Secret of Knowing Without Thinking

Imagine for a moment what your life might be like if you never again were to pick up a complaining thought or feeling. Think of how your days would flow without carrying the additional weight of those inner voices always telling you, "I'm too tired," or "This is too much for me!" The weight of the world would be replaced by a new sense of freedom. Fresh, new energies would flow.

If this is the kind of inwardly carefree life you really want, then look closely into these next two ideas that together tell one story of freedom: leaving troubled thoughts right where you find them is the same as not picking up what troubles you. And if you can leave just one of these weary thoughts behind you, then you can leave two, and three, and four, and fifty!

Most people tend to worry that if they don't worry, something bad will happen to them. But what they don't see is that these worried thoughts they've picked up by mistake are the very storm they fear will come!

You may wonder, "But what happens if I make a mistake? How can you tell which thoughts and feelings are the right ones to leave where you find them, and which ones do you pick up? What if I choose wrong?" You needn't worry about such questions. Here's why.

There's a way to know, without ever having to think about it, exactly which of your own thoughts and feelings are your friends, and which are foes -- a totally thought-free way to understand which of your thoughts are practical and necessary for everyday life, and which are stealing your life with unsuspected self-compromise. It's true. You possess unsuspected powers of perception just waiting to be awakened. The following technique will help you get started.

Stop reading this for a minute and allow your eyes to fall on something familiar in the space where you are. Notice how your mind immediately gives that object a name. Having done this part of the exercise, keep your attention on whatever you've selected, and then continue to watch how more thoughts come into your mind about what you're seeing.

Now, while you're witnessing both that object and your growing stream of associative thoughts and feelings about it, just drop these thoughts and feelings.

You can still see the object, and you still know what it is -- but now you are knowing without thinking. This is your introduction to an unconditioned relationship with life.

In this form of higher attention, of knowing without thinking, you can see that the meaning of the object before you has not changed. The difference is that now its meaning speaks directly, silently to you -- instead of you listening to your thoughts tell you about its meaning.

When it comes to seeing a chair or a pencil, this new kind of thought-free state may not seem too profound. But this practice can, and should, be enlarged to encompass your whole life.

The benefits behind the ability to understand something, or someone, without having to go into thought, cannot be over estimated. You may not be able to think your way out of a nagging problem, but you can see your way clear of it. This special kind of inner seeing is safety. Waking up to yourself is the same as letting go of all those self-defeating thoughts and feelings that have been telling you how to win.

This article is excerpted from Freedom From the Ties That Bind (pages 51-54.).

21 Ways We Waste Our Vital Life Forces 

by Guy Finley

 All creatures in life are created to reach their natural fruition. The Great Life generously provides all of them with everything they need to fulfill their promise. This same abundance holds true for our spiritual awakening as well. Everything we need to succeed is forever raining down upon and within us.

The spiritually awakened life is not something that one achieves, like an award for fine art or some other measured performance. The true Higher Life comes to us naturally and reveals and expresses itself in anyone who realizes that, like the sun above us, this Living Light within us is always present.

It is we who are absent from this eternally indwelling Life, not because these vital forces are withheld from us, but because we waste them. Following are 21 Ways We Waste our Vital Life Forces, and for whose loss we remain sound asleep spiritually. Study these thieves closely and catch them in the act of stealing your chances for Higher Life as they drain away your vital life forces.

1. All forms of useless talking
2. Being wrongly involved in the life of anyone else
3. Daydreams of any nature
4. Using excessive emotions
5. Keeping "accounts" on those who have displeased you
6. Sitting in judgment of anyone for any reason
7. Becoming identified with anything
8. Useless thinking, such as speculating "why?"
9. Overindulging yourself
10. Resisting your environment or the unpleasant manifestations of others
11. Being concerned with how others see you
12. Defending yourself from imagined enemies, as with quips or sarcasm
13. Puttering around in order to keep yourself feeling productive
14. Any form of sexual imagination
15. Rushing through or to anything
16. All forms of frustration, including impatience and anger
17. Doing anything in half measures, or leaving things hanging
18. Telling "little" lies
19. Taking part in any dialogue with yourself
20. Seeking any form of vengeance or retribution, embracing resentment
21. Wrestling with anxious feelings and trying to think your way out of pain

For extra benefit, make a list of ways you suspect your own vital forces are being wasted. Then stop throwing away your chance to know Real Life!