#2693 - Monday, January 8,
2007 - Editor: Gloria Lee
Nondual Highlights
The eternal is not born
nor does it die.
We confound appearance with Reality.
Appearance carries its end in itself.
What is it that appears anew?
If you cannot find it,
Surrender unreservedly to the
Substratum of appearances;
Then Reality will be what remains.
--Ramana Maharshi
One Vast Garden
"I find one vast garden spread
out all over the universe.
All plants, all human beings, all
higher mind bodies
are about in this garden in various
ways ,
each has his own uniqueness and
beauty.
Their presence and variety give me
great delight.
Every one of you adds with his
special feature to the glory of the garden."
--Sri Ananadamayi Ma
Doesn't get much clearer...
Just be silent and you will discover an immense
laughter that is going on all around the earth. Trees
are laughing, birds are laughing. Except man, there
seems to be nobody who is sad. This sadness is because
of your clinging to the words.
Let your life be a life of a dancing and laughing
silence, and you have entered into the only authentic
temple of godliness.
I am not interested in what kind of ideologies you are
carrying in your head. They are all bullshit. I want
you to drop them all, irrespective of what they are.
Let your whole being be filled with laughter. Let
yourself be singing, let each fiber of your being be a
part of the universal dance. To me, this is the only
revolution, the only transformation which can bring
this earth millions of joys.
It is our own stupidity that we have been listening to
idiots of all kinds. And their whole purpose is to
make us sad, because if they succeed in making
humanity sad and serious, they have taken away the
possibility of your being in tune with the tremendous
festivity that surrounds you. And now that you are
taken away from the universal festival, you can be
exploited, enslaved, oppressed. Every kind of crime
can be done to you, and you will not revolt.
Only laughter can be a revolt, a revolution, a
transformation. Start laughing against your so-called
religious pretenders, hypocrites. Start laughing about
your politicians, who have been deceiving mankind for
centuries. Don't pay any attention to this whole gang
of criminals, and we can enter into an absolutely new
era, where everybody is joyful, loving, laughing. And
everybody is carrying his own guitar -- no need to
carry any crosses. I want to change every cross into a
guitar. Right?
Okay, Maneesha?
Yes, Beloved Master.
--Osho
Om Mani Padme Hum
Music and Silence
Chapter 22
posted by Sam Pasiencier to
nondualnow
Biography
of a Sage
I call Robert
Adams the mysterious sage because we knew so little about him. He
rarely talked about his past and hardly ever revealed his own
feelings or thoughts about any personal matter, even when asked.
It was as if he did not exist as a person. After being with him
constantly for nearly eight years, all the stories he told me
about his life might total three dozen pages. He almost always
talked in the present. He always shunned publicity and avoided
any publications about himself in all but a few Indian Journals
such as the Mountain Path published by Ramana Ashram, and Inner Directions . He told me that the greatest
teachers were unknown, and that he only wanted ten close
disciples onto which to pass his understanding.
Bio Excerpt:
To make a long story
short, Yogananda would not allow Robert to become a monk at SRF.
As Robert confides, "He couldn’t wait to get rid of me.
I kept asking why he taught all the practices, mantras,
affirmations and healing techniques, when all of them missed the
point of Self-realization." Yogananda’s expressed
attitude was along the lines of, "I’ve done very well,
thank you, doing things this way!" Because of the nature of
Robert’s own spontaneous awakening, his connection to the
little white haired dwarf, and Yogananda’s own devotional
relationship with Ramana Maharshi, he told Robert to go to
Ramana.
During the Fall of 1946,
Robert arrived by train to the town of Tiruvannamalai, a few
miles from Arunachala Mountain, where lay Ramanashram and his
future teacher, Ramana Maharshi. He took a bullock cart to the
Ashram, was admitted, and stayed the night. Early the next day
while walking back from the mountain, towards the Ashram, he
spotted Ramana walking down the path towards him. An electrifying
energy coursed through his body, and the last of what men call an
ego left him. He felt completely surrendered, completely open. As
Ramana got closer, Robert stripped off his clothes, approached
Ramana and dropped to his guru’s feet. Ramana reached down
grabbing Robert by his shoulder, and looked into Robert’s
eyes with complete love and said, "I have been waiting for
you. Get up! Get up!" Robert said had Ramana asked him to
leap over a cliff at that moment, he would have done so gladly.
Robert became different
when he told this story. Most of the time he never talked about
his past, and when he did, it was said more for entertainment
than for teaching purposes. When he told this story he was
sitting erect, almost standing out of his chair, and he looked
outwards, above the crowd before him, almost as if he were seeing
Ramana again. Tears came from his eyes as stated he would have
jumped off the cliff for Ramana, and he added finally, "This
is how you have to be, completely naked before God, completely
surrendered!"
continues: http://www.itisnotreal.com/Roberts-Story.html
[Note: This
site has extensive resources, including transcripts
of Robert Adam's satsang talks not available elsewhere. The
Site Map has the most workable links and a more detailed
table of contents than the left margin menu.]
On many an
idle day have I grieved over lost time. But it is never
lost, my lord. Thou hast taken every moment of my life in
thine own hands.
Hidden in the heart of
things thou art nourishing seeds into sprouts, buds into
blossoms, and ripening flowers into fruitfulness.
I was tired and
sleeping on my idle bed and imagined all work had ceased.
In the morning I woke up and found my garden full with
wonders of flowers.
This chapter from
Tagore's Gitanjali, like most of the book, is addressed directly
to God as a sort of a prayer. But Tagore is not asking for
something. He is acknowledging a surprising truth, he is
proclaiming to God the dawning realization that growth is taking
place in his "garden" of spiritual awareness always,
secretly, quietly, even when he despairs of his own efforts. He
"imagined all work had ceased" -- he felt his own
spiritual work had come to nothing and his deflated spirit
temporarily gives up -- but he wakes up surprised to find his
"garden full with wonders of flowers." This happens all
the time for those striving spiritually, but why?
The metaphor of a garden to represent one's spiritual awareness
is an ancient one used throughout the world, and it is perfect
for what is being said here. Think about a garden for a moment.
What is it? First, it is a place where things grow, a place of
life. It is the opposite of death, which is the state of
nonspirituality. The plants of the garden are rooted in the
earth, yet they reach upward toward the light of the sun. On an
even subtler level, a garden is a place of nourishment and of
beauty. What grows in our spiritual gardens feeds us through its
"fruitfulness" and brings beauty, the awareness of
harmony to our consciousness. The flowers of the garden represent
the spiritual qualities that have opened within us, that in turn
cause us to open to the Divine. The flowers are within us, and we
are the flowers. From the yogic point of view, the flowers
sometimes represent the chakras that open during spiritual
awakening. Also, a garden is a place of contemplation and rest.
It is a place where we give ourselves permission to simply be, to
settle into the present moment. The garden represents the soul at
rest in the living presence of the Divine.
But, returning to this verse from the Gitanjali, why is a garden
such a perfect metaphor here? Because every plant of the garden
grows with a life of its own. The gardener, the spiritual
aspirant, may need to till the ground and plant the seeds, water
them regularly, keep them free from encroaching weeds -- but for
all that work, the gardener does not actually make the seeds grow
and flower. The gardener just prepares the environment, but it is
the divine spark of life "Hidden in the heart of all
things" that nourishes "seeds into sprouts, buds into
blossoms, and ripening flowers into fruitfulness."
Tagore is surprised to realize that his only job is to prepare
the garden bed and keep it ready, but the growth of the seeds is
effortless, for the seeds are alive with the vitality of God.
Even when he can conceive of no further effort, the seeds still
grow. The seeds WANT to grow. And they will grow. It is their
nature to grow once given the right environment. All we have to
do is prepare ourselves, make ourselves ready. The spiritual
growth will happen of its own accord. Then one morning we wake up
surrounded by "wonders of flowers!"
