Your Current State

Take a moment to be aware of your current state. Now, imagine that yesterday you died. You are exactly where you are right now, only you are dead. Nothing has changed, except that you are dead. Everything that you do from here on out is the action of a dead person—it means nothing. Try as you might, your actions have no effect. Your touch is that of a ghost, your mightiest efforts like a soft breeze.

Your friends call your name, but as you reach out to them, you see that they too are ghosts. All that you hold dear, is like a storybook—it existed, but was made to be set aside.

In all the universe, there is only you. Utterly powerless to even cast a shadow upon a wall.

You are dead, yet you feel alive. A Light shines through your form, animating your thought. Listen for your ceasing to be, it is calling. Let the ghost cry for the loss of it's self—tears of Truth to set it free.

You died the day you were born. How long will you wait to go Home?

Shawn Nevins, “YOUR CURRENT STATE”

Give Up Everything And Come To My Feet

In the Bhagavad Gita Krishna tells Arjuna, “Give up everything and come to my feet.”

What does Krishna mean by this? When he says, “Give up everything and come to my feet.” By this he means that you have to set aside your feelings and go towards the feet of life itself. Do not run away, you should accept life as it is.

Krishna tells  Arjuna to fight but he laments. He refuses to fight and is full of sorrow and compassion. He says, “I don’t want to kill, I would rather commit suicide than kill my friends, family, relatives and teachers who are on the other side of the battlefield.”

If you are religious you may argue that Arjuna is filled with a sense of righteousness. That he is a sage, a man of wisdom. But Krishna tells him otherwise, “Your sense of  religion has left you, you have gone mad."

He tells Arjuna, “You are mad if you think you can kill someone, as no-one ever dies. You are mistaken to think that you can save those who oppose you. Who has ever saved anyone? And you can’t escape war nor can you be non-violent because as long as I exists – and it is this I that is anxious to save itself and it’s  friends, family, relatives and teachers – non violence is next to impossible.  Now, be rid of this nonsense and face reality. Set aside your sense of I and fight. Accept what is facing you and what is facing you is not a temple where prayers are uttered, it is war. Play your part, and so drop your I. Who are you?”

Confessions Of A Jnani

Merriam Webster defines Jnani (alternately Gyani)  as a term in many Indian languages meaning “wise.”

For the Jnani who has realized the identity of his inner being with the infinite Brahman, there is no rebirth, no migration and no liberation. He is beyond all and is firmly established is his own absolute existence.

The further existence of his body and the world appears to the Jnani as an illusion, which he cannot remove, but which no longer deceives him.  After the death of this body, as in life, he remains where and what he eternally is, the first principal of all beings and things: formless, nameless, unsoiled, timeless, dimensionless and utterly free, untouched by objects, experience or thought.   Death cannot touch him, cravings cannot torture him, sins do not stain him; he is free from all desire and suffering.  He sees the Infinite Self in all, and all in the infinite Self, which is his being. 

I am infinite, imperishable, self-luminous, self-existent.  I am without beginning or end.  I am birthless, deathless, without change or decay.  I permeate and interpenetrate all things.  In all the myriad universes of thought and creation, I alone Am.

Robert Adams, "CONFESSIONS OF A JNANI"

Douglas Harding - Headlessness

“Here is just emptiness. There is no getting my ego out of the way, and all that stuff. There is just seeing, shining in great brilliance and clarity.”

Douglas Harding devoted himself to philosophy, trying to understand the nature of himself. He was intrigued by the question, “What Am I?” As most people are content with their identity and never seek to answer the question. And he wasn’t about to take anybody’s word for it. Neither was he going to accept what religion or society told him about himself. He wanted to find out directly for himself.

At the time philosophy was influenced by the ideas of relativity. He realized that his identity depended on the observer – from several meters away he was a human, but a close range he was cells, molecules, atoms and from further away he was absorbed into the rest of society, life, the planets, the star. He realized like an onion he had many layers.

But what was at the centre of these layers? Who was he really?

For example, take this writing. I can read it now only because I am just the right range - almost 10 inches, and the words are bristling with meaning. Nearer still provided I sharpen my vision with electronic aids - the screen is a collection of patterns called molecules and beyond these atoms, particles, quarks and finally space itself, packed full of energy. Neither the page or anything else will stand up to close inspection.

Whilst searching for his innermost identity he happened to stumble upon a drawing by the Austrian philosopher and physicist. It was a self portrait but with an unusual difference:

What is unusual about this self portrait? The unusual thing is that you don’t see the artists head. For most people this fact is interesting. However for Harding he had discovered the keys to his identity, as he noticed his head was missing to. So at the centre of the world there was no head, no appearance – nothing at all. This nothing was special as it was alive and fully awake to the world.

However he was still seeking the answer to the elusive question, “What am I?” And this occurred with the following experience or realization and at the time he happened to be walking in the Himalayas.

The best day of my life—my rebirthday, so to speak—was when I found I had no head. This is not a literary gambit, a witticism designed to arouse interest at any cost. I mean it in all seriousness: I have no head.

What actually happened was something absurdly simple and unspectacular: I stopped thinking. A peculiar quiet, an odd kind of alert limpness or numbness, came over me. Reason and imagination and all mental chatter died down. For once, words really failed me. Past and future dropped away. I forgot who and what I was, my name, manhood, animalhood, all that could be called mine. It was as if I had been born that instant, brand new, mindless, innocent of all memories. There existed only the Now, that present moment and what was clearly given in it. To look was enough. And what I found was khaki trouser legs terminating downwards in a pair of brown shoes, khaki sleeves terminating sideways in a pair of pink hands, and a khaki shirtfront terminating upwards in—absolutely nothing whatever! Certainly not in a head.

Douglas Harding
from his book, “On Having No Head.”

Douglas Harding had seen his original face. He saw emptiness that contained a world. And nowhere did he find evidence of a head. Hence the original face is also a koan in Zen Buddhism: What did your face look like before your parents were born? You are what you experience in the now moment.

Think about this for a moment! You head only exists as a concept. You imagine yourself to have a head when there is nothing but emptiness.

Do the exercises below with an open mind. Rely on present evidence rather than on imagination, memory or assumptions. Look for yourself – you alone can see who you really are and no one else can do it for you.

Douglas Harding

How do you discover your original true nature? Do you think it is by reading holy scriptures and books? You will never find a total answer to this question by reading holy scriptures and books. By seeking an answer to this age old question you have to become the answer; in essence god discovers himself all along. Nevertheless books can help if your struggling to overcome any obstacles on your search.

When the student is ready, the teacher appears. But this need not be limited to physical appearances as such. Your own intuition is the inner teacher and it will guide you to what is most appropriate for you at the time. On the other hand, you may have cultivated self-reliance, independence and balance to such an extent that you need no ‘guru’. In that case, no teacher will appear, your own intuition will provide direct guidance from within.

On the spiritual search one often hears that our true nature is the easiest thing to see, as it is always present, right underneath our noses. Douglas Harding has devised a method of radical self inquiry that is based on simple, practical exercises that anyone can do anywhere. He calls his discovery headlessness, which he says is the same as “seeing who you really are.”

Douglas Harding passed away on January 11, 2007. He was a remarkable sincere individual whose sole interest was helping individuals to “see who you really are.”

His view is that “seeing who you really are” is available right now and not only after a lifetime of seeking, meditation and esoteric practises. Respectively, he lines up with Maharishis view. “All are seeing God always, but they don’t know it. I see what needs to be seen. I see only just what all see, nothing more. The self is always evident.”

The Self

The self is simply a bundle of perceptions. Perceptions themselves, their organs, and things perceived are without substance, as the Heart Sutra tells us. Yet at the same time, the self is the agent of realization and the setting of serious practice. The Buddha pointed out that it is difficult to be born a human being and difficult then to find the Buddha Dharma. Indeed. When you reflect on the infinite number of happenstances that coalesced to produce you, then you understand how unique, how precious, how sacred you really are. Your task is to cultivate that precious, sacred nature and help it to flower.

~ Hakuin Zenji (1689-1796)

You Can't Sit Too Much

The helpfulness of sitting cannot be exaggerated. By sitting and being still, resting in silence, you begin to feel a natural movement, a shift in the direction toward what you are. It is the most typical setting in which one will experience an awakening.
Please note that I'm not suggesting that you meditate or do practices or other exercises.

You can, and these are often a vital part of many people's journeys. But sitting, to me, is just that: sitting. No agenda, no goal, no plan, no purpose. You sit, you rest, you allow. By sitting you acknowledge an inescapable fact of existence: everything is perfect as it is. All is well. The universe is functioning flawlessly, right now, without any assistance on your part.

This simple act of sitting can have a profound effect. You have no idea what will happen. But the main thing to remember is that by sitting, by allowing everything to be, you are aligning yourself with the truth of what you are. For what you are is always at rest, always still, always allowing everything to be exactly as it is.

Yes, I did learn this "technique" from Adyashanti. And yes, he is quite correct: sitting is the best thing you can do.