The Seer

“What amazing grace to see clearly that the very thing that looked so heavy in the world of form, the very thing that seemed to be limiting me on all sides, that very thing is the doorway into the formless and into who I am beyond form. Limited form arises from limitless Spirit and that Spirit is the form each of us is at this moment. What grace to see now that ultimately they are one.”

~ Pete S.

In the dojo (meeting-room) at Gurukula is a large hand-embroided wall-hanging of the ‘Tree of Life,’ that was given to us by our daughter. It clearly depicts in stylized form, the whole tree — leaves, branches, trunk and even the exposed roots.

What is the hidden meaning of this symbolic tree? What deeper understanding does it offer us?

The way we see it, the leaves are the symbol of our individual identities. There are so many leaves and so many individuals on the tree of life. If each leaf is living for itself, then it is living in individual love.

When the leaf realizes it is connected to a branch, it moves into the collective identity and lives for its collective identity. This identity unites us with some and separates us from others, just as one branch is separated from another. In this level, our love becomes collective love. We live for our collective identity and may even be willing to die for our collective identity.

The trunk is the symbol of our universal mind. All branches and leaves are attached to the trunk, but at the same time it transcends them. Here our love becomes universal love.

At the level of the roots — the unitive mind or consciousness or God — our love becomes divine love or unitive love.

Each of us is a leaf for we are a unique physical being. Each of us is a branch in as much as we belong to a particular nation, culture or tradition. And each of us is the roots in as much as we are one with the divine or absolute … whether we realize it fully or not.

To accept intellectually the truth that we are, right now, each grounded inseparably in and as the divine is one thing, but to actually see It, even briefly, is another thing, and to experience this unitive vision continuously is quite another altogether and joy unspeakable.

There have always been a few of these visionaries in every age whose lives seem to correspond with the whole tree of life … including the trunk.

There is only one trunk and one universal mind. The trunk or the universal mind is the mediator between the roots, which represent the unitive mind, and the branches and leaves.

The trunk receives from the roots and nourishes the branches and the leaves. It speaks to the roots in the name of the leaves and the branches and it speaks to the branches and the leaves in the name of the roots.

The trunk lives for all. The Buddha, Jesus, Shankara and Ramana Mahashi etc. could be described as ‘universal persons’, who lived for all humankind. These are the way-showers, the truth-revealers or the mediators, as it were, between the the roots and the leaves / branches of their time.

We are fortunate to be served by a growing number of contemporary spiritual teachers who are fulfilling much the same function today. These are the teachers we respect and attend to at Gurukula.

No one is outside this tree and no ideology, religion or belief-system is outside this tree that is ‘life’ Itself.

There’s only one way, one truth and one life. This is the way of the tree, the way of unity and non-duality. This way embraces different levels of truth, the un-manifested truth and manifested truth.

The great transition or shift isn’t about an individual entering into a branch (belief-system) or moving from one branch (belief-system) to another branch (belief-system).

It’s an invitation to make the leap in consciousness from the branches to the trunk and from there to the roots. Now that’s radical!

Once there were four boatmen living in a small village on the bank of a very wide river in India. It took all four of them to row a few people and their goods from one side of the river to the other. Every day they used to get around 40 persons. They charged 5 Rupees per passenger, so they earned on average 200 Rupees per day which was divided equally among them. At the end of the day they prayed like this:

The first boatman prayed: O God, I am very grateful to you for sending 40 fares today so that I can earn 50 Rupees. Please send more fares tomorrow so that I can earn more money and become rich. Thank you for today’s 50 Rupees.

The second one prayed: O God, I thank you so much because today I could take 40 of my countrymen and their goods from this side to the other side. I am so happy that I can be at the service of my countrymen. Please send more of them tomorrow so that I can serve them too. Thank you for giving me 50 Rupees to maintain my family today.

The third one prayed: O God, I am so happy today because I could take you from this side to the other side so many times. Please come more often tomorrow so that I can serve you even more. Thank you for giving me 50 Rupees today to take care of my family.

The fourth person prayed: O God, please forgive me for making this prayer. I realize that you alone exist. You are in me and you are in the others. It is you who are taking yourself from this side to the other side. The work which I do is not mine, but you who live in me do all the work. I am blessed to have this vision and to be your instrument. Thank you for giving me today 50 Rupees to take care of my family.

All the boatmen did the same work and earned the same amount of money, but their motives were different. The first boatman lived in individual love, the second boatman lived for collective love, the third boatman lived in universal love, and the fourth boatman lived for divine love. Our spiritual journey is to grow from individual love to the love which is divine.

~ by Br. J. M. Sahajananda

An imagined hasidic master, Reb Yerachmiel ben Yisrael writes to his student who has moved from the old country to America:

“It rained heavily during the night, and our village is thick with mud. I walked to the Beit Midrash (House of Learning) this morning and stopped to watch a group of little children playing in a puddle of mud.

They sat in the puddle, oblivious to the damp, and made dozens of mud figures: houses, animals, and towers. From their talk it was clear that they imagined an identity for each: a story that told the figure’s past and foretold its future.

For a while the mud figures took on independence, a life separate and unique. But they are still just mud. Mud is their source, and mud is their substance.

From the perspective of the children wrapped up in the play of separate figures their mud creations had separate selves. From the point of view of a casual observer it is clear that the separate self is an illusion, that in fact they are all just mud.

It is the same with us and God: “Adonai (the Lord) alone is God in heaven above and on earth below, there is none else” (Deuteronomy 4:39). Ayn od — there is none else — meaning that there is nothing else in heaven or on earth but God.

Can this be? When I look at the world I do not see God. I see trees of varying kinds, people of all types, houses, fields, lakes, cows, horses, chickens, and on and on. In this I am like the children at play seeing real figures and not simply mud. Where in all this is God?

Some would argue that God is a divine spark inside each being, some would say only within human beings. Others would argue that God is above and outside creation. But I teach neither position.

God is not inside or outside, God is the very thing itself! And when there is no thing, but only empty space? God is that as well.”

Also, from, the non-dual point of view, the first two of the Ten Commandments (Ex 20: 1-7) are extremely powerful non-dual statements, i.e., neither permitting images before the “I” sense, nor allowing the use of the subject “I” together with an identity to images.

~ From, Open Secrets: The Letters of Reb Yerachniel ben Yisrael, by Rami M. Shapiro

It’s often said that the truth is impossible to express in words. This seems strange for a language that is so varied and eloquent and so many books and discourses have been produced about it. The simple reason for this is that the truth of who/what you are is that principle before the advent of language and mind. Language formed later, you were already the fact. Look at a young child and it is seen that it is aware of you long before it has developed concepts and language.

Language was invented to communicate and express the reality that the person found themselves in. And so language is all about the duality of the world seen to be around us. This means that there are no words to express the non-duality of who you actually are prior to language, they are all geared to duality and concepts.

By concepts I mean the word tree isn’t an actual tree, it’s only a concept, a mental picture we learn to represent a tree so we all know what it is that’s being referred to. We may not be referring to one specific tree, it’s a general concept.

Non-dualists use the term pointers to the truth and not claim they are stating the truth. And non-dual is used instead of one’ness because one is part of language and is a concept and immediately brings with it two and we’re right back into duality once more – the concept of numbers. Non-duality is not learned as the opposite to duality even though it is.

You are Awareness and that’s not a concept.

~ by Roy Townsend

There’s no way *not* to live non-duality — everyone is being lived this way all the time, even if we think we’re not. This is the teaching of non-duality. Non-duality is not something that we must make true. It can’t NOT be so.

Here are some slice-of-life descriptions of experience that you might call mine, say in the last week. And how the being lived has a certain sweet fragrance that isn’t an experience.

My partner, Skye, and I once had a few wonderful slice-of-life exchanges like this, and I still remember them clearly.

Working, commuting on a crowded, hot, muggy, humid subway. Teaching computers, having to talk 8 hours a day some weeks. Friends breaking up. Girlfriend with Chicken pox. Friends living with AIDS, some smiling, some not smiling. Married couple, husband cheating on wife, telling everyone about it, she in pain. My eating too much too late, waking up with a stomach ache. Riding my bike through the city, no breaks, no gears, fixed-gear track bike, Zen-like motion connected to everything going on around …

…Taking dance-skating lessons, loving it but not being very good or having much time to practice. Weekly meditation meeting/satsang. Helping a friend buy new wardrobe. Attending the Budha’s Birthday celebration at a local Chan temple. Talking and corresponding with many people on the phone, in e-mail, in person, about non-duality. Going to the gym. Burning special Japanese incense. Not getting enough sleep. Paying bills. Reading Western philosophers who are similar to Nagarjuna in some respects. ….

The basic fragrance is an unbroken totally sweet miraculousness. Totally unaffected by the details of what happens. Things that happen are not really things at all, and do not happen by magic, or through a mechanistic scientific causal process. But a present miraculousness. Nothing left out.

It is not all pleasant, but it is all fine, perfect is-ness, because there’s no other way for IS-ness to be. Good day, Fine! Bad day, Fine! No difference, no distance. The meditation and bike riding can be seen as metaphors for how everything is, smoothly connected and not separate from anything. Things that aren’t pleasant aren’t in any way more or less separate than things that are pleasant — the difference is the same as the color red versus green.

None of it ever seems like an “I” or “you” is doing it, it’s all very direct, clear, very here and immediate, “things as it is.” There’s no thought that things should be this way, or that they should be some other way. No thought ever of a Greg or any other entity striving or grasping or letting go of anything. No thought that anything needs to be maintained or chased after or watched or kept. No thought that this is separate from what-is. No thought that a gap exists or must be bridged. Everything taking care of itself, in a smooth, uninterrupted flow. And the flow isn’t even a flow — it is just called a flow, the word arising in the context of this writing.

~ From: Standing as Awareness, by Dr. Greg Goode.

Advaita is not monism. Advaita means “not-two.” We and the universe are not “one”: then all distinctions would be destroyed. We are “not-two,” intricately interrelated with everything, both separate, unique *and* united. The astonishment of this dance of “not-two” grows slowly as the mind and heart open in divine love and wisdom.

Imagine that there was a heap of gold and a skillful smith. The smith made fir trees, geraniums, tables, human beings, lamps. Every object had a different shape, a different purpose and identity but was made of the same thing. Look at the sea. All waves are rising and falling differently, in different rhythms, with different volumes. Some catch the light some do not. You can see the separations between the waves but what you also see quite clearly is that all the waves are water. That is what the knowledge of “not-two” is like.

Things retain the separateness which the senses give them, which we use to negotiate this reality, but the illumined mind knows that all things are Brahman or God, waves of one infinite sea of light. You know, in other words, that you and everything and the light that is at all times manifesting everything are “not-two,” and “you” come to exist normally on all levels of the divine creation, and meet “yourself” in all states, events, conditions, beings.

This is sahaja, spontaneous negotiation of, and union with, all dimensions at all moments. Nisargadatta Maharaj explains most lucidly the marvelous transitions to this state: “When the I am myself goes, the I am all comes. When the I am all goes, the ‘I am’ comes. When even ‘I am’ goes, Reality alone is and, in it, every ‘am’ is preserved and glorified.”

It is wonderful that this the most ultimate and holy of all possible ‘experiences’ in this world, that of unity, of advaita, has to be enjoyed by everyone in their own profound solitude, at that diamond point of solitude at which everyone secretly joins and meets God and each other and all things.

This final ‘experience’ kept for this most sacred and secret moment and is too vast an precious to be ever completely communicated. This is the moment when the created one returns to the source of creation — the moment at which all laws, dogmas and techniques that helped the ‘mystic’ (or ’seeker’) arrive at that diamond point vanish in the silence of return to origin.

~ by Andrew Harvey, in Dialogues with a Modern Mystic.

“Advaita (non-duality) does not mean *one* in the sense of eliminating all differences. The differences are present in the *one* in a mysterious way. They are not separated anymore, and yet they are there.”

~ by Bede Griffiths, in: Woven Reflections of Silence and Stillness.

To awaken to the absolute view is profound and transformative, but to awaken from all fixed points of view is the birth of true nonduality….

Enlightenment means the end of all division. It is not simply having an occasional experience of unity beyond all division, it is actually being undivided.

This is what nonduality truly means. It means there is just One Self, without a difference or gap between the profound revelation of Oneness and the way it is perceived and lived every moment of life.

Nonduality means that the inner revelation and the outer expression of the personality are one and the same. So few seem to be interested in the greater implication contained within profound spiritual experiences, because it is the contemplation of these implications which quickly brings to awareness the inner divisions existing within most seekers.

~ by Adyashanti

Ramesh S. Balsekar was born in Mumbai, India, in 1917, and after a distinguished career in banking, was for several years an interpreter for Nisargadatta Maharaj. Then, after his own awakening, Ramesh became a truth-teacher himself and offered Satsang daily in his home right up to the time of his final illness. Pete & Pearl sat with him there for five memorable days in 1995.

He also authored many books on enlightenment spirituality including: Consciousness Speaks.

Sadly, Ramesh passed away at his home after a short illness on Sept. 27, aged 92.

The author/teacher, Wayne LIquorman, was foremost among those influenced by Ramesh and wrote: “Having met Ramesh was one of the defining moments of my life. His generous spirit, open, loving presence and spiritual understanding combined to make him one of the truly great sages of the 20th century. His spirit will live on in his books and in the hearts of all of us who have known him and loved him.”