"In the self is unity and diversity, yet not unity or diversity as opposed to each other....The one self exists--subtle and omnipresent, like space. It is undivided by the birth and death of bodies. 'I am the body' is delusion, not truth. You are the pure self or undivided consciousness." - Vasistha's Yoga
Therein is described the nebulous yet very concrete "feeling" of enlightenment: "unity and diversity, yet not unity or diversity." It sounds nonsensical because it is nonsensical--beyond our human array of senses or anything our minds manage to conjure from them. My own halting attempt to verbalize it has always come down to "emptiness filled to brimming." But try that out on a friend or spouse and see where it gets you! Usually a look at best quizzical and at worst concerned for our mental health. Just last week I tried to reassure my death-phobic wife to quit worrying about it. "We'll be fine," I said. "In fact we'll be free, fulfilled, uh--" "How do you know?" she snapped. "Have you ever been dead?" Well, yeah, sort of, at least to the degree that it is clear to me what a pest this body-mind really is when I take it to be real. To rest in pure and undivided consciousness is indeed to be dead while still so-called alive. This is not to avow suicide. Life is the sound of a songbird breaking the silence of a windless night--provided an ear exists to make it so.
The education of a modern day jnani might follow this course:
Eckhart Tolle = high school
Nisargadatta/Ramana = college
Vasistha's Yoga = grad school
Therein is described the nebulous yet very concrete "feeling" of enlightenment: "unity and diversity, yet not unity or diversity." It sounds nonsensical because it is nonsensical--beyond our human array of senses or anything our minds manage to conjure from them. My own halting attempt to verbalize it has always come down to "emptiness filled to brimming." But try that out on a friend or spouse and see where it gets you! Usually a look at best quizzical and at worst concerned for our mental health. Just last week I tried to reassure my death-phobic wife to quit worrying about it. "We'll be fine," I said. "In fact we'll be free, fulfilled, uh--" "How do you know?" she snapped. "Have you ever been dead?" Well, yeah, sort of, at least to the degree that it is clear to me what a pest this body-mind really is when I take it to be real. To rest in pure and undivided consciousness is indeed to be dead while still so-called alive. This is not to avow suicide. Life is the sound of a songbird breaking the silence of a windless night--provided an ear exists to make it so.
The education of a modern day jnani might follow this course:
Eckhart Tolle = high school
Nisargadatta/Ramana = college
Vasistha's Yoga = grad school
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