There was once a girl who was born into a house of prostitution.
And across the street in front of the market place
there was a preacher, a holy man.
He used to exclaim the virtues of God
and talk about the house of prostitution.
How it was filled with sinners and he told people to repent.
Yet the girl who grew up in the house of prostitution was twenty-three years old.
She used to look out the window everyday
and cry to herself and
she would say,
"How I wish I was like that Holy man, how I wish I was spiritual,"
and she would imagine in her mind that
she was a holy person and yet go on with her work.
Now they both got old and died
and went to St. Peter to go into heaven.
St. Peter told the man,
"You can't come in you've got to go to hell,"
and he told the girl, "you can come in."
So the Holy man became dumbfounded and said,
"Why?
For all these years I've proclaimed your goodness
and your virtues.
I told people to repent.
How can you let her in when she was a prostitute
and leave me out?"
And St Peter said, "You've been a hypocrite.
You were very worthy and talked a lot and said nothing.
In your heart you thought every body was a sinner but you.
Whereas the girl in her imagination, in her feelings,
always was thinking of God.
So she can come in, you can't."
The point is this:
It's not what you say.
It's not what you proclaim.
It's what's deep, deep, deep in your heart that determines
what happens to you.
It's not reading books, it's not studying, it's not going to classes.
It's sitting by yourself,
becoming quiet, going deeper and deeper within yourself.
Transcending your mind and your body until something happens.
When thoughts come to you, you simply ask yourself,
"To whom do these thoughts come?
From whence cometh these thoughts,
" follow the thoughts to their source.
Find out the source of your thoughts.
You will find that the source of your thoughts is I.
Follow the I-thread to its source by asking,
"Who am I?" or "What is the source of I?
Where did this I come from?"
You will realize that the pronoun I,
is the first word that was ever spoken
and everything else is attached to I.
Every other word.
Every other thought,
every other feeling,
every other emotion,
they're all attached to the I.
I feel happy.
I feel sad.
I feel sick.
I feel well.
I feel poor,
I feel rich.
Everything is attached to I.
If the I becomes dissolved,
so does everything else and you become free.
Find out for whom there is an I
and you will discover something amazing.
You will discover that I never existed.
There never was an I.
You will discover that you never existed.
There's no such thing as you.
You will discover that you are the imperishable Self.
That you are never born and you can never die.
You will discover that you're omnipresence,
omniscient, omnipotent.
That there are no others.
There is no world.
There is no universe.
There is no God.
There is only the Self.
All this is the Self.
All that you behold is the Self and "I-am" is that.
This will give you a feeling of freedom, of bliss, of happiness.
You will not lose your awareness.
When I speak these things people believe that
they become completely annihilated
and there's nothing left.
They melt into the great ocean of nirvana.
This is not necessarily true.
You will always be awareness.
You will always be pure intelligence for that is your real nature.
You will always be blissful.
Except you will understand that you are not who you appear to be.
Your body will still appear to be doing things,
going through its motions.
You will appear to be an ordinary person but you will know.
You have lifted yourself up above the gross world into
the heavenly world of pure consciousness
and you will be at peace.
~ Robert Adams - Sri Ramana Maharshi Teachings
You Must Have Your Own Experience, 3rd August, 1990
No comments:
Post a Comment