Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!swrinde!elroy.jpl.nasa.gov!jarthur!nntp-server.caltech.edu!mustang!data.nas.nasa.gov!news From: cyee@bruce.cs.monash.edu.au (Chut Ngeow YEE) Newsgroups: soc.religion.eastern Subject: RE: SRI SRI GOMBOOANANDA Message-ID: <1991May24.063412.5487@nas.nasa.gov> Date: 24 May 91 06:34:12 GMT Sender: news@nas.nasa.gov Organization: NAS Program, NASA Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, CA Lines: 86 Approved: prabhu@amelia.nas.nasa.gov Roger Adams radams@cerritos.edu writes: >(quoting from SRI DA AVABHASA: ) >>The spirutial process is to understand how you contracted this disease, >>understand the mechanics of your presuming it always in this present >>moment so that in every present moment you will be established in the >>Free Position, the Position of Happiness, Truth, or the presumption of >>Being. The spiritual process, then, becomes the magnification of non- >>disease, prior Happiness, the prior presumption. > >Is it possibe that if you were to simply inquire who it is that is suffering >from this disease, that this 'I' who is suffering will disapear and if then >no 'I' is remaining, there is no 'I' to suffer and thus no suffering or >disease will be present? If the 'I' or ego is not real, then can it disapear >or vanish upon searching for its Source? > Hmm... good question. Flipping through an old book called "The Method of The Siddhas" I found the following passages. I am not sure whether it 'answer' your question or how you can 'make use' of it. But it is a piece that I enjoyed a lot. SRI DA AVABHASA: "Our suffering is our own activity. It is something that we are doing moment to moment. It is a completely voluntary activity. We cognize it in the form of symptoms, which are the sense of separate existence, the mind of endless qualities, of differentiation, and the whole form of motion, of desire. We are always already living in these things, but their root, the source of it all, the thing whose form they are all reflecting, is this contraction, this separative act, this avoidance of relationship, which constantly creates the form in consciousness that we cognize as suffering. Where it is re-cognized, known again, this activity and its symptoms cease to be the form of consciousness. Then what is always prevented by the usual state becomes the form of consciousness. Where there is unqualified relationship, where there is no contraction, where there is no separation, no avoidance, there is no differentiation, no neccessary mind, no necessary desire, no identification with separate movement. Then consciousness falls into its own form, without effort. Symbolically, this is called knowing of cognizing the Self. But in fact it is not possible to fix attention on the Self. Your own nature or Reality itself cannot become an object of attention. The actual process involves attention and re-cognition of this suffering, this contration. Where suffering is thus "known", what it prevents is suddenly, spontaneously enjoyed, not as the "object" of enjoyment, but as the enjoyment itself. Then prior to effort, motivation, or attention, there is only the "Self", Reality, the Heart. Where there is this re-cognition of suffering, the whole structure of experiences, concepts, searches, strategies, that is our ordinary life, our search, ceases to be obsessive or even particularly interesting. It losses its significance, its capacity to qualify what always already is. This undistracted state, this natural enjoyment prior to the activity that is our suffering, is called realization, jnana, understanding.... When the ego, the separate self-sense that is our suffering, is undermined, and there is a sudden or prolonged penetration of the structure of consciousness, of mind, of motion, of self-sense, when all of that is undermined, penetrated, understood, re-cognized, and the very thing that it prevents is enjoyed, there is no longer any one to survive his death. Then there is no separate one living, there is no "one" to be in a body, there is no one to be out of the body. Nothing has happened. There is no separate one.... But there is no method to be recommended to go and find that consciousness. Ramana Maharshi spoke about a method, but his way is really quite paradoxical, humorous, and not, as it seems, straightforward. If you remember, he was always saying: Find out "who" it is that has experiences, that wants to seek, that thinks it is in the body, find out who that is. But of course, there is no way find that out. There is no "one" to find that out. It is a spontaneous event, a paradoxical event, the most absolute of all events. It is a gift! It is itself God, Truth, Reality!" SRI DA AVABHASA The Method of the Siddhas This talk is given in 1972 at the begining of his 'career' to a group of down-town Americans who has little knowledge of spiritual matters and what the spiritual process involves. He was 32 years old, and was known then by his birth name Frankin Jones. The collection of talks given in that period is collected in the above mentioned book. It is one of my all time favouriate, but unfortunately it is out of print at present. I have enjoyed myself enormously doing these couple of postings, and plan to do a couple more shortly. But please do give me some feedback to make the process alive. Yee.