January 8, 2022

These are my words to you as I close in on Parabrahman Nirguna. Listen closely and investigate.

One of the Buddhist sects describes the Absolute as the "Clear Light," a very apt phrase for expressing the inexpressible. Take it further. Follow the clear light through a prism and marvel at the colors emergent. The body-mind through which you decode my words is this prism. All of the cosmos and everything known, including this body-mind-prism, are the colors.

This is the first major shift in orientation that needs to happen before you open to Realization. You are not the physical senses and the intellect with which you identify. These are just functions of the prism, and the prism simply transmutes the clear light into colors, our world, our self-identified selves.

This world is quite an entertainment with its ecstasies and miseries, a roller-coaster for most of us, and we are totally caught up in it. But despite the tumult of three score and ten, when you remove that prism, what's left? The Clear Light. Parabrahman Nirguna. 

One thing that studying Advaitan sages such as Nisargadatta has done for me is to undermine the subject-object world we believe in. Remember, we already believe ("know") the atomic and sub-atomic nature of our world and of ourselves, so jumping into the clear light prior to form shouldn't be too much of a stretch. 

But this logic and reasoning is far from the direct experience promised by Advaita. In fact, any concept, any product of the mind and senses, is not what we're after. These are very subtle veils over reality.

Nothing transient is ultimately true or real. Saturate yourself in accurate Advaitan discourse (such as "I Am That" and the subsequent Jean Dunn collections) and over time you will open what is perhaps a new sense and certainly sensitivity to a state prior to mind, prior to perception and sensation. This is not brainwashing; it is brain negating.

The first color out of our so-called body-mind prism is the color "I am." Not I am this or I am that, but free and clear of all qualification. Abide right there as much as possible. Return to it no matter how much or how often the ways of the world and mind-chatter draw you away.

"I am" clear of words and thoughts is the avenue through which the body-mind experiences consciousness, and consciousness is the all-pervading substance of everything known. To abide in that first glimmer of pure consciousness as it emerges from the Unmanifest--this is to know what we truly are, this is the direct experience of Advaitan Realization.

The "I Am" or pure consciousness does not identify with the body-mind. It is experienced first and foremost as non-dual clarity, and all else of body-mind perception and conception is secondary and to be ignored--empty really. I could throw some fancy metaphors at this state, but each will just be one more veil to break through to your own direct experience. Just know that the body-mind is no longer you and dwell as the big picture, the great wide open (there I go again) as much as possible. This is ripening, the goal of all living things.

This "place" just prior to the clear light transformed into you and me and everything that is, this flicker of consciousness that opens the eye of the unmanifest--this is where we abide. I can feel this, sense it, at times open completely to it in a vast surrender of all the illusory contents of all my illusory self. We are meant to know this peace. We are always already this peace and total freedom. How ironic that we live in the movie and forget the pure, peaceful stasis upon which the illusion is projected. 

There is no path to that which is closer than what we consider our own body-minds. I have spent decades practicing meditation "paths" that in the end proved unnecessary for this realization. Or were they though? I have definitely improved my ability to concentrate and focus. That comes in handy while accessing the great wide open. Sometimes intellectual-leaning, scientifically-minded westerners like me need to beat the dead horse again and again before we see the clear light. It's called jnana yoga or "neti, neti"--not this, not this--following these paths until we come to the dead end, then discarding that one for the next. I have been a seeker and that is part of the seeking. Just remember Herbert Spencer's admonition to be vigilant for "contempt prior to investigation," the last stand every ego takes to save itself from annihilation.

I urge you to read "I Am That," maybe once every few years, and slowly. Contemplate it. Be amazed as what once seemed nonsensical, opaque and cryptic gradually bequeaths its wisdom. That is you changing, not the book. It is your shadow growing smaller as noon approaches. Advaita calls this first flicker or last glimmer of pure consciousness "Being-Knowledge-Bliss." Awareness and steadiness in "I am" is blissful. Our purpose in life is its direct experience and "I Am That" its blueprint.

Another breath of freedom is comfort with "I don't know." Where were you twenty years before birth and where will you be twenty years after death? Don't know. What continues when consciousness ceases? Don't know. Death? We return to the "don't know" from which we came. Who or what is it that doesn't know? I prefer to think of death in terms of eternity and infinitude, but that's mind-stuff. Closer still would be Advaitan terminology, "Parabrahman Nirguna," which I understand roughly as "beyond anything known and without attributes or qualification." Acceptance of this is a source of--literally--peace beyond understanding. It is the end of all questions.

I don't have faith anymore. As promised, direct experience confirms the "scriptures" of sages such as Shankara, Ramana Maharshi, Nisargadatta Maharaj, and probably all genuine luminaries of genuine spirituality. Certainly Jesus was such a realized master, whose original truths have since been distorted by the usual human suspects, his golden insight tarnished. Jesus did not have faith. He experienced what he said. The Absolute has no edge or border, no center, no substance, no form, shape or color, no qualification or disturbance of any kind, nor is there time in eternal presence, or presence at all, because we are not these limited and temporal body-minds. It's all one, clear and untainted, without beginning and without end.

You're gonna have to trust me on that until you verify it yourselves.

Love, Dad

January 12, 2022

         You are not the body. You are the conscious presence. Accept it and you can forget it. -- N.M.

          Conscious presence is a ripple, a disturbance of the absolute peace that you are.--Me