Thoughts Arise

Do you want to know what death is? When you are hounded by incessant noise and yearn for it to stop, death is that complete silence. When life is an unending rush and you wish to escape the tyranny of time, death is that timeless stillness. When your mind first stirs from slumber and all you want is the bliss of sleep, death is that perfect peace. When you embrace someone you love and feel the urge to melt in their arms, death is the fulfilment of that eternal union. Do not be afraid of death. It is not extinction or annihilation. It is your original undisturbed state. But wait! Life too is your state. It is your love of existence, the bliss of being, the outpouring of your own vital essence. Savour it. Image from freepik.com

Right now, you are present and aware. Present as in you are here right now. Aware as in you have the capacity to know. And if you think of any memory, at the time that memory is formed you are present and aware. And when you are asleep and begin to dream, or when the mind stirs and you notice it, you are present and aware. And if you lose consciousness and all experience stops, it can only return because you remain present and aware. And when this life begins and the very first experience appears, you are already present and aware. Therefore, if you had a name, you could be called Presence-Awareness. Wherever there is life and consciousness, at the root of it is this Presence-Awareness that is You. And even if there is no life or consciousness, whenever they appear, they appear to You. Hence, You are prior to consciousness and unconsciousness. Beyond beginnings and endings, life and death. In Truth there is only You. There is no one else. All is You. When Yo...

Fulfillment. Happiness. Peace. A lasting joy is available. No spectacular experience is needed. No meditative state needs to be attained. No major shift has to be achieved. All that is required is to find your own heartfelt answer to a simple question. What am I? I — the reference point for all experience. The seed from which a mind takes shape. The events, the memories, the likes and dislikes, the hopes and fears; all tied in knots to I. The thing that somehow happens to be sentient. Is it this body that is sentient? Certainly not the parts that can be lost or replaced. Nor the parts that work autonomously. Not the flesh and bones that will be left behind at death. No, I am not just this body. So what am I? A stream of experience? A pattern of thoughts and memories? A bundle of sensations? No, I am more than that. The activity of this body leaves impressions on what I am. Those impressions are experienced. They are known. I know that activity, therefore I am not the activity. I am it...

We all feel that we fail to express the depth of our love, but love is always perfect. I have seen this clearly: In the experience of love, I am both the subject and the object of love, and the love itself. And, except for the story of this birth, I am you. I have seen this by being you. You are that which sees without eyes, hears sound as music, blossoms as love in the heart. You are the pure awareness which makes experience possible. We cannot be two. Because you are the one true Self, my love for you is boundless; inexpressible even by all expressions of love in their totality. Please understand that the depth of all love is the depth of your true identity. Please let these words express my love for you. Know that this expression is imperfect, but I love you truly for you and I are one. Beyond this life we will forever be together in the ultimate peace. If you can look past your own birth and death, you will see that this is not a belief but a simple truth. There are no individuals...

In the vastness of space, imagine a single pinprick of intense light. Now switch the perspective; you are that point of light. To you there is only the emptiness of space. Now the space is receding. It is fading away and soon there will be no reference for you to know that you even exist. Yet, you are and you are not this space. You will prevail. And as soon as there is anything at all, the fact that you prevail will be self-evident. The insight to end all seeking is based on two unassailable facts — “there is something rather than nothing” and “I am”. No other knowledge can be known with the same level of certainty. These facts come from direct knowledge. Since there is something, there can never truly have been nothing. The equations of science describe how a certain something can produce another thing. But as we follow this chain of cause and effect back to its source we approach an incomprehensible nothingness. Could the universe have appeared out of nothing? “I am, but what...

When the mind is facing annihilation,  Yet the heart is bursting with joy, You know you have arrived at that threshold,  Where Truth can no longer be denied. When you dare to admit, what is aware is not this mind, body or even “I”,  Thoughts dissolve into understanding, the false identity cannot sustain its lie.    All manifestations are expressions of Reality,  And all interactions are Its will. All experience Its intimacy,  And pain and suffering the depth of Its goodwill. It alone has the capacity for sensing, perceiving, knowing,  For granting forms that passing, yet undeniable, touch of be-ing.   Photo from EurekAlert.org  

Sound waves impinge upon the ear. Delicate instrumentation translates the vibrations into electo-chemical signals. A cacophony of neurons fire, activating each other through charged ions. Only then is there experience; the magic of hearing . The vibrations of molecules and the subsequent activity of brain cells, somehow reflected as music. There is a delay between the time the sound reaches the body to when it is heard . So what is really heard cannot be said to be sound waves. Nor can it be called brain activity, because no conceivable instrument should feel the dance of charged ions inside a head as music originating from outside the head. Every experience is a deeply mysterious echo of activity within the body and the world. It is a ripple in some subtle dimension of spacetime, an afterimage of an event that has already happened, palpably felt through some miraculous law of nature. But the miracle is not just that there is experience. You see, both the body and the world have been ...