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Chapter 7
The Ocean dissolves in the Dew Drop
The simplest way to discover grace is to be in the presence of someone
who lives in grace; hence, the importance of being with a Master cannot
be overemphasized.
After grace has been discovered, and as consciousness breaks its identification
with mind, the Master’s work continues to help the devotee go into
even deeper levels of truth and wisdom. Moreover, the depths of sleep
and ignorance are so strong that even after awakening, identification
with mind and body persist. Old habits do die hard. By constantly maintaining
the light of the devotee, the Master continues helping by showing the
illusions of mind, until the devotee’s wisdom, conviction and light
are strong enough for his own inner master to operate.
After some months in satsang, melting and merging into consciousness that
was Papaji, the last split second occured.
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Split Second 7
While sitting with eyes closed one day,
mind became quiet, as time seemed to stand still. I noticed the notion
of
body disappeared and
I discovered I was a sea of Consciousness.
Somewhere contained within me,
Was something I once called body.
However, my containment was something so beyond that;
the body was something contained in me,
and not me in it.
And what was me?
I was consciousness aware it was in the ocean,
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a vast sea of being-ness,
immersed in the source of the Self.
I could expand in many directions,
which were actually no direction,
because I was oneness, a unity.
So blissful this was; so ecstatic,
so healing and restful this was.
In this full wonderfulness, I floated for a while,
seeing that everything of our world did not matter,
was illusion and has never existed.
When the notion of body returned, I opened my eyes
and again the world seemed real.
Later, I wrote down these words
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There is a place where nothing exists.
This nothing is a something without form,
which is pure being,
full with the hum of existence.
In this: I am love, I am bliss.
In this: the world of form does not exist.
From this: I enter the world of form
and the world seems real.
So vast is this experience of being
these exist together in time - no time.
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Appendage
In truth, nothing exists and nothing has ever existed. However, unless
truly experienced and known, this cannot be conceived or even believed;
the world of form, of time seems so real: in fact, more real than the
real.
Who can deny we live in a universe of flux, of constantly changing internal
moods and external conditions. One day we feel great and the next day
we feel terrible. Some days are right and other days are not. Wisdom lies
in the knowledge this change is just apparent, illusionary, somehow it
goes on and yet it doesn’t have much to do with our true selves.
We have become fixed on form and time; and therefore have become creatures
of fear: afraid of death, of survival - not realizing or knowing we are
something beyond this.
We are a incredible vastness.
We are existence itself.
Knowing this is to know where lies the gateway to end suffering.
When the breakthrough in consciousness happens, we go beyond the mind,
into the ocean of Self, and instantly see the truth of what I am saying.
It is mentioned in Split Second 7 how healing, restful and ecstatic it
is to abide in Self.
After even a few seconds of abidance, we can feel totally refreshed and
renewed, similar to a good night’s rest. It is said we abide in
the Self when we enter into dreamless sleep.
Abidance in Self is incomparable; it is far greater than anything we could
ever know and from there, all healing takes place -to be in it is truly
entering into God.
Bliss, ecstasy, well-being and peace are all attributes of Self, but we
could expand and repeat
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these words over and over to infinity and still we would not reach the
utmost depths of being.
Self is always, yet we feel separate and not nourished from it. It is
as if sitting on top of a well with a closed lid, feeling very thirsty
and desperate for water, looking everywhere else but where the water actually
is.
So, what is the lid and how do we open it?
The lid is our ignorance, our persistent belief happiness lies somewhere
outside our selves. We constantly look into the past to analyze and rectify
our feelings of separation. We dream about some future perfection that
will finally heal us. And all the time, we are standing right on the well,
blind to the fact the water is so close.
To open the lid is to take a 180 degree turn within to look for the source
of Self. The emphasis is on the ‘here and now’ as this is
the direction where the Self abides.
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In truth, we live in oneness and yet even oneness is not correct - zero is closer because it does not imply duality. We are existence itself and we are not separate from it. To accept anything less is cheating ourselves out of our birthright. The secret of happiness is to know non-duality; it is the only way out of the suffering of mind. In nothingness, there are no problems - only being and in this being lies everything we have always longed and searched for: bliss, love, truth, light and the most important, love of one’s own Self.
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