Spiritual Absorption
Spiritual Absorption.
The purpose of life is to be absorbed in spirit.
When we see life or the world, time, matter and experience, we feel that life is solid, that it’s visceral, that it has meaning.
In the world of matter we’re born, we grow, develop, decay, decline, and die.
In this world that’s all there is — growth, maturation, decay, and death.
We are all on the wheel of time. Time gives us birth, time gives us death, and time gives us rebirth.
There is a way beyond time, beyond birth, beyond death and rebirth. The way is not to avoid birth, death, and rebirth. The way is not to avoid pleasure and pain, hope and sorrow, sadness and frustration. The way is not to accept nor is it to reject.
The way is to become … without becoming. To act without reason, without hope, without disbelief, without antagonism.
The way is to be absorbed,
Not just to
To enter into that endless ocean we call nirvana, to be absorbed, to return to the source, to become immortality itself.
Absorption always exists, always has existed, and always will exist. Absorption is not so much a state of mind or being as it is a clear perception of reality.
Reality comes in many forms: people, places, histories, pasts, presents, futures, civilizations, planets, universes, lokas, deities. Absorption does not negate any of these things. Spiritual absorption is not an end, nor is it exactly a beginning. It’s simply the integration of that which is and that which is not. You are and at the same time you are not. You are this moment, but you’re not the next. You are this week, but you’re not next week. You are this life, this moment, yet you’re trapped in time.
You think of the future. You live for the future, planning, thinking, evaluating, always hoping that if everything is properly aligned it will all work out.
But you must understand,
nothing lasts.
Everything here is transitory. Your life will end; this world will end. Nothing lasts. The nature of this world is dissolution and transformation.
To feel that you can accomplish something that will last is wrong. Nothing lasts. Nor is that wrong, it’s not supposed to.
This world is eternity as all worlds are eternity. Eternity takes many shapes and forms but ultimately eternity is formless.
Meaning it can adapt any form. And yet at the same time its essence remains beyond form.
The truth of all ages is this:
Don’t think that spiritual realization, peace, joy, comfort, happiness will come to you. Because these things, like all things, are transitory illusions. If happiness comes today, tomorrow unhappiness will follow it. If peace comes today, the next day disruption will come. Just when your system is all worked out, something will upset it. That is the nature of this world — that is correct. To be upset about that is foolish.
One must accept the transitory nature of all things and what’s more,
God does everything perfectly, eternity does everything perfectly. Nirvana is perfect. All things are perfect.
Except that human beings — and other beings — sometimes feel that things are not perfect. We try and make something into something that it is not and then we suffer.
We suffer because we become attached to friends, to places, to things, to ideas and ideals. There’s nothing wrong with friends, places, things, ideas, or ideals.
All exist suspended invisibly by eternity itself.
But for us, in our confusion, to mistake them for something they are not, is only to enter into the world of disappointment.
To think that our car will last forever, no matter how much we love it, it’s foolish. It will only cause us suffering, when it changes its current form.
To think that people we love will stay the same is foolish. Because people change.
To think that our own ideas are important is foolish.
Ideas are not important. People are not important. Places are not important. Time is not important. Nothing and everything has little or no importance.
All that matters is eternity.
Eternity is God. God is the world, the places, the people, the times, the events.
God is existence. And nonexistence.
It cannot be reasoned, but it can be easily understood.
Be absorbed.
Absorb yourself in eternity. Don’t worry about this world. Don’t worry about your bank account, don’t worry about your friends or your family, don’t worry about your job, don’t worry about your health, don’t worry about … worry.
Don’t worry at all.
When you think of the future — when you plan, when you think of the past, when you regret — you lose yourself in the finite.
You lock yourself into a cage from which there is no escape. The cage is the human web of consciousness.
To try and leave this world — to try and enter onto the wheel of karma, to spin on it, and then to leave — is impossible.
That which exists must always exist. That which is born must die.
So you can’t escape from rebirth, you can’t escape from pain and suffering and sorrow.
And if you exist, you must accept the conditions of existence — birth, growth, maturation, decay, and death.
To leave this world is impossible in a sense, because this world is all worlds.
Wherever you go you take yourself with you. Wherever you go, if you exist, you take birth, growth, maturation, decay, and death with you. These conditions exist in all worlds.
Be absorbed.
When you are absorbed
It’s not that these things don’t exist.
When you are fully absorbed in spirit, when you attain liberation, self-realization, satori, when you merge with nirvana, it’s not that the worlds, and the times, and the places, and the loves, and the cares don’t exist.
In this world we see the world. In the dream we see the dream. But when the dream fades, when we awaken from the dream, the dream soon is gone, we forget.
The worst nightmare fades, the worst pain goes away. The most horrible suffering recedes. Even the greatest joys vanish.
For this world, my friend, is but a dream. This life is but a dream.
All of this that we see and even that which is unseen
To be absorbed is to awaken from the dream of life and death and rebirth.
To be absorbed is not to go against the flow nor to go with it.
It is to be absorbed.
To be absorbed in nirvana is perfect perfection, beyond words, beyond reason, beyond remorse.
Be absorbed at every moment.
Be absorbed in meditation. Be absorbed at work. Be absorbed with your friends, your families, your loves, your cares, your frustrations.
Do not attempt to leave this world.
These are but ideas in the mind of God.
Be absorbed.
Be absorbed in perfect perfection, in perfect immortality.
If I hold a candle to the sun the flame vanishes. The flame still exists, but it is not perceived.
So when you are absorbed in spirit — when you think of God, of spiritual teachers, of the highest precepts of existence — constantly, then you will not see the suffering or sorrow of this or any world. You will not see frustration.
This is not a narcotic. This is not a simple forgetting. Rather it is a right perception of the nature of existence. Existence is seamless and perfect.
Be absorbed in nirvana.
Let go of this world.
Don’t focus on it so much. In this world we see nothing but news. We hear nothing but views. We listen but we don’t hear. We see but we don’t view.
We have forgotten the secret of secrets — immortality is all that exists.
Be absorbed and cut this world away. Cut all worlds away.
Throw away desire and hope, love and hate.
Think only of that which is the ultimate good.
It is not the condition of your life or of your body or of your mind that matters but the condition of your spirit, and your spirit is perfect.
Be absorbed only in immortality.
Don’t try and be something that you are not. Don’t try and be anything that you are. Don’t try at all.
Most people feel that one day they will attain. One day they will give. One day they will be — these are idle dreams and idle fantasies.
These things never come to be because we are not.
Be absorbed in God and light. Settle for nothing else.
Tomorrow does not exist. Yesterday does not exist.
Be absorbed in this moment and in this moment see eternity.
Stop procrastinating, stop feeling that tomorrow, tomorrow, tomorrow you will have an opportunity to realize God, to be what you’ve always wanted to be. This is but another illusion.
Now, let go. Let go of your body, let go of the world, let go of your loves and your hates and your desires. Let go of your ego, let go of your bondage, your frustration, your happiness, your dreams, your cares because there is no perfection in them. There is no peace in them; they are all transitory.
You are immortal consciousness caught up in a transitory world.
Be absorbed.
Be absorbed.
Be absorbed.
All is a play of existence, world upon world, scene upon scene. The play goes on forever.
We wake up in one lifetime and we play a role. We wake up in another lifetime and we play another role.
We wake up forgetting, gradually remembering and then we fall asleep again, and we dream another dream of immortality.
Be absorbed.
Don’t give yourself to others.
Don’t think of people, think of truth and love.
Love light. Light is your real friend. Light will never ever fail you. All people, places, and conditions of this world will come and go, but light will always be with you. Stay with light and love light.
Be unafraid of … all. There is nothing to fear. Death is but a mere tickle. Life is the same.
Immortality is all that exists. Listen to these words and be absorbed.
Meditate with your eyes closed. Release yourself.
Give your life away to God, to eternity. Don’t try and live it for yourself anymore. You’ve tried that and it only ends in limitation and frustration.
Allow life to be you. Enjoy the moment, enjoy this world. Enjoy everything and enjoy nothing — nothing being immortal consciousness, nothing being eternal awareness.
Love unconditionally all, but save your deepest love for eternity. Think of God at every moment because every moment is God. Think of truth at every moment, for every moment is truth.
There are no eternal rewards. There is only eternity itself, matchless, perfect and shining, your real nature.
Lose your mind, your heart, your being in the ecstasy of existence. The fathomless ecstasy of nirvana, beyond feeling, beyond non-feeling.
Beyond self and non-self is nirvana. The shining void, endless, perfect, has always existed, and will always exist.
The fabric of reality itself sewn into different forms and patterns, yet beyond all forms and patterns.
All worlds spring forth from nirvana, all worlds return unto it. The self itself is but a projection of nirvana. We are all projections of nirvana. There is nothing but nirvana, nirvana being immortal consciousness.
Be absorbed in that which you are and that which you are not. Don’t fight, don’t struggle.
Be absorbed instead, because if you fight and struggle you will either win or lose and be satisfied with neither.
Be absorbed. It is the way between life and death, the way between success and failure.
It is only in absorption that true peace will come, that true rest will come, that real spiritual liberation occurs. Not an egotistical serving of others, not an egotistical loving of others, not an egotistical knowing.
Be absorbed in immortality itself.
There is nothing and no one else but your dear friend, eternity. Who has always loved you. Who will always love you.
Enjoy the transitory but know that it is transitory, a mere reflection of the eternal.
Enjoy the beauty of the children’s pageant, but realize that the children go away. The curtain closes, the auditorium empties, and you are alone, alone with your own immortal reality.
Watch your self-form appear and disappear in the maya. Know that the maya, the illusion, is God too.
Be absorbed in eternal perfect awareness.
There is weather in the world. So there is weather in immortality. Weather takes many forms. Where does it come from and where does it return to? This is your concern, not the weather.
There are vibratory patterns in the subtle physical world. There are winds of dharma, just as there are winds in the skies of this world, and in all worlds the wind of Shiva blows, the transforming energy of existence moves all the worlds and all the conditions of maya.
Be not concerned with weather. Be not concerned with transformation.
Rather, know that which IS … transformation, that which is the cause of all that transforms. That which is behind the surface.
Be absorbed in that, your real nature.
This transitory body, this transitory personality, are not yours.
They are but donations from eternity. Enjoy them while they last,
Remember, you are the master of all conditions of this and all and other worlds.
You are the mistress of immortality.
Stop trying.
Stop giving. Stop loving.
These ideas, no matter how wonderful and good, only bind you. Release them all and be absorbed.
Become a slave of immortality. Do the bidding … of God. Fight if you must against God, but know that God ultimately always wins. Your higher self always wins.
Be a mistress of eternity. Eternity is your lover. It comes and awakens you. It challenges you. It asks things of you. Do what it will.
Be a loving mistress, be passive. Watch the passing of generations, the births, the deaths, the transmutations, and be unaffected.
Feel love, feel sorrow, feel joy. Live … fully, but feel none of these things as you feel them.
Watch with the eye of the sage, with the eye of intuition and see beyond this physical plane, beyond all planes.
Enjoy your transitory nature; be absorbed.
Look deep within, look far beyond
But remember it is not you who are seeing through your eyes,
Fathom that, plumb that, feel that.
Be absorbed.
No more promises, no more good intentions, no more resolutions, only absorption.
Give this world up. And yet love it and serve it fully. Give up your family, your friends and yourself. But stay with them all.
Be absorbed.
Forget success and failure. Yet try to be successful and don’t mind failure.
Be absorbed.
Learn the lessons of immortality — be they difficult or be they easy — with an even mind.
This evenness of temperament will come through your meditation; through directing yourself to a realized spiritual teacher who IS absorbed and who will channel the light of the dharma to you;.
By meditating on the dharma, on the gods and goddesses, on the self, on the personal or impersonal aspects of God, on nirvana. Be absorbed.
Spend every waking moment and every sleeping moment enjoying the play of immortality.
Be yourself. Try not to be someone else.
Be that which is. Allow yourself the freedom to express yourself in whatever way you need to. It’s not what you do that matters, it’s not what you say.
There is nothing that is not holy or spiritual;
Be beyond definition and categorization.
Allow immortality to work through you.
Be but a mere instrument.
Nirvana
Nirvana is an endless expanse of unused consciousness and awareness. Nirvana is something that we eternally are. Nirvana is reality. Nirvana is not a time, a place, or a dimension, although it includes times and dimensions and places. Nirvana is beyond the ocean, beyond the sky, beyond eternity itself.
We are alive, we believe, we think, act, conceive, rebel, oppress, liberate. We are alive. We do things without knowing why, inventing answers that satisfy our minds, projecting reasons into the sun and the sky. Long before we came into this world, long before this world, nirvana existed, empty of thought waves, permanent, eternal, everlasting, brighter than ten billion suns, without shape or form yet giving all things shape and form. When this world has gone away, when all the people we know, all the beings who have ever been have said their last, and done their last, nirvana will remain.
Nirvana is an end to pain and suffering. This is a world filled with pain and suffering. The absence of nirvana is suffering. A spiritually liberated person like myself, or someone else who has crossed the ocean of life and death and come to rest in nirvana, is the opiate to life. Human beings seek us out because when they’re in our presence they no longer feel the pain of separativity. They seek us out and for a few brief moments or hours or days or years, the pain of life decreases.
But then something lures them back to the pain. They seek rebirth, they seek salvation in this world or in some other world. They forget the perfection of awareness, nirvana, the causeless cause. Why do we seek suffering so? Krishna and Arjuna come to mind: Krishna, the liberated soul, he who has become nirvana; Arjuna, the seeker, who wants, yet does not want, liberation.
Liberation means extinction of all that you know and all that you love — to the ignorant.
To the wise, liberation rather is going beyond this world, beyond time, beyond place, beyond space-dimension, beyond maya, becoming the suffusion of eternal light.
But only the illumined know nirvana. Nirvana does not cause anyone or anything to cease in this world or any other world. Nirvana, rather, is perspective. It’s a release from bondage, not simply the bondage of the body or of time or of this world, but the bondage of vision, perspective; thinking that we’re someone or something trapped in a body, in time, in place; thinking that we’re important, that we matter or feeling that we don’t matter.
Nirvana doesn’t cause this world to go away because this world has never really existed in the way that we think that it does. Our absorption in nirvana does not alter cause and effect. Rather, what happens is we become absorbed in nirvana. That is to say, the “we” that we always knew is replaced by another we, which is nirvana, in which case this world dissolves, life dissolves, death dissolves, all peoples, places, dimensions, times, causations, pains, loves, all these things dissolve — insubstantial, transitory, like a cloud that moves through the sky and appears to be quite solid, and is, for a time. But soon the winds of time move through it, causing its whiteness to separate and soon it dissolves before our eyes, it vanishes into the sky, it’s gone.
So all these worlds which seem so substantial to us — our careers, our families, our friends, our concerns, even our silence in meditation — vanishes, as does the cloud in nirvana, nirvana being not an end or a beginning. Beginnings and ends are ways of seeing things that we, women and men in this world, create. Nirvana just is.
Why are we so afraid … of dissolution of the personality? Why do we seek to be eternal, to suffer forever? Answerless questions. Nirvana is absorption. Suffering is being. Being and nonbeing are really the same, different words to express the same idea. There is no such thing as nonbeing, in the sense that most people mean it. Nonbeing can only be a projection of one who has being. Without one who has being there’s no projection of nonbeing. If I don’t exist, how could I have a concept of nonbeing, of forward and backward in time? These things really don’t exist, except that I give them life, but if I, who am the cause of all things, the creator of all heavens and hells, vanish like the cloud, dissolved in eternity, formless, then all of these things cease to exist. It is I who give them form, it is I who give them formlessness, but if there’s no I, then there’s no heaven, no hell, no eternity.
So, a spiritual seeker seeks an end to suffering. The spiritual seeker spends lifetimes looking for an illumined person, one who has become absorbed in nirvana, what Shankara 3 calls “liberation while living”. That is to say, while still in the body one has attained to liberation. When you come to such a person, when you sit and meditate with them, you experience a minor liberation, a touch of nirvana, just to be in the presence of such a holy person, and we remember — we remember dissolution.
One can only suffer if one is still one. If one is no longer one there is no suffering, no sorrow. But in the mind of one who suffers, suffering matters. Suffering is something to seek because suffering perpetuates being, and the thought of nonbeing, which is created by being, is awesome, frightening, terrible. You may climb to the very highest mountaintop, but then to leave the mountaintop and to go into the thin air itself — it seems impossible. To travel across the deserts, to the ocean, then to swim out into the ocean and disappear, to disappear from your own sight, not simply to lose awareness, nor to become awareness, but to lose sight — nirvana, the ultimate reality. All gods and goddesses, beings and places, astral worlds, physical worlds, the samadhis, all come forth from nirvana.
Nirvana is not separate from life. To think that nirvana is juxtaposed to life, that it’s antithetical to life, is really a lack of vision. Nirvana is not empty, meaningless, or foreign in any way. There is nothing but nirvana. But we could say that there are two types of nirvana, from the point of view of the relative mind. There is nirvana in its absolute form. Then there is nirvana as seen from the point of view of form. In the first case, nirvana is not something to be experienced, since there is no longer an experiencer, there is only nirvana, perfect, seamless reality. The second is nirvana in form, nirvana in self-awareness, self-awareness as a being perceiving nirvana. You look, you see the hills, the mountains, the people, you see nirvana, you are part of nirvana seeing other parts of nirvana — two forms.
So the spiritual seeker seeking liberation from pain and suffering, which is this world, the transitory, comes to the enlightened person and says, “Please show me the truth. Reveal to me what is right. Show me the dharma, the absolute truth, the way. I want to suffer no more. I seek perfection.” And the teacher, who is nirvana in veiled form, through personality, reveals the way, gradually teaches the student the steps to erase one’s self. The student follows the steps, learns to meditate, learns to become pure, humble, self-effacing, self-giving, but one thing still remains: nirvana, in its absolute formlessness.
The student will follow all the lessons, if the student is an excellent student, one out of tens of thousands of millions, and will come all the way to the verge of nirvana, to the verge of dissolution. And at that moment something will rise up within that student, within each person, and will stop, just short of dissolution. That part of them which is still being will fight for life like the patient on the table who’s fighting for their life.
But nirvana has nothing to do with patients or tables or teachers or students. Nirvana is neither concerned nor unconcerned. Nirvana is limitless perfection, everything that you are, all loves, all places, and all peoples. All forms are nirvana, in veiled form. Nirvana is veiled by maya. Maya is illusion, the illusion of separativity, seeing nirvana from this world in separate forms, as opposed to the perfect formlessness of nirvana. To go beyond the categorical mind completely, to go beyond the self, to exhaust all one’s karmas, to become nirvana, only then is one beyond the wheel of birth and death because one is not. There can be no death for one who no longer exists, for one who is no longer one. There can be no rebirth. Vanished without a trace. Absorption. Neither death nor birth nor rebirth.
Everyone suffers in this world. All of you who are listening to me, suffer. Even when you are happy you suffer. You suffer even in happiness in the respect that you are not in the effulgence of liberation. The body torments you, the mind torments you, the world, the ignorance, the cruelty torments you, but simply the mere fact that you are not liberated torments you more than all these things.
There is great beauty in this world; there is love, compassion, joy, gratitude, friendship, strength. There is much beauty in this world and in other worlds, but all of these beauties come and go, they’re transitory. They should be enjoyed, they should not be shunned. But all of the beauties in all the worlds that have ever been and will ever be, all of the ecstasies that have ever been and will ever be, all of the joys, the loves, when stretched from end to end throughout eternity, will not even be noticed in nirvana.
A candle held to the sun is not seen, so great is the light of the sun. So the light of nirvana is greater than a hundred billion suns. The ecstasy is beyond expression, the silence beyond contemplation. The way is free and clear, yet few will reach it and of those who reach it, how many will return? None. That which comes out of nirvana is not the same as that which went in. We walk into the room, the door shuts behind us. Were somebody to open the door and look into the room, they would see no one there. Gone, vanished without a trace. If someone walks out of the room, who’s that? Nirvana in veiled form.
Karma binds us to this world, to any world, to anything, to the idea of being someone; selfhood we call it. Karma means essence, substance. Desire creates the illusion of selfhood. We are free-flowing consciousness, we are the thin air, but a desire passes through the air as a cloud does and so the self is born. Something identifies with that desire. Something says, “I am here and I am experiencing this desire. It is my desire.” That desire leads us astray, it leads us TO something, it offers us a promise, it says, “I want this,” or the desire becomes its opposite, aversion, “I don’t want that.” Likes, dislikes, the pairs of opposites are formed. Soon we construct a world of desires and aversions. We want pleasure, we don’t want pain. We want life, we don’t want death. We want joy, we don’t want sorrow. But life is merely a dream. This world is not substantial, desires are not substantial, all places, persons, and conditions are not substantial. Right now you’re in a dream, but you’ve forgotten that you’re in a dream. You think that you’re awake, you think that you know — you don’t.
Nirvana is waking from the dream of life. The dream, no matter how beautiful, is still a dream and compared with the reality of existence, it is nothing. Nirvana is ecstasy and beyond, an end to suffering, joy and love beyond expression. Nirvana is neither empty nor full. It’s not an end to your being, rather it is your eternal being. Seek ye nirvana, seek the skies. This world is transitory. It is not our real home. Our real home is nirvana. Remember, break through your amnesia and remember. Remember in meditation. Sit in silence, stop all thought and recollection will take place. The mind will become calm, shining, perfect. No longer will the mind be the mind, nor the body the body, nor this world this world. All that will exist is eternity.
The void is a projection of nirvana. The physical world exists. Above the physical world are the subtle physical worlds, the astral worlds we call them. Above the astral worlds, the void. The void is the sky in which the planets hang. The ether is the astral. The void supports both the physical and the astral. It’s emptiness in the sense that it is background. The void is the active projection of nirvana. It creates the worlds, holds the worlds in suspension and dissolves the worlds. Nirvana is that cause beyond the void because the void itself is transitory. Nirvana is not that which is transitory.
The way to seek nirvana? To begin with, love is usually the best. When we start our journey, we need to learn love. Love is unity, unity and multiplicity. As you meditate you will learn about love. You will learn to love your body, even though it doesn’t last; to love your mind, whether it’s filled with pure or impure thoughts; to love this very beautiful world, which we are visiting; to love the beings in this world, the spiritual seekers, those who have no conscious interest in spirit yet are naturally spiritual, that is to say their inner being is attuned to eternity while their conscious being may ignore it; those who are vile, who hate others; those who suffer; those who are condemned — to love them all. We learn to love the nonphysical beings, the gods, goddesses, beings, forms, forces. Each one is a projection of ourselves, each one is our self. As our love grows, division ceases. We no longer see the world, people, beings, places, existences, lokas, as separate, but as our own being.
Then we go to the ocean. We leave everyone and everything behind. We take a walk to the beach by ourselves, and we sit on the sand and we look out at the ocean, and we contemplate that which has nothing to do with life as we know it, that which has nothing to do with love, joy — the other world, beyond this shore — we contemplate that void and we become one with it. We learn to love it, its shining, immutable reality. And we see ourselves in it. We see that we are not a person, we are not a body, we are not a mind. We are eternity, we are the shining void, we are the worlds, subtle, physical, the beings. And that’s where most people stop. If they get that far, they stop there because again, the fear. The fear of dissolution, the fear of perfection haunts us, but a day will come when you, like I have, will find that, without knowing why or how, you will walk beyond that point and dissolve, swept away by a wind that you couldn’t control, try though you could. Then you’ll dissolve. There are no words to express it, what it’s like.
You may reappear and you’ll find yourself in the world again, half man or woman, half nirvana, just enough form to act in this world. Then you’ll become the opiate of the masses. They will seek you out to be near you, to feel that infiniteness and you yourself will lead a strange, strange life. Strange in the sense that you will no longer be exactly human, you will be nirvana. Yet you will find that you still exist, you still have a body, what Shankara calls liberation while in the body. And you must wait out your time and go through this life, nirvana serving others, nirvana accessible through the form, to itself, in and through itself.
Then one day the body will pass away. It won’t be any different, since you didn’t have a body. Others saw you as having a body. There was no body. Nobody at all. Nirvana. Beyond eternity, beyond time.
2. Shankara was a fully Enlightened Indian saint and scholar of the Vedas, possibly of the 8th century AD. He is the author of The Crest Jewel of Discrimination, which was on Rama’s first list of fundamental teachings which he recommended to his students. Rama recommended only the translation by Swami Prabhavananda and Christopher Isherwood.
3. From Amazon, “A classic text on the path to God through knowledge. The basic teaching is that God alone is the all-pervading reality; the individual soul is none other than the universal soul.”