More of Self Knowledge

Random pick. I love this book. Texts and dialogues with and by Nome:

"Furthermore, if you do not pursue the patterns of delusion, the ways of being misidentified, or, in the gross form of ignorance, the ways of becoming attached, your inquiry becomes steady. You can notice this when you are meditating. If you are attempting to inquire, and your mind runs off at a tangent, to what has it run off? Something is of concern or something is desirable; there is something you are anxious about of which you are dreaming. That makes the meditation and knowledge unsteady.

What is one to do? You can attempt to say to yourself that you just will not daydream. That will not last long. The intention is good, but you will need something more than intention. You will need to inquire to see what does your mind run? What identity did you take up? If you examine taht, your inquiry, your meditation, will become steady. If your inquiry lifts you beyond the level of thought, your inquiry becomes continuous. If you are off the level of thought, you discover that there is no such thing as mind. Consider your mind if you remove all the thoughts: what remains of it? There is something remaining but it is not a mind anymore. The mind is transformed into "I". Its real nature is revealed. What is the actual nature of the "I" in which the mind has been transformed? Its real nature is only the Self, not the individualized entity, or ego, that it first appeared to be.

If there is illusion, or differentiation, inquire to know your Self. If there is no illusion, or differentiation, there is no need for the inquiry, and the question of inquiring or not will not even arise. If there is differentiation, find out for whom it is. You thus arrive at the first differentiated point, the "I." Inquire. "Who am I?" If you so inquire, you will find nobody there. There is one SElf that is there, but nobody there. There is no individual; just one undifferentiated Existence. If you abide in the Knowledge of this one undifferentiated Existence, you have peace that is immutable. You have Bliss that is not dependent upon anything and which cannot be diminished. You have the freedom of Liberation from all of the imagined bondage. You thus have Enlightenment, without an alternative, and you are dwelling in your real state, which the Maharshi refers to as the Natural State.

Q: (expressed a belief that external events determine happiness and spoke of her father's unhappiness over events as the cause of hers) He is happy about this, and this seems to make me happy the he is happy. I cannot get past this.
Nome says: You are happy that he is happy.
Q: Yes.
Nome says: Right now, do you know if he is happy or not?
Q: No.
Nome says: However, you are happy that he is happy. (laughter) It is not so externally determined, is it?
Q: Yes, I see.
Nome says: Can you see that if your understanding of the situation is agreeable to your mind, you are happy, regardless of what the situation may actually be.
Q: Yes, that is true.
Nome says: He may be happy, but you may think that he is unhappy. So, you would be busy being unhappy about his happiness. You would be thinking that it was because of his unhappiness. This would still be all in your mind.
The determining factors, or conditionings, are in your mind, and really have little connection to what the external circumstances are.
Q: Yes.
Nome: Indeed, since they are totally contrary, they have nothing to do with the external circumstances. That is the determination. You can now see that those are the limitations, or apparent conditions, upon which your happiness is based. It really is the limitation superimposed on your happiness. From where does the actual experience of happiness itself, come? Does it come from your eyes? Does it come from your ears? Does it come from your other senses?
Q: What I want to say is that it seems as though it comes from my mind or emotions, which, I think, are the same thing.
Nome: In either case, we can say, can we not, that it does not come to you through your senses?
Q: It seems that something that my senses perceive could cause these emotions in my mind.
Nome: That would be so, provided that what you perceive is in accord with the conditions that you have already set up in your mind.
Q:Yes.
Nome: In other words, it is not just a pretty sight that causes your happiness. The pretty sight has to be aggreeable t whatever you regard as a good thing.
Q: Yes.
Nome: For example, if you wanted your father to go on vacation, you would have a completely different idea of what would constituted grounds for being happy, in contrast to if you wanted him to be busy doing something.
Q: That is true.
Nome: So again, the sensory thing is not an instrumental factor. It has to be in agreement with what you have set up in your mind.
Q: Yes.
Nome: At different times, you have different conditions set up in your mind, do you not?
Q: Yes.
Nome: Sometimes you set up even opposite conditions, at diferent times.
Q: Yes.
Nome: If they occur simultaneously, you feel caught in conflict, is that not true?
Q: Yes.
Nome: However, if they happen at different times, such is telling you something, in your experience, is it not?
Q: Right.
Nome: So, the conditions keep changing.
Q: Yes.
Nome: The conditions for what justifies the emotion in the mind keep changing. It is a mental condition, or mental criteria, but what of the quality of happiness itself? Does that change?
Q: I can be mildly happy or euphoric. That seems to be a changing quality.
Nome: It is a changing quantity. Can you discern the quality of happiness itself? Does that change? Or, is that not discernable to you?
Q: That is what you want me to work with?
Nome: This is only one way of addressing it.
Q: It is the same thing, but a different quantity.
Nome: What determines the quantity?
Q: That would be my perceptions of what appears as external.
Nome: Your perceptions or your criteria?
Q: Ah!
Nome: The criteria are mental. The perceptions are sensory.
Q: My mental criteria would be the factor.
Nome: So, the mental criteria are like a valve determining how much, but the quality of happiness remains the same.
Q: Yes.
Nome: When you are in deep, dreamless, thoughtless sleep, what criteria do you have?
Q: None. No criteria.
Nome: However, you do have a good quality of happiness, is that not so?
Q: That is another issue for me. I do not know whether I am happy or not in deep sleep. I cannot say I am happy in sleep, because I do not feel happiness. I do not feel unhappiness either.
Nome: If you cannot discern the bliss in deep sleep, that is all right. We do not need to rely upon that in order to gain Self-Knowledge. If you are denied sleep for some period of time, do you become cranky?
Q: Yes. Definitely.
Nome: Futhermore, you become very demanding of it.
Q: Yes.
Nome: You prepare a comfortable place to sleep for your peace to be undisturbed. Aside from all that, sleep may be of no consequence to you. (laughter). When happiness is experienced by you, does it come from the outside through your senses or does it seem to well up from within you?
Q: It seems to well up from within. This is sure.
Nome: Where withihn? Where is that withinness whence it arises?
Q: I feel it in my heart center, if you will. It seems to be located as an emotion in this body.
Nome: Have you ever had happiness without being cognizant of your body or without thinking of a bodily sensation?
Q: Yes. I would say that I usually do. However, you asked me where it seemed to be.
Nome: I did not mean a bodily location. I meant in your experience.
Q: It is just there.
Nome: The happiness actually comes from within. What the happiness actually is, is the shining of "withinness," itself. It may be reflected through your thoughts and be called an emotion. Since you can have different thoughts, different criteria, and apparently different emotions, the source of happiness is actually something deeper. The source of happiness, itself, is deeper. The actual expereince is not the thought, "happiness". There is no thought that is happiness. It is something non-mental inside. That which is the source of the desire for happiness, the source of happiness itself, and the actual experience of happiness, itself, are one and the same thing. It is within. The experience of happiness, the place where happiness is experienced, and the one who experiences happiness, the experience, are all one and the same thing.

When you set up criteria within your mind, these do not promote happiness. They act as a limiting valve upon happines. They seem to be the conditions which, when met, will result in happiness being produced. What they really are, are the conditions under which you allow yourself to feel the innate happiness. Whenever you experience happiness, it is the nature of the Self shining momentarily unobstructed, perhaps accidentally. The conditions have been momentarily met, and before you reinstate a new set of conditions in your mind, such as the forumulation of a new desire, your own happiness is shining.

Because it is accidental, not in Knowledge, it cannot endure. Furthermore, because it is accidental and because of the criteria set up in the mind, the happiness appears subject to the vagaries of the mind. Thus, your mind is subject to moods. Your happier moods have less conditioning criteria. Your unhappier moods are really the same thing, only with more criteria imposed.

If you would want happiness that endures, taht is not a passing emotion, that is Ananda, Bliss, to be your experience, you need to get to the source of happiness and not superimpose all these conditions upon it. You need to rise above the mis-conceptions that the happiness comes from what is external and is determined by external factors.

All your life, you have been searching for that happiness in myriad ways. As the Maharshi points out, it is an unconscious search for the Self. Find your Being, and Bliss is found. Since, in Self-Knowledge, which is the finding of Being, you yourself are what you know, when you know your Self, you, yourself, are the Bliss. What you have, you can lose, but what you are, you cannot lose. Is this clear for you?
Q: Yes. This helps a lot.
Nome: Reflect upon it. Then meditate upon it by seeking out the source of happiness within, where the experience occurs. See it for yourself. When you inquire to know who you are, this reference to deep sleep and its thought-fre state, in which you have no memory, will be of greater significance, and its bliss will become apparent to you. It will not longer seem to be a state shrouded in darkness.
Q: Thank you.
Another Q: Why was this differentiated existence created?
Nome: When you ask, "Why has it been created?" you assume that it has been created. Has it?
Q: I do not know. I assume that a thought was created in time and that thought resulted in this differentiated existence, but really I am Spirit when I trace all the way back. So, I must have come from somewhere. The differentiated existence leads me in that direction back home.
Nome: So, the differentiated existence is a pointer back to the undifferentiated existence?
Q:Yes. But why did it happen?
Nome: Was it created? Did it happen? If you are an individualized spirit, it appears to be there. When, through divine Knowledge of your Self, you find that you are not an individualized spirit, but rather Spirit, the Self, which is undifferentiated and never divided, you know that none of this ever comes to be. God never split in two and is not divided. As long as there is an "I", there is "this". The Maharshi has said, "With the rise of the 'I', all else rises. With the subsidence of 'I', all else subsides."
What rises and subsides cannot be real. What is real is something unchanging, invariable always. That is the Supreme Spirit.

Otherwise, the question will arise: why did the Supreme Spirit decide to split itself into "you", and it, only for "you" to have to get back to it? The question comes from imagining division, or superimposing human conception, human will, or human play upon the Supreme. The Supreme, or the Absolute, has no such imagining. Neither "you", nor "I", nor anyone else ever cease to be. What we are, is just this one invariable, non-dual Supreme Being, or pure Spirit. IN order to realize this, Self-inquiry is recommended. The "I" seems to be caught up in the differentiated existence. The differentiated existence is for you, for the "I." That is the one who experiences it. Inquire into that "I." The illusion of differentiation vanishes like the waters of a mirage when get close to them. We see what was there the whole time. It is like waking up from a dream.
Another Q: What are the steps one has to take in order to have a pure mind?
Nome: Pure mind means a mind that is introverted, that is turned in on its source. A mind that is extroverted, that believes in its own imaginings, can be called an impure mind. If purity of mind is what is desirable, so that the Realization of the Self can be final, we need only to have our own mind cease to believe in its own thoughts. How do we cease to believe in our own thinking. The tendency in ignorance is: if we think it, it must be so, because we have thought it. When we question that approach, saying to ourselves, "From where does the sens of reality in this thinking derive?" the mind turns inward. The mind becomes pure. Pure mind is really pure Consciousness. It is mind that has lots its mind-ness. Therefore, for each thought that arises, if, as the Maharshi says, you put the inquiry to yourself, "For whom is the mind? For whom is this thought?" the mind will go back to its right place. Its right place is Consciousness, which is Brahman.

Q: So, taht is what is always advisable.
Nome: Yes. In one sesne, all the questions are answered by one counter question, "Who am I?" Everything that we search for to help us in Self-Realization really boils down to knowing our Self, and everything we might do is just to help that. If you have the cognition within your mind that you need to purify your mind, you need to get to the root of the mind, to who has the mind. If your mind is inward-turned, it loses its own form. When the mind loses its own form, it is transformed into "I," or it is known to be "I," which is none other than the Self. That is why it is said that the mind of a jnani is Brahman. It does not mean some individualized thinking process is Brahman. How could the vast Brahman be this little thinking? It means the real nature of the mind, because of inquiry into it, has been revealed to be Brahmabn. Brahman alone is.