Me and Nome in dialogue (pics)

Dialogue between me and my teacher on August 2nd, 2009. It might be worth sharing, I thought

Me: As you are talking I get more of a sense of being all expansive, and just a lot of the things you are saying I have more of a direct experience as you are talking about them. And when I’m doing inquiry outside of here, it tends to be more of a mental exercise, and not getting to the more direct experience of what you are describing as how going into the, looking for the individual I, I only would find the real Self. But here in this room, I have more of an intuitive, visceral, sense of kind of not being an individual and being kind of all expansive. So, I guess it’s just a matter of getting to that experience as I’m walking around (laugh), and doing other things in the world.
Master Nome: What you are describing, is one among several reasons why scriptures and sages advise to keep holy company.
Me: Definitely.
Master Nome: That being understood, why do you say you are walking around? (smile) Isn’t that just the body? Indeed, how do you tell when you are in the room or out of the room? Obviously on a sensory level there are the walls etc. (gesturing to back of satsang hall). How do you know when you are in here, in the temple, and when you are outside it? Such as, lets say you have one foot out the door (gesturing, smiling), but one step Is still inside.Are you in or out (smiling with laughter)?
Me: (laughing) Well as you said, as far as the room goes, it would be on the sensory level telling whether I’m in or outside the room based on where the walls are.
Master Nome: Yes, and when you take your senses to be the determinance of reality, or define yourself in terms of them, you are on the outside even if you are on the inside aren’t you? (smiling, laughing). But if you transcend the senses everything is within.
Me: It seems like I was having some luck in here of transcending the senses, so I guess I really was somewhat within the temple. (laughing). But when I’m literally outside the temple, I’m also metaphorically outside the temple. (laughing everyone including Nome laughs with me)
Master Nome: That’s what I’m addressing. Being inside and outside the temple physically, is not of so much great significance. But when you take your senses to be determining what is real, and define yourself in terms of the senses, such as being a body, that really constitutes the externalized mind. A mind that ceases to believe in it’s own imaginings is the introverted mind.
Me: I suppose that would also apply to as you said, keeping holy company. Would it apply to that also? Because I definitely get something more direct in your presence.
Master Nome: How do you determine what is company or presence? (smiling). If neither you nor I are bodies, what then? (smiling, laughing)
Me: I guess by the level that I’ve transcended the senses, would be the level that I’m in holy company.
Master Nome: That’s correct, if you go beyond the senses entirely, and abandon the imaginings of your own mind, you are in holy company always. (smiling).
Me: Awesome! The main way I’m attempting to keep that holy company as we discussed on Friday, kind of focusing on eliminating things that are non-eternal, which would be perception, thought. What I was noticing while I was doing that while you were just sitting, is that most of the rest of the room including the other people in the room, kind of dissolved to some degree, and there was a white glowing light in this area (motioning to where Nome is sitting). But your presence was still very much there. And I felt like I was getting more of a direct experience of who you really are, which isn’t the form in eliminating the non-eternal.
Master Nome: Go on discerning. Make the discrimination deeper and deeper. Even light, just like darkness comes and goes. Something does not come and go. That something is the Reality, the true Existence. In practice, be sure to discern and to dissolve, completely destroy (gestures), the vasanas or mental tendencies. The tendencies to misidentify in particular ways, become attached in particular ways. In other words confusing your Being for some object including the body. Confusing your Bliss for some object, comes out as attachment. And confusing your own Consciousness with thought, which is delusion. (smiles at me)
Me: I’ve still between Friday and now had a tendency out in the world. You know, pretty constantly I’m focusing on this stuff, but still sometimes I get out in the realm of attachment and the things that kind of come from that. I would say attachment to the body is kind of the central one, and the fear that comes from that as far as the body being in a precarious position because it isn’t eternal.
Master Nome: So, to cease to misidentify with the body is to free yourself of a very precarious situation (smiles at me).
Me: Definitely!
Master Nome: Where the idea of embodiement is no more, and even the notion I subsides, there is no fear. (grins at me)
Me: So it seems like, whenever I’m getting out of that, to eliminate the non-eternal, and when I’m asking “Who am I?” I’m looking for the fact that this sense of individuality is not really real and I’ll notice that it doesn’t really have any form, and really what I am is everything, kind of all expansive and not this particularized entity that I somehow find myself taking myself to be on a regular basis. (laugh).
Master Nome: Alright, so the ignorance seems habitual, but a habit must be conjured up and adhered to by someone, otherwise it is insubstantial and really nothing. You are the responsible party (laugh). Which means that you can attain liberation then, freedom is within your grasp. The liberation is only from imagined bondage, but when imagining it, it seems solid, it seems real. If you find yourself slipping into it, dreaming up the old dreams of delusion again. Alright, when you finally discern it, ‘oh this is illusion again’, trace your way back inward, you will only be stronger for it.
Me: And by tracing is again, I think I come away everytime I talk to you, or get a letter/e-mail from you, I try to come away with methods. So different aspects, finding the source of happiness within if I’m wandering out, or eliminating the non-eternal or this kind of inward search for ‘Who am I?”, which seems to be dissolving, as much as possible, taking myself to be an individual, or to be that entity that is kind of based on thought.
Master Nome: Alright, it may seem at this point to be different methods, or different aspects of the same method. In the end you find that there is only one Inquiry, the mind made various interpretations along the way.
Me: OK, makes sense.