What we are going to describe
has been called ‘The Secret Of Secrets’,
the esoteric wisdom that leads to samadhi.
Samadhi is the goal of all spirituality,
its union with the source.
the truth of who or what you are.
The truth that transcends the limited mind,
cannot be seen by means of the limited mind.
The still point cannot be reached
by means of movement. If you want to
realize the still point beyond thinking,
let go of all interest in thoughts and sensations,
all preferences, all phenomena
generated by the mind and senses,
and rest in naked awareness.
There are two fundamental dimensions
to existence in this moment.
There's that which is changing
and that which is unchanging.
Thoughts and sensations are a field
of constantly changing phenomena.
What is unchanging is the awareness
of that field of change.
We are usually so caught up in the field
of change, fixated on its objects, that we
ignored the dimension of awareness.
So we start our investigation by
becoming aware of awareness,
conscious of Consciousness.
The challenge with resting in awareness
for long periods of time, is that
most people have not cultivated
the concentration and equanimity
to stay in awareness.
We are addicted to comfort
and the limited mind will want
to escape from this exercise,
it will find it profoundly uncomfortable
and will create every type of
hindrance or distraction.
There are two primary knots that
bind us to ego identification.
The body is attached to comfort
and the mind wants to know.
If we continue to seek the comfort
of the body and continue to seek
knowing with the mind,
we will never move beyond the
limited mind and body.
We will remain like a herd animal,
a creature that craves pleasure
and avoids pain, endlessly responding
to stimulus, endlessly doing,
and unaware of the dimension of being.
To be aware, to be fully attentive to
what is happening, without the mediation
of egoic conditioning, without concepts,
without controlling, manipulating
or distortion, without the filtering
of the limited mind,
is to be present without choosing.
Present without choosing and therefore
without a chooser.
Every time the mind moves without your
willing, even the tiniest movement,
it is due to filtering through the
conditioning of the self-structure.
The path leads to cessation of
the entire whirlpool of mind.
To realizing all levels of self as empty.
How do I drop all doing,
how do I drop mind activity?
Listen closely, this is the paradox.
The limited egoic mind hears that
question and wants to know how,
but that limited mind can't do it.
The mind will always fail in any attempt
to realize stillness, because the mind is movement.
The mind itself is movement,
it is an endless process of doing.
We have to make the shift from doing
to BEIGN.
The you that you think you are is a
process a constant movement,
a collection of patterns.
That YOU has to die.
The pathological pattern of you
has to end for Samadhi to be realized.
Let that sink in...
Spiritual teachers have given
the instruction to reach Samadhi.
Be still and know.
Be still and know the True Self.
Primordial Awareness beyond name and form.
Be still and know that you are God.
What exactly do they mean?
What is it that becomes still?
Obviously no one's physical body can
become absolutely still,
existing within time and space.
Because time-space itself is movement.
Time-space is mind,
the Universe is big mind or Logos.
The first Hermetic principle is that
The All is mind, the Universe is mental.
If the Universe is mind and mind is movement,
how can I be still and know?
How can you be still on a globe spinning
a thousand miles per hour around its axis,
spinning 67 000 miles per hour around the Sun,
moving 500 000 miles per hour around the Galaxy,
and millions more through the Universe?
Your heart is beating, cells are moving inside,
food digesting, the brain producing brain waves.
Your blood is pumping, energy is moving,
how can we be still?
When the spiritual Masters say be still and know,
they must be talking about something else,
something Beyond time and space,
something beyond the physical and mental.
What is meant by stillness is something
that we have no word for in our modern language system.
The Sanskrit language, the language
of the yogis, has more precise terms
which point to the non-dual.
The term 'shunyata' is often translated
as ‘voidness’, stillness or emptiness.
It is what is used in connection
with 'anata' or no-self,
the realization of Buddha nature.
Stillness is maybe the closest English word,
but it is inadequate to describe something
that is not of this dualistic world.
What is actually realized is the Primordial Consciousness,
which is beyond stillness and movement,
beyond time. It is eternal,
the ground of your being,
the essential nature of reality
that does not change. Actually it is beyond
change and the changeless.
When our true nature is realized
it becomes obvious that stillness and movement
are a duality created by the Mind,
silence and noise are a duality created by the mind.
Everything is already inherent within
that primordial stillness, the movement
of the world is identical to stillness.
Be still and know,
be in motion and know.
It is all emptiness dancing.
This is not something philosophical,
but an entirely different way
of interfacing with the world.
Actually it's about dropping the interface,
dropping the reducing valve which is
the self-structure, and experiencing your true nature
unmediated by the limited mind.
The so-called outer world is transcended
by realizing stillness, which when realized,
includes that which it transcends.
The duality of stillness and movement collapses.
Realizing samadhi, this great awakening
is just the beginning of the path.
Patanjali says that the entire endeavor
of yoga is aimed at the cessation
of the whirlpool of the mind.
'Chitta vritti nirodha'.
You could say it is the cessation of karma,
the cessation of deep unconscious patterns
on many different levels.
When we realize our true nature,
we temporarily cease our identification
and reaction to the mind.
It's like pulling the plug on a fan.
When we pulled the plug on a fan,
inertia of the Fan's blades keeps it
keeps it going as long as we don't
plug the fan back in,
it will eventually come to stillness.
Karma is simply the tendency for energy
to follow established pathways.
When Consciousness slips back into pattern,
it's like plugging in the fan.
Energy follows Consciousness.
Energy goes back into the old patterns.
Another way of describing it,
is through the law of inertia.
A mind in motion stays in motion,
unless acted upon by an outside force.
In the matrix of the conditioned mind
that we call the Universe,
energy and thought cycle through fractal
labyrinths that exist on a Continuum,
for micro to macro levels,
branching and exploring endlessly
All spiritual practice is an intervention,
an outside force,
a Consciousness which diverts energy
from flowing in the conditioned pathways.
You have to be willing to change your life.
Someone can do all the meditation
in the world but if they go back to their
same old patterns,
their same old routine,
then the wiring remains in place.
Our unconscious motivations must be
excavated and faced.
If through great perseverance and
determination, we managed to not plug in
the fan, then there is an actual
cessation of the 'vritties'.
A profound silence that is born
within the self-structure.
Every time we identify with and react to
some preference produced by the mind,
we plug the fan back in.
The longer we remain in awareness,
the more of the samskaras are purified.
The more the fan slows down,
and the human vessel becomes
more permeable to awareness,
the more we become empty of self.