This Q & A is a continuation from the previous news letter.
Question: I conceptually understand what you are saying, but it didn't put the question to rest for me. In the dream analogy, whether the character knows he is dreaming or not does not change the fact that he never really was an independent dream character.
Now, if some other dream character tried to convince the first character that he was dreaming and that he is not just his dream body, but everything in the dream, he may listen to him and "accept" this knowledge. Try as he might, this knowledge is only a belief to him, because he has not become lucid in the dream. He is still a dream character who wants to believe that he is not just the limited character, but everything in the dream.
Do you see the point I am trying to make? I don't want to believe, I want to _know_.
Answer: The paradox here is that the 'I' that wants to know is a temporal object in Awareness. This I/dream-object cannot comprehend/know the subject, much like an object in space cannot grasp space.
You want to 'know' the non-dual IT while this requires the dualistic position of knower/known. Say that this would be possible; that you would know IT, then what would know the 'knower' while the knower is 'doing' the knowing?
Please don't get hung up on a metaphor. It can only take you so far, and then it has to stop. All use of metaphor requires thought. In other words it is nothing but mind AKA the thinking process. What is pointed at here with words/mind, extends outside the mind. The mind is here in the same position as the object in space; it cannot 'grasp' THAT in which it appears. This is the horizon that the mind cannot look beyond and here an intuitive leap confirms that if thoughts appear, they appear to something that cannot be brought into focus as it is THAT what does/is the focusing.
This Awareness is Self-Shining, no outside knower can know IT and I have tried to point beyond the pointing with examples in my last mail to you. Here is one more; The magic eye pictures that first look like random colours can all of a sudden shift into a clear 3d picture. Nothing has changed in the picture; it was always already so. Seeing the image in the picture does not come from reasoning, but rather from a relaxed gaze that has given up a specific focus.
Certainty about IT does not come from reasoning, just like swimming does not come from reading books, but from daring to trust the instructor, entering the water and applying what has been told. Or learning to ride a bicycle, which comes from trusting and relaxing into your natural sense of balance. Reasoning and the exchange of words can be helpful in learning those skills, but if one really wants to swim, or ride a bicycle, the words have to be left behind.
IT is not some-thing to be known by some-one. IT is the knowing that cannot be known. In essence you are that Knowing. See that this is already so, trust IT, relax and BE (not BEcome, but BE) free.

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Q: How long does it take a man to be reborn after death? Is it immediately after death or some time later?
Maharshi: You do not know what you were before birth, yet you want to know what you will be after death. Do you know what you are now?
Birth and rebirth pertain to the body. You are identifying the Self with the body. It is a wrong identification. You believe that the body has been born and will die, and confound the phenomena relating to the body with the Self. Know your real being and these questions will not arise.
Births and rebirths are mentioned only to make you investigate the question and find out that there are neither births nor rebirths. They relate to the body and not to the Self. Know the Self and don't be perturbed by doubts.
Q: Do not one's actions affect the person in later births?
Maharshi: Are you born now? Why do you think of other births? The fact is that there is neither birth nor death. Let him who is born think of death and palliatives for it.
Q: What happens to a person after death?
Maharshi: Engage yourself in the living present. The future will take care of itself. Do not worry about the future. The state before creation and the process of creation are dealt with in the scriptures in order that you may know the present. Because you say you are born, therefore they say, yes, and add that God created you.
But do you see God or anything else in your sleep? If God is real, why does he not shine forth in your sleep also? You always are, you are the same now as you were in sleep. You are not different from that one in sleep. But why should there be differences in the feelings or experiences of the two states?
Did you ask, while asleep, questions regarding your birth? Did you then ask 'Where do I go after death?' Why think of all these questions now in the waking state? Let what is born think of its birth and the remedy, its cause and ultimate results.
Q: What becomes of the jiva (individual soul) after death?
Maharshi: The question is not appropriate for a jiva now living. A dead jiva may ask me, if he wishes to. In the meantime let the embodied jiva solve its present problem and find who he is. Then there will be an end to such doubts.

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Conversation
God and I in space alone
and nobody else in view.
"And where are the people, O Lord," I said,
"the earth below and the sky o'er head
and the dead whom once I knew?"

"That was a dream," God smiled and said,
"A dream that seemed to be true.
There were no people, living or dead,
there was no earth, and no sky o'er head;
there was only Myself -- in you."

"Why do I feel no fear," I asked,
"meeting You here this way?
For I have sinned I know full well--
and is there heaven, and is there hell,
and is this the Judgment Day?"

"Nay, those were but dreams,"
the Great God said,
"Dreams that have ceased to be.
There are no such things as fear or sin;
there is no you -- you never have been--
there is nothing at all
but Me."

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Why are you unhappy?
because 99% of everything you do
is for your self
--and there isn't one!

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Wei Wu Wei

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