Awakening to the Dream
The Gift of Lucid Living
Welcome
The world is unreal
Inner Strength
Be the way you are
Where is Shiva not?
I am not this person
What is real
Talks with Bob Adamson
Clarity talks with Nathan Gill
An ancient story
Certificate of Awakening
The Mysterious Stranger
Extracts from Tony Parsons
Seeds for the Soul
The Drama of it All
Clarity talks with Nathan Gill
The Self-Perfected State
Amazing Grace
The cage of self-centeredness
Original mind
You Are That
All There Is
The existence of consciousness
A myriad bubbles
Beyond the grasp
Selling water by the river
Awake In The Heartland
What is wrong with Right Now?
This First Instant
Peace of Being
Talks with Ramana Maharshi
All That Jazz
About Silence
It is all
The background
Seeing it Simply
The Dream of Space and Time
Discovering
Already Awake
Reincarnation?
IN MEMORIAM
Basic Questions
Integration
Simplicity
One Essence
Thought
The Central Teaching
Unity
Knowledge and Ignorance
Inexpressible Door of Nonduality
The real "I"
Presence/Awareness
Awakening to the Natural State
Looking for God
Life As It Is
There is only Source appearing
Yearning for otherness
Dharmakaya
The ever-present nature
Getting rid of the ego
To Hell with it All!
You Are the Self
The Search is the Trap
The Obvious
Are you awakened?
The Supreme Self
Naturally Timeless Awareness
The Absolute
Seekers of Enlightenment
Presence of Awareness
I am...
This Amazing Realization
I am Life itself
Awareness is the Source
The Golden Eternity
Simple Beingness
The Boundless Void
Self-enquiry
Who pays the bill?
Changeless Reality
The Precious Treasury
Transparent Radiance
You Are the Buddha
Beyond Good and Evil
The real does not die
Memory
Seeking
I Am
The Nature of Thinking
The Great Way
Beyond na?ve affirmation
Ping-ting T'ung-tzu
Free will versus determinism
The End Of Seeking?
A Sharing of Timeless Being
Present and Obvious
Blinded by the Light
Hooked on Enlightenment
It's marvelous
All the world's diversity
There is no oblivion
Direct insight
Remembering and forgetting
Letting go
Beingness
That which appears
Manifestation of the Absolute
Nothing Being Everything
Consciousness
This
Radiance
Benedictory Verse to the Self
* ATTD News Letter number 40
* Sunday, September 26, 2004 *
Table of contents.
Q & A.

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.
If or when you have a question you'd like to see answered in this newsletter send it to:
author@awakeningtothedream.com
Painting by :PAUL CHRISTIAAN BOS. Title: 'Essence; You are who you are'
Found at: http://www.pcbos.nl/
author@awakeningtothedream.com
Painting by :PAUL CHRISTIAAN BOS. Title: 'Essence; You are who you are'
Found at: http://www.pcbos.nl/
Reincarnation?


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.
From David Godman's book: 'Be As You Are - The Teachings of Sri Ramana Maharshi'
Awakened Poetry


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."
From: Ella Wheeler Wilcox (1855-1919),
an American writer and poet.
an American writer and poet.
Quote of the moment!


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


ATTD Links

http://www.awakeningtothedream.com/forum/
Here you can respond to the contents of this newsletter or start your own topic.
To subscribe or unsubscribe click here.
If you do not see a link go to:
http://www.awakeningtothedream.com/home.html
and click on the newsletter link.
Awakening to the Dream web site: http://www.awakeningtothedream.com/
Fair Use Notice
This news letter may contain copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. The material in this news letter is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information. We believe this constitutes a 'fair use' of any such copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107.