Otherness

Here is a reminder inspired from the words of Rupert Spira. It is necessary and terribly efficient to look into these matters for ourselves. This is why I like to share here the parts of a spiritual teaching that sounds like ‘something to do’, something to experiment and verify for ourselves:

‘See in your everyday, every moment experiences that you are never an inside self experiencing an outside world, even when it seems that it’s looking like that. See that both are identical — the screen and the characters or objects inside — that the seer is the seen. In other words, see how you have made an abstraction of the inside self, and of the outside world, or object…’

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Further exploring on the subject:

“First, you must know that the seer and the seen, the one who finds and what is found, the knower and the known, the creator and the created, the perceiver and the perceived, are one. He sees, knows and perceives His being by means of His being, beyond any manner of sight, knowledge or perception, and without the existence of any of the forms of sight, knowledge or perception. Just as His being is beyond all condition, so the vision, knowledge and perception which He has of Himself are without condition.”
~ Awhad al-din Balyani

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“Jesus said to them, ‘When you make the two one, and when you make the inside like the outside and the outside like the inside, and the above like the below, and when you make the male and the female one and the same, so that the male not be male nor the female; and when you fashion eyes in the place of an eye, and a hand in place of a hand, and a foot in place of a foot, and a likeness in place of a likeness; then will you enter the kingdom.’”
~ The Gospel of Thomas

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“The density and solidity of the body and the otherness of the world are penetrated and suffused with the light of pure knowing, God’s infinite being, and are gradually outshone by it. The body becomes impersonal like the world, and the world becomes intimate like the body.”
~ Rupert Spira

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“There is only one mistake you are making: you take the inner for the outer and the outer for the inner. What is in you, you take to be outside you and what is outside, you take to be in you. The mind and feelings are external, but you take them to be intimate. You believe the world to be objective, while it is entirely a projection of your psyche. That is the basic confusion and no new explosion will set it right. You have to think yourself out of it. There is no other way.”
~ Nisargadatta Maharaj

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“The tree was alive, marvellous, and there was plenty of shade and the blazing sun never touched you; you could sit there by the hour and see and listen to everything that was alive and dead, outside and inside. You cannot see and listen to the outside without wandering on to the inside. Really the outside is the inside and the inside is the outside and it is difficult, almost impossible to separate them. You look at this magnificent tree and you wonder who is watching whom and presently there is no watcher at all. Everything is so intensely alive and there is only life and the watcher is as dead as that leaf. There is no dividing line between the tree, the birds and that man sitting in the shade and the earth that is so abundant.”
~ J. Krishnamurti 

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The picture is by brenkee / Pixabay

Bibliography:
– ‘Being Aware of Being Aware’, – by Rupert Spira – (Sahaja Publications)
– ‘I Am That‘ – by Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj – (Non-Duality Press)
– ‘Know Yourself’ – by Awhad al-din Balyani – (Beshara Publications)
– ‘Krishnamurti’s Notebook’ – by J. Krishnamurti – (Krishnamurti Publications of America, US)

Websites:
– Rupert Spira
– Nisargadatta Maharaj (Wikipedia)
– J. Krishnamurti 
– Gospel of Thomas (Wikipedia)

Suggestion:
– Fleeing to God (other pointers from the blog)
– A Day at Brockwood Park (Homage to J. Krishnamurti)
– Khetwadi Lane (Homage to Nisargadatta Maharaj)

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