Comment below: --- In [email protected], Vaj <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
**SNIP** > > Apparently Nisargadatta's method of the abidance in the "I Am" *was* > > what his guru taught. > > Or he spoke very generally to his students and withheld the actual > methods leading to the "abidance in the "I Am"". Of course the danger > of such a simple instruction is the ego can intervene in a million > ways if you haven't done what is necessary to reside in that state of > presence or if the guru never transmitted the state and qualified > your View. This is essential IMO, otherwise you so easily get "Neo- > or Pseudo-advaita" and satsang culture. > **SNIP TO END** I can't profess to being an expert in Nisargadatta, though I have read many of "his" books, including "I Am That", that are just translations/transcriptions of question and answer sessions (satsangs) with him. If Nisargadatta was speaking "generally" in those talks, withholding the "real methods" of realization then it would seem to me that he was a profound liar, inasmuch as the directness, simplicity and lucidity of what he says in those talks is so completely at odds with esotericism. He specifically says, over and over again, that the simple abidance in the "I Am-ness" -- that sense of presence and being that we each and all know doubtlessly to be -- is all that is necessary for realization. And he says categorically, without any qualification whatsoever, that it is his entire teaching. And, of course, it (atma-vichara) is the core teaching or Ramana Maharishi, too. Perhaps you are correct that the ego can make mischief a million times over with such simple instruction; certainly many (or even most) of his questioners seem to have no clue as to what to do with what he says. However, for myself as a long-term meditator (albeit with a hefty hiatus of 10-12 years while I plumbed some of the depths of the world), I have found that the practice of this atma-vichara provides profound bliss and experientially clarifies what I had only "understood" before. Furthermore, I find over and over again in his talks confirmation of what I had learned from Maharishi in the earlier days of the movement, and confirmation of the truth of vedanta. To know that the Self is really the Self and nothing else; not some place or thing to reach. And to find that all this time in meditation all I was doing was steeping in It and not realizing It is laughable and delightful at the same time. Simple though it may be, it is a profound teaching and I've made it a part of my program. I couldn't recommend it more highly. ------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor --------------------~--> Join modern day disciples reach the disfigured and poor with hope and healing http://us.click.yahoo.com/lMct6A/Vp3LAA/i1hLAA/UlWolB/TM --------------------------------------------------------------------~-> To subscribe, send a message to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Or go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/FairfieldLife/ and click 'Join This Group!' Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/FairfieldLife/ <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
