Path to Nirvana
No matter what you are doing, pause for an instant. This is your last moment before disappearing into the void, and I am not kidding.
“Decide: ‘I want freedom in this life, on this day, in this minute, this second, this quarter of a second.’.. This firm decision to give yourself to your own Self, here and now in this moment, will be enough.” H. W. L. Poonja
Free your attention completely, and become aware of everything.
You can start with the visuals. Perhaps you see a green tree through the wide-open window, gently waving its leaves in the summer breeze. Don’t merely register the tree. Perceive its shape, observe it against its background. Spot the mountain peaks far away, an incredibly blue sky without a single cloud, and a distant airliner against it.
Discern distinct leaves and see how beautifully they are carved. Catch sight of their latent promise to move with the wind into the next moment. Distinguish a tint of yellow on some leaves, with the thought of an approaching autumn.
Pay attention to the sounds. You may hear children playing, people speaking illegibly, or the rustle of a distant car.
If there are no sounds, don’t give up, listen. While your mind is silent, you may recognise a strange, high-pitched buzz coming out of nowhere and everywhere. You may realise this buzz has always been there, unnoticed until you paid attention to it.
Don’t forget the other senses. Feel the touch at your fingertips. Register the pain in your back with a tinge of regret that you missed your morning stretch. Perceive the tone of the muscles maintaining your spatial posture.
Pay attention to your feelings. Is your mood relaxed or anxious? Are you full of energy or tired? Are you feeling happy or sad?
Continue deeper and feel the potential of the millions of memories to spring effortlessly into attention with stories of your life. Perceive how their availability gives you a sense of identity in connection with people, places and times. Feel your interest triggered by the emotional content.
Recognise a few themes which regularly hijack your attention via intrusive thought chains and imaginary dialogues. What are the motives behind them? Is it a fear about your financial situation? Is it a desire for love and connection? Did someone selfishly misuse your trust? Do you constantly argue with someone that their worldview is harmful?
Don’t let yourself disperse in obsessive stories. Notice the gravitational pull of these themes, but leave them unattended.
“Leave your mind alone, that is all. Don’t go along with it. After all, there is no such thing as mind apart from thoughts. Which come and go obeying their own laws, not yours. They dominate you only because you are interested in them.” Nisargadatta Maharaj, “I am That”.
Go deeper and discern your core beliefs. Are people selfish and untrustworthy? Do you need to fight for survival? Is the universe a dangerous and random place? Are you worthy of love? Do you identify with a country or group? Do you trust God (or whatever higher power you believe you are at the mercy of)? Who are you and what kind of world is around you?
It makes no difference what the answers are. Your bondage time is nearly over. All beliefs, ideas, concepts that limit you, that make you despair, suffer, dread, hate, and even go to war to kill others, all of them will be destroyed in a moment. Don’t contemplate whether they are right or wrong. Just be aware.
Go deeper still and discern the “I am” thought at the root of everything. Watch how beliefs, desires, fears and perceptions spread like branches from it.
Don’t follow the branches. Instead, grasp a subtle, incredibly alive, radiant, all-pervading sense of being behind the “I”-thought.
“The indwelling principle “I am”, the knowledge that you are, you have to be that. Just be that. You know you are sitting here, you know you are, do you require any special effort to hold on to that “you are”? You know you are, abide only in that. The “I am” principle without words, that itself is the God of all Ishwaras… With firm conviction, you abide in this knowledge “I am” only: bereft of body-mind sense, only “I am.” If you dwell therein, if you be that only, in due course it will get mature. And it will reveal to you all the knowledge.” Nisargadatta Maharaj
Your time is over.
This moment has expired. And it was the only one. Contrary to your memories, there has never been another moment in the world you’ve just experienced.
That is, your memories are fabricated. There was no past, and there will be no future.
The entire universe, with an illusion of time passing, with mountains and trees, with feelings and thoughts, was created as a piece of art, as a single snapshot, for you, to experience one moment, this moment! And after you perceive it, the snapshot disappears.
What about the future, you may ask? Will this universe reappear again to make the time flow?
There is no answer. For you know no time. The words “consequent” or “simultaneous”, “past” or “future” do not apply to you. An illusion of time is maintained via memory and causality.
What about other people? What about that good-natured guy sitting across the table, with whom you exchanged a few phrases?
That individual is an illusion too. He is a mirage. He has never existed anywhere apart from your perception.
I am sorry to say it, but you are alone. There is no one else.
As a slight consolation, you may create another universe, which you perceive as the guy across the table. And others, which you observe from the perspectives of billions of other people.
For you are both the Creator and the Perceiver. All people are you, and you are the artist behind their complex perception acts.
As the universe disappears, you realise one more thing. You do not create the same worlds for different people. There is no such thing as a common, objective universe. You made it all backwards.
If the guy across the table is in a better mood, the weather in his world might be sunnier. If he sees the world as benevolent, his memories are predominantly populated by kind and generous people. The act of perception is harmoniously intertwined with the manifestation.
You may ask, “What about selfishness, cruelty, suffering, the plagues of the world?
It cannot be helped. The world is a duality dream, a movie that you show yourself. A dream character cannot change it.
However, the content of the dream, the way it unfolds around your dream character, reflects “their” reactions to the movie events. Like a perfect mirror, you project “their” perception patterns into the outside world. And when the dream character is free from obsessive narratives, faulty beliefs, self-imposed limitations, past traumas, fears and desires, the world around them is perfect.
The only freedom you have is not to react to conditions and to turn within, to see the truth. Everything else is preordained. Whatever appears in your life is destined to be. It is your reaction to life’s experiences, which determines what is going to happen to you next, by the way you respond to it, by the way you react to it. Robert Adams, “Silence of the Heart”.
And the universe is undone.
There is nothing.
There are no forms or attributes.
There is neither space nor time.
There are no feelings or thoughts.
Yet you exist.
You are unborn, uncreated, unmanifest, perfect being in eternal bliss, capable of imagining infinite worlds, of infinite complexity, and experiencing them directly, identifying with your creations.
You are the consciousness in which everything arises and passes away.
You are the dreamer of all dreams.
“You see, you are already enlightened. You are already Self-realized. But you refuse to believe it. How do you refuse to believe it? By feeling the world. By allowing all conditions to annoy you, to bother you… This hides your reality as if you were hypnotized… The truth is you have nothing to transcend, nothing to overcome. Silence is your reality.” Robert Adams
Nothing to do.
Nowhere to go.
No one to be.
Nothing ever happened.
“Take your power back. Expose yourself, the real you, and forget all this nonsense about a mind and a body and thoughts and the world and God and everything else that appears to be real… You are the only one that ever existed, and there is no one but you. You are all the saints, the sages, and the seers. You are everything. Everything is the Self, and you are That.” Robert Adams
No matter what you are doing, pause for an instant. Slow down. Get silent. Just be.
