REALITY GOES BEYOND MIND
LIFE IS. Life is free arid natural. Life is consciousness, awareness. True awareness is a consciousness of the present only, not of the past or the future. These are ideas, cravings in the mind. You may have been poor in the past so you want to be reach in the future. Your past memories fill your mind and this sets up a resistance; then Life, the only real thing, is smothered by your ideas, and there is a struggle that goes on all the time in the mind and this leads to frustration.
If you will free your mind from craving for the future, you will lose the memory of the past and then you will live in the present, which frees you from the opposites in which you live. By doing this you will be free from craving that creates the resistance to true expression. Then Life itself will be freed through you. Its desire for complete expression will find you a clear channel through which it can flow. Then there is no conflict but pure action.
You will find that you can not escape by pursuing an opposite, because the opposite contains the thing you are trying to escape from. If you dislike someone it is useless for you to say you must love him, that breeds hypocrisy. Neither can you say mentally, "I must rid myself of dislike" for you will still have the distinction of like and dislike and you are only intellectually deceiving yourselves, for the quality you think you have is but a deception. But if you recognize your dislike and the reason for it, you will free yourself from its entanglements.
Life has no likes or dislikes, nor is it caught up in opposites, it is free and natural and as we are the life, we must free it by uncovering it from all that mental conflict we ourselves create.
What I want to show you in this lesson is the action of the mind which creates resistance and frustration, which prevents the freedom of expression you are seeking. The mind is like a pendulum, it swings from one side to the other, from the positive to the negative and vice versa. It is only when we can discern what we are doing that we begin to be free.
The only way to freedom is to perceive completely and when this is done, there will be no craving which creates its opposite. When the mind is alert it frees itself from the cause of limitation, which is craving. When we are watchful, pliable, we go to the very root of the cause.
We create the opposite in mind by wanting; to free ourselves we must realize that Life is ever renewing itself and is ever pliable and is ever recreating itself, that it is immortal and eternal. This indescribable, deathless and birthless Life is not static, it is a concentrated essence expressed in energy ever active, therefore there can be no end. To be one with Life is to be ever active in the present. If you seek an end and try to hold that end you are frustrating the Life that is trying to free itself.
The Mind is ever wanting and craving, giving and taking. We are blind to the fact that Life is impersonal and is the only reality. Life does not need our ministrations, these are personal factors. We must learn to get out of the personal into impersonal, which is truth. Please do not confuse the issue.
I am not saying that giving is not good - for Life is always giving to those who understand her. She is lavish and seeks nothing in return. What I want you to do is to discern deeply the nature or motive of the desire behind your wanting or giving, and this depends on how honest you can be with yourself.
Is your giving based upon the desire to get something in return, or is it based upon pity; or is your giving based upon egotism, that you are so important that your giving will be appreciated. If this is so, then your giving is destroying the receiver, it is merely a subtle form of exploitation.
Please do not misunderstand me, what I want to do is to free you from the entanglements of your mind and point out to you the freedom of the Life which you are in reality. If you can perceive the true meaning of life you will be free from all that binds you and by which you bind others, for this only causes sorrow and confusion. When you are stripped bare of all craving, past and future, which are merely personal things which hinder and frustrate true expression, you will begin to understand Life.
To be kind is good, but to be kind to one and not the other, is not being kind. To be kind you must know what kindness is. To say we must be kind to one another because we may not live long in this world is but a false state of spiritual security. This is not kindness but sentimental exploitation. Life does not need this sort of kindness. When we realize we are the Life we inherit kindness that is not provisional, and has no motive, no virtues or qualities, it just is what it is, REALITY.
I am trying to show you what is not real, and when you know what is not real, you will have a better understanding of the real.
Some are continually seeking company to escape loneliness, suffocating their minds with ideas, or losing themselves in good works to smother it. They may cover it up over and over again with many sensations but this loneliness will remain; but if you become aware of your loneliness and face it, and never try to escape from it, you will see in what manner you are trying to escape from loneliness, you will perceive the subtle deceits of the mind and each time you are aware of your escape you are enriched in wisdom through your awareness.
To be ever watchful, to face up to all things, is the only way to dissolve them. To try and escape through their opposites does not relieve you but brings more sorrow and conflict. You will then learn that opposites are in the mind and are not born of life or consciousness, but born out of craving. Through knowing what it is, then you will be free from its limitations.
When we know the things that are binding us, crippling our though and out true emotions and wasting our energy, and this is quite easy to know if we do not try to escape in their opposites, we will face up to these things and dissolve them away, for they have no power except the power we give them.
Through the process of freeing ourselves from the cause of all our hindrances we will begin to know what truth is.
We can not imagine what truth is for Life is not an idea. If we try to imagine what truth is, we will find this truth that we seek a dead thing, and all our achievements will turn to ashes, and this is what most people are doing. Their whole structure of thought is based upon imitation, then achievements are full of emptiness, but few see the misery of it.
Do not try to imagine what truth is, saying it is one flame in many lamps, or we shall be united in the future, otherwise the future will always be as far away as it is now.
It is not imagining what it is, but living in the present, knowing what it is now, the same as it has always been, and you are It; but if you submit yourselves to the standardization of though prevailing in the world you will never know It.
We are actually the expression of one whole and are expressing that whole now; this is the ecstasy of life realized in the present. If our minds are hindered by the future or the past, we can not know that ever-present Life, of which we are one.
Most people will never know the Truth because their personality is in the way. The personality is filled with cravings, wanting, ideas of self, which is separation and limitation. The personality must be entirely removed before you can know the ecstasy of the all-embracing Life Consciousness which is not subject to any limitation, idea or fancy.
Personality and separation is the cause of the failure of many who try to know the truth, for while these illusions remain, freedom is impossible. Some try to teach the truth; how can they teach the truth when they do not know what it is? This is merely exploitation. Some may have been helpful personally, but this is not the revealing of the glorious truth.
Some may say they have been put on the path - what path? Do you not see that this is but an idea in the mind? If I try to describe the indescribable to you, you will never understand it, even if you try to copy it.
The majority pattern their lives after what they have seen or read or believed and say this is the truth, while others differ. Where there is confusion of thought there can be no truth.
Life is not confused; it is the mind that is confused and prevents true understanding. The whole is wrapped up in theories and ideas and none are the truth. Truth is Life and Life is free and natural. Your cravings for truth lead you from one theory to the other and you become more confused.
When you rid yourselves of the resistance to truth then you will know it. Therefore I ask you seriously to search deep into your mind and rid it of all the causes of resistance and frustration. When that is done, then only will you know something of the Truth.
If you are only interested in truth because it will give you something, you can not look to reality to give you freedom, it does not do that but makes you a slave to your idea. Reality is freedom. Now remove the cause that prevents this freedom then you will begin to understand.
What I am trying to do in this lesson is to free you from your own limitations by deep discernment, not by escaping into the opposite where you again get lost, just as you are lost now in a maze of ideas and images, likes and dislikes, love and hate, kindness and cruelty, wanting and giving.
Life does not like one and dislike another, nor love one and hate another, nor is kind to one and not to another; or eternally wanting so as to give, or giving so as to get; this is all exploitation and is not Truth.
These things belong to the mind in ignorance of the freedom of truth.
If you can clear away some of these hindrances the light of truth will begin to dawn upon you and your further progress will depend upon your progressive discernment.
Some of you may ask why we came into existence at all. "Why should the Infinite Life, the One Whole and Who remains One, create finite selves of itself?" This is proof that the Infinite Life Consciousness can not be static, which would be a negation of itself. Infinite Conscious creation is though in action, pure thought and action.
The Infinite Life contains within Itself its finite conceptions. There is no "I myself" distinct from the Infinite Life, although each integral, inseparable self appears to be endowed with self consciousness.
The unfoldment of this self-consciousness reveals a unity of one whole, therefore the differentiation only pertains to self-consciousness in appearances, for the finite selves ever remain undifferentiated as to the Life Itself.
We remain united in the identity of the Infinite self, as similarly the manifold of our experiences is held in the unity of our own identity and through the discernment of that which is not real.
When we can discern the personality, or apparent separation, as being only an image in our minds, we become conscious of the oneness of Life, oneness with the Infinite Life Consciousness. We may retain that "I myself" which is but a reflection in the mind, and it is this reflection we take as reality and this is the illusion - we take the shadow for the reality.
That which you can perceive is not Reality, but that which perceives is Reality and this Reality goes beyond mind. It is this conscious Life that organizes its own mediums for expression and thereby perceives its expression, in this way God is aware of us.
You can not comprehend what your consciousness is, but you know that it is and as we begin to unfold, so does this Consciousness recede into the inner states. As we are aware now as too will we retain that awareness, yet it becomes greater and greater as we come to discern more of the mighty Universe within, external to our consciousness. So we do become more aware of that Reality that is behind all, the all being held in that one Consciousness we know as the One and only One, which has individualized itself; and we are that individualization.
It was this understanding that enabled the Master to say "All power is given to me in heaven and on earth." "I of myself can do nothing, it is the Spirit of the Father within me that doeth the work."
"The words that I speak to you all I do not speak of my accord; it is the Father who remains ever in me who is performing His own deeds."
SO MOTE IT BE
LIFE IS. Life is free arid natural. Life is consciousness, awareness. True awareness is a consciousness of the present only, not of the past or the future. These are ideas, cravings in the mind. You may have been poor in the past so you want to be reach in the future. Your past memories fill your mind and this sets up a resistance; then Life, the only real thing, is smothered by your ideas, and there is a struggle that goes on all the time in the mind and this leads to frustration.
If you will free your mind from craving for the future, you will lose the memory of the past and then you will live in the present, which frees you from the opposites in which you live. By doing this you will be free from craving that creates the resistance to true expression. Then Life itself will be freed through you. Its desire for complete expression will find you a clear channel through which it can flow. Then there is no conflict but pure action.
You will find that you can not escape by pursuing an opposite, because the opposite contains the thing you are trying to escape from. If you dislike someone it is useless for you to say you must love him, that breeds hypocrisy. Neither can you say mentally, "I must rid myself of dislike" for you will still have the distinction of like and dislike and you are only intellectually deceiving yourselves, for the quality you think you have is but a deception. But if you recognize your dislike and the reason for it, you will free yourself from its entanglements.
Life has no likes or dislikes, nor is it caught up in opposites, it is free and natural and as we are the life, we must free it by uncovering it from all that mental conflict we ourselves create.
What I want to show you in this lesson is the action of the mind which creates resistance and frustration, which prevents the freedom of expression you are seeking. The mind is like a pendulum, it swings from one side to the other, from the positive to the negative and vice versa. It is only when we can discern what we are doing that we begin to be free.
The only way to freedom is to perceive completely and when this is done, there will be no craving which creates its opposite. When the mind is alert it frees itself from the cause of limitation, which is craving. When we are watchful, pliable, we go to the very root of the cause.
We create the opposite in mind by wanting; to free ourselves we must realize that Life is ever renewing itself and is ever pliable and is ever recreating itself, that it is immortal and eternal. This indescribable, deathless and birthless Life is not static, it is a concentrated essence expressed in energy ever active, therefore there can be no end. To be one with Life is to be ever active in the present. If you seek an end and try to hold that end you are frustrating the Life that is trying to free itself.
The Mind is ever wanting and craving, giving and taking. We are blind to the fact that Life is impersonal and is the only reality. Life does not need our ministrations, these are personal factors. We must learn to get out of the personal into impersonal, which is truth. Please do not confuse the issue.
I am not saying that giving is not good - for Life is always giving to those who understand her. She is lavish and seeks nothing in return. What I want you to do is to discern deeply the nature or motive of the desire behind your wanting or giving, and this depends on how honest you can be with yourself.
Is your giving based upon the desire to get something in return, or is it based upon pity; or is your giving based upon egotism, that you are so important that your giving will be appreciated. If this is so, then your giving is destroying the receiver, it is merely a subtle form of exploitation.
Please do not misunderstand me, what I want to do is to free you from the entanglements of your mind and point out to you the freedom of the Life which you are in reality. If you can perceive the true meaning of life you will be free from all that binds you and by which you bind others, for this only causes sorrow and confusion. When you are stripped bare of all craving, past and future, which are merely personal things which hinder and frustrate true expression, you will begin to understand Life.
To be kind is good, but to be kind to one and not the other, is not being kind. To be kind you must know what kindness is. To say we must be kind to one another because we may not live long in this world is but a false state of spiritual security. This is not kindness but sentimental exploitation. Life does not need this sort of kindness. When we realize we are the Life we inherit kindness that is not provisional, and has no motive, no virtues or qualities, it just is what it is, REALITY.
I am trying to show you what is not real, and when you know what is not real, you will have a better understanding of the real.
Some are continually seeking company to escape loneliness, suffocating their minds with ideas, or losing themselves in good works to smother it. They may cover it up over and over again with many sensations but this loneliness will remain; but if you become aware of your loneliness and face it, and never try to escape from it, you will see in what manner you are trying to escape from loneliness, you will perceive the subtle deceits of the mind and each time you are aware of your escape you are enriched in wisdom through your awareness.
To be ever watchful, to face up to all things, is the only way to dissolve them. To try and escape through their opposites does not relieve you but brings more sorrow and conflict. You will then learn that opposites are in the mind and are not born of life or consciousness, but born out of craving. Through knowing what it is, then you will be free from its limitations.
When we know the things that are binding us, crippling our though and out true emotions and wasting our energy, and this is quite easy to know if we do not try to escape in their opposites, we will face up to these things and dissolve them away, for they have no power except the power we give them.
Through the process of freeing ourselves from the cause of all our hindrances we will begin to know what truth is.
We can not imagine what truth is for Life is not an idea. If we try to imagine what truth is, we will find this truth that we seek a dead thing, and all our achievements will turn to ashes, and this is what most people are doing. Their whole structure of thought is based upon imitation, then achievements are full of emptiness, but few see the misery of it.
Do not try to imagine what truth is, saying it is one flame in many lamps, or we shall be united in the future, otherwise the future will always be as far away as it is now.
It is not imagining what it is, but living in the present, knowing what it is now, the same as it has always been, and you are It; but if you submit yourselves to the standardization of though prevailing in the world you will never know It.
We are actually the expression of one whole and are expressing that whole now; this is the ecstasy of life realized in the present. If our minds are hindered by the future or the past, we can not know that ever-present Life, of which we are one.
Most people will never know the Truth because their personality is in the way. The personality is filled with cravings, wanting, ideas of self, which is separation and limitation. The personality must be entirely removed before you can know the ecstasy of the all-embracing Life Consciousness which is not subject to any limitation, idea or fancy.
Personality and separation is the cause of the failure of many who try to know the truth, for while these illusions remain, freedom is impossible. Some try to teach the truth; how can they teach the truth when they do not know what it is? This is merely exploitation. Some may have been helpful personally, but this is not the revealing of the glorious truth.
Some may say they have been put on the path - what path? Do you not see that this is but an idea in the mind? If I try to describe the indescribable to you, you will never understand it, even if you try to copy it.
The majority pattern their lives after what they have seen or read or believed and say this is the truth, while others differ. Where there is confusion of thought there can be no truth.
Life is not confused; it is the mind that is confused and prevents true understanding. The whole is wrapped up in theories and ideas and none are the truth. Truth is Life and Life is free and natural. Your cravings for truth lead you from one theory to the other and you become more confused.
When you rid yourselves of the resistance to truth then you will know it. Therefore I ask you seriously to search deep into your mind and rid it of all the causes of resistance and frustration. When that is done, then only will you know something of the Truth.
If you are only interested in truth because it will give you something, you can not look to reality to give you freedom, it does not do that but makes you a slave to your idea. Reality is freedom. Now remove the cause that prevents this freedom then you will begin to understand.
What I am trying to do in this lesson is to free you from your own limitations by deep discernment, not by escaping into the opposite where you again get lost, just as you are lost now in a maze of ideas and images, likes and dislikes, love and hate, kindness and cruelty, wanting and giving.
Life does not like one and dislike another, nor love one and hate another, nor is kind to one and not to another; or eternally wanting so as to give, or giving so as to get; this is all exploitation and is not Truth.
These things belong to the mind in ignorance of the freedom of truth.
If you can clear away some of these hindrances the light of truth will begin to dawn upon you and your further progress will depend upon your progressive discernment.
Some of you may ask why we came into existence at all. "Why should the Infinite Life, the One Whole and Who remains One, create finite selves of itself?" This is proof that the Infinite Life Consciousness can not be static, which would be a negation of itself. Infinite Conscious creation is though in action, pure thought and action.
The Infinite Life contains within Itself its finite conceptions. There is no "I myself" distinct from the Infinite Life, although each integral, inseparable self appears to be endowed with self consciousness.
The unfoldment of this self-consciousness reveals a unity of one whole, therefore the differentiation only pertains to self-consciousness in appearances, for the finite selves ever remain undifferentiated as to the Life Itself.
We remain united in the identity of the Infinite self, as similarly the manifold of our experiences is held in the unity of our own identity and through the discernment of that which is not real.
When we can discern the personality, or apparent separation, as being only an image in our minds, we become conscious of the oneness of Life, oneness with the Infinite Life Consciousness. We may retain that "I myself" which is but a reflection in the mind, and it is this reflection we take as reality and this is the illusion - we take the shadow for the reality.
That which you can perceive is not Reality, but that which perceives is Reality and this Reality goes beyond mind. It is this conscious Life that organizes its own mediums for expression and thereby perceives its expression, in this way God is aware of us.
You can not comprehend what your consciousness is, but you know that it is and as we begin to unfold, so does this Consciousness recede into the inner states. As we are aware now as too will we retain that awareness, yet it becomes greater and greater as we come to discern more of the mighty Universe within, external to our consciousness. So we do become more aware of that Reality that is behind all, the all being held in that one Consciousness we know as the One and only One, which has individualized itself; and we are that individualization.
It was this understanding that enabled the Master to say "All power is given to me in heaven and on earth." "I of myself can do nothing, it is the Spirit of the Father within me that doeth the work."
"The words that I speak to you all I do not speak of my accord; it is the Father who remains ever in me who is performing His own deeds."
SO MOTE IT BE
