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Unconditional Support

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Unconditionality

But the only way that there's total and final absolute homecoming is when the humanness presents itself with the same unconditionality. Every time a human being touches into that unconditionality, it's such peace and fulfillment. (Adyashanti, "The Only Price," 2004, downloaded from www.adyashanti.org, 2004.)

For the humanness to lay itself down - your mind, your body, your hopes, your dreams, everything - to lay itself down in the same unconditional manner in which awareness is ever present, only then is there the direct experience of unity, that you and the highest truth are really one thing. It expresses itself through your humanity, through openness, through love. The divine becomes human and the human becomes divine - not in any "high and mighty" sense, but just in the sense of reality. That's the way it is. The only price is all of our positions. The only price is that you stop paying a price. (Adyashanti, "The Only Price," 2004, downloaded from www.adyashanti.org, 2004.)

Time to cash in your chips put your ideas and beliefs on the table. See who has the bigger hand you or the Mystery that pervades you.

Time to scrape the mind's shit off your shoes undo the laces that hold your prison together and dangle your toes into emptiness.

Once you've put everything on the table once all of your currency is gone and your pockets are full of air all you've got left to gamble with is yourself.

Go ahead, climb up onto the velvet top of the highest stakes table. Place yourself as the bet. Look God in the eyes and finally for once in your life lose. (Adyashanti, Downloaded from http://www.poetry-chaikhana.com/A/Adyashanti/Enlightenmen.htm, 11 March 2006.)

Understanding

My thoughts being once seriously busied about the things that are, and my Understanding lifted up, all my bodily Senses being exceedingly holden back, as it is with them that are heavy of sleep...: Methought I saw one of an exceeding great stature, and of an infinite greatness, call me by my name, and say unto me, What wouldst thou hear and see? (Hermes, DPH 7.)

When he had thus said, he was changed in his Idea or Form, and straightway, in the twinkling of an eye, all things were opened unto me. And I saw an infinite sight, all things were become light, both sweet and exceedingly pleasant; and I was wonderfully delighted in the beholding it. (Hermes, DPH, 8.)

People of the deepest understanding look within, distracted by nothing. Since a clear mind is the buddha, they attain the understanding of a buddha without using the mind. (Bodhidharma in ZTB, 35.)

The mind and the world are opposites, and vision arises where they meet. When your mind doesn't stir inside, the world doesn't arise outside. When the world and the mind are both transparent, this is true vision. And such understanding is true understanding. (Bodhidharma, ZTB, 27.)

People capable of true vision (1) know that the mind is empty. They transcend both understanding and not understanding. The absence of both understanding and not understanding is true understanding. (2) (Bodhidharma, 27.)

(1) The fully-illumined. (2) The absence of both false knowledge and ignorance is true understanding.

If you seek direct understanding, don't hold onto any appearance whatsoever, and you'll succeed. I have no other advice. (Bodhidharma in ZTB, 13.)

Understanding without understanding is true understanding. (Bodhidharma in ZTB, 27.)

To transcend motion and stillness (1) is the highest meditation. Mortals keep moving, while arhats (2) stay still. But the highest meditation surpasses that of both mortals and arhats. (3) People who reach such understanding free themselves from all appearances without effort and cure all illnesses without treatment. Such is the power of great zen. (Bodhidharma in ZTB, 24.)

(1) Stillness implies nirvikalpa samadhi. (2) An arhat is one who has reached nirvikalpa samadhi. (3) Bodhidharma implies an enlightenment beyond nirvikalpa samadhi.

The intelligence that appertains to material things is defective in the understanding of great things. To be able to understand this it is necessary to have an intelligence that goes beyond these things and reaches further. (Ibn Arabi, KK, 44-5.)

Over and over again Gautama [the Buddha] declares that the "noble truths" taught ... were not "among the doctrines handed down" but that "there arose within me the eye to perceive them, the knowledge of their nature, the understanding of their cause, the wisdom that lights the true path, the light that expels darkness." (Bucke, CC, 84.)

Truth is the understanding of what is from moment to moment without the burden or the residue of the past moment. (Krishnamurti, COL, 1, 20.)

The actual, the what is, must be understood and not smothered by determinations, ideals and clever rationalizations. (Sri Krishnamurti, COL, 2, 56.)

Desire is ever seeking fulfilment, attainment, and it is this movement of desire which must be understood and not driven away or under. Without understanding the ways of desire, mere control of thought has little significance. (Krishnamurti, COL, 2, 230.)

What is can be understood only with the fading of tomorrow. The understanding of what is brings about transformation in the immediate present. It is this transformation that is of supreme importance. (Krishnamurti, COL, 1, 52.)

All activities of conformity and denial, of analysis and acceptance, only strengthen the experiencer. The experiencer can never understand the whole. The experiencer is the accumulated, and there is no understanding within the shadow of the past. ... Understanding is not of the mind, of thought.... In the awareness of this whole process there is a silence which is not of the experiencer. In this silence only does understanding come into being. (Krishnamurti in COL, 1, 38.)

To be ignorant is not to be free of knowledge. (1) Ignorance is the lack of self-awareness; and knowledge is ignorance when there is no understanding of the ways of the self. Understanding of the self is freedom from knowledge. (Krishnamurti, COL, 1, 26.)

(1) Used here in the sense of experience at one remove; that is, experience mediated by thought.

An addiction to knowledge is like any other addiction; it offers an escape from the fear of emptiness, of loneliness, of frustration, the fear of being nothing. The light of knowledge is a delicate covering under which lies a darkness that the mind cannot penetrate. The mind is frightened of this unknown, and so it escapes into knowledge, into theories, hopes, imagination; and this very knowledge is a hindrance to the understanding of the unknown. (Krishnamurti, COL, 1, 26.)

Does belief bring clarity? Does the tightly enclosing wall of belief bring understanding? What is the necessity of beliefs, and do they not darken the already crowded mind? The understanding of what is does not demand beliefs, but direct perception, which is to be directly aware without the interference of desire. It is desire that makes for confusion, and belief is the extension of desire. (Krishnamurti in COL, 1, 56.)

You can be converted from one belief to another, from one dogma to another, but you cannot be converted to the understanding of reality. Belief is not reality. You can change your mind, your opinion, but truth of God is not a conviction; it is an experience not based on any belief or dogma, or on any previous experience. (Krishnamurti in COL, 1, 23.)

The positive or negative action of will, which is desire sharpened and heightened, always leads to strife and conflict; it is not the means of understanding. (Krishnamurti, COL, 1, 67.)

Self-expansion in any form, whether through wealth or through virtue, is a process of conflict, causing antagonism and confusion. A mind burdened with becoming can never be tranquil, for tranquillity is not a result either of practice or of time. Tranquillity is a state of understanding, and becoming denies this understanding. Becoming creates the sense of time, which is really the postponement of understanding. The "I shall be" is an illusion born of self-importance. (Krishnamurti, COL, 1, 22.)

Quite suddenly, in a moment, I experienced a total revolution of energy and awareness in myself. An absolute sense of understanding opened and arose at the extreme end of all this consciousness. And all of the energy of thought that moved down into that depth appeared to reverse its direction at some unfathomable point. The rising impulse caused me to stand, and I felt a surge of force draw up out of my depths and expand, filling my whole body and every level of my consciousness with wave on wave of the most beautiful and joyous energy. I felt absolutely mad, but the madness was not of a desparate kind. There was no seeking and no dilemma within it, no question, no unfulfilled motive, not a single object or presence outside myself.

I couldn't contain the energy.... I ran out of the building and through the streets. I thought, if I could only find someone to talk to, to communicate this thing. The energy in my body was overwhelming, and there was an ecstacy in ever cell that was almost intolerable in its pressure, light, and force. (Da Free John, KOL, Original Edition, 13-4.)

It would take many years to understand the revolution in my being. It marked the rise in me of fundamental and unqualified life, and it removed every shadow of dilemma and ignorance from the mind, on every level, and all its effects in the body. But I would have to pass through many years of trial before that understanding could become the stable constant and premise of my being.1 (Da Free John in KOL, Original Edition, 13.)

I saw that all kinds of seeking were founded in identification with a certain level of life, experience or motivation. The dilemma that was always involved was founded in a present act of differentiation, whereby what was constantly being realized was separated and threatened consciousness. Thus, I was not moved to pursue any goals, experiences or forms. All such things were merely matters of seeking. I did not even pursue my identity with Siva, Self or pure Consciousness. Such was also a form of seeking. I simply and radically founded myself in understanding, the enquiry of experience, the perception of truth and reality that had been communicated through all my experience. ... I had come to understand life as a proposition of radical consciousness. I saw that every deliberate path was a form of seeking that involved the moment to moment avoidance of relationship as primary activity in consciousness and in life. (Da Free John, KOL, Original Edition, 120-1.)

The ego simply cannot grasp what is beyond itself. The SELF can only know the SELF and in this understanding there is no personality or ego involved. There cannot be if the understanding is real. (Andrew Cohen, AOA, 33.)

Understanding - A function of the sattwic intellect - See also The Gunas - Sattwa

The man who has a sound understanding for charioteer, a controlled mind for reins -- he it is that reaches the end of the journey, the supreme abode of Vishnu, the all-pervading. (UPAN, 19.)

When understanding Shines in through the senses, The doors of the body: Know sattva is present. (Sri Krishna in BG, 108.)

The heart must be freed from subjection to the cravings of the life-principle and the senses and thus rid itself of the false emotions of fear, wrath, hatred, lust, etc., which constitute the impurity of the heart. The will to love is proper to the heart, but here also the choice and reaching after love have to be foregone or tranquillised and the heart taught to love with depth and intensity indeed, but with a calm depth and a settled and equal, (1) not a troubled and disordered, intensity. The tranquillisation and mastery of these members is a first condition for the immunity of the understanding from error, ignorance and perversion. (Sri Aurobindo, SOY, 298-9.)

(1) "Equal" is meant here in the sense of "equanimity."

There is possible a reception and reaction with clear comprehension, poise and balance. This way of natural being has the power that, because it understands, sympathises; it fathoms and controls and develops Nature's urge and her ways; it has an intelligence that penetrates her processes and her significances and can assimilate and utilise... This is the mode of Sattwa, the turn of Nature that is full of light and poise, directed to good, to knowledge, to delight and beauty, to happiness, right understanding, right equilibrium, right order. (Sri Aurobindo, SOY, 221-2.)

[Finally] ... the intelligence, the thinking, understanding and reflective mind, renounces its sattwic limitations and opens to an essential light and peace. An infinite knowledge offers to us its splendid ranges, a knowledge not made up of mental constructions, not bound by opinion and idea or dependent on a stumbling uncertain logic and the petty support of the senses, but self-sure, authentic, all-penetrating, all-comprehending, a boundless bliss and peace.... A higher force, bliss and knowledge from a source beyond mind and life and body seize on them to remould in a diviner image. (Sri Aurobindo, SOY, 226-8.)

The 'Amrita Nadi' is the 'Form of Reality,' founded in the heart and terminated in the aperture of the head. It is the cycle or form of unqualified enjoyment that contains and is the source of all things, all bodies, realms, experiences, states, and levels of being. Its basic nature is unqualified enjoyment or bliss. It is all-powerful Existence or unqualified Presence. It is your very nature at this moment, and it is experienced as such when true understanding arises and becomes the radical premise of conscious life. (Da Free John, KOL, Original Edition, 157.)

Understanding - What we settle for

Understanding is the booby prize in life; it's what you settle for when you don't get "it" out of life. (John Enright, Cold Mountain Institute Seminar, April 15, 1976.)

Universe - Its nature

The Cosmos is made of the transcendental God, the Father, the consciousness beyond all Creation; and God, the Son, (the consciousness of the Father reflected in the womb of Cosmic Energy as the Only Begotten, only reflected Christ Consciousness) and the Holy Ghost, or Cosmic Vibration. This Cosmic Vibration appears as the Cosmic Sound of all lifetrons(1) and Cosmic Energy.

Microcosmically each lifetron (1) ... is composed of the elements God the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, or of transcendental Cosmic Consciousness, of Christ Consciousness, and of Cosmic Energy. (Paramahansa Yogananda, SCC, 1, 89-90.)

(1) Paramahansa Yogananda's term for a unit of matter that has not been detected yet, but which can be seen by the eye of the yogi. Cf. the Buddha's use of the term "kalapa" in S.N. Goenka, DS, 41.

Universe - How worlds are created

See also God the Mother - The universe that She creates is like an island galaxy in the Father

The vision of the Brahmayoni, the womb of Brahman, came to the Master when he was engaged in sadhana under the vilva-tree of the temple garden. What he saw was a large shining triangle of living light. This was also seen by Swami Vivekananda, much later, who reported it to his guru. 'Very good,' said the latter, you have seen the Brahmayoni; I also saw it, but further, I observed its giving birth to innumerable worlds every moment.' (Yogeshananda, VSR, 41.)

A swelling glory within me began to envelop towns, continents, the earth, solar and stellar systems, tenuous nebulae, and floating universes. The entire cosmos, gently luminous, like a city seen afar at night, glimmered within the infinitude of my being. The dazzling light beyond the sharply etched global outlines faded slightly at the farthest edges; there I saw a mellow radiance, ever undiminished. It was indescribably subtle; the planetary pictures were formed of a grosser light.

The divine dispersion of rays poured from an Eternal Source, blazing into galaxies, transfigured with ineffable auras. Again and again I saw the creative beams condense into constellations, then resolve into sheets of transparent flame. By rhythmic reversion, sextillion worlds passed into diaphanous lustre, then fire became firmament. (Paramahansa Yogananda, AY, 142.)

Universe - Is rooted in God

The universe is like a tree eternally existing, its root aloft, its branches spread below. The pure root of the tree is Brahman, the immortal, in whom the three worlds have their being, whom none can transcend, who is verily the Self. (UPAN, 23.)

God clothes himself ... with a star-studded celestial robe, whose end none can see on any side. (Zarathustra in GZ, 7-8.)

Upon me, these worlds are held Like pearls strung on a thread. (Sri Krishna in BG, 71.)

... Then [Arjuna] the son of Pandu beheld the entire universe, in all its multitudinous diversity, lodged as one being within the body of the God of gods. (Sri Krishna in BG, 92.)

It is within you the cosmos rests in safety. (Arjuna, during his penultimate-enlightenment experience to Krishna, the embodied Father, in BG, 95.)

Universe - A function of the mind

The beginning or end of the three realms, the existence or non-existence of anything depends on the mind. This applies to everything, even to such inanimate objects as rocks and sticks. (Bodhidharma in ZTB, 26.)

Buddha, patriarchs -- these are just laudatory words and phrases. Do you want to know what the threefold world is? It is nothing other than the mind-ground that you who are now listening to the Dharma are standing on. When you have a moment of greed in your mind, that is the world of desire. When you have a moment of anger in your mind, that is the world of form. When you have a moment of ignorance in your mind, that is the world of formlessness. These are the pieces of furniture in your house. (Master Lin-Chi, ZTML, 54.)

Universe - Is ultimately illusion, unreal

Brahman alone is -- nothing else is. He who sees the manifold universe, and not the one reality, goes evermore from death to death. (UPAN, 21.)

When you have reached enlightenment, ignorance will delude you no longer. In the light of that knowledge you will see the entire creation within your own Atman and in me. (Sri Krishna in BG, 54-5.)

Look upon the world as you would on a bubble, look upon it as a mirage: the king of death does not see him who thus looks down upon the world. Come, look at this world, glittering like a royal chariot; the foolish are immersed in it, but the wise are not attached to it. (Buddha in TCB, 61.)

This world ... is a prolonged dream, and therefore unreal. (Shankara in CJD, 74.)

Brahman -- the absolute existence, knowledge, and bliss -- is real. The universe is not real. (Shankara in CJD, 7.)

You must know that Maya and all its effects -- from the cosmic intellect down to the gross body -- are other than the Atman. All are unreal, like a mirage in the desert. (Shankara in CJD, 51-2.)

Because of the ignorance of our human minds, the universe seems to be composed of diverse forms. It is Brahman alone. (Shankara in CJD, 70.)

This universe is an effect of Brahman. It can never be anything else but Brahman. Apart from Brahman, it does not exist. There is nothing beside Him. He who says that this universe has an independent existence is still suffering from delusion. (Shankara in CJD, 70.)

"The universe is Brahman" -- so says the great seer of the Atharva Veda. The universe, therefore, is nothing but Brahman. It is superimposed on Him. It has no separate existence, apart from its ground. (Shankara in CJD, 70.)

This universe, which is superimposed upon Brahman, is nothing but a name. (Shankara in CJD, 71.)

Let a man seek illumination in the knowledge of Brahman, as the scriptures direct. Then those attributes, which our ignorance has superimposed on Brahman, will disappear. (Shankara in CJD, 73.)

There are two schools of thought: the Vedanta and the Purana. According to the Vedantic this world is a 'framework of illusion', that is to say, it is all illusory, like a dream. But according to the Purana, the books of devotion, God Himself has become the twenty-four cosmic principles. Worship God both within and without. (Sri Ramakrishna in GSR, 243.)

Universe - Its dissolution

Behind the manifest and the unmanifest, there is another Existence, which is eternal and changeless. This is not dissolved in the general cosmic dissolution. It has been called the unmanifest, the imperishable. (Sri Krishna in BG, 77.)

If he set his heart upon man, if he gather unto himself his spirit and his breath;

All flesh shall perish together, and man shall turn again unto dust. (Job 34:14-5.)

The universe and its created beings, and the twenty-four cosmic principles, all exist because God exists. Nothing remains if God is eliminated. The number increases if you put many zeros after the figure one; but the zeros don't have any value if the one is not there. (Sri Ramakrishna in GSR, 178.)

Nothing exists except the One. That One is the supreme Brahman. (Sri Ramakrishna in GSR, 242.)

This cosmic dissolution is sometimes only partial and temporary, and again sometimes it is complete and for a long time. In the partial, temporary dissolutions, portions only of matter and worlds are dissolved; but in complete dissolution the entire system of universes, all stars and planets, all things are dissolved. But the dissolving of all creation is impossible until all souls cease to desire anything at all and thus become fully emancipated in God. (Paramahansa Yogananda, SCC, 1, 16.)

When vibratory creation exists, God the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost exist. When by cosmic dissolution (greater than Noad's Flood, which was only a partial dissolution), or when by universal dissolution the holy vibration is dissolved, then automatically God the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost become reconverted into the one Unmanifested, Absolute Spirit. (Paramahansa Yogananda, SCC, 1, 29-30.)

The Unseen

Your intrinsic nature is still as pure and clear as it was before you ever took this birth.

If you would just turn your attention away from the various trance-inducing states created by your mind and realize the intrinsically innocent and pure nature of the unseen seer, you would at once experience a great relief and freedom. (Adyashanti, MSS.)

What we see is not the most important. Could dust rise without the invisible hand of the wind? Could a fan turn without any current? Could lungs breathe without breath? Tell me What is the shape of Love? How much does Joy weigh when held in the palm of your hand? Can you catch the Spirit of Life in a jar?

All things seen depend upon the Unseen. All sounds depend upon Silence. All things felt depend upon what is not felt. (Adyashanti, Downloaded from http://www.poetry-chaikhana.com/A/Adyashanti/Enlightenmen.htm, 11 March 2006.)

The Unknown

The mind moves from the known to the known, and it cannot reach into the unknown. You cannot think of something you do not know; it is impossible. What you think about comes out of the known, the past, whether the past be remote, or the second that has just gone by. (COL, 1, 43.)

The Unknown is more vast, more open, more peaceful, and more freeing than you ever imagined it would be. If you don't experience it that way, it means you're not resting there; you're still trying to know. That will cause you to suffer because you're choosing security over Freedom.

When you rest deeply in the Unknown without trying to escape, your experience becomes very vast. As the experience of the Unknown deepens, your boundaries begin to dissolve. You realize, not just intellectually but on a deep level, that you have no idea who or what you are. A few minutes ago, you knew who you were - you had a history and a personality - but from this place of not knowing, you question all of that. Liberated people live in the Unknown and understand that the only reason they know what they are is because they rest in the Unknown moment by moment without defining who they are with the mind.

You can imagine how easy it is to get caught in the concept of the Unknown and seek that instead of the Truth. If you seek the concept you'll never be Free, but if you stop looking to myths and concepts and become more interested in the Unknown than in what you know, the door will be flung open. Until then, it will remain closed. I've seen people who have never meditated come to satsang and have a deep experience of the Unknown, and I've known many who remain in the trance because they stay with the mind's techniques and strategies. There is no prerequisite for experiencing the Unknown. Everyone has equal access to it. (Adyashanti, "Freedom and the Unknown," 2002, downloaded from www.adyashanti.org, 2004.)