Read an Excerpt
Freddom and Resolve
Finding Your True Home in the Universe
By Gangaji Hampton Roads
Copyright © 2014 Gangaji
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-61283-336-1
CHAPTER 1
The Choice Is Yours
After aeons of choosing to tell a story of separation from God, the story seems choiceless. It seems choiceless, but it is not. You have simply been continuing to choose the story that was passed on to you by your ancestors, by your past lives, by your past mistakes, by your past desires. What is choiceless is the truth of who you are.
Choice lies in the mind's ability to either deny that truth or to embrace it. That choice is free will—the freedom of choice. You have no free will regarding who you are. You are that fully and completely. But you do have free will regarding the powers of mind and imagination. You can play as if you are not who you are. You can play as if you almost are, but still not quite. You can play any number of variations and permutations of choosing or denying who you are.
You have played like this for aeons. Eventually, a weariness arises in the play because the play is limited. For all of its display, for all of its beauty, for all of its pain, the play is limited because it is based on the assumption that you are somehow separate from truth, from understanding, from love, from God. The whole play is based on the assumption of separation, and the assumption hardly ever gets investigated. The assumption is believed to be real, and from this belief the play gets very complicated.
I am inviting you to see who is really playing.
Taking for granted the truth that you are consciousness, that you are one with God, that you are truth, then this taking for granted is a kind of trance or sleep state, where you will one day imagine that you are separate, that you are lost, and then the search begins again.
In the invitation that is extended from Ramana, the invitation of direct self-inquiry, you have the opportunity to turn your attention to who is lost, who is separate. You will find no one. There is no one lost. The lost one was fabricated in the mind to begin the play. If your resolve is to investigate intensely, freshly, completely, to not fall asleep by continuing to practice the belief based on the assumption of separation, then you will meet yourself as that very consciousness in which player, seeker, separation, and union appear and disappear.
CHAPTER 2
Vigilance: A Call to Deeper Surrender
Many lucky, graced people have had a taste or a glimpse of what is immortal, of what is the eternal Self. From that taste the question arises, What next? or What should I do now? What do I do with this? Where do I take it? These questions indicate that more surrender is being called for. There is always an invitation to more deeply surrender. This surrender is vigilance.
Vigilance is often misunderstood. Usually, what passes for vigilance is careful monitoring by the super ego. I'm sure you're very aware of this kind of monitoring: Oh, I shouldn't have said it that way. I shouldn't have done it that way. I shouldn't have thought that. I should have surrendered. This monitoring is not vigilance. It is an imitation of vigilance. Vigilance comes from the word vigil, meaning to keep vigil. Keeping vigil is a form of worship. Vigilance is a sacred, quiet, peaceful vigil at the flame of truth.
By assuming that the perception of separation from truth is likely, or at least possible, you have the opportunity to keep vigil at the flame of truth. If you are truly vigilant, you will discover yourself as not separate from truth. What's next from that? Deeper vigilance. Deeper discovery. There is no end to true discovery. What can end is your preoccupation with who you thought you were. Your preoccupation with your body, your thoughts, and your emotions can finally end. In fact, the preoccupation continues only as you continue to feed it.
Feed your body. Feeding your body is not a big deal. But feeding your thoughts is a big deal. Feeding your emotions is a big deal. Stop feeding your thoughts and your emotions and see what doesn't need feeding for its existence. Keep vigil by that, surrender to that.
If the arrow of truth has pierced you and you know it, if you have had this experience, then you also know the arrogant thoughts that can arise: Well, I know I'm one with Truth, so who is there to keep vigil? You have probably said this, right? Then all of a sudden, there is suffering again with the wailing, I've lost it! How did this happen? The perception and experience of losing what cannot be lost are corrected by vigilance.
I am not speaking of effort. I am not speaking of doing vigilance. I am speaking of being vigilance and recognizing that it is natural to be that. You are pure awareness. Awareness is naturally vigilant. It is vigilant to itself, and it is always, in truth, aware of itself.
When the body is in deep sleep, and there are no reference points, no sense impressions—no perception of body or any object whether mental, emotional, or physical—still there is awareness aware of itself, and this is bliss. This is the bliss of deep sleep. When the body awakens and objects come back into view, still you know that there has been deep, objectless experience. You don't have any sense impressions of it, but you know it because the awareness of itself is still present. As objects appear, our conditioning is to fixate on the objects and to overlook the deep nourishment that is always present. Vigilance is awareness of what does not disappear even when objects appear. Whether those objects are exquisite or horrible or mundane, always there is awareness aware of itself. Whether those objects are emotional or mental or physical, always there is awareness aware of itself.
Pure vigilance must be an ease of recognition; otherwise, there is doing vigilance, and this is already not vigilant. When you hear this thought, Now I am going to do vigilance, ask yourself, "Who" is doing vigilance? This is direct self-inquiry. You will see that there is no one there, there is only vigilance. And then you will see that it is quite natural to be aware of passing objects as well as aware of what is aware of both passing objects and itself.
It is a mistaken understanding that implies vigilance to be a burden. The real burden is the denial of your beingness as awareness itself. The idea that vigilance is a burden comes from the concept of spiritual practice. You are admonished to practice. You have to keep your practice. I don't know what the word practice is translated from, but it is a bad translation, because in English practice means some kind of preparation for a real event. You practice for the football game. You practice for your recital. You cannot practice for life. Life is right now. So I don't use the word practice in terms of vigilance. I am talking about being vigilance. Be that now. You are that already. Recognize yourself as that, and be vigilant to your true nature. Then see. Without looking for anything, see.
In Western culture, particularly in America, we are trained to know what is going to be ahead and to attempt to make it be what we want it to be. This is why there is so much suffering here, trying to force life to be something based on a particular concept. Then we search for agreement with that concept and fight any disagreement of that concept. Even if we are victorious in our fight, we are left unsatisfied, unfulfilled.
Wait and see doesn't necessarily mean you sit on your couch and never move. It also doesn't necessarily mean that you get off your couch and move. It is much deeper than that. An active life can be lived as vigilance, and an inactive life can be lived as vigilance.
There will be many insights. There will be many revelations and deepening experiences. In the midst of it all, be vigilant to what has not moved, what has always been whole, what has always been radiant and unpolluted. There will be even deeper insights. Enjoy them as they come, wave them good-bye as they pass, and be vigilant to what has not moved, what has not been lost by the experience of loss, and what has not been augmented by the experience of gain.
Be vigilance. The deepest joy of the human experience is to be vigilant. It is not a task. It is bliss itself. A bliss that is awake and vigilant to what never moves, to what is always present. Be that. Then you will see that this entity called your lifetime unfolds exquisitely, as a flower unfolds. As it begins to die, it will die exquisitely, as a flower dies. You don't need to dip it in wax so that it will stay forever at a certain stage. Death is not the enemy. Fear of death is the enemy. Fear of death is the result of the misidentification of yourself as some particular entity. Your true identification is the sky of being.
CHAPTER 3
The Story of "Me"
When you look at an individual infant and follow that infant through the stages of individual growth, you can see that the difference between the infant and the six-year-old is quite remarkable, as is the difference between six and sixteen, sixteen and thirty-five, thirty-five and eighty. You can start to see a certain pattern of accumulation.
Obviously, an infant is born with certain genetic predispositions, tendencies, and personality, but in general the infant is open and fresh. That is why we love infants. Openness is lovable. Even when babies are difficult, they are mostly lovable because of their fresh, open, inquisitive, free gaze at life. As the infant matures, there is an influx of form and sense perception, which is put together according to the evolutionary process of the individual and that of the species. With the sixteen-year-old, the momentum has already shifted from openness toward personal accumulation and gain. The struggle of adolescence is a breaking free from infancy and naiveté into independence, knowledge, and power.
Even in the most wonderful lives, usually a burden is being carried. This burden is born out of identification with the so-called personal accumulations. This life burden, or individual burden, is the story.
A story has to be magnetized by a point of view. That point of view is the mysterious identification of oneself as a particular individual. Let us call it the generic me. It is the magnet that attracts sensations and experiences and then translates them into story—your life story. That story is the dream. It is possible to wake up in this dream.
I love a good story. There is nothing wrong with a good story. A good story can be profound and beautiful and entertaining, both in its sublimity and in its horror. A good story usually has complexity, mystery, success, and failure; and a true story has resolution at the end, bringing it all together.
In certain individuals, at a certain point in life, there is a recognition that the story is not wanted. At least the part of the story that is not liked, that weighs heavily and keeps one identified as something less than what is yearned for. There can be many attempts to see the personal, individual story in a better light, perhaps it even can be seen from the perspective of truth. This is glorious and wonderful, for in a better life, the identification of oneself as victim falls away, and recognition of oneself as hero or heroine or even, possibly, enlightened one arises.
Most of you reading this are in a special position. Relative to what the burden of your life as a six-year-old or sixteen-year-old was, you are either in heaven, or you have at least glimpsed the heavenly state. You have at least visited it, and you recognize, This is where I want to live. Heaven. Because in this promised land, I am the welcomed one. I am anointed and glorified and worshipped and recognized as God's own child. This is a beautiful story, and I would not take that story away from anyone, except for the purposes of our investigation. True investigation reveals what is beyond both heaven and hell. My teacher asked that I bring this opportunity of investigation to you.
To hear that, to really hear that, you must accept the invitation to drop the whole story and ask yourself, If it is all made up, if "me" does not exist, then what is real? Who am I? What is true?
What perpetuates the story of me? Desire fuels the story. Even though there may be a desire to let the story go, a desire to see what is true, there is also a desire to continue making up the story. This must be recognized. The desire to continue the story, whether that desire be seen or unseen, is rooted in the fear of being nothing. The fear is supported by the belief that if you let go of this story that has been told so diligently throughout this lifetime, you will be nothing, you will die. It will be the end of you.
If you look carefully, you will see the subtle yet powerful conscious effort to keep me-ness in place. Maybe now it's an enlightened me, but it is still me. The fear is that without some conscious effort, maybe the body will just disintegrate on the spot. The fear is that if the body disappears, who you are will also disappear.
To whatever degree that there is fear, that is the degree that there is misidentification with the story of you as the truth of who you are. To the degree that there is identification with the story of you as the truth of you, there is suffering because you are not a story. The story is a lie, and a lie is a burden. It is a burden that is maintained every morning, every day, and every night. Maybe at night the burden is put aside for a while so that there can be deep rest, but it is picked up again as the body leaves the sleeping state. It is augmented, decorated, rearranged, fixed, balanced, and made better—made into a better burden. There is nothing wrong with that. If you are going to be entertained by a story, then yes, balance it, make it right, decorate it. But usually what happens is that the story becomes an object of worship in the name of either self-hatred or narcissism. Then this story of me is the burden of suffering.
I am not speaking of nothing as the mind hears nothing, as some kind of nihilistic, flat, dead void. Pure no-thing-ness is conscious intelligence. The infant doesn't know its name and so doesn't relate to itself as a name but relates to itself as conscious intelligence. The story of infant, adolescent, and mature human is the story of the emergence of me, the worship of me, the burden of me, and the release of me. End of story. Back to conscious intelligence. Consciously knowing oneself to be the conscious intelligence in which all me's make their appearance and disappearance.
Many individuals have awakened to the truth that individual consciousness is inseparable from universal consciousness. Often whatever is left of the momentum of the apparent individual consciousness has gone into hermitage or isolation from society. At a time in the absorption of the apparent individual consciousness of Ramana into the pure consciousness of universal being, Ramana had to be fed. There was no interest in keeping his body alive. My teacher, Sri H.W.L. Poonjaji (Papaji), made a bridge between the life of the sadhu, a life story removed from the interactions of society, and the life of the active person. Papaji lived outside the sheltered ashram. He had a family; he had a job; he had day-to-day interactions with other persons who had no inkling of self as consciousness, all the while knowing himself to be the totality of it all.
I don't know what is the destiny for your life. Whether you live your life as a hermit or whether you live your life in the middle of the marketplace, you have the full potential to recognize the truth of your inherent no-thing-ness.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Freddom and Resolve by Gangaji. Copyright © 2014 Gangaji. Excerpted by permission of Hampton Roads.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
