Born Again

"... Enlightenment is like being born again, being born from above as Christ puts It. The entire life is now transformed in an infinite proportion. Before this passage, I had lived myself corruptible and physical; now I am incorruptible and the Light. Of course for this transformation to be achieved, I need not only to have some glimpses of the reality, but I have to settle in it. But anyone who perceives this reality even for one second sees it perfectly for it is always the Absolute that sees itself. Truth does not depend upon time. There is no possible improvement in the Seeing. Each moment is the moment of awakening, and each awakening is the awakening to the Absolute...

However with this birth, a new life begins. The new child, the child of light, the heavenly being can keep on growing up. In concrete terms, it means that I still see that egoistic reactions can appear in this space in relation to events. The perfection which is in the Centre, the perfection of my true nature illuminates all the imperfections I had not paid attention to before. The habits have to disappear and I do not forget that for more than 20 years I have been totally identified with a body-mind...

So after the illumination, a process of disidentification and of gradual unification is going to take place. But if the identification with the body easily disappears (indeed, it is actually ridiculous to identify with a piece of meat), the belief to be a thinker is more deeply rooted. It will take more time to stop living as a thinker. As Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj puts it:

Thanks to this revelation (enlightenment), your identification with what is corporeal is going to know a vast spread and to extend to the dimensions of the manifested universe. Then you will discover that you contain and penetrate the whole cosmos and that you know it simply as your own body. This is named by the words 'pure superior knowledge' , Shud-Vijnan. Nevertheless, even in this state of sublime Shud-Vijnan, the intellect denies to be recognised as non-entity. However, in giving up yourself to the pure consciousness, the evidence of the fallibility and of the lack of consistence of the intellectual process is going gradually to become stronger and you will be able then to put the intellect to its true place, the second one...

The vacuity is independent of phenomena (thoughts, desires, as well as forms, colours, sounds...) that occur in itself. Fortunately, reality is always available. Reality is the only guide in our often peaceful but sometimes troubled journey. But peace at the centre is never affected. The secret lies in asymmetry. All the changing phenomena appear in the foreground of my non-changing nature. The Seeing of the Vacuity is like a sword which cuts off the illusion as soon as it shows its head. At every instant, the Infinite is here and now, and all the limitations due to experience collapse. The personal is plunged into the Impersonal (or suprapersonal). It could be compared to a carafe of water immersed in the sea: then there is no more interior or exterior.

There is only the ONE."

~ Douglas Harding was "raised in the Exclusive Plymouth Brethren, a Christian sect, from which he apostatised at the age of 21... Harding dedicated his life from that time onwards to empirically investigating the question of his true identity and later sought to share his insights, primarily through his writings and via workshops requiring audience participation. Simultaneously directing attention 'inwards' and 'outwards', Harding explored what was immediately given regarding the Subject and its relationship with the objective world, testing mystical claims about the true nature of the self, for example, against his own experience. While the spiritual implications Harding drew from the experiments are deeply traditional, the exercises themselves may be said to constitute a new category of spiritual experience, which he sometimes summed up as “meditation for the marketplace”. They expand and ground in sense experience numerous references – to vision for example – found scattered throughout spiritual literature and so often understood only symbolically or metaphorically. But all this amounted to only half the story and he never failed to stress that, while Who or What one really is may be easy to see, learning to trust and live consciously in the light of that reality is an immensely demanding and lifelong challenge." 

           

~ Please enjoy the image of Douglas Harding's Headstone. 