IT'S REALLY VERY SIMPLE

There have been a number of students and friends who have been finding it difficult to understand some of the most simple esoteric fundamentals of waking up to the realization that you are already perfect and need not do any searching at all, while at the same time until you are awake to it, you must do something.

You can see in that statement how simple it sounds, just stop everything and BE. BUT it is not so simple to do because the conditioned mental reflexes keep one into the search.

here are so many APPARENTLY conflicting simplicities which are bandied about by truly great teachers.

Look at this way:

Ramana Maharshi says to ask the question "Who am I". Of course, it has to be done in all seriousness.
Patanjali tells us to "Chitta vritti Nirhoda" - annihilate all mental fluctuation.
M.K. Krishnamurti says to begin using "Choiceless Awareness". Just think about that one seriously.
U.G. Krishnamurti says this: "The search ends with the realization that there is no such thing as enlightenment. By searching, you want to be free from the self, but whatever you are doing to free yourself from the self is the self. How can I make you understand this simple thing? There is no 'how'. If I tell you that, it will only add more momentum to that..."
Other great teachers will tell you to practice one technique or the other. Some, they say, are very secret (that makes them special).
I have given many techniques and, along with those techniques, detailed explanations to all of the above.

After reading some of the mail I have been getting, I realized I have been remiss in not making something clearer and that is the standpoint I take on negating everything out of existence (Neti-Neti), so that only the Self Supreme is self-effulgent.

Others like U.G. Krishnamurti feel that the SELF is not standing alone, but is all-inclusive of everything within our perception and not only illuminates the attributes of all the koshas, but the Self is the attributes itself.

It is this, that the Self or God stands alone and, contradictory to that, that the Self is ALL and not separate and apart that has created much confusion; so I would like to explain it with an analogy. It needs an explanation because one might ask, "how can one attain Moksha by annihilation of all mental fluctuation and also attain it by BEING all inclusive and in everything; that is, everything is SELF?"

Try and imagine, if you will, the SELF or God being a spider residing in the splendor of itself. I always use the two terms of SELF and God because those who are not of the Neti-Neti school see God as omniscient, omnipresent and separate and those of the Neti-Neti see the SELF as the only reality and are immersed in SELF, so that they can say, as did Jesus, I and the Father are one.

This brings us back to the spider. Spiders spin webs out of their belly and so does the SELF. The SELF'S web is Maya and, in this manifestation, the SELF becomes God externalized. When the web of Maya is retracted into itself, then God returns to His uncreated SELF. Because the web of Maya is finite and not eternal it is, in fact, illusory.

That which is eternal is uncreated, self-effulgent and ever-existent.

Maya's illusions are real only because of the Self's perceptive abilities, through mind, to illuminate them. Without our consciousness, nothing is illuminated. When our brains die, Maya ceases. The SELF has drawn in its Mayic web at last. Unfortunately, to die before Moksha is attained, ones consciousness ceases and nothing is experienced.

To attain Moksha while alive, the individual consciousness must become non-existent because then there is nothing left in the mind (remember?) - annihilation of all mental fluctuation! Then, due to the attainment of Moksha, he becomes immersed forever in Pure Consciousness and the Liberated One must live out his Dharma for the sake of others. It is those "others" who perceive him to be here, yet he has ceased to exist in the normal mayic sense and only exists within the experience of satchitananda. He is swimming in it and only responds to you by the buttons you push in him. Much like playing a juke box. The money goes in, the record goes on and the music plays. It is the state of satchitananda he is experiencing. It is Pure Consciousness without attributes.

The Neti-Neti philosophy as explained here:

Neti, Neti

The ancient method of seeking ONEness by practicing the uncompromising negative discrimination of the formulation neti, neti, "not this, not this," and the subtle negativity of the designation "not two" applied to the ONE Ultimate Reality, inevitably spin an insidious web of unsuspected dissociation from ONEness that entraps even purest intent. To regain egoless ONEness, totally accept cognitive conditional relativity, then move beyond it across all reciprocal transformation boundaries, across all gateless cognitive gates, to unconditioned Pure Consciousness, Nirguna Brahman, uncreated absolute Pure Being.

Nirguna or Nirguana has been explained as the great Void, the annihilation of all mental fluctuations of Patanjali, the Negativism of Neti-Neti. Brahman, of course, is God or SELF. Pure Being is Pure Consciousness without attributes.

So you can see that both the Neti Neti philosophy and that of U.G. Krishnamurti are veritably the same and, because of this, we can have so many contradictory methods of awakening to the one real SELF. It is just a matter of whether the web of Maya is perceived to be out or has been drawn in.

I hope this has clarified this distinction between the two philosophies. It is much like the old saying that the two opposing Yogic methods in Yoga are Gnana Yoga and Bhakti Yoga, the one being spiritual discernment to arrive at liberation and the other being devotion and love. One being reductive and internalized and the other being all inclusive and externalized. Yet, when Moksha occurs with either method, the methods themselves have ceased to be different and have even ceased to exist. A conundrum!

Namaste.

Swami