September 20, 1997
Gangaji chose my letter to read aloud and respond to me at a Satsang in 1997. It was a total surprise. (Gangaji’s responses are in italics)
My letter starts:
Dear Gangaji,
Thank you for your illumination of the Absolute. I have a question I hope you can unravel for me. In any moment I am experiencing the flow of the Unboundedness throughout my body as distinct physical experience. It is sometimes ephemeral and at the same time, physically focused. It seems to puddle in my heart but moves equally throughout my body. It is a connection that is clear, but unrecognizable in relation to my other physical experience. In other words, nothing compares to it, nothing is like it.
Gangaji: Should I read this again? (and she reads the above paragraph again)
This is the resolution of the paradox. The resolution of opposites. Ephemeral yet physically focused. Located in my heart, but equally throughout my body. Clear connection but unrecognizable with any reference point. This is the highlight of the letter. This is clear recognition of one’s Self. Now we will see what follows. (She begins to read again)
Attention seems to play a roll of my experiencing it directly. If I put my attention on it, it grows. The stream or Flow becomes stronger and stronger. I can be involved in the simplest or most mundane of the aspects of my life and have the only the slightest level of attention on the Flow. It becomes the background canvas to the activity at hand. If my attention is riveted on the Infinite Flow, it envelopes me.
But my mind is a complicated and busy taskmaster. It is constantly moving and searching for something new to chew on, decipher and drop. “On to the next” or “don’t stop now” it seems to say.
I know the Unbounded is in me and around me always. It is part and parcel to my existence. I know that because when I open myself to it, by essentially doing nothing, it is always right here. There is no lag time. It is immediate. It is my attention that wanders to it and away from it. Sometimes moment to moment, sometimes in a large segment of time.
I want to have this Unbounded flow sustained in my experience 100% of the time, even if my attention wanders.
You speak of vigilance. Is this vigilance the same as keeping my attention on the flow? Along the same lines as “pray without ceasing”?
Attention does not cause strain or struggle, and I can’t make it happen. It is so easy to be in the flow by a slight adjustment of attention.
But what about sustaining this Unboundedness in consciousness? My upbringing has taught me that the stability of this Unboundedness has more to do with your level of consciousness then anything you can physically do – like putting your attention in a direction. You either have the nervous system to sustain the Unbounded awareness by years of meditation or you don’t. Attention to it won’t matter one iota.
Hence the conundrum.
So, in a nutshell, here is the question: Will vigilance to the Unbounded flow through my attention lead to sustaining it in my awareness?
I am invited to come up onto the stage and sit across from Gangaji. I feel very exposed.
Gangaji: Namaste. This is a very deep, well investigated question, based on your own direct experience of the most profound level. Then I see two very glaring errors. I will deal with the less glaring error first.
You speak about having been taught something. About the stability of this Unboundedness and having to do with level of consciousness and stability of the nervous system. But all before that you are speaking of your direct experience. This is the nature of what we are presented with in conditioned mind. That what we are taught, we use to deny or dismiss our direct experience. Even if what we are taught is all about getting that direct experience. So that the pointing or the teaching or the words or the understanding become more important than the realization.
And this is just what you have been taught. Of course, before this you were taught other things. I don’t know, maybe you were born into a family of meditators, who studied the Gita, and the Vedas, but most likely you weren’t. Most people in here weren’t and were taught something else. Maybe Christianity, maybe Judaism, maybe Humanism, or something else, which was also pointing to this Divine recognition of the Divine Truth in this instance you are calling Unboundedness. And then these teachings, while they are glorifying that, are denying your experience of it. Because you aren’t a priest, or because you didn’t live 2500 years ago, or because you don’t have something. You weren’t born with a star shining, and you don’t have the proper astrological configuration.
And so the direct experience of the Unboundedness; the unbounded truth of being, goes unconfirmed. The confirmation is postponed to some future time when you have developed personality, or the physical nervous system, so that you can hold that Unboundedness.
And yet, your direct experience totally contradicts that. The Unboundedness is freely revealing itself in whatever limitation of your nervous system. Whatever your limitation of your understanding. Whatever limitation of your knowledge. Because the Truth is the Unboundedness, Truth, is free. It is unconditional. It’s not waiting for you to be a certain thing. It is free. And it is a great Divine free mystery. How it chooses to reveal itself. And it chooses to reveal itself however it chooses to reveal itself. Whenever. To whomever. And has throughout time. And tragically, throughout time, that revelation when presented to others is denied or dismissed or “can’t be” because you don’t meet this criterion.
So finally, it finally gets down to, what are you trusting? What you believe? What you hear? What you are taught? Or what you know without any reference point to knowing what is true. If you had no notion, or if you had no knowing what is true then the teaching will all point you in that direction. If you cling to the teachings, when you have somehow mysteriously recognized for an instant, (Gangaji turns to me) but you are speaking at all times. When you have recognized this and you cling to some idea of “can’t be because…don’t have”. This is a tragedy.
I don’t believe if you have a guru, this is what your guru intends for you. If you have a guru (I shake my head no.) Or just Unboundedness itself?
I respond: I decided to go within and not put my attention on an outside guru.
Gangaji: That’s the guru! And that guru uses great forces of nature. That guru for this (Gangaji puts her hand on her heart) this lifeform uses the force of nature called Papaji. Some lifeforms use this force of nature called Maharishi, Or some other guru like Osho or Ramana. Some huge force of nature that grabs you and says, “What is really True?”
And regardless of what is said, and everything is said…you will hear the whole spectrum…. from you are mad, to you are the guru. Regardless of what is said, what is really true? You are adults. You are adults! You may be limited adults. You maybe adults with habits of childhood. Or adults with identification of childishness. But finally, you must tell the truth and more importantly, you must take the challenge which will be offered on all fronts, to be true to the Truth.
There is a kind of collective conditioning to not stand out. To not appear arrogant. To not look like I know something. And perhaps this is based on the collective experience of being burned at the stake or ostracized or excommunicated or jailed or hated or adored. The Truth is bigger than all of that and throughout time penetrated all restraints, all conditions, all criteria to make itself known freely. To proclaim its freedom of any criteria, any restraint, any conditions. To make itself known in the highest and lowest. In the most refined and the most gross. Non exclusively, all inclusively. So, (Gangaji turns back to me) I ask you to trust yourself. And in that trust, be willing to see.
(Gangaji holds her awareness with me)
There is another error, however, that is even more glaring while it may appear more subtle. If I had corrected this one first, I wouldn’t have needed to say that part, but I liked to say that, so I moved backwards.
(Gangaji starts to read aloud the letter again.)
Attention seems to play a key roll in my experiencing it directly. If I put my attention on it, it grows. The stream or Flow becomes stronger and stronger. I can be involved in the simplest or most mundane of the aspects of my life and have the only the slightest level of attention on the Flow. It becomes the background canvas to the activity at hand. If my attention is riveted on the Infinite Flow, it envelopes me.
Gangaji: What is the difference in It and you?
Me: Only a very slight veil.
Gangaji: This is the time in this very moment to investigate. What is the reality of that veil?
I close my eyes and drop into the Silence inside. I answer: That it’s not real.
Gangai: That’s right!
(She holds a gaze with me).
You have found yourself. As the ocean of consciousness finds itself. As it recognizes itself whether there be waves of activity or simply formless stillness of Being. IT…Oneself…is always here. (She holds a gaze with me) Yes, yes! What a blessed lifetime. (Both smile and start to laugh) Yes!
(A rose is offered by Gangaji)
Gangaji: Namaste, Namaste! Yes!
(I depart the stage)
Gangaji: (speaking to the crowd) The work has been done for you. As all the sages before have done all the work. As Christ on the cross did the work. As Buddha at the tree did the work. And then your challenge. The most challenging challenge is to be true to what is revealed. Because the whole world will deny it. The mundane world, the so-called spiritual world, the political world, the social world, the family world, the phenomenal world, the mental world, the physical world, the emotional world, the circumstantial world, so that you have the opportunity to be crucified to not move from sitting solid without a doubt. Self confirms itself.
Finally, without the possibility of a doubt, regardless of phenomenal experience, regardless of level of consciousness being observed, regardless of refinement of nervous system, regardless of physical health, regardless of intellectual capacity, because it is free. You are free. And somewhere in your heart of hearts, you know it to be so. Because it has gone unconfirmed and because there is fear of lifetimes of persecution, lifetimes of experience of pain, there is an attempt to keep it hidden. But this very attempt to keep it hidden is samsara. It’s suffering it’s seeking its release.
What a time we are living. What times have gone before this time. Where the lone person stood out at the risk of physical torture or physical annihilation, or emotional or social torment, and said, “I am free, I am not separate from God. I am that.” And historically we know that, in general, it was at the cost of physical torture or physical annihilation or emotional or mental torment.
Yet the Truth is alive. Bodies die or imprisoned or limited or finished. The Truth is alive. It’s not existing somewhere “back then” or waiting for its existence somewhere in the future. It is alive as the core of your Being. It is alive as the Unboundedness that gives life its life forms. And takes life forms. And by some blessed mystery of this Divine experience of human incarnation you have the opportunity to experience directly.
You have experienced it indirectly from great works of art, from great scripture, from great songs, from great beings. And all of that is an offering for you to experience it directly and be true to that experience. The experience reveals realization. Realization needs nothing as its reference point. No mood, no state, no change of states, no stability of states because it is free. It’s unconditionally free. It is YOU. And you know it. You know it!
I was telling the story the other day of the “Emperor’s New Clothes.” It just took someone saying, “the Emperor is naked” and everyone said, “no, no, no it simply means that we aren’t intelligent enough to see the very fine clothes that the Emperor is wearing.” And this innocent said, “No, no, the emperor is naked.”
So the challenge of a lifetime is to be the naked Truth with whatever limitation of form is appearing in that naked Truth.
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Letters to the Universe 