An extract from "Everything is Clear and Obvious"
Bob Adamson's NEW CD "Gentle Reminders" is out now and only available for ordering from his 'iinet' website. - It is typical of any meeting at Bob's but it captures, in my opinion, some of the most subtle pointers, expressed in a gentle and thoroughly direct way. - So, even though it remains inexpressable, Bob somehow expresses it so well, that it defies explanations.
It is a beautifully intimate recording for anyone that feels close to grasping what the non dual 'message' is pointing to.
A point of interest from my wanderings:
I strolled into the Theosophical Society Library in Sydney a few days ago. - They have an excellent collection of books there. - The Reference Library has many rare books which one is free to read quietly without disturbance. - I flipped through the card index and found a few books there by Claude Bragdon. - He was the chap who translated P.D. Ouspensky’s
Book called “In Search of the Miraculous” into English from Russian, it was a book that impacted on me very strongly when I was in my early twenties.
Well, one of his books that I did pull out to read some of, was “The Eternal Poles”.
I had never seen it before.
Written in the early part of last century, it gives the impression of being written only last week although the pages are full of foxing and the style of the book is obviously old.
The words still convey his lucid mentations very well.
Here is a short quote from this now rare book:
“Truth is found by living, not by thinking about life”.
&
“ The habit of theorizing prevents us from feeling reality, makes us immune to it, makes it seem no more than another thought”.
In the same book he quotes Arthur Stanley Eddington:
“We have found a strange footprint on the shores of the unknown. We have devised profound theories to account for its origin. At last we have succeeded in reconstructing the creature that made the footprint – and Lo! It is our own”.
Here below are two short extracts from my second book, "Everything is Clear and Obvious" - with some additional inserted comments in italics:
From page 21:
I put it to you that the ever-present pure-functioning of ‘direct cognition’ is directly present as this ‘actuality’, in all its immediacy in every moment — and further more it is this ‘immediacy’ itself which cuts through ‘all time realms’ without exception. It does this simply because it is immediate — un-mediated knowing.
Nothing actually compounds into anything that can be held to be separate and/or independent from ‘this immediacy’ — this ‘living now’. All conceptual postulations about this (or about anything at all) can only ever ‘appear’ in this now (this presence) and they are either seen to be conceptual or they are believed to be substantial — and so they seemingly consume the attention in ‘the realm of extensions in time and belief’.
From further into the book:
One fact which is so often overlooked is that a restless mind cannot be molded into a peaceful state, no matter what practice or method you use.
This is an unfavorable statement for many aspirants and completely indigestable.
Even so, it must be pointed out.
(Almost all spiritual types will argue 'until the cows come home' about that and even the cows will get bored with all those endless ramblings and posturings of those 'biped creatures' - those 'strange birds' called 'man'.)
The main point to recognize is that the fixated point of reference called ‘me’ is the one trying to attain liberation.
- It cannot do this.
- It is no different than any other fixation.
- It is a ‘someone’ (a bunch of ideas), which appears as an attempt to escape its own structure of reference — more ideas.
Liberation is only found in the true nature of mind, which is a clear open and natural state of wakefulness.
You will never squeeze a restless mind into a peaceful space, so don’t try!
The one trying is the obstacle!
This natural state is unachievable for any ‘individual’ due to the fact that this individual is a series of reference points that only appear and disappear in the natural open un-mediated awareness. Simple Wakefulness.
- And beyond all that has been said about this, wakefulness is already ever-present.
It IS.
It is your own true nature.
- You have never been without it.
- You cannot alter this timeless fact.
- Without it there is nothing but ignorance.
Even ignorance can only appear in, or on, it.
The book can be ordered from a link on my 'shining through the mind' website.
It is a beautifully intimate recording for anyone that feels close to grasping what the non dual 'message' is pointing to.
A point of interest from my wanderings:
I strolled into the Theosophical Society Library in Sydney a few days ago. - They have an excellent collection of books there. - The Reference Library has many rare books which one is free to read quietly without disturbance. - I flipped through the card index and found a few books there by Claude Bragdon. - He was the chap who translated P.D. Ouspensky’s
Book called “In Search of the Miraculous” into English from Russian, it was a book that impacted on me very strongly when I was in my early twenties.
Well, one of his books that I did pull out to read some of, was “The Eternal Poles”.
I had never seen it before.
Written in the early part of last century, it gives the impression of being written only last week although the pages are full of foxing and the style of the book is obviously old.
The words still convey his lucid mentations very well.
Here is a short quote from this now rare book:
“Truth is found by living, not by thinking about life”.
&
“ The habit of theorizing prevents us from feeling reality, makes us immune to it, makes it seem no more than another thought”.
In the same book he quotes Arthur Stanley Eddington:
“We have found a strange footprint on the shores of the unknown. We have devised profound theories to account for its origin. At last we have succeeded in reconstructing the creature that made the footprint – and Lo! It is our own”.
Here below are two short extracts from my second book, "Everything is Clear and Obvious" - with some additional inserted comments in italics:
From page 21:
I put it to you that the ever-present pure-functioning of ‘direct cognition’ is directly present as this ‘actuality’, in all its immediacy in every moment — and further more it is this ‘immediacy’ itself which cuts through ‘all time realms’ without exception. It does this simply because it is immediate — un-mediated knowing.
Nothing actually compounds into anything that can be held to be separate and/or independent from ‘this immediacy’ — this ‘living now’. All conceptual postulations about this (or about anything at all) can only ever ‘appear’ in this now (this presence) and they are either seen to be conceptual or they are believed to be substantial — and so they seemingly consume the attention in ‘the realm of extensions in time and belief’.
From further into the book:
One fact which is so often overlooked is that a restless mind cannot be molded into a peaceful state, no matter what practice or method you use.
This is an unfavorable statement for many aspirants and completely indigestable.
Even so, it must be pointed out.
(Almost all spiritual types will argue 'until the cows come home' about that and even the cows will get bored with all those endless ramblings and posturings of those 'biped creatures' - those 'strange birds' called 'man'.)
The main point to recognize is that the fixated point of reference called ‘me’ is the one trying to attain liberation.
- It cannot do this.
- It is no different than any other fixation.
- It is a ‘someone’ (a bunch of ideas), which appears as an attempt to escape its own structure of reference — more ideas.
Liberation is only found in the true nature of mind, which is a clear open and natural state of wakefulness.
You will never squeeze a restless mind into a peaceful space, so don’t try!
The one trying is the obstacle!
This natural state is unachievable for any ‘individual’ due to the fact that this individual is a series of reference points that only appear and disappear in the natural open un-mediated awareness. Simple Wakefulness.
- And beyond all that has been said about this, wakefulness is already ever-present.
It IS.
It is your own true nature.
- You have never been without it.
- You cannot alter this timeless fact.
- Without it there is nothing but ignorance.
Even ignorance can only appear in, or on, it.
The book can be ordered from a link on my 'shining through the mind' website.
posted by Gilbert Schultz at Saturday, March 10, 2007
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