Where is the Seat of Consciousness? Plus an Email

It has taken you ‘a long time’ to ‘get here’. - Hasn’t it?
– All your life has led to THIS moment. – This immediacy.
– Yet THIS immediacy is all there has ever been – you just keep missing it. – For whatever reason, you have opened this website. – You may have looked at it before, in your imaginary journey and search for meaning. – Looking for some proof that this tiresome journey is worth the trouble. – Looking for a scrap of evidence that there is some reason for your own existence.
Well, the fact is that you have ‘seemingly’ been filled up with concepts and you have used them to navigate through this maze.
– All the while you have listened to all sorts of teachers and gurus, mentors and friends and still you keep looking, because nothing really satisfies.
Well, this is an opportunity, right now, to see through the whole mind set.
– All you have to do is follow the various ‘leads’ that are within this website.
– There are umpteen notes and a link to another website or two that will prove to be a ‘god send’. – Don’t waste any more ‘time’ chasing bad leads.
Stop being an arrogant know all and get to the core of the matter now.
You may consider yourself to be thoroughly knowledgeable about non duality but I can assure you that if there is still some search for 'more' going on there, then that needs to be sorted once and for all time.
– Forget the past and all its disappointments, memory is useful but it is now time to set it aside and come directly face to face with your own immediacy – this presence of knowing that you are. - In that face to face duality dissolves and all the conflict of mind and its confusion dissolves also - I can't express this freedom so that you can grasp it - you have to unveil it yourself.
Follow what is pointed out here - Don't doubt or waste time with reactions, just see them and stay with it until it all unfolds naturally. - Warm regards - Gilbert

NEWS:
Stephen H. Wolinsky’s New DVD is Out Now.
It may prove to be an excellent addition to the previous 2 DVD's in the Trilogy.
(I have not seen it as yet, so, naturally, I will reserve my opinion until I do see it)
New lengthy footage of Maharaj is included.
"PRIOR TO THE I AM - The End Of Self Consciousness"
Go to Neti Neti Films dot com to watch some previews, or better still, go to google video and search for neti neti films or Nisargadatta. - and enjoy.

Note for newcomers:
(Speaking in a realtive sense) Most spiritual aspirants have been conditioned to expect a certain presentation of what they conceptualize as 'The Truth' - trumpets blasting, speeches given in an atmosphere of holiness, pomp and circumstance etc.
All that is fine for about one minute, to get the attention, but if it continues, it is just rubbish and a 'down right pest'. - Most gurus make all that obligatory stuff for their own 'career' survival.
– You have by passed over the 'truth', over and over, so much so, you do not even suspect that this simple presence, that you already are, is THAT which is truth itself.
- You miss it over and over as you look so fervently for a facsimile of it in your mind stuff and 'out there'.
The great prize is really nothing but ordinary awareness – everyday awareness, so all this 'spiritual hum bug' and specialness is really just a mind diversion and another obstacle for the mind, and by its very nature, it leads the mind on and on into more and more anticipation, looking for something grand, something to grasp and hold onto.
- Pardom my french but that is all CRAP.
You may not have noticed it but almost all of the material presented on this website is basically a negation of the usual conceptual biased views, which are so common in spiritual aspirants. - The destruction of those divergent concepts is essential - that sounds a bit dramatic - actually all you have to do is see through them - that is enough.




Extracts from “Consciousness and the Absolute” – Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

January 7, 1981

Questioner: - Every time something happens now, instead of getting involved in it, I am seeing that everything is that "I Amness". - I am experiencing that.
Maharaj: -Witnessing takes place, there is nothing to be done. - It is total freedom for one who does not identify with the body.
Q: Everything is happening on its own and I have no concern with it.
M: If that is so, it means that you have understood everything and there is no need for you to linger here any longer.
Questioner [Another person]: - It is diferent for me. I have to make an effort not to get involved in thoughts when I meditate.
M: It is the nature of the life force to express itself through thoughts and words, so they will keep on coming. - If you have to make an effort in the beginning not to get involved, make that effort until it becomes effortless.
Q: Does the jnani have a mind and thoughts also ?
M: Although thoughts come and go, the jnani is not concerned. - Thoughts will come in consciousness; witnessing also takes place in consciousness. - You must have the conviction that you are consciousness. - Thereafter there is nothing for you to do; leave it to the consciousness to do what is to be done. - Whatever happens, happens spontaneously.
Q: Where is the seat of consciousness?
M: In every particle of the juice of the body. - In the scriptural books it is normally given that there are various chakras. - Those are available if you want to locate them like that, but according to me, it is throughout the body.
Q: What is the difference between the body and consciousness?
M: What is the difference between sugar and sweetness? - The sweetness is there in the sugar cane juice. - In the body the sweetness is the knowledge you are, the consciousness. This knowingness is due to what? - What is the prerequisite for consciousness?
Q: Is it the body?
M: The body is necessary to sustain consciousness; for the body to be, food is necessary, is it not?
Q: Yes.
M: If the body does not remain, consciousness will not remain. - In the absence of body and consciousness, what are you?
Q: I don't know.
M: Now you want to get some benefit, some advantage, for yourself.- To whom is the benefit?
Q: Consciousness.
M: If you are not the body or the consciousness, then what are you? - When you realize the Self-knowledge, then the self is released, liberated.
Q: Then what?
M: Then you know, definitely, who you are. - That by which you know, you know that, also.
Q: Is that liberation ?
M: Liberation means what? - It is no more there. - [Flicking his cigarette lighter on and off] This cigarette lighter is the body; the consciousness is the flame. - Now it isn't there anymore; it is liberated. - Where is the need to label it in the absence of consciousness?
End of extract.




Here is a comment I made on a forum recently in regard to the same questions.

Every thought, every motion is consciousness. - The First Instant (the Only instant) is KNOWING - cognition.
So, THAT is the ‘understanding’ - the knowing IS the understanding - there is NO entity in that. – Any appearance of an ‘entity’ is seen – and you cannot see yourself – primarily you KNOW yourself as yourself and then as everything that IS. – No two-ness.
There is a seeing of each thought - a hearing of your own speech – taste, touch, all the senses register ‘on that awareness’ that you are - the investigation is of that 'space of knowing' and the investigator dissolves into the knowing – forever - as it always was - is and will be.
It already IS - so it is truly no Big Deal.
Ordinary awareness is clear and present always. – It may appear to be covered over by mind content – but for whom is it covered over – only a sense of identification – INVESTIGATE.

Those who make a big deal out of this are really ignorant and that dramatizing of it all, just keeps the concept of separation going on and on - then the ignorant guru promises you deliverance if you do what he says - that my friend is EGO looking for companions on a road to nowhere or that old fabricated castle of 'Salvation'.
The guru's MAP is fabricated nonsense. - You ARE here now and there is no other time or place to SEE directly.

Right NOW is IT - you are already FREE - but your mind tells you otherwise - and you believe it - 'who' is the believer?
Watch and see - that is all one needs to do.
Everything is revealed in SEEING.

Email correspondence:
Hi Gilbert,

I'm trying to look into the depth of your philosophical understanding.

Regards – T – Hong Kong.

Hi T,
You say that you are trying to look into my philosophical understanding - and that will take you nowhere but on and on in the ever unfolding realms of the mind, Full Stop!
This is not a philosophical understanding!
Philosophy is of the mind - a creation of the mind and nothing more.
Understanding is simple, direct and silent.

If you look about the room you are in, you see everything and know what everything is, before thought (Philosophy is thought) and you understand what everything is – it is so ordinary yet so profound in the same instant.
From your own culture: "The Tao that can be spoken is not the true Tao" - Lao Tzu.

The simple man is worthy to rule the land - not the complex man of mind.
The simple man has no desire to rule anything and flows with the Tao.
He is Freedom itself.
His declaration of freedom is viewed with suspicion by the one who is bound in thought and conceptual notions.
Many years may pass in the company of a free one and no result - because the seeker is a concept that 'appears to want' (a need) to grasp the freedom from the other one.

As Bob says, start from the FACT that you are THAT (freedom).
Then everything falls into place - AS IT IS - the ACTUAL - not only as the conceptual.

This teaching is the most profound teaching of them all yet it is nothing but your own presence awareness.
That is not a teaching. - Teaching takes time and THIS is timeless - perfect just AS IT IS.
It appears to be extremely subtle yet it is the nature of ordinary awareness - some 'laugh their heads off' as it 'clicks in'. - 'Clicking in' is just a way of expressing something inexpressable. - Any word, concept, idea or any re-presentation is just a facsimile of what IS.

Warm regards - Gilbert

Note: - A new book project is planned, so anyone who has the required skills and is interested in assisting me with some editing of texts, please email me.

The book will be called “Zero Degrees of Separation”.

- Working on such a project can be quite useful in bringing the mind more fully into its own natural understanding. – That is one of the ways things really opened up for me, while I worked on Bob’s first book in 2001.