notes on apperception

http://thehamiltonproject.blogspot.com.au/2012/04/yogi-experiment-peripherycentre.html

We have two different ways of "knowing" things that usually go on simultaneously - attention, and peripheral awareness. Mindfulness really means using peripheral awareness to be introspectively aware of what is going on in our own minds, and also the larger context of the situation we're in. Attention focuses in on details, so it can't observe the mind in an ongoing way, and it can't provide context. In conversations, intellectual tasks, and any kind of emotionally intense situation, attention becomes hyper-focused and peripheral awareness disappears. That is what causes us to lose mindfulness! 

The second instruction Daniel gave you is all about this. It is quite possible to be observing your own mind in peripheral awareness at the same time that attention is focused on something else, like a conversation. When you do this, it gives you the feeling of "watching the mind" even while the mind is engaged in carrying on the conversation, or whatever else it is that attention happens to be engaged in. In other words, two ways of knowing, happening at the same time, provide the "mirror". It allows the mind's activities to be illuminated from "behind", or "within" or "above", or however you might like to describe it.

It takes practice to get good at doing this. And being grounded in body awareness is a great way to get into this place. But no amount of practice and skill will get you very far in intense emotional situations, because attention sucks up all of your capacity for consciousness, leaving none behind for peripheral awareness. This is where meditation really helps. The mind becomes more powerful, so, providing you have developed the habit of introspective peripheral awareness, you are able to mindful even in situations where you might otherwise not be. 

The reason that some of us have acquired this skill at sustaining peripheral awareness and this enhanced conscious power of the mind is that we have been using it all along to help us succeed in our meditation. Early on, we noticed that when we became too focused, we either forgot what we were doing or we got dull and dozy. So we learned to avoid becoming hyper-focused by sustaining peripheral awareness while we focused. Then, the way we ultimately overcame dullness and distractions was by recognizing them as soon as they arose so that we could correct for them. And we did this by converting our peripheral awareness into introspective awareness so that we always knew what was happening in our minds. Eventually, not only introspective peripheral awareness, but the correcting process itself became automatic, and we were good meditators as a result. But sustained introspective peripheral awareness as a habit spills over into daily life as well. So we also found ourselves being much more mindful, even while working and talking to people and fighting with our partners. This was, of course, a tremendous bonus, and actually leads to Insight.

Those of us who have acquired this skill and ability have done it largely by accident. I know that my own successes in both meditation and life would have come about much more quickly if someone had explained these details to me. So that is why I am so happy to pass it along to you. Cultivate peripheral awareness both on and off the cushion. learn to sustain peripheral awareness even when you are focusing very closely. Transmute peripheral awareness from being all about what is happening outside of the mind to being about what is happening inside the mind as well. CULADASA

UG Krishnamurti - The Mystique of Enlightenment

The Mystique of Enlightenment



Part Two

(Compiled by James Brodsky from conversations in India and Switzerland 1973)

I am not out to liberate anybody. You have to liberate yourself, and you are unable to do that. What I have to say will not do it. I am only interested in describing this state, in clearing away the occultation and mystification in which those people in the 'holy business' have shrouded the whole thing. Maybe I can convince you not to waste a lot of time and energy, looking for a state which does not exist except in your imagination.____________
Get this straight, this is your state I am describing, your natural state, not my state or the state of a God-realized man or a mutant or any such thing. This is your natural state, but what prevents what is there from expressing itself in its own way is your reaching out for something, trying to be something other than what you are.____________
You can never understand this; you can only experience this in terms of your past experience. This is outside the realm of experience. The natural state is acausal: it just happens. No communication is possible, and none necessary. The only thing that is real to you is the way you are functioning; it is an act of futility to relate my description to the way you are functioning. When you stop all this comparison, what is there is your natural state. Then you will not listen to anybody.____________
There is no teaching of mine, and never shall be one. "Teaching" is not the word for it. A teaching implies a method or a system, a technique or a new way of thinking to be applied in order to bring about a transformation in your way of life. What I am saying is outside the field of teachability; it is simply a description of the way I am functioning. It is just a description of the natural state of man -- this is the way you, stripped of the machinations of thought, are also functioning.
The natural state is not the state of a self-realized God-realized man, it is not a thing to be achieved or attained, it is not a thing to be willed into existence; it is there -- it is the living state. This state is just the functional activity of life. By 'life' I do not mean something abstract; it is the life of the senses, functioning naturally without the interference of thought. Thought is an interloper, which thrusts itself into the affairs of the senses. It has a profit motive: thought directs the activity of the senses to get something out of them, and uses them to give continuity to itself.
Your natural state has no relationship whatsoever with the religious states of bliss, beatitude and ecstasy; they lie within the field of experience. Those who have led man on his search for religiousness throughout the centuries have perhaps experienced those religious states. So can you. They are thought-induced states of being, and as they come, so do they go. Krishna Consciousness, Buddha Consciousness, Christ Consciousness, or what have you, are all trips in the wrong direction: they are all within the field of time. The timeless can never be experienced, can never be grasped, contained, much less given expression to, by any man. That beaten track will lead you nowhere. There is no oasis situated yonder; you are stuck with the mirage.______________
This state is a physical condition of your being. It is not some kind of psychological mutation. It is not a state of mind into which you can fall one day, and out of it the next day. You can't imagine the extent to which, as you are now, thought pervades and interferes with the functioning of every cell in your body. Coming into your natural state will blast every cell, every gland, every nerve. It is a chemical change. An alchemy of some sort takes place. But this state has nothing to do with the experiences of chemical drugs such as LSD. Those are experiences; this is not.______________
Does such a thing as enlightenment exist? To me what does exist is a purely physical process; there is nothing mystical or spiritual about it. If I close the eyes, some light penetrates through the eyelids. If I cover the eyelids, there is still light inside. There seems to be some kind of a hole in the forehead, which doesn't show, but through which something penetrates. In India that light is golden; in Europe it is blue. There is also some kind of light penetration through the back of the neck. It's as if there is a hole running through between those spots in front and back of the skull. There is nothing inside but this light. If you cover those points, there is complete, total darkness. This light doesn't do anything or help the body to function in any way; it's just there.______________
This state is a state of not knowing; you really don't know what you are looking at. I may look at the clock on the wall for half an hour -- still I do not read the time. I don't know it is a clock. All there is inside is wonderment: "What is this that I am looking at?" Not that the question actually phrases itself like that in words: the whole of my being is like a single, big question mark. It is a state of wonder, of wondering, because I just do not know what I am looking at. The knowledge about it -- all that I have learned -- is held in the background unless there is a demand. It is in the 'declutched state'. If you ask the time, I will say "It's a quarter past three" or whatever -- it comes quickly like an arrow -- then I am back in the state of not knowing, of wonder.______________
You can never understand the tremendous peace that is always there within you, that is your natural state. Your trying to create a peaceful state of mind is in fact creating disturbance within you. You can only talk of peace, create a state of mind and say to yourself that you are very peaceful -- but that is not peace; that is violence. So there is no use in practicing peace, there is no reason to practice silence. Real silence is explosive; it is not the dead state of mind that spiritual seekers think. "Oh, I am at peace with myself! There is silence, a tremendous silence! I experience silence!" -- that doesn't mean anything at all. This is volcanic in its nature: it's bubbling all the time -- the energy, the life -- that is its quality. You may ask how I know. I don't know. Life is aware of itself, if we can put it that way -- it is conscious of itself._______
When I talk of 'feeling', I do not mean the same thing that you do. Actually, feeling is a physical response, a thud in the thymus. The thymus, one of the endocrine glands, is located under the breast bone. The doctors tell us that it is active through childhood until puberty and then becomes dormant. When you come into your natural state, this gland is re-activated. Sensations are felt there; you don't translate them as 'good' or 'bad'; they are just a thud. If there is a movement outside of you -- a clock pendulum swinging, or a bird flying across your field of vision -- that movement is also felt in the thymus. The whole of your being is that movement or vibrates with that sound; there is no separation. This does not mean that you identify yourself with that bird or whatever -- "I am that flying bird." There is no 'you' there, nor is there any object. What causes that sensation, you don't know. You do not even know that it is a sensation.
'Affection' (this is not my interpretation of the word) means that you are affected by everything, not that some emotion flows from you towards something. The natural state is a state of great sensitivity -- but this is a physical sensitivity of the senses, not some kind of emotional compassion or tenderness for others. There is compassion only in the sense that there are no 'others' for me, and so there is no separation.______________
Is there in you an entity which you call the 'I' or the 'mind' or the 'self'? Is there a co- ordinator who is co-ordinating what you are looking at with what you are listening to, what you are smelling with what you are tasting, and so on? Or is there anything which links together the various sensations originating from a single sense -- the flow of impulses from the eyes, for example? Actually, there is always a gap between any two sensations. The co-ordinator bridges that gap: he establishes himself as an illusion of continuity.
In the natural state there is no entity who is co-ordinating the messages from the different senses. Each sense is functioning independently in its own way. When there is a demand from outside which makes it necessary to co-ordinate one or two or all of the senses and come up with a response, still there is no co-ordinator, but there is a temporary state of co- ordination. There is no continuity; when the demand has been met, again there is only the unco-ordinated, disconnected, disjointed functioning of the senses. This is always the case. Once the continuity is blown apart -- not that it was ever there; but the illusory continuity -- it's finished once and for all.
Can this make any sense to you? It cannot. All that you know lies within the framework of your experience, which is of thought. This state is not an experience. I am only trying to give you a 'feel' of it, which is, unfortunately, misleading.
When there is no co-ordinator, there is no linking of sensations, there is no translating of sensations; they stay pure and simple sensations. I do not even know that they are sensations. I may look at you as you are talking. The eyes will focus on your mouth because that is what is moving, and the ears will receive the sound vibrations. There is nothing inside which links up the two and says that it is you talking. I may be looking at a spring bubbling out of the earth and hear the water, but there is nothing to say that the noise being heard is the sound of water, or that that sound is in any way connected with what I am seeing. I may be looking at my foot, but nothing says that this is my foot. When I am walking, I see my feet moving -- it is such a funny thing: "What is that which is moving?"
What functions is a primordial consciousness, untouched by thought._______________
The eyes are like a very sensitive camera. The physiologists say that light reflected off objects strikes the retina of the eye and the sensation goes through the optic nerve to the brain. The faculty of sight, of seeing, is simply a physical phenomenon. It makes no difference to the eyes whether they are focused on a snow-capped mountain or on a garbage can: they produce sensations in exactly the same way. the eyes look on everyone and everything without discrimination.
You have a feeling that there is a 'cameraman' who is directing the eyes. But left to themselves -- when there is no 'cameraman' -- the eyes do not linger, but are moving all the time. They are drawn by the things outside. Movement attracts them, or brightness or a color which stands out from whatever is around it. There is no 'I' looking; mountains, flowers, trees, cows, all look at me. The consciousness is like a mirror, reflecting whatever is there outside. The depth, the distance, the color, everything is there, but there is nobody who is translating these things. Unless there is a demand for knowledge about what I am looking at, there is no separation, no distance from what is there. It may not actually be possible to count the hairs on the head of someone sitting across the room, but there is a kind of clarity which seems as if I could.
The eyes do not blink, except when there is sudden danger -- this is something very natural because the things outside are demanding attention all the time. Then, when the eyes are tired, a built-in mechanism in the body cuts them out -- they may be open, but they are blurred. But if the eyes stay open all the time, if the reflex action of blinking is not operating, they become dry and you will go blind; so there are some glands beyond the outer corners of the eyes, which are not activated in your case, which act as a watering mechanism. Tears flow all the time from the outer corners. Ignorant people have described them as 'tears of joy' or 'tears of bliss'. There is nothing divine about them. By practicing not blinking, one will not arrive in this state; one will only strain the eyes. And there are neurotics in mental hospitals whose eyes do not blink for one reason or another -- for them it is a pathological condition. But once you are in your natural state, by some luck or some strange chance, all this happens in its own way.
____________
Does beauty lie in the eye of the beholder? Does it lie in the object? Where does it lie? Beauty is thought-induced. I do not stop and write poems about the mountain in front of me. What happens is that I am walking and suddenly see something different because the light has changed. I have nothing to do with it. It is not that something new is seen, or that there is a total attention; there has been a sudden change in the light itself. There is no recognition of that as beauty. Clarity is there, which probably wasn't there before the light changed. Then this consciousness suddenly expands to the size of the object in front of the body, and the lungs take a deep breath. This is the pranayama (breath control); not what you are doing, sitting in a corner and inhaling through one nostril and exhaling through the other; this pranayama is going on all the time. So, there is consciousness of a sudden change in the breathing, and then it moves on to something else, the mooing of a cow or the howling of a jackal. It is always moving; it does not linger on something which thought has decided is beautiful. There is no one directing._______________
Do you listen to anybody? You do not; you listen only to yourself. When you leave the sense of hearing alone, all that is there is the vibration of the sound -- the words repeat themselves inside of you, as in an echo chamber. This sense is functioning in just the same way with you, except that you think the words you are hearing come from outside of you. Get this straight: You can never hear one word from anyone else, no matter how intimately you think you are in relationship with that person; you hear only your own translations, always. They are all your words you are hearing. All that the other person's words can possibly be to you is a noise, a vibration picked up by the ear-drum and transferred to the nerves which run to the brain. You are translating those vibrations all the time, trying to understand, because you want to get something out of what you are hearing. That is all right for a relationship with someone on the level of "Here is some money; give me a half kilo of carrots" -- but that is the limit of your relationship, of your communication, with anybody.
When there is no translation, all languages sound the same whether or not your particular knowledge structure 'speaks' a particular language. The only differences are in the spacing of the syllables and in the tune. Languages are melodic in different ways.
It is acquired taste that tells you that Beethoven's Ninth Symphony is more beautiful than a chorus of cats screaming; both produce equally valid sensations. Of course some sounds can be damaging to the body, and noise levels above a certain number of decibels are hard on the nervous system and can cause deafness -- that is not what I am talking about. But the appreciation of music, poetry and language is all culturally determined and is the product of thought.______________
Your movement of thought interferes with the process of touch, just as it does with the other senses. Anything you touch is always translated as 'hard', 'soft', 'warm', 'cold', 'wet', 'dry', and so on.
You do not realize it, but it is your thinking that creates your own body. Without this thought process there is no body consciousness -- which is to say there is no body at all. My body exists for other people; it does not exist for me; there are only isolated points of contact, impulses of touch which are not tied together by thought. So the body is not different from the objects around it; it is a set of sensations like any others. Your body does not belong to you.
Perhaps I can give you the 'feel' of this. I sleep four hours at night, no matter what time I go to bed. Then I lie in bed until morning fully awake. I don't know what is lying there in the bed; I don't know whether I'm lying on my left side or my right side -- for hours and hours I lie like this. If there is any noise outside -- a bird or something -- it just echoes in me. I listen to the "flub-dub-flub-dub" of my heart and don't know what it is. There is no body between the two sheets -- the form of the body is not there. If the question is asked, "What is in there?" there is only an awareness of the points of contact, where the body is in contact with the bed and the sheets, and where it is in contact with itself, at the crossing of the legs, for example. There are only the sensations of touch from these points of contact, and the rest of the body is not there. There is some kind of heaviness, probably the gravitational pull, something very vague. There is nothing inside which links up these things. Even if the eyes are open and looking at the whole body, there are still only the points of contact, and they have no connection with what I am looking at. If I want to try to link up these points of contact into the shape of my own body, probably I will succeed, but by the time it is completed the body is back in the same situation of different points of contact. The linkage cannot stay. It is the same sort of thing when I'm sitting or standing. There is no body.
Can you tell me how mango juice tastes? I can't. You also cannot; but you try to relive the memory of mango juice now -- you create for yourself some kind of an experience of how it tastes -- which I cannot do. I must have mango juice on my tongue -- seeing or smelling it is not enough -- in order to be able to bring that past knowledge into operation and to say "Yes, this is what mango juice tastes like." This does not mean that personal preferences and 'tastes' change. In a market my hand automatically reaches out for the same items that I have liked all my life. But because I cannot conjure up a mental experience, there can be no craving for foods which are not there.
Smell plays a greater part in your daily life than does taste. The olfactory organs are constantly open to odors. But if you do not interfere with the sense of smell, what is there is only an irritation in the nose. It makes no difference whether you are smelling cow dung or an expensive French perfume -- you rub the nose and move on.________________
My talking comes out in response to the questions which are asked. I cannot sit and give a talk on the natural state -- that is an artificial situation for me. There is nobody who is thinking thoughts and then coming out with answers. When you throw a ball at me, the ball bounces back, and that is what you call an 'answer'. But I don't give any answers; this state is expressing itself. I really don't know what I'm saying, and what I'm saying is of no importance. You may transcribe my own talking, but it will make no sense to me -- it is a dead thing.
What is here, this natural state, is a living thing. It cannot be captured by me, let alone by you. It's like a flower. (This simile is all I can give.) It just blooms. It's there. As long as it is there, it has a fragrance which is different and distinct from that of every other flower. You may not recognize it. You may or may not write odes or sonnets about it. A wandering cow might eat it, or it may be chopped down by a haycutter, or it fades and is finished -- that's the end of it. It's of no importance. You can't preserve its perfume; whatever you preserve of this is only a synthetic, a chemical perfume, not the living thing. Preserving the expressions, teachings or words of such a man has no meaning. This state has only contemporary value, contemporary expression._________________
The personality does not change when you come into this state. You are, after all, a computer machine, which reacts as it has been programmed. It is in fact your present effort to change yourself that is taking you away from yourself and keeping you from functioning in the natural way. The personality will remain the same. Don't expect such a man to become free from anger or idiosyncrasies. Don't expect some kind of spiritual humility. Such a man may be the most arrogant person you have ever met, because he is touching life at a unique place where no man has touched before.
It is for this reason that each person who comes into this state expresses it in a unique way, in terms relevant to his time. It is also for this reason that if two or more people are living in this state at the same time, they will never get together. They won't dance in the streets hand in hand: "We are all self-realized men! We belong!"_________________
The natural needs of a human being are basic: food, clothing and shelter. You must either work for them or be given them by somebody. If these are your only needs, they are not very difficult to fulfill. To deny yourself the basic needs is not a sign of spirituality; but to require more than food, clothing and shelter is a neurotic state of mind.
Is not sex a basic human requirement? Sex is dependent upon thought; the body itself has no sex. Only the genitals and perhaps the hormone balances differ between male and female. It is thought that says "I am a man, and that is a woman, an attractive woman." It is thought that translates sex feelings in the body and says "These are sexual feelings." And it is thought that provides the build-up without which no sex is possible: "It would be more pleasurable to hold that woman's hand than just to look at her. It would be more pleasurable to kiss her than just to embrace her," and so on. In the natural state there is no build-up of thought. Without that build-up, sex is impossible. And sex is tremendously violent to the body. The body normally is a very peaceful organism, and then you subject it to this tremendous tension and release, which feels pleasurable to you. Actually it is painful to the body.
But through suppression or attempts at sublimation of sex you will never come into this state. As long as you think of God, you will have thoughts of sex. Ask any religious seeker you may know who practices celibacy, whether he doesn't dream of women at night. The peak of the sex experience is the one thing in life you have that comes close to being a first-hand experience; all of the rest of your experiences are second-hand, somebody else's. Why do you weave so many taboos and ideas around this? Why do you destroy the joy of sex? Not that I am advocating indulgence or promiscuity; but through abstinence and continence you will never achieve a thing.________________
There must be a living contact. If you walk out of the room, you disappear from my consciousness. Where you are, or why you are not here -- these questions do not arise. There are no images here -- there is no room for them -- the sensory apparatus is completely occupied with the things I am looking at now. There must be a living contact with those things that are in the room, not thoughts about things that are not here. And so, if you are totally 'tuned in' to the sensory activity, there in no room for fears about who will feed you tomorrow, or for speculation about God, Truth and Reality.
This is not a state of omniscience, wherein all of man's eternal questions are answered; rather it is a state in which the questioning has stopped. It has stopped because those questions have no relation to the way the organism is functioning, and the way the organism is functioning leaves no room for those questions.________________
The body has an extraordinary mechanism for renewing itself. This is necessary because the senses in the natural state are functioning at the peak of their sensitivity all the time. So, when the senses become tired, the body goes through death. This is real physical death, not some mental state. It can happen one or more times a day. You do not decide to go through this death; it descends upon you. It feels at first as if you have been given an anaesthetic: the senses become increasingly dull, the heartbeat slows, the feet and hands become ice cold, and the whole body becomes stiff like a corpse. Energy flows from all over the body towards some point. It happens differently every time. The whole process takes forty-eight or forty-nine minutes. During this time the stream of thoughts continues, but there is no reading of the thoughts. At the end of this period you 'conk out': the stream of thought is cut. There is no way of knowing how long that cut lasts -- it is not an experience. There is nothing you can say about that time of being 'conked out' -- that can never become part of your conscious existence or conscious thinking.
You don't know what brings you back from death. If you had any will at that moment, you could decide not to come back. When the 'conking out' is over, the stream of thought picks up exactly where it left off. Dullness is over; clarity is back. The body feels very stiff -- slowly it begins to move of its own accord, limbering itself up. The movements are more like the Chinese T'ai Chi than like Hatha Yoga. The disciples observed the things that were happening to the teachers, probably, and embodied them and taught hundreds of postures -- but they are all worthless; it is an extraordinary movement. Those who have observed my body moving say it looks like the motions of a newly born baby. This 'conking out' gives a total renewal of the senses, glands and nervous system: after it they function at the peak of their sensitivity.________________
You shall not taste of death, for there is no death for you: you cannot experience your own death. Are you born? Life and death cannot be separated; you have no chance whatever of knowing for yourself where one begins and the other ends. You can experience the death of another, but not your own. The only death is physical death; there is no psychological death.
Why are you so afraid of death?
Your experiencing structure cannot conceive of any event that it will not experience. It even expects to preside over its own dissolution, and so it wonders what death will feel like -- it tries to project the feeling of what it will be like not to feel. But in order to anticipate a future experience, your structure needs knowledge, a similar past experience it can call upon for reference. You cannot remember what it felt like not to exist before you were born, and you cannot remember your own birth, so you have no basis for projecting your future non- existence. As long as you have known life, you have known yourself, you have been there, so, to you, you have a feeling of eternity. To justify this feeling of eternity, your structure begins to convince itself that there will be a life after death for you -- heaven, reincarnation, transmigration of souls, or whatever. What is it that you think reincarnates? Where is that soul of yours? Can you taste it, touch it, show it to me? What is there inside of you that goes to heaven? What is there? There is nothing inside of you but fear.__________________
Why do you dream? You have the feeling that there is somebody, a self, who is running the show of your perceptions, translating what is seen, heard and felt, directing the eyes, saying "This is beautiful; that is ugly. I will look at this; I will not look at that." You cannot control like that -- you think that you can; but the camera is taking pictures all the time, and the tape- recorder is recording all the time, whether you look at one thing for a longer time than you look at something else. Then, when the body is at rest or your thoughts are in a passive state, these things begin to come up -- one bit of this, one bit of that -- it creates some kind of a mosaic and you begin to dream. When that 'somebody' is not there, there is nothing which says "I was asleep, I was dreaming, and now I am awake."________________
What is morality? It is not the following of enjoined rules of conduct. It is not a question of standing above temptations, or of conquering hate, anger, greed, lust and violence. Questioning your actions before and after creates the moral problem. What is responsible for this situation is the faculty of distinguishing between right and wrong and influencing your actions accordingly.
Life is action. Unquestioned action is morality. Questioning your actions is destroying the expression of life. A person who lets life act in its own way without the protective movement of thought has no self to defend. What need will he have to lie or cheat or pretend or to commit any other act which his society considers immoral?_________________
What is keeping you from being in your natural state? You are constantly moving away from yourself. You want to be happy, either permanently or at least for this moment. You are dissatisfied with your everyday experiences, and so you want some new ones. You want to perfect yourself, to change yourself. You are reaching out, trying to be something other than what you are. It is this that is taking you away from yourself.Society has put before you the ideal of a 'perfect man'. No matter in which culture you were born, you have scriptural doctrines and traditions handed down to you to tell you how to behave. You are told that through due practice you can even eventually come into the state attained by the sages, saints and saviors of mankind. And so you try to control your behavior, to control your thoughts, to be something unnatural.
We are all living in a 'thought sphere'. Your thoughts are not your own; they belong to everybody. There are only thoughts, but you create a counter-thought, the thinker, with which you read every thought. Your effort to control life has created a secondary movement of thought within you, which you call the 'I'. This movement of thought within you is parallel to the movement of life, but isolated from it; it can never touch life. You are a living creature, yet you lead your entire life within the realm of this isolated, parallel movement of thought. You cut yourself off from life -- that is something very unnatural.
The natural state is not a 'thoughtless state' -- that is one of the greatest hoaxes perpetrated for thousands of years on poor, helpless Hindus. You will never be without thought until the body is a corpse, a very dead corpse. Being able to think is necessary to survive. But in this state thought stops choking you; it falls into its natural rhythm. There is no longer a 'you' who reads the thoughts and thinks that they are 'his'.
Have you ever looked at that parallel movement of thought? The books on English grammar will tell you that 'I' is a first person singular pronoun, subjective case; but that is not what you want to know. Can you look at that thing you call 'I'? It is very elusive. Look at it now, feel it, touch it, and tell me. How do you look at it? And what is the thing that is looking at what you call 'I'? This is the crux of the whole problem: the one that is looking at what you call 'I' is the 'I'. It is creating an illusory division of itself into subject and object, and through this division it is continuing. This is the divisive nature that is operating in you, in your consciousness. Continuity of its existence is all that interests it. As long as you want to understand that 'you' or to change that 'you' into something spiritual, into something holy, beautiful or marvelous, that 'you' will continue. If you do not want to do anything about it, it is not there, it's gone.
How do you understand this? I have for all practical purposes made a statement: "What you are looking at is not different from the one who is looking." What do you do with a statement like this? What instrument do you have at your disposal for understanding a meaningless, illogical, irrational statement? You begin to think. Through thinking, you cannot understand a thing. You are translating what I am saying, in terms of the knowledge you already have, just as you translate everything else, because you want to get something out of it. When you stop doing that, what is there is what I am describing. The absence of what you are doing -- trying to understand, or trying to change yourself -- is the state of being that I am describing.________________
Is there a beyond? Because you are not interested in the everyday things and the happenings around you, you have invented a thing called the 'beyond', or 'timelessness', or 'God', 'Truth', 'Reality', 'Brahman', 'enlightenment', or whatever, and you search for that. There may not be any beyond. You don't know a thing about that beyond; whatever you know is what you have been told, the knowledge you have about that. So you are projecting that knowledge. What you call 'beyond' is created by the knowledge you have about that beyond; and whatever knowledge you have about a beyond is exactly what you will experience. The knowledge creates the experience, and the experience then strengthens the knowledge.
What you know can never be the beyond. Whatever you experience is not the beyond. If there is any beyond, this movement of 'you' is absent. The absence of this movement probably is the beyond, but the beyond can never be experienced by you; it is when the 'you' is not there. Why are you trying to experience a thing that cannot be experienced?________________
You must always recognize what you are looking at, otherwise you are not there. The moment you translate, the 'you' is there. You look at something and recognize that it is a bag, a red bag. Thought interferes with the sensation by translating. Why does thought interfere? And can you do anything about it? The moment you look at a thing, what comes inside of you is the word 'bag', if not bag', then 'bench' or 'bannister', 'step', "that man sitting there, he has white hair." It goes on and on -- you are repeating to yourself all the time. If you don't do that, you are preoccupied with something else: "I'm getting late for the office." You are either thinking about something which is totally unrelated to the way the senses are functioning at this moment, or else you are looking and saying to yourself "That's a bag, that's a red bag," and so on and so on -- that is all that is there. The word 'bag' separates you from what you are looking at, thereby creating the 'you'; otherwise there is no space between the two.
Every time a thought is born, you are born. When the thought is gone, you are gone. But the 'you' does not let the thought go, and what gives continuity to this 'you' is the thinking. Actually there is no permanent entity in you, no totality of all your thoughts and experiences. You think that there is 'somebody' who is thinking your thoughts, 'somebody' who is feeling your feelings --- that's the illusion. I can say it is an illusion; but it is not an illusion to you.
Your emotions are more complex, but it is the same process. Why do you have to tell yourself that you are angry, that you are envious of someone else, or that sex is bothering you? I am not saying anything about fulfilling or not fulfilling. There is a sensation in you, and you say that you are depressed or unhappy or blissful, jealous, greedy, envious. This labelling brings into existence the one who is translating this sensation. What you call "I" is nothing but this word 'red bag', 'bench', 'steps', 'banister', 'light bulb', 'angry', 'blissful', 'jealous', or whatever. You are putting your brain cells to unnecessary activity making the memory cells operate all the time, destroying the energy that is there. This is only wearing you out.
This labelling is necessary when you must communicate with someone else or with yourself. But you communicate with yourself all the time. Why do you do this? The only difference between you and the person who talks aloud to himself is that you don't talk aloud. The moment you do begin to talk aloud, along comes the psychiatrist. That chap, of course, is doing the same thing that you are doing, communicating to himself all the time -- 'bag', 'red bag', 'obsessive', 'compulsive', 'Oedipus complex,' 'greedy', 'bench', 'banister', 'martini'. Then he says something is wrong with you and puts you on the couch and wants to change you, to help you.
Why can't you leave the sensations alone? Why do you translate? You do this because if you do not communicate to yourself, you are not there. The prospect of that is frightening to the 'you'._________________
Whatever you experience -- peace, bliss, silence, beatitude, ecstasy, joy, God knows what -- will be old, second-hand. You already have knowledge about all of these things. The fact that you are in a blissful state or in a state of tremendous silence means that you know about it. You must know a thing in order to experience it. That knowledge is nothing marvelous or metaphysical; 'bench', 'bag', 'red bag', is the knowledge. Knowledge is something which is put into you by somebody else, and he got that from somebody else; it is not yours.
Can you experience a simple thing like that bench that is sitting across from you? No, you only experience the knowledge you have about it. And the knowledge has come from some outside agency, always. You think the thoughts of your society, feel the feelings of your society and experience the experiences of your society; there is no new experience.
So, all that any man has ever thought or felt must go out of your system. And you are the product of all that knowledge -- that's all you are.___________________
What is thought? You don't know a thing about it; all that you know about what you call 'thought' is what you have been told. How can you do anything with it -- mould it, control it, shape it or stop it? You are all the time trying to do something with it because somebody has told you that you must change this or replace that, hold on to the good thoughts and not the bad thoughts. Thoughts are thoughts; they are neither good nor bad. As long as you want to do something with whatever is there, you are thinking. Wanting and thinking are not two different things. Wanting to understand means there is a movement of thought. You are adding momentum to that movement, giving it continuity.
The senses function unnaturally in you because you want to use them to get something. Why should you get anything? Because you want what you call the 'you' to continue. You are protecting that continuity. Thought is a protective mechanism: it protects the 'you' at the expense of something or somebody else. Anything born out of thought is destructive: it will ultimately destroy you and your kind._________________
It is the repetitive mechanism of thought that is wearing you out. So, what is it that you can do about it? -- that's all that you can ask. That's the one and the only question, and any answer that I or anybody gives adds momentum to that movement of thought. What is it that you can do about it? Not one thing. It's too strong: it has the momentum of millions of years. You are totally helpless, and you cannot be conscious of that helplessness.
If you practice any system of mind control, automatically the 'you' is there, and through this it is continuing. Have you ever meditated, really seriously meditated? Or do you know anyone who has? Nobody does. If you seriously meditate, you'll wind up in the loony bin. Nor can you practice mindfulness trying to be aware every moment of your life. You cannot be aware; you and awareness cannot co-exist. If you could be in a state of awareness for one second by the clock, once in your life, the continuity would be snapped, the illusion of the experiencing structure, the 'you', would collapse, and everything would fall into the natural rhythm. In this state you do not know what you are looking at -- that is awareness. If you recognize what you are looking at, you are there, again experiencing the old, what you know.
What makes one person come into his natural state, and not another person, I don't know. Perhaps it's written in the cells. It is acausal. It is not an act of volition on your part; you can't bring it about. There is absolutely nothing you can do. You can distrust any man who tells you how he got into this state. One thing you can be sure of is that he cannot possibly know himself, and cannot possibly communicate it to you. There is a built-in triggering mechanism in the body. If the experiencing structure of thought happens to let go, the other thing will take over in its own way. The functioning of the body will be a totally different functioning, without the interference of thought except when it is necessary to communicate with somebody. To put it in the boxing-ring phrase, you have to "throw in the towel," be totally helpless. No one can help you, and you cannot help yourself.________________
This state is not in your interest. You are only interested in continuity. You want to continue, probably on a different level, and to function in a different dimension, but you want to continue somehow. You wouldn't touch this with a barge pole. This is going to liquidate what you call "you," all of you -- higher self, lower self, soul, Atman, conscious, subconscious -- all of that. You come to a point, and then you say "I need time." So sadhana (inquiry and religious endeavor) comes into the picture, and you say to yourself "Tomorrow I will understand." This structure is born of time and functions in time, but does not come to an end through time. If you don't understand now, you are not going to understand tomorrow. What is there to understand? Why do you want to understand what I am saying? You can't understand what I am saying. It is an exercise in futility on your part to try to relate the description of how I am functioning to the way you are functioning. This is a thing which I cannot communicate. Nor is any communication necessary. No dialogue is possible. When the 'you' is not there, when the question is not there, what is is understanding. You are finished. You'll walk out. You will never listen to anybody describing his state or ask any questions about understanding at all.
What you are looking for does not exist. You would rather tread an enchanted ground with beatific visions of a radical transformation of that non-existent self of yours into a state of being which is conjured up by some bewitching phrases. That takes you away from your natural state -- it is a movement away from yourself. To be yourself requires extraordinary intelligence. You are 'blessed' with that intelligence; nobody need give it to you, nobody can take it away from you. He who lets that express itself in its own way is a natural man.

moving quote on the exhaustion of phenomena

​

http://tibetanaltar.blogspot.com.au/2009/10/terton-kunzang-dechen-lingpa-moving.html

"Later when Rinpoche was relaxing in a lawn chair, he said to a few students gathered around him:  

"You don't realize this, but I am actually Guru Rinpoche and you are his twenty-five disciples. I have reached the stage of exhaustion of phenomena (cho nyi zepa). In truth there is for me no form, no sensation, no perception, no karmic formation, no consciousness, no form, no smell, no sense consciousness or object of sense consciousness and so forth; there is no self or other and no distinction of 'Buddhas' and 'sentient beings'; everything remains in the naturally perfect state of pure equality. From the depths of my heart I wish there were some way you could all be made to understand the truth in this, but you do not see it."

Then Rinpoche went silent and tears fell from his eyes."

notes on trekchod

From the Teaching Notes on Tregchod given by HE Garchen Rinpoche at Vancouver, March 2007:

So how is it that we can avoid falling under the power of conditions, it is through stabilizing mindful awareness. When we go outside and we engage our daily activities, if we do so with mindfulness then we will become like Milarepa, who sang “Whenever I go from one place to another, I am bring all appearances onto the path.” So for example if we are sitting down and suddenly we have the wish to get up and go do something, we should just for a moment look at the mind that wants to get up and do. When we do this, the wish to get up and go dissipates and then within a state free of needing to get up, we can get up and engage our activities. When we want to eat something, we should first just recognize that desire to eat, and then the desire itself is liberated. And within a state of desirelessness eat the food. When we suddenly give rise to anger at something someone has said to us, we can look at that mind of anger and it will dissipate and then we can respond in a state free of anger. In this way by cultivating mindful awareness we can engage all of our activities in a state free of negative emotions. We can enjoy all of the five objects of senses pleasure in a state free of fixation. This is what it means to mix awareness with conduct.
At the time when we are engaging activities, we should do so in the context of the Tregchod practice or the practice of destroying delusion. So what is this Dzogchen view of Tregchod, it is when the mind is abiding in a state free of fixation on negative emotions as being real. So for example when you are extremely hungry and then you see food, you immediately want to eat it so that you mouth starts watering, and if in that moment you look at the desire to eat, the desire itself dissipates. In this way you directly cut through the fixation. That is what we call Tregchod or the direct cutting through. We also use this term “Trushak” in Tibetan, which means destroying delusion. And so for example if you taste something and it tastes so delicious to you, in that moment you should think, its not that this food is ultimately delicious because for someone else it doesn’t taste the same way. I see it as delicious because I have been habituated in that way from an early age, if it was ultimately delicious, everyone would think it was delicious. So in this way my notion that this food is so delicious, it is delusion. So when I recognize my habituated perception as delusion, then I can let go of it and I can eat whatever is healthy, whatever supports the health of the body without creating a lot of distinction between delicious and not delicious. In this way, I destroy my delusive fixation. Then I can enjoy whatever food I eat, as I would enjoy partaking of the five nectars.
These teachings on Tregchod and destroying delusions can be understood in another way, whenever we give rise to attachment and aversion and we have fixation on them, that fixation obscures the mind. If we recognize the fixation, through the power of our meditation or our awareness, the fixation itself dissipates and then it does not obscure the mind. If we have pure water for example and we pour milk into it, the water becomes clouded, it is obscured and in a similar way, fixation on negative emotions obscures the mind. If we give rise to great anger and then we recognize the anger, it is purified through the recognition. So we should understand that the fixation is what obscures the mind and when we are free of fixation, negative emotions are spontaneously purified. The awareness that we cultivate is like a flame that burns away the fuel of all arising afflictions. In this way although anger may arise, it does no harm at all. When the anger is recognized with awareness, it is rendered impotent, there is no sensation, there is no feeling associated with the anger, this is what is meant by destroying delusion. If on the other hand we fixate on the anger and we remain in a state of fixation that is the very essence of delusion. Now it is through engaging the practice of the natural state that you will experience, you will understand experientially what I am talking about. When you are in a state free of fixation, there is nothing at that can arise that obscures the mind, this is what is meant by destroying delusion.

Some songs

Some beautiful songs

Milarepa - 6 Happy Ways (Jim Scott translation, by Doha Songs)



Eyes Open, Just this love remains by Doha Songs



Vapour by Aleah

Dan Ingram on non-duality

Excellent writing about how the illusion of self creates 2 different modes, e.g. Rigpa VS distraction, enlightened mode vs deluded mode. Dan Ingram can really write well on non-duality. From Dharma Overground.

At some point there will no longer really be either option, as the thing will just be the thing, the field as the field of sensations, of manifestation, of qualities, textures, colors, and aspects

call it True Self
call it no-self regardless, it is happening, as it always has
and there are various modes of attention, as there always have been

and various modes of perception arising and vanishing, which may highlight various qualities over others, it seems

and there is nobody to decide that this full, rich, transient, direct, interdependent, causal field is either

but thoughts that it might be one or the other can still arise, as they did before

and in that direct perception, the divisionlessness of it eliminates the subtle sense of some thing that is choosing modes

though the sense of those apparent choices and decisions arising on their own may still occur

and this lack of a split, this lack of an illusion of some separate, permanent, continuous something that could truly stand outside of all of this and make such choices is seen through as part of the whole of the flickering, shimmering, transient thing

so look carefully at the patterns that seem to be deciding between those various modes and notice them and just get to know them, such that what is getting to know them and them are both clearly comprehended on their own, by themselves, aware/manifest where they are

and all modes will come to be clearer about having that same quality of directness, of where-they-are-ness, in a way that eliminates finally the sense that any of those specific modes is the one true ultimate mode, but all modes are truly the thing itself, as the qualities of fundamental perceptual truth are universal and apply to all states and qualities and modes of perception and attention without exception

spend time enjoying the nice ones if you wish, as all modes of attention reveal the universal truths if perceived clearly, so if the nice modes happen, perceive them clearly, and if the modes you don't like as much happen, perceive them clearly, though it is true that the most pleasant and unpleasant ones as well as the least interesting ones are not as easy for some to just see as they are, as our reactions of enjoyment, aversion and boredom may seem to cloud clear perception

but with clear comprehension from good practice, the fundamental truths reveal themselves, and a fluent clarity and facility in all states of manifestation becomes natural and habituated

such that apparent exceptions and finally the sense of fundamental options become finer and more subtle and may eventually vanish

.......

The common way of looking at this is as you said, that there are zillions of sensations but we can only comprehend a limited number of them.

Except that perspective actually misses a really essential point that is strangely obvious once you think about it and yet also quite slippery, given how we are so used to not seeing things this say, or so we think.

That point is that each sensation already knew itself when it arose. If it arose, then the comprehension was build into it, intrinsic to it, the same as it.

We have this notion that there is some central comprehender, some liner processor of all of that stuff out there, and yet all of the stuff out there already processed itself it as it arose, as that arising was the processing, and what the seeming central processor does is to make some additional secondary impression (that is also just more sensations that are aware where they are and of themselves), but we actually believe that this secondary impression, this echo, this stand-in, is actually the awareness, the comprehension, when it is actually just a secondary effect from the first cause, that being the first sensation that the second sensation follows.

Said another way:

All of the sensations know themselves as and when and where they are, always have, always will, couldn't be any other way. Awareness and phenomena just always are not n a 1:1 ratio, they are actually just the same thing.

When reality seems filtered through this odd secondary central processing habit, it appears that some middleman, some potentially overburdened one-at-a-time system, is perceiving them, when actually it is just making poor copies one at a time of something that is vast and rich and already comprehended itself and never really actually needed any poor copies made to already be known.

So, just let the field in all of its richness speak for itself, including the small, central, limited copying process, and, seen thusly, the knot of perception that doesn't realize that the things already happened and already knew themselves will eventually and perhaps in stages shift to the whole thing knowing itself directly, as it actually always has but just somehow failed to know that at the level that makes the difference.

I, for one, see no reason not to enjoy the state you are able to get into, as, done well, most such things get boring after a time, no matter how amazing, and eventually familiarity with it will, if you are lucky and when the thrill and novelty wear off, lead to better and more clear senate comprehension, which is the first basis of insight.

Dukkha is a power hog only because it fails to realize that the work was already done, that phenomena already knew themselves naturally, and so it is when that overcompensation stops that the whole thing fully knows that it shines on its own without having to do anything.

....

I am actually talking about something much more fundamental than the way you seem to read me, as I interpret your words.

It can be hardwired, become the way all sensate phenomena are perceived, which is to say perceive themselves, as it actually always was the way all phenomena were manifesting, but this can finally be known directly and automatically without exception and regardless of things like states, modes, chakras, insight stages, and all of that, as, being the way things are, is intrinsic to however the specifics manifest in all their rich occurrence.

So you glimpsed the Natural State! Wow! (Poem)

A poem inspired by my teacher's lineage, Chokyi Nyima Rinpoche and Tulku Urgyen

So you glimpsed the natural state! Wow!
But right now you use it
like a rich man uses a holiday home -
to brag about,
and visit occasionally to escape stress.

How to remember to practice throughout your day?
Your question is simply a reflection of your priorities -
you are like a man with a winning lottery ticket
who keeps forgetting to cash it in,
because he thinks it's only worth a tenner.

Look, every single second you spend in delusion,
your mind blinds and bewilders you with more illusions.
You amass more and more karma,
weighing yourself down with more preferences, opinions, desires and hatred,
as surely as someone watching Fox News.

Look, with every single person you meet,
if you're not recognising Rigpa,
your filthy karma oozes over them
like an oil spill, indiscriminately harming friends, loved ones, strangers,
further poisoning the karmic ecosystem in ways you cannot imagine.
All your dharma friends, deities and Buddhas surround you like Greenpeace,
begging you to urgently contain the karmic Fukushima that is your mind!

is it still hard to remember?

You talk about the nature of mind very nicely
saying how beautiful, wide open, and free of suffering it is.
How tragic that you don't even buy your own spiel!
If you really think it's so great,
why don't you stay there all the time then?

There is no 'how' in remembering,
either you want to, or you don't.
If, for you, Dharma is just a hobby, that's fine,
each must go his own way.
I heard that samsara is nice this time of year.

But for those for have an idea that they want to practice,
then get your priorities straight,
engage all your heart and guts into practice!
Then you will not have to ask how to remember.

A squirrel or other small animal
does not need reminding
to keep looking around whilst eating.
fearful for its life, it twitches its head and eyes upwards constantly, always alert for predators.
Such is the power of fear!
But you see conditioned existence as a familiar old dog, stinky but comforting.
Be like the squirrel and cultivate a healthy fear of the hound of samsara!
Fear can surely save you from your complacency!

A teenager who is swooning in fresh romance
does not need reminding
to call her lover.
He is on her mind as soon as she wakes, eats, sleeps, he lives behind her every word.
Such is the power of love!
But you, like a bad spouse, you have allowed your infatuation with Rigpa to dwindle.
You're no longer enthused about being truly intimate with Reality - when it beckons, you claim to have a headache.
Like a lovestruck teenager, you should yearn for it constantly, pining every single moment that you are separate from it.
Love can surely save you from your complacency!

A proud gardener
does not need reminding
to pull up weeds.
Just seeing a single weed in his beloved beds hurts so much, that without prompting he will pull it up from its roots
Such is the power of care!
You neglect your mind, with no idea of how easily the weeds of your delusion propagate, or how deep their roots go.
Like the gardener, generate a healthy pride for the stainless nature of your mind!
Care can surely save you from your complacency!

A man who falls into some excrement
does not need reminding
to clean it off when he gets a chance.
Revolted by the smell, he will scurry away to a bathroom, hiding from people so it does not offend them.
Such is the power of disgust!
But you walk around reeking of dualistic confusion, with no compassionate regard for others.
Develop a deep revulsion for all your deluded habits, no matter how cute you think they are.
Disgust can surely save you from your complacency!

Cultivate fear of karma like a squirrel fears being torn apart by predators,
Fall in love with reality so hard that all you want to do is be totally naked together, all the time,
Start to care about the nature of mind such that seeing anything defile or obscure it is unbearable,
Become so disgusted by your cowardice that even the scent of it makes you wretch,
These four roads all lead directly back to the natural state. Your effortless progress is guaranteed!

breathing exercises for devotion and surrender

from the book Rudi - Spiritual Cannabalism

The person who undertakes these exercises must believe in God, or in a higher power, or in a great potential within himself. This is necessary because the goal of the exercise is surrender, the removal of all blocks, to allow the higher force to begin the process of destroying the ego, the physical, lower force within us. 

The first step involves using an object or a teacher, sitting before either in a relaxed manner. You must find within yourself the deep, sincere need to grow. You must bring the wish deep within your chest area and ask deeply, as if the voiced wish were emanating from your heart, for help to surrender. This wish must be silently repeated several times until there is a sensation of an opening, like the opening of a flower. This is the beginning of the second dimension, or spiritual world. The opening is the inner wish that in turn opens the mechanism of the person, making a place for the higher force to enter.

The aim of the exercise is to maintain the opening in the chest and to deepen it by relaxing and asking for help within this area. You are breaking down the blocks of the physical dimension. The energy is refined, and this brings about a chemical change, enabling you to use the spiritual muscles. The opening, or surrender, must be continuous during the exercise in order for the force to enter and for the process of spiritual growth to begin. Spiritual growth is a process of exercising and expanding the psychic muscle and nervous systems until they become controlled enough so they may be used at will. 

It also becomes, in time, a continuous process which works together with the ordinary life process. A growing spiritual life adds a quality and depth to life. Asking from the very depths of yourself to surrender or attain a state of nothingness is the key to opening to the flow of higher energy. As you surrender and ask to open to higher cosmic energy, work to draw this energy into yourself and channel the energy through your energy centers (or chakras, as they are called). 

A breathing exercise to use for drawing in cosmic energy is as follows: you draw in the breath high up through the nose and into the heart chakra. As you start the breath into the heart, you swallow in the throat and try to feel the swallow travel down to your heart center. The swallow is to release tension in the throat chakra and allow energy to expand there. After swallowing, you continue to inhale breath into the heart center until the lungs are filled to their maximum capacity. 

The breath is held in the heart chakra for about the count of ten. This time count may become longer as strength is gained in the breathing. During the time when the breath is held, you bring your mental concentration to the heart center and ask to surrender and try to feel very deeply inside the heart center. You must ask into the very core of your being, or deeply into the subconscious, to surrender to and receive the cosmic energy. After the breath has been held for the count of ten, you exhale one fifth of the breath and inhale again, bringing the energy and the concentration to the energy center just below the navel. The breath is retained in the navel chakra for about the count of ten and then exhaled very slowly. This double breathing to heart and navel chakras may be repeated from eight to ten times in a half hour period or about every three minutes. You should think of the breath as energy and develop the sensitivity to feel deep expansion of energy and to let the breathing be governed by that sensitivity as your strength and capacity increase. 

When you are not doing the double breathing exercise, you should breathe into the navel chakra slowly, hold the breath for a few moments, and then exhale very slowly. If you feel an energy sensation in the navel or sex chakra, you should bring your attention to the tip of your spine and rock slowly from side to side on the base of the spine. This breaks up tension and allows the energy to rise up the spine to the top of the head. When you begin to do this exercise, your sensitivity may not be on the deeper energy levels. At first, you may not be able to feel definite energy sensations. This does not mean that the energy is not flowing through those channels but that you have not yet developed the sensitivity to feel it. 

When this energy, known as the kundalini, rises from its dormant state, various spontaneous body movements sometimes occur. These may be uncontrolled body spasms and vibrations or heat. Also, as the kundalini force passes the throat energy center, the head may move back and forth rapidly. All these movements and indeed any experience must be surrendered to totally. There is no harm or danger in these movements as they are deep, healthful tension releases.
The kundalini energy gradually rising to the head over a period of time becomes stronger and stronger and eventually brings enlightenment. 

This is an organic process of spiritual growth, continuously reaching for deeper and deeper states of surrender and openness to the flow of cosmic energy. The more deeply we attain openness and oneness with this higher energy, the more it will lift us up spiritually and the closer it will bring us to the realization of our oneness with God or everything in the universe.

Tilopa's Pith Instruction to Naropa in 28 verses (Ganges Mahamudra)

Tilopa’s Mahamudra Instruction to Naropa in Twenty Eight Verses
(translated by Keith Dowman)

Homage to the Eighty Four Mahasiddhas!
Homage to Mahamudra!
Homage to the Vajra Dakini!

Mahamudra cannot be taught. But most intelligent Naropa,

Since you have undergone rigorous austerity,
With forbearance in suffering and with devotion to your Guru,
Blessed One, take this secret instruction to heart.

Is space anywhere supported? Upon what does it rest?
Like space, Mahamudra is dependant upon nothing;
Relax and settle in the continuum of unalloyed purity,
And, your bonds loosening, release is certain.

Gazing intently into the empty sky, vision ceases;
Likewise, when mind gazes into mind itself,
The train of discursive and conceptual thought ends
And supreme enlightenment is gained.

Like the morning mist that dissolves into thin air,
Going nowhere but ceasing to be,
Waves of conceptualization, all the mind’s creation, dissolve,
When you behold your mind’s true nature.

Pure space has neither colour nor shape
And it cannot be stained either black or white;
So also, mind’s essence is beyond both colour and shape
And it cannot be sullied by black or white deeds.

The darkness of a thousand aeons is powerless
To dim the crystal clarity of the sun’s heart;
And likewise, aeons of samsara have no power
To veil the clear light of the mind’s essence.

Although space has been designated "empty",
In reality it is inexpressible;
Although the nature of mind is called "clear light",
Its every ascription is baseless verbal fiction.

The mind’s original nature is like space;
It pervades and embraces all things under the sun.
Be still and stay relaxed in genuine ease,
Be quiet and let sound reverberate as an echo,
Keep your mind silent and watch the ending of all worlds.

The body is essentially empty like the stem of a reed,
And the mind, like pure space, utterly transcends
the world of thought:
Relax into your intrinsic nature with neither abandon nor control -
Mind with no objective is Mahamudra -
And, with practice perfected, supreme enlightenment is gained.

The clear light of Mahamudra cannot be revealed
By the canonical scriptures or metaphysical treatises
Of the Mantravada, the Paramitas or the Tripitaka;
The clear light is veiled by concepts and ideals.

By harbouring rigid precepts the true samaya is impaired,
But with cessation of mental activity all fixed notions subside;
When the swell of the ocean is at one with its peaceful depths,
When mind never strays from indeterminate, non-conceptual truth,
The unbroken samaya is a lamp lit in spiritual darkness.

Free of intellectual conceits, disavowing dogmatic principles,
The truth of every school and scripture is revealed.

Absorbed in Mahamudra, you are free from the prison of samsara;

Poised in Mahamudra, guilt and negativity are consumed;
And as master of Mahamudra you are the light of the Doctrine.

The fool in his ignorance, disdaining Mahamudra,
Knows nothing but struggle in the flood of samsara.
Have compassion for those who suffer constant anxiety!
Sick of unrelenting pain and desiring release, adhere to a master,
For when his blessing touches your heart, the mind is liberated.

KYE HO! Listen with joy!

Investment in samsara is futile; it is the cause of every anxiety.
Since worldly involvement is pointless, seek the heart of reality!

In the transcending of mind’s dualities is Supreme vision;
In a still and silent mind is Supreme Meditation;
In spontaneity is Supreme Activity;
And when all hopes and fears have died, the Goal is reached.

Beyond all mental images the mind is naturally clear:
Follow no path to follow the path of the Buddhas;
Employ no technique to gain supreme enlightenment.

KYE MA! Listen with sympathy!

With insight into your sorry worldly predicament,
Realising that nothing can last, that all is as dreamlike illusion,
Meaningless illusion provoking frustration and boredom,
Turn around and abandon your mundane pursuits.

Cut away involvement with your homeland and friends
And meditate alone in a forest or mountain retreat;
Exist there in a state of non-meditation
And attaining no-attainment, you attain Mahamudra.

A tree spreads its branches and puts forth leaves,
But when its root is cut its foliage withers;
So too, when the root of the mind is severed,
The branches of the tree of samsara die.

A single lamp dispels the darkness of a thousand aeons;
Likewise, a single flash of the mind’s clear light
Erases aeons of karmic conditioning and spiritual blindness.

KYE HO! Listen with joy!

The truth beyond mind cannot be grasped by any faculty of mind;
The meaning of non-action cannot be understood in compulsive activity;
To realise the meaning of non-action and beyond mind,
Cut the mind at its root and rest in naked awareness.

Allow the muddy waters of mental activity to clear;
Refrain from both positive and negative projection -
leave appearances alone:
The phenomenal world, without addition or subtraction, is Mahamudra.

The unborn omnipresent base dissolves your impulsions and delusions:
Do not be conceited or calculating but rest in the unborn essence
And let all conceptions of yourself and the universe melt away.

The highest vision opens every gate;
The highest meditation plumbs the infinite depths;
The highest activity is ungoverned yet decisive;
And the highest goal is ordinary being devoid of hope and fear.

At first your karma is like a river falling through a gorge;
In mid-course it flows like a gently meandering River Ganga;
And finally, as a river becomes one with the ocean,
It ends in consummation like the meeting of mother and son.

If the mind is dull and you are unable to practice these instructions,
Retaining essential breath and expelling the sap of awareness,
Practising fixed gazes - methods of focussing the mind,
Discipline yourself until the state of total awareness abides.

When serving a karmamudra, the pure awareness of bliss and emptiness will arise:
Composed in a blessed union of insight and means,
Slowly send down, retain and draw back up the bodhichitta,
And conducting it to the source, saturate the entire body.
But only if lust and attachment are absent will that awareness arise.

Then gaining long-life and eternal youth, waxing like the moon,
Radiant and clear, with the strength of a lion,
You will quickly gain mundane power and supreme enlightenment.

May this pith instruction in Mahamudra
Remain in the hearts of fortunate beings.

Tilopa’s Mahamudra Instruction to Naropa in Twenty Eight Verses was transmitted by the Great Guru and Mahasiddha Tilopa to the Kashmiri Pandit, Sage and Siddha, Naropa, near the banks of the River Ganga upon the completion of his Twelve Austerities. Naropa transmitted the teaching in Sanskrit in the form of twenty eight verses to the great Tibetan translator Mar pa Chos kyi blos gros, who made a free translation of it at his village of Pulahari on the Tibet - Bhutan border.
This text is contained in the collection of Mahamudra instruction called the Do ha mdzod brgyad ces bya ba Phyag rgya chen po’i man ngag gsal bar ston pa’i gzhung, which is printed at the Gyalwa Karmapa’s monastery at Rumtek, Sikkim. The Tibetan title is Phyag rgya chen po’i man ngag, or Phyag rgya chen po rdo rje’i tsig rkang nyi shu rtsa brgyad pa.This translation into English has been done by Kunzang Tenzin [Keith Dowman] in 1977, after transmission of the oral teaching by Khamtrul Rinpoche in Tashi Jong, Kangra Valley, India. http://keithdowman.net/mahamudra/tilopa.htm