April 6, 2025: Who is Unrealized?
Transcript:
Who is Unrealized?
April 6, 2025
Om Om Om
(Silence)
The Self is Brahman alone. It is self-existent and self-luminous. It knows itself with a knowledge that is innate. That is nonobjective knowledge. For the Self, yourself, can never be a known or unknown object. It is transcendent of all that is perceptible and conceivable. It is without change or modification, qualityless, bodiless, and egoless. Is there anyone who does not know the Self?
Abandon the tendency to misidentify with the body and question thoroughly what appears as an assumed individuality. There are not two selves that one cannot know another. If you inquire to know what is the nature of the one who is ignorant, the ignorance vanishes, being unreal. The same is true of individuality. The individual appears to be real only so long as it is not inquired into. Upon such inquiry to know its nature, the individuality, being false, vanishes.
Your nature is Existence-Consciousness-Bliss and not another. Know yourself with the same depth of knowledge that you know that you exist. That knowledge is not a thought form. It is that in which the knower and the known are identical, one thing.
What is your Existence and how do you know it? Existence is Consciousness, and Consciousness itself is the knowledge spoken of. As Existence is always existent, and as Consciousness has no parts but is undifferentiated, is there anyone here who is not realized?
One Self alone exists eternally. Realize that to be you without an alternative, without duality.
Questioner:
Namaste Nome. When you asked, “Is there anyone here who is not realized?”, I was reminded of watching the waves in the ocean appearing and slowly disappearing. There was joy in watching that. My question is, how can I see a thought with the same joy when it appears and disappears? I can see a tendency to hate a rising thought.
Nome:
When thought disappears, joy shines forth. How can you make thought disappear? By discerning its nature.
The joy that shines forth, the happiness that shines, at any time, belongs to the Self. It is Sat-Chit-Ananda, Being-Consciousness-Bliss or happiness. You are That.
Are you a thought? Can you be a group of thoughts? When thought appears or rises and disappears, or subsides, what is it that knows such? That cannot be a thought. If you cease to misidentify with thought, both as content and as an occurrence, you will find that there is no such thing as a thought. It does not exist. How do you know thought?
Q: Because I am calling it a thought.
N: What is it that you are calling thought? Have you ever experienced a thought apart from the Consciousness which knows it? That which subsides will also arise anew. Your Existence does not change or subside at any time. Realizing its utter unreality is the subsidence or destruction; that is without end. You see that it never arises to begin with, so how can it subside? Do you understand?
Q: Yes Nome. Thank you.
Another Q:
Namaste Nome. The other day, in one of the readings, I heard of Guru’s initiation. I wanted to know what exactly is Guru’s initiation, who is eligible, and how does it happen?
Nome:
The Guru’s initiation is silent. The initiation is one of Knowledge, in which you abide as that itself. Only the inner Self is eligible. The Self alone knows the Self. The Guru is the Self, and the disciple is the same Self. The Self is only one, and one who has an utterly unchangeable conviction in this is said to be initiated.
Q: But people initially come as individuals without Self-knowledge. In that case, how can that conviction grow?
N: Conviction will grow as inquiry deepens.
Q: To deepen the inquiry, knowledge is required.
N: The inquiry itself is knowledge in the form of inquiry. The end is the means. The eligible seeker is one who has intense desire for liberation from all of the imagined bondage, is one that has sincerity of purpose, is one who is detached from things in the world, having ascertained the source and nature of happiness, and who questions thoroughly his identity. What in truth are you?
Q: I’m actually the Self but covered up with individuality.
N: Who imagines otherwise?
Q: It is false imagination.
N: False imagination alone constitutes the samsara, the cycle of birth, death, and illusion. If it is only false imagination that constitutes ignorance and the consequent bondage, there should not be any difficulty with getting over it. After all, it is false. How much substance can it have? There is no obstruction. Inquire and cease to imagine.
Q: Thank you Nome.
Another Q:
How do you realize God?
Nome:
One realizes God by the disappearance of the ego. One realizes God by knowing one’s own nature. One realizes God by deep humility and by selflessness.
Another Q:
When you ask the question, “Are you a thought?”, I have nowhere to hide but to see that I am the awareness behind the thought. But what next?
Nome:
If you are the awareness only and not a thought of any kind, then what is left to define you? What will confine you? Just as you are not an individual thought, likewise is it with the states of mind, waking, dreaming, and deep dreamless sleep. You are not anything that appears in those states. Not being a thought, you cannot be a mode of mind.
Q: Does this awareness grow deeper and deeper as I progress in the journey?
N: The awareness itself does not grow; it is not small to begin with. The misidentifications, attachments, etc., that are built on thought diminish until there is not a trace of left. The awareness or consciousness is always. Nothing else is so. What is not always is actually never. Identify yourself with that which is always. The sense of reality and the sense of identity should return to their origin. You may speak of progress on a journey, but really you are not going someplace else. It is like journeying into the satsang hall. You are already in the satsang hall. So, how will you get there?
Q: I’m already there.
N: By knowledge, however, you come to know that you have never been elsewhere.
Q: Thank you, Nome.
Another Q:
I am trying to understand the profound meaning of the statement, “One self alone exists and that there is no one that’s not realized”. It seems that realization is perpetual, and there is actually no one, which means that the creation has not occurred. There is no individual that is being realized. But with this loving instruction of the Guru, why doesn’t an understanding of this result in uninterrupted peace? The imagination of the world still appears again and again, and the samsara continues again and again, even after listening to this amazing, wonderful truth.
Nome:
For the unborn, there has been no creation.
(Then followed a recitation in Sanskrit and English from the Brahma-jnana-vali-mala and in Tamil from the Song of Ribhu.)
(Silence)
Om Shanti Shanti Shanti Om