2018 (6b) : Sri Ramana Maharshi , Rumi , John 1:50 , Bhagavad Gita 1:12-13 , Derrida , Bhagavad Gita 1:14-15 , Rumi

You think that the world can be conquered by your own
efforts. When you are frustrated externally and are driven
inwards you feel, ‘Oh, there is a power higher than man.’ The
ego is a very powerful elephant which cannot be brought under
control by any creature less powerful than a lion, which, in
this instance, is none other than the Guru/Atman, whose very looks
make the elephant-like ego tremble and die. You will know in
due course that your glory lies where you cease to exist. In
order to gain that state, you should surrender yourself. Then
the master sees that you are in a fit state to receive guidance
and He guides you.

(Sri Ramana Maharshi)

Lord, said David, since you do not need us,
why did you create these two worlds?

Reality replied: O prisoner of time,
I was a secret treasure of kindness and generosity,
and I wished this treasure to be known,
so I created a mirror: its shining face, the heart;
its darkened back, the world;
The back would please you if you’ve never seen the face.

(Rumi)

“Very truly I tell you, you will see ‘heaven open, and the angels of God ascending and descending on the Son of Man.”

(John 1:50)

So long as you seek Self-realisation, the Guru is
necessary. Guru is the Self/Atman. Take Guru to be the real Self, and
yourself to be the individual self. The disappearance of this sense
of duality is the removal of ignorance. So long as duality persists
in you, the Guru is necessary. Because you identify yourself
with the body, you think the Guru too is the body. You are not
the body, nor is the Guru. You are the Self and so is the Guru.
This knowledge is gained by what you call Self-realisation.

(Sri Ramana Maharshi)

Then, the grand old man of the Kuru dynasty, the glorious patriarch Bheeshma, roared like a lion, and blew his conch shell very loudly, giving joy to Duryodhan.

Thereafter, conches, kettledrums, bugles, trumpets, and horns suddenly blared forth, and their combined sound was overwhelming.

(Bhagavad Gita 1:12-13)

To put the old names to work, or even Just to leave them in circulation,
will always, of course, involve some risk: the risk of settling down or of
regressing into the system that has been, or is in the process of being,
deconstructed. To deny this risk would be to confirm it: it would be to see
the signifier-in this case the name-as a merely circumstantial , conventional
occurrence of the concept or as a concession without any specific
effect. It would be an affirmation of the autonomy of meaning, of the ideal
puri ty of an abstract, theoretical history of the concept. Inversely, to claim
to do away immediately with previous marks and to cross over, by decree,
by a simple leap, into the outside of the classical oppositions is, apart from
the risk of engaging in an interminable “negative theology,” to forget that
these oppositions have never constituted a given system, a sort of ahistorical,
thoroughly homogeneous table, but rather a dissymmetric, hierarchically
ordered space whose closure is constantly being traversed by the forces, and
worked by the exteriority, that it represses: that is, expels and, which
amounts to the same, internalizes as one of its moments.

(Derrida)

Then, from amidst the Pandava army, seated in a glorious chariot drawn by white horses, Madhav and Arjun blew their Divine conch shells.

Hrishikesh blew his conch shell, called Panchajanya, and Arjun blew the Devadutta. Bheem, the voracious eater and performer of herculean tasks, blew his mighty conch, called Paundra.

(Bhagavad Gita 1:14-15)

Jesus sat humbly on the back of an ass, my child!
How could a zephyr ride an ass?
Spirit, find your way, in seeking lowness like a stream.
Reason, tread the path of selflessness into eternity.

Remember God so much that you are forgotten.
Let the caller and the called disappear;
be lost in the Call.

(Rumi)

2018 (6a) Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj , Mark 1:9-11 , Derrida , Sri Ramana Maharshi

Your being a person is due to the illusion of space and time; you imagine yourself to be at a certain point occupying a certain volume; your personality is due to your self-identification with the body. Your thoughts and feelings exist in succession, they have their span in time and make you imagine yourself, because of memory, as having duration. In reality time and space exist in you; you do not exist in them. They are modes of perception, but they are not the only ones. Time and space are like words written on paper; the paper is real, the words merely a convention.

(Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj)

9 At that time Jesus came from Nazareth in Galilee and was baptized by John in the Jordan. 10 Just as Jesus was coming up out of the water, he saw heaven being torn open and the Spirit descending on him like a dove. 11 And a voice came from heaven: “You are my Son, whom I love; with you I am well pleased.”

(Mark 1:9-11)

Someone, you or me, comes forward and says: I would like to learn
to live finally.

Finally but why?

To learn to live: a strange watchword. Who would learn? From
whom? To teach to live, but to whom? Will we ever know? Will
we ever know how to live and first of all what “to learn to live”
means? And why “finally”

By itself, out of context-but a context, always, remains open,
thus fallible and insufficient-this watchword forms an almost
unintelligible syntagm. Just how far can its idiom be translated
moreover?

(Derrida)

When Arjuna said that he would not fight against his
relatives and elders in order to kill them and gain the kingdom,
Sri Krishna said: ‘Not that these, you or I, were not before, are
not now, nor will be hereafter. None was born, none has died,
nor will it be so hereafter’. He further developed this theme,
saying that he had given instructions to the Sun and through
him to Ikshvaku; and Arjuna queried how that could be, since
he had been born only a few years back, while they lived ages
ago. Then Sri Krishna saw his point of view and said: ‘Yes, there
have been many incarnations of me and you. I know them all
but you do not.’ Such statements appear contradictory, but they are true
according to the viewpoint of the questioner. Christ also said
“Before Abraham was, I am.”

(Sri Ramana Maharshi)

2018 (5b) : Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj , Luke 3:23 , Derrida , Luke 3:30 , I Samuel 20:24 , Jung , Luke 3:34 , Derrida, Luke 3:38 , Derrida , Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

Non-distinction speaks in silence. Words carry distinctions. The unmanifested (nirguna) has no name, all names refer to the manifested (saguna). It is useless to struggle with words to express what is beyond words. Consciousness (chidananda) is spirit (purusha), consciousness is matter (prakriti). Imperfect spirit is matter, perfect matter is spirit. In the beginning as in the end, all is one.

(Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj)

Now Jesus himself was about thirty years old when he began his ministry. He was the son, so it was thought, of Joseph, the son of Heli, the son of Matthat, the son of Levi, the son of Melki, the son of Jannai, the son of Joseph

(Luke 3:23)

by a kind of spacing that punctuates it … if thought belongs from the beginning to no one … blended into the continuum of something always – already – there … the origin is suspended by this multiple punctuation … moving again …

(Derrida)

the son of Joseph, the son of Jonam, the son of Eliakim, the son of Melea, the son of Menna the son of Mattatha, the son of Nathan, the son of David

(Luke 3:30)

So David hid in the field, and when the New Moon festival came, the king sat down to eat.

(I Samuel 20:24)

we must perforce consider first the myths of the Near and Middle East that underlie Christianity … the motive force that produces these configurations cannot be distinguished from the transconscious factor known as instinct.

(Jung)

The son of Jacob, the son of Isaac, the son of Abraham, the son of Terah, the son of Nahor, the son of Serug, the son of Reu, the son of Peleg, the son of Eber, the son of Shelah, the son of Caina, the son of Arphaxed, the son of Shem, the son of Noah

(Luke 3:34)

‘Why of the trace? What led us to the choice of this word? I have begun
to answer this question. But this question is such, and such the nature of
my answer, that the place of the one and of the other must constantly be
in movement. If words and concepts receive meaning only in sequences of
differences, one can justify one’s language, and one’s choice of terms, only
within a topic [an orientation in space] and an historical strategy. The
justification can therefore never be absolute and definitive. It corresponds
to a condition of forces and translates an historical calculation. Thus, over
and above those that I have already defined, a certain number of givens
belonging to the discourse of our time have progressively imposed this
choice upon me. The word trace must refer to itself to a certain number
of contemporary discourses whose force I intend to take into account. Not
that I accept them totally. But the word trace establishes the clearest connections
with them and thus permits me to dispense with certain developments
which have already demonstrated their effectiveness in those fields.

(Derrida)

the son of Seth, the son of Adam, the son of God.

(Luke 3:38)

Thus, I relate this concept of trace to what is at the center of the latest
work of Emmanuel Levinas and his critique of ontology: relationship to
the illeity as to the alterity of a past that never was and can never be lived
in the originary or modified form of presence. Reconciled here to a Heideggerian
intention,-as it is not in Levinas’s thought-this notion signifies,
sometimes beyond Heideggerian discourse, the undermining of an ontology
which, in its innermost course, has determined the meaning of being as
presence and the meaning of language as the full continuity of speech. To
make enigmatic what one thinks one understands by the words “proximity,”
“immediacy,” “presence” ( the proximate [proche], the own [propre], and
the pre- of presence ), is my final intention iIi this book. This deconstruction
of presence accomplishes itself through the deconstruction of consciousness,
and therefore through the irreducible notion of the trace (Spur),
as it appears in both Nietzschean and Freudian discourse. And finally, in
all scientific fields, notably in biology, this notion seems currently to be
dominant and irreducible.

(Derrida)

All division is in the mind (chitta); there is none in reality (chit). Movement and rest are states of mind and cannot be without their opposites. By itself nothing moves, nothing rests.

(Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj)

2018 (5a) : Sri Ramana Maharshi , Derrida , Luke 3:23 , William Blake , Wilhelm Reich , Derrida , Mathew 2:13-14 , Derrida , Mathew 2:16-17 , Derrida , Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

Are you born now? Why do you think of future births?
The truth is that there is neither birth nor death. Let him who is
born think of death and palliatives for it.

(Sri Ramana Maharshi)

far from knowing first what ‘life’ or ‘family’ mean whenever we use these familiar values to talk about language and translation; it is rather starting from the notion of a language and its ‘sur-vival” in translation that we could have access to the notion of what life and family mean.

(Derrida)

Now Jesus himself was about thirty years old when he began his ministry. He was the son, so it was thought, of Joseph, the son of Heli, the son of Matthat, the son of Levi, the son of Melki, the son of Jannai, the son of Joseph

(Luke 3:23)

And Days & Months & Years &Ages & Periods , wondrous buildings;

And every Moment has a Couch of gold for soft repose ,

(A Moment equals a pulsation of the artery)

(William Blake)

What psychology calls “tension” and “relaxation” is a counterplay of forces. My idea of the bladder, as simple as it was, was definitely in keeping with the idea of the unity of the soma and the psyche. But apart from the unity, there was also antithesis. This thought was the germ of my theory of sexuality.

(Wilhelm Reich)

by a kind of spacing that punctuates it … if thought belongs from the beginning to no one … blended into the continuum of something always – already – there … the origin is suspended by this multiple punctuation … moving again …

(Derrida)

13 When they had gone, an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream. “Get up,” he said, “take the child and his mother and escape to Egypt. Stay there until I tell you, for Herod is going to search for the child to kill him.”

14 So he got up, took the child and his mother during the night and left for Egypt, 15 where he stayed until the death of Herod. And so was fulfilled what the Lord had said through the prophet: “Out of Egypt I called my son.”

(Mathew 2:13-14)

“Multiplicity and migration of languages, certainly, and within language itself, Babel within a single language … multiplicity within language, insignificant difference as the condition of meaning. But by the same token, the insignificance of language, of the properly linguistic body : it can only take on meaning in relation to a place. By place, I mean just as much the relation to a border, country, house, or threshold, as any site, any situation in general from within which, practically, pragmatically, alliances are formed, contracts, codes and conventions established which give meaning to the insignificant , institute passwords, bend language to what exceeds it, make of it a moment of gesture and of step, secondarize or ‘reject’ it in order to find it again.”

(Derrida)

16 When Herod realized that he had been outwitted by the Magi, he was furious, and he gave orders to kill all the boys in Bethlehem and its vicinity who were two years old and under, in accordance with the time he had learned from the Magi. 17 Then what was said through the prophet Jeremiah was fulfilled:

(Mathew 2:16-17)

Spacing as writing is the becoming-absent and the becoming-unconscious
of the subject. By the movement of its drift/derivation [derive] the
emancipation of the sign constitutes in return the desire of presence. That
becoming-or that drift/derivation-does not befall the subject which
would choose it or would passively let itself be drawn along by it. As the
subject’s relationship with its own death, this becoming is the constitution
of subjectivity. On all levels of life’s organization, that is to say, of the
economy of death. All graphemes are of a testamentary essence.31 And the
original absence of the subject of writing is also the absence of the thing
or the referent

(Derrida)

In some cases death is the best cure. A life may be worse than death, which is but rarely an unpleasant experience, whatever the appearances. Therefore, pity the living, never the dead.

To grow is necessary. To outgrow is necessary. To leave behind the good for the sake of the better is necessary.

The end is in the beginning. You end where you start — in the Absolute.

(Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj)

2018 (4b) : Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj , Mathew 2:1-2 , Genesis 2:10 , Jung , Derrida

By being with yourself, the ‘I am’; by watching yourself in your daily life with alert interest, with the intention to understand rather than to judge, in full acceptance of whatever may emerge, because it is there, you encourage the deep to come to the surface and enrich your life and consciousness with its captive energies. This is the great work of awareness; it removes obstacles and releases energies by understanding the nature of life and mind. Intelligence is the door to freedom and alert attention is the mother of intelligence.

(Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj)

2 After Jesus was born in Bethlehem in Judea, during the time of King Herod, Magi[a] from the east came to Jerusalem 2 and asked, “Where is the one who has been born king of the Jews? We saw his star when it rose and have come to worship him.”

(Mathew 2:1-2)

a river watering the garden flowed from Eden ; from there it was separated into four headwaters. The name of the first is Pison; it winds through the entire land of Havilah, where there is gold. The name of the second river is Gihon; it winds through the entire land of Cush. The name of the third river is the Tigris; it runs along the east side of Asshur. And the fourth river is the Euphrates.

(Genesis 2:10)

‘This Eden, they say, is the brain. ‘ Three of the rivers of Paradise are sensory functions (Pison = sight, Gihon = hearing, Tigris = smell), but the fourth, the Euphrates, is the mouth, ‘ the seat of prayer and the entrance of food.’

(Jung)

Origin of the experience of space and time, this writing of difference,
this fabric of the trace, permits the difference between space and time to be
articulated, to appear as such, in the unity of an experience (of a Hsame”
lived out of a “same” body proper [corps propreJ ). This articulation therefore
permits a graphic (“visual” or Htactile,” Hspatial”) chain to be adapted,
on occasion in a linear fashion, to a spoken (“phonic,” “temporal”) chain.
It is from the primary possibility of this articulation that one must begin.
Difference is articulation

(Derrida)

2018 (4a) : Mundaka Upaninshad Book 3 , Luke 2:21 , Derrida , Wilhelm Reich , William Blake

‘His phases return to their source, his senses to their gods, his personal self and all his actions to the impersonal imperishable Self.

(Mundaka Upanishad Book 3)

On the eighth day, when it was time to circumcise the child, he was named Jesus, the name the angel had given him before he was conceived.

Eight days later, when the baby was circumcised, he was named Jesus, the name given him by the angel even before he was conceived.

(Luke 2:21)

Such difference without presence appears, or rather baffles the process of appearing, by disclosing any orderly time at the center of the present. The present is no longer a mother-form around which are gathered and differentiated the future (present) and the past (present). What is marked in this hymen between the future (desire) and the present (fulfillment), between the past (remembrance) and the present (perpetration), between the capacity and the act, etc., is only a series of temporal differences without any central present, without a present of which the past and future would be but modifications. Can we then go on speaking about time, tenses, and temporal differences? …

(Derrida)

I told him to give in to every impulse. Thereupon, his lips began to protrude and react rhythmically and to hold the protruded position for several seconds as if in a tonic spasm. In the course of these movements, his face took on the unmistakable expression of an infant.

(Wilhelm Reich)

The Web of Life is woven & the tender sinews of life created …

(William Blake)

2018 (3) : Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj , John 1:39 , Derrida , Luke 17:20-21 , Sri Ramana Maharshi , Derrida , William Blake

You, the Self, being the root of all being, consciousness and joy, impart your reality to whatever you perceive. This imparting of reality takes place invariably in the now, at no other time, because past and future are only in the mind. ‘Being’ applies to the now only.

(Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj)

They said, ‘Rabbi’ , ‘where are you staying.’ ‘Come,’ he replied ‘ and you will see.’

(John 1:39)

to be hospitable is to let oneself be overtaken, to be ready to not be ready…

(Derrida)

And when he was demanded of the Pharisees, when the kingdom of God should come, he answered them and said, The Kingdom of God cometh not with observation: Neither shall they say, Lo, here! or, lo there! for, behold, the kingdom of God is within you.

(Luke 17:20-21)

To wait without waiting, awaiting absolute surprise, the unexpected visitor, awaited without a horizon of expectation … the messianic as hospitality … the madness of hospitality…

(Derrida)

Everyone is the Self/Atman and indeed, is infinite. Yet each person
mistakes his body for his Self. In order to know anything,
illumination is necessary. This can only be of the nature of Light;
however, it lights up both physical light and physical darkness.
That is to say, that it lies beyond apparent light and darkness. It
is itself neither, but it is said to be light because it illumines
both. It is infinite and is Consciousness. Consciousness is the
Self/Atman of which everyone is aware. No one is ever away from the
Self/Atman and therefore everyone is in fact Self-realised; only – and
this is the great mystery – people do not know this and want to
realise the Self/Atman. Realisation consists only in getting rid of the
false idea that one is not realised. It is not anything new to be
acquired.

(Sri Ramana Maharshi)

The trace is in fact the absolute origin of sense in general.
Which amounts to saying once again that there is no absolute origin of
sense in general. The trace is the differance which opens appearance
[1′ apparaUre] and signification. Articulating the living upon the nonliving
in general, origin of all repetition, origin of ideality, the trace is not more
ideal than real, not more intelligible than sensible, not more a transparent
signification than an opaque energy and no concept of metaphysics can
describe it. And as it is a fortiori anterior to the distinction between regions
of sensibility, anterior to sound as much as to light, is there a sense in
establishing a “natural” hierarchy between the sound-imprint, for example,
and the visual (graphic) imprint? The graphic image is not seen; and the
acoustic image is not heard. The difference between the full unities of the
voice remains unheard. And, the difference in the body of the inscription
is also invisible.

(Derrida)

To gratify senses unknown? trees, beasts and birds unknown;

Unknown, not unperciev’d, spread in the infinite microscope,

In places yet univisited by the voyager, and in worlds

Over another kind of seas, and in atmospheres unknown

(William Blake)

2018 (2c) : Tao Te Ching , John 2:39 , Derrida , Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj , William Blake

There is a time for being ahead, a time for being behind; a time for being in motion, a time for being at rest; a time for being vigorous, a time for being exhausted ; a time for being safe, a time for being in danger.

(Tao Te Ching)

They said, ‘Rabbi’, ‘where are you staying.’ ‘Come,’ he replied ‘ and you will see.’

(John 2:39)

It is in a certain “unheard” sense, then, that speech is in the world,
rooted in that passivity which metaphysics calls sensibility in general.
Since there is no non metaphoric language to oppose to metaphors here …

(Derrida)

In every event the entire universe is reflected. The ultimate cause is untraceable.

(Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj)

An analysis which is not merely a theoretical analysis, but at the same time another writing of the question of Being or meaning: deconstruction is also a manner or writing and putting forward another text.

(Derrida)

I will arise, Explore these dens, & find that deep pulsation

(William Blake)

2018 (2b) : Sri Ramana Maharshi , Derrida , John 1:38 ,

Everything, whether you call it illusion (Maya) or Divine Play (Lila) or Energy (Shakti) must be within the Self/Atman and not apart from it.

(Sri Ramana Maharshi)

… the witness I am seeking, for, yes, for, without yet knowing what this sublime vocable, for, means in so many languages, for already having found him, and you, no, according to you, for having sought to find him around a trope or an ellipsis that we pretend to organize, and for years I have been going round in circles, trying to take as witness not to see myself being seen but to re-member myself around a single event …

(Derrida)

Turning around Jesus saw them following and asked, ‘What do you want?’

(John 1:38)

2018 (2a) : Sri Ramana Maharshi , John 1:15 , Derrida

He who sees the Self/Atman sees the Self/Atman alone in the
world also. It is immaterial to the Enlightened whether the world
appears or not. In either case, his attention is turned to the Self/Atman.
It is like the letters and the paper on which they are printed.
You are so engrossed in the letters that you forget about the
paper, but the Enlightened sees the paper as the substratum
whether the letters appear on it or not.

(Sri Ramana Maharshi)

‘He who comes after me has surpassed me because he was before me.’

(John 1:15)

… the witness I am seeking, for, yes, for, without yet knowing what this sublime vocable, for, means in so many languages, for already having found him, and you, no, according to you, for having sought to find him around a trope or an ellipsis that we pretend to organize, and for years I have been going round in circles, trying to take as witness not to see myself being seen but to re-member myself around a single event …

(Derrida)