An Infinitely Subtle Viewpoint, October 2, 2010

I would like to even call into question, as radical as this might sound, the notion that you can even be certain that you are realized. Which is not to say that your non-certainty becomes the basis for suspecting that you are realized. You can’t swing in that direction either. If I say to you, “You can’t measure your sense of personal certainty around your vision of the Absolute, that it’s permanent and full. You can’t use the notion of certainty to verify that.” All notions of certainty are based on empiricism, empirical vision. You can only be certain absolutely, that this cup is here. That’s about all you can be certain of. You can all see it. If you come up here, you can all touch it. When we are talking about realization, we are not talking about objects. We are not talking about objects. We are talking about something that is infinitely subtle, an infinitely subtle viewpoint; so subtle that it actually out-subtlitizes the mind itself. So you have to be both free of the mind and functioning intelligently, with right view, in the mind, to appreciate what you are. What that’s going to require is that you gain and lose the Absolute. You gain it and you lose it. You have insight and then you go back to doubt, back and forth, back and forth until you just endure that process to its end. It should be a pleasant process. It shouldn’t be just painful. It shouldn’t be just painful. You should have moments of sparkling clarity or feelings of release, feelings of cessation, that you are ceasing to exist. That must accompany realization or that you are eternally existing, that you are infinite. For some, it will have the flavor of ceasing to exist. Others, it will have the flavor of always endlessly existing, timelessness. For others, it will be an absence of time. For others, it will be timeless radiance.