Satsang with Nirmala

Advaita Spiritual Teacher Who are you really? Are you your body, mind, and personality? Or are you the spacious awareness in which they appear? Questions like these point us to the infinite Presence that is the true source of peace, happiness, and love. Satsang means "gathering together to inquire into our true nature." It is an opportunity through self-inquiry and dialogue to discover that the love, peace, and awakeness you have been seeking are available here and now. Satsang is a chance to finally rest from all seeking and struggle, and to experience directly the completeness and perfection of your Being. Advaita spiritual teacher, Nirmala invites you to enjoy the free spiritual ebooks, spiritual poetry, online satsang video and satsang audio recordings, and nondual articles on this site pointing to this spiritual truth. You will discover the sweet richness that is revealed when we give this essential truth our undivided attention.

Advaita is the teaching of nonduality, which is best known through the spiritual teachings of the revered saint, Ramana Maharshi. He taught that self-realization, or awakening to the spiritual truth of who we are, is not some distant goal that only a few can attain. Instead, the true Self is that which is always and already present, that which doesn't come and go. Through simple self inquiry, we can awaken from the dream of a separate self to the reality of oneness or nonduality, to the spiritual truth of who we are.

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Love Is for Giving

What is love and where is it found? We search for love and try to get love, and yet it seems like we never get enough. Even when we have found love, it can slip away as time passes. What if there is a source of love that never fades and is always available? What if love is as near and easy as breathing? What if we have been “looking for love in all the wrong places” instead of actually lacking love?

Love is both simpler and more mysterious and subtle than we have imagined it to be. Love is very simply the spacious, open attention of our awareness. Awareness itself is the gentlest, kindest, and most intimate force in the world. It touches things without impinging on them. It holds all of our experience but doesn’t hold it down or hold it back. And yet, inherent in awareness is a pull to connect and even merge with the object of our awareness.

It is this seemingly contradictory nature of awareness—the completely open and allowing nature of awareness and its passionate pull to blend with and even become the object of its attention—that gives life its spirituality, depth and sweetness. There is nothing more satisfying than this delicious dilemma of being both apart from and at the same time connected to something we see, hear, or feel.

Awareness is the beginning of all separation. Prior to awareness, there is just “oneness” or “is-ness,” with nothing separate from the oneness that would be able to experience it. With the birth of awareness, there is the subtle distinction of two things: that which is aware and the object of awareness. And yet, those two are still connected by this mysterious force we are calling awareness, or love.

This flow of awareness and love that connects us to all we experience is the true source of satisfaction and joy. We have all experienced it to some degree. Whenever you fall in love with a person, pet, piece of music, or beautiful object, you have felt this flow of intimate, connected awareness. Unfortunately, we have been taught to believe that the source of this good feeling was in the object of our affection. So, we suffered whenever we lost our apparent source. When our lover leaves, our beloved pet dies, the concert ends, or our dream home is repossessed, we feel bereft of that loving, connected feeling.

A Definition of Advaita

Advaita means nondual or "not two." This oneness is a fundamental quality of everything. Everything is a part of and made of one substance. Often the question arises, If it is all one thing why don't I experience it that way? This is confusing oneness or nonduality for the appearance of sameness. Things can appear different without being separate. Just look at your hand for a moment. Your fingers are all different from each other, but are they separate? They all arise from the same hand.

Similarly, the objects, animals, plants and people in the world are all definitely different in their appearance and functioning. But in their ultimate nature, they are all connected at their source. So, this one Being has an infinite number of different expressions that we experience as different objects.

It also turns out that your fingers are all made of the same substance. As you explore the nature of your hand with greater subtlety, you discover more and more similarities. Your fingers are actually made up of very similar tissues, cells, atoms, and ultimately subatomic particles. When your experience of reality becomes even more subtle, you discover that everything is just a different expressions of one field of Being. Below is a wonderful little story about Advaita written by Dennis Waite (of advaita.org.uk) that explores this in more depth.

But what about your experience right now? Is it possible to realize this subtle oneness or nonduality in ordinary experience? It is, if you set aside the expectation of a dramatic awakening to the experience of oneness and explore the nondual nature of reality a little bit at a time. Just as even a single drop of water is wet, you can experience nonduality or oneness in even simple everyday experiences, since Advaita or oneness is a fundamental quality of everything that exists.

As an experiment, just notice your fingers and the palm of your hand. Can you really say where one starts and the other ends, or are they one thing? To take this further, where does your hand stop and your forearm begin? Can you experience the oneness of your hand and your forearm?

The Role of a Teacher

In usual terms, a teacher or mentor instructs, guides, or helps another in the process of gaining understanding, knowledge, or skills. How about the spiritual teacher or mentor? What is the role they play? And also what role does a spiritual teacher or spiritual mentor in the Advaita or nondual satsang tradition do?

A spiritual mentor or teacher's role is different from a usual teacher in that the goal is not so much to transmit understanding or knowledge as to somehow nurture an awakening in the student to their own pre-existing true nature. This is more subtle than simply teaching someone a skill or piece of knowledge, not that a spiritual teacher never assists with knowledge and understanding about spirituality, but by itself, that knowledge or understanding is not the goal. A student can acquire a broad knowledge of the principles of spirituality but may still not have realized those underlying principles as being inherently present in his or her own true nature. So Advaita spiritual teachers or mentors may not teach anything or they may teach a lot, depending on what a student needs at that time to facilitate their enlightenment, or awakening to their true nature.

This may appear to be a subtle distinction between the spiritual teacher's role and that of a regular teacher, but it makes a big difference. The regular teacher usually has something very specific to share, and there is often the implied assumption that the student will have acquired more understanding or somehow be better off when the teaching is finished. In contrast, the spiritual teacher points to something that is always already present in the student. It's like teaching someone to have legs. You can't really teach the having of legs to someone who already has legs! But you can make them more aware of the legs they already have.

In the specific case of an Advaita or nondual spiritual teacher, the mentor or teacher is pointing to the essential qualities of the student's true nature, specifically, the qualities of awareness, oneness, and emptiness. The Sanskrit word Advaita means "not two" and refers to the mysterious oneness or nonduality of everything that exists. There is only one nondual reality that everything is made of, including the student and the teacher. (Here is a definition of Advaita that includes an experiential exploration of oneness.)