Everything contributes to everything else. No effect has a single cause. Trying to assign causes to events is nothing more than entertainment for the mind.
Assume that Y causes Z. If X causes Y, then is X not also a cause of Z? Can you see how the regression is endless?
When one considers all the conditions that must be satisfied for a single action, let’s say death, to occur, the notion of a single cause is revealed as flawed.
For example, would you believe me if I told you that I already knew the cause of your death?
I could say that your death was caused by the cessation of the beating of your heart………..or it was caused by the absence of electrical activity in your brain.
But isn’t the primary cause of your death your birth? Without your birth, your death could not happen, don’t you agree?
And weren’t your parents the cause of your birth? Could I then not argue that your parents are the cause of your death?
If you concede that everything is connected, then it becomes obvious that everything has numerous causes. Yet, if everything causes everything, the notion of cause seems without point.
When we consider deep sleep, we can say that we were happy or at peace. Yet, that is inference only. However, we can say that there was nothing there, a blank. Yet, what knew this blank, what reported it? Knowing!
You are this Knowing and this Knowing has no need for enlightenment or awakening. It is only the ego that seeks enlightenment, and like the moth and the flame, the sought is the source of the destruction of the seeker.
So, the lesson of deep sleep is that I get to my real nature of Peace and Consciousness, when I transcend body, senses and mind.
Trust me when I tell you that you already are what you want to become.
Weren’t you a small baby, some years ago?
Where is the baby now? It is gone forever and it is impossible to bring it back. It, in a sense, died while you continued on to become a child, unaffected by its passing.
The child too is gone and you continued to be come a teenager, then a young adult and now a full adult. Each died to give way to the next.
Soon the adult will give way to the aged. All these deaths keep succeeding one another. It is the natural course of the form’s journey through the world.
Therefore, why fear this impending death? It is no different from the previous deaths. You have known them but you are not them.
Only the name and form die. That which knows the name and form continues.
Fight with all your strength against the idea that you are describable and death cannot touch you.
The answer cannot be located by thinking. How many more months, years or decades will it take until you see the futility of this approach?
You cannot photograph what you are. It is not conceivable or perceivable. And you cannot try to deny it by declaring “I am not”.
Stop trying to quench this thirst by drinking the sound of water. Turn away from thinking.
That’s it; there is no need for practices per se. Just pondering my words and trying to grasp their full meaning is sufficient for returning. Returning means going back to the source and support of everything and resting there.
In that, the misconception that there ever was a thinker, a doer, a perceiver and an enjoyer simply disappears.
Sooner or later you are bound to discover that if you really want to end the searching, you must return the way that you came. This is what I talk about, it is the way I traveled and invite you to take it.
The rest is up to you.