Nisargadatta The Philosophy

arranged under 100 concepts using his own words

This book is organized in 2 parts and arranged under 100 advaitic

concepts, using only Nisargadatta's own words. This is a condensation
of every significant idea spoken by Nisargadatta during talks given to
his students in Bombay. The result is the most direct and powerful
elucidation of the Advaita Vedanta Philosophy yet made known to
mankind.

Contents

Introduction
Biography

Part 0ne

1. Religion
2. Food Essence
3. Body
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4. Body-Mind
5. Mind
6. Beyond the Mind
7. Identity
8. Form-Appearance
9. Manifestation
10. The Seed
11. Maya-Illusion
12. The Show
13. The World
14. Space
15. Time
16. Energy
17. Prana-LifeForce
18. Life
19. Memory
20. Experience
21. Conception and Birth
22. Death
23. Rebirth-Reincarnation
24. Immortality
25. Parabdha-Destiny
26. Karma
27. Existence
28. Jiva
29. Vyakti-The Person
30. Desire
31. Fear
32. Need-Necessary
33. Happiness-Unhappiness
34. Suffering
35. Attachment-Detachment
36. Sadhana-Discipline/Practices
37. Meditation
38. Samadhi
39. Seeking
40. The Way
41. The Jnani
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42. The Guru
43. Disciple-Guru Relationship
44. Earnestness
45. Aim
46. The Senses
47. Perception
48. Waking and Sleep States
49. Attention

Part Two

50. Consciousness
51. Universal Consciousness
52. Child Consciousness
53. Beingness
54. Being-Nonbeing
55. Becoming
56. Just Be
57. I-Am and I-Amness
58. I am this
59. Thought and Words
60. Ideas and Concepts
61. Upadhi-Attributes
62. Knowledge
63. Understanding
64. The Witness
65. Truth
66. Reality
67. Atman
68. Brahman
69. ParaBrahman
70. God
71. The Supreme
72. The Highest State
73. Absolute
74. The Source
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75. Awareness
76. Realization
77. The Self
78. The Original State
79. Impersonal Being
80. Causes and Causation
81. Creation
82. Dissolution
83. Love
84. Imagination
85. Ignorance
86. Me and Mine
87. Surrender
88. Gunas
89. Action
90. Bondage
91. Moksha-Liberation
92. Perfection
93. Change-The Unchangeable
94. Opposites
95. Good/Bad & Right/Wrong
96. Duality
97. Balance

Introduction

The Indian Jnani, Sri Nisargadatta, taught his audience mainly through
the traditional inspirational method of question-and-answer. At the
regular meetings, held in his home in Bombay, disciples, followers, and
spiritual tourists would ask Nisargadatta variously deep, interesting, or
trivial questions, and the teacher would give an astonishing profound
reply. The replies were usually short, and often relative to the level,
and individual problems, of the questioner. Sometimes the answers
4
seemed quite to disregard the narrow objective of the questioner and
instead gave insight into the nature of existence beyond the
anticipation of any person present in the room. Rarely Nisargadatta
discoursed on a subject for more than two or three sentences before
passing on to some other related, or unrelated, subject. Perhaps there
would be a return to the same subject some days, months or years
later, when more would be revealed. Every time he spoke,
Nisargadatta invariably said something new, so accumulatively adding
to his unique exposition of the ancient advaita vedanta philosophy.
Over the years the subject matter under discussion therefore gradually
expanded towards wholeness. In the latter part of his life, many of
Nisargadatta’s talks were recorded, edited transcriptions published,
both in his native Marathi as well as translation into English and other
languages. Such transcriptions are the basis of this collection-study.

For those who delight in listening to, and attempt to understand,

Nisargadatta’s philosophy, the principal difficulty for the intellect is to
gather together, harmonize, unite, and remember the fragments of
subject matter scattered through so many pages of transliterated
talks. Taking a sentence here or there as the definitive utterance on a
particular subject is likely to lead to a limited understanding of advaita
by the reader. In the interest of a possible deeper understanding of
Nisargadatta’s advaita philosophy, it is considered worthwhile to
gather together under some 100 principle concepts, the most
significant statements Nisargadatta made. This has resulted in a
severe selection and distillation of the extant Nisargadatta literature,
and more than 1500 pages of texts have been reduced to some 170.
This selection is individual, and inevitably another reader would have
had a different, personal, preference. The resultant study is offered to
all who find it useful, interesting, or entertaining. Anyone who wishes
to improve this distillation of Nisargadatta can feel free to do so. It is
conceded that Nisargadatta is contemptuous of concepts, therefore
truly beware, because this book contains only concepts. Many talk
about Nisargadatta’s teaching, nobody puts it into practice.

A list of Nisargadatta talks that have appeared in English (to

date, 2008) include:
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 I Am That: translation by Maurice Frydman/ Sudhakar Dikshit
Acorn Press 1973
Seeds of Consciousness: editor Jean Dunn Acorn Press 1982
Prior to Consciousness: editor Jean Dunn Acorn Press 1985
Consciousness and the Absolute: editor Jean Dunn Acorn Press
1994
The Ultimate Medicine: editor Robert Powell Blue Dove
Press/Motilal Banarsidass 1996
The Nectar of Immortality: editor Robert Powell Blue Dove Press
1996
The Experience of Nothingness: editor Robert Powell Blue Dove
Press 1996
Self Knowledge and Self Realization: editor Jean Dunn 1963 Charlie
Hayes/Awake-Now org 2005
I Am Unborn: composed by Vijayendra Deshpande editor Pradeep
Apte theeternalstate.org 2008
Beyond Freedom: editor Maria Jory Yogi Impressions Books 2007
The Last Days of Nisargadatta Maharaj: by S K Mullarpattan Yogi
Impressions Books 2006

Note: Where Nisargadatta discusses two or more advaita concepts

simultaneously the quotation is placed under the classification
considered the most significant. As the published talks of Nisargadatta
represent only a fraction of his verbal output, this study is limited.
Some criticism has been directed at Nisargadatta’s translators for
inaccuracies, therefore the serious student of Nisargadatta may be well
advised to study Marathi and make his own translations.

Acknowledgement:

The compiler places this contributory effort towards the study of

Nisargadatta’s Philosophy freely and openly before any interested
student of Nisargadatta purely for the benevolent purpose of serious
discussion. Copyright owners are most respectfully acknowledged, and
readers are encouraged to consult the original full texts.
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Nisargadatta: Biography

Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj is said to have been born at the time of the
full moon in March 1897, in the Bombay area, India. As his birth took
place during the festival of the monkey-god Hanuman Jayanti, he was
given Hanuman’s patronymic name, Maruti. His family included three
brothers and two sisters.

Maruti’s father was a poor Brahmin who worked variously, first as a

domestic servant in Bombay, and then as a small farmer at
Kandalgaon, Maharashtra. During boyhood Maruti worked with his
father in the fields. When his father died, the eighteen year old Maruti,
with his elder brother, took over responsibility for the support of his
family, working briefly as a clerk in Bombay, then as a small trader in
tobacco and handmade cigarettes. Later he married and had a son
and three daughters. During this period he lived the common life of a
simple uneducated man, with common desires and fears.

Introduced by a friend, Maruti met his Guru, Siddharameshwar

Maharaj, when he was 34, and through his faith in his teacher and
obedience to his words, realized three years later at 37. He then left
behind his human nature to look after itself, until its destiny was
exhausted. He was given the name Nisargadatta, from ‘nisarga’
meaning natural state, innate disposition.

His Guru taught the advaita vedanta tradition of philosophy, within the
Inchegeri branch of the Navnath Sampradaya. Initiated by his Guru
into the techniques of japa mantra meditation, Nisargadatta soon
began to experience visions and changes in consciousness. His identity
as a small shopkeeper dissolved, he became free from desire and fear,
and found himself full, needing nothing. Later, leaving his family and
business, he decided to become a sannyasin wanderer, and walking
barefoot, began a pilgrimage journey towards the Himalayas, but soon
7
understood the unnecessary nature of such quest for an eternal life
which he already possessed, and so returned home. He began to teach
the Nisarga Yoga system to those who were interested to listen, and
from his specially constructed meditation loft in his humble tenement
in the back streets of Bombay began his unique open discourses on
advaita vedanta to a small assembled company, consisting of both
local Indian and western international visitors. These question and
answer sessions in his native Marathi language were later tape-
recorded, and from those audio tapes translated transcripts were
produced and published by a number of close disciples.

Part One

1. Religion

Religion is chiefly the understanding that you are a part of the totality.
Being a separate individual is the entire problem. All sensuality, all
search for knowledge, all search for pleasure, is related to this
problem.

The sense of separate existence is a reflection in a separate body of

the one reality. In this reflection the unlimited and the limited are
confused and taken to be the same. To undo this confusion is the
purpose of yoga.

All the scriptures are of no use.

The traditional scriptures are unable to locate the Absolute, which is

beyond the grasp of the Vedas, because it is not conceptual.

Spiritual books help in dispelling ignorance. They are useful in the

beginning, but become a hindrance in the end. One must know when
to discard them.

There are many volumes written about spirituality which do not

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destroy your concepts but add to them. All the volumes do not tell you
what you are.

Whatever you think of as spiritual knowledge was gained in the realm

of consciousness. Such knowledge is merely a burden upon your head
and is going to add more misery. It is nothing more than spiritual
jargon.

Each seeker accepts, or invents, a method which suits him, applies it

to himself with some earnestness and effort, obtains results according
to his temperament and expectations, casts them into a mould of
words, builds them into a system, establishes a tradition, and begins
to admit others into his ‘School of Yoga’. It is all built on memory and
imagination. No such school is valueless, nor indispensable; in each
one can progress up to the point when all desire for progress must be
abandoned, to make further progress possible. Then all schools are
given up, all effort ceases. In solitude and darkness the last step is
made, which ends ignorance and fear forever.

Religions are based on concepts and emotions. Those emotions are so

violent and absorbing that people have immolated themselves. Those
who have identified themselves with Jesus Christ have not realized
that unless individuality is given up Reality can never manifest itself.
One individual has identified with another individual.

Religions show their true face in action, in silent action. To know what
man believes, watch how he acts. For most people service of their
bodies and their minds is their religion. They have their religious ideas,
but do not act on them. They play with them, they are often very fond
of them, but they will not act on them.

All the prophets, creeds, religions, etc. are not real, they are only the
play of this consciousness.

Spirituality is nothing more than understanding this play of

consciousness.

In spirituality there is no profit or loss.

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It is the Atman, not the personality, that is drawn to spirituality.

2. Food Essence

There are no individuals, there are only food bodies with the
knowledge “I Am”.

The fragrance or sweetness of the food essence body is the knowledge

“I Am”. It has no name and form. It is the “I love” state, the “I”-taste.

The world is full of children. Actually they are products of food, and
children yet to be born are already extant in the food essence, though
in a dormant state. When the food essence takes a form it manifests a
body, and the body provides sustenance to the indwelling “I Am”
principle. Just as milk is sucked by a child from a feeding bottle, so the
food essence is consumed by the “I Amness” from the body. It is eaten
and digested by the “I Amness” the whole day. To realize you are not
the body is liberation, and realization.

Your behaviour is dependent on your identification with the body,

which depends upon the knowledge “I Am”. The “I Am” depends upon
the food essence sustaining your body. This consciousness of
beingness which you are now experiencing is dependent on the
essence of the food you eat. When you can no longer assimilate that
food your vital breath becomes weaker and will one day go, along with
the consciousness that “you are”. There was absolutely no experience
of yourself or the world before you experienced body or the food.

When you take food, who is eating? The “I Amness”. The food also
contains the “I Amness”, so when you consume it, you retain your “I
Amness”. Although the “I Amness” is in the food, nobody identifies
with the food. They say: “This is my lunch, I am not this”, but when it
is consumed by them and becomes part of the body, they say: “I am
the body”....that mistake they make.

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You have the fear that you are going to die, that this consciousness is
going to depart; all such expressions are the expressions of the food
essence body, not you. This “I Amness” is a quality or expression of
the food essence body, and you cannot retain it forever.

3. Body

You believe yourself to be the body.

Why are you in a body? You are not in a body, the body is in you! The
mind is in you. They happen to you. They are there because you find
them interesting.

The body is made of the five elements: earth, water, fire, air, ether.
The vital breath is circulating in the body, the result is consciousness,
your beingness. When you are able to watch all these elements: the
body, the vital force, your beingness, you become established in
reality.

The body is made up of the five elements, and each body behaves
according to the proportion of the combination of the five elements.

You are very fond of your dwelling-place in this world, this body. You
would not like to go to a state which is beyond this, prior to this. You
are enamoured of this beingness state.

The body will not be with you always. The God principle in the body is
going to cast off the body. Know that principle and be one with it.

Treat your body like a visitor, or guest, which has come and will go.
You must know your position as a host very clearly while the guest is
still there. Know the position in which you will find yourself when this
body guest leaves.

Do not care whether the body remains or disappears. Beingness

disappears before the body disappears, and therefore does not know
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that the body is disappearing.

Do you care whether the body remains or goes?

Birth and death are mere ideas. Birth is merely the idea: ‘I have a
body’. Death is merely the idea: ‘I have lost my body’. When I know I
am not a body, the body may be there or may not, it does not make a
difference. The body-mind is like a room.....it is there, but I need not
live in it all the time. Body-minds come and go.....life is forever in
search of new expressions.....they hardly affect me.

By your identification with the manifest body you have lost sight of
your real nature.
If you believe yourself to be the body it means you have forgotten
your true Self, which is the Atman. Sorrow results for one who forgets
himself. If you identify yourself with the body, you feel you are dying,
but in reality there is no death because you are not the body.
Miseries begin when the self becomes associated with a body, mixed
up with the body.

In the state prior to the consciousness there is no pleasure or pain.

When the association of the body and consciousness begins, pleasure
and pain begins.

Because of identity with the body animals and human beings protect
their bodies to preserve their “I Amness”.

As long as you remain identified with the body, you want to be

occupied with actions, because you are not able to sustain that pure ‘I’
without them. You cannot endure it, and so identify with the body-
mind, and with all kinds of activities.

Sex is an acquired habit. Go beyond. As long as your focus is on the

body, you will remain in the clutches of food and sex, fear and death.
Find yourself and be free.

The body is nothing but food. The body in turn is food for the
consciousness.
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The body is the food you have consumed, the taste of it is the
knowledge “I Am”.

Your body is food transformed. As your food, gross and subtle, so will
be your health.

I am not the body, but the life force and the consciousness that is my
nature.

I am neither the material from which the body has been created nor
the consciousness which is immanent in that material.

The body is the support of that beingness. The moment that beingness
was planted in the womb the formation of this body was taking place.
The world is created for it.

In this world there are many statues called human bodies, and each
has a different face. Who made this image called the body, what is it
made of, and who is the sculptor? Is the sculptor present in that body?

You are not the covering. Body is also a covering.

The universe is contained in consciousness, and this physical body is

merely an appearance in consciousness. It is only when the
consciousness starts operating, and there are various movements in
the consciousness, that the behaviour in the world takes place.

This body and the beingness has come, but knowing its nature I do not
expect anything from it.

People measure themselves from the state of time based on the birth
of the physical body, which is a figment of the imagination, and is
purely a bundle of memories, habits, and imagination. You consider
yourself as the body, although it has no substance and can disappear
at any moment. Based on the body you are trying to achieve and
acquire etc., yet only what was before this body came into existence
will remain after the body dies. The moment the body is gone, that
13
final day, even your memory of existence will disappear. Whatever you
have assimilated is only entertainment.

What you do not know is that the entire universe is your body and you
need not be afraid of it. You may say that you have two bodies: the
personal and the universal. The personal comes and goes, the
universal is always with you. The entire creation is your universal
body. You cannot even say that you do not know it, because you see
and experience it all the time, only you call it ‘the world’, and are
afraid of it.

Knowing yourself as the dweller in both the bodies, the personal and
the universal, you will disown nothing. All the universe will be your
concern; every living thing you will love and help most tenderly and
wisely. There will be no clash of interests between you and others.
Your every action will be beneficial.

Divest yourself of the idea that you are the body with the help of the
contrary idea that you are not the body. It is also an idea, no doubt,
therefore treat it like something to be abandoned when its work is
done. The idea that I am not the body gives reality to the body, when
in fact, there is no such thing as body. Body is but a state of mind.

There is no ‘I’ apart from the body, nor the world. The three appear
and disappear together. At the root is the sense ‘I Am’. Go beyond it.
The idea ‘I-am-not-the-body’ is merely an antidote to the idea ‘I-am-
the-body’ which is false.

All changes in consciousness are due to the ‘I am the body’ idea.

Divested of this the mind becomes steady.

It is your identification with the body, which of course, is limited in

space and time, that gives you the feeling of finiteness. In reality you
are infinite and eternal.

The body has importance only because of the “I Amness”, the

consciousness, is dwelling therein. If the “I Amness” or consciousness
is not there the body will be disposed of as refuse.
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The body is an aid for the manifestation of consciousness, for
experiencing. Consciousness needs an instrument. Without the body,
consciousness cannot exist in that form. When there is no body,
consciousness is not conscious of itself.

It is very hard to get rid of the remnant of identification with the body.
It is not that you must be free from ‘I-am-the-body’ idea first, and
then realize the self. It is definitely the other way round. You cling to
the false because you do not know the true.

Once you realize that you are not the body, then there is no more
attraction for the manifestation. When a firm conviction is established
that one is not the body, one’s behaviour has become just like that of
the five elements, claiming no credit as things are merely happening
by themselves. Such a one can have no needs and demands.
The individuality is gone. The identity of body form is gone. The body
is not my design, nor am I male or female. Everything happens
spontaneously.

The body appears in your mind; in my mind nothing is. It is not that I
am unconscious of having a body, on the contrary, I am conscious of
not having a body.

There is no question of others. “You” and “me” is in reference to the

bodies. So keep quiet, for nobody is there.

Nothing dies. The body is just imagined. There is no such thing.

To you the body is real, to me there is none. I, as you see me, exist in
your imagination only.

4. Body-Mind

The body is made of food, as the mind is made of thoughts. See them
as they are.
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You are neither the body nor the mind, they appear and disappear
according to their own laws. Let the body and mind work according to
their own inclinations, and the conditions, but know you are not them.

The mistaken idea: ‘I am the body-mind’ causes the self-concern,

which obscures the universe, just as a speck in the eye, by causing
inflammation, may wipe out the world. It is useless to fight the sense
of being a limited and separate person unless the roots of it are laid
bare. Selfishness is rooted in the mistaken ideas of oneself.

To get rid of the habit of the body-mind is difficult and will take
considerable time. It is done by substituting one habit for another. The
substitute habit is to think constantly that you are not the body.
Observe and understand that events are started by your mind, but you
are only its witness. Do not participate. Be no longer concerned. All
the world activities happen through the mind. If you think ‘I am the
body-mind’ then you are doomed.
The body-mind complex is merely an object, a phenomenon, and no
phenomenon can act. You think you decide, but that is purely a
concept. The individual as an object thinks he can decide, but in fact
no object can decide. Everything is conceptual, and the concept of
acting is in your body-mind complex.

Any thoughts or actions will be based on body-mind identity, and in

order to see your true nature there must be abandonment of this
identity with the phenomenal centre. This cannot come about by any
volitional action.....it happens without any special efforts. There is no
question of doing anything because there is no one to do anything.

You can only kill the body, you cannot stop the mental processes, nor
can you put an end to the person you think you are. Just remain
unaffected. This complete aloofness, unconcern with mind and body is
the best proof that at the core of your being you are neither mind nor
body. What happens to the body and the mind may not be within your
power to change, but you can always put an end to your imagining
yourself to be body and mind. Whatever happens, remind yourself that
only your body and mind are affected, not yourself.

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Outside your consciousness nothing exists. All being, like all knowing,
relates to you. A thing is because you know it to be either in your
experience or in your being. Your body and your mind exist as long as
you believe so. Cease to think that they are yours and they will just
dissolve. By all means let your body and mind function, but do not let
them limit you. If you notice imperfections, just keep on noticing; your
very giving attention to them will set your heart and mind and body
right. Man becomes what he believes himself to be. Abandon all ideas
about yourself, and you will find yourself to be the pure witness,
beyond all that can happen to the body or the mind.

Take steps to separate your real self, that in you which is changeless,
from your body and mind. The more earnest you are at remembering
what needs to be remembered, the sooner will you be aware of
yourself as you are, for memory will become experience. Earnestness
reveals being. What is imagined and willed becomes actuality.....here
lies the danger as well as the way out.

You have to be separate from your mind and your body. This is the
total message.
You are that sense of presence, and not the body-mind.

Does the mind appear in the body, or the body in the mind? Surely
there must be a mind to conceive the ‘I-am-the-body’ idea. Realize
that the body depends on the mind, and the mind on consciousness,
and consciousness on awareness, and not the other way around.

Matter and mind are not separate, they are aspects of one energy.
Look at the mind as a function of matter and you have science, look at
matter as the product of mind and you have religion. The confusion is
apparent and purely verbal. What is, is. Neither mind nor matter come
first. Matter is the shape, mind is the name. Together they make the
world. Pervading and transcending is Reality: pure being-awareness-
bliss.....your very essence.

There is no duality. There is the body and the Self. Between them is
the mind, in which the Self is reflected as ‘I Am’. Because of the
imperfections of the mind, its crudity and restlessness, lack of
17
discernment and insight, it takes itself to be the body, not the Self. All
that is needed is to purify the mind so that it can realize its identity
with the Self. When the mind merges in the Self, the body presents no
problems. It remains what it is, an instrument of cognition and action,
the tool and the expression of the creative fire within. The ultimate
value of the body is that it serves to discover the cosmic body, which
is the universe in its entirety. As you realize yourself in manifestation,
you keep on discovering that you are ever more than what you have
imagined. As there is no beginning, there is no end.

5. Mind

The mind with its five organs of perception, five organs of action, and
five vehicles of consciousness appears as memory, thought, reason
and selfhood.

Mind is a universal dynamic principle but we restrict it to the limits of

the body. It is like the water in a large lake that belongs to the whole
city and we try to claim some of it as our own. The water is universal,
use it when you possess it. Similarly use the mind to meet your needs
and then let it flow by itself without your interference and
involvement.

The mind is like a river, flowing ceaselessly in the bed of the body; you
identify yourself for a moment with some particular ripple and call it:
‘my thought’. Our minds are just waves on the ocean of
consciousness. As waves they come and go. As ocean they are infinite
and eternal. Know yourself as the ocean of being.

The mind is the flow force, continuously flowing, words continuously

welling up. You are not the mind. Do not get involved with the thought
process, or the flow of words, or the flow of mind. When you are in a
position to observe the mind, you are other than the mind.

The vital breath is the cause of the mind flow.

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The things of the mind flow out of the vital breath, but you do not
have to accept them. Usually the moment an impression is received by
an ignorant person, he puts it to the credit of his account.

Mind is only the out-flowing in words of the life principle, the prana.
Mind is limited to the conditioning to which it has been exposed, and
cannot go beyond the specific moulding it has undergone in the
individual. Therefore the working of the mind will differ from individual
case to case.

The life force and the mind are operating, but the mind will tempt you
to believe that ‘you’ are the one who is acting. Do not believe the
mind. Always understand that you are the timeless, spaceless witness.
Always keep your identity separate from that which is doing the
working, thinking, talking. The apparatus is functioning, but you are
not that apparatus.
As long as you have not understood and recognize the vital breath,
prana shakti, then whatever the mind tells you, you are bound to take
as certain. Those concepts which the mind gives you will be final for
you. The mind throws out words and thoughts, and through these we
have mistaken our identity as ‘me’ or ‘mine’. But really whatever takes
place is independent of the one who witnesses, and merely takes place
through the action of the life force. The one who understands this vital
breath, the life force, is beyond all mental concepts. The one who has
not understood it is a slave to his thoughts.

The mind must know itself in every mood. Nothing is a mistake unless
repeated.

The mind plays a guessing game; it is ever uncertain, anxious ridden,

and restless.
The mind has its limits. Understand that the mind has its limits. To go
beyond, you must consent to silence. Stand still, be quiet.

In the mirror of your mind all kinds of pictures appear and disappear.
Knowing that they are entirely your own creations, watch them silently
come and go, be alert but not perturbed. This attitude of silent
observation is the very foundation of Yoga. You see the picture but you
19
are not the picture.

The mind can only work with some name or form or image. If you give
this up, the mind will be helpless.

Disown whatever you get from the mind. Mind flows continuously. Just
innocently, dispassionately, observe the mind flow. With the mind you
will never understand. You are not the mind. Problems are not
yours.....they are your mind’s only. Begin by disassociating yourself
from your mind. Resolutely remind yourself that you are not the mind
and that its problems are not yours.

The mind is changing all the time. Look at your mind dispassionately;
this is enough to calm it. When it is quiet you can go beyond it. Do not
keep it busy all the time. Stop it.....and just be. If you give it rest, it
will settle down and recover its purity and strength. Constant thinking
makes it decay.

It is the mind that is dull or restless, not you.

It is desires and fears that make the mind restless. Free from all
negative emotions it is quiet.

It is not your real being that is restless, but its reflection in the mind
appears restless because the mind is restless. It is just like the
reflection of the moon in the water stirred by the wind. The wind of
desire stirs the mind, and the “me”, which is but a reflection of the Self
in the mind, appears changeful. But these ideas of movement, of
restlessness, of pleasure and pain, are all in the mind. The Self stands
beyond the mind, aware, but unconcerned. You are the Self, here and
now. Leave the mind alone.

What prevents you from knowing yourself as all and beyond all, is the
mind based on memory. It has power over you as long as you trust it.
Do not struggle with it, just disregard it. Deprived of attention, it will
slow down and reveal the mechanism of its working. Once you know
its nature and purpose, you will not allow it to create imaginary
problems. What problems can there be which the mind did not create?
20
It is memory and anticipation that create problems of attainment or
avoidance, coloured by like and dislike. The knowingness recognizes
the mind, the mind cannot recognize consciousness.

The supreme gives existence to the mind. The mind gives existence to
the body.

Intellect is the expression of consciousness. The mind understands

because of the consciousness. The mind interprets whatever the
concept is, the base is consciousness on which the concept arises at
the moment.

Concept and mind are beams of light from the Contemplator.

Whatever comes on the screen of contemplation will surely disappear.
The Contemplator remains.

The individual trapped in the mind-shell is different from that one who
is the knowledge “I Am”.....the consciousness.

The mind must learn that beyond the moving mind there is the
background of awareness, which does not change.

You do not have a personality, it is all in the mind. It is not the mind,
but it is the vital breath that makes you feel you are a separate entity.
Vital force gives rise to the thoughts, otherwise there is no mind. The
vital breath gives rise to the thoughts in the world and you are only
watching it.

The mind craves for formulations and definitions, always eager to

squeeze reality into a verbal shape. Of everything it wants an idea, for
without ideas the mind is not. Reality is essentially alone, but the mind
will not leave it alone.....and deals instead with the unreal. And yet all
the mind can do is to discover the unreal as unreal

All states and conditions are of the mind.

Change is only in the mind-flow.

21
Witness the play of the mind. Understand the quality of the mind.
Know that you are not the mind.

The mind is only an accumulation of the thoughts that are present in

the manifestation. The mind depends on all your memories and
whatever you have heard in this world.

The mind is but a set of mental habits, of ways of thinking and feeling,
and to change they must be brought to the surface and examined. This
takes time.

Good and bad are in the realm of the mind only.

The realization of unity is beyond mind.

The mind by its very nature divides and opposes. There is another
mind which unites and harmonizes, which sees the whole in the part,
and the part as totally related to the whole. In going beyond the
limiting, dividing and opposing mind, the end of the mental process as
we know it occurs. When this comes to an end that other mind is born.
That other mind is love seeking expression and meeting with
obstacles. The inclusive mind is love in action, battling against
circumstances, initially frustrated, ultimately victorious.

A question is a state of mind. No state of mind can be more real than

the mind itself. Is the mind real? It is but a collection of states, each of
them transitory. How can a succession of transitory states be
considered real? An idea: ‘I am the body’ is a mental state and does
not last. It comes and goes like all other states. The illusion of being
the body-mind is there only because it is not investigated. Non-
investigation is the thread on which all the states of mind are strung.
It is like darkness in a closed room, apparently there. But when the
room is opened, where does it go? It goes nowhere, because it was
not there. All states of mind, all names, and forms of existence are
rooted in non-enquiry, non-investigation, in imagination, in credulity.
It is right to say ‘I am’, but to say ‘I am this’, ‘I am that’, is a sign of
not enquiring, of mental weakness, or lethargy.

22
The mind refuses to believe that it is a nonentity.

The mind, which interprets happiness and unhappiness, is meant for

conducting affairs in the world. At the mind level, any individual who
understands himself through certain concepts accordingly undergoes
pleasure and pain. But in actuality this is not so. What is the mind? It
is just noise that goes on inside.

To the realized one, the mind-flow is like the release of obnoxious

gases from below.

O mind, what are you searching? Inside and outside it is one only. It is
the concept that makes you feel inside and outside. Getting rid of the
concept it is “I” only prevailing everywhere.

The riddle of spirituality cannot be solved by your intellect. At the

most, your intellect can provide you with livelihood. What you are is
beyond the grasp of the intellect.

Employ your mind to the extent that it is useful for your normal daily
chores, not beyond that. The knowledgeable one just witnesses or
cancels whatever experiences are obtainable through the mind as
having no substance. All this world play is in the realm of the mind.
Once you understand that you are not the mind, in what way are you
concerned?

Questioning the habitual is the duty of the mind.

What is going on is a projection of your mind.

Nature is in the mind; without the mind where is nature?

All space and time are in the mind. Where will you locate a
superamental world? There are many levels of the mind, and each
projects its own version, yet all are in the mind and created by the
mind.

All this is in the mind only. As I see it, there is nothing of the kind. In
23
the great mirror of consciousness images arise and disappear and only
memory gives them continuity. And memory is
material.....destructible, perishable, transient. On such flimsy
foundations we build a sense of personal existence.....vague,
intermittent, dreamlike. This vague persuasion: “I-am-so-and-so”
obscures the changeless state of pure awareness, and makes us
believe that we are born to suffer and to die.

The mind must come to know the true self and respect it and cease
covering it up.

The mind covers up reality, without knowing it. To know the nature of
the mind, you need intelligence, the capacity to look at the mind in
silent and dispassionate awareness.

The mental modifications take you away from the Self. Nobody
enquires about the Self deeply and thoroughly, everybody enquires on
a superficial level.

You can do nothing to bring reality about, but you can avoid creating
obstacles. Watch your mind. Reality is definitely beyond the mind, but
all that you can do is to know your mind well. Not that the mind will
help you, but by knowing your mind you may avoid your mind
disabling you. You have to be alert, or else your mind will play false
with you. It is like watching a thief, not that you expect anything from
a thief, but you do not want to be robbed. In the same way you give a
lot of attention to the mind without expecting anything from it.

The mirror of the mind can do nothing to attract the supreme, the sun.
It can only keep bright. As soon as the mind is ready the sun shines in
it. The light is uncaused, and unvarying by itself, but coloured by the
mind, as the mind moves and changes. It is very much like a cinema.
The light is not in the film, but the film colours the light and makes it
appear to move by intercepting it.

In this play of the five elements, whatever is seen or experienced is

merely enjoyment, and for this enjoyment, or entertainment, mind is
very necessary.
24
It is the mind that creates illusion, and it is the mind that gets free of
it.

How can an unsteady mind make itself steady? It cannot. It is the

nature of the mind to roam about. All you can do is to shift the focus
of consciousness beyond the mind. Refuse all thoughts except one: the
thought “I Am”. The mind will rebel in the beginning, but with
perseverance it will yield and keep quiet. Once you are quiet, things
begin to happen spontaneously, and naturally, without any
interference on your part.

It is the mind that tells you that the mind is there. Do not be deceived.
All the endless arguments about the mind are produced by the mind
itself, for its own protection, continuation, and expansion. It is the
blank refusal to consider the convolutions and convulsions of the mind
that take you beyond it. Abandon all thoughts, not only of the world,
but of yourself also. Stay beyond all thoughts, in silent being-
awareness.

You are beyond the mind, but you know with your mind. The extent,
depth, and character of knowledge depend on what instrument you
use. Improve your instrument and your knowledge will improve. A
quiet mind is all you need. All else will happen rightly, once the mind is
quiet. As the sun on rising makes the world active, so does self-
awareness effect changes in the mind. In the light of calm and steady
self-awareness inner energies wake up and work miracles without any
effort on your part.

When the mind is quiet it reflects reality. When it is motionless

through and through, it dissolves, and only reality remains. This reality
is so concrete, so actual, so much more tangible than mind and
matter. This overwhelming actuality makes the world dreamlike,
misty, irrelevant.

When the mind is in its natural state, it reverts to silence

spontaneously after every experience, or rather, every experience
happens against the background of silence.
25
At old age the intellect disappears, but there is a witness to this
disappearance.

By looking tirelessly, I became quite empty and with that emptiness all
came back to me except the mind. I find I have lost the mind
irretrievably.

The death of the mind is the birth of wisdom.

Abide in the state where there is no mind.

6. Beyond the Mind

All change affects the mind only. To be what you are, you must go
beyond the mind, into your own being. It is immaterial what is the
mind that you leave behind, provided you leave it behind for good.
This is not possible without self-realization.

I am conscious and unconscious, both conscious and unconscious,

neither conscious nor unconscious.....to all this I am witness. But
really there is no witness, because there is nothing to be a witness to.
I am perfectly empty of all mental formations, void of mind, yet fully
aware. This I try to express by saying that I am beyond the mind.

The mind cannot go beyond itself by itself. It must explode. The

explosive power comes from the real. You are well advised to have
your mind ready for it. Your dwelling on the fact of ‘I Am’ creates the
chance.

You are never alone. There are powers and presences who serve you
all the time most faithfully. You may or may not perceive them,
nevertheless they are real and active. When you realize that all is in
your mind, and that you are beyond the mind, that you are truly
alone, then all is you.
26
7. Identity

Self-identification with the outer causes suffering. The cause of

suffering is self-identification with the limited.

Self-identification happens because the self, by its nature, knows itself

only. For lack of experience whatever it perceives it takes to be itself.

You take yourself to be somebody or something.

Man takes his name and shape to be himself, while I take nothing to
be myself.

Your mind projects a structure and you identify yourself with it.

You know yourself only through the senses and the mind. You take
yourself to be whatever they suggest, having no direct knowledge of
yourself, you have mere ideas, all mediocre, second-hand, by hearsay.
Whatever you think you are, you take it to be true; the habit of
imagining yourself perceivable and describable is very strong with you.

You think you are somebody, but you are nothing of the sort.

The sense of separate identity is totally false and untrue.

Give up your independent identity. There is no question of an

independent entity, everything is an appearance in consciousness only.

Individuality, personality and separateness are associated with desires.

When there is no sense of separateness there is no desire, only one
with the totality. You are the totality.
There is no identity that is exclusively yours. Every identity will
disappear.

27
Is there identity without memory? Identity is continuity in memory.
Memory is the warp of your mental life, and identity is merely a
pattern of events in time and space. Change the pattern and you have
changed the man.

You have assumed something as “I Am”, which actually you are not,
that is why you are afraid. When you put on an identity that is not
yours, you are afraid. When you are the pure “I Amness” only, there is
no fear. But this “I Am” is not the truth, whatever you are prior to the
appearance of the “I Am”, that is your true nature.

Identity occurs only when there is the knowledge ‘I am’. Parabrahman

is without identity. The concept or thought ‘I am’ is not there in the
Parabrahman.

There is resistance to going within, due to fear of having to abandon

the illusion of being something or somebody in particular.

Many persons have a great attachment to their own individuality. They

want to remain as an individual and are not prepared to lose that
individuality. It is as an individual that they search, and want to retain
their identity yet find out what is the truth. But in this process of
knowledge you must get rid of the identity itself. You are not a person.
You are not an individual.

Everyone assumes a certain image of himself: I am so and so. The

image is taken by his concept about himself. It is necessary to see
this, to understand this source of one’s actions, and become free of it
by seeing it as false.

You are not what you think yourself to be. Your ideas about yourself
change from day to day and from moment to moment. Your
changeable self-image is at the mercy of any passer-by. A loss, an
insult, and your image of yourself, which you call your person,
changes deeply. To know what you are you must first investigate and
know what you are not, by watching yourself carefully, rejecting all
that does not go with the basic fact and sense: “I Am”. Our usual
attitude is of “I am this”. Separate consistently and perseveringly the
28
“I am” from “this” or “that”, and try to feel what it means to be, just to
be, without being “this” or “that”. All our habits go against it and the
task of fighting them is long and hard sometimes. Understand that on
the level of the mind you can be described in negative terms only.
When you come to the end of your search you will realize your
limitless being.
As long as identification is there you will think of benefiting only this
pseudo-personality.

There is only one mistake you are making: you take the inner for the
outer, and the outer for the inner. what is in you, you take to be
outside you, and what is outside, you take to be in you. The mind and
the feelings are external, but you take them to be intimate. You
believe the world to be objective, while it is entirely a projection of
your psyche. That is the basic confusion.

Your fall occurs when you try to identify something within the sphere
of consciousness as ‘yourself’. Do not take yourself to be something.

Who and What as such at the highest level, are Nothing. But such a
simple fact has turned into a riddle, because that principle has wrongly
identified itself with a form, and then takes pride in that identification.
It has accepted the body as its identity.

If you identify yourself with something, such an identity must be

sacrificed. Your real identity has no body and no thought. You are the
spontaneous knowledge ‘I am’. You must be bodiless. You are solely
the indwelling principle ‘I am’. Without effort, you are that.

The Self cannot have an image.

Your image of yourself is the concept which is most dear to you.

Each of you is trying to protect yourself, but however much you may
try to protect it, what you are trying to protect will not last.

Do not try to be something. Do not try to be a spiritual person. A

spiritual seeker wants to be something. Just be as you are.
29
The moment there is a pose, there is fear. Anyone who has assumed
the pose of a seeker will be bound to follow the traditional practices of
a seeker, and the limitations. This is identification with the body-mind.

Whatever identity I have is the play of the five elements, and it is

universal. I do not have any exclusive identity for myself.

You are ultimately the product of dirt. You are not that “I” which is
going about in a determined fashion believing “I am so and so”. That
“I” was absent before birth and will be absent after death.

Be unconcerned with what I am and what I am not. Do not be addicted

to self-descriptions. Have the courage to be as nothing, and to see the
world as it is: nothing.

There is no entity, there is only this knowledge that you are here and
awake.

During your life you have held different entities for yourself. After birth
you perceived that you were a child, then a teenager, an adult,
middle-aged, and old. None of these identities has remained with you.
Whatever you hold onto as “myself” will disappear.

The individual personality is lost. A person may have the brightest

intellect in the world and, with the aid of that intellect, collect the
maximum information about the world, but all that will be useless
because the basis is false. Listen to the significance of these words and
reach your original state.

From your own seed-beingness the whole manifest universe is

projected, including your body. This supreme and powerful principle,
though being itself without a form and name, upon sensing “I Am”
instantly embraces the body and mistakenly accepts this as its own. It
clings to the body-identity so quickly that the fact of its own
independent existence is easily missed.

We do not differ. The difference is only in the mind and temporary.

30
When the consciousness identifies itself with a form, it is the nature of
this identity to want to continue as long as possible. Consciousness
loves that identification so much that it wants to continue. When
consciousness loses its individuality it becomes one with the universe.

You carry out all your worldly and spiritual activities with an identity.
Because a human being considers himself an individual, he suffers pain
and pleasure, future and past, birth and death. Total loss of pride in
individuality is the state of non-identity. You have compressed yourself
into a form and an identity, hence the suffering, but you are the
formless, the dynamic, manifest consciousness. The knowledge that
“you are” is manifest and all-pervading, and is purer and subtler than
this light, and therefore it cognizes light.

You identify with, and take pride in, your body-mind. Accept this
identification only: that you are this manifest pure beingness, the very
soul of the universe, of this life that you observe, and presently you
are just wearing this bodily attire.

Whatever you embrace and cling to is going to go. Give up everything

and understand what you are. Whatever you have attained will go, so
what are you going to hold onto as yourself?

All your worldly and unworldly activities are based on the individual
identification. You, as an individual, want to have liberation. You
remain as an individual, that is the difficulty.

You may think you have understood this knowledge, but so long as
you think that you, as an individual, have acquired that knowledge,
the individual identity is still there.

When you are aware “I am the seer, I am the knower”, that simply is,
and It has no shape. That knowledge is formless. When you embrace
the form the problems arise.

You are not a man or a woman. You are that principle out of which all
has come.
31
The mind is expressing itself with various concepts. Do not identify
with that, let it go. You can forestall the mind by asking questions.
Observe the mind, be a witness to the mind flow.

When you identify with the mind-body you become separate, you are
not one with anybody. When you are the “I Amness” you are
everything. To help you understand various concepts are given, like
Prakriti and Purusa, but actually there is nothing. Even such concepts
form a trap. The first trap is the love to be.

We perceive things but we must understand that we are that principle

which makes perception possible. Normally an individual identifies
himself with whatever he sees or perceives.

You do not know yourself. You have allowed yourself to be enticed by

what is not the truth. By identification with the body you have lost that
knowledge.

Whatever is seen and perceived, that you are not. Whatever you see
inside and outside you, that you are not.

Disidentification can only take place when it is understood that there is

no entity, and that what is happening is merely the program of the
functioning of consciousness. There is merely the functioning of
consciousness, there is no entity who is causing it, and there is no
entity who is suffering. If this is not understood all kinds of
misconceptions occur.

That very identity with which you try to understand everything is

unreal.

You are nothing. You have no identity.

I am nothing, I have no design, no colour, I have no image of myself.

Having realized that what one sees is false, who is the “you” who is
searching for the real?
32
Whatever is, is you.

You cannot hold on to some identity as exclusively yours that will not
disappear.

First get rid of that “you”. The Guru is the place where all your hopes,
expectations and desires are completely dissolved, annihilated. So long
as we are one with that beingness we would always like to have some
very high concepts about ourselves.

Once dis-identification with the body-mind takes place, Brahman will

come with folded hands to your feet. when dis-identification does
happen you will realize the identity of the non-manifest and the
manifest. They are one, there is no difference.

There is no individual personality. Out of the essence of the five

elements all form and beingness come.

You do not exist. Such knowledge is only a firm conviction if it is there

all the time.

If after listening to the talks of the Guru you still want to gain some
profit for yourself, that is a pity.

All you really want to do is to keep your body-mind sense intact. You
accept body as your identity and move about and function in the
world. Realize that “I Amness” means the manifest world and the
universe. When the sense of being appears it has no body sense. Out
of that sense of being, the whole cosmos is created. In that creation
you also have a form, but you accept body as your identity. The
principle that motivates and enlivens the body is the sense of
beingness only, but it is not the body. All this play in the cosmos and
the world functions in the consciousness, and finally the play will
merge into consciousness. Being the dynamic manifest universal
principle, when consciousness first appears it is free from identification
of any kind with ‘this or that’. The consciousness knows itself through
itself, but due to its identification with the body it suffers pain and
33
pleasure. It is rare for anyone to realize that the entire cosmos
manifestation springs out of one’s seed-consciousness. One’s unity
with the cosmos is realized when one unites with oneself.

Awareness with a object we call witnessing. When there is also self-

identification with the object, caused by desire or fear, such a state is
called a person. In reality there is only one state; when distorted by
self-identification it is called a person, when coloured with the sense of
being it is the witness, when colourless and limitless it is called the
Supreme.

When individuality has been liquidated only manifest consciousness

remains.

The question of what one is comes only in manifestation, in

comparison with other phenomena. In the state of the jnani there is no
phenomenon, his existence is prior to any manifestation. He does not
ask the question ‘Who or what I am?’

The Self that is within is all the emptiness of the sky.

I am free from all description and identification. Whatever you may

hear, see, or think of, I am not that.

To myself I am neither perceivable nor conceivable; there is nothing I

can point out and say: ‘this I am’. You identify yourself with everything
so easily; I find it impossible. The feeling: ‘I am not this or that, nor is
anything mine’ is so strong in me that as soon as a thing or a thought
appears, there comes at once the sense ’this I am not’.

My nothingness is the subtlest. Having lost everything, I have nothing

further to lose, I can encounter and fit into any situation. So long as
you wear a name and form, all these problems will be there. In this
spiritual pursuit you gradually lose your form and as the form is shed
off, the name also disappears.

The Guru tells you that you have a true identity, but it is not this. It is
the formless, Parabrahman. That Parabrahman is without any doubts.
34
It is not conditioned by maya, because to the Parabrahman, maya
does not exist.

By the grace of my Guru I have realized once and for good that I am
neither object nor subject.

The person is never the subject. You can see a person, but you are not
the person. You are always the Supreme which appears at a given
point of time and space as the witness, a bridge between the pure
awareness of the Supreme and the manifold consciousness of the
person. The manifold nature of the person correspond to the various
samskara (tendencies of the mind). They are contradictory. See them
as they are.....mere habits of thoughts and feelings, bundles of
memories and urges. You identify yourself with them. Once you realize
that whatever appears before you cannot be yourself, and cannot say
“I Am”, you are free of all your ‘persons’ and their demands. The
sense of “I Am” is your own. You cannot part with it, but you can
impart it to anything, e.g. as in saying: “I am young”, I am rich”, etc.
Such identifications are patently false and the cause of bondage.

You still have an idea of what you are, but even that image must be
totally erased, so that there is no idea of any entity, any identification.
When you have understood what you are, any use of the
consciousness will be for others.

Once the body is gone, that knowledge which experienced itself as

Christ, Krishna, Buddha, etc. subsides and becomes one with the
totality. You might be a very great person but when you go to sleep
you forget yourself as a separate entity.

I once felt a sense of individuality, but I do not now have that

individuality. The sense of individuality has transformed itself into the
universal manifest state, only the feeling of universal consciousness
remains.

The whole problem is the sense of being a separate individual, when

that subsides, that is true bliss. Once you understand, there is no
question of enjoying yourself as an individual. You are no more an
35
individual, the individual is dissolved. This is rare.

When your individuality is dissolved, you will not see individuals

anywhere, it is just a functioning in consciousness.

When you believe yourself to be a person, you see persons

everywhere. In reality there are no persons, only threads of memories
and habits. At the moment of realization the person ceases. Identity
remains, but identity is not a person, it is inherent in the reality itself.
The person has no being in itself, it is a reflection in the mind of the
witness, the “I Am”, which is a mode of being.

The person, the ‘I am this body, this mind, this chain of memories, this
bundle of desires and fears’ disappears, but something you may call
‘identity’ remains. It enables me to become a person when required.
Love creates its own necessities, even of becoming a person.

You come to a dimensionless point of consciousness, a conscious

nothing, when you see all you think yourself to be as mere
imagination, and stand aloof in pure awareness of the transient as
transient, imaginary as imaginary, unreal as unreal. It is not difficult,
but detachment is needed.

Most people reach that state which is, but nobody reaches that state
which is not. It is very rarely that one can reach that state. It
transcends all knowledge.

When one looks into one’s self, when one abides in the self, then there
is none.

8. Form-Appearance

There is no permanent form.

Whatever appears is a state and has to disappear.

36
Anything that is sensorially seen and interpreted by the mind is an
appearance in consciousness, and is not true.

What you see is not what is. Appearances will dissolve on investigation
and the underlying reality will come to the surface.

All appearance and disappearance presupposes a change against some

changeless background.

Fascinated by names and forms, which are by their very nature

distinct and diverse, you distinguish what is natural and separate what
is one.

From the bodily standpoint, all forms appear as separate entities. But
at the consciousness level, they are consciousness-manifest and not
separate.

Smaller than the smallest, bigger than the biggest, you are, while all
else appears.
You have no innate form. You have no form, no design. The names
and forms you see are your consciousness only. The forms are only
instruments for the functioning of consciousness. You are not the form
but the consciousness which gives sentience to the form.

Krishna descended into this world from nothingness and took the form.
Prior to that incarnation Krishna had no knowledge about himself;
knowingness, ‘I am’, was absent.
From nothingness the form is taken. The nothingness descends into
form, that is avatar. Prior to incarnation that personality had no
knowledge about himself. After descending into this incarnation he
started knowing himself.

Nothing is. All is a momentary appearance in the field of the universal

consciousness. Continuity as name and form is a mental formation
only, easy to dispel.

The dirt, the body, everything, is myself, but the process of

37
transformation is continually going on. The cycle goes on, gross form
is again transformed into space.

The true nature has no form. Whatever appears is a result of the five
elements. Out of three or four raw materials a cook can concoct
various dishes, each with a different taste, but basically they are from
identical materials.

That which is totally dissolved or obliterated is observed. That which is

always is not perceptible. That principle ever remains.

All kinds of forms are being created and destroyed continuously, the
various forms appearing and disappearing as a result of the five
elemental play.

Both experience and experiencer will disappear. Changes get

expressed in the consciousness, and so the consciousness becomes
subtler and subtler. Forms get dissolved.

Things to be done must be done, things to be understood must be

understood. Things to be done are normally your present worldly life,
and these you must carry out. In spirituality you have to understand,
there is no question of doing. In spirituality there is no name and
form, name and forms are necessary for your practical worldly life.
Your identity in the phenomenal world as name and form is temporary,
a passing show, and anything relating to name and form is not going
to remain. The one who understands that name and form are not his
identity is in spirituality.

How did I get this form? My Guru told me it is due to Satva. What is
Satva? Satva is only the essence of the five elements and in that is the
knowledge “I Am”. All is the five elements. This body is the result of
the five elements. This physical body, this desire to continue to live, to
exist, comes from the five elements, and will last as long as the five
elemental body is present. Originally you had nothing to do with this.
You have no shape or form. Now all you have to solve this mystery of
life is the knowledge “I Am”, without that there is nothing.

38
Even the experiencer is secondary. Primary is the infinite expanse of
consciousness, the immeasurable potential of all that was, is, and will
be. When you look at anything, it is the ultimate you see, but you
imagine that you see a cloud or a tree. Stop attributing names and
shapes to the essentially nameless and formless, realize that what is
seen or heard, touched, or smelt, felt or thought, expected or
imagined, is in the mind and not in reality.
Be friendly with your undifferentiated state, it is your true Self.

Whatever status and achievements one has attained will remain only
so long as the name and form remain. Once they have gone, where is
the entity who thinks he has achieved something? Before this
consciousness, there was nothing. When consciousness exposes itself
to you and shows you your true nature, then you will have no form.
Without a form can there be an image?

Name and form create desires and fears. When one is free of them,
what remains? The void remains. But the void is full to the brim. It is
the eternal potential, as consciousness is the eternal actual. Past,
present, and future.....they are all there. And infinitely more.

The outer is transient, the innermost is permanent and changeless,

although ever new in appearance and action.

9. Manifestation

Whatever deep conviction you hold onto in the core of you will happen.

The Unmanifest and the manifest can never be together. The

Unmanifest ever exists, but this manifest knowingness arises and
departs.

Manifestation needs time and space.

You are what you are, timelessly, but of what use is it to you unless
39
you know it and act on it? You must know your inner worth and trust
it, and express it in the daily sacrifice of desire and fear.

When the Unmanifest manifests it is called saguna-brahman.

In my original non-knowing state I did not know the sense of my

being. But all of a sudden the beingness was felt spontaneously. Then
in a flash I observed this enormous manifest world and also my body.
Later I conceived that the entire universe has manifested in the speck
of my beingness only. In that primordial state I had no information
about myself. Now a form, together with the information “I Am”, is
impressed upon me.

All manifestation comes only from a speck of consciousness. There are

millions of varieties of forms in the total manifestation, but the source
of all is the consciousness.
Every manifestation is an appearance in consciousness, perceived and
cognized by consciousness. There is only manifestation functioning and
perceiving.

With the arising of “I Am” the whole of manifestation takes place.

In the ocean of manifestation, millions are crawling around, like waves

and ripples.

As a result of the interaction of the two great principles, the prakriti

and purusha, the five great elements and the three gunas have
emerged. Space, air, fire, water, together with sattva, rajas, and
tamas, formed the earth, making it ready for further development. On
the earth grew vegetation. When the juice of the vegetation took body
form, the dormant principle of beingness also appeared in it. The five
elements have no knowledge of their sense of being. The beingness is
manifested in body form during the five-elemental process. Thus, that
eternal principle, which did not know its existence, is manifested
through millions of forms.

What power is responsible for this creation? The power is the Self
which each one has in his beingness, and that power is time-bound.
40
From the time that beingness comes it creates automatically until that
beingness disappears. Earlier there was nothing.....after there is
nothing. It is only during the duration of the beingness that the world
and creation is. This power is the faith in the primordial concept “I
Am”, and that is the concept which weaves the web of creation. The
entire manifestation is an appearance in this concept.

The whole universe manifests in that principle, which is termed

beingness or birth. This beingness illumines all that exists, which
means the entire universe manifests as the body of the beingness.
Like the forms and images and landscapes on a television screen are
the expression of electron beams only, the entire manifest world is the
product of your beingness. This manifestation, it is your light only.

Everything happens out of our own Self. This consciousness is

spontaneously felt in the Self only. This “I” is not an individual. What
is, is the Absolute unmanifested. What appears, as if in a dream, is the
manifested, relative world, and this experience of the dreamlike state
is the same, an identical state, for everyone.

This manifestation is Self-effulgent, Self-created. But you are still

wanting to modify something, so you are not finished with it.

I am the manifestation. I, the Absolute, am the same “I” manifested.

Consciousness is the expression of the Absolute, there are not two.

When you are the manifest consciousness, you will find you alone are
the multiplicity. You express yourself in all this ample, manifest world.
These are all your expressions, only you as “I Amness”. This state will
itself be transcended, and you will be in the nirguna state.
As soon as you have the conviction that you are not the body, then
automatically and instantly you become the total manifest. As soon as
you leave your individuality, you become the manifest totality. But
your true being is apart from even that which is totally manifest.

When individuality is lost, whatever happens is then seen as total

functioning. The understanding of the total functioning cannot be
divided. There is no question of “I” or “you” understanding something.
41
It is understanding.

Manifestation is possible only if the life force is there. If the life force is
not there, then as far as that particular individual is concerned, there
is no manifestation.

The happening or creating of the state of manifestation is spontaneous

and without attachment, but once it appeared attachment begins.

All this manifestation is called the ocean of Brahma, or the ocean of

Maya. Beyond the ocean of Maya there is beingness extinguished.
Beingness goes into non-beingness.
Although beingness is one it manifests in multitudes.

The manifested world has neither use or non-use. The world has use
for one who considers himself the body. Because of the senses the
world appears to be real, but it is temporary, and is the sickness of the
illusion, Maya.

This manifestation is beginningless. First was born the sky; out of the
sky came the air; out of the air the light and heat; out of that heat the
water; and out of the water whatever was became the earth from
which the whole of life sprouted. These five elements together are
responsible for this great manifestation. Consciousness is the quality of
the essence of the food that is in all the five elements together. The
five elements differ from each other.

All these creations are taking place out of that principle which is
subtler than space. That ancient principle itself takes birth in various
forms. These are the incarnations.

Whatever is manifest before you has come out of consciousness.

There is no enjoyer of this manifest world and universe, all is

happening spontaneously. All perceptible and tangible movements in
the universe and world just happen, without any specific reason, that
is, there is functioning, rotating, vibrating, humming, without a
purpose. Whatever principle is defined by and identified with form,
42
illusion, name and body, it creates, nourishes and sustains itself by
itself. Therefore gradually you will realize that, as the knower, you
have no identity with respect to a place or form.

The consciousness is experiencing its manifestation. This dynamic

manifest consciousness is always in a fluid state. What will happen no
one can say. The message “I Am” is there. The mind-flow is also there.
It is not a personality, it is the consciousness. There is no imprint of
personality, it is the manifest consciousness which is functioning. For
someone who normally always thinks of others as personalities it is
difficult to think of others as a function in consciousness. The play of
the consciousness will not come down to an individual level.
But it is manifestation only.

Who is manifesting through all the great incarnations? Who is

manifesting through the donkeys and pigs? All is consciousness only.
Water taken from a river in a jug does not change in quality, and the
shape of the receptacle of that water is only imagination, since water
is one.

In the world of consciousness this manifestation is going on

continually.

In the unmanifest Supreme (avyakta) the manifest (vyakta) appears.

The manifest (vyakta) creates the person (vyakti), and thinks itself as
separate from it. The manifest (vyakta) sees that the person (vyakti)
appears in consciousness, and that consciousness also appears in the
manifest (vyakta). The realization of the basic unity is the working of
the unmanifest Supreme (avyakta). It is the power behind the
manifest (vyakta), the source from which all flows. It cannot be
contacted, unless there is unity and love and mutual help between the
person (vyakti) and the manifest (vyakta), unless the doing is in
harmony with the being and the knowing. The unmanifest Supreme is
both the source and the fruit of such harmony.

What is the difference between vyakta (the manifest) and avyakta (the
unmanifest)? There is no difference. It is like light and daylight. The
universe is full of light which you do not see; but the same light you
43
see as daylight. And what the daylight reveals is the vyakti (the
person). The person is always the object, the witness is the subject,
and their relation of mutual dependence is the reflection of their
absolute identity. You imagine that they are distinct and separate
states. They are not. They are the same consciousness at rest and in
movement, each state conscious of the other. In chit (universal
consciousness) man knows God and God knows man. In chit the man
shapes the world and the world shapes man. Chit is the link, the
bridge between extremes, the balancing and uniting factor in every
experience. The totality of the perceived is what you call matter. The
totality of all perceivers is what you call the universal mind. The
identity of the two, manifesting itself as perceptibility and perceiving,
harmony and intelligence, loveliness and loving, reasserts itself
eternally.

The Absolute is Paramatman. From this total reality comes the

chidakasha, the wanting to be. From there the physical space, the
entire manifestation, comes into being in a fraction of a second. In
deep sleep there is nothing, then there is the slightest feeling that I
want to be awake, then the entire manifestation takes place within a
split second. The manifestation has appeared on the Unmanifest and
movement started, but the witness is the Absolute.

Before manifestation can take place there must be something which

has manifested itself: that is the Absolute.

All this manifest world is a combination of the five elements. We are in

the five elements, we are part of the five elements, all the play goes
on in the five elements, which were created at the moment there was
no time.
The manifestation of the dynamic, immanent Spirit occurs in the form
of “I Am”. It understands itself as “I Am”. It involves itself in the
activities in the world through the 3 gunas.

The state of beingness is termed as God. The godly state is the entire
manifestation. It is my state in experiencing. It is duality. But my
Unmanifest state is non-dual, and in that state there is no
experiencing and manifestation.
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As soon as the Unmanifest became the manifest a state of duality
arose, and everything that takes place in the manifest is time-bound.

Whatever has been produced will ultimately take its end and go back
into the state from which it came.

It is the nature of all manifestation that the good and the bad follow
each other and in equal measure. The true refuge is only in the
unmanifested.

The manifest world is full of movement which creates and destroys

innumerable forms all the time.

All we see in this manifest world is exactly like a picture on the

television screen.

The uses of the unmanifested? You must sleep in order to wake up.
You must die in order to live, you must melt down to shape anew. You
must destroy to build, annihilate before creation. The Supreme is the
universal solvent, it corrodes every container, it burns through every
obstacle. Without the absolute denial of everything the tyranny of
things would be absolute. The Supreme is the great harmonizer, the
guarantee of the ultimate and perfect balance.....of life in freedom. It
dissolves you and thus reasserts your true being.

Do not think of altering the course of manifestation. When you engage

in thinking it will be at the personality or individual level, about your
personal problems. There is nothing to be done, just find out how this
touch of “I Amness” has come about in you.

The imagination and memory create a body and a personality, and the
manifest assumes wrongly that it is a body and a personality.

In this concept of space and time there is total manifestation, in that

you consider that you are something separate. There is nothing
separate, you are part of the function of the total manifestation. The
consciousness of being present, the five elements and the three
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gunas, that is the total of the universal manifestation.

In the absence of consciousness is there any proof of the existence of

anything?

Consciousness itself is mind, is thought, is all phenomena, all

manifestation.

I am the Unmanifest, and with my manifestation, my form and body is

all this world.

My svarupa has nothing to do with whatever is manifested.

Whatever is manifested will arise and subside. You are not the
manifestation.
You are the manifested. The manifested in already there in the
unmanifest, in the seed.

All this manifest is only a dream of the unmanifest and is not really
happening.

10. The Seed

In the seed of those two forms, parents, there is potential for

innumerable universes.

A small speck of consciousness, which is like a seed, has all the worlds
contained in it. The physical frame is necessary for it to manifest itself.

Seeds are very subtle. All the gross matter is present within the seed.
Your essential being is similar, it is the subtlest yet contains the whole
universe. Seed (bija) means ‘second creation’ and means the past is
being repeated. The mature form gets concentrated in the seed, and
the seed re-creates the past history it contains. The entire manifested
world is inside the seed.
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The knowledge ‘I am’ is the soul of the world. The knowledge ‘I am’ is
an appearance and like everything that appears it is bound to
disappear. ‘I am’ is invisible both before birth and after death of the
body. ‘I am’ is a seed and all experiences are due to it. It is an
infinitesimal seed that contains the universe. Both the seed and the
experience will disappear. All memory will disappear one day. The
knowledge ‘I am’ is time bound.

The seed, the chemical, the product of the five elemental essences,
which give rise to and sustains the consciousness “I Am”. The seed is
like the seed of a tree in the sense that a seed contains all future
manifestations and expressions that will sprout from it. The seed is the
moment of conception, its expression is the thought-free state, like
space, in the knowingness state. The quality of knowingness is space-
like, without concept, but its expression is the physical, tangible, it is
infinitesimal, but its expression is manifest infinity.

That Linga-deha which is a little drop and the knowledge “I Am” is the
same. What is seen is the manifest world which appears in that speck
of consciousness. Just as sweetness is the nature of sugar, so this
speck of consciousness is the nature of that drop of Linga-deha. The
parents, the source of the Linga-deha, are merely an excuse for
preparing that which was conceived.

Out of a very small seed a very big tree grows into the sky. Similarly
this small seed, this beingness.....”I Amness” touch.....out of that seed
all this manifest world is created. The seed which has created this
body and everything else, so long as it is alive, moist, you will behave
as you do. Once that seed is gone, you are in eternity only, in your
eternal state.

There is a seed which is going to produce a great tree. If you cut that
seed you must be able to see the tree in the seed. The tree which I got
is that seed which is called the seed of birth. When I broke that seed
open I got the Self knowledge. Other than Self knowledge what capital
do I have? There are many jnanis, but the real one is who has seen
the tree in the seed.
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The creation is self-effulgent and spontaneous. There is no creator. A
magnificent tree sprouts out of a tiny seed. In the Marathi language
the word ‘moola’ denotes the root of a tree, and with a slight
modification in pronunciation, it means ‘child’. Just as a splendid tree
takes root out of a small seed, a full-grown person is latently rooted in
a child and his beingness. But the Absolute is prior to the root of
creation, which is the child and the beingness. With the emergence of
the ‘child-beingness’ root the first day of experiencing begins.

You took this form because you were a fool. If you had known
anything about it, you would not have come into this world. Even now
you do not have any form. It is not your shape, it is the shape of the
seed. The seed is the original foolish state. The seed is transient, and
the whole world is full of seeds. All the five elements, all the objective
world, is in that seed. You are not the seed.....you are the observer of
the seed.

11. Maya-Illusion

All the creations emanate from the moolamaya, the primary illusion
and its secret humming.

A jnani knows that everything is not, everything will not be, and
everything has never been.

Nothing is really happening in this world. The seeker, the seeking, and
the sought.....none of these three is true. Nothing is
happening.....everything that goes on in the world is a fraud. The
whole thing is an illusion, merely entertainment.

Whatever you see and perceive is all the play of maya, the illusive
principle.

Whatever spiritual and worldly activities are happening through you

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are merely entertainments for passing time. They are only the
functioning of the manifest dynamic principle.....the maya.

All this is an illusion. Whatever it is because of which you see things is

itself an illusion. When you realize this you will give up everything,
since you will be convinced that it is all unreal.

A man considers that whatever he sees is concrete and existing. But

the truth is that he himself is an object, and whatever he thinks and
acts on is itself an illusion. Consciousness itself is the source of all the
mischief, because once you start having this consciousness then that is
the seed of wanting everything, more and more wants.

The sum total of all this is illusion and nobody is responsible for
creation.....it has come spontaneously, and there is no question of
improvement in that.....it will go on its own way.
The primary illusion expresses itself through Self-love, love for
beingness.

You are an illusion, Maya, an imagination. The “I” that appears is

unreal. I know I am unreal. This knowledge within you that knows that
the “I” is unreal, that knowledge which knows change, must itself be
changeless, permanent.

In deep sleep, consciousness was in a dormant condition, there were

no bodies, no concepts, no encumbrances. Upon the arrival of this
apparently wakeful state, with the arrival of the concept “I Am”, the
love of “I Am” woke up. That itself is Maya, illusion.
The concept ‘I am’ is the primordial maya. Along with that God,
Ishvara, and the whole manifestation, the entire universe, has come.
Otherwise there is absolutely nothing. In the state of the Absolute
there is neither Being nor non-Being.

The knowledge ‘I am’ and the world are tricks of Maya. You are
separate from ‘I am’.

Because of the creation of this fraudulent world out of ‘spit’, people are
ashamed, and therefore do not like to expose the offender through
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which the ‘spit’ was ejected. Ask yourself the question: ‘From where
have I emerged, and where am I proceeding to?’ Understanding this,
how can I have any ego at all?

The illusion of the universe is nothing but a very small modification of

your own Self. Your own self is the most ancient, the unlimited. The
ever-changing world is nothing but the thoughts and the trick of the
ancient.

Maya is the expression of that One which cannot be described.

The end of illusion comes when you catch hold of that principle, that
consciousness, which moves about in various disguises. You will see
this principle as a snake, as a buffalo, and then as something else.

Accepting the form as identity is maya.

This fraud of Maya is clever. First it shows us our body and makes us
believe that we are the body, but the body is nothing but a speck of
fertilized sperm, and in that sperm the consciousness is latent. The
essence of the body is the essence of the foodstuff, and this
consciousness lies dormant in it from the very beginning. In that state
of consciousness is the entire universe. Having seen this, whoever has
understood is bound to be quiet, knowing that this is only a transient
happening.

This “I Amness” is the power of Maya. This “I Amness” is not just a

small principle, that itself is the Mula-Maya, the primary illusion.

Maya is the primary source of illusion. At that point love for the self
begins. “I Am” is the love to be. Its expression is all this manifestation.
The state of love of self is present and you have to enjoy or suffer it.
Even when we suffer we love our beingness.

That Maya is so powerful that it gets you completely wrapped up in it.

Maya means “I Am”, “I love to be”. It has no identity except love. That
knowledge of “I Am” is the greatest foe and the greatest friend.
Although it might be your greatest enemy, if you propitiate it properly,
50
it will turn around and lead you to the highest state.

The primary concept Mula Maya, the source of illusion, produces the
five elements at the moment there was no time.

This knowledge “I Am” is the essence of the food that has been
assimilated by the body. It is as material as the body and it will
disappear, like a fire that will be eventually extinguished. The life-
giving force is in this food essence, and the food essence is itself its
own food. If the food body is not present, or when the food body is
exhausted, you will be whatever you were before. Consciousness, the
world, and this manifestation, is an expression that “I Am”.
Understand all this and do not try to interfere. All the prophets have
come and gone, they could not change what is. The sum total is. This
is the play of Maya. All this has happened out of nothingness, and it is
going to the same state. “I Amness” is part of the play. You are prior
to the “I Amness”.

You all are on a stage performing. There is no reality about your

comings and goings, and your problems are so unreal! The guru enters
your dreamlike state to tell you: ‘Stop suffering, wake up!’

This is the province of Maya: A person comes to the Guru with the
sincere intention of spiritual search, then this Maya shows him a little
bit of temptation and off he goes.

Nobody has been able to change that Maya. Just observe without
accepting or rejecting.
Whatever concept one has will happen. How can concepts survive
without the food body? That “I Amness” is not extinguished
immediately, it is prolonged for some time in the form of subtle body.
The physical shape is gone, but the desires contained in the subtle
body are not dissolved. The consciousness endures so long as a
particle of the food essence persists. Krishna said: “I have put these
various beings on the top of a machine of this illusion. They are
mechanically going round”. The mechanical motive force for the
movement of all these beings is Maya, “I Am”, “I love”. The nature of
this love is greed, great liking, intense desire to be. How passionately
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fond of life we are. That is the primordial Maya.....”I love to be”.

The original illusion, which is without words, will not stop acting. You
cannot remove the original illusion.....it has to continue. Subsequent
illusions you can remove, but not the original illusion. The original
Maya has no colour, no shape, nothing at all. You cannot conceive of
that original Maya.

This Maya does not operate independently.....we, you and it, are
partners. Will you dare divorce yourself from this Maya? No, you will
accept that Maya. That ego, that I am so and so, is very difficult to get
rid of, but the ego cannot touch one who really understands.

Can you use this Maya for anything? You might accumulate enormous
wealth. Who is going to benefit after your death? Whatever you earn
you will try to protect, but it is not going to comfort you, you are not
going to see the world again, so everything is to be used by others.
Even your knowledge will not remain personal, it is meant for others.
It is all public, all non-personal.

In the world there are so many people and they are so busy with their
affairs that they do not have time to eat. These are the characteristics
of the Maya. The great Maya principle is making you do all her tricks,
and you are also abiding in what she says, and finally, that light of
yours, that beingness, gets extinguished. Then where are you going?

The dream appears to be beginningless, but in fact it is only now.

From moment to moment you are renewing it. Once you have seen
that you are dreaming, you shall wake up. But you do not see because
you want the dream to continue. A day will come when you will long
for the ending of the dream, with all your heart and mind, and be
willing to pay any price. The price will be dispassion and detachment,
the loss of interest in the dream itself.

If both dream and escape from dream are imaginings, what is the way
out? There is no need of a way out! Don’t you see that a way out is
also part of the dream? All you have to do is to see the dream as
dream. The very idea of going beyond the dream is illusory. Why go
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anywhere? Just realize you are dreaming a dream you call the world,
and stop looking for ways out. The dream is not your problem. Your
problem is that you like one part of your dream and not another. Love
all, or none of it, and stop complaining. When you have seen the
dream as a dream, you have done all that needs be done.

When you are bound by the illusion: ‘I am this body’, you are merely a
point in space and a moment in time. When the self-identification with
the body is no more, all space and time are in your mind, which is a
mere ripple in consciousness, which is awareness reflected in nature.
Awareness and matter are the active and the passive aspects of pure
being, which is in both and beyond both. Space and time are the body
and the mind of the universal existence. My feeling is that all that
happens in space and time happens to me, that every experience is
my experience, every form is my form. What I take myself to be,
becomes my body, and all that happens to that body becomes my
mind. But at the root of the universe there is pure awareness, beyond
space and time, here and now. Know it to be your real being, and act
accordingly.

The entire manifestation is of the nature of a dream, or a mirage, but

you interpret the rest of the manifestation as being a mirage and do
not let go of the seer of the phenomenon. The seer is also part of the
mirage.

What you see as false, dissolves. It is the very nature of illusion to

dissolve on investigation. Investigate.....that is all. You cannot destroy
the false, for you are creating it all the time. Withdraw from it, ignore
it, and it will cease to be.

12. The Show

The world-play is an image created by consciousness.

The world is but a show, glittering and empty. It is, and yet is not. It is
53
there as long as I want to see it and take part in it. When I cease
caring, it dissolves. It has no cause and serves no purpose. It just
happens when we are absent-minded. It appears exactly as it looks,
but there is no depth in it, nor meaning. Only the onlooker is real, call
him Self or Atma. To the Self the world is but a colourful show, which
he enjoys as long as it lasts and forgets when it is over. Whatever
happens on the stage makes him shudder in terror or roll with
laughter, yet all the time he is aware that it is but a show. Without
desire or fear he enjoys it, as it happens.

All the difficulties in one’s life should be merely watched like something
in a play. When one scene is finished, another scene takes place. The
entire play does not take place anywhere but in yourself. Ultimately
the scenes that take place are merely movements in your own
consciousness.

The world is a passing show that is in a state of flux continually. The

world as a passing show is thrown like a picture on your beingness.

Consciousness has kept you entranced in the play of the world.

Enquire about consciousness and what is the source of it.

During the waking hours you are as if on the stage playing a role. But
what are you when the play is over? You are what you are. What you
were before the play began, you remain when it is over. The
performance may be splendid or clumsy, but you are not in it, you
merely watch it, with interest and sympathy. Keep in mind all the time
that you are only watching while the play.....life.....is going on.

How did the show start? There is no reason, no cause, no purpose. It

is spontaneously happening. No one is working deliberately.

This play is just happening. You are not playing a part. When you are
ignorant you think you are playing a part in this manifest world. You
have to understand that the principle which you are using to talk, to
move about, and operate in this world, is not you.

Once you realize that all these goings-on are the products and play of
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the five elements, in the realm of beingness, you remain unaffected by
it and apart from it. Just as a dead man does not interfere with the
affairs of a live one, so similarly the one who has understood and
realized the beingness is not interested in the activities and
happenings within the domain of beingness.

It is all lila (play), you have nothing to do with it.

Plays are written, planned and rehearsed, but the world just sprouts
into being out of nothing and returns to nothing. Obsessed with the
idea of means and end, of work and purpose, you see me apparently
functioning. In reality I only look. Whatever is done, is done on the
stage. Joy and sorrow, life and death, they are all real to the man in
bondage. To me they are all in the show, as unreal as the show itself. I
perceive the world just like you, but you believe to be in it, while I see
it as an iridescent drop in the vast expanse of consciousness.

Everything will happen, you have no control over it. It is a

misconception to think I can control what I do. Whatever happens,
happens by itself. All this is the show, or the expression, of
consciousness.....the nature of it is change. It is the dance of the
conscious presence. There are so many ways in which consciousness
entertains itself, many different forms, abilities, capacities are
functioning, but the functioning is merely to entertain itself. When it is
tired, it rests in sleep, when awake it needs some kind of
entertainment, some movement, some doing.

They are all appearances in consciousness, and each will last according
to its own duration, but basically nothing that happens has any validity
or importance. Until the awakening, or understanding, you think that
you are the doer, but once this apperception takes place you know
there is no entity that is working.

The mind is both the actor and the stage. All is of the mind, and you
are not the mind. The mind is born and reborn, not you. The mind
creates the world and all the wonderful variety of it. Just like in a good
play you have all sorts of characters and situations, so you need a
little of everything to make a world.
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Nobody suffers in a play? Unless one identifies himself with it. Do not
identify yourself with the world and you will not suffer.

I am like a cinema screen.....clear and empty.....the pictures pass over

it and disappear, leaving it as clear and empty as before. In no way is
the screen affected by the pictures, nor are the pictures affected by
the screen. The screen intercepts and reflects the pictures, it does not
shape them. It has nothing to do with the rolls of films. These are as
they are, lumps of destiny (parabdha), but not my destiny; the
destinies of the people on the screen. In reality nothing happens.
Onto the screen of the mind destiny forever projects its pictures,
memories of former projections and thus the illusion constantly renews
itself. The pictures come and go.....light intercepted by ignorance. See
the light and disregard the picture.

It is the real that creates the urge; the inner prompts the outer and
the outer responds in interest and effort. But ultimately there is no
inner, nor outer; the light of consciousness is both the creator and the
creature, the experiencer and the experience, the body and the
embodied. A power projects all this, take care of it and all your
problems will come to an end. The projecting power is imagination
prompted by desire.

You are pure light appearing as a picture on the screen and also
becoming one with it. All is in the picture exposed on the cinema
screen, nothing is in the light, including what you take yourself to be,
the person. You are the light only.

Your pure state is winding up the show.

13. The World

Trace the world to its source, and you will find that before the world
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was, you were, and when the world is no longer, you remain.

Make full use of your mind. Your mind is free to roam the three worlds.

Entire universes are imploding and exploding every moment.

God is not running the world. Nobody is running the world. All happens
by itself. All is a play in consciousness.

Yours is the desire that creates the universe. Know the world as your
own creation and be free. You are the maker of the world in which you
live. You alone can change it, or unmake it.

Everyone creates a world for himself and lives in it, imprisoned by

one’s ignorance. All we have to do is to deny reality to our prison. You
have projected onto yourself a world of your own imagination, based
on memories, on desires, and fears, and you have imprisoned yourself
in it. Break the spell and be free. This world is painted by you on the
screen of consciousness, and is entirely your own private world. Only
your sense ‘I Am’, though in the world, is not of the world. Once you
realize that the world is your own projection, you are free of it. You
need not free yourself of a world that does not exist, except in your
own imagination! Realize that there is nobody to force the world on
you, that it is due to the habit of taking the imaginary to be real.

Just as you recreate your world on waking up, so is the universe

unrolled.

As the tiny point of a pencil can draw innumerable pictures, so does

the dimensionless point of awareness draw the contents of the vast
universe. Find that point and be free. You create this world out of your
own memories. As long as you are ignorant of yourself as the creator,
your world is limited and repetitive. Once you go beyond your self-
identification with your past, you are free to create a new world of
harmony and beauty. Or you just remain.....beyond being and non-
being.

In the immensity of consciousness a light appears, a tiny point that

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moves rapidly and traces shapes, thoughts and feelings, concepts and
ideas, like the pen writing on paper. And the ink that leaves a trace is
memory. You are that tiny point and by your movement the world is
ever recreated. Stop moving, and there will be no world. Look within
and you will find that the point of light is the reflection of the
immensity of light in the body, as the sense ‘I Am’. There is only light,
all else appears. To the mind it appears as darkness. It can be known
only through its reflections. All is seen in daylight.....except daylight.

I have no work to do, no duties to perform. that part of me which you

may call God will look after the world. This world of yours, that so
much needs looking after, lives and moves in your mind. Outside your
consciousness nothing exists.

As long as you believe that only the outer world is real, you remain its
slave.
Without imagination there is no world. Your conviction that you are
conscious of a world is the world. The world you perceive is made of
consciousness; what you call matter is consciousness itself. You are
the space (akash) in which it moves, the time in which it lasts, the
love that gives it life. Cut off imagination and attachment and what
remains?

The world hangs on the thread of consciousness; no consciousness, no

world. The world exists for you only when you are conscious. If you
are not conscious then there is no world for you. There is nothing
there. If there is no consciousness there is no sense of time.

The moment the feeling “I Am” appears, the world also appears.

We live in one world, only I see it as it is, while you do not. You see
yourself in the world, while I see the world in myself. To you, you get
born and die, while to me the world appears and disappears. Our world
is real, but your view of it is not.

My actual experience is not different from yours. It is my evaluation

and attitude that differ. I see the same world as you do, but not the
same way. There is nothing mysterious about it. Everybody sees the
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world through the idea he has of himself. As you think yourself to be,
so you think the world to be. If you imagine yourself as separate from
the world, the world will appear as separate from you, and you will
experience desire and fear. I do not see the world as separate from
me and so there is nothing for me to desire, or fear.
I move in and out of consciousness easily and naturally, and therefore
to me the world is a home, not a prison.

Thinking yourself to be the body you know the world as a collection of

material things. When you know yourself as a centre of consciousness,
the world appears as the ocean of the mind. When you know yourself
as you are in reality, you know the world as yourself.
There is nothing wrong with the senses, it is your imagination which
misleads you. It covers up the world as it is, with what you imagine it
to be.....something existing independently of you. You cling to the idea
that you were born into a world of pain and sorrow, whereas I know
that the world is a child of love, having its beginning, growth, and
fulfilment in love. But I am beyond love even.

The world is nothing but the picture of your own “I” consciousness. It
is as if you had received a communication telling you that you are, and
immediately the world appears. When you are in deep sleep and you
feel that you are awake, the dream world appears simultaneously.
With the “I Am”, the world appears in the waking and dream states.

Consciousness and the world appear and disappear together, therefore

they are two aspects of the same state.

The source of the universe is your consciousness only. The very world
and universe are contained in the speck of your consciousness only.

The world appears in consciousness, which is the totality of the known

in the immensity of the unknown. What begins and ends is mere
appearance. The world can be said to appear, but not to be. The
appearance may last very long on some scale of time, and be very
short on another, but ultimately it comes to the same. Whatever is
time-bound is momentary and has no reality.

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Before the world was, consciousness was. In consciousness it comes
into being, in consciousness it lasts, and into pure consciousness it
dissolves. At the root of everything is the feeling “I Am”. The state of
mind: “there is a world” is secondary, for to be, I do not need the
world. The world needs me.

The world is full of contradictions, hence your search for harmony and
peace. These you cannot find in the world, for the world is the child of
chaos. To find order you must search within. The world comes into
being only when you are born in a body. No body.....no world. First
enquire whether you are the body. The understanding of the world will
come later.

Your weakness is due to your conviction that you were born into the
world. In reality the world is ever recreated in you and by you. See
everything as emanating from the light which is the source of your
own being. You will find in that light there is love and infinite energy.

To know the world is to forget the self. To know the self you forget the
world. We have divorced ourselves in our imagination from the real
world of common experience and enclosed ourselves in a cloud of
personal desires and fears, images and thoughts, ideas and concepts.
There are many, all sleeping, all dreaming, each dreaming his own
personal dream. All the dreams are superimposed over a common
world. To some extent they shape and influence each other. The basic
unity operates in spite of all. At the root of it all lies self-forgetfulness;
not knowing who I am.

What is the world after all? A collection of memories.

I do not need the world. Nor am I in one. The world you think of is in
your own mind. I can see it through your eyes and mind, but I am
fully aware that it is a projection of memories. It is touched by the real
only at the point of awareness, which can be only now.

In your case the world occupies the entire field of consciousness, in

the case of the jnani the world is a mere speck. The world lasts, but
for a moment. It is your memory that makes you think that the world
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continues, but the jnani does not live by memory and sees the world
as it is, a momentary appearance in consciousness.

Your world appears and disappears according to the state of your

mind. The jnani’s world is real, true, as it is perceived. Your world is
something alien, and you are afraid of it. The jnani’s world is himself,
and he is at home.

It is your mind that has separated the world outside your skin from the
world inside, and put them in opposition. This created fear and hatred
and all the miseries of living.

Everyone lives in his own world. Not all the worlds are equally good or
bad. The mind projects the world, colours it its own way. When you
meet a man, he is a stranger. When you marry him, he becomes your
own self. When you quarrel, he becomes your enemy. It is your mind’s
attitude that determines what he is to you. The world is illusory as
long as it is subjective, and to that extent only. Reality lies in
objectivity.

Your personal universe does not exist by itself. It is merely a limited

and distorted view of the real. It is not the universe that needs
improving, but your way of looking.

You are not of the world. You are not even in the world. The world is
not. You alone are.

The world had all the time to get better, yet it did not. What hope is
there for the future? Of course, there have been and will be periods of
harmony and peace, when sattva was in the ascendance, but things
get destroyed by their own perfection. A perfect society is necessarily
static, and therefore it stagnates and decays. From the summit all
roads lead downwards. Societies are like people: they are born, they
grow to some point of relative perfection, and then decay and die.

Striving for the improvement of the world is a most praiseworthy

occupation. Done selflessly, it clarifies the mind and purifies the heart.
But soon man will realize that he pursues a mirage. Local and
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temporary improvement is always possible, and was achieved again
and again under the influence of a great king or teacher, but it would
soon come to an end, leaving humanity in a new cycle of misery. The
only way to renewal lies through destruction. You must melt down the
old jewellery into formless gold before you can mould a new one. Only
the people who have gone beyond the world can change the world. It
never happened otherwise. The few whose impact was long lasting
were all knowers of reality. Reach their level and only then talk of
helping the world.

You cannot change the world before changing yourself. It is neither

necessary nor possible to change others. But if you change yourself
you will find that no other change is needed. To change the picture
you merely change the film, you do not attack the cinema screen.

Only those who know the self, who have seen beyond the world, can
improve the world. What is in the world cannot save the world. If you
really care to help the world, you must step out of it.

Whatever is happening in the world is in the nature of a dream. One

who knows this cannot be interested in improving such a world. He
does not concern himself with the behaviour in the world.

The world suffers for very valid reasons. If you want to help the world,
you must be beyond the need of help. Then all your doing as well as
not doing will help the world most effectively.

By all means help the world. You will not help much, but the effort will
make you grow. When the time comes for the world to be helped,
some people are given the will, the wisdom, and the power to cause
great changes.

There is nothing wrong with the world, but for the people who make it
bad. Go and ask them to behave. As long as human behaviour is
dominated by desire and fear, there is not much hope.

You create the world in your imagination like a dream. Do not be

afraid of a world you yourself have created. Cease from looking for
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happiness and reality in a dream, and you will wake up.

The world that you can perceive is a very small world indeed, and it is
entirely private. You have furnished your world with your imaginations
and expectations. Take it to be a dream and be done with it.

You live in a world of imaginings. Your world is personal, private,

unshareable, intimately your own. Nobody can enter it, see as you
see, hear as you hear, feel your emotions and think your thoughts. In
your world you are truly alone, enclosed in your ever-changing dream,
which you take for life. The jnani lives in a world of realities. His world
is an open world, common to all, accessible to all. In his world there is
community, insight, love, real quality, the individual is the total, and
the totality is in the individual. All are one and the One is all.

The deep urge to know the truth will definitely occur, but if you desire
to inquire into and to understand this entire world of objects, you will
never reach the goal of knowing yourself. You will be captivated by the
world.

There is a power in the body which is the root of the existence and
maintenance of the entire universe. Whatever upheavals occur in the
world, they are movements in that power. And whatever events take
place are movements in that consciousness.

Out of the manifest consciousness, the material world is created.....the

eternal Parabrahman, the eternal Brahman, in which this play is
always going on. In that play you are the total, no separate identity
arises. In the body is the taste of “I Am”, when the body is gone, the
taste is gone.

The whole universe is experienced in the consciousness “I Am”. If that

is not there, what else can ever exist? The world exists in this speck of
consciousness, and this consciousness can only exist if there is food.

See yourself as you are and you will see the world as it is.....a single
block of reality, indivisible, indescribable.

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The entire world is the expression of the Self. Also the tiniest of the
tiny, like an atom, is the Self. Beingness is like a seed and is very tiny,
but its expression is the manifest world. The seed contains the
substance which is the very source of love. Having provided love to the
entire manifest world, the remnant is that ‘I am’.

Of the entire universe you are the subtle cause. All is because you are.

Because you are, all the worlds, the universe is; this is your reflection.
The sun and the moon are the reflections of that very principle “I Am”.
You are that speck of consciousness and out of that the entire cosmos
is created. It is very rare to meet anyone who considers the sun and
the moon and the universe as their expressions.

It is by your consent that the world exists. Withdraw your belief in its
reality and it will dissolve like a dream.

When you are not conscious, your world does not exist. You are
conscious of your presence and the world outside, but they are not two
things.

Through desire you have created the world with its pains and
pleasures. By its very nature pleasure is limited and transitory. Out of
pain desire is born, in pain it seeks fulfilment, and it ends in the pain
of frustration and despair. Pain is the background of pleasure, all
seeking of pleasure is born in pain and ends in pain. The world is the
abode of desires and fears. You cannot find peace in it. For peace you
must go beyond the world. The root cause of the world is self-love.
Because of it we seek pleasure and avoid pain. Replace self-love by
the love of the Self and the picture changes. Brahma the Creator is the
sum total of all desires. The world is the instrument for their fulfilment.
Souls take whatever pleasure they desire and pay for them in tears.
Time squares all accounts. The law of balance reigns supreme.

To take appearance for reality is a grievous sin and the cause of all
calamities. You have created the world’s sorrows out of your own
desires and fears. It is all due to your having forgotten your own
being. Once having given reality to the picture on the screen, you love
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its people and suffer for them and seek to save them. You must begin
with yourself, there is no other way. You believe that you are in the
world, not the world in you. You are the source and the end of every
event. Control is possible at the source itself. Causes or no causes, a
world of which you are the only source and ground is fully within your
power to change, because what is created can always be dissolved and
re-created. All will happen as you want it, provided you really want it.

Body consciousness is because of the five elements. Consciousness is

because the body is. Brahman is because the consciousness is.
Without the bodily consciousness there is no Brahman. Body
consciousness and the world are not different, they are identical.

The world can exist only if this psychosomatic apparatus is there.

Know this to be just an apparatus, and be apart from it.

The world is an illusion, it is not eternal.

The entire universe is based on the concept “I Am”. It is illusory,

imaginary, there is no substance to it.

The whole universe is alive as long as you have this consciousness.

Once this consciousness is gone from you, nothing is there.

Go beyond seeing the world as a collection of names and forms, or

objects and bodies.

The world is entertainment to you only when you know you are
identified with your body, and consider other people also as bodies,
not as knowledge.

Only the Parabrahman has the conviction that this world never existed.

No one can change the world in the smallest degree, not even sages.
Whatever happens, happens.

Attraction to the world takes the form of craving for the respect of
others, and craving for more knowledge of more arts. Craving means
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that you think it has some benefits, some opportunities.

Where is the world for those who have realized? The world is in that
beingness.

There is no cause for the creation of this objective world. It has come
spontaneously, there was no action on anyone’s part.

The world is within me, I am not within the world.

Just as the dream world, uncalled for, has appeared and you observe
it, similarly this world, uncalled for, has appeared and you are
compelled to observe it. Just observe.

In this world there are no beings that are born, or living, or dead.
Nothing of the sort. It is just a play in consciousness.

The traditional view is that Brahman created the world, Visnu

maintains it, and Siva destroys it. Is this Brahman who creates the
world the same as the Brahma-randhra out of which the sense of “I
Am” comes? If so, Brahman is therefore this “I Amness”. All these
names are given to it. Whatever is time-bound is created out of the
beingness.

The entire world is the body of the beingness, the play of beingness.
The manifest world is the play of beingness. Similarly, on a TV screen
you might see rocks, trees, an ocean, people. Who is playing those
parts? It is the light only. Having realized this go into quietude and
understand that in the cell of beingness many universes are playing
about.

The universe is a stage on which a world drama is being played. The

quality of the performance is all that matters: not what the actors say
and do, but how they say and do it.

This world is only for the moment. So long as the beingness is there
the world is there. Without my beingness there is no world.

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The world is there because I am, but I am not the world. I am neither
the potentiality, nor the actualization, nor the actuality, of things. In
my light they come and go as the specks of dust dancing in the
sunbeam. The light illumines the specks, but does not depend on
them. Nor can it be said to create them. It cannot be even said to
know them.

The world is contained in that tiny spot of consciousness which I am.

From where are you emanating, and to where are you proceeding?
Because of this fraudulent world which is created out of spit people are
sincerely ashamed. Therefore they would not like to expose or parade
the very mouthpiece from which that spit was ejected. That is why
they want to keep it in hiding always. A most despicable state of
affairs.

There is the material world (mahadakash) and the spiritual world

(paramakash). Between lies the universal mind (chidakash), which is
also the universal heart (premakash). It is wise love that makes the
two one. There is a mental or psychological link between the spirit and
matter. The link may be called psyche or nature (antahkarana). When
the nature is raw, undeveloped, quite primitive, it is subject to gross
illusions. As it grows in breadth and sensitivity, it becomes a perfect
link between pure matter and pure spirit, and gives meaning to matter
and expression to spirit.

In mundane, worldly matters you have recourse to spirituality to

understand how unreal this is. Once you understand the object of
spirituality, you also understand that spirituality is unreal, and in the
process you dismiss all this world.

If you attempt to investigate the world of your observation, you will

never reach your destination. You need to give up what you have
heard and abide in your Self. If you attempt to investigate this entire
manifest world you will be caught more and more in a quagmire.
Unless you abide in yourself you will not understand all this manifest
world.

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You take the world too seriously. What is wrong with play? You have a
purpose only as long as you are not complete (purna); until then
completeness, perfection is the purpose. But when you are complete in
yourself, fully integrated within and without, then you enjoy the
universe; you do not labour at it.

Some Mahatmas teach that: “The world is not an accident nor a play
of God, but the result of a plan of work that aims at awakening and
developing consciousness throughout the universe. The world is good
and serves a good purpose. Although such teachers concede that the
world is a mental structure and ultimately all is one, the structure has
meaning and serves a desirable purpose, and like a gardener, God in
His own garden grows beings, men into supermen. The will of God is
an expression of an absolute necessity to grow in love and wisdom and
power, to actualize the infinite potentials of life and consciousness.”
.....This is right for the outgoing path (pravritti), but for the return
path (nivritti) naughting oneself is necessary. Take your stand where
nothing is (paramakash). Words do not reach there, nor thoughts. To
the mind it is all darkness and silence. Then consciousness begins to
stir and wakes up the mind (chitakash), which projects the world
(mahatakash), built of memory and imagination. Once the world
comes into being all that these Mahatmas say may be so, because it is
in the nature of the mind to imagine goals, to strive towards them. It
is not denied that these are divine attributes, but take your stand
where no difference exists, where things are not, nor the minds that
create them. There you will be at home. There is no separation, we are
not separate selves. There is only one self, the Supreme Reality, in
which the personal and the impersonal are one.

Once you admit a cause, then God is the ultimate cause and the world
the effect. They are different, but not separate. When you see the
world you see God. There is no seeing God apart from the world.
Beyond the world to see God is to be God. The light by which you see
the world, which is God, is the tiny little spark “I Am”, apparently so
small, yet the first and the last in every act of knowing and loving.

This manifest world is the dynamic play of the five elements. In that
there is no scope for an individual. A diamond radiates light all around;
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it is radiance itself. In deep meditation you will realize that, like the
brilliance emanating from a diamond in all directions, the manifest
world emanates out of you. It is your effulgence only.

The Self is the world.

The reason the world appeared is that you came to know that you are.
Because you are your world is.

Are you sure you and I live in the same world? My mind is not here,
my life is not here. Your world of desires and their fulfilments, of fears
and their escapes, is definitely not my world. I do not even perceive it,
except what you tell me about it. It is your private dream world, and
my only reaction to it is to ask you to stop dreaming.

When you wake up you have only the sense of being, without words.
Later you know fully that you are and the world is, but that is an
illusion.

Within the prison of your world appears a Guru who tells you that the
world of painful contradictions, which you have created, is neither
continuous nor permanent, and is based on a misapprehension. He
pleads with you to get out of it, by the same way by which you got
into it. You got into it by forgetting what you are, and you will get out
of it by knowing yourself as you are.

Once you realize, beyond all trace of doubt that the world is in you and
not you in the world, you are out of it. Of course the body remains in
the world and of the world, but you are not deluded by it.

When you sit quietly, being one with the knowledge “I Am”, then you
are not concerned with the world or what goes on in the world.

Because I am aware of my true nature I no longer need this

consciousness, even for a few minutes. At the end of their life many
will pay everything for an extension of it, but I have lost all love for
this manifested world.

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So long as the consciousness is there everything is so important to
you, but if that vanishes, then what is the worth of the world to you?

If the world is false, then the plan and its creator are also false.

“I” is the seed from which everything comes out. If the seed is not
there, the universe is not. How have you come into this so-called
objective world? Here everything will be wiped out. I invite you, in
your own interest, to go home.

The world of the realized man is perfect, changeless. It has no

characteristics by which it can be identified. Nothing can be said about
it. He is his world. His world is himself. It is complete and perfect.
Every impression is erased, every experience rejected, he needs
nothing, not even himself, for he cannot lose himself. His world is
single and very simple. In his world nothing happens. His is a non-
verbal world. In his world words and their contents have no being.
There is eternal silence. His silence sings, his emptiness is full, he
lacks nothing. He is completely without ideas. In his world nothing
changes. You cannot say he is alone, or not alone, when words do not
apply, but of course he is alone, for he is all. There are no ruler and
ruled here. There is no duality whatsoever. His world is real, while
yours is made of dreams, yours is of the mind. In your world he
appears to have a name and shape, to display consciousness and
activity, but in his world he has being only. You are free to leave your
world for his. First see your world as it is, not as you imagine it to be.
Discrimination will lead to detachment, detachment will ensure right
action, right action will build the inner bridge to your real being. Action
is a proof of earnestness. Do what your teacher tells you to do
diligently and faithfully, and all obstacles will dissolve.

All that lives, works for protecting, perpetuating, and expanding

consciousness. This is the world’s sole meaning and purpose. The
entire universe becomes a school of Yoga.....ever raising the level of
consciousness, discovery of new dimensions, with their properties,
qualities, and powers.

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14. Space

Once you accept time and space as real, you will consider yourself
minute and short-lived. But are they real? Do time and space depend
on you or you on them? As body you are in space. As mind you are in
time. But you are not mere body with a mind in it.

Space is created.

The four elements are presided over by space. In what activity is

space engaged?
All this is the product of the five elements, and the elements, including
space are substances. Space is like darkness, nothingness, like night.
Out of space vital breath arose as a vibration.

The entire universe (mahadakash) exists only in consciousness

(chidakash), while I have my stand in the Absolute (paramakash).

Mahadakash is nature, the ocean of existences, the physical space with

all that can be contacted through the senses. Chidakash is the expanse
of awareness, the mental space of time, perception and cognition.
Paramakash is the timeless and spaceless reality, mindless,
undifferentiated, the infinite potentiality, the source and origin, the
substance and the essence, both matter and consciousness.....yet
beyond both. It cannot be perceived, but can be experienced as ever
witnessing the witness, perceiving the perceiver, the origin and the
end of all manifestation, the root of time and space, the prime cause in
every chain of causation.

One space is covered by more subtle and more expansive space. The
space of the world is there because of the space of the mind, or prior
to mind. At the base of space is the knowledge “I Am”. The space is
contained in the knowledge “I Am”, and prior to “I Am” is chidakash.
Chidakash is the source of the universe. Chidakash is the root of the
mind space. Because of the chidakash, the great space, mahakash, is
there.
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Mahakash is the infinite space. The infinite space is dark. In that
physical space all the universe arises and sets and is destroyed. All the
experiences that are going on in the play of consciousness, they are
just gone, ending up in pure space. The whole world is in an ever-
changing state, and no form will remain permanently. Finally all the
forms will vanish in space and become formless. Millions of people,
animals, and other beings have come and gone, but the sum total of
the universe does not become more or less. It remains unchanged.
They have never become less. They are always there.

Everything starts, everything happens, in the space of the cosmos,

and it results in concrete actions of the worldly space. Whatever
happens in this concrete world, the instruments and the aids come
from the space. The raw material comes from the space. Words or
sounds are expressions of the space. The space is there prior to the
light. All is spontaneous, there is no author.

Prakriti and Purusa, these are two principles. Purusa means stationary,
Prakriti is the movement. They have no body or form. Beginning from
space, which is steady, there is the movement of the air, Prakriti. The
Prakriti projections begin there. With the air and the sky there is
friction, and out of the friction there is heat, and when this heat
subsides it oozes in the form of water. The water falls as rain, and
where it settles the earth formation takes place, and out of the earth
the sprouting of the vegetation occurs. At the stage of earth and
vegetation only the formation of bodies, forms, shapes, takes place.
Then various insects, animals, human species, are born But all the
formation is already decided in the space. the fate is already sealed in
the space. There is the contact of Purusa and Prakriti in the space, and
its final culmination is the creation of human bodies. It is all the play
of Prakriti and Purusa. It is not real, but in the realm of Maya it is real.
Understand all this game and get out of it. Understand how futile it is
to have this shape.

Before you think.....you are. In the space all movement happens, for
any appearance or any movement, the space must be there.

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When you become one with consciousness you become one with
space.

As soon as consciousness stirred, space-time came. In this space-time

everyone suffers.

All that is seen and perceived in space is the creation of consciousness

and is infused with it. The entire created world of form will finally
merge into space.

Your consciousness, the sense of presence, is the very shell in which

the waking world or the dream world proliferates. In your
consciousness, in the sense that “I Am”, an inner world is being
perceived as something external, as something taking place in the
waking state, but it is a dream. Whatever is visible or perceptible is an
outcome of space only. When all that disappears, again space prevails.
Your world concretizes out of space and in space, and you term all that
with various names and titles for your convenience to carry out your
day-to-day activities. In reality none of such creations has any valid
form or individuality of its own. “I Amness” and the world are one.

The very base is that you do not know you are. Suddenly the feeling of
“I Amness” appears. The moment it appears you see space, mental
space, that subtle sky-like space. You are that. When you are able to
stabilize in that state, you are the space only. When this space-like
identity “I Am” disappears, the space will also disappear. There is no
space. When that space-like “I Am” goes into oblivion, that is the
eternal state, nirguna, no form, no beingness.

The Self is subtler that the space.

The ‘here’ is everywhere and the ‘now’ is always. Go beyond the ‘I-
am-the-body’ idea and you will find that space and time are in you,
and not you in space and time. Once you have understood this, the
main obstacle to realization is removed.

Chidakash is that raw material by which you evaluate whatever you

experience or whatever you observe. In chidakash you evaluate the
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world as name and form, that a form is like this or like that, but when
name and form are dissolved, a dissolution takes place. All forms
dissolve in mahakash. In the process of becoming more subtle, the
external forms are dissolved into mahakash.....no more names and
forms. Simultaneously the process of evaluation and mind functioning
stops, dissolves itself into chidakash. When evaluation is not there, the
mind is like space. When both mahakash and chidakash become still, it
is space only and you are the space. You should be like space. If you
are the space and not the body, then at that stage the body does not
remain the body because there is no one to evaluate the body as
body.

When you are the space you are no more the body, but whatever is
contained in the space, and the space, you are. This space is known as
chidakash. When you are the chidakash you are subtler than the
physical space, expansiveness is more. In chidakash you are still
confined, still conditioned by thinking “I Am”, therefore the next is
Paramakash. Paramakash is the highest, in which there are other
akashes.....seven. In chidakash this knowingness is “I Am”, but in
Paramakash there is no is, or is not, It transcends everything.

You will slowly realize you are just like space, because space is the
beginning and the end of everything.

When you are stabilized in your own Self, then there is no otherness,
you are everything. If you abide in your Self you are like space and
there is no duality left. You are as expansive and as subtle as the
space, and that is liberation. You are not conditioned by any name or
form. If you are like space, what is the point of going elsewhere? The
space which is here is also everywhere else.

Know yourself as beyond space and time, in contact with them only at
the point of here and now.

15. Time
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What is time? Time means space.

Time appears spontaneously. With the appearance of consciousness

time starts.

Time is a succession of moments; each moment appears out of

nothing and disappears into nothing, never to reappear.

In time and space there is eternal flow, birth and death again,
advance, retreat, another advance, again retreat.....apparently without
a beginning and without an end.

The memory of an event cannot pass for the event itself, nor can the
anticipation. There is something exceptional, unique, about the
present event, which the previous and the coming do not have. It
stands out as if illumined. There is the stamp of reality on the actual,
which the past and future do not have. But there is nothing peculiar in
the present event to make it different from the past and future,
because for a moment the past was actual and the future will become
so. The past is in memory, the future is in imagination, and there is
nothing in the present event itself that makes it stand out as real.
What makes the present different is obviously my presence. I am real
because I am always now, in the present. It is what is with me that
now shares in my reality. A thing focused in the now is with me, for I
am ever present. It is my own reality that I impart to the present
event.

Without memory and expectation there can be no time.

The moment the mind, drawing on its stock of memories, begins to

imagine, it fills the space with objects, and time with events. It is the
mind that, itself in movement, sees everything moving, and having
created time, worries about the past and future.

The sense ‘I am a person in time and space’ is poison. In a way, time

itself is the poison. In time all things come to an end, and new are
born, to be devoured in their turn. Do not identify yourself with time,
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do not ask anxiously: ‘What next, what next?’ Step out of time and see
it devour the world. Say: ‘Well, it is in the nature of time to put an end
to everything. Let it be. It does not concern me. I am not combustible,
nor do I need to collect fuel’.

All waiting is futile. To depend on time to solve our problems is self-

delusion. The future, left to itself, merely repeats the past. Change can
only happen now, never in the future.

In due course we shall come back to the starting point. Time cannot
take us out of time, as space cannot take us out of space. all you get
by waiting is more waiting. Absolute perfection is here and now, not in
some future, near or far.

When you know the habit of longing for the known past, and fearing
the unknown future, are in the mind only, you can go beyond them.

Past and future are in the mind only. I am in svarupa, in my own

state, timelessly in the now. I am now.

Time is endless, though limited. Eternity is in the split moment of the

now. We miss it because the mind is ever shuttling between the past
and the future. It will not stop to focus the now. It can be done with
comparative ease, if interest is aroused. Once you are well established
in the now, you have nowhere else to go.

You can start only from where you are. You are here and now, you
cannot get out of here and now.

Wherever you go, the sense of here and now you carry with you all the
time. It means you are independent of space and time, that space and
time are in you, not you in them.

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
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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 convention.

The mind creates time and space and takes its own creations for
reality. All is here and now, but we do not see it. Truly, all is in me and
by me. There is nothing else. The very idea of ‘else’ is a disaster.

That event which is birth, living, and death together constitute nothing
but time, duration. Before the sense of presence arrived you were in
that state in which the concept of time was never there.

Everybody is trying to protect and preserve the time factor.....that is,

the
consciousness. So long as time is there, consciousness is there; and
time is there so long as the body is present. When the life span is
over, time has gone. When time has gone, consciousness has gone.

Until consciousness is there, without a body and your identification

with it, time does not pass. Time and consciousness appear together,
when you witness there is time. Without consciousness there is no
time, because consciousness is time. There is no consciousness prior
to body, it was a timeless state.

In nature everything is time-bound, but nature itself is not time-

bound.

An event which has happened already does not come back. Similar
things may happen, but they will never be identical. According to one’s
firm conviction, the one who dies will have another dream, in which he
will be reborn.

What exists as the body, breath, and the knowledge “I Am” is one
bundle which has been created, and whatever happens is contained in
that bundle. Time has brought this about and time will end it. It has
happened, it will continue for a while, then it will go away. But that “I”
which was conceived and born has not changed from conception till
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the present moment. That “I” has come for a particular length of time.
Some of the expressions of this knowledge “I Am” have achieved
tremendous things. Some have become avatars. But at the end of the
time span the magnificent personalities have disappeared, and
however long the time, there is an end to that “I Amness”. Some of
these avatars have realized that the “I Amness” needs a body before it
can manifest itself. It is this “I Amness” which has remained
unchanged at all times, and which pervades the entire universe. This
“I Amness” is the highest God, as far as this manifestation is
concerned, and in the manifestation you must be one with that. But
ultimately even this is temporary. What you are is spaceless, timeless,
and without attributes.

Whatever must happen has already happened.

Each moment contains the whole of the past and creates the whole of
the future. Past and future exist in the mind only. Time is in the mind,
space is in the mind. The law of cause and effect is also a way of
thinking. In reality all is here and now, and all is one. Multiplicity and
diversity are in the mind only.

Once you understand that the false needs time and what needs time is
false, you are nearer to the Reality, which is timeless, ever in the now.
Eternity in time is mere repetitiveness, like the movement of a clock.
It flows from the past into the future endlessly, an empty perpetuity.
Reality is what makes the present so vital, so different from the past
and future, which are merely mental. If you need time to achieve
something, it must be false. The real is always with you, you need not
wait to be what you are.

The dream world is very old, it is not new. Your beingness is very
powerful. The emergence of this beingness itself constitutes time.

You speak about the flow of time as if you were stationary. But the
events you have witnessed yesterday somebody else my see
tomorrow. It is you who are in movement and not time. Stop moving
and time will cease. Past and future will merge in the eternal now.

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Time will come to an end. This is called the Great Death (mahamrityu),
the death of time. The beginning, middle, and end are all together.
Time has come to a stop, it was, but is no more.

The past and future do not matter any more. All that happened and
will happen becomes an open book to be read at will. What is
unexpected on one level may be certain to happen, when seen from a
higher level. After all, we are within the limits of the mind. In reality
nothing happens, there is no past nor future. All appears and nothing
is.

Awareness is not of time. Time exists in consciousness only. Beyond

consciousness there are no time and space.

Timelessness is beyond the illusion of time, it is not an extension in

time.

16. Energy

All that happens in the universe happens to you, the silent witness. On
the other hand, whatever is done, is done by you, the universal and
inexhaustible energy.

17. Prana-Life force

Prana is the dynamic life force the vital breath.

The vital breath is dynamic and pulsating but has no form. The vital
breath alone gives animation to the body.

It is the nature of the life force to express itself through thoughts and
words, so they will keep on coming. If you have to make an effort in
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the beginning not to get involved, make that effort until it becomes
effortless. Although thoughts come and go, the jnani is not concerned.

Whatever practice one does is done through the instrument of the life
force and is therefore time-bound. Any spiritual practice that anyone
may do is really based only on the vital breath, the life force, and will
therefore last only so long as that breath lasts.

Whatever knowledge you have acquired of any kind, material or

spiritual, is based only on this consciousness or breath. There is no
other knowledge anyone in the manifest world can acquire. It is strictly
limited. One may believe one is doing practice on the Atman, but not
so, Atman is quite separate, and one is doing the practice only from
the point of view of the life force.

The life force and the consciousness are only two as a concept, really
they are one. As soon as form is created, the life force is infused in
that form and sentience is automatically present. physical form and
the life force in the absence of the consciousness would only be a
technically alive body. Merely the life force within the body is of no use
unless consciousness is present, and would be merely air, the potency
to create a sentient being.
Without the vital breath, Ishvara or God has no soul, no expression.
Without God, the vital breath has no existence. It is the vital breath,
the life force, which is worshipping God. When the vital breath seeks
the consciousness as God itself, then dawns the light of consciousness
with which the life force works and achieves what it wants to
achieve...oneness with God. Even if the life force is considered as God
itself, the result will be the same. The consciousness is merely the
witnessing process. If the life force is regarded as God itself, there
cannot be consciousness without life force, so consciousness and life
force are two components, inextricably woven together, of one
principle.

Consciousness is the static witnessing principle, and life force is the

dynamic working principle. Consider the life force as God itself, then
the life principle will unfold itself and give you the necessary spiritual
knowledge.
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When the life force comes into contact with the consciousness, the
combination of both assumes the status of the highest God. Pray to
this life force.

Siva is the speck of consciousness and the life force is the shakti.

Consciousness and prana (life force) together are atman. It can also
be called antahkarana.

If there is no vital breath, the guna has no quality of being. Only so

long as the guna exists, do grand titles such as Siva, Brahma, and
Visnu apply. Without prana, the vital breath, there is no movement or
dynamic quality either of the body or even of the guna. Therefore
when its dear friend and attendant, prana, quits a body, the presiding
principle, guna, also evaporates.

The life force has mistakenly identified itself with the body and the
thoughts and words, and then considers itself to have acquired merit
or be guilty of something, whereas in truth everything takes place
independently, merely through the action of the life force.

Understood there is no question of either bondage or merit. With the

end of the life force there is no movement, no thought, no word, no
waxing nor waning.

When someone dies the life force goes, and the principle behind the
life force, consciousness, also disappears.

Do not be concerned with keeping the life force alive, because

whatever disease has come, it has not come on you but on the
beingness. The ignorant man would like to postpone the moment of
death as much as possible. But a jnani knows there is no benefit to be
gained by existing in the world for even one more minute. The best
thing is for the vital breath to leave quietly and without a fuss. Do
whatever the life force feels like doing.

After leaving the body, the vital breath and the “I Am” merge into the
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substratum.

Coming to the knowledge that I am Brahman, progress is much faster

if one makes friendship with the life force, saying ‘I am the life force
itself’.

The consciousness and the life force together may be given the highest
name and status, the atman, Ishvara, etc.., but you are not even that,
you are apart from even that highest category.

The life force is universal and not personalized. Once you realize this
you have no more troubles.

18. Life

Life is the urge to grow in knowledge and experience.

All life is conscious, all consciousness alive. Even stones are conscious
and alive.

There cannot be life without consciousness, nor consciousness without

life. They are both one.

Life makes you conscious, but the teacher makes you aware.

Life serves to break down mental pride. We must realize how poor and
powerless we are. As long as we delude ourselves by what we imagine
ourselves to be, to know, to have, to do, we are in a sad plight indeed.
Only in complete self-negation there is a chance to discover our real
being.

While the existence in limitation and separation is sorrowful, we love

it. We love it and hate it at the same time. We cling to life. This
clinging is at the root of everything. We hold on to something or
somebody with all our might, and next moment we forget it, like a
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child that shapes its mud-pies and abandons them light-heartedly.
Touch them.....it will scream with anger, divert the child and he
forgets them. We love variety, the play of pain and pleasure, we are
fascinated by contrasts. For this we need the opposites and their
apparent separation. We enjoy them for a time and then get tired and
crave for the peace and silence of pure being.

As long as you are interested in your present way of living, you will not
abandon it. Discovery cannot come as long as you cling to the familiar.
It is only when you realize fully the immense sorrow of your life and
revolt against it, that a way out can be found.

In matters of daily life the knower of the real has no advantage; he

may be at a disadvantage rather. Being free from greed and fear, he
does not protect himself. The very idea of profit is foreign to him. He
abhors accretions. His life is constant divesting oneself, sharing,
giving. There is trouble only when you cling to something. When you
hold on to nothing, no trouble arises. The relinquishing of the lesser is
the gaining of the greater. Give up all and you gain all. Then life
becomes what it was meant to be: pure radiation from an
inexhaustible source. In that light the world appears dimly like a
dream.

When you understand your true nature, you will realize it is always
alive. Do not wish to live in this life by the knowledge of the subjective
world, or the experiences of the subjective world. People tell you that
you must live. Do not desire to live like that. You are alive because of
your own nature, it is there, the existence is there, and you are there
only because of that existence. Your true state is whole,
undifferentiated, beyond birth and death, unbound by body and mind,
limitless. You, the Absolute, never had any experience that you were
alive, and now you are experiencing that you are alive. All this trouble
you are experiencing is through this I-am-alive-experience. This
experience is limited to time and space, but understand that you never
had any experience that you are alive. That is a state beyond
experience. Why has this come? The “I” consciousness appeared and
these experiences started. See the true nature of the “I”
consciousness, go to the source, find out from where this “I” comes.
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There is only life. There is nobody who lives a life.

All life is universal life, it has nothing to do with an individual. There is

no sense in taking pride in whatever ‘I’ know or ‘I’ have done in life.
You are not the body, you do not have a personality, you are the
universal life. This is all universal life. If you consider yourself some
particular individual you will suffer.

In the insect, worm, animal, or human being, is this instinct to keep

itself alive. Why? because with the sprouting of the life force, this “I
Amness”, that is itself the very instinct to live, to love to live. That love
to be is the prime motive force for all life’s activities.
You are existence which is without any desire or objective.

Live without self-concern. For this you must know your own true being
(swarupa). Know with absolute certainty that nothing can trouble you
but your own imagination. Then you will come to disregard your
desires and fears, concepts and ideas, and live by truth alone.

The aim in life is to see one’s Self as one is.

Are you prepared to accept life without the body?

Life with the body is changing, transient. Life without the body is
unchanging.

The beginning and end of life is a tiny thing that has happened in the
state that is permanent. In life one comes with a time-bound ticket,
and at the end of life one must go, there is no appeal. The beginning
and end of life is a journey with a time-bound ticket, and at the end of
the ticket whatever has come will go. Be a witness of that, and step
out of it.

The Self is beyond time. However long a life may be, it is but a
moment and a dream.
Life is like a dream. You are also present in your dreams, and see as
someone totally different. At the end of the dream it all disappears.
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Whatever has appeared in worldly life is only an illusion.

With the experience of so-called birth you are caught up in the cycle
like the picture on a screen. All this life-happening is something like a
cinema. Just as the play you see on the cinema screen is not real,
similarly this play is also not real.

What is the purpose of your existence?

Life appears merely as a series of entertainments. When you

understand this you will come to the end of spirituality.

Take this advice: better not be trapped in the spiritual knowledge

business, have a nice time, a good life, be of service to others, and in
due course, when the time is ripe, you will die.

Life is worthy of the name only when it reflects Reality in action.

Contemplate life as infinite, undivided, ever-present, ever active, until

you realize yourself as one with it. This is not even very difficult, for
you will be returning only to your own natural condition.

Live your life with the interests of your deepest self always in mind.
Seek to express in action what you are. For this you have a body and
a mind. Take them in hand and make them serve you.

In life let the general attitude be of affectionate detachment,

enormous goodwill, without expectation of return, constant giving
without asking. In marriage you are neither the husband nor the wife;
you are the love between the two. You are the clarity and kindness
that makes everything orderly and happy. You will find that the
mystical is the most practical, for it makes your life creatively happy.

Be nothing, know nothing, have nothing. This is the only life worth
living, the only happiness worth having.

To be a living being is not the ultimate state, there is something

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beyond, much more wonderful, which is neither being nor non-being,
neither living nor not-living. It is a state of pure awareness, beyond
the limitations of space and time. Once the illusion that the body-mind
is oneself is abandoned, death loses its terror, it becomes a part of
living.
I have stabilized in the Eternal and am not fascinated by this type of
life, this burden. I would like to get rid of that as early as possible, I
am not interested. I have stabilized prior to this beingness and the
world. Whatever happens to the world, nothing happens to me.

19. Memory

It is all memory carried over into the now.

Between birth and death, between the appearance and the

disappearance of the body, is only a bundle of memories, accumulated
as entertainment. Everything that is in memory will disappear.

Personality comes into being by memory, by identifying the present

with the past, and projecting it into the future. Think of yourself as
momentary, without past and future and your personality dissolves.

This consciousness and “I Amness” are due to these raw materials: the
five elements, the three gunas, and prakriti-purusha. To sustain that
memory “I Am”, the basic materials of the five elements and the three
gunas are necessary. Only when that basic material is available then
there is memory of anything, including the memory that “I Am”. Once
all that raw material has gone no one can retain his memory “I Am”.
You are not memory.
There are no memories after the physical material essence of the body
has gone. Both the memory and the consciousness are the quality of
the food body. When the body is not present, there is no question of
either remaining.

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Everything which you have heard, every piece of knowledge, every
incident in your life, even if you think that you have forgotten, that
consciousness has recorded.

We consider memories only when they come into the present. The
forgotten is not counted until one is reminded, which implies bringing
into the now.

When you are a young person you like all the activities of a young
person very much and get involved in them, but once youth goes you
are disinterested in the activities of a young person. Similarly, as long
as you are wearing the concept “I Am” you will be involved with all the
concepts. When this concept “I Am” departs there will be no memory
left that I was and I had those experiences, the very memory will be
erased. You have piled up a lot of knowledge, you possess heaps of it,
but in due course you will not only forget whatever you have piled up,
but you will forget yourself, that you was.

There are any number of experiences, if you keep the ones you like in
memory and pamper them.....that itself is suffering. All your
experiences should be just part of the total functioning, happening
spontaneously.

Do not struggle with your memories and thoughts: try only to include
in your field of attention the other, more important questions, like:
‘Who am I?’ ‘How did I happen to be born?’ ‘Whence this universe
around me?’ ‘What is real and what is momentary?’ No memory will
persist, if you lose interest in it. It is the emotional link that
perpetuates the bondage.

Between the remembered and the actual there is a basic difference

which can be observed from moment to moment. At no point of time is
the actual the remembered. A moment back the remembered was
actual, in a moment the actual will be the remembered. What makes
the actual unique? Obviously it is your sense of being present. In
memory and anticipation there is a clear feeling that it is a mental
state under observation, while in the actual the feeling is primarily of
being present and aware.
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You are living by memories. Replace the old memories by the new
memory that you are the Supreme Reality. As you were acting on your
old memories, act on the new one. Do not be afraid. For some time
there is bound to be a conflict between the old and the new, but if you
put yourself resolutely on the side of the new, the strife will soon come
to an end, and you will realize the effortless state of being oneself, of
not being deceived by desires and fears born of illusion.

What is added to memory cannot be erased easily. But it can surely be

done, and in fact I am doing it all the time. Like a bird on its wings, I
leave no footprints.

Mind and heart cannot work in darkness. They need the light of pure
awareness to function rightly. All effort at control will merely subject
them to the dictates of memory. Memory is a good servant but a bad
master. It effectively prevents discovery.

Having seen that you are a bundle of memories held together by

attachment, step out and look from the outside. You may perceive for
the first time something which is not memory. You cease to be a Mr-
so-and-so, busy about his own affairs. You are at last at peace. You
realize that nothing was ever wrong with the world.....you alone were
wrong, and now it is all over. Never again will you be caught in the
meshes of desire born of ignorance.

There is no cause of self-forgetting, because there is no forgetting.

Mental states succeed one another, and each obliterates the previous
one. Self-remembering is a mental state and self-forgetting is another.
They alternate like day and night. Reality is beyond both. It is as bad
to remember oneself continuously as to forget oneself. There is a state
beyond forgetting and not-forgetting.....the natural state. To
remember, to forget.....these are all states of mind, thought-bound,
word-bound. What you can seek and find is not the real thing. Find
what you have never lost.

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20. Experience

At the back of every experience is the Self and its interest in the
experience. Call it desire, call it love, words do not matter.

You talk about your spiritual experiences just to show people, “I am

something!” You are interested in your experiential state. There are so
many experiences. Be yourself and not the experiences. Experiences
are a temporary phaze and you are giving it undue importance. It
happens naturally.

Any experience you get is not real.

Experience, however sublime, is not the real thing. By its very nature
it comes and goes. What comes must go. The permanent is beyond all
comings and goings. Go to the root of all experience, to the sense of
being.

Everyone is concerned with these experiences from birth to death, but

no one gives any thought to that state before experiencing began. One
who has a clear understanding of this consciousness cannot attach any
importance to any experience.

Who else can have your experience, when the other person is only as
real as he appears in your experience?

In the state prior to beingness I alone prevail without even the

message “I Am”. There are no experiences at all. It is the non-
experiential eternal state. I alone prevail in that state, there is no
otherness. For any experience otherness is necessary.

I have no need of any experience.

The mind craves for experience, the memory of which it takes for
knowledge. The jnani is beyond all experience, and his memory is
empty of the past.
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You already have all the experience you need, otherwise you would
not have come to the Guru. You need not gather any more, rather you
must go beyond experience. Whatever effort you make, whatever
method (sadhana) you follow, will merely generate more experience,
but will not take you beyond. Nor will reading books help you; they will
enrich your mind, but the person you are will remain intact.

Experience leaves only memories behind and adds to the burden which
is heavy enough. You need no more experiences. The past ones are
sufficient. it is not experience that you need, but the freedom from all
experience. Do not be greedy for experience; you need none.

All experience is illusory, limited and temporal. Expect nothing from

experience. Realization by itself is not an experience, although it may
lead to a new dimension of experience. Yet the new experiences,
however interesting, are not more real than the old. Definitely
realization is not a new experience. It is the discovery of the timeless
factor in every experience. It is awareness which makes experience
possible. In every experience awareness is present, yet it is not an
experience.

Things happen round me, but I take no part in them. An event

becomes an experience only when I am emotionally involved. I am in
a state which is complete, which seeks not to improve on itself. Of
what use is experience to me?

Whatever is seen, heard, experienced and acquired is totally useless

and redundant, when it is realized that no one will remain but the
nishkama Parabrahman, the desireless eternal Absolute state.

Experience is the denial of Reality, which is neither sensory nor

conceptual, neither of the body, nor of the mind, although it includes
and transcends both.

The eternal ever is, a non-experiential state. In the realm of

experience you cannot have the experience of truth. There can be no
experience of truth because ultimately you are That. There cannot be
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experience of truth because it is prior to the beingness. No
experiences are permanent. Experiences are in the realm of
consciousness, which is bound by time.

Beyond the mind there is no such thing as experience. Experience is a

dual state. You cannot talk of reality as an experience. Once this is
understood, you will no longer look for being and becoming as
separate and opposite. In reality they are one and inseparable, like
roots and branches of the same tree. Both can exist only in the light of
consciousness, which again, arises in the wake of the sense “I Am”.
This is the primary fact. If you miss it, you miss all.

The world itself is contact.....the totality of all contacts actualized in

consciousness. The spirit touches matter and consciousness results.
Such consciousness, when tainted with memory and expectation,
becomes bondage. Pure experience does not bind. Experience caught
between desire and fear is impure and creates karma.
Above all, we want to remain conscious. We shall bear every suffering
and humiliation, but we shall rather remain conscious. Unless we
revolt against this craving for experience and let go the manifested
altogether, there can be no relief. We shall remain trapped.

All experience subsides with the mind. Without the mind there can be
no experiencer nor experience.

This habit of experiencing will not go until you realize that all this
domain of the five elements, and the experiences in the five elements,
are unreal. This “I Amness” is itself unreal.

You never pay attention to yourself, only to your experiences. Be

interested in yourself beyond all experience, be with yourself, love
yourself. The ultimate security is found only in self-knowledge.

Do not be all the time immersed in your experiences. Remember that

you are beyond the experiencer, ever unborn and deathless. In
remembering it, the quality of pure knowledge will emerge, the light of
unconditional awareness.

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Pure being is free of experiencing anything in particular.

All the universe of experience is born with the body and dies with the
body. It has its beginning and end in awareness, but awareness knows
no beginning nor end. See the light of awareness in all its clarity, and
the world will fade out of your vision.

You speak of my experience as different from your experience,

because you believe we are separate. But we are not. On a deeper
level my experience is your experience.

21. Conception-Birth

Nobody is born and nobody dies. The truth is beingness appears and
beingness disappears.

Consciousness is the so-called birth. Birth means three aspects:

waking state, deep sleep, and the knowledge “I Am”. Once I
understand what this birth is, then the whole mystery is solved. When
you know what this birth principle is then you will know very well at
that happening of the so-called death you will observe the departure of
the vital breath, the language, and the “I Amness”.

That bundle of three states (waking, sleep, and “I Am” consciousness)

and three attributes (sattva, rajas, tamas) has been born, and
whatever happens, happens to that bundle, and I am not concerned
with it. I know I am not that which has been born.

What exactly is born? What is born is the 3 states: Waking, sleeping,

and consciousness or the knowledge ’I am’. Body and the vital breath
cannot function if consciousness is not present. The 3 states work
through the gunas and is a bundle that is born. You are not that which
is born, and can see it. There may be attachment to that which has
been born, because of the association with it for a long time.
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Consciousness, which is really that which is born, mistakenly attaches
itself to this body and thinks it is the body.

To what does the word ‘birth’ apply? ‘Birth’ is the birth of that in the
body which makes it conscious. It is a chemical which denotes the love
the Self has for Itself and of which it wants to continue.

Nothing could have caused your birth without your own desire to be
born. It is desire that gives birth. The desirable is imagined and
wanted and manifests itself as something tangible or conceivable. Thus
is created our personal world, the world in which we live. The real
world is beyond the range of the mind.

Your birth means a film of the universe at that time. It is not merely a
birth, it is charged with universe inside and outside. Everything that
prevails in the cosmos at the time of the love union of embodied
objects is registered in the outcome, which takes the form, a replica of
the parents. You are the creation resulting from their blissful moment.
The memory “I Am” reminds of the blissful moment.

Before the birth neither that eternal principle nor the parents knew
each other. The principle was planted in fluid form in the womb of the
mother. In the womb, the beingness does not know itself. In the
course of nine months it developed into the form of an infant, who is
the very seed of all future experiences. This seed-beingness is the
pure sattva, and the quintessence of the food body, and is wholly
ignorance only. The seed of future experiences determines parabdha,
which is whatever that future child will have to suffer and experience.
The unfortunate child, who was not in his knowingness before birth, is
now presented with a whole scale of sufferings at birth. At the moment
of a child’s conception, the exact photograph of the total situation in
the cosmos, including the parental material out of which he was
created, position of planets, stars, etc. was imprinted on him. That
principle which takes the photograph is known by such titles as:
moolamaya, maha-tattva, hiranyagarbha, atma-prem etc. It is also
called parabdhi, the ocean of life seething with millions of forms.

As a foetus you did not know yourself in the womb of the mother.
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Consciousness is everywhere. Consciousness is all-prevailing, but it
remained dormant in the foetus because it was not a fully developed
body.

On the first day of your birth you did not know that you existed, that
you were there. When you became a two or three year old child you
started to know that you exist.

All this play is mechanical, a part of the chemical. Birth means the
formation of that chemical. The quintessence of the food body is the
chemical, which is necessary for consciousness to appear. When the
child is a few days old it is the quintessence of the food essence only.
After a few months it develops the sense of knowledge and receives
impressions. Those impressions are registered, like a photograph, in
that chemical.

The belief that ‘I am born’ is ignorance. Childish knowledge is

incomplete knowledge. Until the age of 3 you do not know anything. At
3 you are struck with a word, i.e.. concepts, out of concepts
everything comes. This is Maya, it is a type of singing. Maya proceeds
in cycles, waxing and waning.

At what age did you get the knowledge of your own body? If you
started knowing yourself at the age of three or four, then whatever
actions took place prior to the age of three-four happened without
your knowing, and there is no record in your memory of that. You
have heard from others of things that happened, but you directly do
not know. In the first few years the primary concept “I Am” was there,
but in a dormant condition. Later it started knowing itself. The jnani
state is like the child state, when the child was not knowing itself.
The birth principle, sattva, contains everything. Because of the birth
principle everything is, the world is. Only one person in 10 millions can
find out what the birth principle is. All the knowledge of the world is
contained in it. Once you know it, everything, all knowledge, belongs
to you, even liberation is yours.

Prior to birth is the Absolute, Parabrahman. After birth is chetana-

parabrahman, the consciousness Brahman, the manifest Brahman. The
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‘I am’ concept was not there prior to birth. ‘I am’ is a concept that has
appeared and will also go away.

If you had the capacity to know before birth that you were being born,
you would no have wanted to jump into this pit of birth. You never
knew. If you had the slightest knowledge would you have descended
into the prison of your mother’s womb? Whatever happens, happens
by itself. Who can have knowledge of that which existed before
conception?
What were you doing before conception in the womb of your mother?
If you had been aware of the beingness before conception, you would
not have cared to enter the womb. It is not possible to remember
because it is a non-attentive state. With beingness, attention starts
later. Beingness comes in the womb in a dormant condition,
moolamaya, that borderline between being and non-being. Initially
there is no attention, and suddenly attention begins.

If we had the choice of taking on this body-cum-consciousness, who

would be foolish enough to accept it? It is only because there has been
no choice, everything has been spontaneous. The suffering also has to
be taken on because it is part of the total functioning, and there is no
entity who can pick and choose.

The particle from which this birth has come includes crores of
elements, it is the seed of the whole universe, and is the smallest, the
atomic, and yet it contains crores of universes within the seed.

Most people believe that the world is first and they were born in it
afterwards. This is untrue.

‘I was not’ prior to conception. Prior to conception I was not like this
present “I Am”. But that “I” which could discern this must be there to
judge the absence of the present “I Am”. Owing to the absence of a
body, that “I” prior to conception had no sense of being or sense of “ I
Amness”. With the arrival of a body the sense of “I Amness” is
imposed on the prior “I”.

You are before the gestation period. The whole thing is Maya: nobody
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is born and nobody dies - it is distortion.

You were never born, nor will you ever die. It is the idea that was born
and shall die, not you. By identifying yourself with it you became
mortal.

Whatever has brought about conception is the primordial seed of the

entire universe.

That by which one is able to become a Jnani is an ability that is not

acquired. It is something that happens in nature, in the manifest
world. There is no law or reason. All kinds of miracles happen,
anything can happen. The beingness has stuck to the body, has not
merged, and it still remains. There are two entities who have seen
myriad universes created and destroyed. As soon as the conception
took place and the film was created, the future was photographed and
that was their destiny. There is no reason, it just happens. It is one of
those miracles of nature. That by which one is able to become a Jnani
will itself disappear.

22. Death

Nothing is dead.

There is suffering and bloodshed, people killing each other, how do

you look at it? Death is natural, the manner of dying is man-made.
Separateness causes fear and aggression, which again cause violence.
Do away with man-made separations and all this horror of people
killing each other will surely end. But in reality there is no killing and
no dying. The real does not die, the unreal never lived. Set your mind
right and all will be right. When you know that the world is one, that
humanity is one, you will act accordingly.

In death only the body dies. Life does not, consciousness does not,
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reality does not. And the life is never so alive as after death.

So long as your body, the vital breath and the beingness are there,
you know that ‘you are’. When the vital breath goes, the body drops
off, and the beingness extinguishes, the process is termed death.

Once you know that death happens to the body and not to you, you
just watch your body falling off like a discarded garment. Know that
the body alone dies, and not the continuity of memory, and the sense
of ‘I Am’ reflected in it.

The Brahman of death is the moment of death. Watching occurs. The

vital breath leaves the body. ‘I-am-ness’ recedes, vanishes. That is the
greatest moment, the moment of immortality.

The ignorant struggle at the moment of death. The jnani does not
struggle.

Expect no change at the moment of death. When the film projection

ends, all remains the same as when it started. The state before you
were born was also the state after death, if you remember.

The material of which the body is constituted gets weary and weak,
and along with it this knowledge is also getting weak. The sense of
presence will still be with you because that material of which the body
is made still has a little strength. When that little strength goes away,
then the consciousness will also disappear, then there will be no sense
of presence. You will very much be, but without the sense of presence.

The moment of death is when this consciousness is extinguishing,

knowingness is disappearing, but nothing affects you, the Absolute.
The vital breath is leaving the body, the “I Amness” receding, but the
“I Amness” is going to the Absolute. That is the moment of
immortality. The “I Amness” was there, that movement was there, and
I observe, it is extinguished. The ignorant will get very frightened at
the moment of death.....he is struggling.....but for the jnani it is the
happiest moment.

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To the jnani to be born and to die appears but a way of expressing
movement in the immovable, change in the changeless, end in the
endless. To the jnani it is obvious that nothing is born and nothing
dies, nothing lasts and nothing changes, all is as it is.....timelessly. To
an jnani nothing has beginning or ending. As salt dissolves in water, so
does everything dissolve into pure being.

At death some sages disintegrate into nothingness, with no remnant.

Death is also an illusion. A jnani who abides in the Absolute and who
has understood and transcended this consciousness does not want to
prolong the life of consciousness.

When somebody dies nothing happens. Something becomes nothing.

Nothing was, nothing remains.

Just like a healthy body does not call for attention, so is the
unconditioned free from experience. Take the experience of death. The
ordinary man is afraid to die, because he is afraid of change. The jnani
is not afraid because his mind is dead already. He does not think: ‘I
live’. He knows: ‘There is life’. There is no change in it and no death.
Death appears to be a change in time and space. Where there is
neither time nor space, how can there be death? The jnani is already
dead to name and shape. How can their loss affect him?

People are afraid to die, because they do not know what is death. The
jnani has died before his death, he saw that there was nothing to be
afraid of. The moment you know your real being, you are afraid of
nothing. Death gives freedom and power. To be free in the world, you
must die in the world. Then the universe is your own, it becomes your
body, an expression and a tool. The happiness of being absolutely free
is beyond description. On the other hand, he who is afraid of freedom
cannot die.

Death is considered to be a traumatic experience, but understand what

happens. That which has been born, the knowledge “I Am”, will end.
That knowledge which was limited by this body will then become
unlimited. So, what is to be feared?

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The sense of entity that one has has been created by the mind. When
the consciousness disappears that sense of entity disappears. No one
knows that he is dead, it is only the others who say that he is dead. To
others, the jnani appears to die, but not to himself. In himself he is
free of things.....physical and mental.

Whatever you collect as your own, as knowledge, will not remain with
you at death. Everything will go. The various associations, physical,
mental, conceptual, will not remain with you until the end, they are
passing phases. The ‘I-am-ness’ which you presume to have with
constantly, will quit you at the end when the body drops.

What do you gain by living on, and what do you lose by dying? What is
born must die; what was never born cannot die. It all depends on what
you take yourself to be.

What was born must die. Only the unborn is deathless. Find out what
it is that never sleeps and never wakes, and whose pale reflection is
our sense of “I”.

I know myself and I find no life nor death in me, only pure
being.....not being this or that, but just being.

At the last moment when the breath is leaving, there is also a moment
of ecstasy. At that point, when the life force and consciousness leave,
there is that moment of ecstasy, that last moment of knowing. When
this is apprehended there is no question of birth or death.
When the life force is ready to leave the body, it will be the moment of
highest ecstasy, because what is manifest is now going to be
unmanifest.

Death is a hearsay. Having followed the course of spirituality, you have

come to the end of personality and there is no more human being.
There is only impersonal consciousness. In this realm of consciousness
all that is going on is dynamic playfulness, a process of functioning.
There is no differentiation in this process as to a person, an entity, a
community, a creed, a religion. In the flash of your consciousness all
this play is going on. The play will come to an end.
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Death is the culmination or termination of the Self experience, “I Am”.
After the termination of “I Amness” there is no experience of
knowingness or not knowingness. Knowingness is the quality of the
material stuff. Before birth and after death this instrument is missing,
and without the body there is no experience. Eternity has no birth and
no death, but a temporary state has a beginning and an end. Even
when consciousness goes, you prevail.....you always are.....as the
Absolute.

Death is something to be very happy about, because it is something

which helps to remove the burden of what is called ‘birth’.

If, at the time of death, the consciousness entertains a very strong

concept, the consciousness can create that particular concept. If at the
time of death the person imagines having a life somewhere....the
consciousness will create a similar situation. All these things are
illusions in the realm of consciousness.

Because the knowledge’ I am’ is not there after death, there can be no
individuality left after death, therefore there can be no question of
further rebirths and reincarnation. The truth is that nothing is born,
and there is no world. The world appears but it is not there.

Death occurs to those who think of themselves as an individual.

People want to continue being alive because they want to perpetuate

their ‘I-Amness’, they have the urge to be.

At death the vital breath will merge into the air again, as it was before.

If you think you are dying it shows you still identify with your body.

If you decide, finally, that you are not this body, the death will be
final, death will die. This is achieved by living without consciousness of
body and mind.

The jnani does not die because he was never born. What happens
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when an ordinary man dies? According to his belief it happens. As life
before death is but imagination, so is life after. The dream continues.

We will become whatever concept we entertain at the time of death. It

will take concrete shape according to the concept. To one who has
purified the mind of all concepts, death will be very blissful.

What a man thinks himself to be before death, he continues to be after

death. His self-image survives.

The last thought that you should have before death approaches you, is
“I am Nirguna, without attributes”. Remember you have no shape and
colour.

Death comes to the quality of “I Amness”, which is the product of the

food, but the Absolute prevails always.

No university will teach you how to live so that when the time of dying
comes, you can say: I lived well, I do not need to live again. Most of
us die wishing we could live again. So many mistakes committed, so
much left undone.

For the jnani the moment of so-called death is the most blissful,
because he is going to the very source of bliss. Eternity is bliss, the
very ocean of nectar, immortal.

Only the fear of death is present, but not actual experience of death.
You do not have the experience of birth or death, only the fear of
death. The experience of death is rest. At the most you may see a
dead body lying there, and you are watching.

Birth did not give you anything and death can take nothing from you.

Everyone has to die, so die as your true nature. Never forget your true
nature. Have the highest ambition, so that at least while dying, you
will be the Absolute.

At the moment of what is called death, what happens? All it means is

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that a speck of consciousness is given up. This speck is given up to a
concept you have accepted as time, you reluctantly hand it over to
time. Having protected it for so many years, the ignorant gives up this
Atman Prem (Self Love) to his concept of time. The ignorant bhakti
(devotee) gives it up to a concept of God. The jnani gives it up to his
own nature.
You are pronounced dead when the Atman has left the body, but you
are not that Atman, so your death is not there. You are not affected by
anything. Whatever the experience you surrender it all to the Atman.
All the actions and fruits of the actions are surrendered to the Atman
by the Parabrahman, the Absolute.

Brahman, Isvara, God, all these are names given to the consciousness
when it is conscious of itself. At death consciousness gradually loses
everything, and ultimately consciousness is no longer conscious of
itself. Although that state cannot be described, it is called
Parabrahman for communication purposes. It is only the consciousness
that is going to disappear, the Absolute is always there.

Imagine a big building collapsing. Some rooms are in ruins, some are
intact. but can you speak of the space as ruined or intact? It is only
the structure that suffered and the people who happened to live in it.
Nothing happened to space itself. Similarly nothing happens to life
when forms break down and names are wiped out. The goldsmith
melts down old ornaments to make new. Sometimes a good piece goes
with the bad. He takes it in his stride, for he knows that no gold is lost.

The conscious cannot change fundamentally, it can only modify. Any

thing, to change, must pass through death, through obscuration and
dissolution. Gold jewellery must be melted down before it is cast into
another shape. What refuses to die cannot be reborn. Withdrawal,
aloofness, letting go is death. To live fully, death is essential, every
ending makes a new beginning. On the other hand, understand that
only the dead can die, not the living. That which is alive in you is
immortal.

One who is dead cannot know anything. A dead one does not know he
is or he was. There is no registering a dead one’s existence either with
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us or with the one.

When a body has died, the indwelling Atman, sense of being, loses
memory of its beingness and does not know it is. In that state there is
no sleep, waking and knowingness.

Just as the subject must be separate from the object it perceives, the
Self is separate from the body. When the body disappears the
separate Self will merge with the Universal Being.

The agony of dying is never pleasant to look at, but the dying man is
rarely conscious. Death is very much like sleep. For a time the person
is out of focus and then it returns. The person, being a creature of
circumstances, necessarily changes along with them, like the flame
that changes with the fuel. Only the process goes on and on, creating
time and space.

If you understand at the time of death what you are, that you were
never a person, it is enough. Do not feel that you are a personality and
that you can do something for yourself. There is no person.

When the body dies it decomposes into the five primary elements; and
prana the vital breath merges in the universal air; and the guna, that
is the sense of being, instantly becomes nirguna or non-being, just as
a flame is extinguished instantly.

When the body comes to an end, it mixes with the five elements, the
vital breath mixes with the air, and the consciousness mixes with the
universal consciousness. Consciousness becomes Nirguna, free of the
three gunas to which it had been subject. There is no rebirth, because
for something to be reborn something has to die, and nothing is dead.
No one was born, and there is no one to be reborn.

Because the body and the intellect have dissolved there is no

experience after death. There is nothing to experience. When the food
essence quality is completely dissolved there is no one, no who, to
proceed further.

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23. Rebirth-Reincarnation

The memory of the past unfulfilled desires traps energy, which

manifests itself as a person. When its charge gets exhausted, the
person dies. Unfulfilled desires are carried over into the next birth.
Self-identification with the body creates ever fresh desires and there is
no end to them, unless this mechanism of bondage is clearly seen. It
is clarity that liberates, for you cannot abandon desire unless its
causes and effects are clearly seen. I do not say that the same person
is reborn. It dies and dies for good. But its memories remain and their
desires and fears. They supply the energy for a new person. The real
takes no part in it, but it makes it possible by giving it the light.

Consciousness needs a vehicle and an instrument for its manifestation.

When life produces another body, another knower comes into being.
Just as the knower of the body appears at birth, so he disappears at
death. Life remains. Is there a link? There is something that may be
called the memory body, or causal body, a record of all that was
thought, wanted, and done. It is like a cloud of images held together.

There is no compulsion to be reborn. You get what you want. You

make your own plans and you carry them out.

Desires are strong. It is desire that causes repetition. There is no

recurrence when desire is not.

As I do not know even this birth, how can I know past births?

The scripture say I have lived before, but I know nothing about it. I
know myself as I am; as I appeared, or will appear, is not within my
experience. It is not that I do not remember, in fact there is nothing to
remember. Reincarnation implies a reincarnating self. There is no such
thing. The bundle of memories and hopes, called the ‘I’, imagines itself
existing everlastingly and creates time to accommodate its false
eternity. To be, I need no past or future. All experience is born of
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imagination; I do not imagine, so no birth or death can happen to me.
Only those who think themselves born can think themselves reborn.
What is born and reborn is not you. Let it happen, watch it happen.

All exists in awareness, and awareness neither dies nor is reborn. It is

changeless reality itself.

24. Immortality

You are immortal.

Without breach in continuity there can be no rebirth. There can be no

renewal without death. Without death we would be in eternal senility.
When life and death are seen as essential to each other, as two
aspects of one being, that is immortality. To see the end in the
beginning and beginning in the end is the intimation of eternity.
Definitely, immortality is not continuity. Only the process of change
continues. Nothing lasts.

I am living even when many cosmoses have come into existence and
have been dissolved. I know I was always, ever, and abiding.
Whatever has happened, I am here, ever-present.

Immortality is beyond time and space. In that timeless, spaceless

existence there is no entry for the five elements, for light or darkness,
for the sun or the moon. Timeless, spaceless existence does not know
that it is. That is reality. that is the truth.

25. Parabda-Destiny

Destiny is what happens. There is no thwarting of destiny.

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In the course of time everything happens. All will come through, not a
single jiva (soul) shall be lost.

During the millions of years that the world has been in existence there
have been thousands of avatars, but not one of them has been able to
do anything to change the natural course of events in the world.

Have a better look at yourself. The screen is there.....it does not

change. The light shines steadily. Only the film in between keeps
moving and causes pictures to appear. You may call the film destiny
(parabdha).

Destiny is the storehouse out of which all this manifestation flows. It is

the principle out of which you have emanated. It is something like a
film negative. Consciousness is already present in that source from
which you have emanated, so the film is being projected. What is to be
projected is already recorded. Whatever activities happen through that
beingness, which is you, are your destiny. Every action which that
beingness will take is already registered in the film. Nine months prior
to your birth the destiny was created. However, destiny is created by
nobody, it just happens.

What is just happening is the unfolding of destiny that has come into
existence on the first day of conception. There is nothing you can
claim the doership of. Once you know who you are, that destiny does
not bind you.

The knowledge “I Am” is the film, the destiny. What is our destiny? It
is that birth chemical, that film in which everything is recorded and
everything is happening. Where are you in this? “I Amness” is a
chemical in which everything that is going to happen is recorded.
When this is realized you will understand that you are not an
individual.

Ultimately is there a world, or is there none? What you see is nothing

but yourself. Call it what you like, it does not change the fact. Through
the film of destiny your own light depicts pictures on the screen. You
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are the viewer, the light, the picture, and the screen. Even the film of
destiny (parabdha) is self-selected and self-imposed.

Understand that you are destined for enlightenment. Co-operate with

your destiny, don’t go against it. Allow it to fulfil itself. All you have to
do is to give attention to the obstacles created by the foolish mind.

Perfection is the destiny of all living beings. The possibility becomes a

certainty once a living being has heard and understood that
enlightenment is within his reach, he will never forget it, for it is the
first message from within. It will take root and grow and in due course
take the blessed shape of the Guru.

There is no question of failure, neither in the short run nor in the long.
It is like travelling a long and arduous road in an unknown country. Of
all the innumerable steps there is only the last which brings you to
your destination, yet you will not consider all previous steps as
failures. Each brought you nearer to your goal, even when you had to
turn back to by-pass an obstacle. In reality each step brings you to
your goal, because to be always on the move, learning, discovering,
unfolding, is your eternal destiny. If you have not learnt, repeat.

All kinds of things happen. I do not cause them to happen, they just
happen. So it is with you.....the roll of destiny unfolds itself and
actualizes the inevitable. You cannot change the course of events, but
you can change your attitude, and what really matters is the attitude
and not the bare event.

Thoughts are not predestined but are the reactions of impressions,

samskaras, which you receive now.

Desire shapes destiny.

Destiny refers only to name and shape. Since you are neither body nor
mind, destiny has no control over you. You are completely free. The
cup is conditioned by its shape, material, use, and so on. But the
space within the cup is free.

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Do events take place by accident or is there a plan? Is there a pattern
laid down before I was born by which I have to live my life? Is destiny
immutable and every second of life is predetermined, or does pure
accident decide everything?.....You can have it as you like. You can
distinguish in your life a pattern or merely see a chain of accidents.
Explanations are meant to please the mind. They need not be true.
Reality is indefinable and indescribable.

The objective universe has structure, is orderly and beautiful. Nobody

can deny it. But structure and pattern imply constraint and
compulsion. My world is absolutely free; everything in it is self-
determined. Therefore all happens by itself. There is order in my world
also, but it is not imposed from outside. It comes spontaneously and
immediately, because of its timelessness. Perfection is not in the
future. It is now.

You are completely free even now. What you call destiny (karma) is
but the result of your own will to live. How strong is this will you can
judge by the universal horror of death.

There is no parabda, no destiny. The Brahman state is not subject to

any destiny. There is no question of something good or bad happening
to the Brahman state. Those who are not one with the Brahman still
think they are an individual, and consequently will always be thinking
that something good or bad is going to happen to them, as an entity
conditioned by body-mind.

26. Karma

Karma is only a store of unspent energies, of unfulfilled desires and

fears not understood. The store is being constantly replenished by new
desires and fears. It need not be so for ever. Understand the root
cause of your fears.....estrangement from yourself; and of
desires.....the longing for the self, and your karma will dissolve like a
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dream.

Karma is a gross approximation. In reality we are all creators and

creatures of each other, causing and bearing each other’s burden.

Most of our karma is collective. We suffer for the sins of others, as

others suffer for ours. Humanity is one. We could have been much
happier people ourselves, but for our indifference to the sufferings of
others.

Karma, or destiny, is an expression of a beneficial law: the universal

trend towards balance, harmony, and unity. At every moment,
whatever happens now, is for the best.
Ignorance is like a fever.....it makes you see things which are not
there. Karma is the divinely prescribed treatment. Welcome it and
follow the instructions faithfully and you will get well. Accept your
destiny and fulfil it, this is the shortest way to freedom from destiny,
though not from love and its compulsions. To act from desire is
bondage, to act from love is freedom.

Before you were born you expected to live by a plan, which you
yourself had laid down. Your own will was the backbone of your
destiny. Karma shapes the circumstances; the attitudes are your own.
Ultimately your character shapes your life, and you alone can shape
your character. You shape your character by seeing it as it is, and
being sincerely sorry. This integral seeing-feeling can work miracles.
You have to melt down the metal in the heat of the fire and cast it in
the mould.

27. Existence

To be, to exist with a name and form is painful, yet I love it. My very
nature is to love, even the painful is loveable. It is the instinct of
exploration, the love of the unknown, that brings me into existence. It
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is in the nature of being to see adventure in becoming, as it is in the
very nature of becoming to seek peace in being. This alteration of
being and becoming is inevitable, but my home is beyond.

Existence and non-existence relate to something in space and time;

here and now, there and then, which again are in the mind.

To exist means to be something, a thing, a feeling, a thought, an idea.

All existence is particular. Only being is universal. Existences clash,
being never clashes. Existence means becoming, change, birth and
death, and birth again, while in being there is silent peace.
All existence is in space and time, limited and temporary. He who
experiences existence is also limited and temporary. I am not
concerned either with ‘what exists’ or with ‘who exists’. I take my
stand beyond, where I am both and neither.

Do not identify mere existence with reality. Existence is momentary,

always in time and space, while reality is changeless and all-
pervading.

Existence is in consciousness, essence is independent of

consciousness.

Deny existence to everything except yourself.

Nothing exists by itself. All is the Self, all is myself.

28. Jiva

The jivatman is the one who identifies with the body-mind as an

individual separate from the world. Jivatman is one who thinks I am a
body, a personality, an individual apart from the world. He excludes
and isolates himself from the world as a separate personality because
of identification with the body and the mind.
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This state is by nature limited. He who is aware of his true nature and
the total potential cannot be satisfied with anything that this limited
state can give him.

You are jiva-atman, which means conditioned by the body-mind, and it

is the self which is occupied with all the activities. And the ‘I’ which is
unconditioned by and not identified with the body-mind, having no
form, design, or name, is Paramatman. The jiva-atman is being
witnessed by Paramatman, your real Self.

Whenever man limits his consciousness to body and mind he is called

jiva. Really he is independent of body and mind which are acting and
reacting. Consciousness is all one, and there is no difference
whatsoever, although it expresses itself in various shapes and forms.
The individual is merely a figment of the imagination. One day you will
realize that you are not an individual. You will realize that you are the
universal consciousness which cannot suffer. There is no pain or
pleasure for that consciousness.

When you think in terms of parts, you think of Jiva, and of the whole
as Parabrahman, but there is no difference. When it is entrenched in
the body it assumes a temporality, a time unit, the Jiva. At the end of
the time span it merges into the Parabrahman.

29. Vyakti-The Person

As long as you do not see that it is mere habit, built on memory,

prompted by desire, you will think yourself to be a person.....living
feeling, thinking, active, passive, pleased or pained.

It is not you who desires, fears and suffers, it is the person built on the
foundation of your body by circumstances and influences. You are not
that person. This must be clearly established in your mind and never
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lost sight of. Normally it needs a prolonged sadhana, years of
austerities and meditation.

It is the person you imagine yourself to be that suffers, not you.

Dissolve it in awareness.
How does the person come into being? Exactly as a shadow appears
when light is intercepted by the body, so does the person arise when
pure self-awareness is obstructed by the ‘I-am-the-body’ idea. And as
the shadow changes shape and position according to the lay of the
land, so does the person appear to rejoice and suffer, rest and toil,
find and lose, according to the pattern of destiny. When the body is no
more, the person disappears completely without return, only the
witness remains and the Great Unknown.

How does the error of being a person originate? The absolute precedes
time. Awareness comes first. A bundle of memories and mental habits
attracts attention, awareness gets focalized and a person suddenly
appears. Remove the light of awareness, go to sleep, or swoon away,
and the person disappears. The person (vyakti) flickers, awareness
(vyakta) contains all space and time, the absolute (avyakta) is.

When the vyakti realizes its non-existence in separation from the

vyakta, and the vyakta sees the vyakti as its own expression, then the
peace and silence of the avyakta state come into being. In reality the
three are one: the vyakta and avyakta are inseparable, while the
vyakti is the sensing-feeling-thinking process, based on the body made
of and fed by the five elements. All talk of separation and relation is
due to the distorting and corrupting influence of ‘I-am-the-body’ idea.
The outer self (vyakti) is merely a projection on the body-mind of the
inner self (vyakta), which again is only an expression of the Supreme
Self (avyakta) which is all and none.

The person comes into being when there is a basis for it, an organism,
a body. The personal needs a base, a body to identify oneself with.

In the young child the sense of ‘I Am’ is not yet formed, the
personality is rudimentary. The obstacles to self-knowledge are few,
but the power and clarity of awareness, its width and depth, are
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lacking. In the course of years awareness will grow stronger, but also
the latent personality will emerge and obscure and complicate. Just as
the harder the wood, the hotter the flame, so the stronger the
personality, the brighter the light generated from its destruction.

Self-limitation is the very essence of personality.

The person can stay in the darkness of ignorance forever, unless the
flame of awareness touches it. Once the candle is lighted, the flame
will consume the candle. Who lights the candle? The Guru, his words,
his presence, the mantra; the Guru’s grace works mysteriously. The
difference between the person and the witness is as between not
knowing and knowing oneself. Before the spark, or flame, is lit there is
no witness to perceive the difference. The person may be conscious,
but is not aware of being conscious. It is completely identified with
what it thinks and feels and experiences. The darkness that is in it is of
its own creation. When the darkness is questioned, it dissolves. The
desire to question is planted by the Guru.

The person is merely the result of a misunderstanding. In reality there

is no such thing. Feelings, thoughts and actions race before the
watcher in endless succession, leaving traces in the brain and creating
an illusion of continuity. A reflection of the watcher in the mind creates
the sense of ‘I’ and the person acquires an apparently independent
existence. In reality there is no person, only the watcher identifying
himself with the ‘I’ and the ‘mine’. The teacher tells the watcher: “you
are not this, there is nothing of yours in this, except the little point of
‘I Am’, which is the bridge between the watcher and his dream. ‘I am
this, I am that’ is dream, while pure ‘I Am’ has the stamp of reality on
it.”

The person is a very small thing. Actually it is a composite, it cannot

be said to exist by itself. Unperceived, it is just not there. It is but the
shadow of the mind, the sum total of memories. Pure being is reflected
in the mirror of the mind, as knowing. What is known takes the shape
of a person, based on memory and habit. It is but a shadow, or a
projection of the knower on to the screen of the mind.

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The person is but a shell imprisoning you. Break the shell. Break the
bonds of memory and self-identification and the shell will break by
itself. There is a centre that imparts reality to whatever it perceives.
All that you need is to understand that you are the source of reality,
that you give reality instead of getting it, that you need no support
and no confirmation. Things are as they are, because you accept them
as they are. Stop accepting them and they will dissolve.

It is the presence of the person that complicates. There is no such

thing as a permanently separate person. Remove what poisoned the
mind.....the idea of a separate and isolated person.

The person is in unrest and resistance to the very end. It is the

witness that works on the person, on the totality of its illusions, past,
present, and future.

You are unreachable by any sensory experience or verbal construction.

Turn away from them. Refuse to impersonate. You are not what you
think yourself to be. The image you have of yourself is made up from
memories and is purely accidental. What you appear to be, you are
not. You have never been, nor shall ever be, a person. Refuse to
consider yourself as one.

There is no such thing as a person. There are only restrictions and

limitations. The sum total of these defines the person. You think you
know yourself when you know what you are. But you never know who
you are. The person merely appears to be, like the space within the
pot appears to have the shape and volume and smell of the pot. See
that you are not what you believe yourself to be. Fight with all the
strength at your disposal against the idea that you are the nameable
and describable. You are not. Refuse to think of yourself in terms of
this or that.

Realize that the person you became at birth and will cease to be at
death is temporary and false. You are not the sensual, emotional and
intellectual person, gripped by desires and fears. Find out your real
being. What am I? is the fundamental question. Go into it deeply
There can not be two selves in one body. The ‘I Am’ is one. There is no
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‘higher’ I-am and ‘lower’ I-am. All kinds of states of mind are
presented to awareness and there is self-identification with them.
Great Teachers do not speak to the person. They know well that the
vyakti, the outer self, is but a shadow of the vyakta, the inner self,
and they address and admonish the vyakta only. They tell him to give
attention to the outer self, to guide and help it, to feel responsible for
it, in short, to be fully aware of it. Awareness comes from the Supreme
and pervades the inner self. The so-called outer self is only that part of
one’s being of which one is not aware. One may be conscious, for
every being is conscious, but one is not aware. What is included in
awareness becomes the inner and partakes of the inner. The body
defines the outer self, consciousness the inner, and in pure awareness
the Supreme is contacted.

The person is what I appear to be to other persons. To myself I am the

infinite expanse of consciousness in which innumerable persons
emerge and disappear in endless succession.
The universal is not aware of the particular. The existence as a person
is a personal matter. A person exists in time and space, has name and
shape, beginning and end. The universal includes all persons, and the
absolute is at the root of and beyond all. Everyone imagines ‘others’
and seeks a link with them. The seeker is the link, there is none other.
The world is not independent of your mind. How can it be? Your desire
to know other people’s minds is due to your not knowing your own
mind. First know your own mind and you will find that the question of
other minds does not arise at all, for there are no other people. You
are the common factor, the only link between the minds. Being is
consciousness. ‘I Am’ applies to all.

The person is of little use. It is deeply involved in its own affairs and is
completely ignorant of its true being. Unless the witnessing
consciousness begins to play on the person and it becomes the object
of observation rather than the subject, realization is not feasible. It is
the witness that makes realization desirable and attainable.

To identify oneself with the particular is all the sin there is. The
impersonal is real, the personal appears and disappears. “I Am” is the
impersonal Being. “I am this” is the person. The person is relative,
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pure Being is fundamental.

When you are infected with the ‘I am the body’ virus, a whole universe
springs into being. But when you have had enough of it, you cherish
some fanciful ideas about liberation, and pursue lines of action totally
futile. You concentrate, you meditate, you torture your mind and body,
you do all sorts of unnecessary things, but you miss the essential
which is the elimination of the person.

You resent being treated as mere instrument of some Guru or god,

and insist on being treated as a person, because you are not sure of
your own existence, and do not want to give up the comfort and
assurance of a personality. You may not be what you believe yourself
to be, but it gives you continuity. To be denied personal existence is
frightening, but you must face it and find your identity with the totality
of life. Then the problem of who is used by whom is no more.

The dissolution of personality is followed always by a sense of great

relief, as if a heavy burden has fallen off.

30. Desire

At the root of all creation lies desire. Desire and imagination foster and
reinforce each other. What is the root of pain? Ignorance of yourself.
What is the root of desire? The urge to find yourself. All creation toils
for itself and will not rest until it returns to it.

Desire by itself is neither right nor wrong. Desire is nothing but

striving for happiness. Having identified yourself with a speck of a
body you feel lost, and search desperately for the sense of fullness and
completeness you call happiness.

Desires are right and wrong according to circumstances. It is only for

the individual that a distinction between right and wrong is valid. In
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the individual’s case, desires that lead to sorrow are wrong and those
which lead to happiness are right. But you must not forget others,
their sorrow and happiness also count.

All desires are bad, but some are worse than others. Pursue any
desire, it will always give you trouble. Do not even desire to be free of
desire. Why desire at all? Desiring a state of freedom from desire will
not set you free? Nothing can set you free, because you are free. See
yourself with desireless clarity, that is all.

Desires fulfilled breed more desires.

We cling to the body and all the trouble starts. When you do not
experience the body there are no desires or needs, but when you think
you are the body you want to satisfy your desires, thinking that then
you will have peace. There is no peace in the body identity.
w Desires are entirely mind-made. You have to give up everything to
know that you need nothing, not even your body. Your needs are
unreal and your efforts are meaningless.
There can be no experience without the desire for it. There can be
gradation between desires, from the grossest to the most sublime, but
between the most sublime desire and the freedom from all desire
there is an abyss which must be crossed.

Above everything else you cherish yourself. You would accept nothing
in exchange for your existence. The desire to be is the strongest of all
desires, and will go only on the realization of your true nature.

Your purpose is to retain your individuality, your personality, and to

get all your needs satisfied. Your whole object is the good health of
yourself and your family, not Self-knowledge, not this most important
result, this Ultimate.
You will never be satisfied until you find out that you are what you are
seeking.
The difficulty comes because you are searching for That, forgetting
that That is what you are. You, the subject are seeking you as an
object. You are what you are seeking.
He is a real seeker who desires to get knowledge of the Self only. The
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rest of the desires will enable you to be called jiva and not sadhaka.

It is in the nature of desire to prompt the mind to create a world for its
fulfilment. Even a small desire can start a long line of action, therefore
what about a strong desire? Desire can produce a universe, its powers
are miraculous. A desire lights the fires of manifestation. The very
purpose of creation is the fulfilment of desire. The desire may be
noble, or ignoble, space (akash) is neutral.....one can fill it with what
one likes. You must be very careful as to what you desire. People are
in their respective worlds for the sake of their desires, and there is no
way of helping them except through their desires. You can only teach
them to have right desires so that they may rise above them, and be
free from the urge to create and re-create worlds of desires, abodes of
pain and pleasure.

All desires, holy and unholy, come from the self; they all hang on the
sense “I Am”. All desires aim at happiness. Their shape and quality
depend on the antahkarana (psyche). Where inertia (tamas)
predominates, perversions are found. With energy (rajas), passions
arise. With purity (sattva), the motive behind the desire is goodwill,
compassion, the urge to make happy rather than be happy. But the
Supreme is beyond all, yet because of its infinite permeability all
cogent desires can be fulfilled. Cogent desires are desires that destroy
their subjects, or objects, or do subside on satisfaction, are self-
contradictory and cannot be fulfilled. Only desires motivated by love,
goodwill, and compassion are beneficial to both the subject and object
and can be fully satisfied. Passion is painful, compassion never. The
entire universe strives to fulfil a desire born of compassion. One who
lives in the Supreme Unknown no desire ever arises in his mind. he is
fully conscious, but since no desire or fear enters his mind, there is
perfect silence. Silence knows itself. It is the silence of the silent mind,
when passions and desires are silenced.

All desire has its source in the self. It is all a matter of choosing the
right desire.

Who exactly wants something? The self or the mind? There is no ‘who’.
There is desire, fear, anger, and the mind says.....this is me, this is
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mine. There is no thing which could be called ‘me’ or ‘mine’. Desire is a
state of mind, perceived and named by the mind. Without the mind
perceiving and naming, where is desire?

Desires are just waves in the mind. You know a wave when you see
one. A desire is just a thing among many, feel no urge to satisfy it, no
action needs to be taken on it. Freedom from desire means this: the
compulsion to satisfy is absent.

You identify yourself with your desires and become their slave. To me
desires are things among other things, mere clouds in the mental sky,
and I do not feel compelled to act on them.

Desires arise because you imagine that you were born, and that you
will die if you do not take care of your body. Desire for embodied
existence is the root-cause of trouble.

You do not have an infinite supply of energy. Your aims are small and
low. They do not call for more energy. Only God’s energy is
infinite.....because He wants nothing for Himself. Be like Him and all
your desires will be fulfilled. Desire the good of all and the universe
will work with you. But if you want your own pleasure, you must earn
it the hard way. Before desiring, deserve.

Ask yourself do you deserve what you desire? In some way or other
you have to work for the fulfilment of your desires. Put in energy and
await for results. Where do you get the energy? The desire itself is
energy. If the desire does not get fulfilled, perhaps it was not strong
enough and lasting. When your desire is not clear nor strong, it cannot
take shape. Also because your desires are personal, for your own
enjoyment, the energy you give them is necessarily limited; it cannot
be more than you have. After desiring it very much and for a long time
some persons do attain what they desire, but even then their
achievements are limited. When you desire the common good, the
whole world desires with you. You make humanity’s desire your own
and work for it. There you cannot fail.

Becoming selfish makes you weak. Invariably the object of desire

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destroys the means of acquiring it, and then itself withers away. It is
all for the best, because it teaches you to shun desire like poison.
There is no need to practice desirelessness. No need of any acts of
renunciation. Just turn your mind away. Get it out of its groove by
denying it attention. Whatever may be the desire or fear, do not dwell
upon it.

When you understand the meaning of swa.....the Self.....there will be

no room for selfishness.

This world is filled up with selfishness due to your association with the
body. Once you know what the Self, God, and the world are, then you
dissolve the personality, and in that process that selfishness vanishes
because you are no more an individual.

You want things, but when you realize that there is nothing, and you
are not, what does it matter? Before consciousness came in I had no
needs, no wants. I was whole and without any needs. Selfishness
begins as I want something for myself. In truth there is no such thing
as ‘I’ as an entity. Therefore there is no entity to want anything.

A man who knows that he is neither body nor mind cannot be selfish,
for he has nothing to be selfish for. Or you may say he is equally
selfish on behalf of everybody he meets, everybody’s welfare is his
own. The feeling ‘I am the world, the world is myself’ becomes quite
natural. Once it is established there is no way of being selfish.

When the flame is extinguished it needs to do nothing about itself,

there is no profit or loss. When the body drops off and the
consciousness is extinguished, you need do nothing. Being tied down
to the bondage of the body is only conceptual, and with this
understanding all thought of any advantage or disadvantage is
dissolved, therefore do what you like in the world. For the sake of that
principle of “I Am” you are involving yourself in many activities. When
that very principle is dissolved into nothingness, what are you going to
do? There is no person who should hold on to the worldly life, or who
should give it up. Being fully charged with this knowledge, in spite of
worldly difficulties, no difficulties will touch you.
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Do not expect to benefit in any way by what you experience, because
to benefit there must be an entity, and there is no entity. There is
nothing like an entity ‘I’. There is no one to want anything. There is
nothing to be sought, nor by whom? There is no one to benefit from
desires.

When you happen to desire or fear, it is not the desire or fear that are
wrong and must go, but the person who desires and fears. This person
should be carefully examined and its falseness seen, then its power
over you will end.

If you consider yourself to have a name and form, to have an identity,

then desires will have an effect on you. It is not necessary to wilfully
ignore the desires, just give attention to your ‘I-consciousness.

Whatever you want, desire or worship, can only be concepts. There is

conceptual existence and existence prior to concepts.

The state of craving for anything blocks all deeper experience. Nothing
of value can happen to a mind which knows exactly what it wants, for
nothing the mind can visualize and wants is of much value.

To want something is natural, so long as there is identity with the

body-mind. Once that is transcended there will be no more wants.

Having realized that you cannot influence the results, pay no attention
to your desires and fears. Let them come and go. Do not give them
the nourishment of interest and attention.

All desire must be given up, because by desiring you take the shape of
your desires. When no desires remain, you revert to your natural
state.

In life nothing can be had without overcoming obstacles. The obstacles

to the clear perception of one’s true being are desire for pleasure and
fear of pain. It is the pleasure-pain motivation that stands in the way.
The very freedom from all motivation, the state in which no desire
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arises, is the natural state.

Pleasure and pain are states of mind. As long as you think you are the
body-mind, you are bound to question why they are there, and why
you desire pleasure and fear pain. As long as there is a body and a
mind to protect the body attractions and repulsions will operate. They
will be there, out in the field of events, but will not concern you. You
will not be distracted. The focus of your attention will be elsewhere.

Man considers himself an entity and spends his whole life working
hard, trying to achieve something. The motivation for all this is the
sense of me and mine. It is not understood ..... all that is functioning
is the consciousness.....no entity is involved. There is no benefit for
any supposed entity. There is no benefit even out of this
understanding. You are the understanding. That which apprehends this
has no shape or form. The forms are created from the five elements
and at the end of their span of time they are destroyed. Nothing will
be of any benefit to you.

Weak desires can be removed by introspection and meditation, but

strong, deep-rooted desires must be fulfilled and their fruits, sweet or
bitter, tasted.

No ambition is spiritual. All ambitions are for the sake of the ‘I Am’. If
you want to make real progress you must give up all idea of personal
attainment. In the lust for an everlasting personal bliss the mind is a
cheat. The more pious it seems, the worse the betrayal.

Increase and widen your desires until nothing but reality can fulfil
them. It is not desire that is wrong, but its narrowness and smallness.

Desire is devotion. By all means be devoted to the real, the infinite,

the eternal heart of being. Transform desire into love.

All you want is to be happy. All your desires, whatever they may be,
are expressions of your longing for happiness. Basically you wish
yourself well.

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Desirelessness comes on its own when desire is recognized as false.
You need not struggle with desire. Ultimately desire is an urge to
happiness, which is natural as long as there is sorrow. Only see that
there is no happiness in what you desire.

Leave alone your desires and fears, give your entire attention to the
subject, to him who is behind the experience of desire and fear. Ask:
who desires? Let each desire bring you back to yourself.

The “I” is full of desires. Instead of trying to fulfil the desires, find out
what this “I” is. Understand desire. Nothing in the world has any
attraction for the Self.

Realize that there is no desire outside the mind, and stay out.

The desire for truth is the highest of all desires, yet, it is still a desire.
All desires must be given up for the real to be.

Everything happens by itself, quite spontaneously. But man imagines

that he works for an incentive, towards a goal. He has always a reward
in mind and strives for it. He does not know that to grow is the nature
of consciousness. He will progress from motive to motive and will
chase Gurus for the fulfilment of his desires. When, by the laws of his
being, he finds the way of return (nivritti) he abandons all motives, for
his interest in the world is over. He wants nothing, neither from others
nor from himself. He dies to all and becomes the All. To want nothing
and do nothing.....that is true creation! To watch the universe
emerging and subsiding in one’s heart is a wonder.

You will recognize that you have returned to your natural state by a
complete absence of all desire and fear. After all, at the root of all
desire and fear is the feeling of not being what you are. All self-
concern is a symptom of mental distortion which disappears as soon as
one is in the normal state.

When you pursue this spiritual path of understanding the Self, all your
desires just drop off.....even the primary desire, to be. When you stay
put in that beingness for some time, that desire also will drop off; you
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are in the Absolute.

The spiritual path is the path of self-knowing. On the spiritual path all
your desires, all your attachments, will drop away. The primary desire
is ‘to be’. Your ‘I-am-ness’ is the state ‘to be’. You are attached to that
state ‘to be’. You love ‘to be’. When you stay in the state of ‘beingness’
for some time the desire ‘to be’ will also drop away. This is very
important. When the desire ‘to be’ is dropped off, you are in the
Absolute. The Absolute is a most essential state.

If somebody wants something, it is seeking the real in the totally

unreal.

What you want to be, you are it already. Desire nothing, for you lack
nothing. The very seeking prevents you from finding.

You will be concerned as long as the pictures that appear and

disappear in the mind clash with your own sense of truth, love, and
beauty. The desire for harmony and peace is ineradicable. But once it
is fulfilled the concern ceases and physical life becomes effortless and
below the level of attention. Then even in the body you are not born.
To be embodied or bodiless is same to you. You reach a point when
nothing can happen to you. Without body you cannot be killed, without
possessions you cannot be robbed, without mind you cannot be
deceived. There is no point where a desire or fear can hook on. As long
as no change can happen to you, what else matters.

The cause of desire and fear is obviously the memory of past pains
and pleasures. Conflict arises only when desire and fear refer to the
same object.
Do whatever you want, but never forget what you really are.

In the depth of your heart what is it that you want?

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31. Fear

The world is rich in diversity, but your feeling strange and frightened is
due to misapprehension. It is the body that is in danger, not you.

Fear, anxiety, is a mental state caused by the ‘I-am-the-body’ idea. It

can be removed by the contrary idea: ‘I-am-not-the-body’. Both the
ideas are false, but one removes the other. Realize that no ideas are
your own, they all come to you from outside.

Once you realize that all comes from within, that the world in which
you live has not been projected onto you, but by you, your fear comes
to an end. Without this realization you identify yourself with the
externals, like the body, mind, society, nation, humanity, even God or
the Absolute. But these are all escapes from fear. It is only when you
fully accept your responsibility for the little world in which you live,
and watch the process of its creation, preservation, and destruction,
that you may be free from your imaginary bondage
When you realize that the distinction between inner and outer is in the
mind only, you are no longer afraid.

As persons we are bound to be afraid until we can look at fear and

accept it as the shadow of personal existence. Abandon all personal
equations and you shall be free from fear.
I am dead already. Physical death will make no difference in my case.
I am tireless being. I am free of desire or fear, because I do not
remember the past, or imagine the future. Where there are no names
and shapes, how can there be desire and fear? With desirelessness
comes timelessness. I am safe, because what is not, cannot touch
what is. You feel unsafe because you imagine danger. Of course, your
body as such is complex and vulnerable and needs protection. But not
you. Once you realize your own unassailable being, you will be at
peace.

Both God and the jnani know themselves to be as nothing, therefore

nothing can resist them. Being nothing I am all. Everything is me. I
am all and all is me. Being the world I am not afraid of the world.
Being all, what am I to be afraid of? I am not afraid because I am
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nothing that can experience fear, or can be in danger. I have no
shape, nor name. It is attachment to a name and shape that breeds
fear. I am not attached. I am nothing, and nothing is afraid of no
thing. On the contrary, everything is afraid of the Nothing, for when a
thing touches Nothing, it becomes nothing. It is like a bottomless well,
whatever falls into it disappears.

32. Need-Necessary

Something prevents you from seeing that there is nothing you need.

You are not hungry and you need no bread. You need cessation,
relinquishing, disentanglement. What you believe you need is not what
you need. You need to return to your natural state. You need nothing
except to be what you are. Anything else you may think of is an
illusion and an obstacle. You imagine you will increase your value by
acquisition. Elimination and purification, renunciation of all that is
foreign to your nature, is enough. All else is vanity.

You need not be attached to the non-essentials. Only the necessary is

good. There is peace only in the essential.

You must not allow your mind to go out of yourself in search. When
you want something, ask yourself: do I really need it? And if the
answer is no, then just drop it.

If you abide in consciousness everything will be happening

spontaneously. If you are still at the body-mind level, you will think
you are doing something. If you become one with your Self, then
people will be serving you, they will fall at your feet. Whatever is
necessary for you will happen.

When you got yourself separated from the Absolute with this identity
“I Am”, you felt fragmented, isolated, and that is why your demands
started. In the Absolute there are no needs. Only the Absolute
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prevails.

33. Happiness-Unhappiness

If the entertainment of the experience is easy, if it pleases you, you

call it happiness, if not you call it unhappiness.

Your desires are there. Your longing to be happy is there. Why?

Because you love yourself. By all means love yourself.....wisely. What
is wrong is to love yourself stupidly, so as to make yourself suffer.
Love yourself wisely. Both indulgence and austerity have the same
purpose in view.....to make you happy. Indulgence is the stupid way,
austerity is the wise way. What is austerity? Once you have gone
through an experience, not to go through it again is austerity. To
eschew the unnecessary is austerity

When the mind is engaged in serving the body, happiness is lost. To

regain it, it seeks pleasure. The urge to be happy is right, but the
means of securing it are misleading, unreliable, and destructive of true
happiness.

True happiness cannot be found in things that change and pass away.
Pleasure and pain alternate inexorably.

Do not try to make yourself happy, rather question your very search
for happiness. It is because you are not happy you seek happiness in
pleasure. Pleasure brings in pain, and therefore you call it worldly. You
then long for some other pleasure without pain, which you call divine.
In reality pleasure is but a respite from pain.

What is happiness? Harmony between the inner and the outer is

happiness.

Happiness is our real nature, and we shall never rest until we find it.
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But rarely we know where to seek it. A man of low intelligence
believes, against all evidence, that the world owes him happiness. But
the world cannot give what it does not have. Unreal to the core, the
world is of no use for real happiness. We seek the real because we are
unhappy with the unreal. True happiness is uncaused, and cannot
disappear for lack of stimulation. It is not the opposite of sorrow, it
includes all sorrow and suffering. The inner happiness is
overwhelmingly real. Like the sun in the sky, its expressions may be
clouded, but it is never absent. Pleasure depends on things, happiness
does not. As long as we believe that we need things to make us
happy, we shall also believe that in their absence we must be
miserable. Mind always shapes itself according to its beliefs. Pleasure
is a distraction and a nuisance, for it merely increases the false
conviction that one needs to have and do things to be happy, when in
reality it is just the opposite.

The source of all happiness is your beingness. If you get yourself

involved in the flow, all that Maya, the activities, then you will come to
misery. This is because you try to derive pleasure from the activities.
On the contrary the way is to stillness.

You do not think of happiness except when you are unhappy. A man
who says: ‘Now I am happy’, is between two sorrows, past and future.
Such happiness is mere excitement caused by relief from pain. Real
happiness is utterly unselfconscious. It is best expressed negatively
as: ‘there is nothing wrong with me. I have nothing to worry about’.
The experience of being empty, uncluttered by memories and
expectations, is like the happiness of open spaces, of being young, of
having all the time and energy for doing things, for discovery, for
adventure. What remains to discover? The universe without and the
immensity within, as they are in reality. Your true home is in
nothingness, in emptiness of all content.

Ananda means bliss. and this is a quality of mind.....a higher realm of

the mind.....but present in the consciousness. The prerequisite is the
kiss of consciousness which is necessary for that highest state of
exultation or exhilaration, that is sat-chit-ananda. The first touch of
consciousness is necessary.
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Happiness and unhappiness was not there until I had this
consciousness.
True happiness has no cause, and what has no cause is immovable.

You imagine that without cause there can be no happiness. To the

jnani dependence on anything for happiness is utter misery. Pleasure
and pain have causes, while the jnani’s state is his own, totally
uncaused, independent, unassailable. The jnani’s state tastes of the
pure, uncaused, undiluted bliss. He is happy and fully aware that
happiness is his very nature and that he need not do anything, nor
strive for anything to secure it.

What is your happiness worth when you have to strive and labour for
it? True happiness is spontaneous and effortless.

You are always seeking pleasure, avoiding pain, always after

happiness and peace. Do you not see that it is your very search for
happiness that makes you feel miserable? Try the other way:
indifferent to pain and pleasure, neither asking, nor refusing, give all
your attention to the level on which ‘I Am’ is timelessly present. Soon
you will realize that peace and happiness are in your very nature and it
is only seeking them through some particular channels, that disturbs.
Avoid the disturbance, that is all. To seek there is no need; you would
not seek what you already have.

Happiness comes from the self and can be found in the self only. Find
your real self and all else will come with it.

Desire is the memory of pleasure and fear is the memory of pain. Both
make the mind restless. Moments of pleasure are merely gaps in the
stream of pain. Joy is joy only against a background of pain. How can
the mind be happy?

It is your mind only that makes you insecure and unhappy.

Anticipation makes you insecure, memory makes you unhappy. Stop
misusing your mind and all will be well with you. You need not set your
mind right.....it will set itself right, as soon as you give up all concern
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with the past and the future and live entirely in the now. As nothing
and nobody you are safe and happy.

It is an observable fact that one becomes self-conscious only when

caught in the conflict between pleasure and pain, which demands
choice and decision. It is this clash between desire and fear which
causes anger, which is the great destroyer of sanity in life. When pain
is accepted for what it is, a lesson and a warning, and deeply looked
into and heeded, the separation between pleasure and pain breaks
down, both become experience.....painful when resisted, joyful when
accepted. The personal self by its very nature is constantly pursuing
pleasure and avoiding pain. The ending of this pattern is the ending of
the self. The ending of the self with its desires and fears enables you
to return to your real nature, the source of all happiness and peace.
The perennial desire for pleasure is a reflection of the timeless
harmony within.

Do not pursue pleasure and shun pain, nor shun pleasure and pursue
pain. Accept both as they come, enjoy both while they last, let them
go, as they must.

The bliss is in the awareness of pain, in not shrinking, or in any way

turning away from it. All happiness comes from awareness. The more
we are conscious, the deeper the joy. Acceptance of pain, non-
resistance, courage and endurance.....these open deep and perennial
sources of real happiness, true bliss.

The real happiness, without its counterpart, can only be there when
consciousness leaves.

You can have no experience of happiness or unhappiness if the

concept ‘I am’ is not there. Feeling and thought can come only when
the basic ‘I-am-ness’ is there. If the feeling and the concept that I
exist is not there, who can have any awareness, or consciousness? In
the absence of the basic concept ‘I am’, there is no thought, no
awareness, no consciousness of one’s existence.

You are concerned with your own happiness, and I am telling you that
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there is no such thing. Happiness is never your own, it is where the ‘I’
is not.

How can a person limited in time and space, a mere body-mind, a

gasp of pain between birth and death, be happy? The very conditions
of its arising make happiness impossible. Peace, power, happiness,
these are never personal states. Nobody can say ‘my peace’, ‘my
power’.....because ‘mine’ implies exclusivity, which is fragile and
insecure.

The “you” that has sprouted, that has taken root, that alone is the
cause of pleasure and pain. When you understand this, it is all
over.....finished.....all the show is over.

The world is not objective and the sorrow of it is not avoidable.

Compassion is but another word for the refusal to suffer for imaginary
reasons. It is always the false that makes you suffer, the false desires
and fears, the false values and ideas, the false relationships between
people. Abandon the false and you are free of pain. Truth makes
happy.....truth liberates.

Nothing can make you happier than you are. All search for happiness
is misery and leads to more misery. The only happiness worth the
name is the natural happiness of conscious being.

To imagine that some little thing.....food, sex, power, fame.....will

make you happy is to deceive yourself. Only something as vast and
deep as your real self can make you truly and lastingly happy.

To know that you need nothing to be happy, except self-knowledge, is

wisdom.

Happiness is not lasting. You as the witness are prior to happiness. But
the ultimate you, the real you, are prior to the witness-you.

Those who seek mere happiness may end up in sublime indifference,

while love will never rest. Be sure you attitude is of pure goodwill, free
of expectation of any kind. Happiness is incidental. The true and
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effective motive is love.

The undisturbed state of being is bliss. The disturbed state of being is

what appears as the world. In non-duality there is bliss; in duality
there is experience. What comes and goes is experience with its
duality of pain and pleasure. Bliss is not to be known. One is always
bliss, but never blissful. Bliss is not an attribute.

34. Suffering

This “I Amness” is the very source of all misery.

Every pleasure, physical and mental, needs an instrument. Both the

physical and mental instruments are material, they get tired and worn
out. The pleasure they yield is necessarily limited in intensity and
duration. Pain is the background of all your pleasures. You want them
because you suffer.

Pain is physical, suffering is mental. Beyond the mind there is no

suffering. Pain is merely a signal that the body is in danger and
requires attention. Similarly, suffering warns us that the structure of
the memories and habits, which we call the person (vyakti), is
threatened by loss or change. Pain is essential for the survival of the
body, but none compels you to suffer. Suffering is due entirely to
clinging or resisting; it is a sign of our unwillingness to move on, to
flow with life. A saint is friendly with the inevitable and therefore does
not suffer.

Your attitude to suffering must change. Suffering is primarily a call for

attention, which itself is a movement of love. More than happiness,
love wants growth, the widening and deepening of consciousness and
being. Whatever prevents becomes a cause of pain, and love does not
shrink from pain. Sattva, the energy that works for righteousness and
orderly development, must not be thwarted. When obstructed it turns
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against itself and becomes destructive. Whenever love is withheld and
suffering allowed to spread, war becomes inevitable. Our indifference
to our neighbour’s sorrow brings suffering to our door.

Give attention to what worries you. After all worry is mental pain, and
pain is invariably a call for attention. The moment you give attention,
the call for it ceases. Instead of waiting for an answer to your
question, find out who is asking the question, and what makes him ask
it. You will soon find that it is the mind, goaded by fear of pain, that
asks the question. And in fear there is memory and anticipation, past
and future. Attention brings you back to the present, the now, and the
presence in the now is a state ever at hand, but rarely noticed.

If you are yourself alone, that state will not be felt; but if there is a
foreign element, only then the suffering starts. On you, the original,
this foreign element is imposed, that is why it is suffering.

All your problems arise because you have defined and therefore limited
yourself. When you do not think yourself to be this or that, all conflict
ceases. Any attempt to do something about your problems is bound to
fail, for what is caused by desire can be undone only in freedom from
desire. You have enclosed yourself in time and space, squeezed
yourself into the span of a lifetime and the volume of a body, and thus
created the innumerable conflicts of life and death, pleasure and pain,
hope and fear. You cannot be rid of problems without abandoning
illusions.

Pleasure, pain and miseries are felt so long as identification with the
body and mind is retained. When you realize you are neither the body
nor the mind, you will remain unaffected by any mental modifications.
In that state you are the dynamic universal consciousness.

The bliss of reality does not exclude suffering. It is not the thing in
itself that is pleasant or painful. Pleasure lies in the relationship
between the enjoyer and the enjoyed. And the essence of it is
acceptance. If it is acceptable it is pleasant, if it is not acceptable it is
painful. Suffering is due to non-acceptance. Did you ever try to accept
pain? If you try you will find in pain a joy which pleasure cannot yield,
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for the simple reason that acceptance of pain takes you much deeper
than pleasure does.

Pleasure is readily accepted, while all the powers of the self reject
pain. As the acceptance of pain is the denial of the self, and the self
stands in the way of true happiness, the wholehearted acceptance of
pain releases the springs of happiness. Pain is easily brought within
the focus of awareness. With suffering it is not that simple. To focus
suffering is not enough, for mental life as we know it, is one
continuous stream of suffering. To reach the deeper layers of suffering
you must go to its roots and uncover their vast underground network,
where fear and desire are closely interwoven and the currents of life’s
energy oppose, obstruct and destroy each other.

By themselves neither pleasure nor pain enlighten. Only understanding

does. Once you have grasped the truth that the world is full of
suffering, that to be born is a calamity, you will find the urge and the
energy to go beyond it. Pleasure puts you to sleep and pain wakes you
up. If you do not want to suffer, do not go to sleep. You cannot know
yourself through bliss alone, for bliss is your very nature. You must
face the opposite, what you are not, to find enlightenment.

Permanent perfection includes all imperfection. It is the perfection of

our self-nature which makes everything possible, perceivable,
interesting. It knows no suffering, for it neither likes nor dislikes,
neither accepts nor rejects. Creation and destruction are the two poles
between which it weaves its ever-changing pattern. Be free from
predilections and preferences and the mind with its burden of sorrow
will be no more.

Experiences will be there. You may not be involved in the experiences,

but as long as the “I Am” is there, experiences will be there. The
magic, the art, of this consciousness is that it has not only hidden the
fact that it is the source of all misery, but it has made itself the source
of all apparent happiness.

To suffer or to enjoy, you have no choice. You can not do

anything.....you have to enjoy what is.
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There is no individuality left, nevertheless, so long as this body is part
of the total functioning, whatever comes in the total functioning has to
be suffered. The share of this body from the total suffering has to be
experienced.

If you stand aloof as observer only, you will not suffer. You will see the
world as a show, a most entertaining show indeed. The cause of
suffering is in the identification of the perceiver with the perceived.

Selfishness is the cause of suffering. There is no other cause.

35. Attachment-Detachment

Attachment is bondage, detachment is freedom.

So long as you are attached to the body, you will not be able to
transcend attachment to various people and things.

We should break off the shackles that attach us to the body and the
world. Whatever is seen and perceived is at the bodily or worldly level.
An attachment is developed with objects perceived, and then we
identify with a body as ourselves and claim the objects as our own.
Attachment is the nature of the mind, and it obstinately persists in
these attachments.

Attachment to life is attachment to sorrow.

You cannot renounce. You may leave your home and give trouble to
your family, but attachments are in the mind and will not leave you
until you know your mind in and out. The first thing is know yourself.

If you want to know detachment you must realize the personality or

individuality will melt away.

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Before the knowledge “I am” appeared on you, you were absolutely
unattached. As soon as the knowledge “I am” dawned on you, you
became attached to everything around you. Only the false “I” is
attached.

Sacrifice is giving up and donating yourself. In higher expression it is

called detachment.

Let things happen as they happen.....they will sort themselves out

nicely in the end. You need not strain towards the future.....the future
will come to you on its own. There are always moments when one
feels empty and estranged. Such moments are most desirable for it
means the soul has cast its moorings and is sailing for distant places.
This is detachment.....when the old is over and the new has not yet
come. If you are afraid, the state may be distressing; but there is
really nothing to be afraid of. Remember the old instruction: whatever
you come across.....go beyond.

To think that you are becoming more detached is not correct, because
you are already detached.

The preparation alone is gradual, the change itself is sudden and

complete. Gradual change does not take you to a new level of
conscious being. You need courage to let go.

Attachment destroys courage. Freedom means letting go. People just

do not care to let go everything. Spiritual maturity lies in the readiness
to let go everything. The giving up is the first step. But the real giving
up is in realizing that there is nothing to give up, for nothing is your
own.

Do not hold onto the person you take yourself to be.

Merely giving up a thing to secure a better one is not true

relinquishment. Give it up because you see its valuelessness.

Not only do we surrender our possessions, we surrender ourselves. We

surrender the entire knowledge. The greatest surrender is the
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renunciation of the knowledge “I Am”. When you give up that you
escape birth and death.

This psychosomatic bundle which is born will suffer or enjoy during its
allotted span. I am the knower, not the one who experiences, and am
not concerned. It is perfectly clear. I merely watch the body, mind,
and consciousness laugh and suffer. I know it is a temporary thing, if it
wants to go, let it go. I am not concerned.

Freedom from all desire is eternity. All attachment implies fear, for all
things are transient. And fear makes one a slave. This freedom from
attachment does not come with practice; it is natural when one knows
one’s true being. Love does not cling; clinging is not love. There is
nothing to gain. Abandon all imaginings and know yourself as you are.
Self-knowledge is detachment. All craving is due to a sense of
insufficiency. When you know that you lack nothing, that all there is, is
you and yours, desire ceases.

Be neither master nor slave, stand aloof.

A level of mental maturity is reached when nothing external is of any

value, and the heart is ready to relinquish all. Then the real has a
chance and it grasps it. Delays, if any, are caused by the mind being
unwilling to see or to discard.

All this I perceive quite clearly, but somehow I am not in it, I feel
myself as if floating over it. There is aloofness and detachment, there
is also awareness of it all, and a sense of immense distance, as if the
body and the mind and all that happens to them were far out on the
horizon.

Total independence is merely to apprehend and understand. Apparent

dependence is on this consciousness which says “I Am”.

Meditation will help you to find your bonds, loosen them, untie them,
and cast your moorings. When you are no longer attached to anything,
you have done your share, the rest will be done for you, by the power
that has brought you so far, that prompted your heart to desire truth,
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and your mind to seek it. It is the same power that keeps you alive.
You may call it Life or the Supreme.

36. Sadhana-Discipline

Assiduously investigate everything that crosses your field of attention.

To be steadily and consistently wondering is sadhana.

Sooner or later you are bound to discover that if you really want to
find, you must dig at one place only.....within. You are not looking
towards yourself, instead you are occupied with other things. Once you
look inwards, everything will follow spontaneously.

The waking state differs from deep sleep in the presence of the
witness. A ray of awareness illumines a part of our mind, and that part
becomes our dream or waking consciousness, while awareness
appears as the witness. The witness usually knows only consciousness.
Sadhana consists in the witness turning back first on his conscious,
then upon himself in his own awareness. Self-awareness is Yoga.

Unless you accept inner adventure as a way of life, discovery will not
come to you.

Nothing stops you but preoccupation with the outer which prevents
you from focusing the inner. You cannot skip your sadhana. You have
to turn away from the world and go within, until the inner and the
outer merge, and you can go beyond the conditioned, whether inner or
outer.

Looking outside for light and sound, all disciples undergo some
spiritual experience and that itself is bondage. They compare their
experiences with others. Those disciples think they are very advanced.
They are attracted to the experiences of sound and light because they
identify themselves with the body. They want a shape and design,
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therefore they revel in experiences which indicate shape and design.

You could see the here and now but for the wrong focus of your
attention. You give no attention to yourself. Your mind is all with
things, people and ideas, never with yourself. Bring yourself into focus,
become aware of your own existence. See how you function, watch the
motives and the results of your actions. Study the prison you have
built around yourself, by inadvertence. By knowing what you are not,
you come to know yourself. We discover our natural state by being
earnest, by searching, enquiring, questioning daily and hourly, by
giving one’s life to this discovery.

Watch 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.

Attention means interest and also love. To know, to do, to discover, or

to create.....you must give your heart to it, which means attention. All
the blessings flow from attention.
Be conscious of yourself, watch your mind, give it your full attention.
Do not look for quick results. Unknown to you, your psyche will
undergo a change, there will be more clarity in your thinking and
feeling, and more purity in your behaviour. What you are now is the
result of inattention, and what you become will be the fruit of
attention. Why does attention make a difference? So far your life was
dark and restless (tamas and rajas). Attention, awareness, vitality, are
all manifestations of integrity, oneness with your true nature (sattva).
It is in the nature of sattva to reconcile and neutralize tamas and
rajas, and rebuild the personality in accordance with the true nature of
the self. Sattva is the faithful servant of the self, ever attentive and
obedient.

The very fact of observation alters the observer and the observed.
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After all, what prevents the insight into one’s true nature is the
weakness and obtuseness of the mind and its tendency to skip the
subtle and focus on the gross only. When you try to keep your mind on
the notion ‘I Am’ only, you become fully aware of your mind and its
vagaries. Awareness, being lucid harmony (sattva) in action, dissolves
dullness and quietens the restlessness of the mind, and gently but
steadily changes its very substance. This change need not be
spectacular, it may be hardly noticeable, yet it is a deep and
fundamental shift from darkness to light, from inadvertence to
awareness.

Whatever vice and weakness in ourselves we discover and understand

its causes and its workings, we overcome it by the very knowing, the
unconscious dissolves when brought into the conscious. The
dissolution of the unconscious releases energy, the mind feels
adequate and becomes quiet.

Sadhana (practice) consists in reminding oneself forcibly of one’s pure

‘beingness’, of not being anything in particular, nor a sum of
particulars, not even the totality of all particulars, which make up a
universe. All exists in the mind, even the body is an integration in the
mind of a vast number of sensory perceptions, each perception also a
mental state. Sadhana is enquiring what is permanent in the transient,
real in the unreal.
There is no place for effort in reality. It is selfishness, due to a self-
identification with the body, that is the main problem, and the cause of
all other problems. And selfishness cannot be removed by effort, only
by clear insight into its causes and effects. Effort is a sign of conflict
between incompatible desires. They should be seen as they
are.....then only, they dissolve.

There is nothing to practice. To know yourself, be yourself. To be

yourself, stop imagining yourself to be this or that. Just be. Let your
true nature emerge. Do not disturb your mind with seeking.

Your sadhana is to be. The doing happens. Just be watchful. What is

the difficulty in remembering that you are? You are all the time.

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Sadhana consists in shifting the emphasis from the superficial and
changeful person to the immutable and ever-present witness.

What matters is the persistence with which you keep on returning to

yourself.
In the initial stages of your spiritual practice you should reject your
identity with your body and mind and feel that the principle “I Am” is
the vital breath and the consciousness only. In the later stages the
vital breath and the consciousness, that is the knowledge “I Am”,
merge in one’s ultimate nature

The first step in the discipline, sadhana, is to stay only in the

knowledge ‘I am’, or ‘I am That’. It is necessary to think “I am not the
body but I am that formless nameless knowledge indwelling in this
body. That I am.” Staying in that state sufficiently no external
knowledge will be necessary.

My Guru ordered me to attend to the sense ‘I Am’ and to give

attention to nothing else. I just obeyed. I did not follow any particular
course of breathing, or meditation, or study of the scriptures.
Whatever happened, I would turn away my attention from it and
remain with the sense ‘I Am’. Just turn away from all that occupies the
mind, do whatever work you have to complete, but avoid new
obligations. Keep empty, keep available, resist not what comes
uninvited. In the end you reach a state of non-grasping, of joyful non-
attachment, of inner ease and freedom indescribable, yet wonderfully
real.

Give you heart and mind to brooding over the ‘I Am’, what is it, what
is its source, its life, its meaning. It is very much like digging a well.
You reject all that is not water, until you reach the life-giving spring.

Keep the ‘I Am’ in the focus of awareness, remember that you are.
Watch yourself ceaselessly and the unconscious will flow into the
conscious without any special effort on your part. Wrong desires and
fears, false ideas, social inhibitions, are blocking and preventing its
free interplay with the conscious. Once free to mingle, the two become
one, and the one becomes all. The person merges into the witness, the
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witness into awareness, awareness into pure being, yet identity is not
lost. It is transfigured , and becomes the real Self, the Sadguru, the
eternal friend and guide. You cannot approach it in worship. No
external activity can reach the inner self. Worship and prayers remain
on the surface only. To go deeper meditation is essential, the striving
to go beyond the states of sleep, dream, and waking. In the beginning
the attempts are irregular, then they recur more often, become
regular, then continuous and intense, until all obstacles are conquered.
Obstacles to self-forgetting.

To know that you are neither the body nor mind, watch yourself
steadily and live unaffected by your body and mind, completely aloof,
as if you were dead. It means you have no vested interests, either in
the body or in the mind.

The mind is discontinuous. Again and again it blanks out, like in sleep
or swoon, or distraction. There must be something continuous to
register discontinuity. While looking with the mind, you cannot go
beyond it. To go beyond, you must look away from the mind and its
contents. I am not asking you to look in any particular direction. All
directions are within the mind! Just look away from all that happens in
your mind and bring it to the feeling ‘I Am’. The ‘I Am’ is not a
direction. It is the negation of all direction. Ultimately even the ‘I Am’
will have to go, for you need not keep on asserting what is obvious.
Bringing the mind to the feeling ‘I Am’ merely helps in turning the
mind away from everything else. When the mind is kept away from all
its preoccupations, it becomes quiet. If you do not disturb this quiet
and stay in it, you find that it is permeated with a light and a love you
have never known; and yet you recognize it at once as your own
nature. Once you have passed through this experience, you will never
be the same man again. The unruly mind may break its peace and
obliterate its vision, but it is bound to return, provided the effort is
sustained, until the day when all bonds are broken, delusions and
attachments end, and life becomes supremely concentrated in the
present. The mind is no more. There is only love in action.

There are many starting points.....they all lead to the same goal. You
may begin with selfless work, abandoning the fruits of action, next
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give up thinking, and end in giving up all desires. Giving up (tyaga) is
the factor. Alternatively do not be concerned about anything you want,
think, or do, and stay in the thought and feeling “I Am”, focusing “I
Am” in the mind. Because everything perceivable is transient and only
the “I Am” endures, remain unmoved by all kinds of experience that
may come to you. Action, in which you are emotionally involved and
which is beneficial and does not cause suffering, will not bind you.
Although you may work with enormous zest, remain inwardly free and
quiet, with a mirror-like mind, which reflects all, without being
affected.

What you gave up is of no importance now. What have you not given
up? Find that out and give up that. Sadhana is a search for what to
give up. Empty yourself completely.

Devotion to the goal of freedom and perfection will make you abandon
all theories and systems and live by wisdom, intelligence and active
love. Theories may be good as starting points, but must be
abandoned, the sooner the better.

The world and the self are one and perfect. Only your attitude is faulty
and needs readjustment. This process of readjustment is what is called
Sadhana. You come to it by putting an end to indolence and using all
your energy to clear the way for clarity and charity. Be what you are.
Trust and try and experiment honestly. Give your real being a chance
to shape your life. You will not regret.

Yoga is the work of the inner self (vyakta) on the outer self (vyakti).
All that the outer does is merely in response to the inner. It is the
inner that can control the outer. The outer will be wise to obey. The
outer can help by keeping quiet and free from desire and fear. Notice
that all advice to the outer is in the form of negations: ‘do not, stop,
refrain, forego, give up, sacrifice, surrender, see the false as false’.
Even the description of reality is given through denials: ‘not this, not
this’ (neti, neti). All positives belong to the inner self. The inner is the
source of inspiration, the outer is moved by memory. The source is
untraceable, while all memory begins somewhere. Thus the outer is
always determined, while the inner cannot be held in words.
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To be yourself your outer life is unimportant. It is what you are
inwardly that matters. The only way to learn to be yourself is by
practice. Right away begin to be yourself. Discard all that you are not
and go even deeper. Just as a man digging a well discards what is not
water, until he reaches the water-bearing strata, so you must discard
what is not your own, until nothing is left which you can disown. You
will find that what is left is nothing which the mind can hook on to. You
are not even a human being. You just are.....a point of awareness,
coextensive with time and space and beyond both, the ultimate cause,
itself uncaused. If you ask me: ‘Who are you?’ My answer would be:
‘Nothing in particular. Yet I am.’

Discover all that you are not. Body, feelings, thoughts, ideas, time,
space, being and not-being, this or that.....nothing concrete or
abstract you can point out to is you. A mere verbal statement will not
do, since you may repeat a formula endlessly without any result
whatsoever. You must watch yourself continuously, particularly your
mind, moment by moment, missing nothing. This witnessing is
essential for the separation of the self from the not-self.

Practice detachment not indifference. In your real state you feel no

attraction towards anything in this world.

Step number one is be yourself. Be in your beingness only. You have

to be in that beingness without the body sense: I am the Immanent
Spirit ‘I Am’.

In sadhana each one’s experience will be different due to the

differences in the prakriti and gunas of the instrument.

For the modern young Westerner the right procedure is to adhere to

the thought that he is the ground of all knowledge, the immutable and
perennial awareness of all that happens to the senses and the mind. If
he keeps it in mind all the time, aware and alert, he is bound to break
the bounds of non-awareness and emerge into pure life, light and love.
The idea.....’I am the witness only’ will purify the body and the mind
and open the eye of wisdom. Then man goes beyond illusion and his
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heart is free of all desires. The body dissolves into pure awareness
(chidakash), then into pure being (paramakash), which is beyond all
existence and non-existence.

After a stretch of sadhana Americans and Europeans become charged

with energy and frantically seek an outlet. They organize communities,
become teachers of Yoga, marry, write books.....anything except
keeping quiet, and turning their energies within, to find the source of
the inexhaustible power, and learn the art of keeping it under control.

The main thing is to be free of negative emotions.....desire, fear, etc.,

the six enemies of the mind. Once the mind is free of them, the rest
will come easily. The mind gets purified in the stream of pure feeling.

Watch your thoughts as you watch the street traffic. People come and
go; you register without response. It may not be easy in the
beginning, but with some practice you will find that your mind can
function on many levels at the same time, and you can be aware of
them all. It is only when you have a vested interest in any particular
level, that your attention gets caught in it and you blackout on other
levels. Even then the work on the blacked out levels goes on, outside
the field of consciousness.

When you sit quiet and watch yourself, all kinds of things may come to
the surface. Do nothing about them, do not react to them; as they
have come so will they go, by themselves. All that matters is
mindfulness, total awareness of oneself, or rather of one’s mind.

You will go on making resolves to accomplish something, and continue

to practice, so long as you are identifying with form. When you realize
that you are not the mind-body form, there is no practice anymore.

The seeker will soon find out that the seeker disappears in the
seeking.

Whatever can be lost is not really one’s own; and what is not your
own, of what use can it be to you?

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The signs of progress in spiritual life are freedom from all anxiety, a
sense of ease and joy, deep peace and abundant energy without.

The indication of your progress is your disinclination to associate with

normal people, your desires and expectations get less and less. When
out of intense hunger for Self knowledge, the door or the floodgate is
opened, then you start rejecting everything, right from the gross state
to Isvara state, even your own consciousness, you reject everything.
By donating the Self you get the Brahman, and when you donate the
Brahman you get Parabrahman. You must have a deep, intense desire
for Self knowledge.

There is no need for any sadhana except being aware of the fact that it
is only in this consciousness that everything takes place.

Do not think some progress has to be made. There is no identity. It is

not possible for a phenomenal object to achieve something, and this is
only a phenomenal object. Do not be under the misapprehension that
you are doing anything. Before the conviction comes that you are God,
you will have lost your identity, you will have merged with the total
manifestation, therefore who will expect who to come and do
pranams?

The mumukshu is the first stage, when one feels there is something
beyond this material universe. Meditation etc. is given to the
mumukshu, who is still convinced with his body-mind, but when he
becomes convinced that he is not the body-mind he goes to the stage
of the sadhaka. The sadhaka still has a desire to achieve something,
but he is convinced that he is the beingness or the consciousness.
Ultimately he comes to the conclusion that he is not the beingness,
because the beingness depends on the food and is also time-bound.

Abandon all desires, keep your mind silent, and you shall discover.

If you could give up all other spiritual efforts and disciplines and
absorb yourself in relishing the charan-amrita by abidance in the
consciousness, the mind will release you from its clutches. At present
you meekly accept whatever the mind dictates as your own. If the
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mind goes into silence, where and what are you?

As long as you believe so you must go on with your sadhana, to

disperse the false idea of not being complete. Sadhana removes the
super-impositions.
The moment the Sat-Guru makes everything clear, there is no need
for Japa, or mantra, or anything. If you understand what the Guru has
been telling you there is no need of any sadhana. There is no need to
do anything, and you can do anything.

The real sadhana is effortless.

Direct all your enquiries within.

The causes of delay of self-knowledge are not investigating the

sources of knowledge sufficiently, their sensations, feelings and
thoughts they do not know well enough, or some desires may still be
alive. If the seeker is earnest, the light can be given. The light is for all
and always there, but the seekers are few, and among those few,
those who are ready are very rare. Ripeness of heart and mind is
indispensable.

You have enough will and energy for the first step. And each step will
generate enough energy for the next. Energy comes with confidence,
and confidence comes with experience. Laziness and restlessness
often stand in the way and until they are seen and removed, the
progress is slow.

You want instant insight, forgetting that the instant is always preceded
by a long preparation. The fruit falls suddenly, but the ripening takes
time.

All those who have realized on the spot, by mere touch, look or
thought, have been ripe for it. But such are very few. The majority
needs some time for ripening. Sadhana is accelerated ripening.

What is the ripening factor? Self-remembrance, awareness of ‘I Am’

ripens you powerfully and speedily. Give up all ideas about yourself
and simply be.
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Keep quiet, undisturbed, and the wisdom and the power will come on
their own. Wait in silence of the heart and mind. Stay without
ambition, without the least desire, exposed, vulnerable, unprotected,
uncertain and alone, completely open to and welcoming life as it
happens, without the selfish conviction that all must yield you pleasure
or profit, material or so-called spiritual. Abandon every attempt, just
be, do not strive, do not struggle, let go every support, hold on to the
blind sense of being, brushing off all else. Refuse attention, let things
come and go. Desires and thoughts are also things. Disregard them.
Brush off the dust of events that is covering the clear mirror of your
mind, allowing you to see only memories, until the true nature of your
mind is discovered. Be earnest, and patient. Dispassion, detachment,
freedom from desire and fear, from all self-concern, mere awareness,
free from memory and expectation.....this is the state of mind to which
discovery can happen. Liberation is but the freedom to discover.

If people ask you what to do, what practices to adopt, which way of
life to follow, answer: ‘Do nothing, just be. In being all happens
naturally’.

37. Meditation

In deep meditation all the necessary wisdom is revealed to you.

When you are initiated into a spiritual discipline with a sacred name, it
means that it represents your ultimate true nature. Be one with the
sacred name completely, then it will give you all the mystic knowledge
necessary for your spiritual elevation. It will awaken you into your
eternal awareness.

Meditation is this knowledge ‘I am’, this consciousness meditating on

itself.

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In meditation your beingness should merge in itself, a non-dual state.
Remain still. Do not struggle to come out of the mud of your concepts,
you will only go deeper. Remain still.
Practice the meditation: ‘just be’. ‘I am’. Do this type of meditation
until you stabilize in the conviction: ‘I am the knowledge “I am”. At
that stage your individuality is completely extinguished. You (the
manifested) no longer have a personality. In the place of the lost
individuality comes the manifest totality.

Who meditates and on what? In meditation people use their

consciousness to concentrate on something. Dyana is when this
knowledge, this consciousness that I am, meditates on itself and not
on something other than itself. Knowledge has no form, and the
knowledge that you are has no form. It is not this body identification
that is sitting for meditation, but the knowledge ‘I am’, this
consciousness, which is sitting in meditation and is meditating on
itself. When this is understood it becomes easy.

The first thing you do after waking up is to meditate on that

consciousness, that “I Amness”, worship that consciousness for some
time before you start your daily activities. Before you fall asleep at
night, again abide in that consciousness, “I Amness”. In such a mood
go into sleep. The consciousness which meditates on the Self, that Self
will be revealed to you.

Meditation is a sattvic activity, and aims at complete elimination of

tamas (inertia) and rajas (motivity). Pure sattva (harmony) is perfect
freedom from sloth and restlessness.

All repetitiveness is tamas, but repeating the name of God is sattva-

tamas due to its high purpose. Because of the presence of sattva, the
tamas will wear out, and will take the shape of complete dispassion,
detachment, relinquishment, aloofness, immutability. Tamas becomes
the firm foundation on which an integrated life can be lived.

In meditation the life force gets purified, and then the light of Atman
shines forth. When the purified life force and the light of the Self
merge into each other, then the mind, the concept, the imagination is
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held in abeyance. The life force is the highest principle in the world,
and is God, Paratman, Ishvara. When the life force and the highest
principle become one in your meditation, then this merger signifies
moksha, awakening, liberation. Moksha is the disappearance of
subjection to the gunas and all other upadhis connected with the
individual. When consciousness and the life force merge they become
steady in the Brahma-randa. Then all thoughts cease. That is the start
of samadhi. Then one comes back again and the life force starts its
normal activities.

Do dhyana, meditation, and in that meditation consciousness will

unfold whatever knowledge is to be revealed.

Meditation is the deliberate daily exercise in discrimination between

the true and the false, and renunciation of the false. Seeing the false
as the false is meditation.

Meditation is a deliberate attempt to pierce into the higher states of

consciousness, and finally go beyond it. The art of meditation is the
shifting the focus of attention to ever subtler levels, without losing
one’s grip on the levels left behind. In a way it is like having death
under control. One begins with the lowest levels. The final stage of
meditation is reached when the sense of identity goes beyond the ‘ I-
am-so-and-so’, beyond ‘so-I-am’, beyond ‘I-am-the-witness-only’,
beyond ‘there-is’, beyond all ideas into the impersonally personal pure
being.

For meditation you should sit with identification in the knowledge ‘I

am’ only. Confirm to yourself that you are not the body. Dwell only in
the knowledge ‘I am’, not merely the words ‘I am’. Meditate with the
conviction that I am that self only, the atman.

Meditation is an attempt to tranquillise that ‘I-Amness’. With ‘I-

Amness’ began all misery. Feel the superficiality of ‘I-Amness’. The
attention ‘I-Amness’ is always there in the waking state, but we do not
watch it. Therefore be attentive to that attention ‘I am’.

We know little of our inner world of thoughts and feelings. The primary
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purpose of meditation is to become conscious of, and familiar with, our
inner life.

Meditation is keeping quiet and watching yourself. Meditation is giving

attention to the consciousness.

As long as you are a beginner certain formalized meditations, or

prayers, may be good for you. But for a seeker for reality there is only
one meditation.....the rigorous refusal to harbour thoughts. To be free
from thoughts is itself meditation. You begin by letting thoughts flow
and watching them. The very observation slows down the mind until it
stops altogether. Once the mind is quiet, keep it quiet. Do not get
bored with peace, be in it, go deeper into it. Experiment anew, do not
go by past experience. Watch your thoughts and watch yourself
watching the thoughts. The state of freedom from all thoughts will
happen suddenly and by the bliss of it you shall recognize it.

Meditate on that “I Am” without holding onto the body and mind.
Nurse this “I Am”, which is the knowledge of your beingness.

Meditate on the fact that you are, on your beingness.

Right meditation is when you contemplate yourself. There should be

no concepts or images while you are contemplating. The Self,
Brahman, is without concepts.

You must meditate, but there is nothing to reach.....you are that state.
Yours is the state where there are no fears, no desires, no ambition.

By calling God by his name you make Him come to you. He comes in a
shape according to your expectations. The sound of the mantra
creates the shape which will embody the Self.
The Self can embody any shape, and operate through it. After all the
Self is expressing itself in action, and a mantra is primarily energy in
action. It acts on you, it acts on your surroundings. Since time
immemorial a link was created between certain words and
corresponding energies, and reinforced by numberless repetitions.

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What does seeing purple light in meditation mean?.....These are all
images created out of your own illumination. That light might take the
form of Lord Krishna, Christ, Rama, etc.., but it is Self light, your
creation. You are seeing your own light, and all scriptures are sung in
praise of that great principle, but you the Absolute are not that
principle. I, the Absolute, am not that.

In the process of meditation one can reach silence and ask “Who am
I?”. Then there comes a profounder silence where the notion “I” does
not arise. Such experiences are in the realm of your birth state. Such
is a description of meditation or samadhi, but it is still the product of
the body-mind imagination. Whatever experiences you have in
meditation, of silence also, is confined to the realm of consciousness.
Consciousness is born and it will go. You are prior to consciousness.

In meditation the purpose of the mantra is only to check your

fluctuating mind.

Meditation is only an initial state. Meditation on: ”I am the all-

penetrating and infinite light ‘I Am’ “ will lead you to be a sadhaka.
The sadakha must practice meditation. To reach the centre, the self,
meditation is absolutely necessary, but the meditator is prior to
meditation.

There is no method to pursue this Truth. At the most you will be asked
to purify your vital breath. You will be asked to follow a meditation on
nama-mantra. That is all, because all other things are spontaneous.
The recitation of the nama is the primordial music, thus sing the
melody of name-mantra. In the process one loses one’s self and all the
mischievous thoughts disappear.

The recitation of mantra or Japa is carried out by the vital breath, and
this beingness is a mere witness of the actions of the vital breath.

Constant repetition of the mantra is something the person does not do

for one’s own sake. The beneficiary is not the person.

In actual meditation you should meditate on the meditator,

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contemplate the contemplator. When you do so you will know who you
are.

A Mantra is indicative of the aim or object in you.

There is a purpose in the mantra. By concentrating on the mantra the

form behind the mantra will appear out of the ether, but all this is
time-bound. Both the mantra and the faith in the mantra will get
dissolved.

By your deep meditation the Self is pleased and you need not go
anywhere else to acquire knowledge. Your own Self will give the
knowledge. Start meditation and the Self will direct you. The Self is
the immanent manifest spirit. Do not give it a form.

What the condition of the Self is without the body will be revealed to
you in meditation.
In the process of meditation you will acquire much knowledge, but
your attention should be on the Self, the meditator, not whatever you
get.

You gain a lot of merit and a certain amount of potential power in

meditation, and all that is wasted, you dissipate it in worldly affairs.

Not through the intellect, but through intense meditation you will
realize that you are the universal consciousness. The meditation will
be done by that consciousness itself. To meditate on something is to
become that.

In meditation the Self will become manifest, infinite, boundless. That

which is now conditioned in a personality will be broken up and it will
become manifest, unbounded. The state of the Self is one of no
pleasure, no misery. This is called identity with the Highest, when you
do not know that you are. Be in the Self and do not get involved with
the vital breath and the mind. Ignore the mind.

The purpose of japa is to conserve oneself, that means the

knowingness is to be retained. In Marathi japa means to guard, to
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protect. You should protect your beingness by japa. Japa is like a
treatment given to your beingness for its well-being.

The Self is realized by continuous japa, repetition of mantra. Japa

means “take care” (Marathi). You only take care of something which
you have a desire to maintain. Therefore japa is based upon desire.
By repeating the mantra with a good deal of concentration the inner
receptacle in the body is purified so that one becomes receptive to
such inner knowledge that may come, and the mind disappears into a
spirit of reality. But what generally happens is one starts repeating the
mantra and then wonders if the tea is ready, or the telephone rings,
etc. You must make up your mind what you want. If your desire is so
keen that whether the body lasts or not you must have it, if the
determination is that great, then it must come. But if you want
something in the material world, it is not possible. The true pupil
keeps this in mind and meditates. It is basically the strength of the
beingness. Ultimately the aim is to forget one’s individuality.

In what is called meditation, you need an object. In true meditation,

the meditator is alone, without any object to meditate upon.

When a Yogi is totally absorbed in his meditation or Yoga, this

soundless sound so fills him that he becomes drunk with it for a while
and then it subsides.

The only way to give up identification with the body is continuous

practice of meditation, and thinking on what the Guru has said.
Gradually this self-limitation will disappear and the sense of separation
will go. One has to meditate deeply over a long period. Meditation
means the beingness absorbing itself into the beingness. Over a long
period of this kind of meditation one will come to know the Knower of
this beingness. I am the Knower of this consciousness. I can only know
something else, I cannot know myself. That riddle will solve itself by
continuous deep meditation.

In deep meditation the beingness should totally merge in the non-

being state. In this way I forget myself, undergoing oblivion and
relaxation. Thus the beingness should dissolve gradually into non-
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beingness, beingness lost in the non-beingness.

When the meditator forgets himself totally in meditation, it is vishranti,

which means complete relaxation ending in total forgetfulness. This is
the blissful state, where there is no need for words, concepts, or even
the sense of “I Am”.

The sound that must be heard is the silent sound. Only the silent
sound can hear the actual sound.

Stabilize yourself by meditation. Your senses are very active, they are
not under control. By meditating that particular weakness of your mind
will be brought under control. You are moving about like a calf that
just jumps about here and there. If you have been trying and cannot.
Persistence! That deep longing must be there. You must need
something very badly, then you will think of it continuously, you will
be persistent about it, then you will reach that stage.

Go on humming Guru, Guru, Guru, that is “I Amness”.

Go on humming “I Am” without words, the unstruck sound. (Aham,

Aham, Aham.....)
The sadhana recites the sacred name of God. You are given a certain
title or name for God. That name is your very own name. When you
recite the name, it will proliferate and give you all the knowledge. It is
your own true nature. That recitation should not be given up, whether
the body lives or dies, you should continuously recite that name. The
eternal nature of anyone who recites the sacred name will be opened
up. This recitation of the sacred name, sacred nama-mantra, is a
tradition of the Navanath Sampradaya.
In meditation it is consciousness which meditates on itself and remains
within itself.

Meditate on beingness only. Catch hold of the knowledge “I Am” in

meditation. In this process, the realization occurs that “I” the Absolute
am not the guna “I Am”. Therefore in meditation nothing is to be
retained in memory, nevertheless something will appear on the
memory screen, but be unconcerned, just be, do nothing. Refrain from
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grasping anything in meditation; the moment you do, otherness
begins, and so duality. Nothing is to be done. Then moolamaya, the
primary illusion, will release her stronghold on you and will get lost.

The fulfilment of meditation rests in totally obliterating the memory

and non-memory of manifestation along with the sense of being. So
long as the guna, sense of being, is there, witnessing happens.
Abidance in the non-witnessing state is the advaita state, the highest.
Therefore all experience must be swallowed, including the feeling of
the sense of being, which is the primordial experience.

You must be energetic when you take to meditation. It is definitely not

a part-time occupation. Limit your interests and activities to what is
needed for you and your dependant's barest needs. Save all your
energies and time for breaking the wall your mind has built around
you. You will not regret.

You must persist in meditation until you come to a stage when you feel
there is no meditation. When the purpose of meditation is gained it will
drop off naturally.

38. Samadhi

When this consciousness, this conscious presence, merges in itself, the

state of samadhi ensues. When this manas, buddhi, chitta, etc. merges
in that state, then even the knowledge ‘I am meditating’ gets lost, this
also becomes merged in that state. The conceptual feeling that I exist
disappears and merges into the beingness itself. That is samadhi.

Knowledge unfolds itself and begins to have the knowledge of

everything movable and immovable. Knowledge begins to know itself.
Ultimately the conscious presence alone remains. There is just
conscious presence, not ‘I’ or anything. It is total presence, total
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manifestation, not individual. This consciousness gradually realizes its
true nature, that it is only conscious presence without any inherent
individual aspects. Finally it considers itself the conscious presence of
the total manifestation and all individuality is lost.

As long as there is any vritti (movement, mental modifications) in the

mind it is not Samadhi.
Samadhi is satisfaction. When you obtain your objective you feel
satisfied. You attain a profit and you feel satisfied. The state of
satisfaction in samadhi is the Self.

Samadhi is nothing unusual. If you are in the right state, whatever you
see will put you into samadhi. When the mind is intensely interested, it
becomes one with the object of interest.....the seer and the seen
become one in seeing, the hearer and the heard become one in
hearing, the lover and the loved become one in loving. Every
experience can be the ground for samadhi.

Samadhi is a state of mind. But you are beyond all experience, even of
samadhi.

39. Seeking

The seeker is he who is in search of himself.

You are really in search of yourself, without knowing it. You are love-
longing for the love-worthy, the perfectly loveable. Due to ignorance
you are looking for it in the world of opposites and contradictions.
When you find it within your search will be over.

There are many spiritual seekers whose aim is to acquire sufficient

merit to reach a certain place, such as heaven or Vaikuntha. Have no
aims except to find out.
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That which makes you think you are a human is not human. It is but a
dimensionless point of consciousness, a conscious nothing. All you can
say about yourself is: ‘I Am’. You are pure being-awareness-bliss. To
realize that is the end of all seeking.

There is nothing to seek and find, for there is nothing lost.

40. The Way

It is normal to talk about various paths. Paths are indicative of

movement. But you are the destination itself.

All paths lead to unreality. Paths are creations within the scope of
knowledge. Therefore paths and movements cannot transport you into
Reality, because their function is to enmesh you within the dimension
of knowledge, while the Reality prevails prior to it. As long as you do
not stabilize at the source of your creation, at the beginning of the
knowledge “I Am”, you will be entangled in the chains forged by your
mind and get enmeshed in those of others.

All paths take you to the purification of the mind. The impure mind is
opaque to truth; the pure mind is transparent. Truth can be seen
through it easily and clearly.

To test whether you are on the spiritual path or not, investigate what
you are thinking of during the twenty-four hour day. Are you
discussing all your daily affairs? Are you discussing about your
identity, about what you are, the Self? You are according to the quality
of the intensity of your thinking.

There is a way, open to all, on every level, in every walk of life.

Everybody is aware of himself. The deepening and broadening of self-
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awareness is the royal way. Call it mindfulness, or witnessing, or just
attention.....it is for all, and none can fail. But of course, you must not
be merely alert. Your mindfulness must include the mind also.
Witnessing is primarily awareness of consciousness and its
movements.

That beingness will get to that spiritual path when it is in earnest to do

so, but so long as a vestige of body identity persists it will fail.

You must find your own way. Unless you find it yourself it will not be
your own way, and will take you nowhere. Earnestly live your truth as
you have found it.....act on the little you have understood.

Accept no guidance but from within. Even if you are quite ignorant of
the ways and means, keep quiet and look within, guidance is sure to
come. You are never left without knowing what your next step should
be.

There is no progress, for what you come to is already there in you,

waiting for you.

41. The Jnani

The jnani is that principle which dismisses the life force and the
consciousness.

Because you imagine yourself to be a person you take the jnani to be

a person also.

The jnani is alone, but he is all. He is not even a being. He is the

beingness of all beings. Not even that. No words apply. He is what he
is, the ground from which all grows.

A jnani is recognized easily because they do not have any pride in

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their Self-knowledge, since they have transcended that knowledge.
They say “I am not this knowledge or this consciousness.”

The mind cannot understand, for the mind is trained for grasping and
holding, whereas the jnani is not grasping and not holding.

In the jnani the state is that of total disassociation from the body-
mind. The result is that there are no wants or desires. Because the
disassociation is total there is no question of any effect of such a state,
pleasing or otherwise.

Not only will the jnani have no desires or expectations, but neither will
he have the attraction “to be”. The attraction of the consciousness to
be is not there. To have any hopes, expectations, etc., one must have
an image, an identity.

One of the peculiarities of a jnani is that he is not concerned with the

future. Your concern with future is due to fear of pain and desire for
pleasure. To the jnani all is bliss; he is happy with whatever comes.

The jnani suffers with those who suffer. The event itself is of little
importance, but he is full of compassion for the suffering being,
whether alive or dead, in the body or out of it. After all, love and
compassion are his very nature. He is one with all that lives and love is
that oneness in action.

For the jnani the entire universe is his body, all life is his life.

The jnani understands a situation fully and knows at once what needs
to be done. That is all. The rest happens by itself, and to a large
extent unconsciously. The jnani’s identity with all that is, is so
complete, that as he responds to the universe, so does the universe
respond to him. He is supremely confident that once a situation has
been cognized, events will move in adequate response. The ordinary
man is personally concerned, he counts his risks and chances, while
the jnani remains aloof, sure that all will happen as it must, and it
does not matter much what happens, for ultimately the return to
balance and harmony is inevitable. The heart of things is at peace.
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The jnani knows neither birth nor death; existence and non-existence
are the same to him.

The whole is real, the part comes and goes. The particular is born and
reborn, changing name and shape, the jnani is the Changeless Reality
which makes the changeful possible.

Why do sages do nothing to help the millions who suffer? Because

their suffering is illusory. Let the illusory world take care of itself, you
must find out who you are.

Why does the jnani talk, and teach? Because the life span has to be
spent, it has to be used. It is merely entertainment. Everything is
entertainment.

A jnani cannot give knowledge to anyone. All he can do is point to that

which is your true nature.

The thought of a jnani pervades humanity and works ceaselessly for

good. Being anonymous, coming from within, it is the more powerful
and compelling. That is how the world improves.....the inner aiding
and blessing the outer. When a jnani dies, he is no more, in the sense
in which a river is no more when it merges in the sea, the name, the
shape are no more, but the water remains and becomes one with the
ocean. When a jnani joins the universal mind, all his goodness and
wisdom become the heritage of humanity and uplift every human
being.

A jnani identifies with the universal consciousness and so there is a

perfect adaptation to everything and every place. Only witnessing is
taking place. The jnani only witnesses, he is not individually concerned
with what happens.

A jnani is beyond concept. He gives no importance to any concept.

By merely acquiring knowledge one cannot claim to be a jnani. The

jnani is not required to know anything as he is knowledge itself. The
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jnana-yoga is the highest state in spirituality, in this state there is no
individuality, as this is the all-pervading state. The sense of
individuality and needs are felt prior to jnana-yoga, but after the
accomplishment of jnana-yoga, one is beyond needs and individual
personality.

A jnani is that state from which the witnessing of the knowledge “I

Am” takes place. In that jnani state there is no touch of “I Amness”, it
is a quality-less state and it is not knowledge, because knowledge
means “I Amness”. When there are no thoughts, time has stopped, but
space will be there, a thought-free state is something like space,
space-like. I am the witness that the thought-free state is there. That
is the Self, “I Am”, the being. Because the being is there, having
removed all the pollution, including thought, time is also gone.....and
space and beingness is there. When that state ends, it is the Absolute
state, a something sweet-like state.

In the timeless state there is no self to take refuge in. Who remains to
say: ‘I am the witness’? When there is no ‘I Am’, where is the witness?
The man who cherishes the feeling ‘I Am’ is self-conscious. The jnani
holds on to nothing and cannot be said to be conscious. And yet he is
not unconscious. He is the very heart of awareness. He is called
digambra clothed in space, the Naked One, beyond all appearance.
There is no name and shape under which he may be said to exist, yet
he is the only one that truly is.

The jnani cannot be known because there is nobody to be known.

When there is a person you can tell something about it, but when
there is no self-identification with the particular, what can be said?
Nothing can be said about a jnani, for he is all and yet nothing in
particular. To locate a thing you need space, to place an event you
need time; but the timeless and spaceless defies all handling. It makes
everything perceivable, yet itself it is beyond perception. The mind
cannot know what is beyond the mind, but the mind is known by what
is beyond it.

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42. The Guru

The Guru is the manifestation of the knowledge which you will also be
in the course of time. When you see the image of a Guru, it represents
knowledge only, your consciousness. The image may be of the Guru,
Krishna, Christ, etc.; it is the manifestation of the knowledge which
you are.

When you meet a European with some education whose reaction to

the Guru and his teachings is: ‘the man must be mad to teach such
nonsense’, take him to himself. Show him how little he knows himself,
how he takes the most absurd statements about himself for holy truth.
He is told that he is the body, was born, will die, has parents, learns to
like what others like, and fear what others fear. Totally a creature of
heredity and society, he lives by memory and acts by habits. Ignorant
of himself and his true interests, he pursues false aims and is always
frustrated. His life and death are meaningless and painful, and there
seems to be no way out. Then tell him there is a way out within his
easy reach, not a conversion to another set of ideas, but a liberation
from all ideas and patterns of living. Do not tell him about Gurus and
disciples.....this way of thinking is not for him. His is an inner path, he
is moved by an inner urge and guided by an inner light. Invite him to
rebel and he will respond. Do not try to impress on him that so-and-so
is a realized man and can be accepted as a Guru. As long as he does
not trust himself, he cannot trust another.

The Guru is he who knows the state in which there is neither the world
nor the thought of it. To find him means to reach the state in which
imagination is no longer taken for reality. The Guru stands for reality,
for truth, for what is. He is a realist in the highest sense of the term.
He cannot and shall not come to terms with the mind and its
delusions. He comes to take you to the real; do not expect him to do
anything else.

What one Guru will speak about openly, others will not. The amount of
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receptivity each one has depends on his own luck. What the disciple
hears from the Guru he cannot utilize. Whatever the disciple hears will
spontaneously do what it likes.

You accumulate what you have heard from the Guru, but, ultimately,
whatever is accumulated has to be given up. It is to be understood,
used, and then given up.

No doubt Gurus are very important, very significant, but finally they
merge into space.

It is said that all Gurus are one. Guru is the same all-pervading
consciousness “I Am”. The Sat-Guru has gone beyond all these
concepts, including the primary concept “I Am”.

Nothing is to be done. Be in your beingness and everything that is to

happen will happen. You must have a deep yearning to attain the
Truth. You must have the intense need to understand. To such a
person, the Guru arrives and breaks the shell.

Love for the Guru is without the feeling of duality.

The Guru is basically without desire. He sees what happens, but feels
no urge to interfere. He makes no choices, takes no decisions. As pure
witness, he watches what is going on and remains unaffected.

Inwardly the Guru remains quiet and silent. He has no sense of being
a separate person. The entire universe is his own, including his
disciples with their petty plans. Nothing in particular affects him, or the
entire universe affects him in equal measure.

Guru is only purest consciousness which is all-pervading.

You think you are one individual and the Guru is another individual,
but this is not so. There are no individuals separate from one another.
Guru is the knower of this consciousness which is temporary.

Whatever my Guru said, I implicitly followed, with full conviction, and

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with that conviction I got results. People will hear what the Guru says,
but hardly anyone will put it into practice.

There are Gurus who are just shopkeepers, trading in spirituality.

The real Guru is one who is beyond the body and the mind, beyond
consciousness itself, beyond space and time, beyond duality and unity,
beyond understanding and description.

The Guru is there for giving you courage because of his experience
and success. But only what you discover through your own awareness,
your own effort, will be of permanent use to you.

Life itself is the Supreme Guru. Be attentive to its lessons and

obedient to its commands. When you personalize their source, you
have an outer Guru. When you take them from life, the Guru is within.
Have your Guru always in your heart and remember his instructions.

Every sentient being has a guru within himself.

Your own Self is your ultimate teacher (satguru). The outer teacher
(Guru) is merely a milestone. Only your inner teacher will walk with
you to the goal, for he is the goal. Look within and you will find him.
The greatest Guru is your inner self. Truly, he is the supreme teacher.
He alone can take you to your goal, and he alone meets you at the
end of the road. Confide in him and you need no outer Guru.

That which sees all this is the inner teacher. He alone is, all else only
appears to be. He is the witness. You need not see the witness in front
of you. To be is to know. He is your own self (svarupa). Find him and
cling to him and you will be saved and safe.

The one who recognizes this beingness and transcends it is Sat Guru.
The Parabrahman principle is also the Sat-Guru.

You are never without a Guru, for he is timelessly present in your

heart. Sometimes he externalizes himself and comes to you as an
uplifting and reforming factor in your life, a mother, a wife, a teacher.
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Or he remains as an inner urge towards righteousness and perfection.
All you have to do is to obey him and do what he tells you. What he
wants you to do is simple: learn self-awareness, self-control, self-
surrender.

In the initial stages you must have an external Guru. That Guru
initiates you with the inner Guru.

The innermost light, shining peacefully and timelessly in the heart, is

the real Guru. All others merely show the way.

Even when there is no discoverable outer Guru, there is always the

Satguru, the inner Guru, who directs and helps from within.

When the Guru feels disciples have sufficient knowledge on which they
can continue their own search, he tells them to leave. It is not
necessary for them to be physically present. This makes room for
newcomers. The Guru expounds the knowledge to the disciple and
takes him out of the body-mind sense, and then asks him to fend for
himself.

The Guru has compassion not for the individual but for that beingness
which has trapped itself into identifying with a number of individuals.

Only if my beingness is there, can the existence of sages and gurus

arise. They last and flourish in my beingness, so long as I am there.
Without my beingness.....that is without the message “I Am”.....my
eternal Absolute only prevails.

From your body-mind state you will go to pilgrimages and various

gurus. So long as the consciousness is there, that humming goes on.
Who does the humming? The principle which is humming and saying “I
Am, I Am” is itself your Guru. If you understand this Guru, the
consciousness, and dwell there you will be self-realized. Then no more
spirituality and disciplines are necessary. The Guru is the sense of “I
Amness”.

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43. Disciple-Guru Relationship

Teachers .....there are many, fearless disciples.....very few.

If you are able to trust and obey, you will soon find your real Guru, or
rather, he will find you. Mistrust all, until you are convinced. The true
Guru will never humiliate you, nor will he estrange you from yourself.
He will constantly bring you back to the fact of your inherent
perfection and encourage you to seek within. He knows you need
nothing, not even him, and is never tired of reminding you. But the
self-appointed Guru is more concerned with himself than with his
disciples.

It is the inner Guru who takes you to the outer Guru. Trust and obey
your Guru, for he is the messenger of your real Self. Your heart will
tell you if you have found a Guru whom you can trust. A Guru can
show you the way back home, to your real self. What has this to do
with the character, or temperament of the person he appears to be?
Does he not clearly tell you that he is not the person? By all means
examine the Guru, but what can you find out? Only as he appears to
you on your own level. Only motives matter. How will you know his
motives? The only way you can judge is by the change in yourself
when you are in his company. If you feel more at peace and happy, if
you understand yourself with more than usual clarity and depth, it
means you have met the right man. There is no difficulty in finding a
Guru, because the Guru is in search of you. The Guru is always ready,
you are not ready. You have to be ready to learn, or you may meet
your Guru and waste your chance by sheer inattentiveness and
obstinacy. There was nothing in me of much promise, but when I met
my Guru, I listened, trusted, and obeyed.

Half-heartedness is a serious drawback and the cause of much self-

created sorrow. Any mistake is never the Guru’s, it is always the
obtuseness and cussedness of the disciple that is at fault. The Guru
does not disqualify a disciple, he would not be a Guru if he did! He
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bides his time and waits until the disciple, chastened and sobered,
comes back to him in a more receptive mood.

Unless the disciple is earnest, he cannot be called a disciple. Unless a

Guru is all love and self-giving, he cannot be called a Guru.

Is the finding of a true Guru essential? More essential is the finding of

a true disciple. A true disciple is very rare, for in no time he goes
beyond the need for a Guru, by finding his own self. Life will bring you
a Guru, if one is needed. Or deprive you of all outer guidance and
leave you to your own lights. It is the teaching that matters not the
person of the Guru. The Guru only tells you about your real Self, and
shows you the way back to it. The Guru is the messenger. There will
be many messengers, but the message is one: be what you are.
Until you realize yourself, you cannot know who is your real Guru.
When you realize, you find that all the Gurus you had have contributed
to your awakening. Your realization is the proof that your Guru was
real. Therefore take him as he is, do what he tells you with
earnestness and zeal, and trust your heart to warn you if anything
goes wrong. If doubt sets in, do not fight it. Cling to what is doubtless
and leave the doubtful alone.

Watch yourself. If you see yourself changing, growing, it means you

have found the right Guru. He may be beautiful or ugly, pleasant or
unpleasant, flattering you or scolding. Nothing matters except the one
crucial fact of inward growth.

Each teacher has his method, usually patterned on his Guru’s

teachings, and on the way he himself has realized, and his own
terminology as well. Within that framework adjustments to the
personality of the disciple are made. The disciple is given full freedom
of thought and enquiry, and encouraged to question to his heart’s
content.

The disciple must be absolutely certain of the standing and the

competence of his Guru, otherwise his faith will not be absolute, nor
his action complete. It is the absolute in you that takes you to the
absolute beyond you.....absolute truth, love, selflessness, are the
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decisive factors in self-realization. With earnestness these can be
reached.

It is not on the verbal level that one becomes a disciple, but in the
silent depths of one’s being. You do not become a disciple by choice; it
is more a matter of destiny than self-will. It does not matter who is
the teacher, it is the disciple that matters.....his honesty and
earnestness. The right disciple will always find the right teacher.

What is the Guru’s motive? Sorrow and the ending of sorrow. He sees
people suffering in their dreams and he wants them to wake up. Love
is intolerant of pain and suffering. The patience of a Guru has no
limits, and therefore it cannot be defeated. The Guru never fails.
One does not become a disciple by conversion, or by accident. There is
usually an ancient link, maintained through many lives, and flowering
as love and trust, without which there is no discipleship.

The entire universe is your Guru. You learn from everything if you are
alert and intelligent. Were your mind clear and your heart clean, you
would learn from every passer-by. It is because you are indolent or
restless, that your inner Self manifests as the outer Guru and makes
you trust him and obey.

To rise in consciousness from one dimension to another, you need

help. The help may not always be in the shape of a human person, it
may be a subtle presence, or a spark of intuition, but help must come.
The inner Self is watching and waiting for the son to return to his
father. At the right time he arranges everything affectionately and
effectively. Where a messenger is needed, or a guide, he sends the
Guru to do the needful.

Students ask questions from a point of view that is an identification

with the mind-body. The guru answers from a point of view without
identification with the mind-body. Therefore the answers cannot
correspond with the questions.

Who asks the questions? The person who sees himself as existing in
time, with the birth of the physical body as the base point of view.
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Such a view is false and imaginary, and is only a bundle of memories,
habits and imagination, that has no reality.

In reality the disciple is not different from the Guru. He is the same
dimensionless centre of perception and love in action. It is only his
imagination and self-identification with the imagined that encloses him
and converts him into a person. The Guru is concerned little with the
person. His attention is on the inner watcher. It is the task of the
watcher to understand and thereby eliminate the person.

You, as the person, imagine that the Guru is interested in you as a

person. Not at all. To him you are a nuisance and a hindrance to be
done away with. He actually aims at your elimination as a factor in
consciousness.

People come to the Guru as individuals expecting to get something

from him, that is where the mistake arises. There is no individual, so
how can the Guru do something for a non-existing individual? Your
true nature is in no way different from his. This happening is just a
happening which has come and which will go. But you consider
everything is happening to you as an individual.

Sometimes the people who come to the guru call him ‘great’. Whom
are they calling ‘great’? He is nothing, he is completely void.

The effort is the disciple’s. The outer Guru gives the instructions, the
inner sends the strength. The alert application is the disciple’s. Without
will, intelligence, and energy on the part of the disciple the outer Guru
is helpless. The inner Guru bides his chance. Obtuseness and wrong
pursuits bring about a crisis and the disciple wakes up to his own
plight. Wise is he who does not wait for a shock, which can be quite
rude, a warning. The inner Guru is not committed to non-violence. He
can be quite violent at times, to the point of destroying the obtuse or
perverted personality. Suffering and death, as life and happiness, are
his tools of work. It is only in duality that non-violence becomes the
unifying law. One should not be afraid of one’s own self, for the self
means well. But it must be taken seriously. It calls for attention and
obedience. When it is not listened to, it turns from persuasion to
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compulsion, for while it can wait, it shall not be denied. The difficulty
lies not with the Guru, inner or outer. The Guru is always available. It
is the ripe disciple that is lacking. When a person is not ready, what
can be done?

The Guru who gives you information and instructions is not the real
Guru. The real Guru is he who knows the real, beyond the glamour of
appearances. To him your questions about obedience and discipline do
not make any sense, for in his eyes the person you take yourself to be
does not exist. Your questions are about a non-existing person. What
exists for you does not exist for him. What you take for granted, he
denies absolutely. He wants you to see yourself as he sees you. Then
you will not need a Guru to obey and follow, for you will obey and
follow your own reality. Realize that whatever you think yourself to be
is just a stream of events; that while all happens, comes and goes,
you alone are, the changeless among the changeful, the self-evident
among the inferred. Separate the observed from the observer, and
abandon false identifications.

If you dwell in ‘I am’, it will in due course get mature, and it will reveal
to you all the knowledge. You need not go to anyone else.

Generally the transfer of ‘knowledge’ by teachers is only that of

concepts. People who receive ‘knowledge’ begin to imitate the teacher
from whom he has received it. The only knowledge that you really
have is the knowledge that you really are, this consciousness. All other
knowledge is mere hearsay, and based on illusory consciousness.

You will go to the Guru as long as the concepts remain. Once you go
beyond concepts there will be no need to go to the Guru.

When the disciple has fully understood what the Guru has said, he
need not come to him again. When the disciple is fully convinced that
whatever he sees is unreal, why should he hang on to the unreal
principle?

The nature of the Guru is that he will never give up. To succeed he
must not be met with too much resistance. Doubt and disobedience
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necessarily delay. Given confidence and pliability, he can bring about
radical change in the disciple speedily. The most difficult are the
intellectuals, they talk a lot but are not serious. When you are ready,
your Guru will be waiting. Realization is a natural thing. Sadhana is
effortless. When the relation with your teacher is right, you grow.
Trust him, he cannot mislead you. Be happy with whatever comes
from your Guru and you will grow to perfection without striving.

Only those souls should come to the Guru who want to return to their
source.

The Guru demands one thing only; clarity and intensity of purpose, a
sense of responsibility for oneself. The very reality of the world must
be questioned.

Most of the Bhaktas trust their Guru only as long as all is well with
them. When troubles comes, they feel let down and go out in search of
another Guru.

Most of the so-called disciples do not trust their Gurus; they disobey
them and finally abandon them. For such disciples it would have been
infinitely better if they had no Guru at all and just looked within for
guidance.

If you have faith in your Guru, why leave that Guru and wander about?
If you have reservations, it is best that you leave him. Otherwise
completely surrender yourself - doubts and convictions, everything. If
you have accepted one Guru, then implicit faith and complete
surrender is very necessary. Serving the Guru is following whatever
guidance he gives you through words. You must imbibe and become
one with those words. Before you surrender to any Guru you are free
to move anywhere, a freelance spiritual seeker. Go anywhere, collect
spiritual information, do what you like. But once you accept a Guru
there must be complete surrender. Do not think that the Guru is some
person. It is not so. The Guru is that beingness, and beingness is
manifestation. All the world is beingness, and that is the Guru.

It is natural to move on from one Guru to another. Each tells you the
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direction and the distance, while the Satguru, the eternal Guru, is the
road itself. Once you realize that the road is the goal, and you are
always on the road, not to reach a goal, but to enjoy its beauty and its
wisdom, life ceases to be a task and becomes natural and simple.
Help is received from many different persons. They all arise from your
own being, from your own consciousness. They are not separate from
you.

My Guru said: “You are myself”.

The Guru gives the same knowledge to various disciples, but each
disciple has a different concept about what the Guru has said, and
hangs onto the personal concept which he likes the most.

If someone asks a question about the teachings, by all means give it,
if you know the answer, but don’t consider yourself as someone
superior. If the person is only superficially interested, give an offhand
answer. If you give correct knowledge to someone not really
interested from the heart, it will damage him and others to whom he
may talk.

Have no faith in anything which you have been told, not even what has
been told by the Vedas. Only your own experience.

All the discussions between the Guru and the disciples are an
exchange of ideas and mental entertainment, meant to while away the
time.

People come to the Guru because they want confirmation of whatever

they say is correct. They insist that whatever they say is correct. They
presume they are knowledgeable. The Guru understands that they do
not have an iota of knowledge, therefore he tells them to sit and listen
to the talks, and spontaneously all doubts will be cleared.

Extremely intelligent people come to the Guru and ask questions, and
he answers them, but they do not accept the answers. They speak
from the point of identification with the body-mind, and the Guru
answers them without identification with the form, so how can they
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understand him? How can the answer correspond with the question?

In spite of listening to all that the Guru has said, most disciples will
continue to identify themselves as a body, and will look upon another
as an individual. But he is not that. His real presence is the absence of
the phenomena that are seen.

A number of students who come to the Guru acquire the knowledge,

but only superficially. No one has really studied what the knowledge is,
no one has really grasped the full meaning. They are entangled in
wanting, desiring, and this has made them forget the knowledge. Once
you have understood the origin of this movement, this activity, and
the reason, the nature of this desire, then only can you return to what
you are.

Victory is always the Guru’s.....in the end. He knows that if the

disciples do not learn from his words, they will learn from their own
mistakes.

You must do what your teacher tells you. Mere listening, even
memorizing, is not enough. If you do not struggle hard to apply every
word of it in your daily life, do not complain that you make no
progress.

A real disciple is ready to give up his body and the vital breath to
attain the Eternal.

44. Earnestness

Earnestness is but love in action. For nothing can be done without

love.

To know that you are a prisoner of your mind, that you live in an
imaginary world of your own creation, is the dawn of wisdom. To want
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nothing of it, to be ready to abandon it entirely, is earnestness. Only
such earnestness, born of true despair, will make you trust your Guru.
Your first task is to see the sorrow in you and around you. Your next to
long intensely for liberation. The very intensity of longing will guide
you. You need no other guide.

If you are truly earnest and honest, the attainment of reality will be
yours. It is the earnestness that liberates. When you are in dead
earnest, you bend every incident, every second of your life to your
purpose. You do not waste time and energy on other things. You are
totally dedicated, call it will, or love, or plain honesty. We are complex
beings, at war within and without. We contradict ourselves all the
time, undoing today the work of yesterday. No wonder we are stuck.

Earnestness, not perfection, is a precondition to self-realization.

Virtues and powers come with realization, not before.

The source of earnestness is the homing instinct, which makes the bird
return to the nest and the fish to the mountain stream where it was
born.

45. Aim

The self is universal and its aims are universal. There is nothing
personal about the self.
What is your aim? Do you really want non-Being?

46. The Senses

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The senses in the body operate only due to the consciousness.

The five kinds of sensory perception are only concerned with worldly
pleasures. Sensory perception can only give pleasures of the five
senses. If you do not realize the nature of the five elements and the
five senses of perception, you will get involved and remain involved.
But if you see their nature and the way they work, you will remain
aloof and apart from them.

You see only consciousness. Just as you know the picture on the
cinema screen is nothing but light, know that everything is nothing but
consciousness. There is only light and the light is all. Everything else is
but a picture made of light.

47. Perception

Something entirely unfamiliar can be sensed, but cannot be perceived.

Perception is recognition. Perception involves memory. Perception,
imagination, expectation, anticipation, illusion.....all are based on
memory. There are hardly any border lines between them. They just
merge into each other. All are responses of memory.

When I look through the mind, I see numberless people. When I look
beyond the mind, I see the witness. Beyond the witness there is the
infinite intensity of emptiness and silence.

What is really your own, you are not conscious of. What you are
conscious of is neither you nor your. Yours is the power of perception,
not what you perceive.

Delve deeply into the sense ‘I Am’ and you will surely discover that the
perceiving centre is universal, as universal as the light that illumines
the world.

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The jnani commands a mode of spontaneous, non-sensory perception,
which makes him know things directly, without the intermediary of the
senses. He is beyond the perceptual and the conceptual, beyond the
categories of time and space, name and shape. He is neither the
perceived nor the perceiver, but the simple and universal factor that
makes perceiving possible. Reality is within consciousness, but it is not
consciousness nor any of its contents.

In reality there is only perception. The perceiver and the perceived are
conceptual, the fact of perceiving is actual. The Absolute is the
birthplace of perceiving. It makes perception possible.

48. Waking and Sleep States

Waking means total world manifestation.

The three states of waking, dreaming, and sleeping, are sleep to me.
As I look at you, you all seem asleep, dreaming up words of your own.
To be a person is to be asleep
You do not realize your present waking state is one of ignorance. You
are contacting your sensory and mental states in consciousness, at the
point of ‘I Am’, while reality is not mediated, not contacted, not
experienced.

Other than the three states: waking, sleep, and “I Amness”, I have no
experience, but neither can I give up these three states. I am loaded
with them and cannot get rid of them. They have come without my
knowledge. Nobody asked me if I wanted these three states.

Some seed consciousness must be existing even during sleep. On

waking up the experience runs: ‘I am - the body - in the world’. This
may appear to arise in succession, but in fact it is all simultaneous, a
single idea of having a body in a world.
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Early morning, immediately after waking, just the feeling “ I Am” is felt
inside or the beingness happens, and thereafter further witnessing of
all else happens. This primary witnessing is occurring to one that ever
is, even without waking. To that ever-present substratum the
witnessing of the waking state happens. The primary witnessing is of
my own presence, my existence. This waking sense of existence is a
temporary state.

There are two aspects of ‘I-am-ness’: the waking state in which you
know that you are, which itself is a misery, and deep sleep, in which
‘I-am-ness’ is forgotten, and you are at peace with yourself.

The moment the waking state starts the worshipping of misery begins.

There is no difference between dream consciousness and waking

consciousness, although they appear to be greatly different. All
consciousness is one.

The knower is not absent in sleep. The experience of things and

thoughts was not there, that is all. The knower knows that he does not
know. Sleep is merely a lapse in memory. Life goes on.

During sleep, it is forgetting yourself as an individual that gives you

deep rest. From the position of not believing oneself to be an
individual, nor male nor female, one can go to reality.

There is nothing of you in the sleep and waking states.

All the three states.....of waking, dreaming, and sleeping.....are

subjective, personal, intimate. They all happen to and are contained
within the little bubble in consciousness, called ‘I’. The real world lies
beyond the self.

The waking and sleep states and the “I Am” consciousness.....these

three are not your attributes but the attributes of that chemical.

The mind produces thoughts ceaselessly, even when you do not look
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at them. When you know what is going on in your mind, you call it
consciousness. This is your waking state.

The waking state is the reminder that ‘I am’, and deep sleep is
forgetting ‘I-Amness’. Birth is the birth of these two states. Without
these two states there are no concepts. Without these two states you
are not.

You are in the waking state, a person with name and shape, joys and
sorrows. The person was not there before you were born, nor will be
there after you die. Instead of struggling with the person to make it
become what it is not, why not go beyond the waking state and leave
the personal life altogether? It does not mean the extinction of the
person, it means only seeing it in right perspective.

In deep sleep there are no experiences of pleasure and pain or birth

and death.

When you go to sleep, sleep with the remembrance of the truth that
you know the body but are not the body. Sleep with this thought:
“Many impure thoughts have come and gone away, but I am
immutable, I am infinite, I am the Truth”. If you sleep with this
thought then all impure thoughts are absolved.

Do not go to sleep as a slave to the mind. Become absolutely detached

and be the master of your mind.

The sleep of the jnani is not the kind that others have. It is pure
consciousness. When he sleeps there is awareness of the total
manifestation, and also the Unmanifest. There is no distinction
between an individual and the total universe.

The waking state is “I Amness”.

From deep sleep to waking state, what is it? It is the “I Am” state with
no words. Later the words start flowing and you get involved with the
meaning of the words and carry out your worldly life with the meaning
of those words. The subtlest part of the knowledge is that borderline
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from deep sleep to waking state. To abide in that you must have an
intensely peaceful state. In that state witnessing of the waking state
happens. You must go to that limit, but it is very difficult. For a normal
person, with the arrival of the “I Am” and the word flow, he will go
with the word flow.

You are awake and seeing the world, but there is also the witnessing
of your being awake and seeing the world. When this waking state
goes to sleep that awareness is still there. You are the light behind the
states.

The self based on memory is momentary. But such self demands

unbroken continuity behind it. You know from experience that there
are gaps when your self is forgotten. What brings it back to life? What
wakes you up in the morning? There must be some constant factor
bridging the gaps in consciousness. If you watch carefully you will find
that even your daily consciousness is in flashes, with gaps intervening
all the time. What is in the gaps? What can there be but your real
being that is timeless. Mind and mindlessness are one to it.

The stage ‘where you are.....you are not’, that is the borderline. The
moment you know you are, duality is there. When you do not know
you are, you are perfect. You must go through this process. In deep
sleep you do not know that you are, but that is the grosser state. In
this alive state you must recede into the state of no-knowingness. To
recede means to go within, your normal inclination is to come out
through the five senses and see the world.

Even when you witness that everything is you, it is still the quality of
the five elemental body and will not last. Waking state, deep sleep,
and Turiya, all these are temporary states.

Whatever one perceives through the senses can only be a movement

in consciousness, which is present when the states of waking and
sleep are present. Whatever transpires in these states can only be
temporary.

This state of consciousness cognizing what appears in consciousness is

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being witnessed as a temporary state. The alternative states of
waking, sleeping, and the sense of presence, are all temporary states
that have come upon me. They have all come spontaneously and will
go spontaneously. No one has any control over them.

The waking state, sleep, beingness, all this experience combined, is

ignorance only. That ignorance called ‘birth’ means waking state,
sleep, beingness. Just as you are not afraid of a serpent made of
rubber, so similarly the jnani has no interest in this waking state and
beingness.

During the waking state the sense of your “I Amness” perceives the
world, and from the standpoint of you, the Absolute, there is
witnessing of your “I Amness” and its perceptions. I, the Absolute am
before the waking state.

Even sages and saints would like to continue their beingness. How long
should I continue this waking state and deep sleep? In this continuous
cycle what is the advantage? So long as this cycle continues the
knowingness also will prevail there. In the waking state you carry out
a lot of activities, and when you are tired you fall asleep. Have you
ever encountered anyone who was tired of this waking state and deep
sleep state?

When the mind is still, absolutely silent, the waking state is no more.

We do not wake up into a really waking state. In the waking state the
world emerges due to ignorance and takes one into a waking-dream
state. Both waking and sleep are misnomers. We are only dreaming.
Do I go to sleep or does inadvertence, characteristic of the sleeping
state, come to me? True waking and true sleeping only the jnani
knows. We dream that we are awake, we dream that we are asleep.
The three states are only varieties of the dream state. Treating
everything as a dream liberates. As long as you give reality to dreams,
you are their slave. By imagining that you are born as so-and-so, you
become a slave to the so-and-so. The essence of slavery is to imagine
yourself to be a process, to have past and future, to have history. In
fact, we have no history, we are not a process, we do not develop, nor
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decay. See all as a dream and stay out of it.

The world appears like a dream. while it lasts the dream has
temporary being. It is your desire to hold on to it, that creates the
problem. Let go. Stop imagining that the dream is yours. Let the
dream unroll itself to its very end. You cannot help it. But you can look
at the dream as a dream, refuse it the stamp of reality. When you see
your dream as dream, you wake up. Within the immensity of space
floats a tiny atom of consciousness, and in it the entire universe is
contained.

49. Attention

When the mind is eager for reality, it gives attention

You clean your mind by watching it relentlessly. Inattention obscures,

attention clarifies.

Evil is the shadow of inattention. In the light of self-awareness it will

wither and fall off.

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