You cannot see the seer of seeing; you cannot hear the hearer of hearing; you cannot think the thinker of thinking; you cannot know the knower of knowing. This is your Self that is within everything. What is other than this is suffering.
To know that you are neither body nor mind, watch yourself steadily and live unaffected by your body and mind, completely aloof, as if you were dead.
The songs we sing
are like foam on the surface of sea of being
while the precious gems lie deep beneath.
But the tenderness in our songs
is a reflection of what is hidden in the depths.
Stop the flow of your words,
open the window of your heart and
let the spirit speak.
are like foam on the surface of sea of being
while the precious gems lie deep beneath.
But the tenderness in our songs
is a reflection of what is hidden in the depths.
Stop the flow of your words,
open the window of your heart and
let the spirit speak.
When abiding in Self there is no you, so in effect you cannot bring yourself there. Neither can you actually experience it as you must shed you to abide there. It may be unfolding to you now that the very subject of you, that which you refer to as yourself, is also an idea: simply a grand collection of thoughts. When this unfolds, it is made known with absolute clarity that all that exists is simply thought.
You gain freedom from desire and fear; which are entirely due to wrong uses of the mind. Mere mental knowledge is not enough. The known is accidental; the unknown is the home of the real. To live in the known is bondage; to live in the unknown is liberation.
Some people think that there are different stages in jnana. The Self is nitya aparoksha, i.e., ever-realised, knowingly or unknowingly.
Nothing was ever born but a dream. Nothing ever dies but a dream.
The enquirer is the answer and there is no other answer,
What comes afresh cannot be true.
What always is, is true.
What comes afresh cannot be true.
What always is, is true.
Consider the trees which allow the birds to perch and fly away without either inviting them to stay or desiring them never to depart. If your heart can be like this, you will be near to the Way.
Our illusions—the beliefs we hold on to—are the very doorways to our freedom. We simply have to enter through them without grasping or pushing away. We must not believe them, but we must not run away from them either. We need to see each moment of apparent bondage as an invitation to freedom. Then it becomes an act of love, an act of compassion, to stop running away.
It’s coming to grips with the fact that
the only person who can cause us to suffer,
who can cause us to misperceive illusion and separation,
who has this much power, is ourselves.
Nothing in the exterior environment causes us
to lose a sense of the awakened state.
Nobody we meet, no situation we deal with
has the power to cause us to fall out of awakening.
It is one of the most important realizations we can make.
It’s all an inside job.
It’s all something we do to ourselves—
mistakenly, unknowingly,
and often times unconsciously.
the only person who can cause us to suffer,
who can cause us to misperceive illusion and separation,
who has this much power, is ourselves.
Nothing in the exterior environment causes us
to lose a sense of the awakened state.
Nobody we meet, no situation we deal with
has the power to cause us to fall out of awakening.
It is one of the most important realizations we can make.
It’s all an inside job.
It’s all something we do to ourselves—
mistakenly, unknowingly,
and often times unconsciously.
Every individual is an expression of the whole realm of Nature, a unique action of the total Universe.
The child as child doesn't know how to play the adult game, the power game. And so must be educated to learn what's what. But when he's mastered that game he realizes it has no rewards. That all those things are not worth having.
A little knowledge is a dangerous thing; for the devotee may feel vain and self-satisfied; ceasing to seek profundities of the Divine. Only he who is free from the sense of self-importance becomes more and more spiritual until he is one with God. A humble devotee is lacking in vanity and pettiness.
Fighting the ego, the mind, is precisely what the ego wants. You cannot fight the mind. You cannot suppress the ego. Fighting, resisting, controlling is an impossible action. What is really needed is to yield, to see things as they are.
To remain without thoughts in waking state is the greatest worship.
God is silent. Now if only man would shut up.
All things happen in the inner world long before they happen outside. If you concentrate and watch silently, you can know what is going to happen to you in the future, but usually your mind remains busy in the material world. Everything happens in the subtle world long before it takes place externally.
Question: How does one get rid of fear?
Bhagavan: What is fear? It is only a thought.
If there is anything besides the Self there is reason to fear.
Who sees things separate from the Self?
First the ego arises and sees objects as external. If the ego does not rise, the Self alone exists and there is nothing external.
For anything external to oneself implies the existence of the seer within.
Seeking it there will eliminate doubt and fear.
Not only fear, all other thoughts centred round the ego will disappear along with it.
Bhagavan: What is fear? It is only a thought.
If there is anything besides the Self there is reason to fear.
Who sees things separate from the Self?
First the ego arises and sees objects as external. If the ego does not rise, the Self alone exists and there is nothing external.
For anything external to oneself implies the existence of the seer within.
Seeking it there will eliminate doubt and fear.
Not only fear, all other thoughts centred round the ego will disappear along with it.
There is a stillness in you no heavenly or earthly being can remove. In front of it, the mind is performing and somehow attention goes there. Behind is pure Silence - your real Being. All this is your dynamic dance. As you stay rooted in impersonal seeing, the inner and outer are revealed as One. Knowing this, you will not suffer existence.
The feeling "I work" is the hindrance. Enquire, "Who works?" Remember, "Who am I?" The work will not bind you. It will go on automatically. Make no effort either to work or to renounce work. Your effort is the bondage. What is bound to happen will happen. If you are destined to cease working, work cannot be had even if you hunt for it. If you are destined to work you cannot leave it; you will be forced to engage in it. So leave it to the Higher Power. You cannot renounce or hold as you choose.
Happiness and peace are you, without any attachments.
Pure essence.
This essence is everywhere present.
It is all-pervading.
It is pure awareness.
It is in the trees, the flowers, the sky, and those things are within you.
It is you who are all-pervading, everywhere present at the same time.
Pure essence.
This essence is everywhere present.
It is all-pervading.
It is pure awareness.
It is in the trees, the flowers, the sky, and those things are within you.
It is you who are all-pervading, everywhere present at the same time.
Do not be fooled any longer.
Do not believe what your eyes show you.
What your ears make you hear.
What your senses want you to believe.
Go beyond that.
It may take some effort, it may take some time.
Yet you must do whatever you must do to free yourself from the pull of the world.
96 Self-inquiry Precursor: A Disgust for the World - September 22, 1991
Do not believe what your eyes show you.
What your ears make you hear.
What your senses want you to believe.
Go beyond that.
It may take some effort, it may take some time.
Yet you must do whatever you must do to free yourself from the pull of the world.
96 Self-inquiry Precursor: A Disgust for the World - September 22, 1991
You are not the body. You are the immensity and infinity of consciousness.
To tell ourselves—to tell life—that it shouldn’t be the way that it is is a type of insanity. This insanity destabilizes us. It’s a bit like going up to a brick wall, telling it that it shouldn’t be there, and then continuing to walk into it. Every time you bump “your head on it, you judge the brick wall for being there, and then you walk into it again, again bumping your head. Then you say it shouldn’t be there, at which point you condemn yourself for the pain you have in your head. It’s a kind of insanity to be constantly arguing with what is and thinking it should be different. It’s a way that we keep bumping into life. When we collide with life in this way, we always feel interior friction, and we can never find the inner stability for which we yearn.