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Reality is neither subjective nor objective, neither mind nor matter, neither time nor space. These divisions need somebody to whom to happen, a conscious separate centre. But reality is all and nothing, the totality and the exclusion, the fullness and the emptiness, fully consistent, absolutely paradoxical. You cannot speak about it, you can only lose your self in it. When you deny reality to anything, you come to a residue which cannot be denied . All talk of jnana is a sign of ignorance. It is the mind that imagines that it does not know and then comes to know. Reality knows nothing of these contortions. Even the idea of God as the Creator is false. Do I owe my being to any other being? Because I am, all is.
Who was born first, you or the world? As long as you give first place to the world, you are bound by it; once you realise, beyond all trace of doubt that the world is in you and not you in the world, you are out of it. Of course your body remains in the world and of the world, but you are not deluded by it. All scriptures say that before the world was, the Creator was. Who knows the Creator? He alone who was before the Creator, your own real being, the source of all the worlds with their creators.
Millions eat bread, but few know all about wheat. And only those who know can improve the bread. Similarly, only those who know the self, who have seen beyond the world, can improve the world. Their value to private persons is immense, for they are their only hope of salvation. What is in the world cannot save the world; if you really care to help the world you must step out of it.
Q: All you say sounds very beautiful. But how has one to make it into a way of living?
M: Having never left the house you are asking for the way home. Get rid of wrong ideas, that is all. Collecting right ideas also will take you nowhere. Just cease imagining.
Q: It is not a matter of achievement, but of understanding.
M: Don't try to understand! Enough if you do not misunderstand. Don't rely on your mind for liberation. It is the mind that brought you into bondage. Go beyond it altogether. What is beginningless cannot have a cause. It is not that you knew what you are and then you have forgotten. Once you know, you cannot forget. Ignorance has no beginning, but can have an end. Enquire: who is ignorant and ignorance will dissolve like a dream. 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.
M: Having never left the house you are asking for the way home. Get rid of wrong ideas, that is all. Collecting right ideas also will take you nowhere. Just cease imagining.
Q: It is not a matter of achievement, but of understanding.
M: Don't try to understand! Enough if you do not misunderstand. Don't rely on your mind for liberation. It is the mind that brought you into bondage. Go beyond it altogether. What is beginningless cannot have a cause. It is not that you knew what you are and then you have forgotten. Once you know, you cannot forget. Ignorance has no beginning, but can have an end. Enquire: who is ignorant and ignorance will dissolve like a dream. 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.
You need not and you cannot become what you are already. Only cease imagining yourself to be the particular. What comes and goes has no being. It owes its very appearance to reality. You know that there is a world, but does the world know you? All knowledge flows from you, as all being and all joy. realise that you are the eternal source and accept all as your own. Such acceptance is true love.
'I am' is ever afresh. You do not need to remember in order to be. As a matter of fact, before you can experience anything, there must be the sense of being. At present your being is mixed up with experiencing. All you need is to unravel being from the tangle of experiences. Once you have known pure being, without being this or that, you will discern it among experiences and you will no longer be misled by names and forms. Self-limitation is the very essence of personality.
That which does not exist cannot have a cause. There is no such thing as a separate person. Even taking the empirical point of view, it is obvious that everything is the cause of everything, that everything is as it is, because the entire universe is as it is.
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 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 a convention. How old are you? Q: Forty-eight! M: What makes you say forty-eight? What makes you say: I am here? Verbal habits born from assumptions. 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 and a calamity.
As long as we imagine ourselves to be separate personalities, one quite apart from another, we cannot grasp reality which is essentially impersonal. First we must know ourselves as witnesses only, dimensionless and timeless centres of observation, and then realise that immense ocean of pure awareness, which is both mind and matter and beyond both.
What do you know about yourself? You can only be what you are in reality; you can only appear what you are not. You have never moved away from perfection. All idea of self-improvement is conventional and verbal. As the sun knows not darkness, so does the self know not the non-self. It is the mind, which by knowing the other, becomes the other. Yet the mind is nothing else but the self. It is the self that becomes the other, the not-self, and yet remains the self. All else is an assumption. Just as a cloud obscures the sun without in any way affecting it, so does assumption obscure reality without destroying it. The very idea of destruction of reality is ridiculous; the destroyer is always more real than the destroyed. Reality is the ultimate destroyer. All separation, every kind of estrangement and alienation is false. All is one -- this is the ultimate solution of every conflict.
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 nameable and describable. You are not. Refuse to think of yourself in terms of this or that. There is no other way out of misery, which you have created for yourself through blind acceptance without investigation. Suffering is a call for enquiry, all pain needs investigation. Don't be too lazy to think.
Where is the need of asking? It merely shows weakness and anxiety. Work on, and the universe will work with you. After all the very idea of doing the right thing comes to you from the unknown. Leave it to the unknown as far as the results go, just go through the necessary movements. You are merely one of the links in the long chain of causation. Fundamentally, all happens in the mind only. When you work for something whole-heartedly and steadily, it happens, for it is the function of the mind to make things happen. In reality nothing is lacking and nothing is needed, all work is on the surface only. In the depths there is perfect peace. 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.
Unselfish work leads to silence, for when you work selflessly, you don't need to ask for help. Indifferent to results, you are willing to work with the most inadequate means. You do not care to be much gifted and well equipped. Nor do you ask for recognition and assistance. You just do what needs be done, leaving success and failure to the unknown. For everything is caused by innumerable factors, of which your personal endeavour is but one. Yet such is the magic of man's mind and heart that the most improbable happens when human will and love pull together.
Playing with various approaches may be due to resistance to going within, to the fear of having to abandon the illusion of being something or somebody in particular. To find water you do not dig small pits all over the place, but drill deep in one place only. Similarly, to find your self you have to explore yourself. When you realise that you are the light of the world, you will also realise that you are the love of it; that to know is to love and to love is to know. Of all the affections the love of oneself comes first. Your love of the world is the reflection of your love of yourself, for your world is of your own creation. Light and love are impersonal, but they are reflected in your mind as knowing and wishing oneself well. We are always friendly towards ourselves. but not always wise. A Yogi is a man whose goodwill is allied to wisdom.
The very meeting of a guru is the assurance of liberation." (p 101) and "Insanity is universal. Sanity is rare. Yet there is hope, because the moment we perceive our insanity, we are on the way to sanity. This is the function of the Guru to make us see the madness of our daily living. Life makes you conscious, but the teacher makes you aware
One thing that can improve the body's immune function may be a surprise, but studies from Harvard have proved it to be true. I am referring simply to someone's mental attitude toward crisis and stressful situations. This can have a great effect on the body and immune system function because there are receptors in our immune cells that talk to our brain and gather chemicals made by what our brain thinks. This was researched and found through a study at Harvard University. Given this information we have found that positive thinking can actually result in a healthier immune system while negative thoughts and stress can cause problems and disorders.
In order to attract enlightenment from an enlightened being, the seeker must cultivate the following qualities:
• Simplicity: Simplicity is the first virtue on the path to enlightenment. Those who are overly educated, logical, learned, or intellectual will miss the point.
• Humility: One should be willing to receive the grace of divinity. When it is raining, one should hold the vessel straight to receive water. If it is upside down, will you get the water? No! So, be humble.
• Attitude of learning: Upanishad means sitting at the feet of the master ready to receive grace. Electrical energy flows from high-voltage to low-voltage. Similarly, spiritual energy flows from the master to the disciple. It is an important quality for the disciple to be able to sit at the feet of the master. An egoist cannot do that! Only the right disciple, who is willing to sit at the feet of the master, who is humble, simple, and receptive, will be capable of receiving that grace!
• Gratitude: If you have gratitude in your heart towards that enlightened consciousness, if you have a sense of appreciation for the profundity of the phenomenon, that very gratitude and appreciation will enable you to catch fire any moment.
Courage: The fifth and the most important quality of the right disciple is the courage to die, a willingness to let go. To use the metaphor of the lamp, the lamp should be ready to destroy its darkness. It should be ready to go near the fire to catch the fire. Most people are not willing to go near live fire, the living enlightened master, for it will burn you. Therefore, intellectual pundits will talk about the fire, will have study circles, will read books, but never approach the fire because they are not ready for it.
• Simplicity: Simplicity is the first virtue on the path to enlightenment. Those who are overly educated, logical, learned, or intellectual will miss the point.
• Humility: One should be willing to receive the grace of divinity. When it is raining, one should hold the vessel straight to receive water. If it is upside down, will you get the water? No! So, be humble.
• Attitude of learning: Upanishad means sitting at the feet of the master ready to receive grace. Electrical energy flows from high-voltage to low-voltage. Similarly, spiritual energy flows from the master to the disciple. It is an important quality for the disciple to be able to sit at the feet of the master. An egoist cannot do that! Only the right disciple, who is willing to sit at the feet of the master, who is humble, simple, and receptive, will be capable of receiving that grace!
• Gratitude: If you have gratitude in your heart towards that enlightened consciousness, if you have a sense of appreciation for the profundity of the phenomenon, that very gratitude and appreciation will enable you to catch fire any moment.
Courage: The fifth and the most important quality of the right disciple is the courage to die, a willingness to let go. To use the metaphor of the lamp, the lamp should be ready to destroy its darkness. It should be ready to go near the fire to catch the fire. Most people are not willing to go near live fire, the living enlightened master, for it will burn you. Therefore, intellectual pundits will talk about the fire, will have study circles, will read books, but never approach the fire because they are not ready for it.
As the intensity of witnessing is heightened by additional energy, now available as there are no thoughts to dissipate it, the energy reservoir keeps increasing. This results in a high intensity field of observation – where there are no thoughts – resulting in the ‘non-thought zone’. This state is so vibrant and dynamic that thought has no capacity to linger in this zone. This is the state in which one should be rooted with multi-point awareness. Staying longer and longer in this state is an invitation to the Divine. It makes it possible to touch upon that divine quality that brings about total transformation, from the very core of your being, through the explosion of the psychological instrument in the inner domain. As you remain alert, aware and vigilant throughout, there is no chance at all for the thought-mind to play tricks in the form of visualisation, hallucination and imagery. In fact, this state, being beyond the frontiers of thoughts, is free from the influence of thoughts.
Enlightenment is for those courageous few who are willing to die completely. Enlightenment happens in the total death of the ego
Suffering the consequences of unconsciousness is the fire that ultimately burns up the false ego, but that's the long, slow, painful way. The short cut is any spiritual teaching that cuts through the long way, the painful way of waking up.
It is totally possible to realize the Self and be Free for ever end ever.
Dr. M. W. Lewis, Paramhansa Yogananda's first Kriya Yoga disciple in America, once asked the Master, "Can you resolve a dilemma for me? Is liberation a state one achieves only for this Day of Brahma? Will we when Brahman manifests itself again in creation, be obliged to emerge from that oneness once more and go through the whole, long struggle again?
"Never Fear!" the Master replied. "Once the soul has achieved final freedom in Spirit, it is free forever."
Such is the aim of the Bhagavad Gita: to help the sincere seeker to find the way to perfect union with Satchidananda: ever-existing, ever-conscious, ever-new Bliss.
"Never Fear!" the Master replied. "Once the soul has achieved final freedom in Spirit, it is free forever."
Such is the aim of the Bhagavad Gita: to help the sincere seeker to find the way to perfect union with Satchidananda: ever-existing, ever-conscious, ever-new Bliss.
Questioner: Maharaj, you are sitting in front of me and I am here at your feet. What is the basic difference between us? Maharaj: There is no basic difference. Q: Still there must be some real difference, I come to you, you do not come to me. M: Because you imagine differences, you go here and there in search of ‘superior’ people. Q: You too are a superior person. You claim to know the real, while I do not. M: Did I ever tell you that you do not know and, therefore, you are inferior? Let those who invented such distinctions prove them. I do not claim to know what you do not. In fact, I know much less than you do. Q: Your words are wise, your behaviour noble, your grace all-powerful. M: I know nothing about it all and see no difference between you and me. My life is a succession of events, just like yours. Only I am detached and see the passing show as a passing show, while you stick to things and move along with them.
Q: The sense of being an experiencer, the sense of ‘I am’, is it not also an experience?
M: Obviously, every thing experienced is an experience. And in every experience there arises the experiencer of it. Memory creates the illusion of continuity. In reality each experience has its own experiencer and the sense of identity is due to the common factor at the root of all experiencerexperience relations. Identity and continuity are not the same. Just as each flower has its own colour, but all colours are caused by the same light, so do many experiences appear in the undivided and indivisible awareness, each separate in memory, identical in essence. This essence is the root, the foundation, the timeless and spaceless 'possibility' of all experience.
M: Obviously, every thing experienced is an experience. And in every experience there arises the experiencer of it. Memory creates the illusion of continuity. In reality each experience has its own experiencer and the sense of identity is due to the common factor at the root of all experiencerexperience relations. Identity and continuity are not the same. Just as each flower has its own colour, but all colours are caused by the same light, so do many experiences appear in the undivided and indivisible awareness, each separate in memory, identical in essence. This essence is the root, the foundation, the timeless and spaceless 'possibility' of all experience.
Q: Then what am I?
M: It is enough to know what you are not. You need not know what you are. For as long as knowledge means description in terms of what is already known, perceptual, or conceptual, there can be no such thing as self-knowledge, for what you are cannot be described, except as except as total negation. All you can say is: ‘I am not this, I am not that’. You cannot meaningfully say ‘this is what I am’. It just makes no sense. What you can point out as 'this' or 'that' cannot be yourself. Surely, you can not be 'something' else. You are nothing perceivable, or imaginable. Yet, without you there can be neither perception nor imagination. You observe the heart feeling, the mind thinking, the body acting; the very act of perceiving shows that you are not what you perceive. Can there be perception, experience without you? An experience must ‘belong'. Somebody must come and declare it as his own. Without an experiencer the experience is not real. It is the experiencer that imparts reality to experience. An experience which you cannot have, of what value is it to you?
M: It is enough to know what you are not. You need not know what you are. For as long as knowledge means description in terms of what is already known, perceptual, or conceptual, there can be no such thing as self-knowledge, for what you are cannot be described, except as except as total negation. All you can say is: ‘I am not this, I am not that’. You cannot meaningfully say ‘this is what I am’. It just makes no sense. What you can point out as 'this' or 'that' cannot be yourself. Surely, you can not be 'something' else. You are nothing perceivable, or imaginable. Yet, without you there can be neither perception nor imagination. You observe the heart feeling, the mind thinking, the body acting; the very act of perceiving shows that you are not what you perceive. Can there be perception, experience without you? An experience must ‘belong'. Somebody must come and declare it as his own. Without an experiencer the experience is not real. It is the experiencer that imparts reality to experience. An experience which you cannot have, of what value is it to you?
Q: What benefit is there in knowing that I am not the body?
M: Even to say that you are not the body is not quite true. In a way you are all the bodies, hearts and minds and much more. Go deep into the sense of ‘I am’ and you will find. How do you find a thing you have mislaid or forgotten? You keep it in your mind until you recall it. The sense of being, of 'I am' is the first to emerge. Ask yourself whence it comes, or just watch it quietly. When the mind stays in the 'I am' without moving, you enter a state which cannot be verbalised but can be experienced. All you need to do is try and try again. After all the sense ‘I am’ is always with you, only you have attached all kinds of things to it -- body, feelings, thoughts, ideas, possessions etc. All these self-identifications are misleading. Because of them you take yourself to be what you are not.
M: Even to say that you are not the body is not quite true. In a way you are all the bodies, hearts and minds and much more. Go deep into the sense of ‘I am’ and you will find. How do you find a thing you have mislaid or forgotten? You keep it in your mind until you recall it. The sense of being, of 'I am' is the first to emerge. Ask yourself whence it comes, or just watch it quietly. When the mind stays in the 'I am' without moving, you enter a state which cannot be verbalised but can be experienced. All you need to do is try and try again. After all the sense ‘I am’ is always with you, only you have attached all kinds of things to it -- body, feelings, thoughts, ideas, possessions etc. All these self-identifications are misleading. Because of them you take yourself to be what you are not.
Beings
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