Abiding in your own being is holy company. If you have no problem of suffering and release from suffering, you will not find the energy and persistence needed for self-enquiry. You cannot manufacture a crisis. It must be genuine.
To recognize one's own insanity is, of course, the arising of sanity, the beginning of healing and transcendence.
It is desire that causes sorrow; but the will to realize God is itself felicity. Be certain that He will cleanse and comfort you and take you into His arms. Sorrow comes in order to lead you to happiness. At all times hold Him in remembrance.
We are travelers on a cosmic journey, stardust, swirling and dancing in the eddies and whirlpools of infinity. Life is eternal. We have stopped for a moment to encounter each other, to meet, to love, to share. This is a precious moment.
To change the world, we need to combine Ancient Wisdom with new technologies.
When you accept everything, everything is beyond dimensions. The earth is not great nor a grain of sand small. In the realm of Great Activity picking up a grain of sand is the same as taking up the whole universe. To save one sentient being is to save all sentient beings. Your efforts of this moment to save one person is the same as the eternal merit of Buddha.
As far as inner transformation is concerned, there is nothing you can do about it. You cannot transform yourself, and you certainly cannot transform your partner or anybody else. All you can do is create a space for transformation to happen, for grace and love to enter.
Whatever the ego seeks and gets attached to are substitutes for the being that it cannot feel.
All of this is so incredibly simple. We learnt that whatever happens in our mind somehow is blocking you from going somewhere. I am saying that Awareness, the goal of all enquiry, cannot be on the other side of working through any process, because Awareness is that within which even the attempt to work through to get to something arises and is perceived.
Awareness is primordial; it is the original state, beginningless, endless, uncaused, unsupported, without parts, without change. Consciousness is on contact, a reflection against a surface, a state of duality. There can be no consciousness without awareness, but there can be awareness without consciousness, as in deep sleep. Awareness is absolute, consciousness is relative to its content; consciousness is always of something. Consciousness is partial and changeful, awareness is total, changeless, calm and silent. And it is the common matrix of every experience. Since it is awareness that makes consciousness possible, there is awareness in every state of consciousness. Therefore, the very consciousness of being conscious is already a movement in awareness. Interest in your stream of consciousness takes you to awareness. It is not a new state. It is at once recognized as the original, basic experience, which is life itself, and also love and joy.
The very fact of observation alters the observer and the observed. 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 follow my advice and try to keep your mind on the notion of ‘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.
'Heart' is merely another name for the 'Supreme Spirit,' because 'He' is in all hearts. The entire Universe is condensed in the body, and the entire body in the Heart. Thus the 'Heart' is the nucleus of the whole Universe.
There is no goal to be reached. There is nothing to be attained. You are the Self. You exist always. Nothing more can be predicated of the Self than that it exists. Seeing God or the Self is only being the Self, that is yourself. Seeing is Being. You, being the Self, want to know how to attain the Self. It is like a man being at Ramanasramam and asking how many ways there are of going to Ramanasramam and which is the best way for him. All that is required of you is to give up the thought that you are this body and give up all thoughts of external things or the non-Self. As often as the mind goes out towards objects, stop it and fix it in the Self or 'I'. That is all the effort required on your part. Ceaseless practice is essential until one attains without the least effort that natural and primal state of mind which is free from thought, in other words, until the 'I', 'my' and 'mine' are completely eradicated and destroyed.
If you hold on to being a person, you will not be free.
People are doing this all over the world.
They are going to spiritual gatherings and they are asking questions they believe are spiritual questions, but if they retain identity as a person, whatever answers they get, will not propel them beyond personhood into the clarity of being.
This is why I say, I give you only five minutes to evaluate the outcome of ‘your’ version of doing things so far and to jump out of the claustrophobia of personhood into real freedom.
Five, now three minutes, ample time to say ‘yes-take me home’ and thus re-enter your original being.
What holds you back?
People are doing this all over the world.
They are going to spiritual gatherings and they are asking questions they believe are spiritual questions, but if they retain identity as a person, whatever answers they get, will not propel them beyond personhood into the clarity of being.
This is why I say, I give you only five minutes to evaluate the outcome of ‘your’ version of doing things so far and to jump out of the claustrophobia of personhood into real freedom.
Five, now three minutes, ample time to say ‘yes-take me home’ and thus re-enter your original being.
What holds you back?
Shift your attention from words to silence and you will hear.
Human beings actually have no more independence or autonomy in living their lives than do the characters in a dream. Neither do they have anything to do with the creation of the dream or anything in it. They are simply being lived along with everything else in this living dream of the manifested universe. The entire dream is unreal. Only the dreamer is real, and that is Consciousness itself.
Consciousness has produced this play. Consciousness has written the script. Consciousness is playing all the characters. And Consciousness is witnessing the play. It's a one man show.
The word enlightenment conjures up the idea of some superhuman accomplishment, and the ego likes to keep it that way, but it is simply your natural state of felt oneness with Being. It is a state of connectedness with something immeasurable and indestructible, something that, almost paradoxically, is essentially you and yet is much greater than you. It is finding your true nature beyond name and form.
Be present as the watcher of your mind -- of your thoughts and emotions as well as your reactions in various situations. Be at least as interested in your reactions as in the situation or person that causes you to react. Notice also how often your attention is in the past or future. Don't judge or analyze what you observe. Watch the thought, feel the emotion, observe the reaction. Don't make a personal problem out of them. You will then feel something more powerful than any of those things that you observe: the still, observing presence itself behind the content of your mind, the silent watcher.
And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.
The kingdom of heaven is spread out across the earth, only people don't see it.
If you bring forth what is within you, what you bring forth will save you. If you do not bring forth what is within you, what you do not bring forth will destroy you.
If the mind is happy, not only the body but the whole world will be happy. So one must find out the way of becoming happy oneself. One cannot do this except by finding out about oneself by Self-enquiry. To think of reforming the world without doing that is like thinking of covering the whole world with leather to avoid the pain caused by walking on stones and thorns when the much simpler method of wearing leather shoes is available. When by holding an umbrella over your head you can avoid the sun, will it be possible to cover the face of the whole earth by tying a cloth over it to avoid the sun? If a person realises his position and stays in his own self, things that are to happen will happen. Things that are not to happen will not happen. The shakti that is in the world, is only one. All these troubles arise if we think that we are separate from that shakti.
You must go to the root. The root is the ‘I-thought’. Question it by enquiring as to the source of this concept: “To whom does these questions appear?” “To me” “Who am I? Who is this me? Where does this idea come from?” Do not look for an answer. Only ask the question with patience whenever thoughts arise. This serves to quiet the restless mind. As you do this in a relaxed, alert way, you will notice that the space between the thoughts gets larger. Be aware of this space between your thoughts. That is your true nature, spotless, formless, pure Awareness. It shines like the sun; only clouds of thoughts seem to obscure it.
There is no effort in witnessing. You understand that you are the witness only, and the understanding acts. You need nothing more, just remember that you are the witness only.