CONVERSATIONS WITH ANNAMALAI SWAMI

REALITY IS SIMPLE

It is not good to think too much about your meditation practice. Just do it and keep on doing it until you have the firm conviction that nothing that appears in the mind has anything to do with the real you. If you pay attention to thoughts and feelings while you meditate and try to use them to evaluate how well or how badly you are meditating, you will never reach the ultimate silence. Instead, you will just get bogged down in mental concepts.

Some people are distracting their minds in so many different ways: for example, trying to make distinctions between things like turiya [the fourth state] and turiyatita [that which is beyond the fourth].

Reality is very simple: instead of trying to explain it or label it, just be it by giving up all identification with the body and the mind. This is the ultimate jnana. If you follow this path you need not get involved in any mental or philosophical complexities.

People are practicing all kinds of sadhanas to reach the Self.

Some of these methods are hindrances to jnana. Meditation can be another form of bondage if it starts from the assumption that the body and the mind are real. If this idea is not dropped, meditation will merely enhance it.

— Living by the Words of Bhagavan p. 307