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THE MIND GOES ASTRAY , THE MIND RETURNS HOME...
Q: Is perfection the destiny of all human beings?
M: Of all living beings -- ultimately. The possibility becomes a certainty when the notion of enlightenment appears in the mind.
Once a living being has heard and understood that deliverance is within his reach, he will never forget, for it is the first message from within. It will take roots and grow and in due course take the blessed shape of the Guru.
Q: So all we are concerned with is the redemption of the mind?
M: What else? The mind goes astray, the mind returns home. Even the word 'astray' is not proper. The mind must know itself in every mood. Nothing is a mistake unless repeated.
Q: Is perfection the destiny of all human beings?
M: Of all living beings -- ultimately. The possibility becomes a certainty when the notion of enlightenment appears in the mind.
Once a living being has heard and understood that deliverance is within his reach, he will never forget, for it is the first message from within. It will take roots and grow and in due course take the blessed shape of the Guru.
Q: So all we are concerned with is the redemption of the mind?
M: What else? The mind goes astray, the mind returns home. Even the word 'astray' is not proper. The mind must know itself in every mood. Nothing is a mistake unless repeated.
Just see the person you imagine yourself to be as a part of the world you perceive within your mind, and look at the mind from the outside, for you are not the mind. After all, your only problem is the eager self-identification with whatever you perceive. Give up this habit, remember that you are not what you perceive, use your power of alert aloofness.
Unless you make tremendous efforts, you will not be convinced that effort will take you nowhere. The self is so self-confident that unless it is totally discouraged it will not give up. Mere verbal conviction is not enough. Hard facts alone can show the absolute nothingness of the self-image
It is in the unknown that we live and move. The known is the past.
Just be one with yourself and you will be one with all,
at home in the entire universe. Ultimately nothing is mine or yours everything is ours.
at home in the entire universe. Ultimately nothing is mine or yours everything is ours.
AS LONG AS THE MIND IS BUSY WITH ITS CONTORTIONS...
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.
If you think it out carefully and brood over it for a long time, you will come to see the light of awareness in all its clarity and the world will fade out of your vision.
It is like looking at a burning incense stick, you see the stick and the smoke first; when you notice the fiery point, you realise that it has the power to consume mountains of sticks and fill the universe with smoke.
Timelessly the self actualises itself, without exhausting its infinite possibilities. In the incense stick simile the stick is the body and the smoke is the mind. As long as the mind is busy with its contortions, it does not perceive its own source.
The Guru comes and turns your attention to the spark within. By its very nature the mind is outward turned; it always tends to seek for the source of things among the things themselves; to be told to look for the source within, is, in a way, the beginning of a new life.
Awareness takes the place of consciousness; in consciousness there is the 'I', who is conscious while awareness is undivided; awareness is aware of itself. The 'I am' is a thought, while awareness is not a thought, there is no 'I am aware' in awareness. Consciousness is an attribute while awareness is not; one can be aware of being conscious, but not conscious of awareness. God is the totality of consciousness, but awareness is beyond all -- being as well as not-being...
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.
If you think it out carefully and brood over it for a long time, you will come to see the light of awareness in all its clarity and the world will fade out of your vision.
It is like looking at a burning incense stick, you see the stick and the smoke first; when you notice the fiery point, you realise that it has the power to consume mountains of sticks and fill the universe with smoke.
Timelessly the self actualises itself, without exhausting its infinite possibilities. In the incense stick simile the stick is the body and the smoke is the mind. As long as the mind is busy with its contortions, it does not perceive its own source.
The Guru comes and turns your attention to the spark within. By its very nature the mind is outward turned; it always tends to seek for the source of things among the things themselves; to be told to look for the source within, is, in a way, the beginning of a new life.
Awareness takes the place of consciousness; in consciousness there is the 'I', who is conscious while awareness is undivided; awareness is aware of itself. The 'I am' is a thought, while awareness is not a thought, there is no 'I am aware' in awareness. Consciousness is an attribute while awareness is not; one can be aware of being conscious, but not conscious of awareness. God is the totality of consciousness, but awareness is beyond all -- being as well as not-being...
As all waves are in the ocean, so are all things physical and mental in awareness. Hence awareness itself
is all-important, not the content of it.
is all-important, not the content of it.
Ignore the mind the way you disregard the crowd you encounter in the streets.
All is attended to in the minutest detail and yet there is a sense of unreality about it all. So is the case with me. All happens as it needs, yet nothing happens. I do what seems to be necessary, but at the same time I know that nothing is necessary, that life itself is only make-believe.
DO NOT STRUGGLE WITH YOUR MEMORIES AND THOUGHTS..
Q: How am I to think myself out when my thoughts come and go as they like. Their endless chatter distracts and exhausts me.
M: 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 black out on other levels. Even then the work on the blacked out levels goes on, outside the field of consciousness.
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 l?' '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.
You are always seeking pleasure, avoiding pain, always after happiness and peace. Don't you 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 realise 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. You yourself are God, the Supreme Reality.
To begin with, trust me, trust the Teacher. It enables you to make the first step -- and then your trust is justified by your own experience.
Q: How am I to think myself out when my thoughts come and go as they like. Their endless chatter distracts and exhausts me.
M: 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 black out on other levels. Even then the work on the blacked out levels goes on, outside the field of consciousness.
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 l?' '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.
You are always seeking pleasure, avoiding pain, always after happiness and peace. Don't you 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 realise 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. You yourself are God, the Supreme Reality.
To begin with, trust me, trust the Teacher. It enables you to make the first step -- and then your trust is justified by your own experience.
Self-realization means I am completely full, I don't want to know anything, I don't require anything at all now.
Whatever name you give it: will, or steady purpose, or one-pointedness of mind, you come back to earnestness, sincerity, honesty. 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. A little of integrity would make a lot of difference.
When you have understood that all existence, in separation and limitation, is painful, and when you are willing and able to live integrally, in oneness with all life, as pure being, you have gone beyond the need of help. You can help another by precept and example and, above all, by your being. You cannot give what you do not have and you don't have what you are not.
The Supreme is the easiest to reach for it is your very being.
It is enough to stop thinking and desiring anything but the Supreme.
It is enough to stop thinking and desiring anything but the Supreme.
Everything must be scrutinized and the unnecessary ruthlessly destroyed. Believe me, there cannot be too much destruction.
For in reality nothing is of value.
Be passionately dispassionate – that is all.
For in reality nothing is of value.
Be passionately dispassionate – that is all.
I AM CALLING YOU BACK TO YOURSELF.....
Q: What benefit do I derive from listening to you?
M: I am calling you back to yourself. All I ask you is to look at yourself, towards yourself, into yourself.
Q: To what purpose?
M: You live, you feel, you think. By giving attention to your living, feeling and thinking, you free yourself from them and go beyond them. Your personality dissolves and only the witness remains. Then you go beyond the witness. Do not ask how it happens. Just search within yourself.
Q: What makes the difference between the person and the witness?
M: Both are modes of consciousness. In one you desire and fear, in the other you are unaffected by pleasure and pain and are not ruffled by events. You let them come and go.
Q: How does one get established in the higher state, the state of pure witnessing?
M: Consciousness does not shine by itself. It shines by a light beyond it. Having seen the dreamlike quality of consciousness, look for the light in which it appears, which gives it being. There is the content of consciousness as well as the awareness of it.
Q: I know and I know that I know.
M: Quite so, provided the second knowledge is unconditional and timeless. Forget the known, but remember that you are the knower. Don't be all the time immersed in your experiences. Remember that you are beyond the experience ever unborn and deathless. In remembering it, the quality of pure knowledge will emerge, the light of unconditional awareness...
Q: What benefit do I derive from listening to you?
M: I am calling you back to yourself. All I ask you is to look at yourself, towards yourself, into yourself.
Q: To what purpose?
M: You live, you feel, you think. By giving attention to your living, feeling and thinking, you free yourself from them and go beyond them. Your personality dissolves and only the witness remains. Then you go beyond the witness. Do not ask how it happens. Just search within yourself.
Q: What makes the difference between the person and the witness?
M: Both are modes of consciousness. In one you desire and fear, in the other you are unaffected by pleasure and pain and are not ruffled by events. You let them come and go.
Q: How does one get established in the higher state, the state of pure witnessing?
M: Consciousness does not shine by itself. It shines by a light beyond it. Having seen the dreamlike quality of consciousness, look for the light in which it appears, which gives it being. There is the content of consciousness as well as the awareness of it.
Q: I know and I know that I know.
M: Quite so, provided the second knowledge is unconditional and timeless. Forget the known, but remember that you are the knower. Don't be all the time immersed in your experiences. Remember that you are beyond the experience ever unborn and deathless. In remembering it, the quality of pure knowledge will emerge, the light of unconditional awareness...
For the sprouting of any seed, water is necessary. Similarly for the sprouting of this knowledge 'I am', water and food are necessary. In the essence of the food the quality of 'I amness' is in a dormant state. As salt is in seawater, similarly, in the body, in combination with the vital breath, the consciousness appears. it is the consciousness that feels pain or pleasure not the body or the vital breath. Once you know that you are not the body, all the concepts about pain and pleasure will disappear by themselves.
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.
Right here and now, you are in the realized state. But you try to judge it through desires and mind concepts, hence your inability to apperceive it and abide in it.
You are Self here and now.
Leave the mind alone, stand aware and unconcerned and you will realize that to stand alert but detached, watching events come and go, is an aspect of your real nature.
Leave the mind alone, stand aware and unconcerned and you will realize that to stand alert but detached, watching events come and go, is an aspect of your real nature.
When a stage is reached that one feels deeply that whatever is being done is happening and one has not got anything to do with it, then it becomes such a deep conviction that whatever is happening is not happening really. And that whatever seems to be happening is also an illusion. That may be final. In other words, totally apart from whatever seems to be happening, when one stops thinking that one is living, and gets the feeling that one is being lived, that whatever one is doing, one is not doing, but one is made to do, then that is a sort of criterion.
Meet you own Self.
Be with your own Self, listen to it, obey it, cherish it, keep it in mind ceaselessly.
You need no other guide.
Be with your own Self, listen to it, obey it, cherish it, keep it in mind ceaselessly.
You need no other guide.
Leave alone your desires and fears. Ask: who desires?
Let each desire bring you back to yourself.
Let each desire bring you back to yourself.
Q: How does one go beyond consciousness into awareness?
M: 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 recognised as the original, basic existence, which is life itself, and also love and joy.
Q: Since reality is all the time with us, what does self-realisation consist of?
M: Realisation is but the opposite of ignorance. To take the world as real and one’s self as unreal is ignorance. The cause of sorrow. To know the self as the only reality and all else as temporal and transient is freedom, peace and joy. It is all very simple. Instead of seeing things as imagined, learn to see them as they are. It is like cleansing a mirror. The same mirror that shows you the world as it is, will also show you your own face. The thought 'I am' is the polishing cloth. Use it.
M: 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 recognised as the original, basic existence, which is life itself, and also love and joy.
Q: Since reality is all the time with us, what does self-realisation consist of?
M: Realisation is but the opposite of ignorance. To take the world as real and one’s self as unreal is ignorance. The cause of sorrow. To know the self as the only reality and all else as temporal and transient is freedom, peace and joy. It is all very simple. Instead of seeing things as imagined, learn to see them as they are. It is like cleansing a mirror. The same mirror that shows you the world as it is, will also show you your own face. The thought 'I am' is the polishing cloth. Use it.
One reaches the Supreme state by renouncing all lesser desires. As long as you are pleased with the lesser, you cannot have the highest. Whatever pleases you keeps you back. Until you realize the unsatisfactoriness of everything, its transiency and limitation, and collect your energies in one great longing, ever the first step is not made. On the other hand, the integrity of the desire for the Supreme is by itself a call from the Supreme. Nothing, physical or mental, can give you freedom. You are free once you understand that your bondage is of your own making and cease forging the chains that bind you
The world is but a show, glittering and empty.
It is, and yet it is not.
It is 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.
It is, and yet it is not.
It is 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.
Beings
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