"I am that"-1

https://www.nonduality.com/asmi.htm

first 6 parts

I am not this person, this body-mind or any thing

As I can't be what I perceive, I am not this body-mind or any thing that I am conscious of.

When you realize that the distinction between inner and outer is in the mind only, you are no longer afraid. (464)

You are neither the body nor in the body. There is no such thing as body. You have grievously misunderstood yourself. To understand rightly, investigate. (253)

As body, you are in space. As mind, you are in time. But are you a mere body with a mind in it? Have you ever investigated? (252)

Why not investigate the very idea of body? Does the mind appear in the body or the body in the mind? Surely there must be a mind to conceive the "I-am-the-body" idea. A body without a mind cannot be 'my body'. 'My body' is invariably absent when the mind is in abeyance. It is also absent when the mind is deeply engaged in thoughts and feelings. (434)

You observe the heart feeling, the mind thinking, the body acting; the very act of perceiving shows that you are not what you perceive. (2)

The perceived cannot be the perceiver. Whatever you see, hear or think of, remember - you are not what happens, you are he to whom it happens. (519)
...
as you grow, you begin to understand how the concept of BEING  comes and where it goes. This gives rise to NS

once you know C you will never identify with body again
........
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Desire, fear, trouble, joy, they cannot appear unless you are there to appear to. Yet, whatever happens points to your existence as a perceiving centre. Disregard the pointers and be aware of what they are pointing to. (220)

Realize that every mode of perception is subjective, that what is seen or heard, touched or smelt, felt or thought, expected or imagined, is in the mind and not in reality, and you will experience peace and freedom from fear. (201)

When you realize that the distinction between inner and outer is in the mind only, you are no longer afraid. (464)

You are neither the body nor in the body. There is no such thing as body. You have grievously misunderstood yourself. To understand rightly, investigate. (253)

You are not in the body, the body is in you! The mind is in you. They happen to you. They are there because you find them interesting.
(212)

You only know that you react. Who reacts and to what, you do not know. You know on contact that you exist: "I am". The "I am this", "I
am that" are imaginary. (337)

To myself, I am neither perceivable nor conceivable; there is nothing I can point out to and say: "this I am". You identify yourself with everything so easily; I find it impossible. The feeling "I am not this or that, nor is anything mine" is so strong in me that as soon as a thing or a thought appears, there comes at once the sense "this I am not". (268)

Whatever you may hear, see or think of, I am not that. I am free from being a percept or a concept. (152)

As you cannot see your face, but only its reflection in the mirror, so you can know only your image reflected in the stainless mirror of pure awareness. See the stains and remove them. The nature of the perfect mirror is such that you cannot see it. Whatever you can see is bound to be a stain. Turn away from it, give it up, know it as unwanted. All perceivables are stains. (126)

Having perfected the mirror so that it reflects correctly, truly, you can turn the mirror round and see in it a reflection of yourself -true as far as the mirror can reflect. But the reflection is not yourself - you are the seer of the reflection. Do understand it clearly - whatever you may perceive, you are not what you perceive. You can see both the image and the mirror. You are neither. (330)

Remember, nothing you perceive is your own. (510)

What is really your own, you are not conscious of. (445)

You are nothing that you are conscious of. (458)

As there must be something unchanging to register discontinuity, I am not this body-mind, which is neither continuous nor permanent.

The mind is discontinuous. Again and again it blanks out, like in sleep or swoon or distraction. There must be something continuous to register discontinuity. Memory is always partial, unreliable and > evanescent. It does not explain the strong sense of identity pervading consciousness, the sense "I am". Find out what is at the root of it. (307)

You cannot be conscious of what does not change. All consciousness is consciousness of change. But the very perception of change - does it not necessitate a changeless background? (516)

Changes are inevitable in the changeful, but you are not subject to them. You are the changeless background, against which changes are perceived. (333)

The self based on memory is momentary. But such self demands unbroken continuity behind it. You know from experience that there are gaps when your self is forgotten. What brings it back to life? What wakes you up in the morning? There must be some constant factor bridging the gaps in consciousness. If you watch carefully, you will find that even your daily consciousness is in flashes, with gaps intervening all the time. What is in the gaps? What can there be but your real being, that is timeless? Mind and mindlessness are one to it. (333)

Realize that whatever you think yourself to be is just a stream of events; that while all happens, comes and goes, you alone are, the changeless among the changeful, the self-evident among the inferred. Separate the observed from the observer and abandon false identifications. (215)

The succession of transient moments creates the illusion of time, but the timeless reality of pure being is not in movement, for all movement requires a motionless background. It is itself the background. Once you have found it in yourself, you know that you had never lost that independent being. (409)

What changes is not real, what is real does not change. Now, what is it in you that does not change? As long as there is food, there is body and mind. When the food is stopped, the body dies and the mind dissolves. But does the observer perish? It is a matter of actual experience that the self has being independent of mind and body. It is being-awareness-bliss. Awareness of being is bliss. (210)

You must realize yourself as the immovable behind and beyond the movable, the silent witness of all that happens. (319)

As the person is a changing stream of mental objects that I as the subject take to be my body-mind, I cannot be a person. I am, but I can't be this or that.

Nothing is wrong with you, but the ideas you have of yourself are altogether wrong. It is not you who desires, fears and suffers, it is the person built on the foundation of your body by circumstances and influences. You are not that person. (424)

The person is never the subject. You can see a person, but you are not the person. (64)

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.
(205)

How does personality come into being? By identifying the present with the past and projecting it into the future. (206)

The body-mind is like a room. It is there, but I need not live in it all the time. (153)

The person is merely the result of a misunderstanding. In reality, there is no such thing. Feelings, thoughts and actions race before the watcher in endless succession, leaving traces in the brain and creating an illusion of continuity. A reflection of the watcher in the mind creates the sense of "I" and the person acquires an apparently independent existence. In reality there is no person, only the watcher identifying himself with the "I" and the "mine". (343)

It is because the "I am" is false that it wants to continue. Reality need not continue - knowing itself indestructible, it is indifferent of forms and expressions. To strengthen and stabilize the "I am", we do all sorts of things - all in vain, for the "I am" is being rebuilt from moment to moment. It is unceasing work, and the only radical solution is to dissolve the separative sense of "I am such and such
It is not the "I am" that is false, but what you take yourself to be. I can see, beyond the least shadow of doubt, that you are not what you believe yourself to be. (458)

What is really your own, you are not conscious of. What you are conscious of is neither you nor yours. Yours is the power of perception, not what you perceive. It is a mistake to take the conscious to be the whole of man. Man is the unconscious, the conscious and the superconscious, but you are not the man. Yours is the cinema screen, the light as well as the seeing power, but the picture is not you. (445)

As it is my presence, which is always here and now, that gives the quality of actual to any event, I must be beyond time and space. I was never born, nor will ever die.

Take the idea "I was born". You may take it to be true. It is not. You were not born, nor will you ever die. It is the idea that was born and shall die, not you. By identifying yourself with it you became mortal. (392)

Your mistake lies in your belief that you were born. You were never born nor will you ever die. (83)

Between the remembered and the actual there is a basic difference which can be observed from moment to moment. At no point of time is the actual the remembered. Between the two there is a difference in kind, not merely in intensity. The actual is unmistakably so. By no effort of will or imagination can you interchange the two. Now, what is it that gives this unique quality to the actual? A moment back, the remembered was actual, in a moment the actual will be the remembered. What makes the actual unique?

Obviously, it is the sense of being present. In memory and anticipation, there is a clear feeling that it is a mental state under observation, while in the actual the feeling is primarily of being present and aware. Wherever you go, the sense of here and now you carry with you all the time. It means that you are independent of space and time, that space and time are in you, not you in them. It is your self-identification with the body, which, of course, is limited in space and time, that gives you the feeling of finiteness. In reality you are infinite and eternal. (516)

I am the Self, the Witness of Consciousness,
pure Awareness.

I am only the Self , which is universal and
imagines itself to be the outer self, a person.

Somebody, anybody, will tell you that you are pure consciousness, not a body-mind. Accept it as a possibility and investigate earnestly. You may discover that it is not so, that you are not a person bound in space and time. Think of the difference it would make! (441-2)

The personality (vyakti) is but a product of imagination. The self (vyakta) is the victim of this imagination. It is the taking yourself to be what you are not that binds you. The person cannot be said to exist on its own rights; it is the self that believes there is a person and is conscious of being it. (143)

How can there be two selves in one body? The "I am" is one. There is no "higher I-am" and "lower I-am". All kinds of states of consciousness are presented to awareness and there is self-identification with them. The objects of observation are not what they appear to be, and the attitudes they are met with are not what they need to be. If you think that Buddha, Christ of Krishnamurti speak to the person, you are mistaken. They know well that the vyakti , the outer self, is but a shadow of the vyakta , the inner self, and they address and admonish the vyakta only. They tell him to give attention to the outer self, to guide it and help it, to feel responsible for it; in short, to be fully aware of it. Awareness comes from the Supreme and pervades the inner self; the so-called outer self is only that part of one's being of which one is not aware. One may be conscious, for every being is conscious, but one is not aware. What is included in awareness becomes the inner and partakes of the inner. (294)

The self you want to know, is it some second self? Are you made of several selves? Surely, there is only one self and you are that self. The self you are is the only self there is. Remove and abandon your wrong ideas about yourself and there it is, in all its glory. (516-7)

There is no second, or higher self to search for. You are the highest self, only give up the false ideas you have about your self. (517)

Your own self is your ultimate teacher (sadguru). The outer teacher (guru) is merely a milestone. It is only your inner teacher that will walk with you to the goal, for it is the goal. (51)

Yoga is the work of the inner self (vyakta) on the outer self (vyakti). All that the outer does is merely in response to the inner. It [the outer self] has some control over the body and can improve its posture and breathing. Over the mind's thoughts and feelings it has little mastery, for it is itself the mind. It is the inner that can control the outer. The outer will be wise to obey. The inner is the source of inspiration, the outer is moved by memory. The source is untraceable, while all memory begins somewhere. Thus the outer is always determined, while the inner cannot be held in words. The mistake of students consists in their imagining the inner to be something to get hold of, and forgetting that all perceivables are transient and therefore unreal. Only that which makes perception possible, call it Life or Brahman, or what you like, is real. (74-5)

The self by its nature knows itself only. For lack of experience whatever it perceives it takes to be itself. Battered, it learns to look out (viveka) and to live alone (vairagya). When right behaviour (uparati) becomes normal, a powerful inner urge (mukmukshutva) makes it seek its source. The candle of the body is lighted and all becomes clear and bright. (110)

You can observe the observation, but not the observer. You know you are the ultimate observer by direct insight, not by a logical process based on observation. You are what you are, but you know what you are not. The self is known as being, the not-self is known as transient. But in reality all is in the mind. The observed, observation and observer are mental constructs. The self alone is. (219)

The self is universal and its aims are universal. There is nothing personal about the self. (212)

I am not an object in Consciousness but its source,
its Witness, pure shapeless Awareness.

You are and I am. But only as points in consciousness; we are nothing apart from consciousness. (92)

You are not the body. You are the immensity and infinity of consciousness. (264)

The source of consciousness cannot be an object in consciousness. To know the source is to be the source. When you realize that you are not the person, but the pure and calm witness, and that fearless awareness is your very being, you are the being. It is the source, the inexhaustible Possibility. (65)

Discard all you are not and go ever deeper. Just as a man digging a well discards what is not water, until he reaches the water-bearing strata, so must you discard what is not your own, till nothing is left which you can disown. You will find that what is left is nothing which the mind can hook on to. You are not even a human being. You just are - a point of awareness, co-extensive with time and space and beyond both, the ultimate cause, itself uncaused. If you ask me "Who are you?", my answer would be: "Nothing in particular. Yet, I am." (318)

I am not my body, nor do I need it. I am the witness only. I have no shape of my own. You are so accustomed to think of yourself as bodies having consciousness that you just cannot imagine consciousness as having bodies. Once you realize that bodily existence is but a state of mind, a movement in consciousness, that the ocean of consciousness is infinite and eternal, and that, when in touch with consciousness, you are the witness only, you will be able to withdraw beyond consciousness altogether. (327)

Do realize that it is not you who moves from dream to dream, but the dreams flow before you, and you are the immutable witness. No happening affects your real being - that is the absolute truth. (333)

The witness is not a person. The person comes into being when there is a basis for it, an organism, a body. In it, the absolute is reflected as awareness. Pure awareness becomes self-awareness. When there is a self, self-awareness is the witness. When there is no self to witness, there is no witnessing either. It is all very simple; it is the presence of the person that complicates. See that there is no such thing as a permanently separate person and all becomes clear. Awareness, mind, matter - they are one reality in its two aspects as immovable and movable, and the three attributes of inertia, energy and harmony. Awareness becomes consciousness when it has an object. The object changes all the time. In consciousness there is movement; awareness by itself is motionless and timeless, here and now. (233)

The difference between the person and the witness is as between not knowing and knowing oneself. The person is in unrest and resistance to the very end. It is the witness that works on the person, on the totality of its illusions, past, present and future. (358)

[The person and the witness] 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. (190)

The pleasure to be is the simplest form of self-love, which later grows into love of the self. Be like an infant with nothing standing between the body and the self. The constant noise of the psychic life is absent. In deep silence, the self contemplates the body. It is like the white paper on which nothing is written yet. Be like that infant, instead of trying to be this or that, be happy to be. You will be a fully awakened witness of the field of consciousness. But there should be no feelings and ideas to stand between you and the field. (216)

Only the feeling "I am", though in the World,
is not of the World nor can be denied.

A reflection of the watcher in the mind creates the sense of "I" and the person acquires an apparently independent existence. In reality there is no person, only the watcher identifying himself with the "I" and the "mine". The teacher tells the watcher: you are not this, there is nothing of yours in this, except the little point of "I am", which is the bridge between the watcher and his dream. "I am this, I am that" is dream, while pure "I am" has the stamp of reality on it. (343)

That which makes you think that you are a human is not human. It is but a dimensionless point of consciousness, a conscious nothing. All you can say about yourself is "I am". You are pure being-awareness-bliss. To realize that is the end of all seeking. You come to it when you see all you think yourself to be as mere imagination, and stand aloof in pure awareness of the transient as transient, imaginary as imaginary, unreal as unreal. (316)

Only your sense "I am", though in the world, is not of the world. By no effort of logic or imagination can you change the "I am" into "I am not". In the very denial of your being you assert it. (200)

It [the "I am"] is unreal when we say: "I am this, I am that". It is real when we mean "I am not this, nor that". (395)

To identify oneself with the particular is all the sin there is. The impersonal is real, the personal appears and disappears. "I am" is the impersonal Being. "I am this" is the person. The person is relative, and the pure Being fundamental. (71)

The World exists only as a dream in my Consciousness: Part One

As I only know the contents of my consciousness, and an outside world is unprovable, all perceivables are only in my mind.

You know only what is in your consciousness. What you claim exists outside conscious experience is inferred. (449)

Is there a world outside your knowledge? Can you go beyond what you know? You may postulate a world beyond the mind, but it will remain a concept, unproved and unprovable. Your experience is your proof, and it is valid for you only. Who else can have your experience, when the other person is only as real as he appears in your experience? (533)

Whatever happens, happens to you, by you, through you; you are the creator, enjoyer and destroyer of all you perceive. (468)

You are the maker of the world in which you live, you alone can change it, or unmake it. (380)

The world appears to you so overwhelmingly real because you think of it all the time; cease thinking of it and it will dissolve into thin mist. (505)

All perceivables are stains. The entire universe is a stain. (126)

That you hear is a fact. What you hear is not. The fact can be experienced, and in that sense the sound of the word and the mental ripples it causes are experienced. There is no other reality behind it. (450)

All happens in consciousness. The world is but a succession of experiences. (404)

Your conviction that you are conscious of a world is the world. The world you perceive is made of consciousness; what you call matter is consciousness itself. (286)

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. (261)

There is only one mistake you are making: you take the inner for the outer, and the outer for the inner. What is in you, you take to be outside you, and what is outside you take to be in you. The mind and feelings are external, but you take them to be intimate. You believe the world to be objective, while it is entirely a projection of your psyche. That is the basic confusion. (240)

You have projected onto yourself a world of your own imagination, based on memories, on desires and fears, and you have imprisoned yourself in it. Break the spell and be free. (200)

The idea of responsibility is in your mind. You think there must be something or somebody solely responsible for all that happens. There is a contradiction between a multiple universe and a single cause. Either one or the other must be false. Or both. As I see it, it is all day-dreaming. There is no reality in ideas. The fact is that without you, neither the universe nor its cause could have come into being. (502)

Before the world was, consciousness was. In consciousness it comes into being, in consciousness it lasts and into pure consciousness it dissolves. At the root of everything is the feeling "I am". The state of mind "there is a world" is secondary, for to be, I do not need the world, the world needs me. (98)

The world comes into being only when you are born in a body. No body - no world. (207)

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. (262)

To be born means to create a world round yourself as the centre. (208)

Your own little body too is full of mysteries and dangers, yet you are not afraid of it, for you take it as your own. What you do not know is that the entire universe is your body, and you need not be afraid of it. You may say you have two bodies: the personal and the universal. The personal comes and goes, the universal is always with you. The entire creation is your universal body. You are so blinded by what is personal, that you do not see the universal. This blindness will not end by itself - it must be undone skilfully and deliberately. When all illusions are understood and abandoned, you reach the error-free and perfect state in which all distinctions between the personal and the universal are no more. (308)

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 realize, 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. (207)

The pure mind sees things as they are - bubbles in consciousness. These bubbles are appearing, disappearing and reappearing - without having real being. Each bubble is a body and all these bodies are mine. (138)

You see yourself in the world, while I see the world in myself. To you, you get born and die, while to me the world appears and disappears. Our world is real, but your view of it is not. There is no wall between us, except the one built by you. There is nothing wrong with the senses, it is your imagination that misleads you. It covers up the world as it is with what you imagine it to be - something existing independently of you and yet closely following your inherited or acquired patterns. (264)

This must be well grasped: the world hangs on the thread of consciousness. No consciousness, no world. (92)

You are the infinite potentiality, the inexhaustible possibility. Because you are, all can be. The universe is but a partial manifestation of your limitless capacity to become. (121)

Once you realize that the world is your own projection, you are free of it. You need not free yourself of a world that does not exist, except in your own imagination! However is the picture, beautiful or ugly, you are painting it and you are not bound by it. Realize that there is nobody to force it on you, that it is due to the habit of taking the imaginary to be real. See the imaginary as imaginary and be free of fear. (200)

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. (207)

Transient things only appear and have no substance.

What begins and ends is mere appearance. The world can be said to appear, but not to be. The appearance may last very long on some scale of time, and very short on another, but ultimately it comes to the same. Whatever is time-bound is momentary and has no reality. (16)

What contradicts itself has no being. Or it has only momentary being, which comes to the same. For what has a beginning and an end has no middle. It is hollow. It has only name and shape given to it by the mind, but it has neither substance nor essence. (314)

However great and complete is your world, it is self-contradictory and transitory and altogether illusory. (533)

Transiency is the best proof of unreality. (334)

The final answer is this: nothing is. All is a momentary appearance in the field of the universal consciousness. Continuity as name and form is a mental formation only, easy to dispel. (415)

Trace the world to its source and you will find that before the world was, you were, and when the world is no longer, you remain. (493)

What changes has no reality. Time and space are imagined, ways of thinking, modes of perception. Only timeless reality is,
and it is here and now.

Once you accept time and space as real, you will consider yourself minute and short-lived. But are they real? Do they depend on you, or you on them? (252)

There can be no continuity in existence. Continuity implies identity in past, present and future. No such identity is possible, for the very means of identification fluctuate and change. Continuity, permanency, these are illusions created by memory, mere mental projections of a pattern where no pattern can be. (467)

Don't talk to me about past and future. They exist only in your mind. (259)

Time is in the mind, space is in the mind. The law of cause and effect is also a way of thinking. (115)

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. (205)

Your body is short of time, not you. Time and space are in the mind only. You are not bound. Just understand yourself - that itself is eternity. (260)

The whole of it is [imagination]. Even space and time are imagined. All existence is imaginary. (355)

Existence and non-existence relate to something in space and time, here and now, there and then, which again are in the mind. (460)

Time is endless, though limited, eternity is in the split moment of the now. We miss it because the mind is ever shuttling between the past and the future. It will not stop to focus the now. It can be done with comparative ease, if interest is aroused. (528)

In your world everything must have a beginning and an end. If it does not, you call it eternal. In my view, there is no such thing as beginning and end - these are all related to time. Timeless being is entirely in the now. Being and not-being alternate and their reality is momentary. The immutable Reality lies beyond space and time. (454)

In reality nothing happens, there is no past nor future; all appears and nothing is. (406)

All depends on you. It is by your consent that the world exists. Withdraw your belief in its reality and it will dissolve like a dream. Time can bring down mountains; much more you, who are the timeless source of time. For without memory and expectation there can be no time. (452)

You are the space (akash) in which it moves, the time in which it lasts, the love that gives it life. (286)

"I am" is an ever present fact, while "I am created" is an idea. Neither God nor the universe have come to tell you that they have created you. The mind, obsessed by the idea of causality, invents creation and then wonders "who is the creator?" The mind itself is the creator. Even this is not quite true, for the created and its creator are one. The mind and the world are not separate. Do understand that what you think to be the world is your own mind. All space and time are in the mind. (502)

There is only imagination. It has absorbed you so completely that you just cannot grasp how far from reality you have wandered. No doubt imagination is richly creative. Universe upon universe are built on it. Yet they are all in space and time, past and future, which just don't exist. (288)

It is you who are in movement and not time. Stop moving and time will cease. Past and future will merge in the eternal now. (405)

I am nowhere to be found. I am not a thing to be given a place among other things. All things are in me, but I am not among things. (327)

In reality all is here and now and all is one. Multiplicity and diversity are in the mind only. (115)

Truly, all is in me and by me. There is nothing else. The very idea of "else" is a disaster and a calamity. (205)

The World exists only as a dream in my Consciousness: Part Two

Whatever has a form is only limitations imagined
in my consciousness.

By itself nothing has existence. Everything needs its own absence. To be is to be distinguishable, to be here and not there, to be now and not then, to be thus and not otherwise. Like water is shaped by the container, so is everything determined by conditions (gunas). (15)

Pure being, filling all and beyond all, is not existence, which is limited. All limitation is imaginary, only the unlimited is real. (355)

The World is but a show, a make-belief.

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. (178-9)

The universe is a stage on which a world drama is being played. The quality of the performance is all that matters; not what the actors say or do, but how they say and do it. Sportsmen seem to make tremendous efforts: yet their sole motive is to play and display. (95)

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 a make-belief. (191)

You see me apparently functioning. In reality, I only look. Whatever is done, is done on the stage. Joy and sorrow, life and death, they all are real to the man in bondage; to me, they are all in the show, as unreal as the show itself. I may perceive the world just like you, but you believe to be in it, while I see it as an iridescent drop in the vast expanse of consciousness. (179)

All that lives, works for protecting, perpetuating and expanding consciousness. This is the world's sole meaning and purpose. It is the very essence of Yoga - ever raising the level of consciousness, discovery of new dimensions, with their properties, qualities and powers. In that sense, the entire universe becomes a school of Yoga. (275)

Out of a lump of gold, you can make many ornaments - each will remain gold. Similarly, in whatever role I may appear and whatever function I may perform - I remain what I am: the "I am" immovable, unshakable, independent. What you call the universe, nature, is my spontaneous creativity. Whatever happens, happens. But such is my nature that all ends in joy. (138)

The World I perceive is entirely private, a dream.

The world you can perceive is a very small world indeed. And it is entirely private. Take it to be a dream and be done with it. Is not the idea of a total world a part of your personal world? The universe does not come to tell you that you are a part of it. It is you who have invented a totality to contain you as a part. In fact all you know is your own private world, however well you have furnished it with your imaginations and expectations. (23)

This world is painted by you on the screen of consciousness and is entirely your own private world. (200)

To know the picture as the play of light on the screen, gives freedom from the idea that the picture is real. (388)

Consider. The world in which you live, who else knows about it? Within the prison of your world appears a man who tells you that the world of painful contradictions, which you have created, is neither continuous nor permanent and is based on a misapprehension. He pleads with you to get out of it. You got into it by forgetting what you are, and you will get out of it by knowing yourself as you are. There is no reality in it. It cannot last. (45)

The world has no existence apart from you. At every moment it is but a reflection of yourself. You create it, you destroy it. Your personal universe does not exist by itself. It is merely a limited and distorted view of the real. (94)

You are not of the world, you are not even in the world. The world is not, you alone are. You create the world in your imagination like a dream. As you cannot separate the dream from yourself, so you cannot have an outer world independent of yourself. You are independent, not the world. Don't be afraid of a world you yourself have created. (453)

Search and you shall discover the Universal Person, who is yourself and infinitely more. Anyhow, begin by realizing that the world is in you, not you in the world. Your personal body is a part in which the whole is wonderfully reflected. But you have also a universal body. You cannot even say that you do not know it, because you see and experience it all the time. Only you call it "the world" and are afraid of it. Both anatomy and astronomy describe you. You know the world exactly as you know your body - through your senses. It is your mind that has separated the world outside your skin from the world inside and put them in opposition. (309-10)

The world is but a reflection of my imagination. Whatever I want to see, I can see. But why should I invent patterns of creation, evolution and destruction? I do not need them. The world is in me, the world is myself. I am not afraid of it and have no desire to lock it up in a mental picture. (28)

Imagine a dense forest full of tigers and you in a strong steel cage. Knowing that you are well protected by the cage, you watch the tigers fearlessly. Next, you find the tigers in the cage and yourself roaming about in the jungle. Last, the cage disappears and you ride the tigers! (476-7)

What I appear to be to you exists only in your mind. I am a dream that can wake you up. You will have the proof of it in your very waking up. (181)

Give up all and you gain all. Then life becomes what it was meant to be: pure radiation from an inexhaustible source. In that light the world appears dimly like a dream. (257)

Desire and fear come from seeing the World
as separate from my-Self.

As you think yourself to be, so you think the world to be. If you imagine yourself as separate from the world, the world will appear as separate from you and you will experience desire and fear. I do not see the world as separate from me and so there is nothing for me to desire or fear. (123)

There is no chaos in the world, except the chaos which your mind creates. It is self-created in the sense that at its very centre is the false idea of oneself as a thing different and separate from other things. In reality you are not a thing, nor separate. (121)

While I see the dream as real, I'll suffer being its slave.

Both sleep and waking are misnomers. We are only dreaming. True waking and true sleeping only the gnani knows. We dream that we are awake, we dream that we are asleep. The three states are only varieties of the dream state. Treating everything as a dream liberates. As long as you give reality to dreams, you are their slave. By imagining that you are born as so-and-so, you become a slave of the so-and-so. The essence of slavery is to imagine yourself to be a process, to have past and future, to have history. In fact, we have no history, we are not a process, we do not develop, nor decay; so see all as a dream and stay out of it. (189)

To know that you are a prisoner of your mind, that you live in an imaginary world of your own creation is the dawn of wisdom. (426)

The cause of suffering is in the identification of the perceiver with the perceived. Out of it desire is born, and with desire blind action, unmindful of results. Look around and you will see - suffering is a man-made thing. (381)

Nobody suffers in a play, unless one identifies himself with it. Don't identity yourself with the world and you will not suffer. (156)

While it lasts, the dream has temporary being. It is your desire to hold on to it, that creates the problem. Let go. Stop imagining that the dream is yours. (257)

Let the dream unroll itself to its very end. You cannot help it. But you can look at the dream as a dream, refuse it the stamp of reality. (258)

At present you are drifting, and therefore in danger, for to a drifter any moment anything may happen. It would be better to wake up and see your situation. That you are, you know. What you are, you don't know. Find out what you are. (474)

My intention to wake you up is the link [between our respective dreams]. My heart wants you awake. I see you suffer in your dream and I know that you must wake up to end your woes. When you see your dream as dream, you wake up. But in your dream itself I am not interested. Enough for me to know that you must wake up. You need not bring your dream to a definite conclusion, or make it noble, or happy, or beautiful; all you need is to realize that you are dreaming. Stop imagining, stop believing. See the contradictions, the incongruities, the falsehood and the sorrow of the human state, the need to go beyond. In dream you love some and not others. On waking up you find you are love itself, embracing all. Personal love, however intense and genuine, invariably binds; love in freedom is love of all. (258)

This is the heart of the matter: As long as you believe that only the outer world is real, you remain its slave. (424) Just understand that what you see is not what is. Appearances will dissolve on investigation, and the underlying reality will come to the surface. You need not burn the house to get out of it. You just walk out. It is only when you cannot come and go freely that the house becomes a jail. I move in and out of consciousness easily and naturally, and therefore to me the world is a home, not a prison. (479)

Nothing in the dream is done by me.

As long as you believe yourself to be a body, you will ascribe causes to everything. I do not say things have no causes. Each thing has innumerable causes. It is as it is, because the world is as it is. Every cause in its ramifications covers the universe. There are no causes, but your ignorance of your real being, which is perfect and beyond causation. For whatever happens, all the universe is responsible and you are the source of the universe. (347)

All that happens is the cause of all that happens. Causes are numberless; the idea of a sole cause is an illusion. (398)

Why do you talk of action? Are you acting ever? Some unknown power acts and you imagine that you are acting. You are merely watching what happens, without being able to influence it in any way. (238)

Stop imagining yourself being or doing this or that, and the realization that you are the source and heart of all will dawn upon you. (3)

The wise man counts nothing as his own. When at some time and place some miracle is attributed to some person, he will not establish any causal link between events and people, nor will he allow any conclusions to be drawn. All happened as it happened because it had to happen; everything happens as it does, because the universe is as it is. (270)

You imagine being and doing as identical. It is not so. The mind and the body move and change and cause other minds and bodies to move and change, and that is called doing, action. I see that it is in the nature of action to create further action, like fire that continues by burning. I neither act nor cause others to act; I am timelessly aware of what is going on. (398)

Nothing is done by me, everything just happens. I do not expect, I do not plan, I just watch events happening, knowing them to be unreal. (191)

It is just like your tape-recorder. It records, it reproduces - all by itself. You only listen. Similarly, I watch all that happens, including my talking to you. It is not me who talks, the words appear in my mind and then I hear them said. (433)

The deed is a fact, the doer a mere concept. Your very language shows that while the deed is certain, the doer is dubious; shifting responsibility is a game peculiarly human. Considering the endless list of factors required for anything to happen, one can only admit that everything is responsible for everything, however remote. Doership is a myth born from the illusion of "me" and "mine". I do not have the feeling that I am talking. There is talking going on, that is all. Do you [really talk]? You hear yourself talking and you say: I talk. I have no objections to the conventions of your language, but they distort and destroy reality. A more accurate way of saying would have been: "There is talking, working, coming, going". For anything to happen, the entire universe must coincide. It is wrong to believe that anything in particular can cause an event. Every cause is universal. Your very body would not exist without the entire universe contributing to its creation and survival. I am fully aware that things happen as they happen because the world is as it is. To affect the course of events, I must bring a new factor into the world and such factor can only be myself, the power of love and understanding focussed in me. (389)

There is only one dreamer, the one Self,
dreaming many dreams

In every body there is a dream, but the dreamer is the same, the
one Self, which reflects itself in each body as "I am".

To me all [persons] are equal. Differences in appearance and expression are there, but they do not matter. Just as the shape of a gold ornament does not affect the gold, so does man's essence remain unaffected. (301)

There is absolutely no difference between me and others, except in my knowing myself as I am. I know it for certain and you do not. The difference is only in the mind and temporary. I was like you, you will be like me. (123)

My self and your self are one. I know it, but you don't. That is all the difference - and it cannot last. (88)

This [helping people] is mere imagination. In truth you do not help others, because there are no others. (313)

In reality there are no others, and by helping yourself you help everybody else. (383)

I am the other person, the other person is myself; in name and shape we are different, but there is no separation. At the root of our being we are one. (511)

Where are the many points [of consciousness]? In you mind. You insist that your world is independent of your mind. How can it be? Your desire to know other people's minds is due to your not knowing your own mind. First know your own mind and you will find that the question of other minds does not arise at all, for there are no other people. You are the common factor, the only link between the minds. Being is consciousness. "I am" applies to all. (257)

The dreams are not equal, but the dreamer is one. I am the insect, I am the poet - in dream. But in reality I am neither. I am beyond all dreams. I am the light in which all dreams appear and disappear. I am both inside and outside the dream. Just as a man having a headache knows the ache and also knows that he is not the ache, so do I know the dream, myself dreaming and myself not dreaming - all at the same time. I am what I am before, during and after the dream. But what I see in dream, I am not. (117)

Ultimately nothing is mine or yours, everything is ours. Just be one with yourself and you will be one with all, at home in the entire universe. (462)

Even to talk of re-uniting the person with the self is not right, because there is no person, only a mental picture given a false reality by conviction. Nothing was divided and there is nothing to unite. (143)

There is no "my self" and "his self". There is the Self, the only Self of all. Misled by the diversity of names and shapes, minds and bodies, you imagine multiple selves. We both are the self. (137)

The one witness reflects itself in the countless bodies as "I am". As long as the bodies, however subtle, last, the "I am" appears as many. Beyond the body there is only the One. (157)

I am one, but appear as many. (529)

Delve deeply into the sense "I am" and you will surely discover that the perceiving centre is universal, as universal as the light that illumines the world. All that happens in the universe happens to you, the silent witness. On the other hand, whatever is done,is done by you, the universal and inexhaustible energy. (519)

All the dreams are of a common imaginary World
and influence each other.

The variety of personal worlds is not so great. All the dreams are superimposed over a common world. To some extent, they shape and influence each other. The basic unity operates in spite of all. At the root of it all lies self-forgetfulness; not knowing who I am. In a hospital there may be many patients, all sleeping, all dreaming, each dreaming his own private, personal dream, unrelated, unaffected, having one single factor in common - illness. Similarly, we have divorced ourselves in our imagination from the real world of common experience, and enclosed ourselves in a cloud of personal desires and fears, images and thoughts, ideas and concepts. (92-93)

Love is seeing the unity under the imaginary diversity.

When all the false self-identifications are thrown away, what remains is all-embracing love. (195)

To see myself in everybody, and everybody in myself, most certainly is love. (91)

The consciousness in you and the consciousness in me, apparently two, really one, seek unity and that is love. (70)

I alone am, the One, the Supreme.

Not only the multiplicity of selves is false: even the duality I /
World, Subject / Object, Spirit / Matter is a transient appearance in
my Consciousness.

There can be no universe without the witness, there can be no witness without the universe. (351)

Look closely and you will see that the seer and the seen appear only when there is seeing. They are attributes of seeing. When you say "I am seeing this", "I am" and "this" come with the seeing, nor before. You cannot have an unseen "this" nor an unseeing "I am". Knowing is a reflection of your true nature along with being and loving. The knower and the known are added by the mind. It is in the nature of the mind to create a subject-object duality, where there is none. (404)

All thinking is in duality. In identity, no thought survives. (335)

The painter is in the picture. You separate the painter from the picture and look for him. Don't separate and don't put false questions. (416)

In reality there is only perception. The perceiver and the perceived are conceptual, the fact of perceiving is actual. The Absolute is the birthplace of perceiving. It makes perception possible. (340)

Even the experiencer is secondary. Primary is the infinite expanse of consciousness, the eternal possibility, the immeasurable potential of all that was, is and will be. (201)

The moment you say "I am", the entire universe comes into being along with its creator. (362)

There is no "I" apart from the body, nor the world. The three appear and disappear together. At the root is the sense "I am". Go beyond it. The idea "I am not the body" is merely an antidote to the idea "I am the body" which is false. What is that "I am"? Unless you know yourself, what else can you know? (295)

What you see is nothing but your self. Call it what you like, it does not change the fact. Through the film of destiny, your own light depicts pictures on the screen. You are the viewer, the light, the picture and the screen. Even the film of destiny (prarabdha) is self-selected and self-imposed. (480)

[Between vyakta and avyakta] there is no difference. It is like light and daylight. The universe is full of light which you do not see; but the same light you see as daylight. And what the daylight reveals is the vyakti. The person is always the object, the witness is the subject, and their relation of mutual dependence is the reflection of their absolute identity. You imagine that they are distinct and separate states. They are not. They are the same consciousness at rest and in movement, each state conscious of the other. In chit, man knows God and God knows man. In chit, the man shapes the world and the world shapes man. Chit is the link, the bridge between extremes, the balancing and uniting factor in every experience. The totality of the perceived is what you call matter. The totality of all perceivers
is what you call the universal mind. The identity of the two, manifesting itself as perceptibility and perceiving, harmony and intelligence, loveliness and loving, reasserts itself eternally.
(251)

You are [lonely] as a person. In your real being you are the whole. (533)

I have realized once and for good that I am neither object nor subject. (268)

There is only seeing; both the seer and the seen are contained in it. Don't create differences where there are none. (266)

There is only my-Self, Consciousness.

Who is there to be conscious of unconsciousness? As long as the window is open, there is sunlight in the room. With the windows shut, the sun remains, but does it see the darkness in the room? Is there anything like darkness to the sun? There is no such thing as unconsciousness, for unconsciousness is not experienceable. (263)

In reality there is only consciousness. All life is conscious, all consciousness -alive. Even the stones are conscious and alive. (47)

[My guru] told me: "You alone are, deny existence to everything except your self" and I did not doubt him. I was merely puzzling over it, until I realized that it is absolutely true. I found that I am conscious and happy absolutely, and only by mistake I thought I owed being-consciousness to the body and the world of bodies. (83-84)

Nothing exists by itself. All is the Self, all is myself. (91)

All is you and yours. There is nobody else. This is a fact. (161)

You, the self, being the root of all being, consciousness and joy, impart your reality to whatever you perceive. This imparting of reality takes place invariably in the now, at no other time, because past and future are only in the mind. "Being" applies to the now only. (528)

Outside the Self there is nothing. All is one and all is contained in "I am". In the waking and dream states it is the person. In deep sleep and turiya [samadhi] it is the Self. Beyond the alert intentness of turiya lies the great, silent peace of the Supreme. But in fact all is one in essence and related in appearance. In ignorance the seer becomes the seen, and in wisdom he is the seeing. (68)

One and all are the same to me. The same consciousness (chit) appears as being (sat) and as bliss (ananda): Chit in movement is Ananda; Chit motionless is Being. (104)

I am not even Consciousness, which is dual and perceivable:
I am the unkown Reality beyond.

Neither your body nor you mind, nor even your consciousness is yourself. (520)

The "I am" is at the root of all appearance and the permanent link in the succession of events that we call life; but I am beyond the "I am". (458)

Before the mind, I am. "I am" is not a thought in the mind; the mind happens to me, I do not happen to the mind. And since time and space are in the mind, I am beyond time and space, eternal and omnipresent. (525)

The outer self and the inner both are imagined. The obsession of being an "I" needs another obsession with a "super-I" to get cured, as one needs another thorn to remove a thorn, or another poison to neutralize a poison. All assertion calls for a denial, but this is the first step only. The next is to go beyond both. (374)

Go beyond. Neither consciousness nor the "I am" at the centre of it are you. Your true being is entirely unselfconscious, completely free from all self-identification with whatever it may be - gross, subtle or transcendental. (371)

Only reality is, there is nothing else. The three states of waking, dreaming and sleeping are not me, and I am not in them. (191)

As long as one is conscious, there will be pain and pleasure. You cannot fight pain and pleasure on the level of consciousness. To go beyond them, you must go beyond consciousness, which is possible only when you look at consciousness as something that happens to you, and not in you, as something external, alien, superimposed. Then, suddenly you are free of consciousness, really alone, with nothing to intrude. And that is your true state. Consciousness is an itching rash that makes you scratch. Of course, you cannot step out of consciousness, for the very stepping out is in consciousness. But if you learn to look at your consciousness as a sort of fever, personal and private, in which you are enclosed like a chick in its shell, out of this very attitude will come the crisis which will break the
shell. (382)

He [Buddha] must have meant that all consciousness is painful, which is obvious. (382)

I am conscious and unconscious, both conscious and unconscious, neither conscious nor unconscious - to all this I am witness, but really there is no witness, because there is nothing to be a witness to. I am perfectly empty of all mental formations, void of mind, yet fully aware. This I try to express by saying that I am beyond the mind. (328)

When you realize that all is in your mind and that you are beyond the mind, that you are truly alone, then all is you. (457)

Where there is a universe, there will also be its counterpart, which is God. But I am beyond both. (264)

Even faith in God is only a stage on the way. Ultimately, you abandon all, for you come to something so simple that there are no words to express it. (469-70)

Consciousness and life - both you may call God; but you are beyond both, beyond God, beyond being and not-being. (475)

You cannot know the knower, for you are the knower. The fact of knowing proves the knower. You need no other proof. The knower of the
known is not knowable. Just like the light is known in colours only, so is the knower known in knowledge. (360)

Before you can say "I am", you must be there to say it. Being need not be self-conscious. You need not know to be, but you must be to know. (452)

You need not know what you are. Enough to know what you are not. What you are you will never know, for every discovery reveals new
dimensions to conquer. The unknown has no limits. (372)

Do understand that you cannot ask a valid question about yourself, because you do not know whom you are asking about. (452)

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. (446)

Discontinuity is the law when you deal with the concrete. The continuous cannot be experienced, for it has no borders. Consciousness implies alterations, change following change, when one thing or state comes to an end and another begins; that which has no borderline cannot be experienced in the common meaning of the word. One can only be it, without knowing, but one can know what it is not. It is definitely not the entire content of consciousness which is always on the move. To realize the immovable means to become immovable. I am talking of immovability, not of immobility. You become immovable in righteousness. You become a power which gets all things right. It may or may not imply intense outward activity, but the mind remains deep and quiet. (531)

When you go beyond awareness, there is a state of non-duality, in which there is no cognition, only pure being, which may be as well called non-being, if by being you mean being something in particular.
(409)

Your true home is in nothingness, in emptiness of all content. (487)

[I can describe your supreme, natural state] only by negation, as uncaused, independent, unrelated, undivided, uncomposed, unshakable, unquestionable, unreachable by effort. Every positive definition is from memory and, therefore, inapplicable. And yet my state is supremely actual and, therefore, possible, realizable, attainable. (16)

How can I put it into words, except in negating them? Therefore, I use words like timeless, spaceless, causeless. These are words too, but as they are empty of meaning, they suit my purpose. Because you want words where no words apply. (458)

Though unknown and unkowable, my real being is concrete and solid like a rock.

[The supreme state] is not perceivable, because it is what makes perception possible. It is beyond being and not being. It is neither the mirror nor the image in the mirror. It is what is - the timeless reality, unbelievably hard and solid. (36)

The timeless knows the time, the time does not know the timeless. All consciousness is in time and to it the timeless appears as unconscious. Yet, it is what makes consciousness possible. Light shines in darkness. In light darkness is not visible. Or you can put it the other way: in the endless ocean of light, clouds of consciousness appear, dark and limited, perceivable by contrast. There are mere attempts to express in words something very simple, yet altogether inexpressible. (379-89)

Turn your mind inside out. Overlook the movable and you will find yourself to be the ever-present, changeless reality, inexpressible, but solid like a rock. (162)

When all distinctions and reactions are no more, what remains is reality, simple and solid. (410)

It is solid, steady, changeless, beginningless and endless, ever new, ever fresh. (63)

This reality is so concrete, so actual, so much more tangible than mind and matter, that compared to it even diamond is soft like butter. This overwhelming actuality makes the world dreamlike, misty, irrelevant. (484)

To me nothing ever happens. There is something changeless, motionless, immovable, rock-like, unassailable; a solid mass of pure being-consciousness-bliss. I am never our of it. Nothing can take me out of it, no torture, no calamity. (191)

My world is free from opposites, of mutually destructive discrepancies; harmony pervades; its peace is rocklike; this peace and silence are my body. (485)

[My condition is] absolutely steady. Whatever I may do, it stays like a rock - motionless. Once you have awakened into reality, you stay in it. It is self-evident and yet beyond description. (192)

I am the light that makes Consciousness possible, pure Awareness, the non-dual Self, the Supreme Reality, the Absolute, the Beingness of being, the Awareness of consciousness.

Who are you? Don't go by formulas. The answer is not in words. The nearest you can say in words is: I am what makes perception possible, the life beyond the experiencer and his experience. (330)

My feeling is that all that happens in space and time happens to me, that every experience is my experience, every form is my form. What I take myself to be becomes my body, and all that happens to that body becomes my mind. But at the root of the universe there is pure awareness, beyond space and time, here and now. Know it to be your real being and act accordingly. (484)

At the root of my being is pure awareness, a speck of intense light. This speck, by its very nature, radiates and creates pictures in space and events in time - effortlessly and spontaneously. As long as it is merely aware, there are no problems. But when the discriminative mind comes into being and creates distinctions, pleasure and pain arise. During sleep the mind is in abeyance and so are pain and pleasure. The process of creation continues, but no notice is taken. The mind is a form of consciousness, and
consciousness is an aspect of life. Life creates everything, but the Supreme is beyond all. (180-1)

"Nothing is me" is the first step. "Everything is me" is the next. Both hang on the idea "There is a world". When this too is given up, you remain what you are - the non-dual Self. You are it here and now, but your vision is obstructed by your false ideas about your self. (518)

[The Absolute] gives birth to consciousness. All else is in consciousness. (65)

The entire universe exists only in consciousness, while I have my stand in the Absolute. In pure being consciousness arises; in consciousness the world appears and disappears. All there is is me, all there is is mine. Before all beginnings, after all endings -I am. All has its being in me, in the "I am", that shines in every living being. Even not-being is unthinkable without me. Whatever happens, I must be there to witness it. (15)

I am beyond time. However long a life may be, it is but a moment and a dream. In the same way, I am beyond all attributes. They appear and disappear in my light, but cannot describe me. The universe is all names and forms, based on qualities and their differences, while I am beyond. The world is there because I am, but I am not the world. I know there is a world, which includes this body and this mind, but I do not consider them to be more "mine" than other minds and bodies. They are there, in time and space, but I am timeless and spaceless. (35)

You are the Supreme Reality beyond the world and its creator, beyond consciousness and its witness, beyond all assertions and denials. (425)

You yourself are God, the Supreme Reality. (240)

You are God, but you do not know it. (533)

You are always the Supreme, which appears at a given point of time and space as the witness, a bridge between the pure awareness of the Supreme and the manifold consciousness of the person. Once you realize that whatever appears before you cannot be yourself, and cannot say "I am", you are free of all your "persons" and their demands. The sense "I am" is your own. You cannot part with it, but you can impart it to anything, as in saying: I am young. I am rich, etc. But such self-identifications are patently false and the cause of bondage. (64-5)

The Supreme is the universal dissolvent, it corrodes every container, it burns through every obstacle. Without the absolute denial of everything, the tyranny of things would be absolute. The Supreme is the great harmonizer, the guarantee of the ultimate and perfect balance -of life in freedom. It dissolves you and thus re-asserts your true being. (89)

As long as you deal in terms: real - unreal, awareness is the only reality that can be. But the Supreme is beyond all distinctions, and to it the tern "real" does not apply, for in it all is real and, therefore, need not be labelled as such. It is the very source of reality, it imparts reality to whatever it touches. It just cannot be understood through words. Even a direct experience, however sublime, merely bears testimony, nothing more. The Universal Mind (chidakash) makes and unmakes everything. The Supreme (paramakash) imparts reality to whatever comes into being. To say that it is the universal love may be the nearest we can come to it in words. Just like love, it makes everything real, beautiful, desirable. (303)

In reality only the Ultimate is. The rest is a matter of name and form. And as long as you cling to the idea that only what has a name and shape exists, the Supreme will appear to you non-existing. When you understand that names and shapes are hollow shells without any content whatsoever, and what is real is nameless and shapeless, pure energy of life and light of consciousness, you will be at peace -immersed in the deep silence of reality. (37)

The Supreme State is universal, here and now; everybody already shares in it. It is the state of being, knowing and liking. Who does not like to be, or does not know his own existence? But we take no advantage of this joy of being conscious, we do not go into it and purify it of all that is foreign to it. (231)

The real is simple, open, clear and kind, beautiful and joyous. It is completely free of contradictions. It is ever new, ever fresh, endlessly creative. Being and non-being, life and death, all distinctions merge in it. (340)

[It is] single, simple, indivisible and unperceivable, except in its manifestations. Not unkowable, but unperceivable, un-objectival, inseparable. Neither material nor mental, neither objective nor subjective, it is the root of matter and the source of consciousness. Beyond mere living and dying, it is the all-inclusive, all-exclusive Life, in which birh is death and death is birth. (232)

One thing is quite clear to me: all that is lives and moves and has its being in consciousness, and I am in and beyond that consciousness. I am in it as the witness. I am beyond it as Being. (92)

[You are] the impersonal and unqualified centre of being, love and bliss. (509)

Just like ice turns to water, and water to vapour, and vapour dissolves in air and disappears, so does the body dissolve into pure awareness (chidakash), then into pure being (paramakash), which is beyond all existence and non-existence. (76-77)

Even the sense of "I am" is composed of the pure light and the sense of being. The "I" is there even without the "am". So is the pure light there, whether you say "I" or not. Become aware of the pure light and you will never lose it. The beingness in being, the awareness in consciousness, the interest in every experience - that is not describable, yet perfectly accessible, for there is nothing else. (201)

I am what I am, neither with form nor formless, neither conscious nor unconscious. I am outside all these categories. You cannot find me by mere denial. I am as well everything as nothing. Nor both nor either. These distinctions apply to the Lord of the universe, not to me. I am complete and perfect. I am the beingness of being, the knowingness of knowing, the fulness of happiness. (321)

The big cycle: part one

The alternation of manifested (existence, becoming)
- unmanifested (pure being).

The three states, sleeping, dreaming and waking, are all in consciousness, the manifested; what you call unconsciousness will also be manifested - in time; beyond consciousness altogether lies the unmanifested. And beyond all, and pervading all, is the heart of being which beats steadily: manifested-unmanifested, manifested-unmanifested (saguna-nirguna). (450)

It is the instinct of exploration, the love of the unknown, that brings me into existence. It is in the nature of being to seek adventure in becoming, as it is in the nature of becoming to seek peace in being. This alternation of being and becoming is inevitable; but my home is beyond. (417)

With being arising in consciousness, the ideas of what you are arise in your mind as well as what you should be. This brings forth desire and action and the process of becoming begins. Becoming has, apparently, no beginning and no end, for it restarts every moment. With the cessation of imagination and desire, becoming ceases and the being this or that merges into pure being, which is not describable, only experienceable. (505)

All that lives, works for protecting, perpetuating and expanding consciousness. This is the world's sole meaning and purpose. It is the very essence of Yoga - ever raising the level of consciousness, discovery of new dimensions, with their properties, qualities and powers. In that sense, the entire universe becomes a school of Yoga. (275)

Once you realize that the road is the goal and that you are always on the road, not to reach a goal, but to enjoy its beauty and its wisdom, life ceases to be a task and becomes natural and simple, in itself an ecstasy. (426)

After all, what do you really want? Not perfection; you are already perfect. What you seek is to express in action what you are. For this you have a body and a mind. Take them in hand and make them serve you. (212)

The manifestation of the Absolute.

[The centre of consciousness] cannot be given name and form, for it is without quality and beyond consciousness. You may say it is a point in consciousness, which is beyond consciousness. Like a hole in the paper is both in the paper and yet not of paper, so is the supreme state in the very centre of consciousness, and yet beyond consciousness. It is as an opening in the mind through which the mind is flooded with light. The opening is not even the light. It is just an opening. From the mind's point of view, it is but an opening for the light of awareness to enter the mental space. By itself the light can only be compared to a solid, dense, rocklike, homogeneous and changeless mass of pure awareness, free from the mental patterns of name and shape. The supreme gives existence to the mind. The mind gives existence to the body. (34)

There can be no experience of the Absolute as it is beyond all experience. On the other hand, the Self is the experiencing factor in every experience and thus, in a way, validates the multiplicity of experiences. The world may be full of things of great value, but if there is nobody to buy them, they have no price. The Absolute contains everything experienceable, but without the experiencer they are as nothing. That which makes the experience possible is the Absolute. That which makes it actual is the Self. (334)

In the Supreme the witness appears. The witness creates the person and thinks itself as separate from it. The witness sees that the person appears in consciousness, which again appears in the witness. This realization of the basic unity is the working of the Supreme. It is the power behind the witness, the source from which all flows. It cannot be contacted, unless there is unity and love and mutual help between the person and the witness, unless doing is in harmony with the being and the knowing. The Supreme is both the source and the fruit of such harmony. As I talk to you, I am in the state of detached but affectionate awareness (turiya) . When this awareness turns upon itself, you may call it the Supreme State (turiyatita). But the fundamental reality is beyond awareness, beyond the three states of becoming, being and not-being. (296)

The body appears in your mind, your mind is the content of your consciousness; you are the motionless witness of the river of consciousness which changes eternally without changing you in any way. Your own changelessness is so obvious that you do not notice it. The universe is in you and cannot be without you. The world exists in memory, memory comes into consciousness; consciousness exists in awareness and awareness is the reflection of the light on the waters of existence. (199)

Nobody can say "I am the witness". The "I am" is always witnessed. The state of detached awareness is the witness-consciousness, the "mirror-mind". It rises and sets with its object and thus it is not the real. Whatever its object, it remains the same, hence it is also real. It partakes of both the real and the unreal, and is therefore a bridge between the two. (395-6)

Consciousness arising, the world arises. When you consider the wisdom and the beauty of the world, you call it God. Know the source of it all, which is in yourself, and you will find all your questions answered. (266)

The absolute precedes time. Awareness comes first. A bundle of memories and mental habits attracts attention, awareness gets focalized and a person suddenly appears. Remove the light of awareness, go to sleep o swoon away, and the person disappears. The person (vyakti) flickers, awareness (vyakta) contains all space and time, the absolute (avyakta) is. (255)
Awareness is not of time. Time exists in consciousness only. Beyond consciousness, where are time and space? (31)

Mahadakash is nature, the ocean of existence, the physical space with all that can be contacted through the senses. Chidakash is the expanse of awareness, the mental space of time, perception and cognition. Paramakash is the timeless and spaceless reality, mindless, undifferenciated, the infinite potentiality, the source and origin, the substance and the essence, both matter and consciousness, yet beyond both. It cannot be perceived, but can be experienced as ever witnessing the witness, perceiving the perceiver, the origin and the end of all manifestation, the root of time and space, the prime cause in every chain of causation. (251)

Just like in a cinema all is light, so does consciousness become the vast world. Look closely and you will see that all names and forms are but transitory waves on the ocean of consciousness, that only consciousness can be said to be, not its transformations. In the immensity of consciousness a light appears, a tiny point that moves rapidly and traces shapes, thoughts and feelings, concepts and ideas, like the pen writing on paper. And the ink that leaves a trace is memory. You are that tiny point, and by your movement the world is ever re-created. Stop moving and there will be no world. Look within and you will find that the point of light is the reflection of the immensity of light in the body, as the sense "I am". There is only light, all else appears. To the mind, it [that light] appears as darkness. It can be known only through its reflections. All is seen in daylight - except daylight. To be the point of light tracing the world is turiya. To be the light itself is turiyatita. But of what use are names when reality is so near? (392-3)

Don't say "everybody is conscious". Say "there is consciousness", in which everything appears and disappears. Our minds are just waves on the ocean of consciousness. As waves they come and go. As ocean they are infinite and eternal. Know yourselves as the ocean of being, the womb of all existence. These are all metaphors of course; the reality is beyond description. You can know it only by being it. (221)

Neither comes first [matter or mind], for neither appears alone. Matter is the shape, mind is the name. Together they make the world. Pervading and transcending is Reality, pure being-awareness-bliss, your very essence. (405)

When the self-identification with the body is no more, all space and time are in your mind, which is a mere ripple in consciousness, which is awareness reflected in nature. Awareness and matter are the active and passive aspects of being, which is in both and beyond both. (483)

Consciousness is always of movement, of change. There can be no such thing a changeless consciousness. Changelessness wipes out consciousness immediately. A man deprived of outer or inner sensations blanks out, or goes into the birthless and deathless state. Only when spirit and matter come together, consciousness is born. (479)

In reality you were never born and never shall die. But now you imagine that you are, or have, a body and you ask what has brought about this state. Within the limits of illusion the answer is: desire born from memory attracts you to a body and makes you think as one with it. But this is true only from the relative point of view. In fact, there is no body, nor a world to contain it; there is only a mental condition, a dream-like state, easy to dispel by questioning its reality. (427)

The big cycle: part two

The return to the Absolute.

There is the body and there is the Self. Between them is the mind, in which the Self is reflected as "I am". Because of the imperfections of the mind, its crudity and restlessness, lack of discernment and insight, it takes itself to be the body, not the Self. All that is needed is to purify the mind so that it can realize its identity with the Self. When the mind merges in the Self, the body presents no problems. It remains what it is, an instrument of cognition and action, the tool and the expression of the creative fire within. The ultimate value of the body is that it serves to discover the cosmic body, which is the universe in its entirety. As you realize yourself in manifestation, you keep on discovering that you are ever more than what you have imagined. (274)

Consciousness as such is the subtle counterpart of matter. Just as inertia (tamas) and energy (rajas) are attributes of matter, so does harmony (sattva) manifest itself as consciousness. You may consider it in a way as a form of very subtle energy. Wherever matter organizes itself into a stable organism, consciousness appears spontaneously. With the destruction of the organism, consciousness disappears. (265)

The mind produces thoughts ceaselessly, even when you do not look at them. When you know what is going on in your mind, you call it consciousness. This is your waking state - your consciousness shifts from sensation to sensation, from perception to perception, from idea to idea, in endless succession. Then comes awareness, the direct insight into the whole of consciousness, the totality of the mind. The mind is like a river, flowing ceaselessly in the bed of the body; you identify yourself for a moment with some particular ripple and call it "my thought". All you are conscious of is your mind; awareness is the cognizance of consciousness as a whole. (221)

Consciousness comes and goes, awareness shines immutably. When there is a person, there is also consciousness. "I am", mind, consciousness denote the same state. If you say "I am aware", it only means "I am conscious of thinking about being aware". There is no "I am" in awareness. Witnessing is of the mind. The witness goes with the witnessed. In the state of non-duality, all separation ceases. (488)

It [the witness] is both [real and unreal]. The last remnant of illusion, the first touch of the real. To say: "I am only the witness" is both false and true: false because of the "I am", true because of the witness. It is better to say "there is witnessing". The moment you say "I am", the entire universe comes into being along with its creator. (362)

The witness is merely a point in awareness. It has no name and form. It is like the reflection of the sun in a drop of dew. The drop of dew has name and form, but the little point of light is caused by the sun. (399)

Watch yourself closely and you will see that whatever be the content of consciousness, the witnessing of it does not depend on the content. Awareness is itself and does not change with the event. The event may be pleasant or unpleasant, minor or important, awareness is the same. Take note of the peculiar nature of pure awareness, its natural self-identity, without the least trace of self-consciousness, and go to the root of it and you will soon realize that awareness is your true nature, and nothing you may be aware of, you can call your own. When the content is viewed without likes and dislikes, the consciousness of it is awareness. But still there is a difference between awareness as reflected in consciousness and pure awareness beyond consciousness. Reflected awareness, the sense "I am aware" is the witness, while pure awareness is the essence of reality. Reflection of the sun in a drop of water is a reflection of the sun, no doubt, but not the sun itself. Between awareness reflected in consciousness as the witness and pure awareness there is a gap, which the mind cannot cross. (437-8)
Consciousness does not shine by itself. It shines by a light beyond it in which it appears, which gives it being. Don't be all the time immersed in your experience. Remember that you are beyond the experiencer, ever unborn and deathless. In remembering it, the quality of pure knowledge will emerge, the light of unconditional awareness. (190)

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. (263)

The totality of conscious experience is nature. As a conscious self your are a part of nature. As awareness, you are beyond. Seeing nature as mere consciousnes is awareness. There are levels in consciousness, but not in awareness. It is of one block, homogeneous. Its reflection in the mind is love and understanding. There are levels of clarity in understanding and intensity in love, but not in their source. The source is simple and single, but its gifts are infinite. Only do not take the gifts for the source. Realize yourself as the source and not as the river, that is all. Of course, you are [the river too]. As an "I am" you are the river, flowing between the banks of the body. But you are also the source and the ocean and the clouds in the sky. Wherever there is life and consciousness, you are. Smaller than the smallest, bigger than the biggest, you are , while all else appears. (403)

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. (29)

Awareness with an object we call witnessing. When there is also self-identification with the object, caused by desire or fear, such a state is called a person. In reality there is only one state; when distorted by self-identification it is called a person, when coloured with the sense of being, it is the witness; when colourless and limitless, it is called the Supreme. (401)

One word may convey several and even contradictory meanings. The "I am" that pursues the pleasant and shuns the unpleasant is false; the "I am" that sees pleasure and pain as inseparable sees rightly. The witness that is enmeshed in what he perceives is the person; the witness who stands aloof, unmoved and untouched is the watch-tower of the real, the point at which awareness, inherent in the unmanifested, contacts the manifested. (351)

The "I am" in movement creates the world. The "I am" at peace becomes the Absolute. Of course you can [change the world you project]. But you must cease identifying yourself with it and go beyond. Then you have the power to destroy and re-create. (351)

As long as you are ignorant of yourself as the creator, your world is limited and repetitive. Once you go beyond your self-identification with your past, you are free to create a new world of harmony and beauty. Or you just remain, beyond being and non-being. (389)

The world has only as much power over you as you give it. Rebel. Go beyond duality. (351)

The person merges into the witness, the witness into awareness, awareness into pure being, yet identity is not lost, only its limitations are lost. It is transfigured and becomes the real Self, the sadguru, the eternal friend and guide. (447)

When I look through the mind, I see numberless people. When I look beyond the mind, I see the witness. Beyond the witness there is the infinite intensity of emptiness and silence. (355)

Without the one [the witness] the other [the "I am"] cannot be. Yet they are not one. It is like the flower and its colour. Without flower, no colours; without colour, the flower remains unseen. Beyond is the light which on contact with the flower creates the colour. Realize that your true nature is that of pure light only, and both the perceived and the perceiver come and go together. That which makes both possible, and yet is neither, is your real being, which means not being a "this" or "that", but pure awareness of being and not-being. When awareness is turned on itself, the feeling is of not knowing. When it is turned outward, the knowables come into being. To say "I know myself" is a contradiction in terms for what is "known" cannot be "myself". (395)

There must be love in the relation between the person who says "I am" and the observer of that "I am". As long as the observer, the inner self, the higher self, considers himself apart from the observed, the lower self, despises it and condemns it, the situation is hopeless. It is only when the observer (vyakta) accepts the person (vyakti) as a projection or manifestation of himself and, so to say, takes the self into the Self, the duality of "I" and "this" goes, and in the identity of the outer and the inner the Supreme Reality manifests itself. This union of the seer and the seen happens when the seer becomes conscious of himself as the seer; he is not merely interested in the seen, which he is anyhow, but also interested in being interested, giving attention to attention, aware of being aware. Affectionate awareness is the crucial factor that brings Reality into focus. When the vyakti realizes its non-existence in separation from the vyakta, and the vyakta sees the vyakti as his own expression, then the peace and silence of the avyakta state come into being. In reality the three are one: the vyakta and the avyakta are inseparable, while the vyakti is the sensing-feeling-thinking process. (292-3)

[Between vyakta and avyakta] there is no difference. It is like light and daylight. The universe is full of light which you do not see; but the same light you see as daylight. And what the daylight reveals is the vyakti. (251)

The state of identity is inherent in reality and never fades. But identity is neither the transient personality (vyakti), nor the karma-bound individuality (vyakta). It is what remains when all self-identification is given up as false - pure consciousness, the sense of being all there is, or could be. Consciousness is pure in the beginning and pure in the end; in between it gets contaminated by imagination which is at the root of creation. At all times consciousness remains the same. To know it as it is, is realization and timeless peace. (395)

Beyond the self (vyakta), lies the unmanifested (avyakta), the causeless cause of everything. (143)

All happens in consciousness and you are the root, the source, the foundation of consciousness. The world is but a succession of experiences and you are what makes them conscious, and yet remain beyond all experience. It is like the heat, the flame and the burning wood. The heat maintains the flame, the flame consumes the wood. Without heat there would be neither flame nor fuel. Similarly, without awareness there would be no consciousness, nor life, which transforms matter into a vehicle of consciousness. (404)

What relationship can there be between what is and what merely appears to be? Is there any relationship between the ocean and its waves? The real enables the unreal to appear and causes it to disappear. The succession of transient moments creates the illusion of time, but the timeless reality of pure being is not in movement, for all movement requires a motionless background. It is itsef the background. Once you have found it in yourself, you know that you had never lost that independent being, independent of all divisions and separations. But don't look for it in consciousness, you will not fint it there. Don't look for it anywhere, for nothing contains it. On the contrary, it contains everything and manifests everything. It is like the daylight that makes everything visible while itself remaining invisible. (410)

The seeker is he who is in search of himself. Soon he discovers that his own body he cannot be. Once the conviction "I am not the body" becomes so well grounded that he can no longer feel, think and act for and behalf of the body, he will easily discover that he is the universal being, knowing, acting; that in him and through him the entire universe is real, conscious and alive. This is the heart of the problem. Either you are body-conscious and a slave of circumstances, or you are the universal consciousness itself - and in full control of every event. Yet consciousness, individual or universal, is not my true abode; I am not in it, it is not mine, there is no"me" in it. I am beyond, though it is not easy to explain how one can be neither conscious nor unconscious, but just beyond. I cannot say that I am in God or I am God; God is the universal light and love, the universal witness: I am beyond the universal even.(320)

Ultimately you will come to see that you are neither the particular nor the universal, you are beyond both. As the tiny point of a pencil can draw innumerable pictures, so does the dimensionless point of awareness draw the contents of the vast universe. Find that point and be free. (389)

The enlightened (gnani) is neither [conscious or unconscious]. But in his enlightenment (gnana) all is contained. Awareness contains every experience. But he who is aware is beyond every experience. He is beyond awareness itself. (265)

There can be no experience beyond consciousness. Yet there is the experience of just being. There is a state beyond consciousness, which is not unsconscious. Some call it super-consciousness, or pure consciousness, or supreme consciousness. It is pure awareness free from the subject-object nexus. Consciousness is intermitent, full of gaps. Yet there is the continuity of identity. What is this sense of identity due to, if not to something beyond consciousness? (310)

To take appearance for reality is a grievous sin and the cause of all calamities. You are the all-pervading, eternal and infinitely creative awareness -consciousness. All else is local and temporary. (42)

Creation - reflection - rejection: Brahma - Vishnu - Shiva : this is the eternal process. All things are governed by it. After the stage of creation, comes the stage of examination and reflection, and finally the stage of abandonment and forgetting. The consciousness remains, but in a latent, quiet state. Understand that the One includes the Three and that you are the One, and you shall be free of the world process. (394)

There are no real differences. Only the One is real.

There is the body. Inside the body appears to be an observer, and outside a world under observation. The observer and his observation as well as the world observed appear and disappear together. Beyond it all, there is void. This void is one for all. (378)

The knower comes and goes with the known, and is transient; but that which knows that it does not know, which is free of memory and anticipation, is timeless. (395)

The known is but a shape and knowledge is but a name. The knower is but a state of mind. The real is beyond. All knowledge is in memory; it is only recognition, while reality is beyond the duality of the knower and the known. How misleading is your language! You assume, unconsciously, that reality also is approachable through knowledge. And then you bring in a knower of reality beyond reality! Do understand that to be, reality need not be known. Ignorance and knowledge are in the mind, not in the real. (423)

To become free, your attention must be drawn to the "I am", the witness. Of course, the knower and the known are one, not two, but to break the spell of the known the knower must be brought to the forefront. Neither is primary, both are reflections in memory of the ineffable experience, ever new and ever now, unstranslatable, quicker than the mind. (424)

They [the person and the witness] appear to be two, but on investigation they are found to be one. Duality lasts as long as it is not questioned. The trinity: mind, self, spirit (vyakti, vyakta, avyanta) , when looked into, becomes unity. These are only modes of experiencing: of attachment, of detachment, of transcendence. (363)

They [matter and spirit] are one, or two, or three. On investigation, three become two, and two become one. Take the simile of face - mirror - image. Any two of them presuppose the third which unites the two. In sadhana, you see the three as two, until you realize the two as one. (479)

You are really in search of yourself, without knowing it. You are love-longing for the love-worthy, the perfect lovable. Due to ignorance you are looking for it in the world of opposites and contradictions. When you find it within, your search will be over. (401)

Pain and pleasure, good and bad, right and wrong: these are relative terms and must not be taken absolutely. They are limited and temporary. (264)

What you see is yours, and what I see is mine. The two have little in common. To find the common factor you must abandon all distinctions. Only the universal is in common. (533)

When you look at anything, it is the ultimate you see, but you imagine that you see a cloud or a tree. (201)

We love variety, the play of pain and pleasure, we are fascinated by contrasts. For this we need the opposites and their apparent separation. We enjoy them for a time and then get tired and crave for the peace and silence of pure being. (416)

My world is free from opposites, of mutually destructive discrepancies; harmony pervades; its peace is rocklike; this peace and silence are my body. (485)

In the mirror of your mind, images appear and disappear. The mirror remains. Learn to distinguish the immovable in the movable, the unchanging in the changing, till you realize that all differences are in appearance only, and oneness is a fact. This basic identity -you may call God, or Brahman, or the mattrix (Prakriti) , the words matter little- is only the realization that all is one. Once you can say with confidence born from direct experience "I am the world, the world is myself", you are free from desire and fear on one hand and become totally responsible for the world on the other. The senseless sorrow of mankind becomes your sole concern. (496)
A man who knows that he is neither body nor mind cannot be selfish, for he has nothing to be selfish for. Or you may say he is equally "selfish" on behalf of everybody he meets; everybody's welfare is his own. The feeling "I am the world, the world is myself" becomes quite natural; once it is established, there is just no way of being selfish. To be selfish means to covet, acquire, accumulate on behalf of the part against the whole. (510-1)

I have no shape, nor name. It is attachment to a name and shape that breeds fear. I am not attached. I am nothing, and nothing is afraid of no thing. On the contrary, everything is afraid of Nothing, for when a thing touches Nothing, it becomes nothing. (88)

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. (208)

No relation [between Reality and its expressions]. In Reality, all is real and identical. As we put it, saguna and nirguna are one in Parabrahman. There is only the Supreme. In movement, it is saguna. Motionless, it is nirguna. But it is only the mind that moves or does not move. The real is beyond, you are beyond. (489)

Unmanifested, manifested, individuality, personality (nirguna, saguna, vyakta, vyakti), all these are mere words, points of view, mental attitudes. There is no reality in them. The real is experienced in silence. (89)

In reality the three are one: the vyakta and the avyakta are inseparable, while the vyakti is the sensing-feeling-thinking process. How can there be relation when they are one? All talk of separation and relation is due to the distorting and corrupting influence of "I-am-the-body" idea. The outer self (vyakti) is merely a projection on the body-mind of the inner self (vyakta) , which again is only an expression of the Supreme Self (avyakta) , which is all and none. (293)

All attributes are personal. The real is beyond all attributes. (528)

As water remains water regardless of the vessels, as light remains itself regardless of the colours it brings out, so does the real remain real regardless of conditions in which it is reflected. (15)

If I ask you what is the taste of your mouth, all you can do is to say: it is neither sweet nor bitter, nor sour nor astringent; it is what remains when all these tastes are not. Similarly, when all distinctions and reactions are no more, what remains is reality, simple and solid. (410)

When all names and forms have been given up, the real is with you. You need not seek it. Plurality and diversity are the play of the mind only. Reality is one. (38)

In reality there is only the source, dark in itself, making everything shine. Unperceived, it causes perception. Unfelt, it causes feeling. Unthinkable, it causes thought. Non-being, it gives birth to being. It is the immovable background of motion. Once you are there, you are at home everywhere. (381)

Tapa sadhana of the swamis -part 3

265

In support of their contention, the cham- 
pions of renunciation pointed out that a mere statement 
of the fact that ’* I am Brahman ** is not tantamount 
to the realization of Brahman, that Brahman can be 
realized only through long and arduous discipline of 
both body and mmd, in peaceful solitude , that, in 
the case of people immersed day in and day out in 
the belief that “ I am the body ” it is by no means 
easy to dispel the perverse notion, by merely repeating 

occasionally, “ I am Brahman ” and that, therefore, 
the stage of sanyasa wherein there is complete 
renunciation of desire and total avoidance of excite- 
ment, is indispensable to all true seekers of Brahman. 
To the enlightened who abide in Bralmtan, sanyasa 
is a matter of course. The truth is, they have already 
become Brahman. 

Abidance in Brahman is the unbroken flow of 
mental moulds informed by Brahman. When the 
mind is engaged in a state of samadhi, how can the 
concept of body and other objects extraneous to the 
Atman arise in it ? Concept of the Atman and concept 
of the non-Atman cannot exist in the mind at the 
same moment. How can there be activities connected 
with the body, etc., in the absence of a strong attachment 
to such objects ? As the enlightened ones abiding in 
Jnana are beyond the reach of activities, sanyasa 
comes to them quite spontaneously. The advocates 
of sanyasa, therefore, argue that during the stage of 
preparatory practice, sanyasa in the form of the 
renunciation of action is indispensable ; in the stage of 
attainment it becomes natural ; that Karma and Jnana 
cannot therefore exist in the same person at the same 
time ; that the Karma of Janaka, Vidura, etc., was 
merely the reflection of it and that only worldlings 
obsessed with the idea of sense enjoyment oppose the 
idea of sanyasa. 
Practical-minded men have often asked in the past 
and still continue to ask. “ Of what use to this world 
full of action, sustained by action and propelled by 
action, are the swiyasins who have renounced the 
world and its activities to live immersed in samadlii 
and bhajan 1 To this question, the sanyasins’ answer 
is quite simple. Their very state of non-action is in 
itself a mighty blessing to the world. More than all 
the learned disquisitions of erudite scholars, more 
than all their profound treatises, the Nirvikalpa 
Samadlii of a sanyasin touches the heart of humanity 
and elevates it to a higher plane. Their desireless 
non-action does greater good to the world than the 
swiftest and the most frantic activities of the revolu- 
tionaries. What is more, sanyasa is mightier than 
armies and is boundless as the sea. 

292
However, only the sage who has 
reahzed God can distinguish his bhss as truly satvik 
and divine Only he can identify his concentration 
with the divine trance great yogis have claimed to have 
achieved Satvik joy is something that can be attained 





only through long and arduous discipline. At Gomu- 
kha one reaches it without effort. 



It is my thirst for 
the nectar of tranquillity that drives me to wrestle 
with the difficulties of travel in these inaccessible 
fastnesses and reach that spot every year. It is this 



tranquillity, this bliss that adepts seek in the bustle of 
cities through long processes of meditative practice 
and the consequent dwindhng of the innate tendencies 
of the mind Tranquilhty is the innate nature of all, 

I at IS a self-existent reality Therefore there need be 
no striving to produce it Where is the need for 
effort to bring into being what IS ? Though it is, m 
Ignorance, referred to as non-existent, though tranquil- 
hty IS own inborn nature, being wrapped up by agita- 
tion, It is not experienced Abolish this agitation and 
tranquillity reveals itself Effort, then, is needed not 
to generate tranquillity but to bamsh agitation The 
mass of light, the Sun’s disc, is concealed by clouds 
The clouds only need move away and immediately 
the solar disc which appeared to be non-existent, 
reveals itself Here there is no question of producing 
the solar disc and making it shine In the same way, 
with the cessation of agitation tranquilhty nses (hke 
the Sun) But what is the nature of this agitation 9 
It IS nothing but the transmigratory existence 
consisting of agency, relation and act or of name, 
form and act How 7 The real nature of tranquilhty 
IS experienced in dreamless slumber even by morons 
Later there is waking from that state, that is to say 
“ I, I ” asserts itself for the first time as agency Then 
desire and so forth begin to operate Next, the sense 
organs hke the eye, the ear, etc , awake and operate 
m regard to their objects Together with that, crop 
up attitudes, affirmative or negative, and concepts 
such as happiness, unhappiness, etc It is the conglo- 
meration of the egoistic sense and so forth and their 
activities, thus engendered, that is known widely as 
distraction and that is agitation This transmigratory 
existence is nothing but the summation of these discrete 
masses and their operations The physical orgamsm, 
transmigratory existence, name, form, distraction, 
pain, agitation — these are but the synonyms denoting 
one and the same thmg Even so, tranquilhty, truth, 
beauty, bliss, self, God, Brahman — these are but 
different names of one and the same Thmg The 
source of this agitation or intranqmlhty is well-known 
to be the inner organ which assumes such form as 
V‘ I ”, “ this ”, “knower”, “known" In brief, agita- 


tion is the various fabrications of the inner organ 


and tranquilhty is their cessation 
Let there be a duahty, once the fabrications of the 
mind have been suppressed or let there not be, what 


IS certain is, that is the peerless state of tranquillity 
Let a tigress roar terribly in front of a sage merged 
m profound meditation or let a hourt sing sweetly 
before him , his state of tranqmlhty is unaffected 
by them all, because the mmd that grasps does not 
operate in regard to its objects, but remains concen- 
trated and so tranquil Therefore, though there are 
llexternal objects they are as good as non-existent and 
llthus no longer promote agitation Again, that is 
the reason why certam teachers have laid it down as 
a rule that by liquidating not the world created by 
God, but the world created by man, that is, by under- 
mining the fabncations of the mmd of man, certain 
tranquillity is attained The conclusion of all spiritual 
sciences and of all great sages is that agitation or 
transmigratory existence is the summation of all 
possible relations between subject and object , while 
liberation or tranquillity is the cessation of such 
summations In the restncted state of the mind the 


veil, namely, the objective complex, disappears and 
then, like the sun with the disappearance of the clouds. 

the supreme truth of tranquilhty shines forth vividly 
Though this ultimate truth has been indicated m 
manifold ways by various philosophers, there is no 
doubt about its umty A real difference cannot 
result from difference of labels or processes of thought 
What has been estabhshed thus far is that high souled 
sages attain that unsurpassed tranquillity which is 
untainted by association with a variety of names and 
forms They do so by attaining the stage of the 
restricted mmd after, through disciplme, discardmg 
the distractions of the mmd and sense organs and 
body Now rises the question what the state of the 
sages IS when the body, senses and the mind function 
Is theirs a plight of wretchedness full of agitation, 
such as that of the ignorant ? Never In the midst 
of agitation they experience, without a break, internal 
tranquilhty Since the principle of tranquilhty always 
shmes forth in their minds, never is tranquillity hidden 
from them How can there be darkness in light ’ 
jHow can there be agitations m tranquilhty "> Don’t 
ask, how bhss can dwell in pain When a man stands 
waist deep in the cool water of a deep pond m summer 
when all around it is scorching heat, simultaneously 
half his body feels the heat while the other half coolness 
Seetha dwelling under the asoka tree in Lanka, sur- 
rounded by ogresses, is said to have, at once, experi- 
enced the torments of hell and consequent upon her 
constant recollection of her lord, the qmntessence of 
bhss Even so, the sages also may find unavoidable 
I the activities of the sense organs and the mmd, impelled 
by past actions as well as the consequent sensations 
of pain and pleasure Even m the midst of such deep 
distraction the great souls who have firmly realized 
the essence of tranquillity vnll continue to expenence 




It Without a moment’s break for, such tranqmlhty 
shmes m their mmd When we say the supreme truth 
jmamfests itself or tranqmlhty is expenenced we mean 
Jthe same thing. Famous is the utterance of the 
teacher (Sankara) q- lassie fharil’ 

which means “ Not for half a moment do the sages 
remain without the experience of Brahman ” 

In other words, their mmd takes on the form of 
Brahman which leaves them not even for the briefest 



midst of external activities the mmd, no doubt, assumes 
from moment to moment, the forms of objects Never- 
theless, what IS extremely difficult for an ordinary 
type of knower is achieved by eminent sages, namely, 
to keep unaffected the mental grasp of the truth of 
Brahman Just as the body-bound souls never miss 
the experience of the body even in the midst of the 
uttermost distractions, so the shining forth of Brahman 
IS experienced without any difficulty by the knowers 
of Brahman who delight in Brahman and who are 
non-different from Brahman The fact is, it is easier 
llfor them to do so. It becomes their very nature 
For such sages who are hardly less than God Hunself, 
and who habitually find themselves on (he summit 
of such expenence, there is concentration of mind 
both when the mind is restricted and when it operates 
towards objects.
 Though, thus, both the states of 
concentration and distraction are alike to them, it is 
assumed, from the point of view of duality, that in 
one state, there is the apprehension of objects while, 
in the other, there is none of it. Let us, however, 
leave it at that and come back to our mam theme 
It is not surprising if other sadhus wonder at 



or even envy my good fortune m sojourning at Gomu- 
kha every year, enjoying the super mundane pleasure 
arising out of the beauty of the snow and through it 
the absolute bliss, originating in the beauty of the 
soul 
302
No fear however great, no sorrow however 
mighty, can upset the everlasting peace of one who 
has realized Brahman. Those who have seen God 
see Him everywhere and at all times. The seer is 
himself God. Then why should he fear himself 7 
How could he be affected by sorrow ? There is 
nothing strange if we, whose minds were continuously 
occupied with the thought of God and who saw, 
beyond all doubt, that all movable and immovable 
beings are but so many forms of God, were not frigh- 
tened by the objects that terrify the ignorant who 
identify themselves with their bodies. In short, we 
were not distracted by the terrors and anxieties which 
haunt the minds of common people whose love of 
the body and considerations of personal safety set 
their imagination feverishly busy.
At no time did we 
, experience there anything but cheerfulness. There 
[may be people who wonder how we were able to 
preserve fearlessness and cheerfulness in the midst 
of terrors. To them there is this brief reply ; Only a 
bird that flies through the air, knows the nature of 
I iflight ; similarly, only a sanyasin who travels in the 
world can know nothing about the secrets of the 
inner world. Among wisemen there is a well-known 
saying, “ Only the knower knows the knower 

There may still be persons who ask, “ what is 
the meaning of saying that those who have obtained 
the vision of God see him always and everywhere ? 
What is God’s shape ? What is the form of His 
vision ? ” It is impossible to answer such questions 
at onee with words. How can one describe the true 
form of God in words and make others understand 
It ? Even those who have actually seen It fail to 
describe It completely. Descriptions, however de- 
tailed or extensive, cannot hope to touch all Its aspects. 
The way to know It, is by actual experience and there 
is no other way. The srtiifs and learned men have 
described it in a thousand ways— as the Omniscient, 
the Omnipotent, the Supreme Limit of A/swarya, 
the Creator-preserver-destroyer, the shoreless, honey- 
like, Ocean of Sweetness, the Light that renders 
billions of suns dark by comparison, the Inner Being 
that controls all beings movable and immovable, the 
Embodiment of Truth-Knowledge-Bliss, the One All- 
pervading like space. One without sound, touch or 
form — so on and so forth. Indeed, we may admit 
that all these descriptions are descriptions of the 
Supreme Soul and to some extent help to convey the 
notion of what It is, but all these fall far short of 
giving men a complete idea ; for It is far above all 
description. We cannot circumscribe It with words. 
Like a fruit that floats on the surface of water, the 
Paramalma rises above tlie floods of eloquence. 
Howsoever high the water rises, the fruit still floats 
lover it. Similarly, the supreme soul keeps on rising 
'above the swelling words ; It is never submerged. 
The vision of an indescribable thing 
must necessarily be indescribable. What is the instru- 
ment with which one may perceive the Supreme Soul 
With our eye we perceive pots, etc With the mind 
we perceive desn-e, anger, etc But with neither, 
shall we perceive It which is beyond name and form. 
IHhe ancient rishis who had reahzed Truth descnbe 
l|lt as beyond words and mind Like God, the vision 
of God too is beyond words When the mmd assumes 
the form of a pot, it becomes the perception of the
pot. Like that, when the mind, rising above name 
and form, assumes the state of Brahman it is called 
the perception of Brahman, by the Vedantins. But 
Brahman has no form, ft is formless. Who can 
perceive the formless Brahman ? How can the limited 
mind comprehend the formless and u nlimi ted Brah- 
man ? It may be argued that when the mind is free 
from all its functions of imagination, it intuits Brahman, 
pure, one without a second, which shines forth in its 
own splendour without a veil ; then it is futile to 
maintain that there is a perceiver and a perception of 
Brahman. It will then follow that the intuition of 
Brahman has nothing in common with phenomenal 
.perceptions of the objective world, that, in fact, the 
perception of Brahman is the Ijasic experience of the 
non-objective. Such ate the conclusions of Vedanta. 
Even as God is. His perception also is surpassingly 
marvellous and transcendent. Hence it is impossible 
to grasp either from mere descriptions thereof. On 
ithe other hand, both of them have to be immediately 
intuited. That is the upshot of this context. 
 it would be difficult, if 
not impossible, to practise Nis/ikaiiia Karma or carry 
on Dhyana or Samadhi in a strict, scientific way. 
As is well-known, the repetition of holy names is the 
easiest step in a life of devotion. Any worldling, 
any sinner, can cry out “ O Siva ! 0 Krishna 1 ! ” 
For people engaged in the relentless pursuit of worldly 
pleasures it is -verily impossible to shed all desires or 
set their minds on God or even make them meditative. 
So, in this Age, pursuit of Bhakti h the easiest as well 
as the most important means to reach the goal. There 
can be no difference of opinion on this point. In the 
early stages, repetition of holy names and prayer, the 
singing of hymns and listening to religious discourses 
help the love of God to sprout up and as it grows 
and flourishes, the uncontrollable craving for sensual 
pleasures is tamed, and men gradually become intros- 
pective. Their minds begin to flow continuously 
towards the Lord, and experience pleasure in doing so. 
If the jmnis find their joy in meditating upon formless 
Brahman, the Bliaktas revel in the contemplation of the 
Divine form. Of course there-are not two gods, one 
with form and another without it. God is one and 
so a Bliakla who loves the Divine form intensely to 
the exclusion of everything else, has nothing more to 
gain. Let no one be under the illusion that the direct 
perception of Parabrahma who has no form and 
no attributes, alone leads to salvation, that the Bliakla 
■ has not attained it, that he is yet to achieve it and that 
until he does so, the purpose of his life remains un- 
fulfilled. If God has such a form without attributes — 
a form whose perception alone will lead to salvation — 
will not He disclose it to His true devotee one 
day or other and lead him on to the supreme goal ? 
If he is a bhakla let 
him concentrate his mind upon the form of the Lord ; 
if he is a jnani let him try to acquire steadfast knowledge 
of the formless, through earnest study and discipline. 
The supreme, the ultimate, goal of Bbakti and Jmna 
is the same. There is no doubt it is Nirvana through 
, the realization of Brahman. Certainly, those people 
who move slowly, step by step, towards the goal 
uttering the holy names of God in full faith, are 
immensely more fortunate than the unqualified persons 
who tumble down headlong into perdition during 
their attempts to scale the difficult and dangerous 
heights of Bralmia-Jnam. The path of Bhafcti is the 
royal toad to the presence of God. It is open to all 
types of people, whether learned or ignorant. It is 
also the easiest to follow. That is why the great seers 
of God, both inside and outside the Vedic pale, have 
recommended it whole-heartedly as the noblest route 
to the great goal, popularised it among the people 
tortured by the threefold sufferings of life. If there 
is God, there is no doubt. He must be omniscient, 
as well as omnipotent. He can assume any form in 
which his devotee worships Him and bless him, granting 
him a vision in that particular form. There is nothing 
illogical or unscientific in the idea. Nor is it contrary 
to experience.
To abandon all love of worldly 
pleasures and immerse one’s -mind completely in the 
love of God, can be the consummation only of great 
punya.
Whatever be the form of God, only a mind 
which has freed itself totally from worldly entangle- 
ments, can be filled with Divine love. For people 
whose vasanas (inborn dispositions) have been washed 
away by the flood of Divine love, the atmitic knowledge 
cannot be far, if at all they want it. Beh'eve firmly 
in the existence of God — believe that He is — believe 
that He is the Father of the Universe who preserves 
everything— then, it does not matter in what form you 
' worship Him, on what pedestal, or in what world you 
place Him ; then, there is no doubt, the Omniscient 
I ,One, immanent in everything and everywhere, will 
I [bestow His grace upon you. When a Bhakla, filled 
with the longing to see his Beloved, cries out as if his 
heart would break, “ My Lord, My Lord, OParcmwtma, 
when shall I behold Thy lovely form with these eyes 
of mine 7 ” only people who have tasted the Divine 
sweetness of that intense love, can understand it. 
Seeing that Bliakii and Jiwna are equally good, wise 
ones should never waste their precious time arguing 
,, excitedly about the superiority of the one or the other, 
llwhat vdse men. ought to do is to adopt one of these 
I'aaccording to their qualifications and inclinations, 
[pursue it steadily, see God and thus fulfil the purpose 
of this invaluable human birth. 
Those who possess such love of God, love such 
solitary places as Gomukha, whichever proclaim the 
glory of the Lord. Parted from her lover, his beloved 
sits in the corner of her lonely chamber where every- 
thing reminds her of him, thinking of him in secret. 
To her even the sound of a single foot-step seems 
intolerable. She hates every distraction which disturbs 
the contemplation of her lord. Even so, the bhakla 
hates all interruptions to his prayers, and all distrac- 
tions which break up his continuous contemplation of 
God whom he loves most intensely. For such bhaktas, 
can there be a place more congenial than the solitary, 
peaceful Gomukha? There is nothing here which 
docs not help the enjoyment of contemplation and 
prayer. What is here to hinder it ? This solitary 
place is. extremely suitable to people who see God, 
who love God or who meditate upon God, for they 
require no external assistance in their activities, but 
a cultured mind. Solitude serves them best to perfect 
their discipline. This Gomukha region is unrivalled 
not only in its perpetual solitude but also its clear, 
pure, spiritual atmosphere and so it aids the bhakla 
as well as the jimni to reach easily the state of samadin 
which is the culmination of jnaiia, bhakti and dhyana. 
But, for the karma yogi who is trying to perform his 
duties as acts of devotion, without any desire for 
reward, this place is not suited so well. He can 
bathe here devoutly, gain God’s grace and thereby 
destroy sins and acquire mental purity. He can 
reinforce his faith in God by observing the glory of 
the Creator which manifests itself everywhere in this 
Divine land, but unlike the other three types of yogis 
he cannot afford to stay on in this region and at the, 
same time carry on his duties as a karma yogi for a 
karma yogi has to depend necessarily upon external 
objects for his activities.
The dualism of action, cause and etfect is itself 
Samsara. Freedom from it is freedom from Sanmra. 
If action is Samsara, non-action is the cessation of 
Samsara. So even the uneducated can easily perceive 
that the states of waking and dreaming which involve 
action, cause and effect, are Samsara whereas the 
state of deep slumber (sushupU) is the cessation of 
Saiimra. If a man, out of his love for action (even 
if he has no desire for the fruit thereoO does not 
long for the everlasting peace of non-action in this 
life itself, out of that love, may wish for a fresh lease 
of life after die fall of the present body. How can 
one suppose that a seeker after Truth, who knows 
that this worldly hfe of birth, disabhng old age and 
death is misery, that the escape from it is Moksha 
and that Moksha is the same as Brahnan (which is 
homogeneous at all times, immovable and eternally 
peaceful) and who having known It, sticks resolutely 
to It, or endeavours to stick to It, will find delight in 
the continuance of the duahstic view and the tension 
of conflicting action resulting from it, while fearing 
the eternal peace of non-action ’ If what he prefers 
is Karma, which consists in the activities of the mind 
and the senses, can he really long for Moksha which 
means the cessation of all action ? Is it not more 
probable that he would prefer entering new bodies 
for further action ? If he does not desire for a state 
unfettered by the body, why should he undertake the 
Herculean labours requited for the acquisition of 
the Knowledge of Truth, for the destrucUon of inborn 
tendencies and the annihilation of Karma ’> That 
means, a region of non-action like Gomukha, though 
a source of terror to people of action, becomes a dear 
refuge to lovers of supreme peace, whose vasanas 
have been uprooted and whose minds have attained 
quiescence, even like Brahman Itself If some who 
had attained the state of Brahman (that_state_oLnon- 
action) had yet laboured m the cause of umversal 
happiness, itisnotfor any one to approve or disapprove 
of it Who can overcome one’s own nature ? What 
I mean is only this even a jnam will have to experience 
pleasures and pains according to the measure of his 
^engagement inaction , the expenence of such pleasures 
and pams is itself Samsara , and that the state of 
supreme peace, the state of Moksha, is altogether 
untouched by Samsara 
The knowledge of 
Brahman is the immediate perception of non-difference 
between Brahman on the one hand and oneself and 
the universe on the other. An uninterrupted revelling 
in this non-dual Brahman realized as the quintessence 
,of the world is the supreme goal of life. What has 
been attempted in this book is to present in an easily 
,;jintelligible manner, the truth of the identity between 
. ijiva and Brahman. This timeless truth, viz,, the 
non-duality (of reality) has been set forth here along 
witli the means and the auxiliaries that promote the 
e-xperience of this truth. 
He concedes, also, that for certain 
people the very thought of the soul is impossible 
until they have totally abandoned all distracting 
activities That is all true But, m spite of all this, 
the writer of this book does not believe that house- 
holders and other Asramilcs are disqualified to lead a 
spiritual life or that, for people m other Asrams it is 
impossible to meditate upon the Soul I have expressed 
this opinion elsewhere, but I am repeating it here to 
stress that view over again In the midst of action, 
think of the Soul Surrounded by wife, children and 
grandchildren, still think of the Paramanm with 
devout lose Think, constantly, of the power that 
activates your hands, legs, etc Always use them to 
Ido things good and desirable Allow not yourself 
to be tempted by the intoxicating wine On the 
contrary, drink, drink your fill of the Nectar of Life 
for ever more and find everlasting BLISS ' 

Om Santi ' Santi ' ' Santi ' ' 

Tapa sadhana of the swamis -part 2

the jnani rises to the exalted 
state of jivanmukli where he realizes beyond all doubt 
i“ I am the soul, pure and blissful — the One without 
a second. That is the ultimate goal of man. For 
him there is no gain greater than the realization of the 
soul — ^no greater pleasure to enjoy — no higher duty 
to perform. Self-abidance is the paramount duty, 
paramount joy, paramount gain. It is the supreme 

knowledge, O Maitreyi, self-abidance is the sole means 
of attaining immortality : so, if you aim at immortality, 
spare no effort towards reaching that state of self- 
abidance.” 

Brahman is infinite and like a lump of salt. It is 
homogeneous in taste — that is to say, it is the mass of 
being, intelligence, bliss. It is free from the differences 
of three kinds. Being without parts it has no internal 
difference ; since there is nothing positive like it, 
it has no difference from things like it ; Nonentity 
alone is different from it, but a nonentity cannot 
be a counter entity of difference (or similarity) whence 
Brahman has no difference from things unlike it. 
iThus Brahman, entirely free from diversity, appears 
un the phenomenal stage to be many, though it is in 
fact one ; though unlimited by time and space, etc., 
it appears to be limited ; yet, always in its own grandeur 
It shines all by itself. 

Brahman is one-without-a-second. It transcends 
nature. Therefore, questions pertinent to the objects 
of nature are out of place in relation to It. Questions 
like, “ where did Brahman originate ? ” “ When did 

Brahman originate ? ” are as ridiculous as “ Please 
see, have I a tongue ? ” “ Is my mother barren ? ” 
When It is without a second, how can it have a cause ? 
Interrogatives like “ where ” and “ when ” are irrele- 
vant to advaita ; they have their place only in the 
illusory world of duality. 
Only a few virtuous souls with real wisdom 
realise that sensuous pleasures which cause bondage 
are ultimately the source of sorrow, and cultivate a 
spirit of detachment in an effort to attain the Divine 
Joy All mankind, without any distinction of the 
learned and the ignorant, lose themselves in the fleeting 
bodily pleasures and consequently suffer from a series 
of calamities such as births and deaths and illness 
Yet, paradoxical as it is, they fancy that state of bondage 
to be happiness The very awareness of bondage is the 
[result of keen discrimination He who knows not 
he IS bound, will not try to set himself free He 
who does not desire freedom, cannot find any interest 
m the search after Truth or in philosophical discussions 
Philosophical discussions lead to philosophical wisdom. 
Knowledge of Truth leads to Soul Force. Soul 
188
Force is ever homogeneous, unexcelled, eternal. The 
seductive power of the sense objects is as momentary 
as the flashes of lightning. In the presence of Soul 
Force, power of the sense objects loses all lustre and 
appears as a glow-worm in the presence of the Sun 
The Soul Force is the great force in whose presence 
all earthly power, the power of the emperor, the power 
of even Hiranyagarbha, becomes infinitely negligible 
When man attains that power, all his bonds break, 
and he comes to enjoy a free, blissful life with a feeling 
of eternal contentment and finality. 
So long as man mistakes the body for the Self, and consequently 
entertains feelings of “ I ” and “ mine ”, he can 
hardly reach the portals of Soul Force. 
Most people caught in the toils of Illusion waste their lives, not only without attaining Soul Force or self-knowledge, 
but even without realising that they are in a state of 
bondage. Among all mankind, who has the strength 
to overstep the limits of the wide realm of the mighty 
Illusion which holds sway over everything, and engulfs 
all men and women in the shoreless sea of desire and 
dances intoxicated, blowing the trumpet of her victory 
that signifies undisputed sovereignty.
190
We can hardly 
forget that pleasant night when, after such intense 
privations, we enjoyed a full meal and sound sleep 
without fear and anxiety God is everywhere and at 
all times , He sees everything He understands the 
needs of all and supplies them as He knows fit But 
Iman is hardly aware of this truth , even if he is aware 
of it, he does not fully believe it. Some evil in him 
'obstructs complete self-surrender

On that plateau of 
solitary grandeur, I spent most of my tune in meditation 
It IS not impossible to keep the eyes open, engage 
ourselves in various activities and at the same time 
see the Paramalmaii, even as we see Him directly 
in our meditation while we sit with our eyes closed. 
Yet if the latter course is preferred, it is only because 
we desire to reach the sublime state of supreme peace 
without the obstructions of perceptible things, and 
because concentration gradually develops into one’s 
second nature. Having consciously overcome  obstacles like laya, vikshepa, kashaya and rasaswada, man’s 
mind soars higher and higher like birds to the very 
zenith of Nirvikalpa Brahman, and finds rest and 
happiness there. To those who have realized, this 
kind of samadhi is a source of bliss , to the seekers, 
it proves helpful in reinforcing knowledge. There is 
no doubt that the congeniality of time and place goes 
a long way towards making the mind still and pointed 
like the flame in a windiess room and leading it on 
to the state of Nirvikalpa and bliss. It may be stated 
with certainty that the Himalayan atmosphere permeated with the noble penance and energy of the 
great rishis, has exceptional powers of easily leading 
minds to peace and concentration.
...According to him salvation consists 
in the destruction of the sorrow originating from 
illusion But Vedavyasa proves, with reference to 
authorities, that soul is the pure spirit without quahties 
It IS the One without a second It is Brahman The 
direct experience of It is what is called liberation 
Kaivalya or Moksha consists not merely in the annihila- 
tion of sorrow, but in the positive bhssful realization 
of one’s true Self This Vedantic view expounded by 
Vyasa conveys undoubtedl/the eternal, the paramount 

[truth, the goal of all human endeavour 
All these 
relative truths are acceptable because they help towards 
the realization of the ultimate and absolute truth that 
Jivatma and Paramatma are one.
It is therefore doubtless that 
out ultimate objective is the attainment of Advaita, 
not of Dwaita.
When one has actually seen a piece of clay, all the 
transformations of clay are as good as seen. For 
effect IS not different from its cause Pitcher, etc , 
are but the nominal variations of the clay So the 
clay alone is true Similarly there is one Truth 
(Brahman) on knowing which one knows everything. 
Did you get that knowledge from your master ” 
So also, it is from 
this minute, subtle, eternal thing imperceptible to the 
senses that this big solid world, perceptible to all 
puraan senses, takes its ongin Learn with great 
attention O Swethakethu, that eternal object, Brah- 
man, IS yourself You arc that Eternal Thing 
Once a native of Gandhara fell into the hands 
of thieves They bound him, bhnd-folded him and 
took him to an extensive wilderness and left him there 
The poor man, knowing not even the directions, began 
to cry out in terror “ Thieves have blind folded me 
and left me m this wilderness ” A passer-by heard 
his cries and out of pity went to him and set him free 
The good Samaritan told him where Gandhara was. 





how far away, and which route he should take to 
reach his native place The traveller took him out 
and set him on the right road to Gandhara Having 
understood the directions and being clever enough to 
draw out inferences, he made his way back to his 
native village and reached home in safety Even so, 
man is blind folded by the veil of illusion He is 
captured by the thieves, Dharma and Adharnia, and 
left in the forest of this body so full of woes Then 
the kind master takes pity on him, removes the veil 
from his eyes and sets him on the right road to his 
goal The man being clever enough to understand 
advice, and being contemplative by nature, escapes 
from the wood and reaches the Eternal Object Under- 
stand, therefore, that the advice of the master is 
the chief means of attaining that Eternal Entity 
' “ That thou art, O Swethakethu, youi are that Eternal 
Entity That Eternal Object is yourself ” 
294-imp-
By very careful reasoning they determined 
the nature of Reality and found everlasting bliss, 
jl'lndccd, thinking alone helps in determining the 
irnaturc of Reality. No amount of penance or ritualistic worship can take us to the goal. Penance, by itself, 
cannot destroy the I-Comciousness. 
That can be footed out only by the direct perception of Reality resulting from thought.
 Until that is done there 
cannot be real peace and freedom from suffering.
All 
creatures, from the worm to Htraiiyagarbha, are 
strung on the ego-sense called adliyasa, by the Vedan- 
tins (Saririka Bhashya ) The impression that some- 
thing IS what It IS not — the notion that the soul is the 
body (which it is not)— is what is called adliyasa or 
ahamkara Ahamkara-us saiiisara The escape from 
Samsara (cycle of births and deaths) is called moksha. 
The state in which one has destroyed egoism, realized 
the soul, and found the soul in everything movable or 
immovable, is called mukn (liberation) The attain- 
ment of that state is the highest purpose of hie.


(0 Lord of Bliss aad Knowledge, Lord of Cowhcrdcsscs, 

Save me from egoism, spare me even here 
But O Narayana, Dispensei of Boons, 

If at all I feel like ‘ I ’, let me feel cvcrylhing as * 1 *.] 

It was this State of Jnamnukti that was predominating 
his thoughts 
He who has transcended egoism, experiences ever- 
lasting joy, finding himself the Paramatman, in every- 
thing,
209
..men who, having uprooted all egoism, found all things 
equal and attained Godhood. 

The truth is, there is nothing 
in the world, spiritual or material, which faith cannot 
achieve. To a man of faith, no penance however 
hard or rislg', is impossible ; in fact such things 
become quite easy.