Part 2

When I met my Guru, he told me:
"You are not what you take yourself to be.
Find out what you are.
Watch the sense 'I am', find your real Self."

I obeyed him, because I trusted him. I did as he told me.
All my spare time I would spend looking at myself in silence.

And what a difference it made, and how soon!

My teacher told me to hold on to the sense 'I am' tenaciously 

and not to swerve from it even for a moment.

I did my best to follow his advice 

and in a comparatively short time 

I realized within myself the truth of his teaching.

All I did was to remember his teaching, 

his face, his words, constantly.

This brought an end to the mind; 

in the stillness of the mind I saw myself as I am -- unbound.

I simply followed (my teacher's) instruction 

which was to focus the mind on pure being 'I am'

and stay in it.

I used to sit for hours together

with nothing but the 'I am' in my mind 

and soon peace and joy and a deep all-embracing love 

became my normal state.

In it all disappeared -- myself, my Guru, 

the life I lived, the world around me.

Only peace remained and unfathomable silence. 

My Guru ordered me to attend to the sense 'I am' 
and to give attention to nothing else.
I just obeyed.
I did not follow any particular course of breathing, 
or meditation, or study of scriptures.

Whatever happened, I would turn away my attention from it 
and remain with the sense 'I am'.
It may look too simple, even crude.
My only reason for doing it was that my Guru told me so.
Yet it worked!

Obedience is a powerful solvent of all desires and fears.
There is no sense of purpose in my doing anything.
Things happen as they happen -- 
not because I make them happen, 
but it is because I am that they happen.
In reality nothing ever happens.

When the mind is restless, 
it makes Shiva dance
like the restless waters of the lake make the moon dance. 
It is all appearance, due to wrong ideas. 

In whatever role I may appear 

and whatever function I may perform 
I remain what I am: 

the 'I am' 
immovable, unshakable, independent. 

When I say 'I am'

I do not mean a separate entity with a body as its nucleus. 

I mean the totality of being, 

the ocean of consciousness, 

the entire universe of all that is and knows.

I have nothing to desire for I am complete forever.

Words betray their hollowness.

The real cannot be described, it must be experienced.

I cannot find better words for what I know.

What I say may sound ridiculous.

But what the words try to convey is the highest truth.

All is one, however much we quibble.

And all is done to please the one source and goal of every desire

whom we all know as the 'I am'. 

Just like the sun is reflected in a billion dew drops, 

so is the timeless endlessly repeated.

When I repeat: 'I am, I am', 

I merely assert and re-assert an ever-present fact.

You get tired of my words 

because you do not see the living truth behind them.

Contact it and you will find the full meaning 

of words and of silence -- both.

I trusted my Guru.

What he told me to do, I did.

He told me to concentrate on 'I am' -- 

I did. 

He told me that I am beyond all perceivables and conceivables -- 

I believed.

You may choose any way that suits you; 

your earnestness will determine the rate of progress.