Part 5

There are many starting points -- 
they all lead to the same goal. 

You may begin with selfless work, 
abandoning the fruits of action; 

you may then give up thinking 
and in the end giving up all desires. 

Here, giving up (tyaga) is the operational factor. 

Or, you may not bother about any thing you want, 

or think, or do 

and just stay put in the thought and feeling 'I am', 

focussing 'I am' firmly in your mind. 

All kinds of experience may come to you -- 

remain unmoved 
in the knowledge that all perceivable is transient, 

and only the 'I am' endures.

What do you love now? 

The 'I am'. 

Give your heart and mind to it, think of nothing else. 

This, when effortless and natural, is the highest state. 

In it love itself is the lover and the beloved.

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.

Go home, 

take charge of your father's business, 

look after your parents in their old age. 

Marry the girl who is waiting for you, 

be loyal, be simple, be humble. 

Hide your virtue, live silently. 

The five senses and the three qualities (gunas) 
are your eight steps in Yoga. 

And 'I am' is the Great Reminder (mahamantra). 

You can learn from them all you need to know. 

Be attentive, enquire ceaselessly. 

That is all.

Everything is a play of ideas. 

In the state free from ideation (nirvikalpa samadhi) 
nothing is perceived. 

The root idea is: 'I am'. 

It shatters the state of pure consciousness 

and is followed by the innumerable sensations and perceptions, 

feeling and ideas, 

which in their totality constitute God and His world. 

The 'I am' remains as the witness, 

but it is by the will of God that everything happens.

In my world nobody is born and nobody dies. 

Some people go on a journey and come back, 

some never leave. 

What difference does it make since they travel in dreamlands, 

each wrapped up in his own dream. 

Only the waking up is important. 

It is enough to know the 'I am' as reality and also love.

As it is natural for the incense stick to burn out, 

so it is natural for the body to die. 

Really, it is a matter of very little importance. 

What matters is that I am neither the body nor the mind. 

I am.

ॐ

Don't identify yourself with an idea. 

If you mean by God, the Unknown, 

then you merely say: 'I do not know what I am'. 

If you know God as you know yourself, you need not say it. 

Best is the simple feeling 'I am'. 

Dwell on it patiently. 

Here patience is wisdom; don't think of failure. 

There can be no failure in this understanding.

That which makes you think you are 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.

You assert yourself to be what you are not
and deny yourself to be what you are.
You omit the element of pure cognition,
of awareness free from all personal distortions.
Unless you admit the reality of consciousness,
you will never know yourself.

Behave as if what I say is true
and judge by what actually happens.
All I ask is the little faith needed for making the first step.
With experience will come confidence
and you will not need me any more.
I know what you are
and I am telling you.
Trust me for a while.

ॐ

The world cannot give us
what it does not have;
unreal to the core,
it is of no use for real happiness.
It cannot be otherwise.
We seek the real
because we are unhappy with the unreal.

Happiness is our real nature
and we shall never rest
until we find it.
But rarely do we know where to see it.

Once you have understood
that the world is but a mistaken view of reality,
and is not what it appears to be,
you are free of its obsessions.

Only what is compatible with your real being
can make you happy;
and the world,
as you perceive it,
is its outright denial.

ॐ

As long as we believe 
that we need things to make us happy,
we shall also believe
that in their absence we must be miserable.

Mind always shapes itself according to its beliefs.
Hence the importance of convincing oneself
that one need not be prodded into happiness;
that, on the contrary,
pleasure is a distraction and a nuisance,
for it merely increases the false conviction
that one needs to have and do things to be happy
when in reality it is just the opposite.

ॐ

Do understand 
that what you think to be the world
is your own mind.

Once you have seen
that you are dreaming,
you shall wake up.
But you do not see,
because you want the dream to continue.

A day will come
when you will long for the ending of the dream,
with all your heart and mind,
and be willing to pay any price;
the price will be dispassion and detachment,
the loss of interest
in the dream itself.

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

ॐ

You are the Self, here and now. 
Leave the mind alone, 
stand aware and unconcerned, 
and you will realize 
that to stand alert and detached, 
watching events come and go, 
is an aspect of your real nature. 

A quiet mind is all you need. 
All else will happen rightly, 
once your mind is quiet. 
As the sun on rising makes the world active, 
so does self-awareness affect changes in the mind. 
In the light of calm and steady self-awareness, 
inner energies wake up and work miracles 
without any effort on your part. 

Do understand that you are destined for enlightenment. 
Co-operate with your destiny, 
don't go against it, don't thwart it. 
Allow it to fulfill itself. 
All you have to do is to give attention 
to the obstacles created by the foolish mind.

Moods are in the mind and do not matter. 
Go within, go beyond. 
Cease being fascinated by the content of your consciousness. 
When you reach the deep layers of your true being, 
you will find that the mind's surface-play affects you very little.

What was never lost can never be found.
Your very search for safety and joy 
keeps you away from them.
Stop searching, cease losing.
The disease is simple 
and the remedy equally simple.
It is your mind only 
that makes you insecure and unhappy.
Anticipation makes you insecure; memory, unhappy.
Stop misusing your mind and all will be well with you.
You need not set it right, it will set itself right,
as soon as you give up all concern 
with the past and the future
and live entirely in the now.

It is only when you are satiated with the changeable
and long for the unchangeable
that you are ready for the turning round
and stepping into what can be described,
when seen from the level of the mind,
as emptiness and darkness.
For the mind craves content and variety,
while reality is, to the mind, contentless and invariable.

The problem is not yours -- it is your mind's only.
Begin by disassociating yourself from your mind.
Resolutely remind yourself that you are not the mind
and that its problems are not yours.

How can an unsteady mind make itself steady?
Of course it cannot.
It is the nature of the mind to roam about.
All you can do is to shift the focus of consciousness beyond the mind.

Stop making use of your mind and see what happens.
Do this one thing thoroughly. That is all.

ॐ

The real is beyond,
you are beyond.
Once you have understood that nothing perceivable
or conceivable can be yourself,
you are free of your imaginations. 

To see everything as imagination,
born of desire,
is necessary for self-realisation.
We miss the real by lack of attention
and create the unreal by excess of imagination.
You have to give your heart and mind to these things
and brood over them repeatedly.
It is like cooking food.
You must keep it on the fire for some time
before it is ready.

ॐ