56. Consciousness Arising, World Arises

Awareness itself is all important, not the content of it.

Only those who think themselves born can think themselves re-born.

All exists in awareness and awareness neither dies nor is reborn. It is the changeless reality itself.

There is no 'I am aware' in awareness.

In consciousness there is the 'I', who is conscious while awareness is undivided; awareness is aware of itself.

God is the totality of consciousness, but awareness is beyond all—being as well as not-being.

I know that the world is a child of love, having its beginning, growth and fulfillment in love. But I am beyond love even.

Awareness contains every experience. But he who is aware is beyond every experience. He is beyond awareness itself.

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.

55. Give up All and You Gain All

Everyone imagines 'others' and seeks a link with them. The seeker is the link, there is none other.

Your desire to know other people's minds is due to your not knowing your own mind.

There is trouble only when you cling to something. When you hold on to nothing, no trouble arises.

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.

In dream you love some and not others. On waking up you find you are love itself, embracing all.

Freedom from all desire is eternity.

Self-knowledge is detachment.

To know yourself, be yourself. To be yourself, stop imagining yourself to be this or that. Just be.

Where action is needed, action happens. Man is not the actor. His is to be aware of what is going on. His very presence is action.

Within the immensity of space floats a tiny atom of consciousness and in it the entire universe is contained.

54. Body and Mind are Symptoms of Ignorance

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

Compassion is but another word for the refusal to suffer for imaginary reasons.

To find truth, you must not cling to your convictions; if you are sure of the immediate, you will never reach the ultimate.

Find the spark of life that weaves the tissues of your body and be with it. It is the only reality the body has.

Behave as if you were pure awareness, bodiless and mindless, spaceless and timeless, beyond 'where' and 'when' and 'how'.

Yoga is bending the outer to the inner. Make your mind and body express the real which is all and beyond all.

The person (vyakti) flickers, awareness (vyakta) contains all
space and time, the absolute (avyakta) is.

53. Desires Fulfilled, Breed More Desires

You began as a child and you will end as a child. Whatever you have acquired in the meantime you must lose and start at the beginning.

You want peace and harmony in the world, but refuse to have them in yourself.

Of the entire universe you are the subtle cause. All is because you are.

Be quiet now and all will fall in place. The unexpected is bound to happen, while the anticipated may never come.

Pleasure and pain are mere disturbances of the senses; treat them equally and there will be only bliss.

What you need will come to you, if you do not ask for what you do not need.

52. Being Happy, Making Happy is the Rhythm of Life

Is not love as much a part of you, as consciousness of being?

It is your complete ignorance of yourself, that covered up your love and happiness and made you seek for what you had never lost.

Love is will, the will to share your happiness with all.

Being happy—making happy—this is the rhythm of love.

51. Be Indifferent to Pain and Pleasure

The Self is near and the way to it is easy. All you need doing is doing nothing.

Your sadhana is to be. The doing happens. Just be watchful. Where is the difficulty in remembering that you are? You are all the time.

Your burden is of false self-identifications—abandon them all.

By remembering what I told you, you will achieve everything. I am telling you again: You are the all-pervading, all transcending reality.

Behave accordingly: think, feel and act in harmony with the whole.

It is natural and good to love oneself. Only you should know what exactly do you love. It is not the body that you love, it is Life...

Everybody is glad to be. But few know the fullness of it.

You come to know by dwelling in your mind on 'I am', 'I know', 'I love'—with the will of reaching the deepest meaning of these words.

Remember to remember: 'whatever happens—happens because I am'.

Stereotyped gestures and postures will not help you. Rely entirely on your clarity of thought, purity of motive and integrity of action.

No particular thought can be mind's natural state, only silence.

All will happen by itself. You need not do anything, only don't prevent it.

50. Self-awareness is the Witness

To see that all knowledge is a form of ignorance is itself a movement of reality.

Unless there is order in yourself, there can be no order in the world.

Evil is the stench of a mind that is diseased. Heal your mind and it will cease to project distorted, ugly pictures.

In consciousness there is movement; awareness by itself is motionless and timeless, here and now.

49. Mind Causes Insecurity

No true teacher indulges in opinions. He sees things as they are and shows them as they are.

It is in the unknown that we live and move. the known is the past.

Reality is good and beautiful; we create the chaos.

As nothing and nobody you are safe and happy. You can have the experience for the asking. Just try.

When the 'I am myself' goes, the 'I am all' comes. When the 'I am all' goes, 'I am' comes.

When even 'I am' goes, reality alone is and in it every 'I am' is preserved and glorified.

Selfishness is rooted in the mistaken ideas of oneself. Clarification of the mind is Yoga.

48. Awareness is Free

I am that infinite ocean of consciousness in which all happens. I am also beyond all existence and cognition, pure bliss of being.

The same power that makes the fire burn and the water flow, the seeds sprout and the trees grow, makes me answer your questions.

Things and people are different, but they are not separate. Nature is one, reality is one. There are opposites, but no opposition.

Work is by the whole for the whole, activity is by oneself for oneself.

You are what you are, but you know what you are not.

Let anything happen—good or bad. But don't let yourself be submerged by what happens.

Do not fight with what you take to be obstacles on your way. Just be interested in them, watch them, observe, enquire.

To be aware is to be awake. Unaware means asleep. You are aware anyhow, you need not try to be. What you need is to be aware of being aware.

47. Watch Your Mind

The very reality of the world must be questioned.

Realize that whatever you think yourself to be is just a stream of events.

While all happens, comes and goes, you alone are, the changeless among the changeful, the self-evident among the inferred.

Investigate yourself and love the investigation and you will solve not only your own problems but also the problems of humanity.

Be interested in yourself beyond all experience, be with yourself, love yourself; the ultimate security is found only in self-knowledge.

46. Awareness of Being is Bliss

It is not desire that is wrong, but its narrowness and smallness.

Increase and widen your desires till nothing but reality can fulfill them.

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. Your very nature has the infinite capacity to enjoy. It is full of zest and affection. It sheds its radiance on all that comes within its focus of awareness and nothing is excluded. It does not know evil nor ugliness, it hopes, it trusts, it loves. You people do not know how much you miss by not knowing your own true self.

You are neither the body nor the mind, neither the fuel nor the fire. They appear and disappear according to their own laws. That which you are, your true self, you love it, and whatever you do, you do for your own happiness. To find it, to know it, to cherish it is your basic urge. Since time immemorial you loved yourself, but never wisely. Use your body and mind wisely in the service of the self, that is all.

Be true to your own self, love your self absolutely. Do not pretend that you love others as yourself. Unless you have realized them as one with yourself, you cannot love them. Don't pretend to be what you are not, don't refuse to be what you are. Your love of others is the result of self-knowledge, not its cause.

Without self-realization, no virtue is genuine. When you know beyond all doubting that the same life flows through all that is and you are that life, you will love all naturally and spontaneously. When you realize the depth and fullness of your love of yourself, you know that every living being and the entire universe are included in your affection. But when you look at anything as separate from you, you cannot love it for you are afraid of it. Alienation causes fear and fear deepens alienation. It is a vicious circle. Only self-realization can break it. Go for it resolutely.

45. What Comes and Goes has no Being

First words, then silence. One must be ripe for silence.

Everything is caused by innumerable factors, of which your personal endeavor is but one.

The very idea of doing the right thing comes to you from the unknown. Leave it to the unknown as far as the results go.

In reality nothing is lacking and nothing is needed, all work is on the surface only. In the depths there is perfect peace.

Any attempt to do something about your problems is bound to fail, for what is caused by desire can be undone only in freedom from desire.

To work in the world is hard, to refrain from all unnecessary work is even harder.

You cannot be rid of problems without abandoning illusions.

There is no such thing as a person. There are only restrictions and limitations. The sum total of these defines the person.

Fight with all the strength at your disposal against the idea that you are nameable and describable. You are not.

Truly, all is in me and by me. There is nothing else. The very idea of 'else' is a disaster and a calamity.

All separation, every kind of estrangement and alienation is false. All is one-this is the ultimate solution of every conflict.

What is in the world cannot save the world; if you really care to help the world you must step out of it.

To be born means to create a world around yourself as the center. But do you ever create yourself?

What comes and goes has no being. It owes its very appearance to reality. You know that there is a world, but does the world know you?

Everyone creates a world for himself and lives in it, imprisoned by one's ignorance. All we have to do is to deny reality to our prison.

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.

44. 'I am' is True, all else is Inference

God is only an idea in your mind. The fact is you.

You are the motionless witness of the river of consciousness which changes eternally without changing you in any way.

The main point to grasp is that you have projected onto yourself a world of your own imagination, based on memories, on desires and fears.

All hangs on your faith in yourself, on the conviction that what you see and hear, think and feel is real. Why not question your faith?

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!

Stop attributing names and shapes to the essentially nameless and formless, realize that every mode of perception is subjective.

What is seen or heard, touched or smelt, felt or thought, expected or imagined, is in the mind and not in reality.

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.

43. Ignorance can be Recognised, not Jnana

The light is for all and always there, but the seekers are few, and among those few, those who are ready are very rare.

Laziness and restlessness often stand in the way and until they are seen and removed, the progress is slow.

The realized man is the most earnest man. Whatever he does, he does it completely, without limitations and reservations.

Integrity will take you to reality.

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

Get rid of all ideas about yourself, even of the idea that you are God. No self definition is valid.

When you want nothing, seek nothing, expect nothing then the Supreme State will come to you uninvited and unexpected!

Stay open and quiet, that is all. What you seek is so near you, that there is no place for a way.

The desire for truth is the highest of all desires, yet, it is still a desire. All desires must be given up to the real to be.

Remember that you are. This is your working capital.

What you gave up is of no importance now. What have you not given up?. Find that out and give up that.

Stop making use of your mind and see what happens. Do this one thing thoroughly. Don't mentalize and verbalize. Just see and be.

42. Reality can not be Expressed

The self is single. You are that self and you have ideas of what you have been or will be. But an idea is not the self.

There is no progress in reality, it is final, perfect, unrelated.

The source of light is dark, unknown is the source of knowledge. That source alone is. Go back to that source and abide there.

God is all that is great and wonderful; I am nothing, have nothing, can do nothing. Yet all comes out of me -- the source is me.

When reality explodes in you, you may call it experience of God. Or rather, it is God experiencing you. God knows you when you know yourself

Reality is not the result of a process; it is an explosion. It is definitely beyond the mind, but all you can do is to know your mind well.

Not that the mind will help you, but by knowing your mind you may avoid your mind disabling you.

Treating everything as a dream liberates. As long as you give reality to dreams, you are their slave.

The essence of slavery is to imagine yourself to be a process, to have past and future, to have history.

See the event as event only, the transient as transient, experience as mere experience and you have done all you can.

Then you are vulnerable to reality, no longer armored against it, as you were when you gave reality to events and experiences.

Neither action, nor feeling, nor thought express reality. There is no such thing as an expression of reality.

Reality neither comes nor goes. It is to be perceived, not expected. It is not to be prepared for and anticipated.

Once you have awakened into reality, you stay in it. A child does not return to the womb!

41. Develop the Witness Attitude

Anything you do for the sake of enlightenment takes you nearer. Anything you do without remembering enlightenment puts you off.

Just know that you are above and beyond all things and thoughts. What you want to be, you are it already. Just keep it in mind.

I am not indifferent, I am impartial. I give no preference to the me & the mine. A basket of earth and a basket of jewels are both unwanted.

Looking for causes and results is but the pastime of the mind. What is, is lovable.
Love is not a result, it is the very ground of being.

Wherever you go, you will find being, consciousness and love. Why and what for make preferences?

When you realize that your mind too is a part of nature, the duality will cease.

Develop the witness attitude & you will find in your own experience that detachment brings control. The state of witnessing is full of power

40. Only the Self is Real

The world is but a show, glittering and empty. It is, and yet 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 absentminded.

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 colorful 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.

39. By Itself Nothing has Existence

There is nothing wrong in repeating the same truth again
and again until it becomes reality.

When l repeat: 'I am, I am', I merely assert and reassert
an ever-present fact.

Nothing stops you but preoccupation with the outer which
prevents you from focusing the inner.

To know that consciousness and its content are but
reflections, changeful and transient, is the focusing of the real.

The refusal to see the snake in the rope is the necessary
condition for seeing the rope.

Why not work on the theory that you are your own creation
and creator. At least there will be no external God to battle with.

You do not know your own powers. You never investigated.
Begin with yourself now.

38. Spiritual Practice is Will Asserted and Re-asserted

The common things of life: I experience them just as you
do. The difference lies in what I do not experience.

I do not experience fear or greed, hate or anger. I ask
nothing, refuse nothing, keep nothing. In these matters I do not
compromise.

Maybe this is the outstanding difference between us. I will
not compromise, I am true to myself, while you are afraid of reality.

Whatever you do for the sake of truth, will take you to
truth. Only be earnest and honest.

If you could but keep in mind what you do not know, it
would reveal to you its secrets.

37. Beyond Pain and Pleasure there is Bliss

You are afraid of what you are. Your destination is the
whole. But you are afraid that you will lose your identity. This is
childishness...

..clinging to the toys, to your desires and fears, opinions
and ideas. Give it all up and be ready for the real to assert itself.

As long as you take your stand in the mind, you will see me
in the mind.

Pain and pleasure are the crests and valleys of the waves
in the ocean of bliss. Deep down there is utter fullness.

Being pervades and transcends consciousness. Objective
consciousness is a part of pure consciousness, not beyond it.

The way leads through yourself beyond yourself.

36. Killing Hurts the Killer, not the Killed

The only thing you can be sure of is 'I am'. Stay with it,
and reject everything else.

It is the real that creates the urge; the inner prompts the
outer and the outer responds in interest and effort.

Ultimately there is no inner, nor outer; the light of
consciousness is both the creator & the creature, the experiencer & the
experience.

In these matters there is no question of purpose, nor of
action. All you need is to listen, remember, ponder.

It is like taking food. All you can do is to bite off, chew
and swallow.

Listen, remember and understand.

35. Greatest Guru is Your Inner Self

You do not tidy up a dark room. You open the windows first.

Abandon all conceptualization and stay silent and
attentive. Be earnest about it and all will be well with you.

34. Mind is restlessness Itself

There is no such thing as peace of mind. Mind means
disturbance; restlessness itself is mind.

Changes by themselves cannot bring us to the changeless.

You can find what you have lost. But you cannot find what
you have not lost.

The true knowledge of the self is not a knowledge.

Nothing profits the world as much as the abandoning of
profits.

A man who no longer thinks in terms of loss and gain is the
truly non-violent man, for he is beyond all conflict.

It is not doing good that comes first, but ceasing to hurt,
not adding to suffering.

The only help worth giving is freeing from the need for
further help. Repeated help is no help at all.

Momentary relief from pain we call pleasure-and we build
castles in the air hoping for endless pleasure which we call happiness.

It is all misunderstanding and misuse. Wake up, go beyond,
live really.

Undeceive yourself and be free. You are not a person.

33. Everything Happens by Itself

To see the unreal is wisdom. Beyond this lies the
inexpressible.

All states of mind, all names and forms of existence are
rooted in non-enquiry, non-investigation, in imagination and credulity.

I cannot tell what I am because words can describe only
what I am not. I am, and because I am, all is.

All who come are helped, for such is the law. Only the
shape help takes varies according to the need.

What you call the universe, nature, is my spontaneous
creativity. Whatever happens -- happens. But such is my nature that all
ends in joy.

To want nothing and do nothing—that is true creation! To
watch the universe emerging and subsiding in one's heart is a wonder.

When effort is needed, effort will appear. When
effortlessness becomes essential, it will assert itself. You need not push
life about.

Don't be afraid, don't resist, don't delay. Be what you
are. There is nothing to be afraid of. Trust and try. Experiment honestly.

Give your real being a chance to shape your life.

32. Life is the Supreme Guru

There is as much death when a million die as when one
perishes.

Fear and greed cause the misuse of the mind. The right use
of mind is in the service of love, of life, of truth, of beauty.

You must begin in yourself, with yourself—this is the
inexorable law. You cannot change the image without changing the face.

First realize that your world is only a reflection of
yourself and stop finding fault with the reflection.

Self-remembrance is in the mind, self-realization is beyond
the mind. The image in the mirror is of the face beyond the mirror.

To help others, one must be beyond the need of help.

Empty of possession, physical and mental, free of all
self-concern, be open for discovery.

31. Do not Undervalue Attention

Everybody sees the world through the idea he has of
himself. As you think yourself to be, so you think the world to be.

See yourself as you are and you will see the world as it is—a single block of reality, indivisible, indescribable.

To know, to do, to discover, or to create you must give
your heart to it—which means attention. All the blessings flow from it.

Give your undivided attention to the most important in your
life—yourself.

Of your personal universe you are the center—without
knowing the center what else can you know?

30. You are Free NOW

As a living being you are caught in an untenable and
painful situation and you are seeking a way out.

You are being offered several plans of your prison, none
quite true. But they all are of some value, only if you are in dead
earnest.

It is the earnestness that liberates and not the theory.

What is going on is a projection of your mind. A weak mind
cannot control its own projections.

Be aware, therefore, of your mind and its projections. You
cannot control what you do not know.

On the other hand, knowledge gives power. In practice it is
very simple. To control yourself – know yourself.

There is no chaos in the world, except the chaos which your
mind creates.

Because you are, all can be. The universe is but a partial
manifestation of your limitless capacity to become.

To be a living being is not the ultimate state; there is
something beyond, much more wonderful, which is neither being nor
non-being...

It is a state of pure awareness, beyond the limitations of
space and time.