83. The True Guru

Mistrust all, until you are convinced. The true Guru will never humiliate you, nor will he estrange you from yourself.

He who knows the mind as non-realized and realized, who knows ignorance and knowledge as states of mind, he is the real.

The known is but a shape and knowledge is but a name. The knower is but a state of mind. The real is beyond.

Do understand that to be, reality need not be known. Ignorance and knowledge are in the mind, not in the real.

You need not reach out for what is already with you. Your very reaching out makes you miss it.

To break the spell of the known the knower must be brought to the forefront. Neither is primary, both are reflections in memory.

You do not know what you are and therefore you imagine your self to be what you are not. Hence desires and fear and overwhelming despair.

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

Abandon all sense of separation, see yourself in all and act accordingly. With action bliss will come and, with bliss, conviction.

If you trust my words and put them to test, you will for yourself discover how absolutely true they are.

There is no body, nor a world to contain it; there is only a mental condition, a dreamlike state, easy to dispel by questioning its reality.

As you were acting on your old memories, act on the new one. Don't be afraid…there is bound to be a conflict between the old and the new.

If you put yourself resolutely on the side of the new, the strife will…end & you will realize the effortless state of being oneself.

If you ask for a proof before you venture, I can only say: I am the proof.

Gurus are like milestones…Each tells you the direction and the distance, while the sadguru, the eternal Guru, is the road itself.

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.

82. Absolute Perfection is Here and Now

The ideas of 'me' and 'mine' are at the root of all conflict. Be free of them and you will be out of conflict.

You fight others all the time for your survival as a separate body-mind, a particular name and form. To live you must destroy.

The world is what it contains and each thing affects all others. We all kill the child and we all die with it.

In our ignorance we are innocent; in our actions we are guilty. We sin without knowing and suffer without understanding.

We fight, we kill, we destroy life & property and yet we are affectionate & self-sacrificing. We nurse the child tenderly & orphan it too.

Our only hope: to stop, to look, to understand & to get out of the traps of memory. For memory feeds imagination &…generates desire & fear.

I do not look at death as a calamity as I do not rejoice at the birth of a child. The child is out for trouble while the dead is out of it.

For me the moment of death will be a moment of jubilation, not of fear. I cried when I was born and I shall die laughing.

The cosmic heart beats ceaselessly. I am the witness and the heart too.

It is the instinct of exploration, the love of the unknown, that brings me into existence.

It is in the nature of being to see adventure in becoming, as it is in the very nature of becoming to seek peace in being.

This alteration of being and becoming is inevitable; but my home is beyond.

Whatever has a beginning must have an end. In the timeless all is perfect, here and now.

The secret is in action—here and now. It is your behavior that blinds you to yourself. Disregard whatever you think yourself to be.

Act as if you were absolutely perfect.

My grace is telling you now: look within. All you need you have. Use it.

Action does not lead to perfection; perfection is expressed in action.

81. Root Cause of Fear

The real enables the unreal to appear and causes it to disappear. the succession of transient moments creates the illusion of time.

The timeless reality of pure being is not in movement, for all movement requires a motionless background. It is itself the background.

When all distinctions and reactions are no more, what remains is reality.

The effort to understand yourself is Yoga. Be a Yogi, give your life to it, brood, wonder, search, till you come to the root of error.

Meditation is a deliberate attempt to pierce into the higher states of consciousness and finally go beyond it. The art of meditation is the art of shifting the focus of attention to ever subtler levels, without losing one's grip on the levels left behind. In a way it is like having death under control.

One begins with the lowest levels: social circumstances, customs and habits; physical surroundings, the posture and the breathing of the body, the senses, their sensations and perceptions; the mind, its thoughts and feelings; until the entire mechanism of personality is grasped and firmly held.

The final stage of meditation is reached when the sense of identity goes beyond the 'I-am-so-and-so', beyond 'so-I-am', beyond 'I-am-the-witness-only', beyond 'there-is', beyond all ideas into the impersonally personal pure being.

But you must be energetic when you take to meditation. It is definitely not a part-time occupation. Limit your interests and activities to what is needed for you and your dependents' barest needs. Save all your energies and time for breaking the wall your mind had built around you. Believe me, you will not regret.

At the end of your meditation all is known directly, no proofs whatsoever are required.

Reality is not a concept, nor the manifestation of a concept. It has nothing to do with concepts.

Give your heart and mind to brooding over the 'I am', what is it, how is it, what is its source, its life, its meaning.

The limited only is perfectible. The unlimited is already perfect. You are perfect, only you don't know it.

All you need is already within you, only you must approach your self with reverence and love.

Self-condemnation and self-distrust are grievous errors.

Your constant flight from pain and search for pleasure is a sign of love you bear for your self.

All I plead with you is this: make love of your self perfect. Deny yourself nothing.

Give your self infinity and eternity and discover that you do not need them; you are beyond.

80. Awareness

The future, left to itself merely repeats the past. Change can only happen now, never in the future.

Realization is not a new experience. It is the discovery of the timeless factor in every experience.

Awareness is ever there. It need not be realized. Open the shutter of the mind, and it will be flooded with light.

As a conscious self you are a part of nature. As awareness, you are beyond. Seeing nature as mere consciousness is awareness.

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.

Knowing is a reflection of your true nature along with being and loving. The knower and the known are added by the mind.

Science merely pushes back the frontiers of our ignorance.

Matter and mind are not separate, they are aspects of one energy.

Look at the mind as a function of matter and you have science; look at matter as the product of the mind and you have religion.

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.

It is you who are in movement and not time. Stop moving and time will cease.

It may mean that past and future do not matter any more.

It may also mean that all that happened and will happen becomes an open book to be read at will.

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

The source is neither right nor wrong. Nor is desire by itself right or wrong. It is nothing but striving for happiness.

Having identified yourself with a speck of a body you feel lost and search desperately for the sense of fullness…you call happiness.

A speck in the eye makes you think you are blind. Wash it out and look.

The light is there—waiting. The eyes are there—ready. The darkness you see is but the shadow of the tiny speck.

Get rid of it and come back to your natural state.

79. Person, Witness and the Supreme

To see reality is as simple as to see one's face in a mirror. Only the mirror must be clear and true.

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 neither act nor cause others to act; I am timelessly aware of what is going on.

There is only one mind, which swarms with ideas; 'I am this, I am that, this is mine, that is mine'. I am not the mind.

Understand first that you are not the person you believe yourself to be. What you think yourself to be is mere suggestion or imagination.

For realization, understanding is essential. Action is only incidental.

A man of steady understanding will not refrain from action. Action is the test of truth.

If you do not test yourself all the time, you will not be able to distinguish between reality and fancy.

The foreseen and expected is rarely true.

Act on what you think is true—this is the way to truth.

Now, to say 'I know' is not untrue—it is merely limited. But to say 'I do' is altogether false, because there is nobody who does.

The witness is that which says 'I know'. The person says 'I do'.

All happens by itself, including the idea of being a doer.

Step back from action to consciousness, leave action to the body
and the mind; it is their domain.

Remain as pure witness, till even witnessing dissolves in the Supreme.

In reality there is only one state; when distorted by self-identification it is called a person…

…when colored with the sense of being, it is the witness…

…when colorless and limitless, it is called the Supreme.

78. All Knowledge is Ignorance

My Guru, before he died, told me: Believe me, you are the Supreme Reality. Don't doubt my words, don't disbelieve me.

I am telling you the truth—act on it. I could not forget his words and
by not forgetting—I have realized.

Things happen as they happen—who can tell why & how? I did nothing deliberately. All came by itself—the desire to let go…to go
within.

I found myself desiring and knowing less and less, until I could say in utter astonishment: 'I know nothing, I want nothing.'

I was undeceived, that is all. I used to create a world and populate it—now I don't do it any more.

'I do not know' is the only true statement the mind can make.

You were never born, nor will you ever die. It is the idea that was born and shall die, not you.

There is only light, all else appears.

The knower comes & goes with the known…but that which knows that it does not know, which is free of memory and anticipation, is timeless.

To know the source as source and appearance as appearance, and oneself as the source only is self-realization.

77. 'I' and 'Mine' are False Ideas

Give up the idea of being the body & face the question Who am I? At once a process will be set in motion which will…take the mind to reality

For reality to be, the ideas of 'me' and 'mine' must go. They will go if you let them.

All you have to do is to understand that you love the self and the self loves you and that the sense 'I am' is the link between you both.

I appear to depend on everything, but in fact all depends on me.

For anything to happen, the entire universe must coincide.

You must begin by being the dispassionate observer. Then only will you realize your full being as the universal lover and actor.

Having seen that you are a bundle of memories held together by attachment, step out and look from the outside.

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…universe.

Find that point and be free.


You have a mind which is spread in time. One after another all things happen to you and the memory remains. There is nothing wrong in it. The problem arises only when the memory of past pains and pleasures—which are essential to all organic life—remains as a reflex, dominating behavior. This reflex takes the shape of 'I' and uses the body and the mind for its purposes, which are invariably in search for pleasure or flight from pain.

When you recognize the 'I' as it is, a bundle of desires and fears, and the sense of 'mine', as embracing all things and people needed for the purpose of avoiding pain and securing pleasure, you will see that the 'I' and the 'mine' are false ideas, having no foundation in reality. Created by the mind, they rule their creator as long as it takes them to be true; when questioned, they dissolve.

76. To Know that You do not Know, is True Knowledge

The grace of your Inner Reality is timelessly with you.

There can be no causal connection between practice and wisdom. But the obstacles to wisdom are deeply affected by practice.

The discovery and abandonment of the false remove what prevents the real entering the mind.

Believe me, there is no goal, nor a way to reach it. You are the way and the goal, there is nothing else to reach except yourself.

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.

True awareness is a state of pure witnessing, without the least attempt to do anything about the event witnessed…

…You will find that you love what you see, whatever may be its nature. This choiceless love is the touchstone of awareness.

You must go beyond consciousness, which is possible only when you look at consciousness as something that happens to you and not in you.

The very admission: 'I am ignorant' is the dawn of knowledge. An ignorant man is ignorant of his ignorance.

There are no blind powers. Consciousness is power. Be aware of what needs be done and it will be done. Only keep alert—and quiet.

Once you reach your destination and Know your real nature, your existence becomes a blessing to all.

75. In Peace and Silence you Grow

The innermost light, shining peacefully and timelessly in the heart, is the real Guru. All others merely show the way.

The initiation into Reality must come from within.

When the shadow is seen to be a shadow only, you stop following it. You turn round and discover the sun which was there all the time.

Turn away from all that occupies the mind; do whatever work you have to complete, but avoid new obligations; keep empty, keep available.

Considering the endless list of factors required for anything to happen, one can only admit that everything is responsible for everything.

Perfection of the mind is the human task, for matter and spirit meet in the mind.

The real being is reflected in the mind undistorted. Matter is redeemed, spirit—revealed. The two are seen as one. They were always one.

To escape from prison one must unquestioningly obey instructions sent by those who work for one's release.

Obey the teacher and brave the dogs.

Words based on truth, if fully tested, have their own power.

In the attentive and thoughtful reader they will ripen and bring out flowers and fruits.

74. Truth is Here and Now

Your very being is the real.

You ask for the proof of truth while to me all existence is the proof.

Instead of searching for the proof of truth…go thru the proofs you have of what you believe to know. You will find you know nothing for sure

The discovery of truth is in the discernment of the false. You can know what is not. What is—you can only be.

In the timeless the words 'for ever' have no meaning… In the realm of nonduality everything is complete, its own proof, meaning and purpose.

Truth cannot be described, but it can be experienced.

Truth can be experienced, but it is not mere experience.

Truth is not a reward for good behavior, nor a prize for passing some tests. It cannot be brought about. It is the primary, the unborn.

You need not merit truth. It is your own. Just stop running away by running after. Stand still, be quiet.

Do understand that the mind has its limits; to go beyond, you must consent to silence.

What you are you will never know, for every discovery reveals new dimensions to conquer. The unknown has no limits.

Truth is in the discovery not in the discovered.

73. Death of the Mind is Birth of Wisdom

The very desire to be ready means that the Guru had come and the flame is lighted. It may be a stray word, or a page in a book.

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.

To know that nothing is, is true knowledge.

Abandon false ideas, that is all. There is no need of true ideas. There aren't any.

The mind cannot know what is beyond the mind, but the mind is known by what is beyond it.

The knower of the known is not knowable.

The death of the mind is the birth of wisdom.

The man who carries a parcel is anxious not to lose it—he is parcel-conscious. The man who cherishes the feeling 'I am' is self-conscious.

Immortality is freedom from the feeling: 'I am'.

It is enough to bring you to the very frontiers of knowledge and make you face the immensity of the unknown. To dive in it is up to you.

The finite is the price of the infinite, as death is the price of immortality.

Freedom means letting go. People just do not care to let go everything.

The giving up is the first step. But the real giving up is in realizing that there is nothing to give up, for nothing is your own.

72. What is Pure, Unalloyed, Unattached is Real

Find the immutable center where all movement takes birth.

Just like a wheel turns round an axle, so must you be always at the axle in the center and not whirling at the periphery.

Immobility and silence are not inactive. The flower fills the space with perfume, the candle—with light.

It has nothing to do with effort. Just turn away, look between the thoughts, rather than at the thoughts.

It is all quite simple. Turn away from your desires and fears and from the thoughts they create and you are at once in your natural state.

Nothing stops you from being a jnani here and now, except fear. You are afraid of being impersonal, of impersonal being.

There is nothing to renounce. Enough if you stop acquiring.

The problem is excessive interest, leading to self-identification. Whatever you are engrossed in you take to be real.

The 'I am' in movement creates the world. The 'I am' at peace becomes the Absolute.

I am not concerned with the universe. Let it be or not be. It is enough if I know myself.

Pity the self that is, not the world that is not!

All these attributes; being, consciousness, love and beauty are reflections of the real in the world. No real—no reflection.

Change the current of your desire from taking to giving.

The passion for giving, for sharing, will naturally wash the idea of an external world out of your mind, and of giving as well.

Only the pure radiance of love will remain, beyond giving and receiving.

In love there is not the one even, how can there be two? Love is the refusal to separate, to make distinctions.

The world has only as much power over you as you give it. Rebel. Go beyond duality, make no difference between east and west.

You are eager to separate right from wrong, because you need some basis for action. You are always after doing something or other.

It is right to be oneself, it is wrong not to be. All else is conditional.

Awareness is dynamic, love is being. Awareness is love in action.

By itself the mind can actualize any number of possibilities, but unless they are prompted by love, they are valueless.

Love precedes creation. Without it there is only chaos.

Chaos is movement for movement's sake. True action does not displace; it transforms.

Just remember, nothing perceivable is real. Activity is not action. Action is hidden, unknown, unknowable. You can only know the fruit.

Through the film of your mind you project a world and also a God to give it cause and purpose. It is all imagination—step out of it.

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

To be free in the world you must be free of the world. Otherwise your past decides for you and your future.

First return to your true being and then act from the heart of love.

71. In Self-awareness you Learn about Yourself

The person is merely the result of a misunderstanding.

There is nothing of yours in this, except the little point of 'I am', which is the bridge between the watcher and his dream.

Liberation is never of the person, it is always from the person.

The person is but a shell imprisoning you. Break the shell.

All you need is to understand that you are the source of reality, that you give reality instead of getting it.

In self-awareness you learn about yourself. Of course you can only learn what you are not. To know what you are, you must go beyond the mind

Awareness is the point at which the mind reaches out beyond itself into reality. In awareness you seek not what pleases, but what is true.

You concentrate, you meditate… you do all sorts of unnecessary things, but you miss the essential which is the elimination of the person.

For whatever happens, all the universe is responsible and you are the source of the universe.

70. God is the End of All Desire and Knowledge

You must unlearn everything. God is the end of all desire and knowledge.

By desiring you take the shape of your desires. When no desires remain, you revert to your natural state.

Desire is merely the fixation of the mind on an idea.

You can have all the emotions you want, but beware of reactions, of induced
emotions.

You have to give up everything to know that you need nothing, not even your body. Your needs are unreal and your efforts are meaningless.

Refuse to impersonate.

You can not know perfection, you can know only imperfection.

You can know what you are not, but you can not know your real being. You can be only what you are.

You know on contact that you exist—'I am'. The 'I am this', 'I am that' are
imaginary.

You are not what you think yourself to be, I assure you. The image you have of yourself is made up from memories and is purely accidental.

You are already perfect, here and now. The perfectible is not you. You imagine yourself to be what you are not—stop it.

Nothing compels. You are as you believe yourself to be. Stop believing.

Abandon all verbal structures, all relative truth, all tangible objectives. The Absolute can be reached by absolute devotion only.

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.

69. Transiency is Proof of Unreality

Do understand it clearly—whatever you may perceive you are not what you perceive.

The nearest you can say in words is: I am what makes perception possible, the life beyond the experiencer and his experience.

You need not correct yourself—only set right your idea of yourself.

At the root of all desire and fear is the feeling of not being what you are.

You are the infinite focused in a body. Now you see the body only. Try earnestly and you will come to see the infinite only.

Just be. Do nothing. Be. No climbing mountains & sitting in caves. I do not even say 'be yourself', since you do not know yourself. Just be.

Don't try to convey it to others. If you can, it is not the real thing. Be silent and watch it expressing itself in action.

Concentrate totally on the now, be concerned only with your response to every movement of life as it happens.

To find your self you need not take a single step.

68. Seek the Source of Consciousness

Only the people who have gone beyond the world can change the world.

Relatively, what causes suffering is wrong, what alleviates it is right.

Absolutely, what brings you back to reality is right and what dims reality is wrong.

You are so accustomed to think of yourselves as bodies having consciousness that you just cannot imagine consciousness as having bodies.

Be aware of being conscious and seek the source of consciousness. That is all.

Very little can be conveyed in words. It is the doing as I tell you that will bring light, not my telling you.

The means do not matter much; it is the desire, the urge, the earnestness that count.

67. Experience is not the Real Thing

The seeker is he who is in search of himself.

I am complete and perfect…the beingness of being, the knowingness of knowing, the fullness of happiness. You cannot reduce me to emptiness!

You need nothing except to be what you are.

It is the mind that tells you that the mind is there. Don't be deceived.

Experience, however sublime, is not the real thing.

Go to the root of all experience, to the sense of being. Beyond being and not-being lies the immensity of the real.

Being needs no proofs—it proves all else.

66. All Search for Happiness is Misery

To know that you are is natural, to know what you are is the result of much investigation.

Either let yourself be carried by the river of life & love represented by your Guru, or you make your own efforts guided by your inner star.

If you are earnest, whatever way you choose will take you to your goal. It is the earnestness that is the decisive factor.

Truth gives no advantage. It gives you no higher status, no power over others; all you get is truth and the freedom from the false.

Truth can be expressed only by the denial of the false—in action.

It is useless to search for truth when the mind is blind to the false. It must be purged of the false completely before truth can dawn on it

Surely, what has no being is false.

What contradicts itself, has no being. Or it has only momentary being, which comes to the same.

The real is inconceivable and cannot be harnessed to a purpose. It must be wanted for its own sake.

Self-interest and self-concern are the focal points of the false. Your daily life vibrates between desire and fear.

Discard every self-seeking motive as soon as it is seen and you need not search for truth; truth will find you.

Give up the bondage of self-concern and be what you are—intelligence and love in action.

The body will survive as long as it is needed. It is not important that it should live long. A full life is better than a long life.

Abandon all self-concern, worry not about your welfare, material or spiritual, abandon every desire…stop thinking of
achievement of any kind.

You are complete here and now, you need absolutely nothing.

Live in tune with things as they are and not as they are imagined.

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.

Once you understand that the false needs time and what needs time is false, you are nearer the Reality, which is timeless, ever in the now.

If you need time to achieve something, it must be false. The real is always with you; you need not wait to be what you are.

Nothing can make you happier than you are. All search for happiness is misery and leads to more misery.

It is not experience that you need, but the freedom from all experience.

To deal with things knowledge of things is needed. To deal with people, you need insight, sympathy. To deal with yourself you need nothing.

Be what you are: conscious being and don't stray away from yourself.

Life is worthy of the name only when it reflects Reality in action.

Most of the people vegetate, but do not live. They merely gather experience and enrich their memory.

Experience is the denial of Reality.

The old grooves must be erased in your brain, without forming new ones. You must realize yourself as the immovable.

The mystical is most practical.

65. A Quiet Mind is All You Need

While looking with the mind, you cannot go beyond it. To go beyond, you must look away from the mind and its contents.

A quiet mind is all you need. All else will happen rightly, once your mind is quiet.

Just look away from all that happens in your mind and bring it to the feeling 'I am'.

The 'I am' is not a direction. It is the negation of all direction.

The sense of identity pervades the universal. Search and you shall discover the Universal Person, who is yourself and infinitely more.

The entire universe is your body and you need not be afraid of it.

Begin by realizing that the world is in you, not you in the world.

Both anatomy and astronomy describe you.

You have two ways: …either you become totally self-concerned, or totally un-self-concerned. It is the word 'totally' that is important.

You must be extreme to reach the Supreme.

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…All you have to do is to give attention to the obstacles created by the foolish mind.

64. Whatever pleases you, Keeps you Back

Whatever can be lost is not really one's own; and what is not your own of what use can it be to you?

In my world nothing is pushed about, all happens by itself.

Mere knowledge is not enough; the knower must be known.

All existence is in space and time, limited and temporary. He who experiences existence is also limited and temporary.

I am not concerned either with 'what exists' or with 'who exists'. I take my stand beyond, where I am both and neither.

What the mind invents, the mind destroys. But the real is not invented and cannot be destroyed.

Cease to be the object and become the subject of all that happens; once having turned within, you will find yourself beyond the subject.

If in the state of witnessing you ask yourself: 'Who am I?', the answer comes at once, though it is wordless and silent.

As long as you deal in terms: real—unreal; awareness is the only reality that can be.

The Supreme 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

Realize that whatever there is true, noble and beautiful in the universe, it all comes from you, that you yourself are at the source of it.

As long as you are pleased with the lesser, you cannot have the highest. Whatever pleases you, keeps you back.

The integrity of the desire for the Supreme is by itself a call from the Supreme.

Give yourself no name, no shape. In the darkness and the silence reality is found.

Unselfish action, free from all concern with the body and its interests will carry you into the very heart of Reality.

Pleasure puts you to sleep and pain wakes you up. If you do not want to suffer, don't go to sleep.

You cannot know yourself thru bliss alone…bliss is your very nature. You must face the opposite, what you are not, to find enlightenment.

Your disbelief does not matter. My words are true and they will do their work. This is the beauty of satsang.

63. Notion of Doership is Bondage

There is only life. There is nobody who lives a life.

Contemplate life as infinite, undivided, ever present, ever active, until you realize yourself as one with it.

Being remains, but not self-being.

The false self wants to continue—pleasantly. Therefore it is always engaged in ensuring one's continuity. Life is unafraid and free.

A little whorl arises in the mind, which indulges in fantasies & imagines itself dominating and controlling life. Life itself is desireless.

No ambition is spiritual.

The mind is a cheat. The more pious it seems, the worse the betrayal.

The very notion of doership, of being a cause, is bondage.

Reality need not continue—knowing itself indestructible, it is indifferent to the destruction of forms and expressions.

You are in bondage by inadvertence. Attention liberates. You are taking so many things for granted. Begin to question.

All hangs on the idea 'I am'. Examine it very thoroughly. It lies at the root of every trouble.

62. In the Supreme the Witness Appears

The present 'I am' is as false as the 'I was' & 'I shall be'. It is merely an idea in the mind…& the separate identity it creates is false.

You need not chase the 'I am' to kill it. You cannot. All you need is a sincere longing for reality…atma-bhakti, the love of the Supreme.

Merely talking about Reality without doing anything about it is self-defeating.

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… 'higher' self, considers himself apart from the observed, the 'lower' self, despises it…the situation is hopeless.

It is only when the observer accepts the person 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.

If you think that Buddha, Christ or 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, & they address and admonish the vyakta only.

They tell him to give attention to the outer self, to guide 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.

Affectionate awareness is the crucial factor that brings Reality into focus.

Where there is no mind, there is no back to it. I am all front, no back! The void speaks, the void remains.

61. Matter is Consciousness Itself

Your concern with future is due to fear of pain and desire for pleasure, to the jnani all is bliss: he is happy with whatever comes.

There is nothing wrong with the world. What is wrong is in the way you look at it.

It is your own imagination that misleads you. Without imagination there is no world.

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.

In my world love is the only law.

Everything happens, but there is a continuous canceling out, and in the end it is as if nothing happened.

You can distinguish in your life a pattern or see merely a chain of accidents. Explanations are meant to please the mind…not be true.

Reality is indefinable and indescribable.

Perfection is not in the future. It is now.

When the mind is eager for reality, it gives attention.

When the mind is intensely interested, it becomes one with the object of interest -- the seer and the seen become one in seeing.

The lover and the loved become one in loving.

60. Live Facts, not Fancies

Contradiction is the mark of the false; the real never contradicts itself.

The moment we perceive our insanity, we are on the way to sanity.

Life makes you conscious, but the teacher makes you aware.

There is no good and no evil. In every concrete situation there is only the necessary and the unnecessary.

In my world even what you call evil is the servant of the good and therefore necessary.

The needful is good and the needless is evil. In your world the pleasant is good and the painful is evil.

The universe is perfect as a whole and the part's striving for perfection is a way of joy.

Willingly sacrifice the imperfect to the perfect and there will be no more talk about good and evil.

59. Desire and Fear: Self-centered States

The bliss of reality does not exclude suffering.

Whatever may be the situation, if it is acceptable, it is pleasant. If it is not acceptable, it is painful.

Acceptance of pain takes you much deeper than pleasure does.

The personal self by its very nature is constantly pursuing pleasure & avoiding pain. The ending of this pattern is the ending of the self.

The ending of the self with its desires and fears enables you to return to your real nature, the source of all happiness and peace.

When pain is accepted for what it is, a lesson & warning, & deeply looked into & heeded, the separation between pain & pleasure breaks down.

Accept both as they come, enjoy both while they last, let them go, as they must.

The bliss is in the awareness of it, in not shrinking, or in any way turning away from it. All happiness comes from awareness.

The fact of pain is easily brought within the focus of awareness. With suffering it is not that simple.

To focus suffering is not enough, for mental life, as we know it, is one continuous stream of suffering.

To reach the deeper layers of suffering you must go to its roots and uncover their vast underground network…

…where fear and desire are closely interwoven and the currents of life's energy oppose, obstruct and destroy each other.

By being with yourself, the 'I am'; by watching yourself in your daily life with alert interest,…

…with the intention to understand rather than to judge, in full acceptance of whatever may emerge, because it is there,…

…you encourage the deep to come to the surface and enrich your life and consciousness with its captive energies.

This is the great work of awareness; it removes obstacles and releases energies by understanding the nature of life and mind.

Intelligence is the door to freedom and alert attention is the mother of intelligence.

58. Perfection, Destiny of All

You want to know yourself. For this keep steadily in the focus of consciousness the only clue you have: your certainty of being.

The entire universe is your Guru. You learn from everything, if you are alert and intelligent.

All that lives, works for protecting, perpetuating and expanding consciousness. This is the world's sole meaning and purpose.

There is no difficulty in finding a Guru, because the Guru is in search of you. The Guru is always ready; you are not ready.

What I have discovered by the grace of my Guru is: I am nothing that can be pointed at. I am neither a 'this' nor a 'that'.

57. Beyond Mind there is no Suffering

I find that somehow, by shifting the focus of attention, I become the very thing I look at and experience the kind of consciousness it has…

…I become the inner witness of the thing. I call this capacity of entering other focal points of consciousness – love…

…Love says: 'I am everything'. Wisdom says: 'I am nothing' Between the two my life flows.

Since at any point of time & space I can be both the subject & the object…, I express it by saying that I am both, & neither, & beyond both.

Suffering warns us that the structure of memories and habits, which we call the person…, is threatened by loss or change.

Pain is essential for the survival of the body, but none compels you to suffer.

Suffering is due entirely to clinging or resisting; it is a sign of our unwillingness to move on, to flow with life.

The essence of saintliness is total acceptance of the present moment, harmony with things as they happen.