go ever deeper

Your outer life is unimportant. You can become a night watchman and live happily. It is what you are inwardly that matters. Your inner peace and joy you have to earn. It is much more difficult than earning money. No university can teach you to be yourself. The only way to learn is by practice. Right away begin to be yourself. 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.'

Reality in action

Life is worthy of the name only when it reflects Reality in action. No university will teach you how to live so that when the time of dying comes, you can say: I lived well I do not need to live again. Most of us die wishing we could live again. So many mistakes committed, so much left undone. Most of the people vegetate, but do not live. They merely gather experience and enrich their memory. But experience is the denial of Reality, which is neither sensory nor conceptual, neither of the body, nor of the mind, though it includes and transcends both.

freedom from all experience

Experience leaves only memories behind and adds to the burden which is heavy enough. You need no more experiences. The past ones are sufficient. And if you feel you need more, look into the hearts of people around you. You will find a variety of experiences which you would not be able to go through in a thousand years. Learn from the sorrows of others and save yourself your own. It is not experience that you need, but the freedom from all experience. Don't be greedy for experience; you need none.

pure being—awareness—bliss

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. It is not at all difficult, but detachment is needed. It is the clinging to the false that makes the true so difficult to see.

abandon all self-identification

If you seek reality you must set yourself free of all backgrounds, of all cultures, of all patterns of thinking and feeling. Even the idea of being man or woman, or even human, should be discarded. The ocean of life contains all, not only humans. So, first of all abandon all self-identification, stop thinking of yourself as such-and-such, so-and-so, this or that. Abandon all self-concern, worry not about your welfare, material or spiritual, abandon every desire, gross or subtle, stop thinking of achievement of any kind. You are complete here and now, you need absolutely nothing.

It does not mean that you must be brainless and foolhardy, improvident or indifferent; only the basic anxiety for oneself must go. You need some food, clothing and shelter for you and yours, but this will not create problems as long as greed is not taken for a need. Live in tune with things as they are and not as they are imagined.

imparts reality to all

That which does not depend for its existence, which does not arise with the universe arising, nor set with the universe setting, which does not need any proof, but imparts reality to all it touches. It is the nature of the false that it appears real for a moment. One could say that the true becomes the father of the false. But the false is limited in time and space and is produced by circumstances.

to formulate truth denies it

In truth you do not help others, because there are no others. You divide people into noble and ignoble and you ask the noble to help the ignoble. You separate, you evaluate, you judge and condemn—in the name of truth you destroy it. Your very desire to formulate truth denies it, because it cannot be contained in words. Truth can be expressed only by the denial of the false—in action. For this you must see the false as false (viveka) and reject it (vairagya). Renunciation of the false is liberating and energizing. It lays open the road to perfection.

the passive or the active way

What you take to be the 'I' in the 'I am' is not you. To know that you are is natural, to know what you are is the result of much investigation. You will have to explore the entire field of consciousness and go beyond it. For this you must find the right teacher and create the conditions needed for discovery. Generally speaking, there are two ways: external and internal. Either you live with somebody who knows the Truth and submit yourself entirely to his guiding and molding influence, or you seek the inner guide and follow the inner light wherever it takes you. In both cases your personal desires and fears must be disregarded. You learn either by proximity or by investigation, the passive or the active way. You either let yourself be carried by the river of life and love represented by your Guru, or you make your own efforts, guided by your inner star. In both cases you must move on, you must be earnest. Rare are the people who are lucky to find somebody worthy of trust and love. Most of them must take the hard way, the way of intelligence and understanding, of discrimination and detachment (viveka-vairagya). This is the way open to all.

the 'I am' is not a direction

All directions are within the mind! I am not asking you to look in any particular direction. 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. Ultimately even the 'I am' will have to go, for you need not keep on asserting what is obvious. Bringing the mind to the feeling 'I am' merely helps in turning the mind away from everything else.

the Supreme is beyond all distinctions

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 term 'real' does not apply, for in it all is real and, therefore, need not be labeled 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 real is not invented

We were told about ourselves, our parents, name, position, duties and so on. We never cared to verify. The way to truth lies through the destruction of the false. To destroy the false, you must question your most inveterate beliefs. Of these the idea that you are the body is the worst. With the body comes the world, with the world—God, who is supposed to have created the world and thus it starts—fears, religions, prayers, sacrifices, all sorts of systems—all to protect and support the child-man, frightened out of his wits by monsters of his own making. Realize that what you are cannot be born nor die and with the fear gone all suffering ends.

What the mind invents, the mind destroys. But the real is not invented and cannot be destroyed. Hold on to that over which the mind has no power. What I am telling you about is neither in the past nor in the future. Nor is it in the daily life as it flows in the now. It is timeless and the total timelessness of it is beyond the mind.

an enrichment of the false

The saints and Yogis, by immense efforts and sacrifices, acquire many miraculous powers and can do much good in the way of helping people and inspiring faith, yet it does not make them perfect. It is not a way to reality, but merely an enrichment of the false. All effort leads to more effort; whatever was built up must be maintained, whatever was acquired must be protected against decay or loss. 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. 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.

deal with the 'I'-sense

You must deal with the 'I'-sense if you want to be free of it. Watch it in operation and at peace, how it starts and when it ceases, what it wants and how it gets it, till you see clearly and understand fully. After all, all the Yogas, whatever their source and character, have only one aim: to save you from the calamity of separate existence, of being a meaningless dot in a vast and beautiful picture.

You suffer because you have alienated yourself from reality and now you seek an escape from this alienation. You cannot escape from your own obsessions. You can only cease nursing them.

It is because the ‘I am' is false that it wants to continue. Reality need not continue—knowing itself indestructible, it is indifferent to the destruction 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 person' once and for good. Being remains, but not self-being.

begin to question

Change your ways of feeling and thinking, take stock of them and examine them closely. You are in bondage by inadvertence. Attention liberates. You are taking so many things for granted. Begin to question. The most obvious things are the most doubtful. Ask yourself such questions as: ‘Was I really born?' 'Am I really so-and-so?’ 'How do I know that I exist? 'Who are my parents?’ 'Have they created me, or have I created them?' 'Must I believe all I am told about myself?' ‘Who am I, anyhow?'. You have put so much energy into building a prison for yourself. Now spend as much on demolishing it. In fact, demolition is easy, for the false dissolves when it is discovered. All hangs on the idea 'I am'. Examine it very thoroughly. It lies at the root of every trouble. It is a sort of skin that separates you from the reality. The real is both within and without the skin, but the skin itself is not real. This 'I am' idea was not born with you. You could have lived very well without it. It came later due to your self-identification with the body. It created an illusion of separation where there was none. It made you a stranger in your own world and made the world alien and inimical. Without the sense of 'I am' life goes on. There are moments when we are without the sense of 'I am'. at peace and happy. With the return of the 'I am' trouble starts.

life is unafraid and free

Whether you plan or don't, life goes on. But in life itself a little whorl arises in the mind, which indulges in fantasies and imagines itself dominating and controlling life. Life itself is desireless. But the false self wants to continue—pleasantly. Therefore it is always engaged in ensuring one's continuity. Life is unafraid and free. As long as you have the idea of influencing events, liberation is not for you: The very notion of doership, of being a cause, is bondage.

the fundamental reality

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 the 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.

the 'I am' is one

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 mind 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 be. 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, and 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. 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. You may put it differently: the body defines the outer self, consciousness the inner, and in pure awareness the Supreme is contacted.

affectionate awareness

You need not chase the 'I am' to kill it. You cannot. All you need is a sincere longing for reality. We call it atma-bhakti, the love of the Supreme: or mokshasankalpa, the determination to be free from the false. Without love, and will inspired by love, nothing can be done. 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, 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.

all happens by itself

The objective universe has structure, is orderly and beautiful. Nobody can deny it. But structure and pattern, imply constraint and compulsion. My world is absolutely free; everything in it is self-determined. Therefore I keep on saying that all happens by itself. There is order in my world too, but it is not imposed from outside. It comes spontaneously and immediately, because of its timelessness. Perfection is not in the future. It is now.

as if nothing happened

Everything moves according to its nature. Where is the need of a policeman? Every action creates a reaction, which balances and neutralizes the action. Everything happens, but there is a continuous canceling out, and in the end it is as if nothing happened.

without imagination there is no world

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. You are the space (akash) in which it moves, the time in which it lasts, the love that gives it life. Cut off imagination and attachment and what remains?

the right response

Every situation is a challenge which demands the right response. When the response is right, the challenge is met and the problem ceases. If the response is wrong, the challenge is not met and the problem remains unsolved. Your unsolved problems—that is what constitutes your karma. Solve them rightly and be free.

your private dream world

Are you sure we live in the same world? I do not mean nature, the sea and the land, plants and animals. They are not the problem, nor the endless space, the infinite time, the inexhaustible power. Do not be misled by my eating and smoking, reading and talking. My mind is not here, my life is not here. Your world, of desires and their fulfilments, of fears and their escapes, is definitely not my world. I do not even perceive it, except through what you tell me about it. It is your private dream world and my only reaction to it is to ask you to stop dreaming.

first be free of suffering yourself

M: It is the perfection of our self-nature which makes everything possible, perceivable, interesting. It knows no suffering, for it neither likes nor dislikes; neither accepts nor rejects. Creation and destruction are the two poles between which it weaves its ever-changing pattern. Be free from predilections and preferences and the mind with its burden of sorrow will be no more.

Q: But I am not alone to suffer. There are others.

M: When you go to them with your desires and fears, you merely add to their sorrows. First be free of suffering yourself and then only hope of helping others. You do not even need to hope—your very existence will be the greatest help a man can give his fellowmen.

the great work of 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.

acceptance of pain

Pleasure is readily accepted, while all the powers of the self reject pain. As the acceptance of pain is the denial of the self, and the self stands in the way of true happiness, the wholehearted acceptance of pain releases the springs of happiness.

the ending of the self

You will find in pain a joy which pleasure cannot yield, for the simple reason that acceptance of pain takes you much deeper than pleasure does. The personal self by its very nature is constantly pursuing pleasure and 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. The perennial desire for pleasure is the reflection of the timeless harmony within. It is an observable fact that one becomes self-conscious only when caught in the conflict between pleasure and pain, which demands choice and decision. It is this clash between desire and fear that causes anger, which is the great destroyer of sanity in life. When pain is accepted for what it is, a lesson and a warning, and deeply looked into and heeded, the separation between pain and pleasure breaks down, both become experience—painful when resisted, joyful when accepted.

the mistake is never the Guru's

A Guru can show the way back home, to your real self. What has this to do with the character, or temperament of the person he appears to be? Does he not clearly tell you that he is not the person? The only way you can judge is by the change in yourself when you are in his company. If you feel more at peace and happy, if you understand yourself with more than usual clarity and depth, it means you have met the right man. Take your time, but once you have made up your mind to trust him, trust him absolutely and follow every instruction fully and faithfully. It does not matter much if you do not accept him as your Guru and are satisfied with his company only. Satsang alone can also take you to your goal, provided it is unmixed and undisturbed. But once you accept somebody as your Guru, listen, remember and obey. Half-heartedness is a serious drawback and the cause of much self-created sorrow. The mistake is never the Guru's; it is always the obtuseness and cussedness of the discipline that is at fault.

Preface

This website is a collection of tweets from @Nisargadatta_M (the tweets are being replayed on the Facebook account of the same name [see link on top right sidebar]) selecting quotes from consecutive chapters of "I Am That." As such, it is not to be misconstrued as a synoptic overview of the book (although there was more of an attempt to represent the feeling of each chapter in the last half of the book) nor even a selection of greatest quotes. Rather, it is what it is: a dream of Nisargadatta Maharaj as a twitter avatar, using the book as its daily source. Of course, one can get the flavor of each chapter of the book from the quotes, but not its essence. One needs to read the book (a link to a free pdf copy is supplied on the right sidebar). Jai guru deva om.

Introduction

Nisargadatta on How to Read ‘I Am That’

Q: I have been reading and studying I Am That.' I still feel dissatisfied with my way of living.

M: Have you tried to find out the reason?

Q: No, I guess that I love my personality too much.

M: You still feel that you are the body-mind; that is why you are feeling unhappy.

Q: That's right.

M: You have been reading with the mind. Now, whenever you read the book consider that you are the universal consciousness, and from that point of view do your reading and studying. Read it from the point of view that you have no form or color, that you are the light.


from ‘Seeds of Consciousness’

Table of Tweets

§ 1. The Sense of ‘I am’
§ 2. Obsession with the body
§ 3. The Living Present
§ 4. Real World is Beyond the Mind
§ 5. What is Born must Die
§ 6. Meditation
§ 7. The Mind
§ 8. The Self Stands Beyond Mind
§ 9. Responses of Memory
§ 10. Witnessing
§ 11. Awareness and Consciousness
§ 12. The Person is not Reality
§ 13. The Supreme, the Mind and the Body
§ 14. Appearances and the Reality
§ 15. The Jnani
§ 16. Desirelessness, the Highest Bliss
§ 17. The Ever-Present
§ 18. To Know What you Are, Find What you Are Not
§ 19. Reality lies in Objectivity
§ 20. The Supreme is Beyond All
§ 21. Who am I?
§ 22. Life is Love and Love is Life
§ 23. Discrimination leads to Detachment
§ 24. God is the All-doer, the Jnani a Non-doer
§ 25. Hold on to ‘I am’
§ 26. Personality, an Obstacle
§ 27. The Beginningless Begins Forever
§ 28. All Suffering is Born of Desire
§ 29. Living is Life’s only Purpose
§ 30. You are Free NOW
§ 31. Do not Undervalue Attention
§ 32. Life is the Supreme Guru
§ 33. Everything Happens by Itself
§ 34. Mind is restlessness Itself
§ 35. Greatest Guru is Your Inner Self
§ 36. Killing Hurts the Killer, not the Killed
§ 37. Beyond Pain and Pleasure there is Bliss
§ 38. Spiritual Practice is Will Asserted and Re-ass...
§ 39. By Itself Nothing has Existence
§ 40. Only the Self is Real
§ 41. Develop the Witness Attitude
§ 42. Reality can not be Expressed
§ 43. Ignorance can be Recognised, not Jnana
§ 44. 'I am' is True, all else is Inference
§ 45. What Comes and Goes has no Being
§ 46. Awareness of Being is Bliss
§ 47. Watch Your Mind
§ 48. Awareness is Free
§ 49. Mind Causes Insecurity
§ 50. Self-awareness is the Witness
§ 51. Be Indifferent to Pain and Pleasure
§ 52. Being Happy, Making Happy is the Rhythm of Lif...
§ 53. Desires Fulfilled, Breed More Desires
§ 54. Body and Mind are Symptoms of Ignorance
§ 55. Give up All and You Gain All
§ 56. Consciousness Arising, World Arises
§ 57. Beyond Mind there is no Suffering
§ 58. Perfection, Destiny of All
§ 59. Desire and Fear: Self-centered States
§ 60. Live Facts, not Fancies
§ 61. Matter is Consciousness Itself
§ 62. In the Supreme the Witness Appears
§ 63. Notion of Doership is Bondage
§ 64. Whatever pleases you, Keeps you Back
§ 65. A Quiet Mind is All You Need
§ 66. All Search for Happiness is Misery
§ 67. Experience is not the Real Thing
§ 68. Seek the Source of Consciousness
§ 69. Transiency is Proof of Unreality
§ 70. God is the End of All Desire and Knowledge
§ 71. In Self-awareness you Learn about Yourself
§ 72. What is Pure, Unalloyed, Unattached is Real
§ 73. Death of the Mind is Birth of Wisdom
§ 74. Truth is Here and Now
§ 75. In Peace and Silence you Grow
§ 76. To Know that You do not Know, is True Knowledg...
§ 77. 'I' and 'Mine' are False Ideas
§ 78. All Knowledge is Ignorance
§ 79. Person, Witness and the Supreme
§ 80. Awareness
§ 81. Root Cause of Fear
§ 82. Absolute Perfection is Here and Now
§ 83. The True Guru
§ 84. Your Goal is Your Guru
§ 85. ‘I am’: The Foundation of all Experience
§ 86. The Unknown is the Home of the Real
§ 87. Keep the Mind Silent and You shall Discover
§ 88. Knowledge by the Mind, is not True Knowledge
§ 89. Progress in Spiritual Life
§ 90. Surrender to Your Own Self
§ 91. Pleasure and Happiness
§ 92. Go Beyond the I-am-the-body Idea
§ 93. Man is not the Doer
§ 94. You are Beyond Space and Time
§ 95. Accept Life as it Comes
§ 96. Abandon Memories and Expectations
§ 97. Mind and the World are not Separate
§ 98. Freedom from Self-identification
§ 99. The Perceived can not be the Perceiver
§ 100. Understanding leads to Freedom
§ 101. Jnani does not Grasp, nor Hold

101. Jnani does not Grasp, nor Hold

The jnani’s identity with all that is, is so complete, that as he responds to the universe, so does the universe respond to him.

I am the infinite expanse of consciousness in which innumerable persons emerge and disappear in endless succession.

Time is endless, though limited, eternity is in the split moment of the now.

Once you are well-established in the now, you have nowhere else to go; what you are timelessly, you express eternally.

I am entirely unimagined. I am what I am, not identifiable with any physical or mental state.

The world you think of is in your own mind. I can see it through your eyes & mind, but I am fully aware that it is a projection of memories.

There is a vastness beyond the farthest reaches of the mind. That vastness is my home; that vastness is myself.

Love is boundless. What is limited to a few cannot be called love.

All is within my consciousness; all is my own. It is madness to split oneself through likes & dislikes. I am beyond both. I am not alienated

M: 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.

Q: What arouses interest?

M: Earnestness, the sign of maturity.

Q: And how does maturity come about?

M: By keeping your mind clear and clean, by living your life in full awareness of every moment as it happens, by examining and dissolving one's desires and fears as soon as they arise.

Wonder is the dawn of wisdom. To be steadily and consistently wondering is sadhana.

Self-awareness is Yoga.

…

100. Understanding leads to Freedom

It is the mind that is violent and also afraid of its own violence.

Unless you make tremendous efforts, you will not be convinced that effort will take you nowhere.

The self in relation to itself is neither violent nor non-violent, it is either aware or unaware of itself.

Just look at yourself as you are, see yourself as you are, accept yourself as you are and go ever deeper into what you are.

The destruction of the false is not violence.

The mind happens to me, I do not happen to the mind.

Resolutely reject what you are not, till the real Self emerges in its glorious nothingness, its 'not-a-thingness.'

It comes with understanding, not with determination, which is but another form of memory. An understanding mind is free of desires & fears.

Become fully aware of your problem—look at it from all sides—watch how it affects your life. Then leave it alone—You can't do more than that

Do not expect perfection. There is no perfection in manifestation.

The world itself is a miracle. I am beyond miracles—I am absolutely normal.

99. The Perceived can not be the Perceiver

To find reality you must be real in the smallest daily action; there can be no deceit in the search for truth.

There is no such thing as mind. There are ideas & some of them are wrong. Abandon the wrong ideas, for they…obstruct your vision of yourself

Assertions are usually wrong and denials—right.

Whatever you can know with your mind is of the mind, not you; about yourself you can only say: 'I am, I am aware, I like It'.

You can only know your self by being yourself without any attempt at self-definition and self-description.

You cannot be alive for you are life itself.

Don't try to reform yourself, just see the futility of all change. The changeful keeps on changing while the changeless is waiting.

All change affects the mind only. To be what you are, you must go beyond the mind, into your own being.

Self-realization…comes first. The mind cannot go beyond itself by itself. It must explode.

The explosive power comes from the real. But you are well advised to have your mind ready for it.

What I teach is the ancient and simple way of liberation through understanding. Understand your own mind and its hold on you will snap.

No effort can take you there, only the clarity of understanding. Trace your misunderstandings and abandon them, that is all.

There is nothing to seek and find, for there is nothing lost. Relax and watch the 'I am'. Reality is just behind it.

Keep quiet, keep silent; it will emerge, or, rather, it will take you in.

98. Freedom from Self-identification

The mind must be open & quiet to see…What we are trying to do here is to bring our minds into the right state for understanding what is real

Just be aware that you are and remain aware -- don't say: 'yes, I am; what next?' There is no 'next' in 'I am'. It is a timeless state.

As long as you are interested in your present way of living, you will not abandon it.

Discovery cannot come as long as you cling to the familiar.

Accept no guidance but from within, and even then sift out all memories for they will mislead you.

You are not interested in others as persons, but only as far as they enrich, or ennoble your own image of yourself.

And the ultimate in selfishness is to care only for the protection, preservation and multiplication of one's own body.

Love is not selective, desire is selective.

Punishment is but legalized crime. In a society built on prevention, rather than retaliation, there would be very little crime.

What is religion? A cloud in the sky. I live in the sky, not in the clouds, which are so many words held together.

Remove the verbiage and what remains? Truth remains.

We talk of God, Truth and Love, but instead of direct experience we have definitions.

Instead of enlarging and deepening action we chisel our definitions. And we imagine that we know what we can define!

Religions show their true face in action, in silent action. To know what man believes, watch how he acts.

You know everything, but you do not know yourself. For the self is not known through words—only direct insight will reveal it.

97. Mind and the World are not Separate

Those who practice the sadhana of focusing their minds on ‘I am' may feel related to others who have followed the same sadhana & succeeded.

The ‘Nine Masters' tradition, Navnath Parampara, is like a river—it flows into the ocean of reality & whoever enters it is carried along.

The legend says that our first teacher was Rishi Dattatreya, the great incarnation of the Trinity of Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva.

If you accept a Navnath Sampradaya teacher as your Guru, you join his Sampradaya. Usually you receive a token of his grace.

Your belonging is a matter of your own feeling and conviction. After all, it is all verbal and formal.

In reality there is neither Guru nor disciple, neither theory nor practice, neither ignorance nor realization.

Call yourself by any name—as long as you are intensely mindful of yourself, the…obstacles to self-knowledge are bound to be swept away.

There is no reality in ideas. The fact is that without you, neither the universe nor its cause could have come into being.

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.

I know no sin, nor sinner…Everybody behaves according to his nature. It cannot be helped, nor need it be regretted.

Life lives on life. In nature the process is compulsory, in society it should be voluntary. There can be no life without sacrifice.

The world does not yield to changing. By its very nature it is painful & transient. See it as it is & divest yourself of all desire & fear.

You can be happy in the world only when you are free of it.

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.

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.

96. Abandon Memories and Expectations

The search for reality is the most dangerous of all undertakings for it will destroy the world in which you live.

But if your motive is love of truth and life, you need not be afraid.

Learn to distinguish…the unchanging in the changing, till you realize that all differences are in appearance only and oneness is a fact.

Once you can say w/ confidence from direct experience: 'I am the world, the world is myself', you are free from desire & fear on one hand…

and become totally responsible for the world on the other.

Nothing is necessary, nothing is inevitable. Habit and passion blind and mislead. Compassionate awareness heals and redeems.

Love is not lazy & clarity directs. You need not worry about action, look after your mind & heart. Stupidity & selfishness are the only evil

To meet all the vicissitudes of life is penance enough! You need not invent trouble.

To meet cheerfully whatever life brings is all the austerity you need.

Share willingly and gladly all you have with whoever needs—don't invent self-inflicted cruelties.

Accept what comes.

Do nothing that may be unworthy of the glorious reality within your heart and you shall be happy and remain happy.

But you must seek the self and, having found it, stay with it.

Watch what happens to you. Don't ask others. Their man may not be your Guru. A Guru may be universal in essence, but not in his expressions.

All you have to do is to abandon all memories and expectations. Just keep yourself ready in utter nakedness and nothingness.

Just see the need of being abandoned. Don't resist, don't hold on to the person you take yourself to be.

Don't trust definitions and descriptions—they are grossly misleading.

By all means do feel lost! As long as you feel competent and confident, reality is beyond your reach.

Unless you accept inner adventure as a way of life, discovery will not come to you.

Be nothing, know nothing, have nothing. This is the only life worth living, the only happiness worth having.

You must find your own way. Unless you find it yourself it will not be your own way and will take you nowhere.

Earnestly live your truth as you have found it—act on the little you have understood.

It is earnestness that will take you through, not cleverness—your own or another's.

Knowing them to be superficial, give no value to your experiences, forget them as soon as they are over.

Above all you need inner peace—which demands harmony between the inner and the outer. Do what you believe in and believe in what you do.

95. Accept Life as it Comes

Destiny is only a blanket word to cover up your ignorance. Chance is another word.

In this universe, when one thing changes, everything changes. Hence the great power of man in changing the world by changing himself.

It is only what you strive for, out of your own imagination and desire, that gives you trouble.

Accept life as it comes and you will find it a blessing.

If you were really compassionate, you would’ve abandoned long ago all self-concern & entered the state from which alone you can really help.

Complete conviction generates both desire and courage. And meditation is the art of achieving faith through understanding.

In meditation you consider the teaching…in all its aspects
& repeatedly, until out of clarity confidence is born &, with confidence, action.

Conviction & action are inseparable. If action doesn’t follow conviction, examine your convictions—don't accuse yourself of lack of courage.

Self-depreciation will take you nowhere. Without clarity and emotional assent of what use is will?

Energy comes from love—you must love to act—whatever the shape and object of your love. Without clarity and charity courage is destructive.

Action delayed is action abandoned. There may be other chances for other actions, but the present moment is lost—irretrievably lost.

All preparation is for the future—you cannot prepare for the present.

Clarity is now, action is now. Thinking of being ready impedes action. And action is the touchstone of reality.

Find your timeless being and your action will bear it testimony.

To realize your independence, you must test it by letting go all you were dependent on.

The realized man lives on the level of the absolutes; his wisdom, love and courage are complete, there is nothing relative about him.

The tester, the tested and the set up for testing are all within; it is an inner drama to which none can be a party.

Keep quiet, undisturbed, and the wisdom and the power will come on their own. You need not hanker. Wait in silence of the heart and mind.

It is very easy to be quiet, but willingness is rare. You people want to become supermen overnight.

Abandon every attempt, just be; don't strive, don't struggle, let go every support, hold on to the blind sense of being.

If you know how to do it, you will not do it.

94. You are Beyond Space and Time

The world is but the surface of the mind and the mind is infinite.

When the mind is quiet it reflects reality. When it is motionless through and through, it dissolves and only reality remains.

Reality is so concrete, so actual, so much more tangible than mind and matter, that compared to it even diamond is soft like butter.

Just see the person you imagine yourself to be as a part of the world you perceive within your mind and look at the mind from the outside…

for you are not the mind.

See yourself in all that lives and your behavior will express your vision.

The very desire to live is the messenger of death, as the longing to be happy is the outline of sorrow.

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

Keep very quiet and watch what comes to the surface of the mind. Reject the known, welcome the so far unknown and reject it in its turn.

Thus you come to a state in which there is no knowledge, only being, in which being itself is knowledge.

To know by being is direct knowledge.

Pleasure depends on things, happiness does not.

Pleasure…merely increases the false conviction that one needs to have and do things to be happy when in reality it is just the opposite.

Real happiness is utterly unselfconscious…best expressed negatively as: 'there is nothing wrong with me. I have nothing to worry about'.

Nothing is only an idea, it depends on the memory of something. Pure being is quite independent of existence.

Consciousness comes and goes, awareness shines immutably.

If you say 'I am aware', it only means: 'I am conscious of thinking about being aware'. There is no 'I am' in awareness.

In the state of non-duality all separation ceases.

Something you may call identity, remains…Love creates its own necessities, even of becoming a person.

It is only the mind that moves or does not move. The real is beyond, you are beyond.

To see everything as imagination, born of desire, is necessary for self-realization.

We miss the real by lack of attention and create the unreal by excess of imagination.

93. Man is not the Doer

As long as there is the body and the sense of identity with the body, frustration is inevitable.

Only when you know yourself as entirely alien to and different from the body, will you find respite from…fear and craving.

Merely assuaging fears and satisfying desires will not remove this sense of emptiness you are trying to escape from.

Only self-knowledge can help you. By self-knowledge I mean full knowledge of what you are not. Such knowledge is attainable and final.

But to the discovery of what you are there can be no end. The more you discover, the more there remains to discover.

You cannot change your circumstances, but your attitudes you can change. You need not be attached to the non-essentials.

Only the necessary is good. There is peace only in the essential.

You cannot see the true unless you are at peace.

A quiet mind is essential for right perception, which again is required for self-realization.

Your desire just happens to you along with its fulfillment, or non-fulfillment. You can change neither.

You may believe that you exert yourself, strive and struggle. Again, it all merely happens, including the fruits of the work.

Nothing is by you and for you.

All is in the picture exposed on the cinema screen, nothing in the light, including what you take yourself to be, the person.

You are the light only.

Freedom is freedom from worry. Having realized that you cannot influence the results, pay no attention to your desires and fears.

Give attention to what worries you, that is all. After all, worry is mental pain and pain is invariably a call for attention.

In fear there is memory and anticipation, past and future. Attention brings you back to the present, the now.

The presence in the now is a state ever at hand, but rarely noticed.

Sadhana is only a vessel & it must be filled to the brim with earnestness, which is but love in action. For nothing can be done without love

Love your self wisely and you will reach the summit of perfection. Everybody loves his body, but few love their real being.

Your real being is love itself and your many loves are its reflections according to the situation at the moment.

Think over, feel out deeply what is really good for you & strive for it earnestly. Very soon you will find that the real is your only good.

It is not what you do, but what you stop doing that matters.

The people who begin their sadhana are so feverish and restless, that they have to be very busy to keep themselves on the track.

An absorbing routine is good for them. After some time they quieten down and turn away from effort.

In peace and silence the skin of the 'I' dissolves and the inner and the outer become one. The real sadhana is effortless.

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 the passive aspects of pure being, which is in both and beyond both.

Space and time are the body and the mind of the universal existence.

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.

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.

Circumstances and conditions rule the ignorant. The knower of reality is not compelled. The only law he obeys is that of love.

92. Go Beyond the I-am-the-body Idea

What prevents you from knowing yourself as all and beyond all, is the mind based on memory.

Truth and love are man's real nature and mind and heart are the means of its expression.

Memory is a good servant, but a bad master. It effectively prevents discovery. There is no place for effort in reality.

It is selfishness, due to a self-identification with the body, that is the main problem and the cause of all other problems.

Selfishness cannot be removed by effort, only by clear insight into its causes and effects.

Effort is a sign of conflict between incompatible desires. They should be seen as they are—then only they dissolve.

Use every incident of the day to remind you that without you as the witness there would be neither animal nor God. Understand…you are both.

Wherever you go you find yourself. However far you reach out in time, you are there…The 'here' is everywhere and the now—always.

Go beyond the 'I am-the-body' idea and you will find that space and time are in you and not you in space and time.

Each seeker accepts, or invents, a method which suits him, applies it to himself with some earnestness and effort, obtains results according to his temperament and expectations, casts them into the mound of words, builds them into a system, establishes a tradition and begins to admit others into his 'school of Yoga'. It is all built on memory and imagination. No such school is valueless, nor indispensable; in each one can progress up to the point, when all desire for progress must be abandoned to make further progress possible. Then all schools are given up, all effort ceases; in solitude and darkness the vast step is made which ends ignorance and fear forever.

The true teacher, however, will not imprison his disciple in a prescribed set of ideas, feelings and actions; on the contrary, he will show him patiently the need to be free from all ideas and set patterns of behavior, to be vigilant and earnest and go with life wherever it takes him, not to enjoy or suffer, but to understand and learn. Under the right teacher the disciple learns to learn, not to remember and obey. Satsang, the company of the noble, does not mould, it liberates. Beware of all that makes you dependent. Most of the so-called 'surrenders to the Guru' end in disappointment, if not in tragedy. Fortunately, an earnest seeker will disentangle himself in time, the wiser for the experience.

'I am' is the ultimate fact; 'Who am I?' is the ultimate question to which everybody must find an answer.

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.

The spirit is a sport and enjoys to overcome obstacles. The harder the task the deeper and wider his self-realization.

91. Pleasure and Happiness

Every teacher teaches according to his own experience. Experience is shaped by belief and belief is shaped by experience.

It is the disciple that makes the Guru great.

Life teaches, where all else fails.

It is enough to have a good look at human faces to perceive the universality of suffering.

Your own happiness is so vulnerable and short-lived… It is just a moment of respite, a mere gap between two sorrows.

Real happiness is not vulnerable, because it does not depend on circumstances.

The world is full of living beings whose lives are squeezed between fear and craving.

Look at yourself fearlessly & you will at once realize that your happiness depends on conditions & circumstances…it is momentary, not real.

Real happiness flows from within.

You are quite satisfied with pleasures. There is no place for happiness. Empty your cup and clean it. It cannot be filled otherwise.

Others can give you pleasure, but never happiness.

There is no East and West in sorrow and fear. The problem is universal—suffering and the ending of suffering.

The cause of suffering is dependence and independence is the remedy.

Yoga is the science and the art of self-liberation through self-understanding.

Liberation is a natural process and in the long run, inevitable. But it is within your power to bring it into the now.

What it means to be natural or normal you do not know, nor do you know that you do not know.

That you are—you know. What you are—you don't know. Find out what you are.

90. Surrender to Your Own Self

We suffer for the sins of others, as others suffer for ours. Humanity is one. Ignorance of this fact does not change it.

Pain is a call for attention and the penalty of carelessness. Intelligent and compassionate action is the only remedy.

When the mind is engaged in serving the body, happiness is lost. To regain it, it seeks pleasure.

The urge to be happy is right, but the means of securing it are misleading, unreliable and destructive of true happiness.

Do not try to make yourself happy, rather question your very search for happiness.

Because you are not happy you seek happiness in pleasure; pleasure brings in pain and therefore you call it worldly.

You then long for some other pleasure, without pain, which you call divine.

In reality, pleasure is but a respite from pain. Happiness is both worldly and unworldly, within and beyond all that happens.

Be aware that whatever happens, happens to you, by you, through you, that you are the creator, enjoyer and destroyer of all you perceive.

This attitude of silent observation is the very foundation of Yoga. You see the picture, but you are not the picture.

What is born and reborn is not you. Let it happen, watch it happen.

Why exteriorize? Surrender to your own self, of which everything is an expression.

Go on, go beyond. A thing recognized is a thing transcended.

89. Progress in Spiritual Life

There is nothing new you will find here. The work we are doing is timeless.

I can only point at the sky; seeing of the star is your own work.

It is the absolute in you that takes you to the absolute beyond you.

To be denied personal existence is frightening, but you must face it and find your identity with the totality of life.

What I am, you are, and what you are—I am. The ‘I am’ is common to us all; beyond the ‘I am’ there is the immensity of light and love.

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

There is no need of training. Awareness is always with you. The same attention that you give to the outer, you turn to the inner.

It is the simple that is certain.

88. Knowledge by the Mind, is not True Knowledge

I am aware, for I imagine nothing.

You can know reality only when you are astonished.

Reality is common to all. Only the false is personal.

You cannot destroy the false, for you are creating it all the time. Withdraw from it, ignore it, go beyond, and it will cease to be.

Earnestness is not a yearning for the fruits of one’s endeavors. It is an expression of an inner shift of interest away from the false.

To keep the mind in its own place and on its own work is the liberation of the mind.

Nothing stands in the way of your liberation and it can happen here and now, but for your being more interested in other things.

You cannot fight with your interests. You must go with them, see through them and watch them reveal themselves as mere errors of judgment.

Running after saints is merely another game to play. Remember yourself instead and watch your daily life relentlessly. Be earnest.

Do not try to know the truth, for knowledge by the mind is not true knowledge. But you can know what is not true.

The idea that you know what is true is dangerous, for it keeps you imprisoned in the mind.

There can be no salvation, without investigation, because non-investigation is the main cause of bondage.

What the mind has done the mind must undo.

87. Keep the Mind Silent and You shall Discover

Words create words, reality is silent.

The sound of the word and the mental ripples it causes are experienced. There is no other reality behind it.

Words do not convey facts, they signal them. Once you are beyond the person, you need no words.

Words and questions come from the mind and hold you there. To go beyond the mind, you must be silent and quiet.

Peace and silence, silence and peace—this is the way beyond. Stop asking questions.

Beyond all, and pervading all, is the heart of being which beats steadily—manifested-unmanifested; manifested-unmanifested (saguna-nirguna).

You are responsible only for what you can change. All you can change is only your attitude. There lies your responsibility.

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.

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

In the question ‘Who am I?’ the ‘I’ is not known and the question can be worded as: “I do not know what I mean by ‘I’”

You need not know ‘why’ and ‘how’, there is no end to questions. Abandon all desires, keep your mind silent and you shall discover.

You need not know to be, but you must be to know.

86. The Unknown is the Home of the Real

All that happens in your consciousness is your Guru. And pure awareness beyond consciousness is the supreme Guru.

Somebody, anybody, will tell you that you are pure consciousness, not a body-mind. Accept it as a possibility and investigate earnestly.

Sadhana consists in shifting the emphasis from the superficial and changeful person to the immutable and ever-present witness.

If you have no problem of suffering and release from suffering, you will not find the energy and persistence needed for self-enquiry.

The door that locks you in, is also the door that lets you out. The ‘I am’ is the door. Stay at it until it opens…

As a matter of fact, it is open, only you are not at it. You are waiting at the non-existent painted doors, which will never open.

Trust nobody, not even yourself. Search, find out, remove & reject every assumption till you reach the living waters and the rock of truth.

Get busy with your ego—leave me alone. As long as you are locked up within your mind, my state is beyond your grasp.

At present you are moved by the pleasure-pain principle which is the ego. You are going along with the ego, you are not fighting it.

A man should always revolt against himself.

Keep the ‘I am’ in the focus of awareness, remember that you are, watch yourself ceaselessly and the unconscious will flow into the conscious without any special effort on your part. Wrong desires and fears, false ideas, social inhibitions are blocking and preventing its free interplay with the conscious. Once free to mingle, the two become one and the one becomes all. 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. You cannot approach it in worship. No external activity can reach the inner self; worship and prayers remain on the surface only; to go deeper meditation is essential, the striving to go beyond the states of sleep, dream and waking. In the beginning the attempts are irregular, then they recur more often, become regular, then continuous and intense, until all obstacles are conquered.

The clarification and purification needed at the very start of the journey, only awareness can give. Love and will shall have their turn.

Give all your attention to the question: ‘What is it that makes me conscious?’, until your mind becomes the question itself.

The sun of awareness must rise first—all else will follow.

85. ‘I am’: The Foundation of all Experience

Sadhana is but a persistent attempt to cross over from the verbal to the non-verbal.

As long as you are interested in your present way of living, you will shirk from the final leap into the unknown.

Of the unknowable only silence talks. The mind can talk only of what it knows.

It is the full and correct knowledge of the known that takes you to the unknown.

The mind can talk only of what it knows. If you diligently investigate the knowable, it dissolves and only the unknowable remains.

The known, the changeable, is what you live with—the unchangeable is of no use to you.

The mind craves for content and variety, while reality is, to the mind, contentless and invariable…

It is also all-pervading, all-conquering, intense beyond words. No ordinary brain can stand it without being shattered…

Purity of body and clarity of mind, non-violence and selflessness in life are essential for survival as an intelligent and spiritual entity.

Reality is not shapeless mass, a wordless chaos. It is powerful, aware, blissful; compared to it your life is like a candle to the sun.

The unchangeable can only be realized in silence. Once realized, it will deeply affect the changeable, itself remaining unaffected.

I do not know, I am. I am, because to be, everything must be witnessed.

Witnessing, if not personal and actual, must at least be possible and feasible. Direct experience is the final proof.

Whatever may be the experience, true or false, the fact of an experience taking place cannot be denied. It is its own proof.

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.

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.

Reflected awareness, the sense ‘I am aware’ is the witness, while pure awareness is the essence of reality.

Between awareness reflected in consciousness as the witness and pure awareness there is a gap, which the mind cannot cross.

The real sees the real in the unreal. It is the mind that creates the unreal and it is the mind that sees the false as false.

The real is beyond experience. All experience is in the mind. You know the real by being real.

The timeless can be reached only by the timeless.

84. Your Goal is Your Guru

If our relationship is meaningful to you and me, it cannot be accidental. The future affects the present as much, as the past.

Unless you know yourself well, how can you know another? And when you know yourself—you are the other.

Do not look for a Guru, do not even think of one. Make your goal your Guru.

The only trouble is that you are addicted to experience and you cherish your memories.

In reality it is the other way round; what is remembered is never real; the real is now.

As the mind is made of words and images, so is every reflection in the mind. It covers up reality with verbalization and then complains.

The sentence: ‘ I can see that I am false’ contains all you need for liberation. Ponder over it, go into it deeply, go to the root of it.

The Guru only tells you the good news about your real Self and shows you the way back to it. In a way the Guru is its messenger.

There will be many messengers, but the message is one: be what you are.

There is a way out within…easy reach, not a conversion to another set of ideas, but a liberation from all ideas and patterns of living.

You are never without a Guru, for he is timelessly present in your heart. Sometimes he externalizes himself and comes to you.

Earnestness is both necessary and sufficient. Everything yields to earnestness.

Compassion is the foundation of earnestness. Compassion for yourself and others, born of suffering, your own and others.

Realize that the body depends on the mind, and the mind on consciousness, and consciousness on awareness and not the other way round.

You cling to the false, because you do not know the true. Earnestness, not perfection, is a precondition to self-realization.

Virtues and powers come with realization, not before.