51
All hangs on the idea ‘I am’. Examine it very thoroughly. It lies at the root of every trouble. 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 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 ‘I am’, trouble starts.
52
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. No ambition is spiritual. All ambitions are for the sake of ‘I am’. If you want to make real progress you must give up all ideas of personal attainment.
53
When I met my Guru, he told me: ‘you are not what you take
yourself to be. Find out what you are. Watch the sense ‘I am’, find you real self’ I obeyed him because I trusted him; I did as he told me. All my spare time I would spend looking at myself in silence. And what a difference it made, and how soon. It took me only three years to realize my true nature. My Guru died soon after I met him, but it made no difference. I remembered what he told me and persevered. The fruit of it is here, with me.
54
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 directions. Ultimately even the ‘I am’ will have to go for you need not keep asserting what is obvious. Bringing the mind to the feeling ‘I am’ merely helps turning the mind away from everything else.
55
Tirelessly I draw your attention to the one incontrovertible factor – that of being. Being needs no proofs – it proves itself. If only you go deep into the fact of being and discover the vastness and the glory, to which the ‘I am’ is the door, and cross the door and go beyond, your life will be full of happiness and light. Believe me; the effort needed is as nothing when compared with the discoveries arrived at.
56
Hold on to the sense ‘I am’ to the exclusion of everything else.
When this mind becomes completely silent, it shines with a new
light and vibrates with new knowledge. It all comes spontaneously; you need only to hold on to the ‘I am’.
57
Begin with feeling ‘I am’. All else is neither true nor false, it seems real when it appears, it disappears when it is denied. A transient thing is a mystery. The real is simple, open, clear and kind, beautiful and joyous. It is completely free of contradictions. It is ever-new, ever-fresh, and endlessly creative. Being and non-being, life and death, all distinctions merge in it.
58
The teacher tells the watcher you are not this; there is nothing
yours in this, except the point of ‘I am’, which is the bridge
between the watcher and his dream. ‘I am this’, ‘I am that’ is a
dream, while pure ‘I am’ has the stamp of reality on it. You have tasted so many things – all came to naught. Only the sense ‘I am’ persisted – unchanged. Stay with the changeless among the changeful, until you are able to go beyond.
59
First you create a world, then the ‘I am’ becomes a person, who is not happy for various reasons. He goes out in search of happiness, meets a Guru who tells him ‘You are not a person, find out who you are’. He does it and goes beyond.
60
He who is beyond time – is the UN-nameable. A glowing ember
moved round and round quickly enough appears as a glowing
circle. When the movement ceases, the ember remains. Similarly, the ‘I am’ in movement creates the world. The ‘I am’ at peace becomes the Absolute.
61
Immortality is freedom from the feeling: ‘I am’. Yet it is not
extinction. On the contrary, it is a state infinitely more real, aware and happy than you can possibly think of. Only self-consciousness is no more. Who would remain even to say ‘I am the witness’? When there is no ‘I am’, where is the witness? In the timeless state there no self to take refuge in.
62
The witness is both unreal and real. The last remnant of the
illusion, the first touch of the real. To say: I am only the witness is both false and true, false because of the ‘I am’, true because of the witness. It is better to say: ‘there is witnessing’. The moment you say ‘I am’, the entire universe comes into being along with its creator.
63
Trust the teacher. Take my case. My Guru ordered me to attend to the sense ‘I am’ and to give attention to nothing else. I just obeyed. I did not follow any particular course of breathing or meditation, or study of scriptures. Whatever happened I would turn away my attention from it and remain with the sense ‘I am’, it may look too simple, even crude. My only reason for doing it was that my Guru told me so. Yet it worked! Obedience is a powerful solvent of all desires and fears.
64
Look at the ‘I am’ as a sign of love between the inner and the
outer, the real and the appearance. Just like in a dream all is
different, except the sense of ‘I’, which enables you to say ‘I
dreamt’, so does the sense of ‘I am’ enable you to say, ‘I am my
real Self again. I do nothing nor is anything done to me. I am what I am and nothing can affect me. I appear to depend on everything, but in fact all depends on me’.
65
In the immensity of consciousness a light appears, a tiny point that moves rapidly and traces shapes, thoughts and feelings, concepts and ideas, like a pen writing on paper. And the ink that leaves a trace is memory. You are that tiny point and by your movement the world is ever re-created. Stop moving and there will be no world. Look within and you will find that the point of light is the reflection of the immensity of light in the body as the sense ‘I am’. There is only light all else appears.
66
To be the point of light (reflected as the sense ‘I am’) tracing the world is ‘turiya’. To be the light itself is ‘turiyatita’. But of what use are names when reality is so near?
67
The sense of ‘I am’ is both unreal and real. Unreal when I say ‘I
am this or that’. It is real when we mean ‘I am not this nor that’. The ‘I am’ and the witness are not one, but without one the other cannot be.
68
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. It is very much like digging a well. You reject all that is not water, till you reach the life-giving spring.
69
The witness and consciousness appear and disappear together. The witness or the sense ‘I am’ too is transient but is given importance to break the spell of the known; the illusion that only the perceivable is real. Presently for you perception is primary and witnessing secondary, revert it to make witnessing primary and perception secondary (The ‘I am’ is just a device to revert).
70
Look at yourself steadily – it is enough. 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.
71
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. 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. 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 recur more often, become regular, then continuous and intense, until all obstacles are conquered.
72
All that happens, happens in and to the mind, not to the source of the ‘I am’. Once you realize that all happens by itself (call it
destiny or the will of God or mere accident), you remain as witness only, understanding and enjoying, but not perturbed.
73
Before you can say ‘I am’, you must be there to say it. Being need not be self-conscious. You need not know to be, but you must ‘be’ to know.
74
The subtle body is created with the emergence of the ‘I am’ idea. The two are one. It is momentary. Real when present, unreal when over. Call it empirical, or actual, or factual. It is the reality of immediate experience, here and now, which cannot be denied. You can question the description and the meaning, but not the event itself. Being and non-being alternate and their reality is momentary. The immutable reality lies beyond space and time. Realize the momentariness of being and non-being and be free from both.
75
The ‘I am’ is at the root of all appearance and the permanent link in the succession of events that we call life; but I am beyond the ‘I am’.
All hangs on the idea ‘I am’. Examine it very thoroughly. It lies at the root of every trouble. 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 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 ‘I am’, trouble starts.
52
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. No ambition is spiritual. All ambitions are for the sake of ‘I am’. If you want to make real progress you must give up all ideas of personal attainment.
53
When I met my Guru, he told me: ‘you are not what you take
yourself to be. Find out what you are. Watch the sense ‘I am’, find you real self’ I obeyed him because I trusted him; I did as he told me. All my spare time I would spend looking at myself in silence. And what a difference it made, and how soon. It took me only three years to realize my true nature. My Guru died soon after I met him, but it made no difference. I remembered what he told me and persevered. The fruit of it is here, with me.
54
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 directions. Ultimately even the ‘I am’ will have to go for you need not keep asserting what is obvious. Bringing the mind to the feeling ‘I am’ merely helps turning the mind away from everything else.
55
Tirelessly I draw your attention to the one incontrovertible factor – that of being. Being needs no proofs – it proves itself. If only you go deep into the fact of being and discover the vastness and the glory, to which the ‘I am’ is the door, and cross the door and go beyond, your life will be full of happiness and light. Believe me; the effort needed is as nothing when compared with the discoveries arrived at.
56
Hold on to the sense ‘I am’ to the exclusion of everything else.
When this mind becomes completely silent, it shines with a new
light and vibrates with new knowledge. It all comes spontaneously; you need only to hold on to the ‘I am’.
57
Begin with feeling ‘I am’. All else is neither true nor false, it seems real when it appears, it disappears when it is denied. A transient thing is a mystery. The real is simple, open, clear and kind, beautiful and joyous. It is completely free of contradictions. It is ever-new, ever-fresh, and endlessly creative. Being and non-being, life and death, all distinctions merge in it.
58
The teacher tells the watcher you are not this; there is nothing
yours in this, except the point of ‘I am’, which is the bridge
between the watcher and his dream. ‘I am this’, ‘I am that’ is a
dream, while pure ‘I am’ has the stamp of reality on it. You have tasted so many things – all came to naught. Only the sense ‘I am’ persisted – unchanged. Stay with the changeless among the changeful, until you are able to go beyond.
59
First you create a world, then the ‘I am’ becomes a person, who is not happy for various reasons. He goes out in search of happiness, meets a Guru who tells him ‘You are not a person, find out who you are’. He does it and goes beyond.
60
He who is beyond time – is the UN-nameable. A glowing ember
moved round and round quickly enough appears as a glowing
circle. When the movement ceases, the ember remains. Similarly, the ‘I am’ in movement creates the world. The ‘I am’ at peace becomes the Absolute.
61
Immortality is freedom from the feeling: ‘I am’. Yet it is not
extinction. On the contrary, it is a state infinitely more real, aware and happy than you can possibly think of. Only self-consciousness is no more. Who would remain even to say ‘I am the witness’? When there is no ‘I am’, where is the witness? In the timeless state there no self to take refuge in.
62
The witness is both unreal and real. The last remnant of the
illusion, the first touch of the real. To say: I am only the witness is both false and true, false because of the ‘I am’, true because of the witness. It is better to say: ‘there is witnessing’. The moment you say ‘I am’, the entire universe comes into being along with its creator.
63
Trust the teacher. Take my case. My Guru ordered me to attend to the sense ‘I am’ and to give attention to nothing else. I just obeyed. I did not follow any particular course of breathing or meditation, or study of scriptures. Whatever happened I would turn away my attention from it and remain with the sense ‘I am’, it may look too simple, even crude. My only reason for doing it was that my Guru told me so. Yet it worked! Obedience is a powerful solvent of all desires and fears.
64
Look at the ‘I am’ as a sign of love between the inner and the
outer, the real and the appearance. Just like in a dream all is
different, except the sense of ‘I’, which enables you to say ‘I
dreamt’, so does the sense of ‘I am’ enable you to say, ‘I am my
real Self again. I do nothing nor is anything done to me. I am what I am and nothing can affect me. I appear to depend on everything, but in fact all depends on me’.
65
In the immensity of consciousness a light appears, a tiny point that moves rapidly and traces shapes, thoughts and feelings, concepts and ideas, like a pen writing on paper. And the ink that leaves a trace is memory. You are that tiny point and by your movement the world is ever re-created. Stop moving and there will be no world. Look within and you will find that the point of light is the reflection of the immensity of light in the body as the sense ‘I am’. There is only light all else appears.
66
To be the point of light (reflected as the sense ‘I am’) tracing the world is ‘turiya’. To be the light itself is ‘turiyatita’. But of what use are names when reality is so near?
67
The sense of ‘I am’ is both unreal and real. Unreal when I say ‘I
am this or that’. It is real when we mean ‘I am not this nor that’. The ‘I am’ and the witness are not one, but without one the other cannot be.
68
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. It is very much like digging a well. You reject all that is not water, till you reach the life-giving spring.
69
The witness and consciousness appear and disappear together. The witness or the sense ‘I am’ too is transient but is given importance to break the spell of the known; the illusion that only the perceivable is real. Presently for you perception is primary and witnessing secondary, revert it to make witnessing primary and perception secondary (The ‘I am’ is just a device to revert).
70
Look at yourself steadily – it is enough. 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.
71
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. 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. 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 recur more often, become regular, then continuous and intense, until all obstacles are conquered.
72
All that happens, happens in and to the mind, not to the source of the ‘I am’. Once you realize that all happens by itself (call it
destiny or the will of God or mere accident), you remain as witness only, understanding and enjoying, but not perturbed.
73
Before you can say ‘I am’, you must be there to say it. Being need not be self-conscious. You need not know to be, but you must ‘be’ to know.
74
The subtle body is created with the emergence of the ‘I am’ idea. The two are one. It is momentary. Real when present, unreal when over. Call it empirical, or actual, or factual. It is the reality of immediate experience, here and now, which cannot be denied. You can question the description and the meaning, but not the event itself. Being and non-being alternate and their reality is momentary. The immutable reality lies beyond space and time. Realize the momentariness of being and non-being and be free from both.
75
The ‘I am’ is at the root of all appearance and the permanent link in the succession of events that we call life; but I am beyond the ‘I am’.
No comments:
Post a Comment