26
The one witness reflects itself in the countless bodies as ‘I am’. As
long as the bodies, however subtle, last, the ‘I am’ appears as
many. Beyond the body there is only the One.
27
When I say ‘I am’, I do not mean a separate entity with a body as
its nucleus; I mean the totality of being, the ocean of
consciousness, the entire universe of all that is known. I have
nothing to desire for I am complete forever.
28
Words betray their hollowness. The real cannot be described, it
must be experienced. I cannot find better words for what I know.
What I say may sound ridiculous. But what the words try to
convey is the highest truth. All is one, however much we quibble.
And all is done to please the one source and goal of every desire,
whom we all know as the ‘I am’.
29
When I repeat: ‘I am’, ‘I am’, I merely assert and re-assert an everpresent fact. You get tired of my words because you do not see the
living truth behind them. Contact it and you will find the full
meaning of words and of silence- both.
30
Self-remembrance, awareness of “I am’ ripens man powerfully and
speedily. Give up all ideas about yourself and simply be. Stop
making use of your mind and see what happens. Do this one thing
thoroughly. That is all.
31
The fact is you. The only thing you know for sure is: ‘here and
now I am’. Remove the ‘here and now’, the ‘I am’ remains
unassailable.
32
All I can say is ‘I am’, all else is inference. But the inference has
become a habit. Destroy all habits of thinking and sleeping. The
sense ‘I am’ is a manifestation of a deeper cause, which you may
call self, God, Reality or by any other name. The ‘I am’ is in the
world but it is the key which can open the door out of the world.
33
Only your sense ‘I am’ though in the world, is not of the world. By
no effort of logic you can change the ‘I am’ into ‘I am not’. In the
very denial of your being you assert it. Once you realize that the
world is your own projection, you are free of it. You need not free
yourself of a world that does not exist, except in your imagination.
34
The sense ‘I am’ is composed of pure light and the sense of being.
The ‘I’ is there even without the ‘am’. So is the pure light there,
whether you say ‘I’ or not. Become aware of that pure light and
you will never lose it. The being ness in being, the awareness in
consciousness, the interest in every experience – that is not
describable, yet perfectly accessible, for there is nothing else.
35
‘I am’ is ever fresh. You do need to remember in order to ‘be’ As a
matter of fact, before you can experience anything, there must be
the sense of being. At present your being is mixed up with
experiencing. All you need to do is to unravel being from the
tangle of experiences. Once you have known pure being, without
being this or that, you will discern it among experiences, and you
will no longer be misled by names and forms.
36
All talk of ‘gnana’ is a sign of ignorance. It is the mind that
imagines that it does not know and then comes to know. Reality
knows nothing of these contortions. Even the idea of God as the
Creator is false. Do I owe my being to another being? Because ‘I
am’ all ‘is’.
37
My teacher told me to hold on to the sense ‘I am’ tenaciously and
not to swerve from it even for a moment. I did my best to follow
his advice and in a comparatively short time I realized within
myself the truth of his teaching. All I did was to remember his
teaching, his face, his words constantly. This brought an end to the
mind, in the stillness of the mind I saw myself as I am – unbound.
38
One has to understand that the search for reality, God, Guru and
the search for the self are the same, when one is found all are
found. When ‘I am’ and ‘God is’ become in your mind
indistinguishable, then something will happen and you will know
without a trace of doubt that God is because you are, you are
because God is. The two are one.
39
When ‘I am myself’ goes the ‘I am all’ comes. When the ‘I am all’
goes, ‘I am’ comes. When even ‘I am’ goes, reality alone is, and in
it every ‘I am’ is preserved and glorified.
40
I am now 74 years old. And yet I feel that I am an infant. I feel
clearly that in spite of all the changes I am a child. My Guru told
me that the child, which is you even now, is your real self
(‘swarupa’). Go back to that state of pure being, where the ‘I am’
is still in its purity before it gets contaminated with ‘this I am’ or
‘that I am’. Your burden is of false self-identification – abandon
them all. My Guru told me – ‘Trust me. I tell you, you are divine.
Take it as the absolute truth. Your joy is divine; your suffering is
divine too. All comes from God.Remember it always. You are
God, your will alone is done.’ I did believe him and soon realized
how wonderfully true and accurate were his words. I did not
condition my mind by thinking: ‘I am God, I am wonderful, I am
beyond.’ I simply followed his instruction, which was to focus the
mind on pure being, ‘I am’ and stay in it. I used to sit for hours
together, with nothing but the ‘I am’ in my mind and soon peace
and joy and a deep all-embracing love became my normal state. In
it all disappeared - myself, my Guru, the life I lived, the world
around me. Only peace remained and unfathomable silence.
41
Don’t you see that it is your very search for happiness that makes
you feel miserable? Try the other way: indifferent to pain and
pleasure, neither seeking, nor refusing, give all your attention to
the level on which ‘I am’ is timelessly present. Soon you will
realize that peace and happiness are in your very nature and it is
only seeking them through some particular channels that disturbs.
Avoid the disturbance, that is all. To seek there is no need; you
would not seek what you already have. You yourself are God, the
Supreme Reality. To begin with, trust me, trust the teacher. It
enables you to make the first step - and then your trust is justified
by your own experience.
42
The best is the simple feeling ‘I am’. Dwell on it patiently. Here
patience is wisdom; don’t think of failure. There can be no failure
in this undertaking.
43
No use rebelling against the very pattern of life. If you seek the
immutable, go beyond experience. When I say remember ‘I am’ all
the time, I mean come back to it repeatedly. No particular thought
can be mind’s natural state, only silence. Not the idea of silence
but silence itself. When the mind is inits natural state, it reverts to
silence spontaneously after every experience, or rather, every
experience happens against a background of silence. Now, what
you have learnt here becomes the seed. You may forget it –
apparently. But it will live and indue season sprout and grow and
bring forth flowers and fruits. All will happen by itself. You need
not do anything, only don’t prevent it.
44
First know your own mind and you will find that the question of
other minds does not arise at all, for there are no other people. You
are the common factor, the only link between the minds, Being is
consciousness; ‘I am’ applies to all.
45
The ‘I am’ is a thought, while awareness is not a thought; there is
no ‘I am aware’ in awareness. Consciousness is an attribute while
awareness is not, one can be aware of being conscious, but not
conscious of awareness. God is the totality of consciousness, but
awareness is beyond all – being as well as non-being.
46
When you follow my advice and try to keep the mind on the notion
of ‘I am’ only, you become fully aware of your mind and its
vagaries. Awareness being lucid harmony (‘sattwa’) in action
dissolves dullness and quietens the restlessness of the mind and
gently but steadily changes its very substance. This change need
not be spectacular; it maybe hardly noticeable; and yet it is a deep
and fundamental shift from darkness to light from inadvertence to
awareness.
47
There is the body and there is the Self, between them is the mind,
in which the Self is reflected as ‘I am’. Because of the
imperfections of the mind, its crudity and restlessness, lack of
discernment and insight, it takes itself to be the body and not the
Self. All that is needed is to purify the mind so that it can realize its
identity with the Self. When the mind merges in the Self, the body
presents no problems. It remains what it is, an instrument of
cognition and action, the tool and the expression of the creative fire
within.
48
The tangle which is entirely below the level of consciousness can
be set right 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, infull 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.
49
There must be love in the relation between the person who says ‘I
am’ and the observer of the ‘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 the identity of the outer and the inner, the
Supreme Reality manifests itself.
50
There is no ‘I’ apart from the body or the world. The three appear
and disappear together. At the root is the sense ‘I am’. Go beyond
it. The idea ‘I-am-not-body’ is merely an antidote to the idea ‘I am-the-body’, which is false. What is that ‘I am’? Unless you
know yourself, what else can you know?
The one witness reflects itself in the countless bodies as ‘I am’. As
long as the bodies, however subtle, last, the ‘I am’ appears as
many. Beyond the body there is only the One.
27
When I say ‘I am’, I do not mean a separate entity with a body as
its nucleus; I mean the totality of being, the ocean of
consciousness, the entire universe of all that is known. I have
nothing to desire for I am complete forever.
28
Words betray their hollowness. The real cannot be described, it
must be experienced. I cannot find better words for what I know.
What I say may sound ridiculous. But what the words try to
convey is the highest truth. All is one, however much we quibble.
And all is done to please the one source and goal of every desire,
whom we all know as the ‘I am’.
29
When I repeat: ‘I am’, ‘I am’, I merely assert and re-assert an everpresent fact. You get tired of my words because you do not see the
living truth behind them. Contact it and you will find the full
meaning of words and of silence- both.
30
Self-remembrance, awareness of “I am’ ripens man powerfully and
speedily. Give up all ideas about yourself and simply be. Stop
making use of your mind and see what happens. Do this one thing
thoroughly. That is all.
31
The fact is you. The only thing you know for sure is: ‘here and
now I am’. Remove the ‘here and now’, the ‘I am’ remains
unassailable.
32
All I can say is ‘I am’, all else is inference. But the inference has
become a habit. Destroy all habits of thinking and sleeping. The
sense ‘I am’ is a manifestation of a deeper cause, which you may
call self, God, Reality or by any other name. The ‘I am’ is in the
world but it is the key which can open the door out of the world.
33
Only your sense ‘I am’ though in the world, is not of the world. By
no effort of logic you can change the ‘I am’ into ‘I am not’. In the
very denial of your being you assert it. Once you realize that the
world is your own projection, you are free of it. You need not free
yourself of a world that does not exist, except in your imagination.
34
The sense ‘I am’ is composed of pure light and the sense of being.
The ‘I’ is there even without the ‘am’. So is the pure light there,
whether you say ‘I’ or not. Become aware of that pure light and
you will never lose it. The being ness in being, the awareness in
consciousness, the interest in every experience – that is not
describable, yet perfectly accessible, for there is nothing else.
35
‘I am’ is ever fresh. You do need to remember in order to ‘be’ As a
matter of fact, before you can experience anything, there must be
the sense of being. At present your being is mixed up with
experiencing. All you need to do is to unravel being from the
tangle of experiences. Once you have known pure being, without
being this or that, you will discern it among experiences, and you
will no longer be misled by names and forms.
36
All talk of ‘gnana’ is a sign of ignorance. It is the mind that
imagines that it does not know and then comes to know. Reality
knows nothing of these contortions. Even the idea of God as the
Creator is false. Do I owe my being to another being? Because ‘I
am’ all ‘is’.
37
My teacher told me to hold on to the sense ‘I am’ tenaciously and
not to swerve from it even for a moment. I did my best to follow
his advice and in a comparatively short time I realized within
myself the truth of his teaching. All I did was to remember his
teaching, his face, his words constantly. This brought an end to the
mind, in the stillness of the mind I saw myself as I am – unbound.
38
One has to understand that the search for reality, God, Guru and
the search for the self are the same, when one is found all are
found. When ‘I am’ and ‘God is’ become in your mind
indistinguishable, then something will happen and you will know
without a trace of doubt that God is because you are, you are
because God is. The two are one.
39
When ‘I am myself’ goes the ‘I am all’ comes. When the ‘I am all’
goes, ‘I am’ comes. When even ‘I am’ goes, reality alone is, and in
it every ‘I am’ is preserved and glorified.
40
I am now 74 years old. And yet I feel that I am an infant. I feel
clearly that in spite of all the changes I am a child. My Guru told
me that the child, which is you even now, is your real self
(‘swarupa’). Go back to that state of pure being, where the ‘I am’
is still in its purity before it gets contaminated with ‘this I am’ or
‘that I am’. Your burden is of false self-identification – abandon
them all. My Guru told me – ‘Trust me. I tell you, you are divine.
Take it as the absolute truth. Your joy is divine; your suffering is
divine too. All comes from God.Remember it always. You are
God, your will alone is done.’ I did believe him and soon realized
how wonderfully true and accurate were his words. I did not
condition my mind by thinking: ‘I am God, I am wonderful, I am
beyond.’ I simply followed his instruction, which was to focus the
mind on pure being, ‘I am’ and stay in it. I used to sit for hours
together, with nothing but the ‘I am’ in my mind and soon peace
and joy and a deep all-embracing love became my normal state. In
it all disappeared - myself, my Guru, the life I lived, the world
around me. Only peace remained and unfathomable silence.
41
Don’t you see that it is your very search for happiness that makes
you feel miserable? Try the other way: indifferent to pain and
pleasure, neither seeking, nor refusing, give all your attention to
the level on which ‘I am’ is timelessly present. Soon you will
realize that peace and happiness are in your very nature and it is
only seeking them through some particular channels that disturbs.
Avoid the disturbance, that is all. To seek there is no need; you
would not seek what you already have. You yourself are God, the
Supreme Reality. To begin with, trust me, trust the teacher. It
enables you to make the first step - and then your trust is justified
by your own experience.
42
The best is the simple feeling ‘I am’. Dwell on it patiently. Here
patience is wisdom; don’t think of failure. There can be no failure
in this undertaking.
43
No use rebelling against the very pattern of life. If you seek the
immutable, go beyond experience. When I say remember ‘I am’ all
the time, I mean come back to it repeatedly. No particular thought
can be mind’s natural state, only silence. Not the idea of silence
but silence itself. When the mind is inits natural state, it reverts to
silence spontaneously after every experience, or rather, every
experience happens against a background of silence. Now, what
you have learnt here becomes the seed. You may forget it –
apparently. But it will live and indue season sprout and grow and
bring forth flowers and fruits. All will happen by itself. You need
not do anything, only don’t prevent it.
44
First know your own mind and you will find that the question of
other minds does not arise at all, for there are no other people. You
are the common factor, the only link between the minds, Being is
consciousness; ‘I am’ applies to all.
45
The ‘I am’ is a thought, while awareness is not a thought; there is
no ‘I am aware’ in awareness. Consciousness is an attribute while
awareness is not, one can be aware of being conscious, but not
conscious of awareness. God is the totality of consciousness, but
awareness is beyond all – being as well as non-being.
46
When you follow my advice and try to keep the mind on the notion
of ‘I am’ only, you become fully aware of your mind and its
vagaries. Awareness being lucid harmony (‘sattwa’) in action
dissolves dullness and quietens the restlessness of the mind and
gently but steadily changes its very substance. This change need
not be spectacular; it maybe hardly noticeable; and yet it is a deep
and fundamental shift from darkness to light from inadvertence to
awareness.
47
There is the body and there is the Self, between them is the mind,
in which the Self is reflected as ‘I am’. Because of the
imperfections of the mind, its crudity and restlessness, lack of
discernment and insight, it takes itself to be the body and not the
Self. All that is needed is to purify the mind so that it can realize its
identity with the Self. When the mind merges in the Self, the body
presents no problems. It remains what it is, an instrument of
cognition and action, the tool and the expression of the creative fire
within.
48
The tangle which is entirely below the level of consciousness can
be set right 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, infull 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.
49
There must be love in the relation between the person who says ‘I
am’ and the observer of the ‘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 the identity of the outer and the inner, the
Supreme Reality manifests itself.
50
There is no ‘I’ apart from the body or the world. The three appear
and disappear together. At the root is the sense ‘I am’. Go beyond
it. The idea ‘I-am-not-body’ is merely an antidote to the idea ‘I am-the-body’, which is false. What is that ‘I am’? Unless you
know yourself, what else can you know?
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