ramana maharshi | guru | who am I? | self enquiry | spiritual instruction | wisdom | words | silence | annamalai swami | self alone is real | ellam ondre | all is one
h.w.l. poonja | the fire of freedom | remembering | interview | satsang | who are you? | words | no practice | eternal rest | yoga vasishtha | the supreme yoga
nisargadatta maharaj | meet the sage | self knowledge and self realisation | a great maharashtrian gnani | words | ranjit maharaj | meeting | interview | satsang
adi shankaracharya | atma bodha | aparokshanubhuti | ribhu gita | the heart | advaita | what's advaita? | seng tsan | faith mind | dattatreya | avadhuta gita
u.g. krishnamurti | interview | remembering | william samuel | "now" | lama guendune rinpoché | free and easy | chief joseph | the way of the warrior

NTRODUCTION

Though a Maharashtrian myself it was a matter of great shame for me that I had not known of this great Maharashtrian gnani [a man of wisdom], Nisargadatta Maharaj till March 1992.

I was waiting for Bhagavan's morning darshan as usual at Brindavan ashram. A friend of mine sitting next to me was pouring over the pages of a fairly bulky book. I gave a sly glance at the book unwilling to disturb him. I found the title of the book I Am That. This roused my curiosity about the author's name.

I found the author to be Maurice Frydman whose name sounded very familiar to me. I was a frequent visitor to Sri Ramanasramam [ashram of Ramana Maharshi at Tiruvannamalai, Tamil Nadu] in the early years between 1944 and 1948, when I was a judicial officer there. I had seen him there though I had not talked to him.

My friend somehow sensed that I was anxious to look into the book, and to my great joy handed me the book. I poured over a few pages at random and found precious pearls of wisdom on the few pages I happened to browse.

This is the genesis of this book, the seeds of which were sown about a year ago. I had no intention whatever of writing this book. My ceaseless remorse at not knowing about the existence of Maharaj earlier haunted me. Added to this was a sense of pride that he belonged to my community, the Maharashtrians.

Nearly about a lakh of Maharashtrians live scattered in places like Madras, Bangalore, Tanjore, North Arcot and Krishnagiri district and a few other places. A strange urge to write about this great gnani took possession of me. I was anxious that I should make him known to the people of the South, Who were utterly unaware of his existence. They could scarcely believe that such a great soul lived in a bye-lane in the city of Bombay, avoiding publicity. It sounds somewhat paradoxical that people in the Western world knew more about him than his own countrymen in India. We have ourselves to blame for this situation.

If by publishing this book I have aroused some interest in him in the people of the South and dispelled the unpardonable ignorance about him, I will deem it, that I have achieved something. May the ever merciful Maharaj forgive us in his infinite grace, and make us aware of his sublime teachings.

It remains for me to express my gratitude to all my friends and well-wishers who were anxious that I should publish this book for the benefit of all concerned. I must first thank my very good friend Mr. Krishnamurthy who was instrumental in typing the manuscript for this book. He did it in such a perfect way that not a world needed correction.

I must next thank Mr. Hans Bearholm and his wife Lilian from Denmark, a highly spiritual persons, for all the moral support they gave in encouraging me to write about this great gnani. Next I must thank other friends and well-wishers who took a keen interest in the publication of this book. I must also thank my good friend Mr. C.S. Ramakrishnayya of the Gita Press.
                        G.K. Damodara Row

Vanamali Mansion, 10th lane, Khetwadi in Bombay became a landmark for many persons who were seekers of the spirit. Here lived Nisargadatta Maharaj, a great gnani in relative obscurity, in the early years of his life. He was running a small beedi [cigarette] shop offering a variety of hand-rolled tobacco, which poor people smoke. In fact, Maharaj himself was a chain smoker.

It is to the credit of late Maurice Frydman that he discovered Maharaj in his wanderings in quest of a Guru. He visited Sri Ramanasramam and Ganeshpuri [ashram of Nityananda] and other spiritual centres until he came to Bombay having heard about Maharaj. With some difficulty he found the lane where Maharaj lived. He was very intrigued that a great soul like Maharaj should live in such squalor and stench in a bye-lane in Bombay instead of in the Himalayas. Maharaj was a pious man dressed in simple clothes, and steeped all the time in meditation and Atma vichara [Self-enquiry]. The surroundings in which he lived did not in the least bother him. He lived aloof in his loft room, totally detached from the noisy world around.

Visitors, both foreign and Indian, sought his company. It was an interesting sight to see gleaming Mercedes cars glide gracefully with their rich owners in search of N°10 Khetwadi Lane.

It is said that Maharaj refused to talk about himself and such information as could be got was only from the early devotees, most of whom were ordinary poor people who used to go to the shop to purchase beedis. During the course of the purchase, Maharaj used to draw them into conversation as shopkeepers often do. The peculiarity of Maharaj was that he would speak mainly on adhyathmic subjects and there will be no idle gossip as is the wont of poor villagers. He never used to encourage it with the result there used to be a small band of earnest seekers standing in front of the shop listening in awe to the pearls of wisdom that fell from his lips. It was indeed an unusual sight in those days to see persons who came to purchase beedis, stay for hours listening in rapt attention to Maharaj. Maharaj explained great truths in very simple language. Some of the old people living in the locality were almost daily visitors to his shop and were mesmerized by his talks and would not leave him until they were compelled to go, and attend to their daily avocations.

From the available materials we are able to gather that Maharaj was born on a full moon day in March 1897. His birthday coincided with the auspicious day of Hanuman Jayanthi [birthday] and he was therefore named as Maruti. His childhood was spent in a village called Kandalgaon, a short distance from Bombay. It is said that his father moved to that village at the time of the plague. When somebody who was anxious to know about the date of birth of Maharaj, persisted in asking him about it, Maharaj replied bluntly that he "was never born" - a highly abstruse philosophical statement which most of us cannot understand. Thinking of his declaration deeply, one is led to think that Maharaj referred to the unborn, undying Self [Atman] and not to the body. Anyway, many of his devotees left it at that and did not try to find out the exact date of his birth.

In a reminiscent mood, Maharaj used to say, "I remember being carried on my father's shoulders which I greatly enjoyed". His father was a poor agriculturist and died in 1915. As the income of the family was found insufficient, the family had to go back to Bombay to earn their livelihood. Maruti joined a private firm as a clerk, but he had to leave it because of his independent temperament. He often used to say, "Better one day of independence than a lifetime without freedom". Being a Maharashtrian by birth and belonging as he did to the great Shivaji's clan, his view of life is not surprising.

Maruti grew up almost without education. As a boy, he tended cattle, worked in the fields with his father and was a real son of the soil. His pleasures were equally simple. But it is said by people who knew him as a young man that he had an inquisitive mind, anxious to know about the mysteries of life, its pleasures and sorrows. Maruti started a business venture in selling beedis in a shop owned by him in Khetwadi Lane. Luck smiled on him and he soon became the owner of eight more shops. Then he got married and had four children.

Though his business was prosperous and the life was comfortable, a vague sense of something missing in his life haunted him. He sought the help of his learned brahmin friend, Vishnu Gore who kindled in him questions regarding the world outside, man and God. Then he befriended another friend, Yashwanth Rao, who took him to the great and holy Siddharameshwar Maharaj, a realised soul, who initiated him into the mysteries of life, God and karma and gave him a mantra [sacred words or syllables].

This was the turning point in his life and he took Sri Siddharameshwar Maharaj as his Guru and clung to him till his Guru attained Mahasamadhi in 1936. The following year, Maruti suddenly decided to abandon his family and also his prosperous business, and wandered about aimlessly visiting temples and places of religious interest. His mind was restless. He travelled north, determined to spend his time in the Himalayas and never to return home. It is said that he walked barefoot in the Himalayan region. There he happened to meet a fellow-disciple of his Guru who told him that such wandering was of no avail and was really not necessary for a spiritual aspirant. He suggested that Maharaj should go back home and live an active life as a house holder. He advised selfless service to the poor which was far more meaningful.

After deep thought Maruti returned back to Bombay. He found all his shops taken away except one, but he was not in the least perturbed and got reconciled to the situation and calmly decided that one shop was enough for his worldly needs.

After some time when his son was able to look after the shop, he retired to his small loft room in the house, which later became an ashram to the devotees, both Indian and foreign who came to him. He lived in this small room, till his final Nirvana in 1981. It is of some importance to note that he did not yield to the persuasions of some of the rich Bombay devotees who owned palatial residences with marble flooring, to come and stay with them. He refused their request as only a gnani would and continued to live in his small loft room in the lane.

Every year Deepawali is celebrated with great joy in Bombay and the whole city is agog and the sky will be lit with fireworks. But to Nasargadatta it had no joy and his mind was mentally absent to welcome Deepawali. He was constantly thinking of the death of his Guru Maharaj and decided that he should renounce everything that he had in life and go away to the Himalayas. For a gurubhakta there could not have been a more suspicious occasion than Deepawali. On the first day of Deepawali he left his house without informing anybody; family and friends could not locate him. He started walking towards Pandarpur on foot and reached the place in about four days. He prostrated before Panduranga, and prayed for His Blessings for his future life. He purchased two saffron lungis and rudrakshamalas and a rug, removed his clothes and gave them to a poor person. He found that he had one anna left in his pocket which he threw into the river Chandrabagha which flows by Pandarpur.

From Pandarpur he started walking southwards without any plans. All the time he was only concentrating on his guruvachan, the 'naam' with his identity. He had tremendous faith in his Guru and he narrated an experience to his gurubandhus about the power of Guru Maharaj. He was a vegetarian in a family which was eating meat. Once he went to his Guru to Bhagewadi in Biljapur District and in the course of the spiritual discussions his Guru Maharaj suddenly changed the subject and looking at him asked whether he ate mutton to which he replied in the negative.

After hearing this his Guru said that he would make him eat mutton the next day and he felt very confused and shocked. He bowed down to him and requested him to excuse him because it was likely that he would vomit. But Guru Maharaj told him not to worry about it and said if any such thing happened he himself would clean the floor. Unable to go against the dictates of Guru Maharaj he ate mutton and he experienced Brahmananda the whole day. Obviously Maharaj knew about it and asked him with a smile as to how he felt. Speaking about this Nisargadatta used to say, "If one type of food can restrict your spiritual progress, it would mean some other type of food can accelerate it".

His faith in his Guru was such that he had no fear whatsoever about his future and walked on foot from place to place. He went first to Gangapur and then to Tirupati en-route to Rameswaram. He did not know any of the South Indian languages but this created no difficulty for him in getting food whenever necessary. Actually he did not care for food as he was mentally ready to throw away his body if necessary. He had great faith in his Guru's words that he will shoulder the responsibility for the well being of the disciples.

It often happened that somebody in the garb of a sadhu would come and give him whatever he needed: food, railway fare and bus tickets for his journey which he politely refused. He walked on foot and when tired used to get into a train without a ticket but surprisingly nobody checked him for a ticket even though he walked past the ticket examiner along with other passengers who were being interrogated. It looked as though some power made him invisible to the eyes of the ticket examiner. He had similar experience in the night when walking on the footpath in Bombay where curfew had been ordered due to communal riots. Armed guards were patrolling the streets but they used to walk past him without any interrogation though other persons were interrogated. He was somewhat intrigued about this incident and came to the conclusion that his Guru was protecting him in his own invisible way.

Very curiously he was not harassed by the police who allowed him to go about freely without any interrogation. On one occasion when he was taking shelter under a tree for rest he clearly saw his Guru's image on his feet and the feeling of loneliness vanished. After sometime he practiced the most difficult mantra called 'Trataka', looking at the Sun with the naked eye for hours. After some days he found that the Sun started looking like a ball of ice. Then he gave up practicing Trataka.

During his wanderings, an extraordinary incident happened. One day around noon, he felt tired, hungry and thirsty. He looked around for some human habitation nearby and could not find any house nearby. Still he kept on walking, looking around for a possible source of water at least. To his surprise he saw a hut in a lonely field and he walked towards it. The owner of the hut welcomed him, gave him water first as he was thirsty and made him sit down on a bench and served him food saying that he has been waiting for him for the past few days. This added to his confusion and after eating the food he made a low bow, thanked him and left the place. When he reached the road he looked back, but found that the hut which provided him food and water had vanished and he could see only fields all around.

1. All your problems are your body's problems - food, clothing, shelter, family, friends, name, fame, security, survival - all these lose their meaning the moment you realise that you may not be a mere body.

2. You give no attention to your Self. Your mind is always occupied with things, people and ideas, never with your Self. Bring your Self into focus, become aware of your own existence. See how you function. Watch the motives and the results of your actions. By knowing what you are not you come to know your Self. The way back to your Self is through refusal and rejection. One thing is certain; the real is not imaginary, it is not a product of the mind. Even the sense "I am" is not continuous, though it is a useful pointer; it shows where to seek but not what to seek. All you need is to get rid of is the tendency to define your Self. All definitions apply to your body only and to its expressions. Once this obsession with the body goes, you will revert to your natural state spontaneously and effortlessly. We discover it by being earnest, by searching, enquiring, questioning daily and hourly, by giving one's life to discovery.

3. Between the spirit and the body, it is love that provides the bridge. The mind creates the abyss, the heart crosses it.

4. A sense of separate existence is a reflection in a separate body of the one Reality. In this reflection, the unlimited and the limited are confused and taken to be the same. To undo this confusion is the purpose of Yoga.

5. He who has a body, sins with the body: he who has a mind, sins with the mind.

6. Like beads on a string, events follow events, forever. They are all strung on the basic idea; "I am the body". But even this is a mental state and does not last. It comes and goes like all other states. The illusion of a body-mind is there only because it is not investigated. Non-investigation is the thread on which all the states of mind are strung. It is like darkness in a closed room. It is there, apparently, but when the room is opened, where does it go? It goes nowhere because it was not there. All states of mind, all names and forms of existence are rooted in non-investigation, non-enquiry, imagination and credulity. It is right to say "I am" but to say "I am this" or "I am that" is a sign of not enquiring, not examining, mental weakness or lethargy.

7. If you say, "I am the body", you show it. Well, it is there only when you think of it. Both mind and body are intermittent states. The sum total of these flashes create the illusion of existence. enquire what is permanent in the transient, real in the unreal. This is sadhana.

8. Events in time and space - birth and death, cause and effect - may be taken as one; but the body and the embodied are not of the same order of reality. The body exists in time and space and is transient and limited, while the dweller is timeless and spaceless, eternal and all-pervading. To identify the two is a grievous mistake and the cause of endless suffering. You can speak of the mind and body as one but the body-mind is not the underlying Reality.

9. I repeat, I was not, am not, shall not be a body. To me this is a fact. I too was under the illusion of having been born, but my Guru made me see that birth and death are mere ideas - birth is merely the idea, "I have a body" and death is the idea, "I have lost my body". Now, when I know I am not a body, the body may be there or may not, what difference does it make? The body-mind is like a room. It is there, but I need not live in it all the time.

10. Question: What dies with death?

Maharaj: The idea: "I am this body", dies; the witness does not.

11. The blankness of deep sleep is due entirely to the lack of specific memories. But a general memory of well-being is there. There is a difference in feeling when we say, "I was sound asleep" from "I was absent". In sleep, the body functions below the level of brain consciousness.

12. Surely, you must sleep in order to awake. You must die in order to live, you must melt down to reshape anew; you must destroy to build, annihilate before creation. The Supreme is the universal solvent, it corrodes every container, it burns through every obstacle. Without the absolute denial of everything, the tyranny of things would be absolute. It is the great Harmoniser, the guarantee of the ultimate and perfect balance of life in freedom. It dissolves you and thus reasserts your true being.

13. Dreams are never the same, but the dreamer is unique. I may dream of being an insect or a pest, but in reality I am neither. I am beyond all dreams. I am the light in which all dreams appear and disappear. I am both inside and outside the dream. Just like a man having a headache knows the ache and also knows that he is not the ache, so do I know the dream, myself dreaming and myself not dreaming - all at the same time. I am what I am before, during and after the dream. But what I see in the dream, I am not.

14. All suffering is man-made and it is within man's power to put an end to it. God helps by facing man with the results of his actions and demanding that the balance be restored. Karma is the law that works for righteousness and is the healing hand of God.

15. All life on earth depends on the Sun. Yet, you cannot blame the Sun for all that happens, though it is the ultimate cause. Light causes the colour of the flowers, but it neither controls nor is responsible for it directly. It makes it possible, that is all.

16. Between the banks of pain and pleasure the river of life flows. It is only when the mind refuses to flow with life and gets stuck at the banks that it becomes a problem. By flowing with life, I mean acceptance, letting come what comes and go what goes. Desire not, fear not, observe the actual as and when it happens, for you are not what happens. You are the one to whom it happens. Ultimately, even the observer you are not. You are the ultimate potentiality of which the all embracing consciousness is the manifestation and expression.

17. My experience is that everything is bliss. But the desire for bliss creates pain. Thus, bliss becomes the seed of pain. The entire universe of pain is born of desire. Give up the desire for pleasure and you will not even know what is pain.

18. You have gone beyond the body, haven't you? You do not follow your digestion, circulation or elimination closely. It has become automatic. In the same way, the mind should work automatically, without calling for attention. This will not happen unless the mind works faultlessly. We are most of the time mind and body-conscious because they constantly call for help. Pain and suffering are only the body and the mind screaming for attention. To go beyond the body, you must be healthy; to go beyond the mind, you must have your mind in perfect order. You cannot leave a mess behind and go beyond.

19. Desire is the memory of pleasure and fear is the memory of pain. Both make the mind restless. Moments of pleasure are merely gaps in the stream of pain.

20. Memory is in the mind. The mind continues in sleep. As long as the mind is there, your body and your world are there. Your world is mind-made, subjective, enclosed within the mind, fragmentary, temporary, personal, hanging on the thread of memory. I live in a world of realities. Yours is of imaginings. Your world is personal, private, unsharable, intimately your own. Nobody can enter it, see as you see, hear as you hear, feel your emotions and think your thoughts. In your world you are truly alone, enclosed in your ever-changing dream, which you take for life.

21. It is not your real being that is restless but its reflection in the mind that appears restless because the mind is restless. It is just like the reflection of the moon in the water stirred by the wind. The wind of desires stirs the mind, and the "me" which is but a reflection of the Self in the mind appears changeful. But these ideas of movement, of restlessness, of pleasure and pain are all in the mind. The Self stands beyond the mind, aware but unconcerned.

22. The world of your perceptions is a very small world indeed. And it is entirely private. Take it to be a dream and be done with it. A dream does not last, neither does your own little world. Is not the idea of a total world a part of your personal world? The universe does not come to tell you that you are a part of it. It is you who have invented a totality to contain you as a part. In fact, all you know is your own private world, however well you have furnished it with your imaginations and expectations.

23. Perception, imagination, expectation, anticipation, illusion, are all based on memory. There are hardly any border lines between them. They just merge into each other. All are responses of memory.

24. The Supreme gives existence to the mind. The mind gives existence to the body.

25. Examine carefully your waking state. You will soon discover that it is full of gaps, when the mind blanks out. Notice how little you remember even when fully awake. You cannot say you were not conscious during sleep. You just don't remember. A gap in memory is not necessarily a gap in consciousness.

26. We use the words "aware" and "conscious". Awareness is primordial, it is the original state, beginningless, endless, uncaused, unsupported, without parts, without change. Consciousness is on contact, a reflection against a surface, a state of duality. There can be no consciousness without awareness, but there can be awareness without consciousness as in deep sleep. Awareness is absolute, consciousness is relative to its content; consciousness is always of something, consciousness is partial and changeful, awareness is total, changeless, calm and silent. And it is the common matrix of every experience. Since awareness is in every state of consciousness possible, the very consciousness of being conscious is already a movement in awareness. It is not a new state. It is at once recognized as the original, basic existence which is life itself, and also love and joy.

27. You talk of the unconscious when there is a lapse in memory. In reality, there is only consciousness. All life is conscious, all consciousness is alive. Even stones are conscious and alive.

28. At the root of all creation lies desire. Desire and imagination foster and reinforce each other. The fourth state [Turiya] is a state of pure witnessing, detached awareness, passionless and worldless. It is like space, unaffected by whatever it contains. Bodily and mental troubles do not reach it - they are outside "there", while the witness is always "here."

29. Knowledge has its rising and setting. Consciousness comes into being and goes out of being. It is a matter of daily occurrence and observation. We all know that sometimes we are conscious and sometimes not. When we are not conscious it appears to us as darkness or a blank, but a gnani is aware of himself as neither conscious nor unconscious, but purely aware, a witness to the three states of the mind and their contents.

30. Look at it this way. The mind produces thoughts ceaselessly, even when you do not look at them. When you know what is going on in your mind, you call it "consciousness". This is your waking state: your consciousness shifts from sensation to sensation, from perception to perception, from idea to idea, in endless succession. Then comes awareness, the direct insight into the whole of consciousness, the totality of the mind. The mind is like a river, flowing ceaselessly in the bed of the body; you identify yourself for a moment with some particular ripple and call it "my thought". All you are conscious of is your mind, awareness is the cognizance of consciousness as a whole.

31. The entire universe [mahadakash] exists only in consciousness [chidakash], while I have my stand in the absolute [parakash]. In pure being consciousness arises, in consciousness the world appears and disappears. All there is me, all there is mine. Before all beginnings and after all endings, I am. All has its being in me, in the "I am" that shines in every living being.

32. What begins and ends is mere appearance. The world can be said to appear, but not be. The appearance may last very long on some scale of time and be very short on another. Whatever is time bound is momentary and has no reality.

33. The consciousness and the world appear and disappear together, hence they are two aspects of the same state.

34. The power of life is consciousness. All is consciousness. Consciousness itself is the source of everything. There cannot be life without consciousness, nor consciousness without life. They are both one. In reality only the Ultimate is. The rest is a matter of name and form. As long as you cling to the idea that only what has name and shape exists, the Supreme will appear to you non-existing. When you understand that names and shapes are hollow shells without any content whatsoever, and what is real is nameless and formless, pure energy of life and light of consciousness, you will be at peace, immersed in the deep silence of Reality.

35. Samadhi is not making use of one's consciousness. You just leave your mind alone. You want nothing, neither from your body nor from mind.

36. When you see the world, you see God. There is not seeing God apart from the world. Beyond the world, to see God is to be God, the light by which you see the world which is the tiny little spark, "I am", apparently so small, yet the first and the last in every sort of knowing and loving.

37. The objective universe [mahadakash] is constant movement, projecting and dissolving innumerable forms. Whenever a form is infused with life [prana], consciousness [chetana] appears by reflection of awareness in matter.

38. To watch the universe emerging and subsiding in one's heart is a wonder.

39. The child is born into your world. Now, were you born into your world, or did your world appear to you? To be born means to create a world with yourself as centre. But do you ever create yourself? Or did anyone create you? Everyone creates a world for himself and lives in it, imprisoned by one's ignorance. All we have to do is to deny reality to our prison.

40. Witnessing is an experience and rest is freedom from experience.

41. Beyond the mind [chit] there is no such thing as experience. Experience is a dual state. You cannot talk of Reality as an experience. Once this is understood, you will no longer look for being and becoming as separate and opposite. In reality, they are one and inseparable, like roots and branches of the same tree. Both can exist only in the light of consciousness which again arises in the wake of the sense "I am". This is the primary fact. If you miss it, you miss all.

42. Don't drag down Reality to the level of experience. How can Reality depend on experience when it is the ground [adhar] of experience? Reality is in the very fact of experience, not in its nature. Experience is, after all, a state of mind, while being is definitely not a state of mind.

43. Without an experiencer, the experience is not real. It is the experiencer that imparts reality to experience. Of what value is an experience which you cannot have?

44. The knower and the witness are two or one? When the knower is seen as separate from the known, the witness stands alone. When the known and the knower are seen as one, the witness becomes one with them.

45. The gnani [Self-realised being] is the Supreme and also the witness. He is both being and awareness. In relation to consciousness, he is awareness. In relation to the universe, he is pure being.

46. Before the world was, consciousness was. In consciousness it comes into being. In consciousness it dissolves. At the root of everything is the feeling "I am". The state of mind, "There is a world", is secondary to the sense "I am", I do not need the world, the world needs me.

47. Who was born first, you or the world? Realise that the world is in you and not you in the world. All scriptures say that before the world was, the creator was. Who knows the creator? He alone who was before the creator, your own real being, the source of all the worlds with their creators.

48. What does it mean to see the world as God? It is like entering a dark room. You see nothing. The window opens and the room is flooded with light. Colours and shapes come into being. The window is the giver of light, but not the source of it. The sun is the source. Similarly, matter is like the dark room; consciousness is the window flooding the matter with sensations and perceptions; and the Supreme is the sun, the source both of matter and of light. The window may be closed or open, the Sun shines all the time. It makes all the difference to the room but not to the Sun. Yet all this is secondary to the tiny little thing which is the "I am". Without the "I am", there is nothing. All knowledge is about the "I am". False ideas about this "I am" lead to bondage, right knowledge leads to freedom and happiness.

49. To exist means to be something, a thing, a feeling, a thought, an idea. All existence is particular. Only being is universal, in the sense that every being is compatible with every other being. Existences clash, being never. Existence means becoming, change, birth and death, and birth again, while in being there is silent peace.

50. Freedom form desire means that the compulsion to satisfy is absent.

51. The mistake of the students of yoga consists in their imagining the inner to be something to get hold of, and forgetting that all perceivables are transient and therefore unreal. Only that which makes perception possible, call it life or Reality or what you like, is real.

52. The same consciousness [chit] appears as being [sat] and as bliss [ananda]. Chit in movement is ananda; chit motionless is being.

53. The sense of "I am" is always with you, only you have attached all kinds of things to it; body, feelings, thoughts, ideas, possessions, inner and outer etc. Because of them you take yourself to be what you are not. Go deep into the sense of "I am" and you will find the sense of being, of "I am" is the first to emerge. Ask yourself whence it comes or just watch it quietly. When the mind stays in the "I am" without moving, you enter a state which cannot be verbalised but can be experienced. All you need to do is to try and try again.

54. Everything is a play of ideas. In the state free from ideation [nirvikalpa samadhi] nothing is perceived. The root idea is "I am". It shatters the state of pure consciousness and is followed by the innumerable sensations and perceptions, feeling and ideas which in their totality constitute God and His world. The "I am" remains as the witness but it is by the will of God that everything happens.

55. A memory of the event cannot pass for the event itself. Nor can the anticipation. There is something exceptional, unique about the present event which the previous or the coming do not have. There is the "stamp of Reality" on the actual, which the past and the future do not have. There is nothing peculiar in the present event to make it different from the past and future. For a moment the past was actual and the future will become so. What makes the actual so different? Obviously my presence. I am real for I am always now in the present, and what is now with me shares in my Reality. The past is in memory, the future in imagination. There is nothing in the present event itself that makes it stand out as real. It may be some simple, periodical occurrence, like the striking of the clock. In spite of the fact that we know that the successive strokes are identical, the present stroke is quite different from the previous and the next as remembered or expected. A thing focused in the new is with me for I am ever present; it is my own Reality that I'm impart to the present event.

56. We consider memories only when they come into the present. The forgotten is not counted until one is reminded, which implies bringing it into the now. Things and thoughts have been changing all the time. But the feeling that what is now is real has never changed, even in dream.

57. Causation means succession in time of events in space, the space being physical or mental. Time, space, causation are mutual categories arising and subsiding with mind. It is the illusion of time that makes you talk of causality. When the past and the future are seen in the timeless now as parts of a common pattern, the idea of cause-effect loses the validity and creative freedom takes place.

58. The witness consciousness is not permanent. The knower rises and sets with the known. That in which both the knower and the known arise and set is beyond time. The words permanent and eternal do not apply.

59. Permanency is a mere idea, born of the action of time. Time again depends on memory. By permanency you mean unfailing memory through endless time. You want to eternalise the mind, which is not possible. Only that which does not change which time is eternal. You cannot eternalise a transient thing only the changeless is eternal.

60. The past and the future exist in the mind only. Time is in the mind, space is in the mind. The law of cause and effect is also a way of thinking. In reality all is here and now and one. Multiplicity and diversity are in the mind only.

61. You cannot speak of a beginning of consciousness. The idea of beginning and time are within consciousness. To talk meaningfully of the beginning of anything, you must step out of it. But the moment you step out, you realise that there is no such thing and never was. There is only Reality, in which no "thing" had any being on its own. As waves are unthinkable without the ocean, so is all existence rooted in being.

62. Question: When did the feeling "I am the body" arise? At my birth? This morning?

Maharaj: Now.

Question: I remember it having yesterday too!

Maharaj: The memory of yesterday is now only.

Question: Surely I exist in time. I have a past and a future.

Maharaj: That is how you imagine now.

Question: There must have been a beginning.

Maharaj: Now.

Question: What about ending?

Maharaj: What has no beginning cannot end.

63. King Janaka had a dream that he was a beggar. On his walking up he asked his Guru Vasishta; "Am I a king dreaming of being a beggar or a beggar dreaming of being a king?". The Guru answered: "You are neither. You are both. You are and yet you are not what you think yourself to be. You are because you behave accordingly; you are not because it does not last. Can you be forever king or beggar? All must change. You are what does not change. What are you? Janaka replied: "Yes, I am neither king nor beggar. I am the dispassionate witness". The Guru said: "This is your last illusion, that you are a gnani, that you are different from and superior to the common man. Again you identify yourself with your mind, in this case a well-behaved and in every way exemplary mind. As long as you see the least difference, you are a stranger to Reality. You are on the level of the mind. When the "I am myself" goes, the "I am all" comes. When the "I am all" goes, "I am" comes. When even "I am" goes, Reality alone is and in it every "I am" is preserved and glorified. Diversity without separateness is the ultimate the mind can touch. Beyond that all activity ceases, because in it all goals are reached and purpose fulfilled.

64. Freedom from all desire to last is eternity.

65. The Supreme state can be described only by negation as uncaused, independent, unrelated, undivided, uncomposed, unshakable, unquestionable, unreachable by effort. Every positive definition is from memory and therefore inapplicable. And yet my state is supremely actual and therefore possible, realisable, attainable.

66. My world is real, true as it is perceived, while yours appears and disappears, according to the state of your mind. Your world is something alien, and you are afraid of it. My world is myself. I am at home.

67. Outside the Self there is nothing. All is one and all is contained in "I am". In the waking and dream states it is the person. In deep sleep and Turiya, it is the Self. Beyond the alert intentness of Turiya lies the great silent peace of the Supreme. But in fact, all is one in essence and related in appearance. In ignorance the seer becomes the seen and in wisdom he is the seeing. Know the knower, and all will be known.

68. Unmanifested, manifested, individuality, personality [nirguna, saguna, vyakta, vyakti] all these are mere words, points of view, mental attitudes. There is no reality in them. The real is experienced in silence. You are conscious of being a person only when you are in trouble when you are not in trouble, you do not think of yourself.

69. Non-distinction speaks in silence. Worlds carry distinctions. The unmanifested [nirguna] has no name; all names refer to the manifested [saguna]. It is useless to struggle with words to express what is beyond words. Consciousness [chidananda] is spirit [purusha], consciousness in matter [prakriti]. Imperfect spirit is matter, perfect matter is spirit. In the beginning as in the end, all is one.

70. Reality is neither subjective nor objective, neither mind nor matter, neither time nor space. These divisions need somebody to whom to happen, a conscious separate centre. Reality is all and nothing, the totality, and the exclusion, the fullness and the emptiness, fully consistent, absolutely paradoxical. You cannot speak about it, you can only lose yourself in it. When you deny reality to anything, you come to a residue which cannot be denied.

71. It is a matter of actual experience that the Self has being independent of mind and body. It is being awareness bliss. Awareness of being is bliss.

72. I appear to see and hear as you do, but to me it just happens as to you digestion and perspiration happen. The body-mind machine looks after it, but leaves me out of it. Just as you do not need to worry about growing hair, so I need not worry about works and actions. They just happen and leave me unconcerned for in my world nothing ever goes wrong.

73. My world is just like yours. I see, I hear, I feel, I think, I speak and act; in a word I perceive just like you. But with you, it is all: with me it is almost nothing. Knowing the world to be part of myself, I pay it no more attention than you pay to the food you have eaten. While being prepared and eaten the food is separate from you and your mind is on it. Once swallowed you become totally unconscious of it. I have eaten up the world and need not think of it anymore.

74. By being asleep, you mean unconscious, by being awake you mean conscious, by dreaming you mean conscious of your mind but not of the surroundings. Well it is the same with me. Yet there seems to be a difference. In each state, you forget the other two, while to me there is but one state of being, including and transcending the three mental states of waking, dreaming and sleeping.

75. On realisation, pleasure and pain lost their sway over me. I was free from desire and fear. I found myself full, needing nothing. I saw that in the ocean of pure awareness, on the surface of the universal consciousness, the numberless waves of the phenomenal world arise and subside beginninglessly and endlessly. As consciousness, they are all me. As events, there are all mine. There is a mysterious power that looks after them. That power is awareness, Self, Life, God, whatever name you give it. It is the foundation, the ultimate support of all that is, just like gold is basis for all jewels. Be free of name and form and void remains but the void is full to the brim. It is the eternal potential as consciousness is the eternal actual.

76. You may not be quite conscious of your physiological functions, but when it comes to thoughts and feelings, desires and fears, you become acutely self conscious. To me, these too are largely unconscious. I find myself talking to people or doing things quite correctly and appropriately without being conscious of them. It looks as if I live my physical, waking life automatically, reacting spontaneously and accurately.

77. The tremendously complex work going on all the time in your brain and body, are you conscious of it? Not at all. Yet for an outsider all seems to be going on intelligently and purposefully. Why not admit that one's entire personal life may sink largely below the threshold of consciousness and yet proceed safely and smoothly. When self control becomes second nature, awareness shifts its focus to deeper level of existence and action. You agree to be guided from within and life becomes a journey into the unknown.

78. It is all matter of focus. Your mind is focused in the world; mine is focused in Reality. It is like moon in daylight when the Sun shines, the Moon is hardly visible.

79. The ordinary man is not conscious of his body as such. He is conscious of his sensations, feelings and thoughts. Even these, once detachment sets in, move away from the centre of consciousness and happen spontaneously and effortlessly.

80. The centre of consciousness is that which cannot be given name and form, for it is without quality and beyond consciousness. Like a hole in the paper is both in the paper and yet not of paper, so is the Supreme state in the very centre of consciousness and yet beyond consciousness. It is as if an opening in the mind through which the mind is flooded with light. The opening is not even the light but just an opening. From the mind's point of view, it is but an opening for the light of awareness to enter the mental space. By itself the light can only be compared to a solid, dense, rocklike, homogeneous and changeless mass of pure awareness, free from the mental patterns of name and form.

81. That in which consciousness happens, the universal consciousness or mind, we call the ether of consciousness. All the objects of consciousness form the universe. What is beyond both, supporting both, is the supreme state, a state of utter stillness and silence. Whoever goes there, disappears. It is unreasonable by words or mind. You may call it God or Parabrahman, but these are names given by the mind. It is the nameless, contentless, effortless and spontaneous state beyond being or not being. As the universe is the body of the mind, so is consciousness the body of the Supreme. It is not conscious but it gives rise to consciousness.

82. The Supreme is neither conscious nor unconscious. I am telling you from experience. "Prajnanam Brahma" prajnana is the unself conscious knowledge of life itself, energy comes first. For everything is a form of energy. Consciousness is most differentiated in the waking state. Less so in dream. Still less in sleep. Homogeneous in the fourth. Beyond is the inexpressible monolithic Reality, the abode of the gnani.

83. God is the All-Doer, the gnani is a non-doer. God himself does not say: "I am doing all". To him things happen by their own nature. To the gnani all is done by God. He sees no difference between God and nature. Both God and gnani know themselves to be the immovable centre of the movable, the eternal witness a point of pure awareness. They know themselves to be as nothing, therefore nothing can resist them.

84. Being nothing I am all. Everything is me, everything is mine. Just as my body moves by mere thinking of the movement, so do things happen as I think of them. Mind you, I do nothing. I just see them happen. I accept and I am accepted. I am nothing and nothing is not afraid of nothing.

85. Just as the taste of salt pervades the great Ocean and every single drop of sea-water carries the same flavour, so every experience gives me the touch of Reality, the ever fresh realisation of my own being.

86. Of course, you are and I am. But only as points in consciousness; we are nothing apart from consciousness. This must be well grasped, the world hangs on the thread of consciousness; no consciousness, no world.

87. A life lived thoughtfully, in full awareness, is by itself Nisarga Yoga. Living in spontaneous awareness, consciousness of effortless living; being fully interested in one's life all this is implied.

88. Why should a liberated man necessarily follow conventions? The moment he becomes predictable, he cannot be free. His freedom lies in being free to fulfill the need of the moment, to obey the necessity of the situation. Freedom to do what one likes is really bondage, while being free to do only what one must, what is right, is real freedom.

89. Take the experience of death. The ordinary man is afraid to die, because he is afraid of change. The gnani is not afraid because his mind is dead already. He does not think: "I live". He knows "There is life". There is no change in it and no death. Death appears to be a change in time and space. Where there is neither time nor space, how can there be death? The gnani is already dead to name and shape. How can their loss affect Him? The man in the train travels from place to place, but the man off the train goes nowhere, for he is not bound for any destination. He has nowhere to go, nothing to do, nothing to become. Those who make plans will be born to carry them out. Those who make no plans need not be born.

90. A gnani's state is not so blind. It tastes of pure, uncaused, undiluted bliss. He is happy, and fully aware that happiness is his very nature and that he need not do anything nor strive for anything to secure it. It follows him, more real than the body, nearer that the mind itself. You imagine that without cause there can be no happiness. To me dependence on anything for happiness is utter misery. Pleasure and pain have causes while my state is my own, totally uncaused, independent, unassailable.

91. I may perceive the world just like you, but you believe to be in it, while I see it as an iridescent drop in the vast expanse of consciousness.

92. I am a dream that can wake you up. You will have the proof of it in your very waking up.

93. How do you go about this finding out? By keeping your mind and heart on it. Interest there must be and steady remembrance. You come to it through earnestness. What is supremely important is to be free from contradictions; behaviour must not betray belief. Tenacity of purpose and honesty in pursuit will bring you to your goal. Turn within. "I am" you know. Be with it, all the time you can spare until you revert to it spontaneously. There is no simpler and easier way.

94. Skill in meditation affects deeply our character. We are slaves to what we do not know; of what we know we are masters. Whatever vice or weakness is in ourselves we discover and understand its causes and workings, we overcome it by the very knowing; the unconscious dissolves when brought into the conscious. The dissolution of the unconscious releases energy; the mind feels adequate and becomes quiet. When the mind is quiet, we come to know ourselves as the pure witness. We withdraw from the experience and its experiencer and stand apart in pure awareness which is between and beyond the two.

95. It is the nature of mind to roam about. All you can do is to shift the focus of consciousness beyond the mind. Refuse all thoughts except one, the thought "I am". The mind will rebel in the beginning but with patience and perseverance, it will yield and keep quiet. Once you are quiet, things will begin to happen spontaneously and quite naturally, without any interference on your part.

96. True happiness cannot be found in things that change and pass away. Pleasure and pain alternate inexorably. Happiness comes from the Self and can be found in the Self only. Find your real Self [swarupa] and all else will come with it.

97. You are the Self here and now. Leave the mind alone, stand aware and unconcerned and you will realise that to stand alert but detached, watching events as they come and go, is an aspect of your real nature.

98. By eliminating the intervals of inadvertence during your waking hours you will gradually eliminate the long interval of absentmindedness, which you call sleep. You will be aware that you are asleep.

99. It is your fixed idea that you must be something or the other that binds you. How can you get rid of this idea? If you trust me, believe when I tell you that you are the pure awareness that illumines consciousness and its infinite content, and live accordingly. If you do not believe me, then go within enquiring "What I am?" or focus your mind on "I am", which is pure and simple being.

100. Discover all you are not. Body feelings, thoughts, ideas, time, space, being and not being this or that nothing concrete or abstract you can point out is you. A mere verbal statement will not do. You may repeat a formula endlessly without any result whatsoever. You must watch yourself continuously particularly your mind moment by moment, missing nothing. This witnessing is essential for the separation of the Self from the not-self.

101. Realisation is but the opposite of ignorance. To take the world as real and one's Self as unreal is ignorance, the cause of sorrow; to know the Self as the only Reality and all else as temporal and transient is freedom, peace, peace and joy. It is all very simple. Instead of seeing things as imagined, learn to see them as they are. When you can see everything as it is, you will also see yourself as you are. It is like cleansing a mirror. The same mirror that shows you the world as it is will also show you your own face. The thought "I am" is the polishing cloth. Use it.

102. When it comes to the actual finding of this inner Self, you say it escapes you. The idea "it escapes me" arises in the mind. Who knows the mind? The witness of the mind. Nobody came to you and said "I am the witness of your mind". Then who is the witness? "I am". So, you know the witness because you are the witness. Here again, to be is to know.

103. Are you a person with gaps in self-consciousness? So to be a person, you need memory. But you surely do exist without memory as in sleep. Since you admit that as a person you have only intermittent existence, can you tell me what are you in the intervals between experiencing yourself as a person? You now say, "I am", but I do not know that "I am". Could you possibly say it when unconscious? No. Were you really unconscious or you just do not remember? Maybe you we conscious in sleep and just do not remember? Your only proof is your memory. Let us consider the waking hours only. Waking and dreaming go together - their only difference is merely in continuity. When we talk of the waking state, we also include the dream state. The world and the consciousness of the world are essential to your existence as a person, an individual. The person and the world appear in consciousness, and also disappear in consciousness. You say you are a person because of the world. I say, because of you there is a world. You will understand on investigation.

104. You do not know yourself. Your ideas about yourself change from day to day and from moment to moment. Your self-image is the most changeful thing you have. To know what you are, you must first investigate and know what you are not. And to know what you are not, you must watch yourself carefully, rejecting all that does not necessarily go with the basic fact; "I am", "I am born", "I am related", "I am this" separate these consistently and perseveringly the "I am" from "this", and try to feel out what it means to be, just "to be", without being this or that. All our habits go against it and the task of fighting them is long and hard sometimes, but clear understanding helps a lot. The clearer you understand that on the level of the mind you can be described in negative terms only, the quicker you will come to the end of your search and realise your limitless being.

105. Give up all questions except one: "Who am I". After all, the only fact you are sure of is that you are. The "I am" is certain. The "I am this" is not. Struggle to find out what you are in reality. Strive without seeking, struggle without greed.

106. When you shall begin to question your dream, awakening will not be far away.

107. You are always the Supreme. But your attention is fixed on things, physical or mental. When your attention is off a thing and not yet fixed on another, in the interval you are pure being. When though the practice of discrimination and detachment [viveka-vairagya] you lose sight of mental and sensory states, pure being emerges as the mental state.

108. By focusing the mind on "I am", on the sense of being, "I am so and so" dissolves. "I am a witness only" remains and that too submerges in "I am all". Then the all becomes the One.

109. Self-forgetting is inherent in Self knowing. Consciousness and unconsciousness are two aspects of one life. They co-exist. To know the world you forget the Self to know the Self, forget the world. What is the world after all? A collection of memories. Cling to one thing that matters; hold on to "I am" and let go all else. This is sadhana. In realisation there is nothing to hold on to and nothing to forget. Everything is known, and nothing is remembered.

110. Desire what is worth desiring and desire it well. Just like you pick your way in a crowd, passing between people, so you find your way between events without missing your general direction. It is easy if you are earnest.

111. Anything you do for the sake of enlightenment takes you nearer. Anything you do without remembering enlightenment puts you off. What you want to be, you are it already. Just keep it in mind.

112. Develop the witness attitude and you will find in your own experience that detachment brings control. The state of witnessing is full of power, there is nothing passive about it.

113. You can do nothing to bring it [realisation] about; but you can avoid creating obstacles. Watch your mind how it comes into being, how it operates. As you watch your mind, you discover yourself as the watcher. When you stand motionless, only watching, you discover yourself as the light behind the watcher. The source of light is dark, unknown is the source of knowledge. That source alone is. Go back to that source and abide there. It is not in the sky, nor in the all-pervading ether. God is all that is great and wonderful; I am nothing, have nothing, can do nothing. Yet all comes out of me the source is me; the root, the origin is me.

114. When Reality explodes in you, you may call it experience of God. Or, rather, it is God experiencing you. God knows you when you know yourself. Reality is not the result of a process; it is an explosion. It is definitely beyond the mind, but all you can do is to know your mind well. Not that the mind will help you, but by knowing your mind you may avoid your mind disabling you. You have to be very alert or your mind will play false with you. It is like watching a thief not that you expect anything form a thief, but you do not want to be robbed. In the same way you give a lot of attention to the mind without expecting anything from it.

115. We sleep and we wake. Both sleep and waking are misnomers. We are only dreaming. True waking and true sleeping, only the gnani knows. We dream that we are awake, we dream that we are asleep. The three states are only varieties of the dream state. Treating everything as a dream liberates. As long as you give reality to dreams, you are their slave. The essence of slavery is to imagine yourself to be a process, to have a past and future, to have history. In fact, we have no history, we are not a process, we do not develop, nor decay; see all as a dream and stay out of it.

116. The three states rotate as usual there is waking and sleeping and waking again, but they do not happen to me. They just happen. To me, nothing ever happens. There is something changeless, motionless, immovable, rock-life, unassailable, a solid mass of pure being consciousness bliss. I am never out of it. Nothing can take me out of it, no torture, no calamity. There is peace deep, immense, unshakeable. Events are registered in memory, but are of no importance. One is hardly aware of them. This state did not come it was always so. There was discovery and it was sudden. Just as at birth you discover the world suddenly, as suddenly I discovered my real being. Once you have awakened into Reality, you stay in it.

117. Just puzzling over my words and trying to grasp their full meaning is sadhana quite sufficient for breaking down the wall.

118. The perceiver of the world, is he prior to the world or does he come into being along with the world? Unless you know the correct answer, you will not find peace.

119. The body appears in mind; your mind is the content of your consciousness; you are the motionless witness of the river of consciousness which changes eternally without changing you in any way. Your own changelessness is so obvious that you do not notice it. Have a good look at yourself and all these misapprehensions and misconceptions will dissolve. Just as all the watery lives are in water and cannot be without water, so all the universe is in you and cannot be without you.

120. God is only a idea in your mind. 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. The world exists in memory, memory comes into consciousness; consciousness exists in awareness and awareness is the reflection of the light on the waters of existence.

121. All I can truly say is: "I am", all else is inference. But the inference has become a habit. Destroy all habits of thinking and seeing. The sense "I am" is the 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. The moon dancing on the water is seen in the water, but it is caused by the moon in the sky and not by the water.

122. Examine the motion of change and you will see. What can change while you do not change can be said to be independent of you. But what is changeless must be one with whatever else is changeless. For duality implies interaction and interaction means change. In other words, the absolutely material and the absolutely spiritual, the totally objective and the totally subjective are identical both in substance and essence.

123. The main point to grasp is that you have projected on to yourself a world of your own imagination, based on memories, on desires and fears, and that you have imprisoned yourself in it. Break the spell and be free. Assert your independence in thought and action. After all, all hangs on your faith in yourself, on the conviction that what you see and hear, think and feel is real. Why not question your faith? No doubt, this world is painted by you on the screen of consciousness and is entirely your own private world. Only your sense "I am", though in the world, is not of the world. By no effort of logic or imagination can you change the "I am" into "I am not". In the very denial of your being you assert it. Once you realise that the world is your own projection, you are free of it. You need not free yourself of a world that does not exist, except in your own imagination. Realise that there is nobody to force it on you, that it is due to the habit of taking the imaginary and be free from fear. Just like colours, so is the world caused by you but you are not the world.

124. That which creates and sustains the world, you may call it God or Providence, but ultimately you are the proof that God exists, not the other way round. For, before any question about God can be put, you must be there to put it.

125. Even the sense of "I am" is composed of the 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 beingness in being, the awareness in consciousness, the interest in every experience that is not describable, yet perfectly accessible, for there is nothing else.

126. Having never left the house you are asking for the way home. Get rid of wrong ideas, that is all. Collecting right ideas will take you nowhere. Just cease imagining.

127. The main thing is to be free of negative emotions desire, fear etc., the "six enemies" of the mind. Once the mind is free of them, the rest will come easily. Just like cloth kept in clean water will become clean, so will the mind get purified in the stream of pure feeling. When you sit quiet and watch yourself, all kinds of things may come to the surface. Do nothing about them; as they have come, so will they go, by themselves. All that matters is mindfulness, total awareness of oneself or rather of one's mind. Be oneself, I mean the person, which alone is objectively observable. The observer is beyond observation. You know you are the ultimate observer by direct insight, not by a logical process based on observation. The Self is known as being, the not-self is known as transient. But in reality all is in the mind. The observed, observation and observer are mental constructs. The Self alone is.

128. A man who seeks realisation is not addicted to desires; he is a seeker who goes against desire, not with it. A general longing for liberation is only the beginning; to find the proper means and use them is the next step. The seeker has only one goal in view; to find his own true being. Of all desires, it is the most ambitious, for nothing and nobody can satisfy it; the seeker and the sought are one and the search alone matters.

129. To be free from thoughts is itself meditation. You begin by letting thoughts flow and watching them. The very observation slows down the mind till it stops altogether. Once the mind is quiet, keep it quiet. Don't get bored with peace, be in it, go deeper into it.

130. What your thoughts and watch yourself watching the thoughts. The state of freedom from all thoughts will happen suddenly and by the bliss of it you shall recognize it.

131. Your expectation of something unique and dramatic, of some wonderful explosion, is merely hindering and delaying your self-realisation. You are not to expect an explosion, for the explosion has already happened at the moment when you were born, when you realised yourself as being knowing feeling. There is only one mistake you are making; you take the inner for the outer and the outer for the inner. What is in you take to be outside you and what is outside, you take to be in you.

132. The mind and feelings are external but you take them to be intimate. The world you believe to be objective, while it is entirely a projection of your psyche. You have to think yourself out of it. There is no other way.

133. Watch your thoughts as you watch the street traffic. People come and go; register without response. It may not be easy in the beginning, but with some practice you will find that your mind can function on many levels at the same time, and you can be aware of them all. It is only when you have a vested interest in any particular level, that your attention gets caught in it and you blacked out levels goes on, outside the field of consciousness.

134. Do not struggle with your memories and thoughts; try only to include in your field of attention the other, more and more important questions like "Who am I?", "How did I happen to be born?", "Whence this universe around me?", "What is real and what is momentary?". No memory will persist if you lose interest in it, it is the emotional link that perpetuates the bondage. You are always seeking pleasure, avoiding pain, always after happiness and peace. 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 asking nor refusing, give all your attention to the level on which "I am" is timeless present. Soon you will realise that peace and happiness are in your very nature and it is only seeking them through some particular channels, that disturbs.

135. You yourself are God, the Supreme Reality. Trust me, trust the Guru. It enables you to make the first step and then your trust is justified by your own experience. I am telling you again: you are the all-pervading, all transcending Reality. Behave accordingly, think, feel and act in harmony with the whole and the actual experience of what I say will dawn upon you in no time. No effort is needed. Have faith and act on it. It is not the body that you love, it is life; perceiving, feeling, thinking, doing, loving, striving, creating. It is that life you live, which is you, which is all. Realise it in its totality, beyond all divisions and limitations and all our desires will merge in it for the greater contains the smaller. Therefore, find yourself, for in finding that you find all.

136. Everybody is glad to be. But few know the fullness of it. You come to know by dwelling in your mind on "I am", "I know", "I love" with the will of reaching the deepest meaning of these words.

137. It is the mind that, itself in movement, sees everything moving, and having created time, worries about the past and future. All the universe is cradled in consciousness [maha tattva] which arises where there is perfect order and harmony [maha sattva]. All the waves are in the ocean, so are all things physical and mental in awareness. Hence, awareness itself is all-important, not the content of it. Deepen and broaden your awareness of yourself and all the blessings will flow. You need not seek anything, all will come to you most naturally and effortlessly. The five senses and the four functions [of the mind: memory, thought, understanding and selfhood], the five elements [earth, water, fire, air and ether], the two aspects of creation [of matter and spirit], all are contained in awareness.

138. Look, my thumb touches my forefinger. Both touch and are touched. When my attention is on my thumb, the thumb is the feeler and the forefinger the Self. Shift the focus of attention and the relationship is reversed. I find that somehow by shifting the focus of attention, I become the very thing I look at and experience the kind of consciousness it has; I become the inner witness of the thing. I call this capacity of entering other focal points of consciousness as love; you may give it any name you like. Love says, "I am everything". Between the two my life flows. Since at any point of time and space I can be both the subject and the object of experience, I express it by saying that I am both and neither and beyond.

139. 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.

140. Question: When do I know that I have discovered the truth?

Maharaj: When the idea, "this is true", "that is true" does not arise. Truth does not assert itself, it is in the seeing of the false as false and rejecting it. It is useless to search for truth when the mind is blind to the false. It must be purged of the false completely before truth can dawn on it.

141. Attachment destroys courage. The giver is ready to give. The taker is absent. Freedom means letting go. People just do not care to let go everything. They do not know that the finite is the price of the infinite as death is the price of immortality. Spiritual maturity lies in the readiness to let everything go. The giving up is the first step. But the real giving up is in realising that there is nothing to give up, for nothing is your own. It is like deep sleep you do not give up your bed when you fall asleep - you just forget it.

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

143. Until man can free himself from false identifications, from pretentions and delusions of various kinds, he can not come fce to face with Eternal Verity that is latent within his own Self.

144. Once you beyond the "I am the body" idea, you will find that space and time are in you, not you in space and time. Once you understand this, the main obstacle to realisation is removed.

145. Happiness comes from the Self and can be found in the Self only. Find your real Self and all else will come with it. To be happy, you need nothing except Self-knowledge.

146. Neither action, nor feeling, nor thought can express Reality. There is no such thing as expression of Reality.

147. Just like the wood produces fire, which is not wood, so does the body produce mind which is not body.

148. The death of the mind is the birth of wisdom.

149. The mind will set itself right as soon as you give up all concern with the past and future and live entirely in the now.

150. The way to truth lies through the destruction of the false. To destroy the false you must question your invetrate beliefs. Of these the idea that yopu are the body is the worst. With the body comes the world, with te 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 that man has frightened out of his wits by monsters of his own making. Realise that what you are can not be born nor die and with the fear gone all suffering ends.

151. What the minds 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.

152. 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.

153. True happiness can not be found in things that change, decay and die. True happiness comes from the Self and can be found in Self only, not your bodily self, but the inner Self which is the everlasting reservoir of oy. All search for happiness outside your Self is misery and leads to more misery.

154. The window is the absence of a wall and it gives light because it is empty. Be empty of all mental contents, of all imagination and effort and the very absence of obstacles will cause Reality to rush in. There is trouble only when you cling to something. When you hold on to nothing no trouble arises.

155. By focussing the mind on "I am", the sense of being "I am so-and-so" dissolves. What remains is "I am a witness only". Later, it develops into "I am That" - the Reality, and ultimately it merges into "I am All".

156. God can be realised only when you have emptied yourself of all else.

157. The Self does not need to be put to rest. It is peace itself, not at peace. Only the mind is restless. All it knows is restlessness with its many modes and grades. The pleasant are considered superior and the painful are discounted. What we call progress is merely a change over from the unpleasant to the pleasant. But changes by themselves cannot bring us to the changeless, for whatever has a beginning must have an end. The real does not begin; it only reveals itself as beginningless and endless, all pervading, all powerful, immovable prime mover, timelessly changeless.

158. The personality [vyakti] is but a product of imagination. The self [vyakta] is the victim of this imagination. It is the taking yourself to be what you are not that binds you. The person cannot be said to exist on its own right, it is the self that believes there is a person and is conscious of being it. Beyond the individual self [vyakta] lies the unmanifested [avyakta], the causeless cause of everything. Even to talk of reuniting the person with the Self is not right because there is no person, only a mental picture given a false reality by conviction. Nothing was divided and there is nothing to unite.

159. You can find what you have lost. But you cannot find what you have not lost. When you are searching it shows that you believe you have lost something. But who believes it? And what is believed to be lost? Have you lost a person like yourself? What is this Self which you are in search of? What exactly do you expect to find?

160. The true knowledge of the Self is not knowledge. It is not something that you find by searching, by looking everywhere. It is not to be found in space and time. Knowledge is but a memory, a mere pattern of thought, a mental habit. All these are motivated by pleasure and pain. It is because you are goaded by pleasure and pain that you are in search of knowledge. The being ofSelf is completely beyond all motivation. You cannot be Self for some reason. You are That and no reason is needed.

161. You cannot approach Realty through worship only. For a seeker of Reality, meditation is essential and there is only one meditation: the rigorous refusal to harbour thoughts.

162. What has been attained may again be lost. Only when you realise the true peace, the peace you have never lost, that peace will remain with you for it was never away. Instead of searching for what you do not have, find out what is it that you have never lost. That which is there before the beginning and after the ending of everything, to That there is no birth nor death. That immovable state, which is not affected by the birth and death of a body or a mind, that state you must perceive.

163. In life nothing can be had without overcoming obstacles. The obstacles to the clear perception of one's true being are desire for pleasure and fear of pain. It is the pleasure-pain motivation that stands in the way. The very freedom from all motivation, the state in which no desire arises is the natural state.

164. Leave alone your desires and fears, give your entire attention to the subject, to Him who is behind the experience of desire and fear. Ask, "Who desires?" Let each desire bring you back to your Self.

165. The happiness you can think of and long for is mere physical or mental satisfaction. Such sensory or mental pleasure is not the real, the absolute happiness. It has its roots in imagination. A man who is given a stone and assured that it is a priceless diamond will be mightily pleased until he realises his mistake; in the same way pleasures lose their tang and pains their barb when the Self is known. Both are seen as they are - conditional responses, mere reactions, plain attractions and repulsions, based on memories or preconceptions. Usually pleasure and pain are experienced when expected. It is all a matter of acquired habits and convictions.

166. Pain and pleasure go always together. Freedom from one means freedom from both. If you do not care for pleasure, you will not be afraid of pain. But there is happiness which is neither of these, and which is completely beyond. The happiness you know is describable and measurable. It is objective, so to say. But the objective cannot be your own. It would be a grievous mistake to identitfy yourself with something external. This churning up of levels leads nowhere. Reality is beyond the subjective and objective, beyond all levels, beyond every distinction. Most definitely it is not their origin, source or root. These come from ignorance of Reality, not from Reality itself, which is indescribable, beyond being and not-being.

167. The desire to find the Self will be surely fulfilled, provided you want nothing else. But you must be honest with your Self and really want nothing else. If in the meantime you want many other things and are engaged in their pursuit, your main purpose may be delayed until you grow wiser and cease being torn between contradictory urges. Go within, without swerving, without ever looking outward.

168. Desires and fears reside in your memory. Realise that their root is in expectation born of memory - and they will cease to obsess you.

169. When the mind is quiet, we come to know ourselves as the pure witness. We withdraw from the experience and its experiencer and stand apart in pure awareness which is between and beyond the two.

170. Find your Self first, and endless blessings will follow. Nothing profits the world as much as the abandoning of profits. A man who no longer thinks in terms of loss and gain is the trly non-violent man, for he is beyond all conflict.

171. The only help worth giving is freeing from the need for further help. Repeated hekp is no help at all. Do not talk of helping another unless you can put him beyond all need of help.

172. When you have understood that all existence, in separation and limitation, is painful, and are willing and able to live integrally, in oneness with all life, as pure being, you have gone beyond all need of help. You can help another by precept and example and, above all, by your being. You cannot give what you do not have and you don't have what you are not. You can only give what you are - and of that you can give limitlessly.

173. How restless people are, how constantly on the move. It is because they are in pain that they seek relief in pleasure. Does a happy man seek happiness? What else can be the cause of this universal search for pleasure? All the happiness they can imagine is in the assurance of repeated pleasure.

174. To be your Self you can only cease to be as you seem to be now. There is nothing cruel in what I say. To wake up a man from a nightmare is compassion. You come here because you are in pain, and all I say is, "Wake up! Know your Self. Be your Self." The end of pain lies not in pleasure. When you realise that you are beyond both pain and pleasure, aloof and unassailable, then the pursuit of happiness ceases and the resultant sorrow too. For pain aims at pleasure and pleasure ends in pain, relentlessly.

175. In the ultimate state there can be neither happiness, nor sorrow, only freedom. Happiness depends on something or other and can be lost; freedom from everything depends on nothing and cannot be lost. Freedom from sorrow has no cause and therefore cannot be destroyed. Realise that freedom.

176. Being the source of both, the Self is beyond both knowledge and power. The observable is in the mind. The nature of the Self is pure awareness, pure witnessing, unaffected by the presence or absence of knowledge or liking.

177. Have your being outside this body of birth and death and all your problems will be solved. They exist because you believe yourself born to die. Undeceive yourself and be free. You are not a person.

178. What world do you want to improve? You are creating it and with it the horrors and misery. You first create your "self" with the subtlest movement of mind in "I am". Stop creating and the misery and the horrors will not be there. Why are you interested in this mad rush to organise and systemize that which is like a dream? Just wake up and it will not be there. Why worry about that which is not? Realise what is.

179. Before you can know anything directly, non-verbally, you must know the knower. So far you took the mind for the knower. It is not so. The mind clogs you up with images and ideas which leave scars in memory. You take remembering to be knowledge. True knowledge is ever fresh, new, unexpected. It wells up from within; when you know what you are, you are also what you know. Between knowing and being there is no gap.

180. Once you know your Self as pure being, the ecstacy of freedom is your own.

181. Nothing you do will change you. You need no change. You may change your mind or your body, but it is always something external to you that has changed, not your Self. Why bother at all to change? Realise once and for all that neither your body nor your mind, nor even your consciousness is your Self. Stand alone in your true nature, beyond consciousness and unconsciousness. No effort can take you there; only clarity of understanding. Trace your misunderstandings and abandon them; that is all. There is nothing to seek and find, for there is nothing that is lost. Relax and watch "I am". Reality is just behind it. Keep quiet, keep silent. It will emerge, or, rather it will take you in.

182. I am uncaused, independent, unrelated, undivided, uncomposed, unshakable, unquestionable, unreachable by effort. Every positive definition of my Self is from memory and therefore inapplicable.

183. Societies are like people, they are born, they grow to some point of relative perfection, then decay and die.

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

185. Time cannot take us out of time, as space cannot take us out of space. All you get by waiting is more waiting. Absolute perfection is heare and now, not in some future, near or far. It is your behaviour that blinds you to your Self. Disregard whatever you think your Self to be and act as if you were absolutely perfect - whatever your idea of perfection may be. All you need is courage. Courage is within you. Look within.

186. As the Sun knows not darkness, so the Self knows not the non-Self.

187. Beyond living and dying it is the all-inclusive, all-exclusive Life in which birth is death a,d death is birth.

188. The real dies not die, the unreal never lived.

189. To know what you are, you must first investigate and know what you are not.

190. The source of consciousness cannot be an object in consciousness. To know the source is to be the source.

191. To know the world you forget the Self, to know the Self you forget the world.

192. When life and death are seen as essential to each other, as two aspects of one being, that is immortality. To see the end in the beginning and beginning in the end is the intimation of eternity. Definitely, immortality is not continuity. Only the process of change continues. Nothing lasts.

193. Not making use of one's consciousness is samadhi. You just leave your mind alone. You want nothing, either from your body or your mind.

194. Your mind is always with things, peaple and ideas; never with your Self. Bring your Self into focus. Become aware of your own existence - "I am".

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

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

197. All causes are served best by the man who has returned to his source.

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

199. Learn to look without imagination, to listen without distortion: that is all. Stop attributing names and shapes to the essentially nameless and formless, realise that every mode of perception is subjective, that what is seen or heard, touched or smelled, felt or thought, expected or imagined, is in the mind and not in reality, and you will experience peace and freedom from fear.

200. From my point of view everything happens by itself, quite spontaneously. But man imagines that he works for an incentive, towards a goal. He always has a reward in mind and strives for it.

DVD
ramana maharshi | la lumière éternelle | les films d"archives, 1935-1950 | arunachala | autour d'arunachala | h.w.l. poonja | maya | soyez libre de toute recherche
ramakrishna | sa vie, son message | amma | darshan | rivière d'amour | ma anandamayi | comment elle se révèle | ashrams
vijayananda | un chemin de sagesse | henri le saux | swamiji - un voyage intérieur | jayramdas | de l'isle au gange | ayurvéda | l'art de vivre
soufisme | soufis d'afghanistan | milarépa | la voie du bonheur | à propos de milarépa | lama guendune rinpoché | hommage
dilgo khyentsé rinpoché | l'esprit du tibet | matthieu ricard | témoignage d'un bouddhisme vivant | bouddhisme et bonheur | zen | films zen avec deshimaru
himalaya | terre de sérénité | une expérience orientale | la traversée du zanskar | le message des tibétains | au royaume du bhoutan
le yoga du tibet | les sentiers de la foudre | la longue marche | monastères | la lumière du désert | le grand silence | de silence et d'amour
eckhart tolle | la transformation de la conscience | retraite à findhorn | j. krishnamurti | le défi du changement | série - sur l'éducation, 1983-1985 | la mort, 1979
causeries publiques à washington, dc, 1985 | série - ce que l'amour n'est pas, 1979 | série - un monde de paix, 1983 | série - mettre fin à la souffrance, 1984

CD
eckhart tolle | en présence d'un profonde mystère | retraite à findhorn | l'épanouissement de la conscience humaine | même le soleil mourra un jour
portes d'accès au moment présent | entrer dans le moment présent | la conscience de l'être | vivre libéré | vivre la paix intérieure | nouvelle terre | quiétude
mettre en pratique le pouvoir du moment présent | le pouvoir du moment présent | ma anandamayi | hari nam
amma | mothers own | old is gold - volume 1 | old is gold - volume 2 | remembrance

LIVRES
vedanta | ramana maharshi | h.w.l. poonja | annamalai swami | arunachala | tout est un | tripurarahasya | sorupananda | nisargadatta maharaj
siddharameshwar maharaj | amma | ma anandamayi | j. krishnamurti | vimala thakar | ramakrishna | vivekananda | u.g. krishnamurti | kabir | swami ramatirtha
bhagavad gita | uddhava gita | uttara gita | ashtravakra samhita | yoga | asparsa yoga | yoga sutra de patanjali | yoga vasishtha | un et multiple | retour aux sources
l'essence du vedanta | la connaissance des vedas | le ramayana | le mahabharata | shankaracharya | shiva | spandakarika | la bhakti | tantras | lalla | toukaram | OM
upanishads | samnyas | isa | katha | kena | mundaka | mandukya | karika | kausitaki | svetasvatara | prasna | taittiriya | aitareya | atharvasira
brahmabinupanishad | kaivalya | sarvasaropinishad | maitry | atmapujopanishad | baskala-mantra | chagaleya | ganapati | devi | chandogya
ayurvéda | ayurvéda & nutrition | ayurvéda & panchakarma | la maternité ayurvédique - thaimai | abyangam - massage ayurvédique | l'ayurvéda pour les femmes
prakriti - votre constitution ayurvédique | la santé par l'ayurvéda | yoga & ayurvéda | la divinité des plantes | caraka samhita
bouddhisme | dilgo khyentsé rinpoché | phendé rinpoché | kamalashila | dzogchen | le sutra de lotus | nagarjuna | padmasambhava | longchenpa | milarépa
taisen deshimaru | shunryu suzuki | zazen | fa hai | vieux tcheng | mazu | houang po | hsin hsin ming
taoïsme | lao tseu | tao te king | lie tseu | lu tsou | wei wu wei | nan shan | entre source et nuage | han fei tse | tao poemes | tchouang tseu
soufisme | rumi | le divan | le petit livre des conseils | attar | bistami | les tentations métaphysiques | ghazali | ibn'arabi | nasrudin | machrab
textes occidentaux | maître eckhart | le nuage d'inconnaissance | la quête de la sagesse | la voie du silence | vide et plénitude | la source | khalil gibran | henri le saux
l'évangile selon thomas | st jean de la croix | william samuel | adyashanti | byron katie | eckhart tolle | paul brunton | raphael

ENSEIGNEMENTS
ramana maharshi | qui suis-je ? | tout le monde est déjà réalisé | en la présence | padam - le soi sans forme | la recherche de soi-même | instruction spirituelle
h.w.l. poonja | le feu de la liberté | hommage | qui êtes-vous ? | summa iru | l'effort et le non-effort | rien n'a jamais existé | proses et poèmes du vide dansant
plongeon dans l'inconnu | l'océan de silence | annamalai swami | seul le soi est réel | amma | entretien | swami paratmananda | sur le chemin de la liberté
siddharameshwar maharaj | " je ne suis pas le corps " | ranjit maharaj | " je suis en tout et partout " | la connaissance et l'ignorance | entretien | paroles
nisargadatta maharaj | connaissance spirituelle et pacification du désir de savoir | le discernement mène au détachement | adi shankaracharya | aparokshanubhuti
neem karoli baba | le darshan | advaita | qu'est-ce que l'advaita ? | ribhu gita | le cœur | yoga | l'asparsa yoga | yoga vasishtha | le yoga suprême
ayurvéda | la nutrition ayurvédique | lama guendune rinpoché | libre et tranquille | seng tsan | l'esprit unifié | fa hai | le réel
william samuel | qui est william samuel ? | " maintenant " | chief joseph | la voie de la guerrière | u.g. krishnamurti | entretien | hommage


ENGLISH  DVD
h.w.l. poonja | call off the search | maya | ramana maharshi | the archival films, 1935-1950 | the sage of arunachala | ma anandamayi | how she reaveals herself
vijayananda | a path of wisdom | rumi | poet of the heart | j. krishnamurti | the nature of the mind - parts 1 & 2 | the nature of the mind - parts 3 & 4
tibet | yoga from tibet | the message of the tibetans

CD
ma anandamayi | hari nam | amma | mothers own | old is gold - volume 1 | old is gold - volume 2 | remembrance

BOOKS
ramana maharshi | guru vachaka kovai | padamalai | heart is thy name, oh lord | talks with ramana maharshi | letters from sri ramanasramam
the power of the presence - part 1 | the power of the presence - part 2 | the power of the presence - part 3 | absolute consciousness | sri ramana darsanam
the mind of ramana maharshi and the path of self-knowledge | lakshmana swami | no mind - i am the self | annamalai swami | final talks
h.w.l. poonja | the fire of freedom | nothing ever happened | papaji - interviews | ma anandamayi | matri darshan | death must die | life and teachings
siddhareshwar maharaj | amrut laya - volume 1 | amrut laya - volume 2 | ranjit maharaj | understanding is realizing | illusion versus reality - volume 1
illusion versus reality - volume 2 | vimala thakar | insights into the bhagavad gita | on an eternal voyage | upanishads | eight upanishads | chandogya upanishad
kabir | selected couplets | couplets from kabir | the bijak of kabir | vedanta | the song of ribhu | uddhava gita | gayatri | yoga vasishtha | tripura rahasya
the acarya | pratyabhijnahrdayam

TEACHINGS
ramana maharshi | guru | who am I? | self enquiry | spiritual instruction | wisdom | words | silence | annamalai swami | self alone is real | ellam ondre | all is one
h.w.l. poonja | the fire of freedom | remembering | interview | satsang | who are you? | words | no practice | eternal rest | yoga vasishtha | the supreme yoga
nisargadatta maharaj | meet the sage | self knowledge and self realisation | a great maharashtrian gnani | words | ranjit maharaj | meeting | interview | satsang
adi shankaracharya | atma bodha | aparokshanubhuti | ribhu gita | the heart | advaita | what's advaita? | seng tsan | faith mind | dattatreya | avadhuta gita
u.g. krishnamurti | interview | remembering | william samuel | "now" | lama guendune rinpoché | free and easy | chief joseph | the way of the warrior