Tonight I would like to talk to you a little bit about spiritual metamorphosis or transformation. Self-discovery is a process of dissolution and creation. We’re dissolving what we know to create what we don’t know. Dissolution means envelopment in eternity. Creation is bringing into focus new awareness.
In self-discovery, as in life itself, we believe that we know who we are. This knowledge changes as we change and develop. One day we think that we’re one type of person with certain tendencies, feelings, very emotional perhaps. Another day we feel that we’re very cold and aloof. But as we meditate and we go within and still the mind, stop the subterfuge of thought, we become aware of awareness. We see that we’re really not one component being, but we’re really composed of bodies of awareness, distinct selves.
The surface personality, in other words, is only the beginning of what we are. So as we meditate and we still that surface personality, we can see beyond it, and we see that we encompass multitudes.
Initially we’ll see different selves, perhaps selves that we’ve had in past lives. Then later we’ll see aspects of consciousness that these selves are made from. Just as there are primary colors from which all of the other colors come forth when they’re combined, so there are primary vibratory qualities of energy and light within us and these combine and recombine to produce a picaresque 27 variety of selves.
We adopt these selves in different situations, in different lifetimes. We come to see, in other words, that we embody everything that there is. Everything that’s good is within us. Everything that’s bad is within us. Everything that’s helpful is within us. Everything that’s harmful is within us. There is nothing that we’re not.
As we trace our spirit further down, we pass beyond duality. Remember, we label things through value systems that we’ve developed through learning, through cultural indoctrination.
But nothing is or is not unless we feel it is that way. We give ground to reality by creating it. Not in the sense that reality will not exist without us. It does. Or, to look at it another way, we can’t separate ourselves from reality. Reality can’t exist without us, since we are reality.
The premise is false; we can never be separated from reality in life or in death. We are eternal awareness in variant forms.
We believe that we decide, and in a surface sense we do and we don’t. We do make decisions. But the deeper decisions come from another part of our being that we’re not particularly aware of yet.
The surface personality thinks, “Ah, I’m deciding. I’m deciding to buy the bananas because they look good today in the supermarket. I’m deciding to go to this school because it offers the courses I want, I like its physical location. I’m deciding to study with this teacher of meditation because I feel comfortable or challenged. I’m deciding to marry this person because I love them. I’m deciding to follow this career because it seems fulfilling or it will take care of my economic needs”—never realizing that we don’t decide these things at all.
You might say they’re all decided for us by that great unknown. When we wake up in the morning and we make decisions, these decisions came from the night, the night of eternity, our other side.
Most people are fragile. They’re fragile in the sense that they’re afraid of the unknown, so they cling to each other. They cling to families, traditions, ways of seeing life that protect them from the immensity of the unknown. Very few individuals have the tenacity and the love to propel them beyond everything that they know and can trust and to face the unknown, let alone to be absorbed in it.
The process of self-discovery is learning to turn your back on everything, and everyone … and face that immensity.
Only after you’ve done that can you then turn around and face everyone again with new, clear eyes.
There are so many traps. There are so many opportunities. Life is a river and we take our boat and we go down it. It’s a journey or a series of journeys into the self. The self exists in everything. But sometimes we can get stuck in the journey. We enter into a lagoon and we stay there, sometimes for a while, sometimes for a lifetime, sometimes for many lifetimes. Then some agency beyond our knowledge releases us without us knowing why, so that we can go forward again.
Why is it that one person will approach the inner life with depth, sincerity and humility and another won’t, when both ostensibly want to? Why is it one will get caught up in relationships, temporal experiences, and another will just see far beyond that, will see the limitations of such things?
Is one better than another? No.
Each is a journey, a journey within a journey, and life consists of countless journeys within journeys. And no one knows why. Enlightened people don’t know why. They don’t ask anymore. Enlightenment simply means that you’ve run out of questions, and that the answers don’t matter anymore.
Before enlightenment, you feel that if you can only have the answers to the questions, “Who is God? Why am I alive? What happens after death? What can I do to be complete and happy? What is the meaning of all of this? Why is it? How did it get started? Will it ever end? Do I reincarnate? Is death really awful? Should I cling to life? Should I not be concerned about it? Do I have control over my destiny or is it all out of my hands? Is life chaos, or is there a supreme order? If there is a supreme order, why does it seem to be so screwed up? Why is there so much pain and suffering if there’s a God?”
These questions plague us. In enlightenment, there are really no answers to these questions. Let’s say that the questions simply become no longer important because you’re so absorbed in the light of eternity that you see that it just doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter at all.
All the things that once mattered to you no longer do.
Not because they don’t matter to the person who you were, [but] because you change in this process of self-discovery. You become something else. You go beyond what we know as the human condition, which wants answers, which demands them, and lives in unhappiness.
If you are the universe itself, if you become the meaning of life, you don’t have to ask what it is, you are it. You become that.
Because the answers to these questions will only bring about more questions, “Well, if this is so, if this is the answer, then what about this? What about that? How do I know?”
Self-discovery does not seek to bring you answers about what to do with your personal life; it doesn’t try and philosophically comfort you about life or death. What it does is bring you into reality, not as a perceiver, but if anything, as perception itself.
If you were wondering what water is like, you can ask someone questions, you’ll just hear answers. If you get into the water and swim or taste it, that’s more direct. That’s meditation. But if you became the water itself, if you became all the water that has ever been or will ever be, you would know water. You are water. You are the consciousness of water. That’s absorption in nirvana, that’s samadhi.
Self-discovery tries to take you beyond reason. Because a reason is a terrible trap—because you will be satisfied with answers. And if you’re satisfied with answers, you’ll never come to know what life really is. Life can only be known through direct experience—direct experience in meditation, where you’re tasting the water or feeling it, which is far removed from simply talking about it or hearing someone else’s experiences. The next step, of course, is to become it.
When we read the Arthurian legends of King Arthur, of his training, his teacher was Merlin, the magician. And the way Merlin taught Arthur, the way he prepared him to be king, was to give him experiences. He would transform Arthur into a bird, and for a night Arthur would be an owl among the owls. Then he would transform him into a fish in a pond, and he would swim and see the other fish and converse with them. Gradually he was able to teach him about the universe, not by simply saying, “A fish is thus and such, a bird is thus and such, a woman is thus and such, a man is thus and such.” But rather, he would bring him that, he would become that.
Nothing else gives you awareness but awareness.
There is the form and the formless.
The world of the form we call life. That’s a world of transposition where there’s time and place and change. Beyond this world, beyond other worlds, be they interdimensional worlds or physical worlds, there is something else, which is that vast unknown that we call “eternity.”
It is where we have come from. It is that which is within us, and it is where we will eventually return. I can’t tell you what that is like.
I have meditated and experienced that. I have tasted it and felt it. Then I went beyond that to become it. Therefore I know that, I am that.
We have the possibility of being far removed from what we are, of beginning to taste it and feel it, and finally becoming that. That is direct knowledge.
That is the truth. Anything else is mere words.
A great deal of humility is necessary in the process of self-discovery.
Humility is the ability to accept what and who you are at this moment. Humility does not imply that you will stay this way. It’s impossible to stay any way since change is the law of the universe
Rather than being unhappy that you are not something that you feel you should be, you have the equanimity and the inner poise and balance to accept your lot in life and to be happy therein.
When you meditate, each time you meditate, you must accept the meditation as it has been given to you by eternity. It is extremely vain to feel that you meditate. Life meditates you.
You are a meditation of existence. You are a passing dream.
And the question that you should ask yourself,
is,
Most people are content with explanations, with rituals, with dogma, and they find this in religion, philosophy, in the world. If you are content with that, then you have to have the equanimity to accept that.
When the time comes for you to experience—to experience eternity in higher forms—you can’t stop it because it is not up to us.
It is vain to think that we choose, that our own energy, our own intellect will create the possibility of us experiencing the higher order of existence.
Liberation is to know that you are That—not knowing in the sense of mind, as we know mind to be, but in the sense that you have merged so irrevocably and completely with all there is, that there is nothing else, not even That, since the perception of That can only exist as long as you are still in the relative world.
The force that drives the green fuse, as Dylan Thomas said, cannot be understood.
So equanimity and self-discovery is to accept your daily meditation—to meditate, to observe yourself meditating and to not be concerned with the results.
Results will bind you.
The want of gain and the fear of loss come about through attachment to the body. You feel that you are the body and your welfare is dependent upon the body.
But I can tell you that if you are the body, you’re in terrible trouble because your body is extremely mortal and will not last.
One small microbe will destroy it one day, if not an accident of some type. You have but a short time to live in this world. As you age, you will experience the pains of aging.
And if your hopes and joys rest upon the body and its abilities, then you will suffer greatly.
The world is futile when viewed through the persona of the body. The body, of course, is not simply the physical body but it’s the body of knowledge of this world.
All of the great accomplishments that have ever been will be washed away by eternity. All of the emotions, the caring, the fear, the hate, will be washed away by the river of eternity.
Nothing you can do can prevent your death. Nothing you can do can prevent your rebirth.
But to become aware of that marvelous cosmic process which you are caught up in—
is self-discovery.
Why you have elected to follow this path, you do not know. You may have reasons implanted in your mind, but I assure you that they are ego-bound and have nothing to do with what is or what is not.
You have elected to follow the path because eternity has elected you.
All in this world pass away. None remain.
And if you retain that knowledge, you will be able to become immortal.
Immortality is to be that.
Immortality is to be God, if we use the word “God” as representative of that which is timeless, immortal and infinite, that which produces order, which holds the nucleus of an atom together, which gives us life and death and rebirth and yet is—while inextricably bound up in the process of existence—very far removed from it, and does not suffer its growing pains.
That, then is God—neither masculine nor feminine, not a person, beyond any comprehension.
We refer to God as That.
In Sanskrit they say, “Tat twam asi.” Thou art That. You are God. The bubble of your awareness bursts and you’re flooded with immortality.
Until that happens, death is inevitable, as is life inevitable.
You should never fear that which is inevitable because it is good. We fear it if we think of ourselves as the body. The body fears its extinction as you fear to go to the dentist.
But when you see that you are not the body, that the body comprises only a small fraction of the aggregate of your awareness, then death is no fear, life is no fear, there is no fear.
Timeless awareness occurs to very few in this world, to step beyond the cycle of fear.
The body has created a magnificent arena of fears, and to combat those fears, which are based upon ignorance, a lack of true seeing, the body has manifested order. We have developed ways of seeing life that exclude us from seeing life.
It’s as if we’re dealing with a psychotic individual who has manifested a separate reality that has nothing to do with what is.
The person lives in a series of hallucinations because they can’t deal with truth, not knowing that if they dealt with truth they would be happy and free. But because they fear what is, through illusion they create a paranoid body of hallucinations.
When the lights are out, if you’re in a dark room, you could hear a noise. You could conjure up terrible images in your mind, and you could turn the lights on and perhaps nothing is there.
So the light of knowledge dispels all fear and all misery. The fears that you have now are illusory. They exist because you are in a condition of maya.
You are caught up in the samsara, the world.
Maya is the illusion of duality. It’s a sense of having life or death. Neither is the case. These are relative conditions that you pass through.
In meditation, in selfless giving, in anything that lends nobility to the soul, we rise beyond the limitations of our self-created illusions and we become perfectly what we are.
Otherwise we placate ourselves with fear. We’re afraid to be alone so we have a relationship with someone. And the more afraid we are, the more we cling to them.
People have children for the same reason. They sense their imminent death and they want to leave something of themselves in this world, thinking it provides them with some form of immortality.
People will pray to gods and goddesses, thinking it will bring them some form of immortality. They’ll go through all kinds of untold suffering when they watch a relative pass away, when they lose a child, when they lose a husband or a wife, when someone in a relationship leaves them. They will go through untold suffering.
All of these attachments are “hostages to fortune.”
Whenever you become attached to something, you have created a hostage to fortune. Sooner or later, it is inevitable that you will be parted from everything and everyone in this world. It’s only a question of when. The more you affix and attach yourself to these things, the more you will suffer at the time of parting or suffer in anticipation of that parting.
None of this is real.
All of this is an illusion, and your acceptance of that fact is the beginning of the pathway to self-knowledge.
It is only when you have the strength to stand alone in the light of eternity that you will begin to learn a new way. It is only when you have the perseverance to meditate beyond thought that you will begin to feel and sense a new way.
And beyond all of our control, when all of the selves have been dissolved, when all of your karma is dissolved, will you enter into the superconscious awareness, will you become That.
Then you are free. Then there is no suffering. Then there is no attachment. There is only liberation. Then one plays with life because life becomes your friend, death becomes your friend, enemies become your friend.
Because there is only love at that point—love, and at the same time the basic street awareness of how the world works and the ability to deal with the relative while being immortal.
The condition of humankind is not good, in the sense that the illusory prisons we create for ourselves through our desires and our frustrations are unhappy.
Life is so beautiful, but we fail to see it because we’re so busy looking at our illusions.
The way out, then, is self-knowledge. Self-knowledge can only come through practice and discrimination.
It’s necessary to determine that which is real and that which is passing.
It’s necessary
This is only another illusion. That nothing is real in this world in the sense that nothing here lasts.
To affix yourself to immortality.
It’s necessary to take a road, as Robert Frost said, less traveled by—if you want an uncommon destiny.
To do that you have to push aside your illusions. You have to push aside, one by one, your fears, which are all false, and you have to accept perfection.
You have to accept immortal awareness, that you are That.
There is no time, there is no space, there is no condition. There is only awareness, awareness of these ideas.
The things that prevent you from being free are few—
There are only three things.
Anything that you can think of or imagine is an illusion. No matter how right it may seem at the time, it’s still an illusion, in the sense that you are in duality, that you are thinking, that you are perceiving, that there’s a sense of separativity. All thoughts, all ideas, are illusions—even the highest, most noble are illusions. All are partialities.
You have to use your sword of discrimination and cut all illusions aside.
It’s done in a succession. We begin by eliminating our illusions which are dark and unhappy—that we’re not capable, that we’re not lovable, that we’re not worthwhile. These are very unhappy illusions—that we’re not eternal, that we are subject to death and rebirth. These are unhappy illusions.
Then, after we eliminate all the unhappy illusions through meditative practice, selfless giving, kindness to others and humility, we have to work away at our happy illusions that seem to be happy but still bind us.
Our sense of being worthwhile, our sense of being good, our sense of being … anything, or “being” itself—all must go.
Final clearance sale.
The sense that one has the knowledge of these perceptions is egotism.
The sense that you are in any way superior because you can move to a higher level of attention, the sense that you can even do that, that it is even worthwhile—these are the higher truths that are illusions and must go, until there is nothing, not even the concept of nothing, and without a sense that this has even a purpose or a direction.
When all has gone away, all remains. The circle is broken, yet perfect, and there is no circle.
At that point you move into the superconscious, which you’ve never left, since there was never anything else. Upon waking from the dream of life and death and rebirth, there is no memory of that dream in the superconscious.
Success and failure are terrible traps. Each is potent. When we have failure, we look within because we feel a need for something greater. But yet, in failure, we become so frustrated that we feel we’re not worthwhile. We don’t feel that we’re worthy of immortality, of perfect consciousness, so we develop a very poor self-image and we stop short of success, because we feel we can’t—we’re failures, we always fail.
A person enters into the inner life with this attitude and after they’ve meditated for some time, they begin to see that this isn’t true.
A new power and force is leant to their life. They become more successful in their meditation, in their own state of happiness, in their career.
Then they become complacent and attached to these things and they no longer strive to go within because the pain has been removed.
But there’s a deeper pain, and that’s the pain of an unfulfilled spirit.
While the comforts of modern civilization and technological success or economic success or friendship or having others love you may seem at the moment to be quite fulfilling,
The more you affix yourself to them, the greater your unhappiness will be at the time of separation.
Running away from success doesn’t help either.
All you can do is accept with equanimity and humility what life gives you and not to feel that you are the cause of these events because in your egotism you will delude yourself and become attached and suffer greatly.
You should only remember that you are on a journey, and the journey is a journey within a journey.
Accept whatever comes in the dream of life. If it’s success, don’t feel successful and don’t feel that it had anything to do with your own self-worth. If it’s failure, don’t feel that it’s failure, and don’t feel that it had anything to do with your own lack of self-worth. Success and failure are the traps of egotism.
You are not the doer.
Just as images rest upon a screen in a movie theater and appear to be solid—
so life is composed of images of light that refract and reflect over the awareness field of your consciousness.
To hate the movie is a mistake.
To try and take it apart will only leave you with an empty feeling. To walk around, as some people do when they practice jnana yoga, and say that, “Nothing is real, nothing is real,” is not liberation. It’s unhappiness because you lack the beauty of life. You lack the joy in objects. You lack the ecstasy of love. You lack the embrace of friends.
What you need to remember, as you pass through the samsara, as you go down the river of life,
You can enjoy everything that comes to you. With a happy sense of humor, you can greet success and failure.
But for heaven’s sakes, don’t get caught up in them or believe for a second that they matter. Don’t think that your career matters, your wife matters, your husband, your friends, your possessions.
You will suffer greatly because they are all transitory and upon parting with them your attachment will cause you much pain.
But even more you will suffer because your fixation to these things will prevent you from enjoying the immortality of conscious awareness, the pure bliss and ecstasy of the liberated consciousness.
So enjoy all things that come to you in life. But remember always to bring your sword of discrimination with you.
In the midst of success, while everyone at the party is celebrating you, is having a wonderful time, don’t celebrate, observe.
Enjoy the party, don’t hate it. And don’t feel badly about those who are in illusion. Don’t feel that you are superior because I assure you, you are not.
But observe quietly and remain empty, empty in the sense that you are filled with light and knowledge, and empty and void of attachment.
In the midst of failure, do not be upset.
When people say terrible things about you, when your body ages and doesn’t work the way it used to, do not be upset.
In illness, in fatigue, when your spirits are down, remember—observe.
Simply observe the turn the movie is taking as it’s being projected on the screen, but know that these events and these experiences that you call life are but phantoms and will one day pass away and you will remain because you are That.
You are immortal consciousness. You are free and perfect.
And even though at this time you are not fully aware of that,
if you remember these words
if you remember this, you will be free.
Observe, don’t run away. Be neither attracted nor repulsed. But do not think that it is your power that creates success, your nobility, your wonderful qualities. Nor should you feel that you’ve created your failures. [Rama speaks softly.]
Instead, draw back from success and failure. Put forth your best effort in whatever life has directed you towards. If you’re washing dishes at home, if you’re acting on the stage, if you’re running a corporation, if you’re driving your car, if you’re by yourself in a secluded place meditating, whatever it is that you find yourself doing, without any sense of doing, do that with everything that you have and everything that you are, without a sense of strain but with perfect balance.
And when the emotional turmoil of life whirls around you, when the flame of knowledge seems to be extinguished by your moods, by the kindness of others which still does not fulfill you and leaves you empty, by the unkindness of others which appears to hurt you, do not be affected by these things. They don’t matter.
You are immortality in a body. You are bliss and love, and if you will only reflect upon your inner state, your absolute good fortune to be alive, to be a perceiver of knowledge, then it doesn’t matter where you are, who you’re with, what you have or what you do not have—you will be free.
You will be awake in the dream. Thus you can enjoy the dream, but you must remember it’s a dream. You must remember that at midnight the horse will turn back into a mouse, the carriage into a pumpkin, and that’s a different kind of magic. That all of life is magic and that you are a magical being.
What you settle for is what you get.
The dreams that you’ve created for yourself of what you call success, the dreams that you’ve created for yourself of what you call failure, are what you get.
I can tell you that there is no success and that there is no failure because it is impossible to stop immortal consciousness, which is all there really is.
Your mantram,28 then, is awareness of the dream—to enjoy and appreciate and to have gratitude for all, to not be fooled by any; neither to condemn nor to liberate, but to observe—to observe the experiences, the essence and the substance. And if you attain liberation, to not feel that it matters or it’s important because you had nothing to do with it.
And if you are bound by the samsara, by maya, by ignorance, to not feel bad because you had nothing to do with it, but to
As soon as it really begins to matter, to remember that it doesn’t. It doesn’t matter in the sense that we might like to think it does.
What matters is eternal awareness.
To the great pharaohs it mattered a great deal to bury their treasures in the pyramids, which they thought they would bring to the other worlds. They spent half their lives having those built. But obviously it doesn’t matter to them now. They went, the goods stayed.
So don’t become a slave to success or failure, family, friends, possessions. If these things come to you in life, enjoy them, but fix your consciousness on that which does not change.
Enjoy all human beings but be careful. The motives of all are not pure. Don’t condemn, just observe.
Observe where life places you.
There’s something to learn at every moment, and something to unlearn.
Beyond learning and unlearning
There is nothing beyond nirvana, which is beyond all-encompassing awareness, yet it contains and houses all things. And That you are; you are That.
Avoid those things which hurt you. Enjoy those things which help you.
Discriminate in every situation, in every association, in every choice, and ask yourself,
Don’t avoid an endeavor because you think you will fail, if the endeavor is right. Don’t choose only the things that you know you will succeed at, because you will be bound by success, failure and unhappiness. Instead, open yourself up to the possibility.
Ask yourself, “Will this lead to liberation? Is this right?”
And if it’s not right, if it doesn’t lead to liberation, don’t do it because you will bind yourself.
If something inside you tells you it will, no matter how it seems to the surface mind, even if it seems not to be a so-called “pious act,” engage in it.
Because the things that lend to liberation are not necessarily sensible nor are they insensible.
There are certain guidelines which we follow—kindness, the avoidance of attached relationships, self-giving, humility, meditation—but occasionally an action or an occurrence in our life will cause us to seemingly go against these things.
But perhaps we’re not going against them, we’re going with them on another level.
Again, beware of the delusion of desire. The heat of desire is a powerful thing. You can convince yourself, you can lie to yourself and fool yourself and rationalize that the choice you’re making is what is right and what is true and what leads to liberation, when it’s actually only the fulfillment of a desire, which will lead to pain later.
Desires are neither good nor bad. What’s important is to do what’s right.
If what you desire is in line with that which is right, which cannot be reasoned but felt, then follow what is right and what you desire.
But if what you desire is not right, then avoid that desire, stand back from it because it is not your friend. It will enslave you in the trap of success, failure and self,
I offer you the possibilities of immortality, a pathway that leads beyond the known and the unknown.
Few follow it. Those who do, do not return as they were, but they become immortal.
They surpass the gods and the goddesses themselves who are also bound by the three worlds.
And that is the pathway that leads to enlightenment.
But you must know that every step on the path is important, and that every moment you have to always choose what is right. And only your heart can tell you what is right.
Eventually you can go beyond the knowledge of the heart, which is not an impeccable perceiver. It’s a good way to start, to follow your heart. But the heart can be fooled, so then you have to be able to discriminate.
The only way you can do that is by meditating deeply, because desire is such a powerful force, it can so persuade you with promises of sweetness.
Or desire, working in its opposition, will tell you to avoid something painful, how miserable it will be.
If you listen to these voices, I assure you, you will live in the land of illusion and be miserable.
But when you meditate, you can stand back from your desire. When you silence the mind and there is stillness, at that time you can stand back and only then can you tell if a desire is dharma, if it’s true, if you should follow it.
That’s why meditation is indispensable. To meditate well you need to practice several times a day.
But even more you must lead a meditative life, a life of silence, enthusiasm, awareness. A creative life where you’re living fully at every moment and never settling, in any situation, for that which is easy and comfortable, nor feeling the necessity of seeking that which is difficult and uncomfortable.
But rather living completely—leading an impeccable life.
In the process of self-discovery you will learn to be kind when you could be harsh.
You will learn to forgive, mostly yourself.
You will learn to be patient because you may have to wait for quite a while to become that which you will eventually be. But patience is complete strength, and that strength will see you through. You have to develop a noble character, diligently, every day.
Whenever you see something in the garden of the self that is unwanted you must weed it out. When you see propensities that are not beautiful, you must weed them out, and you must add propensities that are hopeful.
You must live the life of a saint.
You have no choice because to do anything else is to enter into the human kingdom, which is a land of unfulfilled opportunity, of promises that when they’re fulfilled are as empty as when they are not.
If you choose to turn back on the path, you will be forgiven. The path is all-forgiving. But you will be unhappy.
If you choose to go forward and be a warrior and become noble and pure of heart and kind and efficient and selfless and dedicated and loyal, then you will flourish. You will become the path itself.
So first, you must build a noble character.
One day you must dissolve that noble character. You must go through a succession of selves leading to that which is most noble, that which is the kindest, that which is the purest. Faithfulness, faith, all of the words that so few people live, you must live.
Only then are you worthy of immortality.
Until then, if you choose not to do this, then you must have the humility to accept the samsara, the transitory joys and pains, and the greatest pain of all, which is to be separate from That which you are, and to wait for another chance and next time not to forget, not to turn back on the path where you turned back the last time.
If the doorway of life is opening for you and you are fortunate enough to go forward, then forward you must go.
It doesn’t matter what anyone else thinks or says.
The judgments of others are irrelevant because all of them will die and pass away and they don’t know anything anyhow.
Only listen to the observations of the enlightened because everyone else is self-centered, egocentric and bound by the net of desire. Yet listen to everything everyone says because truth can speak through anyone at any time.
If you want to learn to make a lot of money, you don’t go and ask a poor person. You find a wealthy person and you ask them to teach you.
If you wish to learn how to be free, then you must find someone who is free and happy and complete, who is beyond the binds of this world, even though they live in the world. Those who reject the world and run away from it may appear to be liberated, but we don’t know what they would do in the world.
It’s only one who lives in the world and partakes in it and willingly accepts the transitory joys and pains of the world, yet at the same time is so far beyond it and removed from it in their complete absorption in the infinite—it is only such a one who can show you the way to liberation. All others will promise, but the roads will be dead ends.
Some can take you further along the path. Anyone who knows something more than you do can aid you, and life itself is the great teacher working through all of us.
But you must discriminate between those who claim to help you and only want to manipulate you and those who are free, who never manipulate, who only open doorways and possibilities of enlightenment for others. Those you should cleave to and the others you must avoid.
On a daily, practical, pragmatic basis you have to participate in the actions of self-discovery.
You must be kind to others.
You must foster a caretaker personality of gentleness and perseverance, even in the midst of adversity.
No matter how many times you have failed, you must keep going forward.
Only when you have become humble and kind and pure and efficient and loyal, loyal to those who would aid you, who are the servants of eternity, will you begin to grasp the meaning of life, will the binds begin to snap and fall away, and will you be free.
Happiness, remember, is not freedom. You may become happy tomorrow; you’ll get everything you want. But I assure you your happiness will not last, a month from now it will be something else.
And even your happiness will be smashed by the pains of your body as you age, by the all-encompassing death that swallows up everything and everyone in this world.
Only one who has achieved immortality of awareness can laugh with life and laugh with death. Only one who has that impeccable spirit is free in all the three worlds.
And you must always feel, that that one day may be you.
Do not feel that you are destined to enlightenment in this life. You have no idea. This is an illusion of selfhood. It’s gross ignorance and egotism.
Do not feel that you are destined not to make that final liberation in this life. This is egotism in a reverse form.
Don’t be concerned one way or the other.
Advance yourself by advancing others. Do not judge others. Be of service to them, but realize that you are not necessarily the instrument of perfecting and immortalizing others. Be of service when you can, but when your inner voice tells you to withdraw, not because you fear adversity or fear hardship or hard work, but because your inner voice says, “This is not the time,” then withdraw.
Many people excuse themselves but only go deeper into illusion and pain and misery by claiming that they don’t have to do work anymore, that they don’t have to do service because they’re beyond it.
They’re simply afraid of getting their hands dirty, and they don’t understand [that] getting your hands dirty washes your being.
Even in action, even in self-giving, you must be so careful of egotism, you must be so careful when you’re aiding others in their liberation, not to have a sense of self.
To do what you must do impeccably, but with the sense of being a servant of existence or of being nothingness—that nothing is done through you. To observe your actions but to be so busy in them, that you never contemplate their possible effects.
There’s only this consciousness that leads to liberation. Everything else is illusion.
The path to enlightenment is joyful. It may sound harsh, it may sound that there’s great adversity in it.
But yet, you must know what’s what. It will not simply happen. You must do these things and you must avoid the things that will hurt you and drain your power and your energy.
You have to free yourself from your mental conditioning, through association with the holy, through doing good works, through meditating, through laughter and through love and through solitude.
It is most important to have time alone. To be alone is not to be alone.
It is only possible to truly feel immortality when we are by ourselves, unless you are a very advanced soul. If you are very advanced, if you are liberated, then you can be in the crowd and there is no crowd. You can be surrounded by the world and there is no world. You have shattered the prism of illusion. But for most, this is impossible. So it is necessary to be a recluse to a certain extent.
You must have time each day by yourself. Not necessarily hours and hours, but some time when there’s no one else around you because only then can you feel what you are, and know with humility how far along the path you are.
Because there’s no one to distract you, no one to praise you, no one to blame you, there’s just you and the procession of your thoughts and feelings and emotions and your awareness. You can see clearly where your awareness is.
It is only when we are by ourselves
When we are with other human beings, we are distracted by their bodies, by the dreams that they have, the energy vortexes that they project, of success and failure. People try and dream us into their dreams. They have pure and impure motivations, depending upon the evolution of their soul and their awareness of that evolution.
It is only when we are by ourselves
It’s necessary to be alone, to learn to love oneself and to accept. So for every seeker a certain amount of time must be by oneself.
Because only when you are by yourself can you realize how wonderful you are, can you feel your immensity, can you feel your finiteness, can you feel your unlimited spiritual consciousness, can you feel the body which is transitory—and revel in all these things and delight in them.
We hide from ourselves by being with others, and all we manage to do is to be miserable.
In order to meditate, we must meditate alone.
There are times when we meditate with others and gain much from that, particularly if they’re advanced.
But to truly meditate we must have no one there, and in the silence of our own mind we must do discipline!
This discipline is joyous and it frees us.
When there’s no one else there, no thoughts, no impressions of others clouding our mind, can we sit and practice the glorious practice of meditation, can we experience the depths of eternity.
There are worlds beyond anything you can imagine.
There are joys beyond anything that you have experienced. There are ecstasies that are undreamed of, I assure you.
In your meditation you will traverse those worlds. You will experience those joys; you will become those ecstasies.
As one who has traveled greatly in the worlds, I can assure you there is much to see and much to become. You have only begun to tap the source, which is endless life.
In the silence of your meditation, as you will struggle with your mind to quiet it, as you will open your heart to feel its depth, as you will move into the soul, the superconscious, as you travel through the worlds of awareness, the planes of being, and go beyond being and becoming to eternal awareness itself, you will grow, you will change, you will become That.
You will be free and complete. Only then can you enter into the world arena and be of service to others because you have something to offer. Otherwise the little you bring will soon be lost in the veil of maya, of illusion.
The stillness of God is perfect. Nothing has to be added to it, nothing can be taken away. None of us can add to it or take away from it. We are fortunate in that.
And it’s for everyone who wants it, and it’s really not so difficult. It just takes a smile and commitment to that which is right.
Then your life blossoms.
To not have these things is to be human—to be frustrated, to always be looking, the insatiable craving that the next person, the next relationship, the next experience will free you—foolish thoughts of foolish people who are bound again and again to birth, death and rebirth.
So you must choose whether to follow the path of love or the path of attachment. They are not the same. The immortal silence is there—always waiting for you. The spirit is deathless and courageous; you need only avail yourself.
Remember, many have trod the path that you are walking on and succeeded and they were no better than you, they were no wiser.
They had the same fears that you have, the same aggressive tendencies, the same attachments.
But they were freed in time because they believed.
Because it is the power of faith that frees us. Not faith in our own ability—it’s good to believe in that—but the faith that a higher power, a higher agency, that which is truth, will liberate us and show us the way if we’re eager to follow.
When you live this type of life, devoid of ritual, devoid of convention, with honesty and self-effacement, then you are free, on the road to freedom.
Then everything that follows will be beauty. Even the so-called suffering will be beauty because you will understand and see beyond.
And one day, liberation will come, and it won’t be a day, it won’t be a year, it won’t be a time, a place or a condition. It will be immortality reflecting through you.
What will you do then?
27. Wikipedia: The picaresque novel, a genre of prose fiction, depicts the adventures of a roguish, but “appealing hero,” usually of low social class, who lives by his wits in a corrupt society.
28. Same as mantra.