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COPYRIGHT
The Almighty needs no protection, no copyrights He is open to all. He is available to all. He is available even to those who want to manhandle Him. So my teachings, if that is the word you want to use, has no copyright. I have no claims. You are welcome to share it with your friends. This book may be reproduced, copied and distributed for non-commercial purposes, provided the book remains in its complete original form. I have used few images in this book that I picked from internet. I have no knowledge about their copyrights and about their artists. If any of them is copy-righted then please inform me. Having said that, I would also humbly request to any possible holder of rights that please grant me continue using them in my book as I do not intend to gain any commercial benefit from them. This work is purely for noble cause of enlightenment and I am offering this book free of any price

Contents I II III Preface 05 Acknowledgements 08 Dilemma of a Seeker

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Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4 Chapter 5 Chapter 6 Chapter 7 Chapter 8 Chapter 9 Chapter 10 Chapter 11 Chapter 12 Chapter 13 Chapter 14 Chapter 15 Chapter 16 Chapter 17 Chapter 18 Chapter 19

Spiritual Cosmology 16 God 26 Role of Mind 56 Light of Wisdom 95 Non-duality 155 Spiritual Contemplation 165 Ego and Desires 201 Pain and Sufferings 220 Peace and Happiness 234 Silence is Sublime 255 Renunciation and Detachment 265 Surrender 273 Flames of Passion 287 Practice Makes Difference 330 Persistence 342 Have Your Mantra 357 Enlightenment 376 Boredom is a Goldmine 402 Truth is in the Middle 411

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Preface
This book is purely a mind-work. It can not bring the readers to the golden shores of peace; the maximum it can do is to just point the finger towards those shores with full honesty of the intent. This book is not giving you the fish but it is giving you the fishing rod. It is up to you that how much effort you invest in. Words without practice are merely empty crockery and any empty crockery can not cater to the needs of a hungry soul. So keep it in mind all the time that it is relentless practice that will make any difference in life. And never speculate that me the presenter of this book is the living image of the contents of this book not at all. I have my share of weaknesses. But throughout my youth and middle age, at least I have dreamed about the possibility of a truthful life. Now I have shared that dream with other fellow beings in hope that from now onward we will chase this holy dream of living an accomplished life together. Primarily, this book is part of my Spiritual Contemplation, it is my worship to God and I have shared it with other seekers only because of my inner urge to do so, in good feeling and compassion. It is not offered as a manual of enlightenment, for the ultimate truth of awakening cannot be reduced to a conceptual model. Rather, this book should serve as a guiding light for those mature enough to apply conceptual knowledge towards a non-conceptual feeling of reality. Accordingly, the explanations and methods presented here point beyond words to the realm of direct experience and latent meanings. Although, the aim of this book is to unravel the many steps of the awakening process but the revelations of this book can be easily misinterpreted and misunderstood. There is an immense chasm between theoretical knowledge and real experience; concepts with the power to illuminate the truth of our inner reality can also obscure it, depending on their interpretation. Ultimately, to truly understand

the teaching, its experiential essence must be realized through the unfoldment of ones own evolution and enlightenment. Although it is indeed a long journey from ignorance to complete Selfactualization, the way to truth is far more than the attainment of progressively higher spiritual states. It is not a linear path in the sense of being goal-fixated. Neither is it a finite path, for there is no end to enlightenment. That, which we are everlastingly realizing, yet can never fully attain the unknown heart of the beloved Masters presence is eternally expanding and ever ahead of the intelligence that pursues it. Although the Self-state can never be entirely grasped but our evolution towards its divine radiance is the very meaning of our existence. It is indeed the journey, not its culmination - that is the essence of our spiritual unfoldment. Honoring this, we should regard the ineffable mystery of the spiritual path with humility and wonder, its majesty with a sense of awe. This book is not meant to change anyone because human beings are not changed from outside; they are always changed from within. The only purpose of my submissions is to share the flame of my soul with those who have already been enkindled by the divine fire and are striving hard to meet the Ultimate Truth- with full vigor of their body and unreserved strength of their soul. Any spiritual guidance can only bring you to the glass wall from where you can see the Truth across but to reach to that truth you are required to make an effort by yourself alone. It is only you who will have to break the glass wall to meet to the beyond. Here, no instructor can help you to be the winner. This book is a response to the deepest need for true understanding that lies within the consciousness of every seeker. It is a vital compendium of spiritual knowledge addressed both to those commencing their inner journey, as well as those who have already reached higher levels of spiritual realization. The teaching presented here is not a personalized interpretation of spiritual reality, but a reflection of truth with the power to broaden understanding of the inner dimension and assist in navigating the intricacies of the inner path. This book holds immense potential for those who have special taste of finding their own core reality. The more you read the more you will get aware, the more you get aware the more you will be ready to

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act, the more you will act the more you will become, the more you will become the more you will stop to be. First it will come to you as ripples then as currents then as waves then as tides then it will engulf you and will shake you inside out and can help you to be transformed forever in a positive way. It is essential that the material presented here be studied in the context of real inner work, for without a foundation of practice that yields experiential knowledge of the inner realm, a reader will not be able to grasp the true meanings of the teaching or, worse still, will create the illusion of understanding. When not based on spiritual realization, intellectual knowledge is but a hollow substitute for real experience. The reality of the awakening process is extremely complex and must be illuminated gradually from within. To approach this material solely from the standpoint of mind would defeat the very purpose of its presentation. Ladla Sarkar ladlasarkar@gmail.com

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Acknowledgements
I humbly submit this book in service to those who cherish God more than anything else in their life. My academic stature, caliber and record do not grant me to claim for any credits or appreciation from readers. Primarily, I arranged this book for Self-help or my own guidance but as I have benefited from it greatly so I thought it my compassionate duty to present this book for the benefit of other Self seekers. I pay great respect to those writers from whom I have benefited greatly but I am now unable to credit them by their names for their marvelous thoughts. Most of the content of the Chapter named as Dilemma of a seeker has been borrowed from the Internet pages and is added here with slight necessary modifications. In other chapters of the book, paragraphs of thoughts are presented in numerical sequence. Here again I clarify that all these paragraphs are not the exclusive work of my intelligence but at many places thoughts of other great writers of present and the past have also been included for the benefit of readers as well as myself. I fully agree with the content of those paragraphs that are borrowed from the literary works of other writers. I felt as those words came right from my own heart. In these paragraphs of the book, collection of thoughts, though appear fragmented but all paragraphs are inter-linked with each other with the final objective of God-seeking. I have deliberately left the reader at liberty to assemble his own personal and unique model of understanding with the help and guidance of these fragmented pieces of spiritual wisdom. As enlightenment is not the static climax of spiritual evolution but is an eternally expanding movement of intelligence and consciousness that is unique for each soul. How far we can expand the frontiers of our enlightenment depends upon our spiritual capacity, inspiration, knowledge and intelligence. It is our

individual essence that journeys through the process of evolution, progressively shifting through states of awakening and levels of surrender that lead ever deeper into the supreme beyond. Finally a few words about one strange thing that you will find in this book that this book teaches spirituality but does not advocate any religion, cult or ism. This was a real hard task for me to separate spiritual teachings from the myth and superstitions of the past that have intermingled and adulterated the spiritual wisdom up to a level that the separate and independent identity of the spiritual education has become almost extinct. It has been my deliberate effort to avoid using any standard terminology and specific religious, historical or geographical references and personal names. English is not my mother tongue. So I am afraid that there might be a number of grammatical and structural errors in my submissions. It may be asked that why I chose English as medium of communication while I was not confident about my ability to express in English. To my personal opinion, the kind of thoughts that I intended to present could only be delivered well in English, as this is the only language that has evolved its capacity and word treasure up to a level that can assimilate all the modern day thought processes. So any linguistic suggestions in this regard would be received with gratitude and will be included in future dissemination of this book. I have opted for not disclosing my formal name as the author of this book. As I am a weak man, so I feared that the imprinting of my name as the author of this book and the possible pride resulting from it could spoil the purity of my intent. So I have used a special literary name Ladla Sarkar for the purpose. The real author of all, which is a glimmer of the truth itself, is the one Self. Those humans, who have been blessed with capacity to experience truth as it is, become simply instruments or servants to it. When one goes through the experience of pure peace as the core of one's own being and tastes the living freedom inside, he or she is "propelled" by compassion to share one's experience with others. In that way many can come to know and experience reality as it is. Ladla Sarkar Nov, 2013

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Dilemma of a Seeker
(The plight of a modern-day seeker)

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You cannot just become a God-seeker without having previously developed this spiritual desire through the evolution of your own inner consciousness. Not everyone desires to know God and Its infallible truth, nor does the realization of the true Self have much universal draw in our highly technological world, and therefore the subject matter of this book will not appeal to everyone. Only those who have searched the globe high and low, desperately looking for some divine light will find some sort of guidance in it. It is my sincere desire that true seekers wherever they are should benefit in some way by perusing these pages to achieve a deeper insight into their unique situation in their lonely search for Truth and God. What is intended here is to introduce to you a system of thinking which is impossible to avoid in your life. Logic, argumentation, conflict, strife and fear, battle, war - do they succeed finally? An amiable nature, a smiling face, a love, a consideration, a goodness, an acceptance of the nature of another person, an acceptance of the nature of the world as a whole and an acceptance of the oneness of God - that is what succeeds. I am particularly going to introduce you a way of living that is determined by Self-awakening. You may be wondering: What it means the Self-awakening? While, the very idea of Self appears illusive in the beginning. Honest spiritual seekers are searching for a Path that transcends all personal ills, carrying them past the stultifying conditions of institutionalized religion and past the conventional and traditional ideals of modern society. True seekers are wary of preachers in their ivory towers declaring their outrage at those who do not believe as they do. They are exasperated over the plethora of cultish leaders and pseudo gurus springing up all over the globe. The seekers of truth have become all too knowledgeable with the emptiness of ritualistic and ceremonial worship, wisdom that is out of date, and past Masters who have come and gone. The seekers are dismayed with how spirituality has been commercialized, how seekers are being exploited for money, and with the performance of vows and disciplines that bring no appreciable gain to ones own evolving spirituality. The plight of the modern-day seekers has them wondering if a true path even exists, or if anybody really knows or can guide them aright to Gods door. Spirituality has been so ravaged

and overworked that hardly anyone knows with certainty what a true spiritual path even consists of. No wonder the seekers of truth are still disillusioned and disenfranchised with the current state of all spiritual endeavors as presented by our world and culture. Many seekers have simply quit their search; others feel it is hopeless to continue searching; some are so discouraged and dismayed that they wonder if truth even exists, and if it does the near impossibility of ever finding it still remains. Is there an adequate explanation for these spiritual maladies? Is there a rhyme or reason for this spiritual crisis? Yes there is, but we must continue our investigation into the plight of all modern-day seekers, for at the heart of this dilemma lie the answers to the seekers redemption and liberation. All spiritual doctrines, philosophies, psychic sciences, and metaphysical pursuits, have all been created and founded by humans. Furthermore, all spiritual interpretation as to what spirituality really means, and the way to liberation and salvation, has only come from humans as well. All enmity and discord amidst religious circles, coupled with abundant argumentation and bigotry, have all issued forth and been a byproduct of human beings walking this planet, whether in the misty past or in present times. All things are in such disarray that need for a peaceful and enlightened life has become a far cry in this modern age. Naturally, unenlightened human beings are not concerned with this spiritual downfall, but those keenly yearning for a higher and more fulfilling life are bewildered by and ashamed of such degrading situation, undeniably knowing that this could not in any way properly reflect the purpose of human life. Rudderless at sea and without a compass, does the individual attempt to cross the ocean of empirical existence. Blown about by chance winds and detoured by inclement weather, does the soul strive to secure its spiritual moorings. Without the Master at the helm, without precise directions over stormy seas, it becomes impossible to arrive at the other shore. There is a true Path, but you must give up your external search to find it. There is a true doctrine, but you must close the outer books of scripture to read it. There truly is a transcendental Guide, but you

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must forfeit your own mental counsel to find Him. And there is a true Self deep within your being-ness. There is a secret Path leading to Gods door and, although it is enshrouded in mystery, it opens up to all the sincere seekers of God. The honest seeker who squarely faces his own human dilemma desires to remedy the situation as quickly as possible. Many byways are adopted with the hope that the gnawing pains of separation and isolation will subside, but hardly anything effectively works anymore. Those who experiment with drinks or drugs with the dim and fading hope of forgetting or suppressing their personal dilemma only make it worse, although sometimes this experience is needed in the overall unfoldment of the consciousness. Some individuals abandon themselves to the pleasure principle, avoiding pain and heartache as much as possible, but this too boomerangs upon the seeker, for ones reliance and refuge is still being placed in the external world, and pain follows pleasure like the darkness follows light. The majority of individuals enlist the help of four major institutions such as religion, philosophy, commercially propagated spiritualism and self devised odd practices of meditation, with the expressed desire of alleviating the inner problems that have become palpable and acutely present. The seeker enlists the help of external institutions with the desire to find reconciliation and resolution of ones difficulties. And yet the plight of spiritual institutions is more aggravating the circumstances the individual finds and perceives within oneself. The institutions of the world are pointedly more concerned with their own collective survival than they are with emancipating the individual soul and relieving it of its unsettling conditions. The current dilemma that each honest seeker faces is only the byproduct of these sterilized approaches. Religion and philosophy were initially meant to redeem and liberate the soul of the seeker, but by following these doctrines centuries later, after they have been ravaged and overly editorialized to the point of their original purity being unrecognizable, one only sinks deeper into the morass of externalized opinion coming from those supposedly in the know. It appears that our own religious and spiritual leaders of today are as

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ignorant of the truth as are their followers, and as a result they both fall into the ditch. Many spiritual seekers are not happy in this outer world of excessive materialism, for no matter how much or how little one acquires; an ever-present emptiness remains. Likewise, the same seekers uneasily sense that they are not in harmony with their subjective reality, those prevailing thoughts and feelings that constantly follow one in the waking day-to-day life, whispering messages of either support or the lack thereof. And lastly, there are those who, having sensed their lack of fulfillment, have embraced a system of spirituality that has not produced the desired relief nor adequately taught the means of transcending their personal dilemma. Out of yearning and sometimes desperation, seekers attempt to find another spiritual doctrine that will put an end to the confusion or somehow shed some light and meaning upon their own search for spiritual growth. When the individual attempts to sift through the labyrinth of psychic paths available in the marketplace, one can become confused and misled with the excess of New Age mania. As a result, the seeker can become wary and suspicious, filled with doubts and skepticism about all paths, whether traditional or contemporary, and the hope and trust of ever finding some means of escape fades before one's very own eyes. Consequently, the universal mantra has become: What doctrine can I really trust? Which teacher or master is actually telling the truth? Where am I to turn, with some degree of provisional faith, in order to find the purest truth about myself? Subsequently, the seekers of the world can sometimes wage a needless war of words and doctrines, feeling their enemy to be outside themselves, while simultaneously their hearts remain burdened, harmony is fleeting or forever lost, and the fresh breezes of love, power, and wisdom fall to the ground like autumn leaves. The common denominator in all separate paths is their insistence that God is outside of your body. The vast percentage of spiritual endeavor directs the seekers to pursue a Deity that is outside of them, one that cannot be accessed, seen, or heard. All devotees are subjected to this universal dilemma. Before the Divine Deity can be found and worshipped properly, the individual must discover one's own divine essence within oneself.

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When human consciousness realizes that it is just an extension of divine consciousness then doors of further spiritual guidance become open for us. Which, inculcates the oneness of all life, of all paths, and the overriding realization that it is the Divine's Essence, which creates, sustains, and directs all life, whether it is the atom, molecule, plant, animal, or human being. Every true spiritual seeker should realize that the truth for which one seeks is never outside of himself, but always within. Seekers must find their own divinity within themselves before they can properly relate to anything divine outside of them. A Self seeker must also negotiate the problems in life that all of us encounter, and which are inescapable even to the best of us: problems of despair and uselessness; the feeling of inadequacy; a sense of inner guilt and shame; unrelenting strife and tension; overwhelming loneliness; the inescapable date with death; a gnawing doubt and growing skepticism with external authority; an inexplicable loss of our spiritual bearings; constant assaults of anger, greed, lust, vanity, and attachment; not to mention debt, problematic children, unruly mates, and the loss of our own personal tranquility. Heap onto this our growing dissatisfaction with the religious torch bearers, social and political reformers, and therapists of every kind, alongside the alarming reality of pharmaceutical companies, advertising through subliminal projection, the promise of having it all by just taking a pill. When your entire external search has ended, when all the byways and detours have been explored, when your heart is flayed and truth is nowhere to be found, simply have trust in your lord, give up yourself to your God. Let the hand of God work for you and if you would not turn away from your God-seeking, all your conflicts will end miraculously.

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CHAPTER - 1

Spiritual Cosmology

- There is God - God created the world

These are two common statements. But how many of us really understand the depth of these statements to the full of their meaning and scope. I fear there are very few souls that really have some good grasp of these statements. And even fewer are those who are ready to surrender to the sublimity and grace that is latent in these words. To initiate our journey on the spiritual path, we need a spiritual view of cosmic existence (world) and its presence in and around us. What is the true nature of visible world is an unsolvable mystery. All cosmologies in this regard are mere assumptions. So, the spiritual cosmology too is an assumption. It is an assumption that provides the God seekers a viable ground for spiritual understanding of the world. We have to establish a conscious link between world and our own individual existence. Missing it, it would become hard to grow in Spiritual Contemplation and to have a well aliened perception of Truth. The foundation of the spiritual cosmology is laid down upon these principles or understandings. 1. God is the Principle Cause from where all subordinate causes are ari sing. Symphony of cause and effect is being controlled by Gods Will as an orchestra conductor directs the music movements in a concert through his conducting baton and gestures. 2. To have a right view about the creator, we must have a proper understanding of creation. Creation is waving out of the divine radiance into six dimensions which are Time, Space, Forms, Motion (change), Consciousness and Witnessing. We have to understand the subjectivity (I-ness) and dynamics (cause and effect) of Consciousness. Witnessing is the most subtle plane of creation. It rises from the creation but appears as it stands outside of it. Proper grooming of Witnessing can guide us to the experience of our own source. 3. God is unknowable because if you know the God then God will become the known and you the knower. How can the known become the God of the knower. God is not understandable. Because if you understand the God then you would become bigger

than God. And how can the smaller be the God of the bigger. God is not available. Because if God becomes available to you then you would become the master of Him. How an available thing can be the God of its master. But to walk on the path of Self-realization, we have to have some idea about God because without having a little perception of God we can not move towards God. So, just for the sake of having some idea, we would assume that God is non-polar radiance that is self-sufficient, self conscious, eternal, infinite and cause of all creation (creation is waving out of God). Remember that Creation also includes death. Life and death both together compose the symphony of creation. Death is rebound of the life. Death is reversal of the wheel of the creation. But these are just assumptions of the intellect. What is the true nature of the Truth is still unknowable and it will continue to be unknowable for all the times to come. It is a tragedy but this tragedy is limited only to mind, intelligence or intellect. Man is bigger than mind. There are other means and ways to feel the heart of Truth and the presence of it. Certainly there is another type of knowing and understanding, not based on logic or intellect. When a drop of honey falls on your lips and you lick over it then you know what the honey is but this knowing does not come from logic or intellect side. Rather it comes through encounter, experience and sensation. Feelings are imminent while ideation follows them. Without feelings the evolvement of thoughts is impossible. So, spirituality is a path that seeks knowing and understand ing through direct feel not through logic or intellect. The baby floating in the womb of mother is connected to her mother not through perception, logic or intellect but through umbilical cord. This umbilical cord is taking care of the baby and it is sufficient to her needs. Find your umbilical cord that is connecting you to your God. Let you float in the womb of God. God will take care of you and He is the Lord of All. 4. In the Self of God there is musk of His Attraction. This musk is emitting the fragrance that pulsates (vibrates) equally in all dimensions. This fragrance of the Self is vibrating in twin waves and is forming the divine rhythm of I AM. In the I wave of its

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pulsation it reverts back into Self and in the AM wave it radiates in all dimensions and fills the whole space. Hearts of lovers are attracted to this fragrance and once you smell it in your life you will never come back. [Here Self of God, musk and its fragrance have been used only metaphorically just to convey the sense near to the reality] The rhythm of I AM is emanating from Self and is the highest and purest form of God-worshipping. It has been invoked by God Himself for Himself. Our God worshipping is just an echo or resonance of this divine utterance occurring at the level of Self. Our mantra reciting is just a shadow action. The original recitation is being done by the God Himself. Resonance of this divine mantra (rhythm) is penetrating all forms from particles to complex organisms. Those are extremely lucky people who are allowed to perceive this fragrance of the Self and to attend this divine resonance present in the divine rhythm of I AM. This rhythm can be used as Mantra to focus or contemplation to allow the gifts behind the words, the resonance and divine truth that the Mantra represents, to be invoked within the seeker and then allow these energies and wisdom to bathe the mind, the spiritual self (consciousness) and the physical body & being. Repeating the Mantra silently from a conscious, connected and intentional space can assist in accessing the resonating energies and Truth that is held within the Mantra. 5. Consciousness is of two grades. Master consciousness that resides in God and is basis of all manifestations, Subordinate (causal) consciousness that resides in organic (manifested) self. Master consciousness is an attribute of God; subordinate consciousness is deriving its life from Master consciousness. Causal consciousness is oblivion to its source and is imprisoned in gross physicality of world but it can be brought to a state of illumination and awareness through sustained spiritual effort. God is unknowable and non-empirical in His full grace. It is not the human capacity to interact with God. But God can be reached through His mantric rhythm. This mantric rhythm is the empirical (spiritual) face of God. God in His full grace is a stateless state, a

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bodiless presence that is called wajud -ela-wajud or Alam-ehahoot. Where God is present even without His Self and attributes. No human consciousness, no matter how exalted it is, can ever access this domain. 6. World has not come out of its creator at some remote point in time, rather world is emanating from its source (God) in the very moment of Now. Space and time are just providing a stage for the divine show. 7. God is Sun and creation is His sunlight. All objects of creation hold heat of God. This heat is Soul. Soul awakened to creation becomes Ego and the soul awakened to God becomes Self. Evil and forgetfulness is the path of ego while love and remembrance is path of the self. In the world of non-living matter and animals there is neither soul nor ego. Their existence is simply being governed by laws of nature. They have no capacity to be awakened to God or to the reality of the creation. Survival is their only concern and interest in this world. Who awakens to whom it is a matter of divine choice. We have no power to adopt a path of our own choice. In fact we have no choice. The choice we apparently exercise in our daily lives is being puppeted by the greater will of divine. 8. Whole universe is web of divine Oneness. It is the characteristic of mind that it divides this oneness in duality or multiplicity and it does so for the convenience of its own functional needs. Mind does not stand as paradox to oneness; rather it too works as component part of the miracle of oneness. Oneness is the major theme being played by versatile roles and characters of its constituent components. Water, when in Ocean is called ocean, when on the mountain peak we name it as snow, when in the lake we call it lake, when in the river we call it river. Water is same but it assumes different names and forms during its journey through water cycle. The content remains the same but change occurs in name, form and character. Similarly the underlying reality in this world of multiplicity is one but this reality goes through many stages of manifestation as it moves through the channels of time and space. The same one

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reality behaves differently on three levels of its manifestation i.e. Subject, Object and Witness. 9. Through training and harmonizing our minds with the latent oneness of universe, we can experience the bliss of reunion with God (self-realization) and that is very practical and possible idea. 10. Soul is heat (energy) of God. Soul itself is not self-conscious it is merely a form of energy but when our body organs are energized by this energy they show their properties according to their build and structures. When soul energizes eyes, sight is produced, when ears are energized listening is provided and when brain is energized then thoughts, understanding, awareness and witnessing is produced. Awareness identified with its medium (body) becomes ego and the same awareness when awakened to its source (God) becomes enlightenment.

DNA is the Instrument of Spirituality.

The goal of all mystic disciplines is the achievement of a spiritual state of oneness with God. In essence, spirituality is the ability through various practices to arrive at a coherent state in which the individual becomes whole. What are the dynamics of this coherent state? DNA is more than a blueprint for genetic expression; it is the instrument for the re spiritualization of the body, DNA structures help man to arrive at Divine Resonance by passing through electromagnetic influences on body and subtle processes of thought. It is DNA that functions as the receiver and transmitter of electromagnetic frequencies through the body. Mans ability to achieve Divine Resonance is located in the hydro-energetic matrix of DNA, where the bodys highest concentration of water molecules is found. These water molecules are the source of the organisms coherence. Divine Resonance is accessed through a variety of practices that return the body to its coherent state. Now, more than ever, man can attest to the divinity within him. The spirituality of modern man resides in his ability to control the profile of his DNA through

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practices that can restore him to the coherent state of Divine Resonance.

Everything is Formed by Vibration and Geometry

Scatter some very fine sand over the head of a drum. Then take a tuning fork and strike a note just above the drum head causing it to vibrate. The sand would shift and assume a geometrical figure corresponding to the particular note that was played. When another is sounded, the sand will shift and assume another figure. This shows that every vibration produces a corresponding geometric form. Form is the organization of energy at certain rates of vibration. There is no solidity in the universe. A form that appears solid is actually created by an underlying vibration. Vibrations express themselves in corresponding geometrical figures and in this way build up crystals that are the expression of vibration. Crystals collectively form a body of an element according to its particular vibration. The forms of snowflakes and faces of flowers take on their shape because they are responding to some sound in nature. Crystals, plants, and human beings are music that has taken on visible form.

Vibrations
All of existence can be viewed as a manifestation of energy and consciousness, functioning according to various laws or principles. This trio of active Energy, Consciousness and Principles may be called manifest existence, part of which is perceived as space-time and matter. All such manifestation is characterized by vibration, which is related to the amount of energy and consciousness resident in a parcel of matter. The higher the amount of associated energy and consciousness, higher the vibration. Readers who are familiar with modern physics might recognize that a parcel of energy at the finest levels can also be represented by frequency, which is another term for how fast something vibrates. But the rate of vibration is an indication not just of energy, but also of the state of consciousness associated with it.

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 The scientific notion of the Grand Unification tries to unify all forces and laws (i.e. energies and principles - matter being a form of energy) under a single force or law at the highest energies possible. Here the consciousness aspect of our Trio is simply missing. But if consciousness were to be included, the reader might readily find a parallel between the scientific Grand Unification and the spiritual Grand Unification. The latter is known as Truth (spiritual). Truth is simply laws or principles behind manifestation, in this case the higher laws. The ancient notion of the spiritual grand unification may be reconciled with the modern scientific grand unification by including consciousness into the picture. One direct result of the above unification is that a parcel of consciousness can be characterized by its vibration. All kinds of experiences in consciousness have associated vibrations and energy levels. The energy level determines the intensity of an experience, and frequency determines its nature. By changing the state of vibrations, the state of consciousness associated with that parcel of energy is changed. And by changing the state of consciousness, its vibrational levels (frequency) can be modified. All sensations and feelings in consciousness - such as pain, pleasure, love, fear and so on - may be considered as resulting from an interplay of different vibrations and energy levels. One implication of the above notion of Grand Unification, which considers consciousness as an integral aspect of matter with its own dynamics, is that the concept of chemistry extends to consciousness. And not just chemistry, but also physics, biology and so on. For example, the chemistry of certain drugs on the human brain and their effects on a resonant consciousness is a matter of active research in the medical community. Another implication of the Grand Unification is that higher states of consciousness can be associated with higher vibrations and energies, progressively tending toward the Grand Unification with the Godhead. The baser, denser or more materialistic consciousness can be characterized by lower vibrational levels. Spiritual progress can be defined in terms of moving toward the Grand Unification, and away from a purely material

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preoccupation - or in essence, the raising of ones vibrations. Ones level of spirituality is a measure of his average vibrational level. This is a key point to understand, for much that may appear perplexing or nonsensical can be explained in terms of the mechanics of vibrations. We all are created in the image of God and God, like the sun, continuously shines His light onto all. Everything in the universe, in its simplest form, is vibrating with divine resonance. In nature we see a beautiful example in the bumble bee. When buzzing around a particular plant the bumble bee hits the note of C, which resonates with the plants opening mechanism to reveal the sweet nectar within. In medicine, kidney stones are destroyed through a laser therapy called lithotripsy. The laser is set at a resonance that is destabilizing to the stone, thus causing it to break up. Every organ, every molecule in the body has a particular resonance and the ancients were able to detect these in order to create appropriate healing and meditation techniques. Resonance can be described as a process of initiating and amplifying a vibratory response in a receiving system that is attuned to an emitting system. It is very important to understand that resonance starts only when the frequency of two systems (receiving and emitting) are almost matching. Every human has a subtle body which comprises of mainly emotions and thoughts. This is the body which can be called causal self or ego self as it is created by the simple act of borrowing from others hence it is based on all borrowed emotions and thoughts. The natural frequency of human being is the frequency of the fundamental emotion which can only be found in humans which is faith. This specific emotion has the frequency quite matching with the natural frequency of existence. Once we generate faith or love frequently within us then these doses of faith act as small periodic forces being supplied to ego which can actually trigger larger amplitude oscillations for ego self . Earlier positive swing which was either missing or quite small suddenly with doses of faith become large and as intensity of faith increases the larger and larger swings can eventually trigger the collapse of

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giant ego self which is attached to us like a shadow self . This phenomenon can be termed as spiritual resonance. Resonance phenomena occur with all types of vibrations or waves. There is mechanical resonance, acoustic resonance, electromagnetic resonance, nuclear magnetic resonance, resonance of quantum wave functions. I would like to add one more type of resonance spiritual resonance. Spiritual resonance is a resonance effect created by most powerful emotion of faith to tame and discipline the most anti spiritual entity the ego self attached to every human being by default. Everything in creation is vibrating with Gods power. I AM is the rhythm produced by the vibrations of Gods presence within and around us. I AM is the divine rhythm and has a few meanings. Firstly I AM is a powerful statement and in itse lf is a Mantra. It is a creation & manifestation statement, as well as a statement that resonates with the frequency of divine wholeness and Divine perfection. I AM calls forth the Creator Self, the creator energy that lives within each of us and is part of the manifestation cycle. Secondly, the rhythm of I AM shows that when we choose our lives to live from place of consciousness, divine presence, conscious connection and peace, we become a Living Mantra into our world. We become a living, breathing prayer that then offers this frequency, this consciousness into our world.

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CHAPTER - 2

The God

Though the foundation stone of the perception about God has been laid down in the first chapter yet some more details are needed to assess the attributes of God properly. This second chapter is supposed to serve the purpose.

1. There is only ONE SUBSTANCE, call it God or whatever you like. THE SUBSTANCE contracts or thins out, thus dissolving or appearing, there is a pulsation of appearancedisappearance. To understand and describe this divine pulsation, we assign it the syllables of I AM. When this SUBSTANCE contracts in its own unspoken and unperceivable grace then this phase is symbolized through the syllable of I and in the AM phase of this pulsati on that SUBSTANCE expands or thins out in Creation and appears as the dimensions of Time, Space, Forms, Motion (change), Consciousness and Witnessing (though witnessing gives an illusion of its aloofness and beyondness but in fact even the witnesser or witnessing has a location in space-time, and hence, is the part of creation and is the root of experience). The "awarer"; experiences; the body; the world of psychology; the physics dimensions; the earth, sun, moon; stars and galaxies; spiritual paths and spirituality along with the concept of God all are different expressions of this AMness of this Substance or God.

2. God is neither center nor periphery. Neither gross nor subtle but God is God. God is unique and has no opposite word for it. Transcendence and Beyondness are also used to indicate towards God-hood. God is not a person and hence is pure of any personality. God is pure presence equated to holy Silence - eternal and infinite. We cannot know or grasp Him but Gods presence is every where. God is present in us (or we are present in God) and we can

experience this divine presence if we would train our minds to receive this experience.

3. God is not an external object that is to be explored and reached through intellect or to be tamed through labor of worship. God never comes to us as He is never away from us. Veils of ego are separating man from God. Ego must be taught and forced to fall back into its divine source. God-experience is natural culmination of Spiritual Contemplation.

4. Life has no meaning without God. When the sea tide collides with seashores foam is produced on the surface of the waves. Our individual consciousness is nothing but this foam on the divine water waves.

5. Nature of God is Transcendence, Silence is His nonpolar radiance. And from this Silence, from this stillness Creation is waving out in its six dimensions which are Time, Space, Form, Motion, Consciousness and Witnessing. To be one with God a seeker has to enter into the Silence by dropping (through detachment) all these six dimensions of his being.

6. Only Oneness (of God) is the truth, multiplicity is the creation of mind. Multiplicity is a delusion and is a trick of mind to handle and understand the Oneness. For example Time is a dimension in God. It is indivisible but to understand Time mind divides it into seconds, minutes, hours, days, weeks, months, years, centuries and millennia. Real time is a dimension in God. It never

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moves or changes. It never comes so it never goes away. It never begins so it never ends. It is always there available to interact. But division of time into days etc is an act of mind. Mind creates Thursday then Thursday is replaced by Friday. Thursday has to die out so that Friday may come. Time as dimension of God never moves, changes or dies out but it is the time divisions created by mind that have to change and disappear.

7. Theological literature about God is in such abundance that we cannot finish reading it even in hundred lives. Thus one may easily jump to the conclusion that it is impossible to get full knowledge of truth. But fortunately truth is so evident and so near to us that even an illiterate person can access it through direct knowledge. When some one is feeling hungry or happy he does not need reading books to become aware of his hunger or happiness. Content is fundamental thing and words are of secondary importance. God is like ocean and language is like a bowl. You cannot condense the ocean into a bowl.

8. Life stands as question mark in front of us but our logical minds find no satisfactory answer to it. It baffles us and leaves us beaten down. The need for a God, a missing link, a super being that could help and guide us through the rigmarole of life gets intensified. Our logical thinking fails to find any such being and authority in the sphere of life; the feeling of tragedy and betrayal engulfs us more deeply. We all need God, the whole existence needs God but God does not appear before our addict minds. Right at the center of the mess and darkness there is light. Invisibility does not mean that God is not present. God is present but our minds are so drunk in physicality that it is hard for gross mind to trace the presence of God. We cannot sense God with our five senses. We cannot find God through logical probing; if we could have found

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God through our logical pursuing then such God would not be worthy to be called a God. God is such an immense Reality that it cannot be exposed upon our senses. It is beyond the power of senses to bear the intensity of divine exposure. We can experience God only through sincere self-consecration. God is available to us all the times. The only thing that keeps us apart from God is our discordant thinking. If we empower and purify ourselves to go beyond the ego and mind momentum then we can enjoy the companionship of God in this very life. It is impurity of the vision that keeps us ignorant and separated from God. God is not outside He is within us. We have to make ourselves eligible for Gods exposure. Leaves, blossom and fruit all three are there in the seed of the plant right from the day one but to realize all that the seed has to go through many stages of development. When seed attains maturity for leaves the leaves come from within, when branches attains maturity for blossom the blossom comes from within, when blossom attains maturity for the fruit the fruit comes from within. So is the God-seeking. God comes to us firstly as seed. We have to nurture this seed for the required period of time. Then this seed attains leaves and blossom and finally bears fruit with the passage of time. Slowness and gradual growth is law of nature. It applies to Spiritual Contemplation also.

9. As creation is not external to God so creation is as real as God. When we say that all sense objects are unreal and illusive, the only intention is to denounce the way of thinking about the sense objects as separate and standalone phenomena. World is not unreal but our perception of seeing things is illusive. Nothing exists as outside of God. Even our misperceptions are taking there life energy from God. When our misperceptions too are part of God then what makes a difference between wisdom and follies, a saint and a sinner. The difference between positive and negative states is not because we feel about them differently but they are different because of holding different types of divine energy. Wisdom and enlightenment

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represent positive and constructive type of energy whereas the ignorance is a dark state. God-experience is a play of positive energy. Do we have any control or discretion to manipulate the flow of different types of energy in our favor? Answer is NO. Energy and its flow relate to God and God alone has control over its flow. If there could have been any other controlling entity then that entity too was eligible to be called as God. Creation comes only from one God and the control over it is also the privilege of that one God. We all have to go through our life conditions submissively. There is no ultimate verbal answer for the ultimate why. No school of thought, no saint can provide ultimate answer to the ultimate W hy. At the end, knowledge fails but Spiritual Contemplation based experience delivers. Spiritual Contemplation is fragrance of God. God Himself is the seed of His seeking. Those whose hearts are sowed with this seed are the most fortunate beings on earth.

10. All is phantom unless He is seen, who is the only real. See Him and all is His garment; see Him not and all is phantom. What is World, you ask? To see anything whatsoever apart from Him: that is the illusion the source of sorrow. See Him and you see that all belongs to Him and nothing is rejected.

11. We can show indifference or we can deny the existence of God consciously but we are incapable to silence the cry that arises deep inside us incessantly. We cannot remove or silence the cry for God that is present inside our consciousness. Life without God is not sustainable; it would be a lie that never comes true. People need God. It may be a job. It may be a drug. It may be family. It may be a hobby. Each persons God may be different and it may even be yourself. Everyone has to put his faith in something and it becomes his God whether they believe it or not.

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In this day and age, many secularists have accepted creation itself as God and they worship Gods creation in place of God. Where do you give your time, your talent, and your treasure? Where is your focus? Where ever that might be, it most likely is your God.

12. Having faith in God is also having faith in our own being. When we lose faith in our Master, we become miserable. God is an answer from within to a question from within.

13. Oh! Lord. Whenever You come to me I have no questions for You, only openness. Nothing needs to be spoken. Everything is in its place; all is accounted for. But when You leave ... I am a harbor without any boat; a nest without a bird; a cup that somehow knows what it means to have capacity, yet that sits without any means to fill itself except for this flood of questions rushing to pour themselves into where once You were. What is it about You? How is it that your footsteps through my heart -- even on their way out -- leave only imprints of a new promise? What is in your hand that can touch my soul almost imperceptibly yet moves it so much? How do You speak to me of all that matters without ever saying a word? Coming out of the darkness, going into it, and then back out again almost unannounced and the sudden sense of awakening light is always left there in your place? What is it about You?

14. Will of God is represented through material causes. No living being sustains on material causes alone. It is will of God that creates, maintains and discontinues any manifestation. When the will of God is withdrawn from your life then your body is no more capable even to drink a spoon of water or to inhale a puff of air.

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15. HE, who strives to realize God through understanding, eventually will understand Him but realization will still be a dream. And he who strives to realize God through unconditional submission will eventually realize as well as understand Him. Because where God comes there remains no ignorance.

16. God is non-deductive, primitive and original truth. All other facts stand as truth only in reference to Him. God is content of all forms. Without His presence nothing has any existence, form, character or property. He is heat in fire, he is cold in ice, He is illumination in light, He is fatality in poison, He is healing in medicine, He is hardness in stone and flow in water and air, He is softness in love and destruction in hatred. We cannot take anything as fact without taking God first as basis of all truth.

17. Universe is creation of God. Our love, hatred, denial, submission etc are part of it. Our sense of individual being (ego) is also very much part of this creation. Thing A and thing B and space of choice between them, and the higher mind that observes in alienation - all are part of creation. We cannot come near to God as we are never away from Him, we cannot realize God, as we are never separated from Him. There is no independent I, we, you or mine. There is only one God all else is His radiance and creation. Those are wise people who are bestowed upon with power of discernment. In life we have two options. One is to take the dirty thing that is dirty throughout from inside to outside and the other is to take the clean thing that outwardly looks absurd but is clean at core. In other words if we deny and challenge the God then we opt

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for a dirty thing and if we surrender to God though apparently it looks unmanly and unworthy matter but in the longer run of life this second choice proves to be the clean and pure thing. This other thing is clean and pure and the more we go deep inside it the more it appears clean and pure. Ultimately it absorbs the sense of our separateness and thus we reinvent our identity as a vital part of the infinite divine play. We must not be afraid of surrendering our illusive being to the real-being of God. This physical self of us that is afraid of submission is an illusion, a phantom created by our own senses on the screen of our perception. This fear is fear of a child who shouts in the long corridors of a deserted castle and gets feared when he listens back the echo of his own shout in a changed tone and pitch of voice. He ignores the original sound that produced this echo and he takes it as someone else is voicing upon him from inside the castle corridors. It is matter of the awakening of us to the original Self that the fear of the other self will be obliterated from our minds and hearts.

18. One saint said, "My me is God". This knowing, this gentle intuition that arises and is at first repressed and left unfulfilled. We have had this intuition all our lives. And we have run from it our entire life: evaded it, pushed it away, drowned it in drink or drugs or knowledge or success or sex or a billion other reasons and excuses. But the more it is run from the more it haunts, daunts and confronts us in the gnawing emptiness within and without. Some succeed in evading it until the moment of physical death itself. Still others, who having been given an inclination to seek and search, are graced with a realization now. And what a blissful realization this is!

19. The wonder of God is that there is nothing you need to do to get anything of Him. I repeat there is nothing that needs to be done, by you or anyone else. Our only problem is that we have

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been taught and conditioned by years and years of belief systems that we are not in touch with that which is infinite, that which is unnamed, unknowable and almighty. And so we have invented philosophies and techniques and there have been teachers and gurus and a myriad of God-help seminars and books about it all. I say to you now, you need none of it. There is nothing to find out which is not already here right now. All of the spiritual guidance and wisdom is meant only to make us realize that we are born perfect. That we are pure at core. When we remove impurities then the pure emerges spontaneously, as when the disease is cured health is available without any further effort. Health is a natural state and is available to us as our birthright but efforts are required for the removal of any sick condition.

20. No argument can prove the existence of God as well as no denial has the power to quench the infinite thirst of human heart. We stray between two ends and two pulling forces. When the world sucks us viciously we bow before God and we bow before world when God does not honor our wishes. This run between two extremities ultimately tears apart our inner peace and we look as breathless as a deer that had been running all the day along in front of hungry wolves. Then what is the way out of it? There is a way that leads out of this fiasco. This way comes forth, when we start accepting God as He is, in all its manifestations. When we drop the desire to run away from God as we can never run away from God (whenever and wherever we go God is already there) or to become nearer to God as we can never become nearer to God (we are already living in God). When we drop the desire to change the prevailing moment. When we desire; we follow the gravity of ego force and we are doomed to be failed and suffer from pain.

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21. External relations are source of worries and dissatisfaction whereas peace flows only from within - from ones own core relation with God. It is direct and internal relation to God that gives life a perspective and meanings; all other relations are Relations of Necessity. It is beauty of the Man -God relation that it is of non-necessitous nature. One can go on with life routines even without believing in the existence of God. But one who gives more importance to understanding the life rather merely living through it is bound to go through all the mystic experiences called spirituality.

22. God can turn a stonehearted man into a saint and a noble into a filthy disgusted man. God enjoys total control over all His creatures. No one shares this control with God. Our mind only reads the events and situations around us but is not in control of them. As the speedometer of the vehicle only shows the speed and does not generate it. God alone is the cause of all effects.

23. At times acts of God appear illogical from human point of view but how can we ignore the primal fact that all of the logic itself is constantly getting its life from God. Thus how can one assume that some acts of God are not logical? But rather divine logic is so immense and expanded that we the mortals cannot grasp it through our limited physical capacities. The Absolute is Pure Being. It is not an empirical concept. Pure being is impossible to think in mind, because it cannot be thought about. You are thinking that you are outside of the Absolute. If you would think that you are inside the Absolute, how would you raise a question?

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24. To those who judge life from the stand point of logic, God appears to them as a cruel and psychopath custodian of the universe. Only those who bow before God unconditionally can see the true face of God. The Absolute (God) baffles the mind of even the greatest scholars. It eludes the grasp of even the mightiest intellect. It is experienced only as Pure Isness, where intellect dies, scholarship perishes and the entire being itself is completely lost in it. All is lost, and all is found.

25. You want laboratory proofs? Very fine, indeed! You wish to limit the illimitable all-pervading God in your test-tubes, blow-pipes and chemicals. God is the source for your chemicals. He is the substratum for your atoms, electrons and molecules. Without Him no atom or electron will move. He is the inner ruler. He is the controller. Without Him the fire cannot burn, the sun cannot shine, the air cannot flow. Without Him you cannot see, talk, hear and think. He is the maker and sustainer of all scientific laws, the law of gravitation, the law of cohesion, the law of attraction and repulsion, etc. He is law-giver. Bow to Him in devotion and humbleness.

26. Dance cannot be separated from a dancer. As long as dancer is dancing, dance is coming out. One cannot conceive a dance without a dancer. This reflects the same understanding that the Creator and the Creation are one. God is not such a presence which could be talked about! God is just God and the very word of God too is just a lingual facility for communications. God is not visible yet pervades everything, cannot be pinpointed yet is present everywhere.

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27. The mirage we see is not the desert, yet without the desert there can be no mirage. From the mirage we know we are in the desert. The world of our sense-experience is not God, yet there can be no world without God. From the effect we know we are in the Cause. The world is the effect, God is the Cause. Being in the effect we are in the Cause. Our knowledge and experience of the outer world are not direct, as they are obtained through the instrumentality of our senses. If the senses are defective, our knowledge and experience regarding the world are also defective. We can have no direct experience of anything except that which is within ourselves, and is the experiencer himself. We know it directly, through itself. Without it we are nothing. It is the foundation of all knowing and experience. When we are rooted in a deep and dynamic awareness of this infinite presence within and without, we have an experience of God.

28. We can stop believing in God. We can stop thinking about God. But we can not stop thinking about our own self, our own presence. Our faith in our own self and presence is an irrefutable evidence of Gods presence. So there are no virtual non -believers in the world. Every one is bound to have faith in his presence. If someone claims to have no faith even in himself either he is lying or is mad. So, if we come from river to canal or we go from canal to river we are swimming in the same one water.

29. Sometimes God blows as breeze upon our hearts (emotional construct) and some other times He whirls as tornado blowing apart the walls of the heart. Some times God comes as

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droplets of dew and some other times He roars as an ocean. Such is the magnificence of God.

30. God is there as the omniscient witness and receiver of all our works and is the secret Master. All our actions, all our efforts, even our sins and stumbling and sufferings and struggles are governed in their last result by one God. God is all these things, a guide, a Master, ultimate consolation and a playmate in the game of life.

31. When I reckon about myself I assume multiple roles. My one part acts as subject the other as object, one more as very act of thinking and still one more that is conscious of all this split and multiple roles. So at core I am One in Many and Many in One. And this attribute in me is the direct evidence of Gods presence in me.

32. So long God is merely a piece of knowledge to you, God is part of suffering. God must become the very content of your being. So long God is your second thought it is darkness, let the God be master of all things in you and of you.

33. God comes to us not from outside but from within. God is very basis of our genesis; when the capacity to receive Gods exposure has been built and developed in us then the sun of God begins to rise on the horizon of our consciousness. We feel pressure of Gods presence and consequently our capacity to interact with God is further extended and developed. This process goes on for some time and then with the grace of God, devotees are brought at par to

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divine resonance where they become fully enlightened and satisfied in the company of their true Lord.

34. Do not say you are having God but it is God who is having you. God is not existent because of our thinking but it is our thinking that is existent because of God.

35. Transcendence is the real vesture of God. No word can indicate towards Him. No idea can claim the cognition of Him. No ism can contain Him. No single form of faith can have proprietary rights over Him. God-seeking is meant only to help us and prepare us for the final encounter with Reality.

36. In me God is not an outsider but God is my supreme organ that is holding all the life in me. Neither heart nor the brain; neither blood nor the air; neither food nor the water is keeping me alive but God alone is my sustainer. Without Him I am simply nothing.

37. You may debate over God for one hundred years yet no one can know Him through debates. Even the Masters have failed in the attempt. Finally, they resort to observing He is not this, He is not that. Generations have passed in attempt to describe God but God remains unsaid.

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38. Understanding of the true nature of man-God or God-man relation is the bedrock of wisdom. A seeker cannot have divine experience in mind state and he can not have it without mind state too. Apparently the statement looks paradoxical because if God is not available to mind state then logically He must be available to no-mind state. But the underlying meaning of this statement indicates that mind has its limitations, God is not coming out of mind rather mind is coming out of Him. In deep sleep we are in minimum mind state and in maximum inner silence but we still can not claim any God realization in sleep state. In sleep we are not aware of our relation to God and we are even not aware of our own existence at conscious levels. So it is evident that mind perplexes us through its many faces. It spreads logical blockades in the way of any logical comprehension of God; it clears as well as those blockades and also monitors these subtle processes nonchalantly and suggests ways to us that are of supra-mind (nomind) quality. The true nature of man-God relation is not of intellectual type but it is an inherent and essential type of relation. Even a single particle of universe is essentially bonded with God. Nothing can escape of this essential bond. It is spontaneous, inevitable inescapable relation. Existence at any level is not possible without this relationship that is called Sambandh. Mind is not a creator of anything it just studies, explores and reveals the pre-existing data and possibilities. Mind is a manipulator and inventor but not a creator; only God can create. So mind cannot create God for us, it only examines and exposes upon us the pre-existing essential man-God Sambandh. No man either believer or infidel can escape this essential bond that the world (including man) has with its source (God). But at mental levels we are free to believe or not to believe. If we are so lucky to realize our essential relation with God in this life then we can become saints (friends) of God and if we fail to realize this relation then we are

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bound to live a life not better than animals. In an animal life we suffer and become slaves of mental urges and instincts.

39. I am not a doer it is God who is doing me and guiding me through the garden of His presence. Some times He appears as thorn and prick and at other times as flower and fragrance but He is One and All. He is One in many and many in One. He is not only the Being but the Witness too. He is whirling around His own axis. He is always busy in His own worship. He is flying on the majestic wings of suffering and joy into the horizons of His beyondness. He is drunk in His own unique grace. Neither my saying Yes nor my saying No can change my relation to Him.

40. Presence of God is indivisibly one but our minds split it in fragments. Individuality is a perceptive mirage. As ocean is indivisible but when we pick some water out of it in a pot we start thinking that we have picked the ocean in the pot or we assume that ocean has become two; one in the pot and the other that is out of the pot. God is like ocean and ego (psyche) is like a small pot that picks a little part of the whole in it and starts thinking in illusion about its separate existence. Our whole existence or being-ness is of reflective nature, It is just a show of divine possibilities, being projected by God through end-less forms, for the celebration of His own Is-ness

41. God- realization is some orgasmic experience of the highly purified consciousness. This living consciousness is our Inner Reality. It does not come from outside but it blooms from within. God is the Inner Realty . Your very I contains God. When we attain the required Inner State then God blooms from within. But alas! we waste whole of our life as a beggar and do not realize that the most

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invaluable treasure is hidden within us. We are unspeakably rich but we are ignorant of our worth.

42. Every God-seeker will ultimately have to quieten the simmering of mind. When gravitational pull of physical life gets overpowered by the intensity of our desire for God, only then we can fly; only then we can become successful in our Spiritual Contemplation. Simple is that: we can not become spiritual; we can not become divine unless we build a divine momentum within us. To know God, to have God and to become God we have to become at par with God. Without it God remains only the dancing mirage in the desert of thought.

43. You hold God as an idea. The head can configure it out in the conceptual way, but it can never really understand it, because as is with ideas, to understand them you have to experience them. That means, for a true spiritual experience, you have to immerse in the idea of God with whole your being.

44. My master is within. He is the guide and He is the real companion. I call him when He allows and I bow to Him when He wills for so. I seek Him with the power that He confers upon me. When I start drifting away, He guides me to the way. He whispers to me in my loneliness you are not alone. He speak s to my heart and my heart speaks to Him like fragrance communicates to flower in the wild.

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45. Lord has made me an instrument to carry out His will. It is of no importance for the flute that what tune tragic or melodious is being played through it; what is important for the flute is that it is in the hands of its performer and it must perform correctly.

46. God never takes any side because God is Total. All things are happening in God but God is not doing them. All things are moving in God -- not as an act of God but as an inherent divine attribute. God does not exist for He is transcendent; God has no link with the world because He is the world. We can not understand and rationalize the world from the stand point of logic as we are not total. We have only partial logic and biased point of view. Even if we ever feel any sense of totality it is not original but it is assembled and attained for a very limited time frame. All things are moving in God. This is divine absoluteness that our intellect can never understand. To understand it we have to enter into God-experience and Godexperience comes through total surrender in silence.

47. I am an addict of God. Now I do not think God rather I am a thought in God. Even my denial is now impotent to segregate me from God. Now God is an incessant and eternal Yes to me. Now He is pulse of the pulse and heart of the heart, He is my air and food. He is my sight and smell. Ah! He is pouring to me from within and beyond. In me ... now He is a yearning so strong even stronger than desire to live and desire to understand.

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48. God IS. It simply is; nothing can be said about it. And all that can be said about it will falsify it. There is no need for any explanation. Unexplained, utterly immediate, God IS. It surrounds you. It is within you, without you. There is no need to come to any conclusion about it. It is already concluded! You are in it. You cannot be without it. There is no way to lose it. There is no way to become distracted from it. You may be fast asleep, unaware, but still you are in it.

49. God is such a mystery -- or call it life, or existence -a mystery that when you enter into the innermost shrine of it you will not be able even to believe it. It is unbelievably true. It is incredible. Here is a beautiful poem named The Bridge. I didn't believe, Standing on the bank of a river Which was wide and swift That I would cross that bridge Plaited from thin, fragile reeds Fastened with bast I walked delicately as a butterfly And heavily as an elephant, I walked surely as a dancer And wavered as a blind man I didn't believe that I would cross that bridge, And now that I am standing on the other side, I don't believe I crossed it. Even when you have known God, you will not be able to believe that you have known Him. That is what I mean when I say God is a mystery. He remains unknowable. He is an unseen mystery; seen He

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becomes even a greater mystery. He is not a problem that you can solve. He is bigger than you. You can dissolve into Him but you can not define Him. But remember please: whatsoever I am saying is not the thing that I want to say to you. Whatsoever I am saying has nothing to do with truth, because truth cannot be said. Whatsoever I am saying is nothing but a hammering. If you become awake, you will see the truth. This is just to create an opportunity. I am shaking you hard -and if you allow, if you don't resist, if you cooperate with me, if you are ready to go with me, if you can trust, if you are courageous, then my words can become a flash of sudden thunder. Drop the hesitation! Stop analyzing! Become more open! Meet directly! Truth is immediate, radiant, here-now. It is not that truth has to be discovered -- only you have to become aware. Truth is already here. Let me shake you; allow me to shake you out of your sleep. Don't go on thinking that you understand. You don't. Your knowledge is a way of ignoring the truth. Drop this ignorance -- and ignorance cannot be dropped by accumulating more knowledge. Ignorance can be dropped only by dropping the knowledge that you have already accumulated. Knowledge is the barrier to knowing. When knowledge is dropped, knowing flowers.

50. God comes to you when you are not; when you have become just a zero, God comes to you. He is just waiting by the corner. The moment you become empty, He rushes towards you, He comes and fills you. Yes, it is hard. One has to pay too much for it -but God is not cheap. You will have to pay with your whole being. Only when you have paid totally and you are not holding anything and you are not a miser, and you have sacrificed and consecrated yourself totally, you will attain Him.

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51. God never becomes absolutely known; He remains mysterious, ineffable and indefinable. It is not possible for human intellect to penetrate, to ponder, to contemplate Him. There is no way to define God. The more you ponder, the more it becomes unknowable. The more you know, the more difficult it becomes to say that you know. You try and try and it starts slipping from your hands. It is very elusive.

52. God alone exists all else is His presence. All that is present is coming out of His existence. All that is present needs constant support to be present. Sun exists and sunshine is presence. Fire exists and heat is presence. There can be no presence without existence and no existence without presence. There is no duality between existence and presence because both are one. They are not two; they have never been two. Can you tell what relation your nose has with your face, what relation your eyes have with your face? It is mind who is firstly dividing the unity of whole into parts and then starts searching a relation between parts and the whole. There is no relation between God and the world, between God and the I because God is existence and I is presence. Your I, your wor ld does not belong to you. You as you are nowhere. We see there is no relational gap between sun and sunshine, between fire and heat. Sunshine is never oblivious to sun; heat is never oblivious to fire then why man is oblivious to God? Why man needs awakening to become aware of his relation to God? Because heat and sunshine are direct presence of fire and sun but I which is direct presence of God has been masked by the physical veils of mind and body. Ego is always caged in time and space. Heat and sunshine can never realize fire and sun because they are never separate from their source. But our I has been separated by the physical veils, thus it has been given an opportunity to realize its

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Sambandh to its source (God). This is why it needs awakening; it needs enlightenment to reunite with its source once again. We can not have God experience without having the Silence first. To have Silence, we need righteous approach and spiritual practice. If we do not go through preparations we will miss the opportunity of God-realization for ever. No doubt after death we will become in direct relation with God but after death there will be no opportunity available to us to realize God. Death makes us in direct relation to God as sunshine or heat is in direct relation to sun or fire. After death there will be no relational gap between man and God. Further, we must understand that it is not our I that needs Spiritual Contemplation. I is already purified, it is already divine; it has no hesitation to fall back to God. But it is our mind conditions that need to be purified, trained and disciplined. Once mind is tamed then I comes at home spontaneously.

53. A master handed over the manuscript of a book to his veteran disciple saying that go through of this manuscript a nd delete that what you find is not equal to the truth. After a year the disciple came back to his master and handed back the book to the master. Master opened it and found that the entire book has been deleted; now the book contained only blank pages. Master asked why it is blank. Disciple said I studied all the sentences and paragraphs but could not find anything equal to the truth in it. Disciple further said I find that only the blankness can hold the perfection. Master said now you stand qualified and always keep yourself established in this blankness which is holding the perfection of God.

54. Do not take life as an ordinary event. It is just a miracle of God. Life is an opportunity for both, for God and for man. It is an opportunity for God to act as man and it is also an opportunity for man to experience God.

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55. You think about God, You pride over your faith in God and while doing so, inadvertently, you put yourself at center and God on the periphery. Subjective thinking is your malady; thinking is the venom in you. So long you think you are the center and God is on the periphery. Through thinking you squeeze the God into the size of your mental box. Thinking makes life miserable. Your thinking is holding your miseries as a womb holds the baby. A piece of dry wood will burn in fire without any resistance. It will never complain; it will not resist the flame. It will turn into ashes without having any pride of burning. But the wood that still has its roots in the moisture of land or even the wood that has been cut off the land but yet holds the moisture in it will resist to the burning flame in proportion to its moisture level. To be one with God you have to get rid of your moisture (ego). Firstly, you have to dislodge your roots from the land of thinking and secondly you have to dry up the residual moisture in you. To dry your moisture - you would have to expose your Self to the heat of Sun (God) for a pretty long time. When thinking will stop its wheel then there will be no medium available to your miseries for their sustenance.

56. God is at center of you. Suffering is there but just around you; it is not at the center, it is at the periphery. It is impossible for suffering to be at the center; it is always at the periphery and you are the center. So when you allow it to happen, when you dont escape, you dont run, you are not in a panic, suddenly you become aware that suffering is there at the periphery, as if happening to someone else, not to you, and you are looking at it. A subtle joy spreads all over your being because you have realized one of the basic truths of life. Suffering is there, you need not seek for it. Enough suffering is there already, you need not go in search. Suffering is already there; life by its very nature creates suffering.

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Illness is there, death is there, the body is there - by their very nature suffering is created. See it; look at it with a very dispassionate eye. Look at it - what it is, what is happening. Dont escape. Immediately the mind says, "Escape from here, dont look at it." But if you escape then you cannot be blissful. God is at core of all things and states, HE is not external to you; your own core is no different from God, this is the reason that it is said God is nearer to you more than your jugular vein.

57. Nobody has ever reached to God. When you stop all reaching, when you drop the whole nonsense of achievement, suddenly God comes to you. And when He comes, He comes from everywhere, from all directions. He simply enters in you from every pore of your being. You never reach to Him; He always comes to you.

58. You have no power to reject God so when you reject God what happens actually is that God rejects you and shuts the doors of peace and light on you until the time when you again realize that you have no power to reject God and again you submit your will before God.

59. Physical presence and transcendence are two planes of the same one God. These two aspects of God are not in contradiction to each other. But both together and combined characterize the Oneness of God. Physical plane of existence represents Gods Am-ness, our body and mind are part of Gods Am-ness. Mind is thinking personality of brain. But the transcendent part of God is also present within us. It is the metaphysical part of our being. It is prese nt in us as witnessing principle. It is direct reflection of universal I-ness within our limited

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body. Mind by default serves our ego but it can be trained to have experience of the root-mind or universal consciousness. For this we have to refine and develop our psyche to a level where it becomes possible to experience the I-ness of God. And note it that this kind of experience does not take place between subject and object, between mind and God or between ego and God but by reaching this level mind and our psyche has traveled so much that it is now ready for its complete transformation. Our purified mind enters into its own bigger reality as a river enters into the ocean. By entering into the ocean river assumes the personality of ocean. For the river it is a win win situation.

60. God is unique to each individual. No two men have the same God. Man is Gods flowering and God is mans flowering. God of the individual is like a portrait painted by the skill and capacity of an individual. As a spider weaves its web out of its nature and instinct; It is great blessing offered by God that individual is allowed to make his own God that is according to his own capacity and taste. God has as many forms as there are thinking minds. God is infinite and despite having innumerable personas His oneness remains perpetually intact.

61. It is hard for me to understand the ocean but I can understand a droplet of rain when it falls upon my forehead. God is ocean I can not perceive Him with my limited potentiality but my own is-ness is a droplet of that bigger presence of God, I can see and feel the God through this little droplet of my own existence.

62. All inquiries about God are stupid and all answers in this regard are even a greater stupidity. World is like an open book.

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God is the content and meaning of it. God is content of all things. But not all men have that inner eye which could see and feel this content. Not all hearts are built to sense the beat of God. Basically human beings are of two natures i.e. divine and animal. One who are born having the seed of God-seeking and others are those who simply do not have it. Persons who have this seed would inevitably feel and smell God directly in the great panorama of life and their feelings would naturally grow into divine experience. It does not make any difference that whether you are very learned man or an illiterate, point is! If you are born with it you have it and if you are not born with it then you would never know it! If you are born with this seed of God, sooner or later, you would awaken to it and realize God and if you are not born with this seed you would never have any idea what God really is. Spiritual Contemplation is not a thing to learn or not an act to do intentionally, no one can be invited to it. If you have the seed of God you would grow into it spontaneously as a plant seed grows and blossoms into its fullness. A plant seed does not need to go to any university and obtain a scholarly degree to grow and blossom into its originality. Having all that said, it needs to be mentioned that even a seed needs nourishment and particular environment to realize its inner natural potential. Same way, spiritual teachings provide us with that particular nourishment and environment that is essential for the explosion and growth of any inner and inherent potential (whether it is botanical or divine). But remember one thing that listening or delivering the spiritual discourses or reading or writing the books is not the only medium to become enlightened. Listening and reading are supposed to build a certain level of yearning and longing for the divine that would be intense enough to guide us and change us, if some one who is illiterate but his longing and yearning for the divine is strong enough to take him to the divine doorstep then such person is not in need of going through the traditional learning, his very yearning caters to him all the nourishment of Spiritual Contemplation. Longing or yearning (also called Ishq) is the basic thing that makes real difference between a seeker and a scam.

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63. I can live without my limbs but I can not live without God. The moment without God is like falling constantly in a bottomless abyss. If God is not with me then hands of the absurd start grinding each molecule of my existence. Without God pain of the Now is simply unbearable for me.

64. If we pick a spoonful of water from the ocean then water in the spoon is ocean and not ocean simultaneously. It is ocean because its composition is same as of the oceanic water and it is not ocean because it is devoid of the oceanic grace and capacity. Ships and sharks cannot swim in a spoon. There can be no hurricanes in a spoon. Our content is from God but it has been demoted by the limitations of our physicality. We are from God but our physicality is making us human beings. Limitations of capacity are now obstructing the infinity. So in spoon, we pick the ocean and we miss the ocean simultaneously. The point is not that the ultimate reality remains unattainable or unrealizable in full but that the whole truth, when descends upon our consciousness, transforms itself into an imperfection. So a God-seeker is never satisfied in his attainments. His journey continues all of his life. The seeker always feels that yet more is left unattained. Seeking never gets completed and this very fact grants seeking such a great vitality and magnificence.

65. God is not the creation of man but God accomplishes Himself through His creation. Creation is a medium for God to celebrate His own presence. Fragrance of a rose flower is not created in its petals but the whole thing was present already in the seed from

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day one and it just unraveled itself through the growth process of the plant.

66. God, Self, Truth and Reality are different words but all four words are used in spiritual literature to express the same and one content, understanding or idea. The very subtleness that is latent in these words remains always inexplicable. So, the very nature of God, Self, Truth or Reality is silence or no-mind but these too are just few more words. They are not substitute of true knowing that can come only through an encounter or experience. Encounter or experience of the subtleness is very essential for its true understanding but even when encounter occurs it can be felt by the individual who is having it and can not be expressed to others exactly through the facility of language. This understanding can not be generalized or textualized. In some spiritual paths, words of silence, emptiness or no-mind are used more decidedly than the words of God, Self, Truth or Reality. By doing so, it is not meant by them that these words are any substitute for the words of God, Self, Truth or Reality but through the words of silence, emptiness or no-mind they want to speak about and draw attention towards the very nature of God, Self, Truth or Reality.

67. God is indivisible truth. But when mind tries to apply God over the life (world), dichotomies appear. Problem of evil and suffering poses major threat to any integrated comprehension of the whole truth. Firstly seeing God as separate from creation and secondly trying to apply God over the creation and adjusting Him in the great panorama of life is doubly played reinforced folly of mind. God is not separate from universe so we have no need to create a place for Him in the universe. World already stands adjusted in Him. In God there are no problems and paradoxes at all.

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68. God is a name; we give to an imaginary space which in fact is not perceivable. Say it God or give any other name to it it makes no difference. But the presence of that non-perceptual space is a hard Truth. Denial of God brings only misery and dissolution of consciousness.

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CHAPTER - 3

The Role of Mind

1. World is full of stimuli and our thoughts are just a response to it. It is an endless game. Stimuli will never stop and so are the responses. But to live through our Is-ness we have to liberate our consciousness. Our consciousness has been caught up badly in this vicious cycle of stimulus and the brain responses there on. To be limited to this type of life is a shame on man. To be liberated from the narrowness and suffering of lower mind, we have to purify and expand our consciousness. Your thoughts are your torments. You can not annihilate your thoughts as they are natural function of your brain but you can drop them. You can transcend them. You do not need to carry your luggage on your head while you are traveling in a train. Put your luggage on floor and enjoy your journey. You can not be without thoughts but you can live a life beyond your thoughts. There is a great difference between being thoughtful and being a witness on thoughts. Learn to live your Is-ness. Is-ness is like stream of pure rushing water but life enslaved by obsessive thoughts is like a pond full of fungus and bacteria. Your name, fame, success, failures, worries, possessions, money, jobs, pains, humiliations, poverty, richness, authority, relations, love, hatred and many more things are just pieces of obsessive thoughts. You would certainly experience these thoughts in your life but never let them pollute the Is-ness of your life. Never allow them to become a fungus of your life. Never allow them to master over your Is-ness. Keep your Is-ness pure and detached because this Is-ness of you is a gift to you from God.

2. To think is natural function of mind. We can not deprive mind of thinking. But we can transform our mind-state by engaging it in a righteous thought, a meaningful action. What is this righteous thought? God-seeking is the only righteous thought and meaningful action in life. Each breath of us should be consumed in

attending the Is-ness of Divine. To attend the divine Is-ness by shifting our focus upon it is also the celebration of our own presence in this world.

3. A master tells his disciple to meditate on a koan: A small goose is put into a bottle, fed and nourished. The goose goes on becoming bigger and bigger and bigger, and fills the whole bottle. Now it is too big, it cannot come out of the bottle's mouth the mouth is too small. And the koan is that you have to bring the goose out without destroying the bottle, without killing the goose. Now it is mind-boggling. What can you do? The goose is too big; you cannot take it out unless you break the bottle, but that is not allowed. Or you can bring it out by killing it; then you don't care whether it comes out alive or dead. That is not allowed either. Day in, day out, the disciple meditates, finds no way, thinks this way and that way but in fact there is no way. Tired, utterly exhausted, a sudden revelation ... suddenly he understands that the master cannot be interested in the bottle and the goose; they must represent something else. The bottle is the mind, you are the goose... and without being in the mind through witnessing it is possible to make the goose free. By living a mind-life we become so much identified with it that we start feeling that we are in it! He runs to the master to say that the goose is out. And the master says, "You have understood it. Now keep it out. It has never been in." Awareness is the goose, which is not in the bottle of mind. But you believe that it is in it and asking everyone how to get it out. And there are idiots who will help you, with techniques, to get it out. I call them idiots because they have not understood the thing at all. Awareness is pure of duality, and mind cannot exist out of duality. Awareness is non-dual and mind is dual. So just get back a little and watch, make a distance between you and your mind. Whether it is something good, beautiful and delicious or it is ugly and painful just remain as far away as possible. Look at it just the way you look at a

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film. But people get identified even with films. Identification is the root cause of your misery. And all identification is identification with the mind. Step aside let the mind settle down. And soon you would be able to see that there is no problem at all -- the goose is out. You don't have to break the bottle; you don't have to kill the goose either.

4. Knowledge stands on intelligence and suffering stands on desire. Liberation comes from going beyond knowledge and desire. In the presence of knowledge and desire mystic experience can not take place. Intelligence and desire dwell in the body as maggots dwell in a rotten corpse. A seeker needs to know that the very thing that makes anyone enlightened neither comes from intelligence nor from desire, rather it is an inner explosion of the ego that takes place when ego kept exposed for a certain length of time to the radiance of God. It is the heat of God; it is the fragrance of God that bewitches you so much with its intensity that it becomes impossible for you to hold back and you feel yourself sucked into that mystic experience which is named as nirvana, mukti, liberation, God-realization etc, etc. State of Self-realization is inherently a state of transcendence and beyondness. Hence the mystic experience itself remains always indescribable. Spiritual discipline and practices are not any goal in themselves, nor they are any tools to the prime experience of enlightenment yet they are not without purpose, they are supposed to help us gaining that strength which is essential for any further advancement on the path. Spiritual discussions are not meant to report the exactness of mystic experience but are meant only to bring the seeker close to that point where he himself becomes capable to feel the heat of God, the fragrance of God directly. And ultimately the medium that helped us so far to bloom in fullness dissolves and disappears like a seed that disappears when its inner potential of becoming a full plant is accomplished.

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5. Mind powers are instinctive and wild. Proper use of them requires harnessing and training. As flow of a river is wild but we can use it for our benefit by building dams across it. Thus we would get water for irrigation and electric power for our homes. By channelizing the flow of mind into positive thinking, we can make our lives far better.

6. Mind is an instrument that receives divine influences (vibrations) and adopts them as its own ideas.

7. No-mind state is not a term for emptiness, zero-ness or any void. No-mind is always filled with holy presence of God. In no-mind state there is no possibility of ideas, philosophies and opinions. It is pure feeling and direct understanding an understanding that does not depend on words and logic. It is unpolluted awareness.

8. Mind is an individualized reflection of universal consciousness. Return of the intelligence back to universal consciousness is called enlightenment.

9. After going through a certain level of thought process, brain feels exhaustion and distress. It becomes incapable to discover more subtleties of life. It becomes lazy and feels dizziness. A steady

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progress cannot be made on the spiritual path unless the seeker practices some kind of mind control. Recitation of mantra helps in developing concentration and with the help of concentration the seeker can explore the deeper layers of self realization.

10. Feeling the state of Transcendence is also a subtle experience of mind and is not any supra-mind state. Any form of experience, no matter how subtle it appears, is not a supra-mind event. Experience of self-realization appears as supra-mind due to its intense subtlety. The utmost purity gives mind such a level of transparency that it generates the illusion (mirage) of its own disappearance.

11. Acts of God stand un-witnessed. What mind sees are not the acts of God but mind sees only the mind version of reality. For us it is not possible to see the reality in its divine nakedness and if someone ever encounters it, he would not be able to narrate it through mental means.

12. If were lucky enough, at a certain point, the mind will come to the stark realization that it is simply too limited and narrow, too small to ever understand, fathom, or contain the wildfire of Life blazing across the heavens. What we are and what God is, is simply too unpredictable and wild, too vast and free to ever be known. And yet, something is known, isn't it? There is this undeniable sense of knowing, the sense that something is happening even if we know not what it is. The mind may try again and again to wrap its arms around this, but eventually the realization will dawn that no name, no definition, no explanation for what is happening will ever suffice.

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Yes, something is known, but it is a knowing.

knowing that shatters all

13. A thought arises: "This is who I am." A feeling appears and mind says, "Yes, this is what I am" But where are all these thoughts and feelings now? Gone, like everything else that is so fleeting, vanished like every other moment that has ever appeared and then disappeared. The "you" that you think you are is but a memory, a moment, an experience that is no longer. What you are is ever-changing, the movement of Life, never fixed, always fluid, this ever-present freshness

14. Thoughts - whether about things or selves - don't actually refer to anything solid but simply to more thoughts. What we call "I" is nothing more than mind, commenting upon itself.

15. The mind is a master magician. It can conjure up just about any experience. It can make happiness or sadness, hope or despair. It can make plans, make friends and make meaning. It can make love and war. It can dance and sing, laugh and cry, climb mountains, read books, learn calculus, or fly to the moon. It can create the sense that there is a self. It can generate millions of thoughts about that self. It can make us believe that a self actually exists. But it can never, ever make a self, hard as it may try.

16. Mind prowls the world in search of some object it desperately hopes will satisfy the ache and the hunger. And yet, nothing will. But maybe mind wants something else? Maybe it

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simply wants to stop looking anywhere and just sink back into its Source, fall back into what it came from. Let it die into the Source that gave it birth for there it will find everything it ever searched for.

17. No one can willfully stop thinking and when it stops it stops at its own terms. This distinction has to be understood; otherwise you can go mad chasing your mind. No-mind does not arise by stopping thinking. When the thinking is no more, no-mind is. The very effort to stop will create more anxiety, it will create conflict and it will make you split. You will be in a constant turmoil within. This is not going to help. And even if you succeed in stopping it forcibly for a few moments, it is not an achievement at all -- because those few moments will be almost dead, they will not be alive. You may feel a sort of stillness, but not silence, because a forced stillness is not silence. Underneath it, deep in the unconscious, the repressed mind goes on working. So, there is no way to stop the mind. But the mind stops -- that is certain. It stops of its own accord. So what to do? Watch -- don't try to stop. There is no need to do any action against the mind. In the first place, who will do it? It will be mind fighting mind itself. You will divide your mind into two; one that is trying to boss over -- the top-dog -- trying to kill the other part of itself, which is absurd. It is a foolish game. It can drive you crazy. Don't try to stop the mind or the thinking -- just watch it, allow it. Allow it total freedom. Let it run as fast as it wants. You don't try in any way to control it. You just be a witness. It is beautiful! Mind is one of the most beautiful mechanisms. Science has not yet been able to create anything parallel to mind. Mind still remains the masterpiece -- so complicated, so tremendously powerful, with so many potentialities. Watch it! Enjoy it! And don't watch like an enemy, because if you look at the mind like an enemy, you cannot watch. You are already prejudiced; you are already against. You have already decided that something is wrong with the mind -- you have already concluded.

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And whenever you look at somebody as an enemy you never look deep, you never look into the eyes. You avoid! Watching the mind means: look at it with deep love, with deep respect, reverence -- it is God's gift to you! Nothing is wrong in mind itself. Nothing is wrong in thinking itself. It is a beautiful process as other processes are. Clouds moving in the sky are beautiful -- why not thoughts moving into the inner sky? Flowers coming to the trees are beautiful -- why not thoughts flowering into your being. The river running to the ocean is beautiful -- why not this stream of thoughts running somewhere to an unknown destiny? Is it not beautiful? Look with deep reverence. Don't be a fighter -- be a lover. Watch! -- the subtle nuances of the mind; the sudden turns, the beautiful turns; the sudden jumps and leaps; the games that mind goes on playing; the dreams that it weaves -- the imagination, the memory; the thousand and one projections that it creates. Watch! Standing there, aloof, distant, not involved, by and by you will start feeling ... The deeper your watchfulness becomes, the deeper your awareness becomes and gaps start arising. One thought goes and another has not come, and there is a gap. One cloud has passed, another is coming and there is a gap. In those gaps, for the first time you will have glimpses of nomind, you will have the taste of no-mind. In those small intervals, suddenly the sky is clear and the sun is shining. Suddenly the world is full of mystery because all barriers are dropped. The screen on your eyes is no more there. You see clearly, you see penetratingly. The whole existence becomes transparent. In the beginning, these will be just rare moments, few and far in between. But they will give you glimpses of what silence is. Small pools of silence -- they will come and they will disappear. But now you know that you are on the right track -- you start watching again. When a thought passes, you watch it; when an interval passes, you watch it. Clouds are also beautiful; sunshine also is beautiful. Now you are not a chooser. Now you don't have a fixed mind: you don't say, "I would like only the intervals." That is stupid -- because once you become attached to wanting only the intervals, you have decided again against thinking. And then those intervals will disappear. They happen only when you are very distant, aloof. They happen, they cannot be brought. They happen; you cannot force them to happen. They are spontaneous

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happenings. Go on watching. Let thoughts come and go -- wherever they want to go. Nothing is wrong! Don't try to manipulate and don't try to direct. Let thoughts move in total freedom. And then bigger intervals will be coming. You will be blessed with state of sudden spiritual enlightenment. You will be surrounded by infinity. You will be suddenly in the presence of God -- ineffable, mysterious. Touching you although you can not grasp it; within your reach and yet beyond. God not only will be outside but you will be suddenly surprised -He is inside too. He is not only in the seen; He is in the seer also -within and without ... But don't get attached to that either. Attachment is the food for the mind to continue. Non-attached witnessing is the way to stop it without any effort to stop it. And when you start enjoying those blissful moments, your capacity to retain them for longer periods arises. Finally, eventually, one day, you become master. Then when you want to think, you think; if thought is needed, you use it; if thought is not needed, you allow it to rest. Not that mind is simply not there: mind is there, but you can use it or not use it. Now it is your decision. Just like legs: if you want to run you use them; if you don't want to run you simply rest -- legs are there. In the same way, mind is always there. When I am talking to you I am using the mind -- there is no other way to talk. When I am answering your question I am using the mind -- there is no other way. I have to respond and relate, and mind is a beautiful mechanism. When I am not talking to you and I am alone, there is no mind -- because it is a medium to relate through. Sitting alone it is not needed. You have not given it a rest; hence, the mind becomes mediocre. Continuously used, tired, it goes on and on and on. Day it works; night it works. In the day you think; in the night you dream. Day in, day out, it goes on working. If you live for seventy or eighty years it will be continuously working. Look at the delicacy and the endurance of mind -- so delicate! In a small head all the libraries of the world can be contained; all that has ever been written can be contained in one single mind. Tremendous is the capacity of the mind -- and in such a small space! And not making much noise. If scientists some day become capable of creating a parallel computer to mind ... computers are there, but they are not yet minds. They are still mechanisms, they have no organic unity; they don't have any center

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yet. If some day it becomes possible ... and it is possible that scientists may some day be able to create minds -- then you will know how much space that computer will take, and how much noise it will make. Mind is making almost no noise; goes on working silently. And such a servant! -- For seventy, eighty years. And then, too, when you are dying your body may be old but your mind remains young. Its capacity remains yet the same. Sometimes, if you have used it rightly, it even increases with your age! -- because the more you know, the more you understand, the more you have experienced and lived, the more capable your mind becomes. When you die, everything in your body is ready to die -- except the mind. Once you have attained the state of no-mind then you will simply die. And with your dying, everything will be dissolved -- your body, your mind ... only your awareness will survive because it is a nonlocal phenomenon. That is beyond time and space. Then you become one with existence; then you are no more separate from it. The separation comes from the mind. But there is no way to stop it forcibly -- don't be violent. Move lovingly, with a deep reverence -and it will start happening of its own accord. You just watch. And don't be in a hurry. The modern mind is in much hurry. It wants instant methods for stopping the mind. Hence, drugs have appeal. You can force the mind to stop by using chemicals, drugs, but again you are being violent with the mechanism. It is not good. It is destructive. In this way you are not going to become a master. You may be able to stop the mind through the drugs, but then drugs will become your master -- you are not going to become the master. You have simply changed your bosses, and you have changed for the worse. Now the drugs will hold power over you, they will possess you; without them you will be nowhere. Spiritual Contemplation is not an effort against the mind. It is a way of understanding the mind. It is a very loving way of witnessing the mind -- but, of course, one has to be very patient. This mind that you are carrying in your head has arisen over centuries, millennia. Your small mind carries the whole experience of humanity -- and not only of humanity: of animals, of birds, of plants, of rocks. You have passed through all those experiences. All that has happened up to now has happened in you also. In a very small nutshell, you carry the whole experience of

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existence. That's what your mind is. In fact, to say it is yours is not right: it is collective; it belongs to us all. Modern psychology has been approaching it and they have started feeling something like a collective unconscious. Your mind is not yours -- it belongs to us all. Our bodies are very separate; our minds are not so separate. Our bodies are clear-cut separate; our minds overlap -- and our souls are one. Bodies separate, minds overlapping, and souls are one. I don't have a different soul and you don't have a different soul. At the very center of existence we meet and are one. That's what God is: the meeting-point of all. Between the God and the world (bodies) is mind. Mind is a bridge: a bridge between the body and the God, between the world and God. Don't try to destroy it! Many have tried to destroy it through spirituality. That is a misuse of it. It stops of its own accord -- and then it is beautiful when something happens without any violence it has a beauty of its own, it has a natural growth. You can force a flower and open it by force; you can pull the petals of a bud and open it by force -- but you have destroyed the beauty of the flower. Now it is almost dead. It cannot stand your violence. The petals will be hanging loose, limp, dying. When the bud opens by its own energy, when it opens of its own accord, then those petals are alive. The mind is your flowering -- don't force it in any way. I am against all force and against all violence, and particularly violence that is directed towards your own mind. Just watch -- in deep surrender, love, reverence. And see what happens! Miracles happen of their own accord. There is no need to pull and push. You ask: How to stop thinking? I say: Just watch, be alert. And drop this idea of stopping; otherwise it will stop the natural transformation of the mind. Drop this idea of stopping! Who are you to stop? At the most, enjoy. And nothing is wrong -- even if immoral thoughts, socalled immoral thoughts, pass through your mind, let them pass; nothing is wrong. You remain detached. No harm is being done. It is just fiction; you are seeing an inner movie. Allow it its own way and it will lead you, by and by, to the state of no-mind. Watching ultimately culminates in no-mind. No-mind is not against mind: nomind is beyond mind. No-mind does not come by killing and destroying the mind: no-mind comes when you have understood the

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mind so totally that thinking is no longer needed -- your understanding has replaced it.

18. A tamed mind is like a tamed beast; we have to be vigilant all the time because the beast of mind can easily take us unaware and can turn tables on us any moment we are confident about its submissiveness. Being persistent in ones vow in front of mind is the real strength of a divine seeker.

19. Every day we interact with the world in six ways: through seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, touching and thinking. Actually, we live our life in these six worlds. The first five are physical and the sixth is mental. Something perceived in one of the first five would leave an impact on the sixth. And the sixth can also affect the performance of other five senses in return. The aim of Spiritual Contemplation is to control all these worlds through our will power; to prevent any possible noise and pollution coming through them; to prevent any mental energy leaking through them; to increase mental energy through the positive use of them.

20. Usually we find it difficult to control our mind. It seems as if our mind is like a balloon in the wind - blown here and there by external circumstances. If things go well, our mind is happy, but if they go adverse, it immediately becomes unhappy. For example, if we get what we want, such as a new possession or a new partner, we become excited and cling to them tightly. However, since we cannot have everything we want, and since we will inevitably be separated from the friends and possessions we currently enjoy, this mental stickiness, or attachment, serves only to cause us pain. Such fluctuations of mood arise because we are too closely involved in the

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external situations. We are like a child making a sandcastle who is excited when it is first made, but who becomes upset when it is destroyed by the incoming tide. By training in Spiritual Contemplation, we create an inner space and clarity that enables us to control our mind regardless of the external circumstances. Gradually we develop mental equilibrium, a balanced mind that is happy all the time, rather than an unbalanced mind that oscillates between the extremes of excitement and frustration. If we train in Spiritual Contemplation gradually, eventually we will be able to eradicate from our mind the delusions that are the cause of all our problems and suffering. In this way, we will come to experience a permanent inner peace, known as liberation.

21. World around us is full of paradoxes and conflicts. Mind is not ready to accept the oneness of all creation as indivisible unified truth. This is because mind sees water and fire, light and shade, hard and soft, high and low as opposites that cannot co-exist; one expels other. To accept the paradox as oneness appears impossible to mind. Paradoxes are merely judgments of mind and hence have no independent value. It is mischief of mind that turns unified natural truth into rags of opposites. Mind does so only to find its way along the path of life. Unquestioned acceptance of things as they are can open the possibility of unnamed peace and happiness inside us.

22. Just as the ocean has waves, or the sun has rays, so the mind has its own radiance that is its thoughts and emotions. The ocean has waves, yet they do not particularly disturb the ocean. The waves are the very nature of the ocean. Waves will rise, but where do they go? Back into the ocean. And where do the waves come from? The ocean. In the same manner, thoughts and emotions are the radiance and expression of the very nature of mind. They rise from

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mind, but where do they dissolve? Back into the mind. Whatever rises, do not see it as a particular problem. If you do not impulsively react, if you are only patient, it will once again settle into its essential nature.

23. Emotions set up ripples in our mind. These ripples cause larger ripples and soon a storm is brewing. This storm disturbs mind further and we lose touch with the silence and peace within. Without calming these ripples mind can not reside in its own equanimous state. When mind rests in its own stillness then it can see things clearly as they are.

24. The mind is very suggestive and extremely seductive. It will constantly present juicy goals and one must remain very alert to this and not buy in! This needs to be vigilant moment-to-moment. The thoughts can lose their potency and become impotent. Then they are just flying around but are unable to draw us in. Our prison is unfortunately made of our own thoughts and most of us remain unaware to it.

25. Without your support, all mental constructs can withstand only for a limited amount of time. Withdraw this support and see them collapse in their own weakness. Fire that is lighted up by thoughts can not be appeased by throwing more thoughts into it. What we need at that time is a state of no-mind.

26. Mind itself is not culprit but we take it as culprit on the basis of its criminal acts done against the spiritual life. All codes

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of law respect the law-abiding citizens; similarly a peaceful and submissive mind deserves great respect and honor. Such a mind should not be taken as foe but a friend. Taming of mind is hardest task of all. Mind is happy in its wildness. It does not like to be stilled and disciplined for longer times. It behaves like a wild stallion. It is for this character that mind is considered as an obstruction in the way of spiritual growth. But once the stallion of mind is tamed and you get on its back then sky is the limit.

27. Pure knowledge comes from deep within. It comes in the beginning as ripples then as waves then as tides. Mind just witnesses the thoughts sprouting from the soil of consciousness. They emerge so unnoticed, so rapidly and grow in such a speed that mind finds it hard just to watch and keep pace with them.

28. A tremendous "knowing" comes effortlessly into the mind when it sinks into Spiritual Contemplation, when it gives up trying to understand. When we allow this knowing into our minds, our very lives become as clear and startling as this knowing is.

29. When a river enters into ocean though it is the death of its river-hood but the waters in river start to live as ocean; a higher living. A lion who lived among sheep thought itself a sheep. But one day while drinking water at a pond the lion realized by seeing its reflection into the pond water that he was very different from the fellow sheep, its being-ness as a sheep ended but it was not the death of the lion rather it started to live into its originality.

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30. The problem of shortsightedness arises because a person exists in his mind and mind always divides. This feeling of separation from others makes a person more egoistic and unless he drops his ego, he cannot realize the true dimension of his self. Although the reality of a drop and ocean is water but a drop is a drop and an ocean is an ocean. To become ocean, a drop has to dissolve its identity into ocean. Although the whole tree is hidden inside the seed but a seed must die to give birth to a tree. When a person is born, society starts to condition him according to its way. He is given a name and he starts considering himself as the name. He starts recognizing himself through the eyes of others. This conditioning is so strong that he even wants to understand God according to his own learning from the society. In other words, his search for God is an effort to confirm his own pre-existing concepts about God. This is why, when a philosopher tries on God he always ends up in confusion. Because knowing God is not a process of knowing more and learning more rather it is a process of total submission and attaining a state of no-mind. A person must drop his conditioned mind that considers itself the subject and sees God as an object of study. Unless a person becomes one with God, he will not feel contented instead his life would become miserable. The celebration in his life will be missing, no matter even if he is a King, as he himself keeps on creating hell for him through his egoistic actions.

31. Consciousness provides medium for thoughts; thoughts are like sailing creatures in the calm waters of consciousness. Thoughts come and go. Awareness is the original and primitive state of mind that provides medium for thoughts to emerge, move around and fall back into. Ideas and words are acquisitions but consciousness is the nature of mind.

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32. Untamed mind is the biggest obstacle in the way of self-control. Happiness, character, external success they all begin in the mind. The ego identifies itself with objects, people, and situations. Have you ever seen a child and her newest doll? When you take the toy away from her, she cries and will do anything to get it back. But a few days later when she gets a new toy, she would not care what happens to the old one. What is the difference? Then, the toy was a part of her ego it was hers. When you took the toy away, it was the lessening of the ego that caused the pain, not the loss of the toy itself. And it is the same with us. As we grow older, the toy loses importance. Now its our hot girlfriend, our handsome wife, our house on the beach, our bank account. Other common forms of identification would be social status or reputation. I am not saying that having these is wrong; but just dont become identified with them. The moment you do, you plant the seed of suffering. Nothing is permanent; chances are you will lose it, whatever it is. You know youve begun to identify with something the moment you feel any discomfort, no matter how minor, at the thought of losing it. Once the ego has identified with it, it is as much a part of the ego as our arm is a part of our body. And taking it away from the ego is as painful to the psyche as ripping our arms off. The ego loses a part of itself. This is the reason people kill themselves over lost love they have so completely identified themselves with their lover that losing them left the ego with nothing. This is the reason the beauty industry makes so much money millions of women have identified themselves with their looks, or somehow tie their inherent value with their outer appearance . And worst of all, the ego is never satisfied for long. No matter what your goals are, youll only gain a temporary satisfaction from achieving it then your ego will force you to go out and seek more. Even if you became the best in the world at what you want, your ego wont be satisfied for more than a brief period. This means you will never be at peace you will always be seeking.

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33. Each time we think we put some more dust on the surface of the mirror and then we start complaining that face of the truth is becoming more unclear. Just remove the dust of ideas off the mirror and the Truth will shine forward.

34. The human mind questions, and the human mind answers, and we have created such a great mess of answers and questions, but not a single question has been answered. The questions remain where they were always. If you can see this whole procession of questions and answers, this meaningless, fruitless effort leading nowhere -- if you become aware of this whole nonsense then you can laugh at the absurdity of the human mind. And the moment there is laughter, you transcend the human mind completely. Then there is no question, and then there is no answer. There is no purpose, and there is no cause. Then living itself is enough.

35. For self-realization the mind has to be penetrated and understood. One thing: the mind has no present; it has only past and future. The present is so narrow that the mind cannot catch it. The moment the mind catches it, it has already become the past. The past is vast, the future also is vast; the present is so atomic, so subtle, that by the time you become aware, it is gone. And you are not so aware! A very great intensity of awareness is needed, only then will you be able to see the present. You have to be fully alert; if you are not totally alert, the present cannot be seen. The mind is drunk. It cannot see the present, that which is before you. The mind is filled with dreams, desires and responses. You dont have a presence.

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36. Putting questions and finding answers to satisfy the questions is a vicious game of human mind. Mind plays with ideas as a cat plays with wool-balls. The end result of this game is mental fatigue and frustration. But all this game is not without use and benefit. Our understanding grows this way. Each time an answer enters the mind; mind turns it again into a fresh query and the game of learning goes on.

37. Ironically, one can be intellectually convinced of the illusory nature of the mind, but remain fully identified with thinking. The mind can believe various concepts about its own unreality, but cannot actually experience itself as unreal. One cannot think about reality. Only in the absence of thought the real becomes revealed. Most humans think in circles, ruled by the minds obsessive tendencies. When the mind cannot find something to think about, it will think about anything just to escape boredom. In this vacuum of purposelessness, the mind generates dull and depressing thoughts. The highest endeavor of mind is an enquiry into the dimension of beyond, as it initiates the actualization of its ultimate destiny its own dissolution. The notion that we need to transcend the mind is correct, but this transcendence cannot be actualized until the mind itself has become highly evolved. Until we are ready to surrender it, the mind remains a fundamental component of our identity and our quest. Our goal is not to negate, but to transcend the mind through its seamless integration into the beyond.

38. Basic faculty of awareness is not the property of mind but is the nature of soul. If the awareness was not there from the very beginning then no sense data could be registered to mind. So we

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must not be fearful of progressing into the no-mind state and we must not apprehend that the Spiritual Contemplation will result into any lack of alertness in us. Rather the no-mind state is our true nature; seeker would become more extensively alert and aware of the existence all around as he (the seeker) is coming nearer to the very center of universal consciousness.

39. Brain has dual role to play. It thinks and it thinks about thinking. Brain initiates thinking without any visible effort and then takes notice of its own thinking experience subsequently. We can say that there is (I) real time thinking and (II) observatory thinking. The very act of thinking is organic nature of the brain. The real time thinking flashes in our brain at the speed of light. We can neither stop nor control this part of thinking. The second part of thinking starts when brain starts thinking about the very experience of thinking at any given moment. This is the secondary (post facto) role of our brain. This secondary role supports to evolve a sense of Me (ego) in us. This sense of me falsely assumes that the whole thinking process is being controlled by it and is serving to it. In fact this sense of me is utterly shallow and has no real existence. This sense of ego is like center of the tornado. It is a vacuum being maintained and moved by the outside forces. It is eye of the cyclone; a relatively calm centre of the intense thoughts playing all around. In spiritual context, when we talk about the no-mind state, it is not meant that we are going to get rid of thinking faculty of the brain. We can not do this. We can not separate things from their inherent nature. Rather this no mind state is attained when ego awakens to its latent reality. Ego realizes that it is not the center of the phenomena but is only a tool in the hands of Reality. The whole existence is manifestation of the Supreme Oneness. Ego stops thinking itself as master and realizes its subjugation to the Real. Ego becomes nonbeing through total submission. It stops splitting and veiling the integrity of Truth. It becomes a friend and facilitator rather than a resistance to spiritual growth.

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40. The discipline of dispassion is a part of the training of mind, through this education it can be purified and capacitated to go into beyond. The spirit of renunciation is a very subtle attitude of consciousness and is not merely any kind of outward conduct or behavior. It is not an abandonment of things in the pure physical sense, though a safe distance from attractive physical objects may be conducive to discipline of dispassion. But mere physical distance from objects of sense is not what is required here, because the desire of the mind can connect itself with its objects even under conditions in which they are physically very remote and out of reach. Physical distance does not prevent mind from desiring and, therefore, physical isolation alone is not what the true renunciation requires. It is an inner transformation that has to take place, by which mind does not relates itself to the objects of thought. The objects of attachment can be physical as well as conceptual, and one can be attached to a conceptual object even though there might not be any physical object. As far as attachment is concerned, it makes not much difference whether its object is physical or purely psychological, because inward reveries of mind are as dangerous as outward possessive attitudes. But most seekers do not go deep into this peculiar feature of dispassion; they go by a traditional attitude of renunciation by which they simply mean a monastic life etc. That is not what is ultimately required of us. It is a mental potentiality, a predisposition of the mind towards something that causes bondage or liberation. The mind can inwardly harbor an abundance of pleasurable feelings, and feel happy. We can be inwardly happy by enjoying a psychological object. There is no need for a physical object always. The senses can get excited by even a thought of a sense-object; and it is this excitement that causes pleasure, and not the object itself. So, whenever the nerves or the senses are stimulated, there is a sensation of pleasure. The pleasure is not caused by the object; it is the stirring of the feelings, the sensations and the nerves that are the source of

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pleasure. This is very important to remember. We are happy because of a stimulation of the bodily organism, not because of the presence or the absence of the object. It is the mind that creates an atmosphere of satisfaction and joy by a rearrangement of its own constituents, and merely because an external circumstance helps in the arrangement of its psychological constitution it does not mean that the joy comes from the object alone. Mostly, our renunciation is compelled it is forced upon us by outward conditions and this is a dangerous type of life that one can live, at least from the psychic health perspective. We dislike a work when it is forced upon us by our boss. We can walk ten miles if it is our wish to go as a sort of diversion or a play, but we will not walk even one furlong if we are sent on a duty. We will say we cannot walk so much, and go by car or scooter; but we can walk ten miles if it is our wish. Therefore, voluntary and spontaneous aspiration is called for in Spiritual Contemplation. There is an infinite shortcoming in the mind and, therefore, finite objects cannot bring it satisfaction. When there is an awakening into this fact, it tries to discover the causes of its failure and tries to take right methods, by which it can gain what it has lost. But the mind is wedded to the senses. It always plays second fiddle to the tune of the senses, and so, even in its investigations into the causes of its failure, it takes the advice of the senses only because it has no other ministers except the senses. And so, in a life of renunciation, in a life of monastic discipline etc., what the mind is trying to do is to act independently for its own self and discover the remedies for its sorrows. But in the act of this discovery of the causes of its sorrow, it takes once again the aid of the senses and, therefore, again it becomes a failure. The senses begin to tell it once again the very same thing that they conveyed to it earlier and we once again begin to interpret the causes of our suffering in this world in terms of the objects of the world; and there is a possibility, then, of our entering into a muddle, which is the state of mental confusion.

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41. God owns equally the good and the bad; the beauty and the ugliness and He sees no difference in them. It is our mind that labels the states, situations and objects as good and bad; beautiful and ugly.

42. Strangely, the strongest divine pull on the heart of man comes into its play when man is lost in denial state. And I believe strongly that there is an intimate relation and kinship between being an atheist and being a God seeker. It appears to me that both lead to the same direction. The only difference is that the spirituality travels only one step more than atheism towards the goal of God-realization. An atheist looses all the possibility to become divine when the goal is only one step away. To find God, one must become firstly the God-less. End of God is end of the psyche and end of the psyche is end of the world. And strangely when the world is dead then suddenly we find us in the lap of God. Yes! The Truth is like that. When we comprehend God in its true sense then the psyche stops, the world stops, the knowing itself stops and then there survive no deeds and no doer, everything stops in the sublimation of God. And then suddenly we feel that we have never been away from God. And it is impossible to be without God. Even each molecule in the body of a so called declared atheist is constantly worshipping God.

43. We want to be free of mind but irony is that we want to attain this through mental processes. We are not ready to break our mental image about our presence here. We can not be free of mind by using the mind as a tool of freedom. In fact it is not possible to be free of mind through any mental effort. Instead mind drops

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automatically when the time of it comes. It drops like the petals of a flower when the time of fruit is ripened on a tree.

44. A thought comes to our mind and then another replaces it. It is a very fast process and we are usually not aware of it. When we develop a strong concentration, we become more conscious of the thoughts and their coming and going. The mind gradually entertains fewer thoughts per minute. Under these conditions we become aware that there is an interval between one thought and the other. It may be just a second or a split second of quietude. There are no thoughts, there is Silence, but it is also fullness. At this moment we just exist. We are in pure awareness. We are in our original mode.

45. Mind, world and God all are components of a unified Truth. Mind is mirror, world is reflection and God is being reflected. Mind never falls, the world never falls and God never falls. It is just for teaching convenience that we say that world falls or mind falls in Spiritual Contemplation.

46. Our thought is just impotent spectator of the play of life. Life is being run by instinctive reflections programmed into our genes. Our thoughts are not part of the sea but they are the vapor in the air, though they rise from the ocean but they are no more part of the ocean. So we can get rid of our suffering through distancing our selves from our thoughts this distance will not stop our life; it will continue performing in full by instinctive responses always present in us. Discordant thoughts are wastage of time and energy; we do not need them at all. They cause suffering in us. They blind us, they cripple us. Without thoughts we can feel free, happy and blissful. We are God at center but thoughts have made us a monkey.

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47. Mind is transitory condition of nature. We can train and improve it, so that it may become appropriate to our spiritual needs. Our agony is within and our peace is within. It is up to us that whom we attend. To whom we attend that we become. Our body is simply an automaton that obeys the consciousness which we experience.

48. Though life and nature as a whole are mysterious but act of fertilization, diversity and aesthetic sense in nature, sleep, death, self-awareness, multiplicity (multiple roles) of mind and passion of love are the most wondrous of them. We have no proper words to explain them fully and befittingly. Scientists, Preachers, Philosophers and psychiatrists use them only in their on peculiar context and considerations. We can not define and confine their scope in any single discourse, article, workshop or book. These are such fence posts on the borders of the finite which are also exposed to the realm of the divine.

49. Do not chase mind with mind. You can not kill mind with mind. Natural faculties of thinking are always required to exist for a healthy balanced life. When spiritual teachers ask to drop the mind then what they really mean is not to use your mind to understand the nature of God. Because understanding God is not the capacity of mind.

50. A mental man has faith in mind; always has questions and he loves to find their answers. When questions have met their

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answers then mind transforms those answers into new questions and the quest for new answers stays continued. But a God seeker is not a mental man. He has no questions and he does not indulge in finding their answers. Instead he has faith in God. And it makes a lot of difference in life that whether you have faith in mind or you have faith in God. A mental man is like a stagnant pond of water. Water in it goes nowhere. And ultimately gets infected. To flow back to God you need no knowing, no ideas about the Real because the ideas and concepts about the Real are not real in them. A hungry man can not be satisfied by the ideas and images of the bread. He needs real bread. Same way our inner urge for God can not be made satisfied by lifeless ideas, images and perceptions. To meet the Real what is needed is T ilt in you. Once the Tilt is formed then your flowing back to God will just start spontaneously as the water on the peaks of mountains flows back to ocean along the tilt of landscape naturally.

51. Ideas are like empty boxes at center they have no substance. Or they are like bubbles empty on inside. But some scientific minds will think that boxes and bubbles are not empty rather they are holding a space. Ok! But to what I am indicating is that actually what they are holding was already there and will remain there even when the box or bubble will be no more. Boxes and bubbles are just temporary formations. They hold nothing their own. They are just filled by a borrowed space. They are just the mental measurements of the infinity.

52. Experience of total truth is like living in a wild jungle; in which there are beasts, insects, severe whether conditions, flowers, brooks, birds and fruits. If we would have full and continuous exposure to it then we can not sustain in its wildness. To live and enjoy the jungle life properly we need a hut in the jungle. This hut

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protects us and gives comfort to us when we are in need of it. Hut gives us opportunity to fall back and get prepared to encounter the jungle again. Here God is jungle and mind is our hut. We enjoy God and when we feel the need of recess we come back to the hut of mind. There is nothing bad with mind. Befriend it, respect it and take guidance from it when it is needed. After all we are not the same as God. We are tied with a physical body; we have to make our way in the world; for this God has bestowed upon us the facility of mind. It is up to us that we use it for our betterment or for our destruction. Mind can not be used in all situations. When we go back to our source the divinity we have to leave the mind behind. We do not need the company of mind while we are in the company of our Lord. But it is always available to serve us when we come back to it.

53. When mind is fully purified, it becomes capable to act as no-mind. In no-mind state mind exists but it behaves as it has disappeared. Thus it provides us an opportunity to taste the bliss of infinitude.

54. Minds functionality is so complex and mysterious that it remains elusive in its depths. To work around and for the convenience of having a notion about mind, we can categorize it in three compartments. These three compartments work in collaboration with each other, working harmony between these parts is of utmost importance for the mental health. These three compartments of mind are (i) Lower Mind (ii) Higher Mind (iii) Subtle mind. The lower mind revolves around living. It is animal part of the mind. It promotes and protects our vital interests in the world to survive as animal. Life of lower mind is life of lower nature. Next is the higher mind. Higher mind revolves around reasoning and probing. Probing adds kn owledge to animal life. Still there is third dimension of mind that is Subtle Mind. Subtle mind

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takes interest in discovering and going back to the first cause. Subtle mind has an instinctive urge to reach to God as a young bird by its very nature, has an inner urge to fly in the open skies. Lower mind is vital in its powers while higher mind gives light for living and the subtle mind holds the purpose of living and adds meanings to life. Subtle mind gives wings to our bio-machine (body) for flying into the unknown. Life without awakening is a life without wings.

55. We think that happiness is a mental state. So any claim of happiness in no-mind state is paradoxical. This misconception stems from the notion that no-mind state is equal to the absence of mind. In fact no-mind state is not the absence of mind. How can anyone annihilate mind with mind. This simply is not possible. In spiritual education, term of no-mind is used in a peculiar context, in no-mind state mind is present but it is not present as a hindra nce or anti -flow. Mind is present but not as an outsider but as a player and participant. So in this context we can say that no-mind state does not equal to the absence of mind but it is even deeper involvement of mind. In no mind state mind becomes intensely alert and aware. Mind gets so involved in the moment of Now that it behaves like its own disappearance. In no-mind state mind becomes capable to experience the ecstatic states. We can see this phenomenon in the culmination moments of a sexual act. When mind is so much influenced by the orgasmic rapture that it becomes unaware of its own very presence. What prevails there is only the happiness and intensity of experience. If this is the state in physical action then you can imagine the intensity of spiritual rapture. The spiritual entry of the soul back into God will surely be manifolded intense in its magnitude. How can mind stay aside in uttermost spiritual experience. Mind is not such a fool that would let go these moments of divine rapture unengaged. No-mind state is a total immersion of mind into the object of its own focus.

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56. A failed mind is a mad dog ready to attack even his own master. Let the mind wriggle in its rage and stay calm in your Spiritual Contemplation. When your mind fails and your ego is hurt do not take it as the failure of your self. You are not your mind or ego. You are in the witnessing. Live in your witnessing and observe the play of your mind or ego without any subjugation to it. Always stay aloof and unpolluted. At core you are - unbound (free of any bondage) transcendence that is afloat in its own magnificence.

57. Mind is like mirror. If you put it before milk it will reflect milk and if you put it before urine it will reflect urine. If you put it before light it will reflect light and if you put it before darkness it will become part of that darkness. If we would focus on God mind will feel and reflect God and if we would focus on world then world will take possession of mind. What you think that you become. Your thought process, therefore, is the point where changes need to happen. It is your thought process that affects how you express yourself and who you become. To use a gardening analogy, thoughts are seeds in the garden of our personal psyche. Given the right conditions, in a garden, the earth will grow anything - nourishing food or poison. Much the same as the earth grows what is sowed, so our psyche would grow the thoughts and gives them nutrients and sustenance. Our thoughts shape our lives in a very subtle way.

58. If you think that you can liberate yourself from the clutches of mind by practicing ceremonial spiritual practices then you are mistaken. Liberation would come only after you recognize your own real nature that is transcendence and oneness. Once you know yourself, nothing in the world will ever disrupt you again.

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The mind has millions of ways of manifesting itself in the thinking process. Behind all these myriad thoughts there is the seed-thought which is the mother of all thoughts. This is the I-thought which emerges from the One God. Everyone, be he a theist or an atheist, says 'I' and believes that he himself exists. Eventually everyone can realize the Truth (God) by tracing back to the very root of his Ithought.

59. Drop your worries and have no fear that your control over your life is going to fall off as you already have no control over it. You are just in an illusion of having control over your life. Let your darkness (forgetfulness) fall off and then you would see the sun of God. Then your suffering will end and doors of true understanding will open upon you. Why you not realize that once you were in the womb of your mother where you were being fed through umbilical cord and then your mind was not earning for you. Every thing in this world is floating in the divine womb and there is an invisible umbilical cord connecting everything to the one divine source. Have faith in it, your life may not become comfortable but certainly there would be no suffering in it.

60. Thoughts create clouds around you -- they are subtle clouds. A mist is created by them, and the clarity is lost. When thoughts disappear, when there are no more clouds around you, when you are in your simple being-ness, clarity happens. Then you can see far away; then you can see to the very end of existence; then your gaze becomes penetrating -- to the very core of being.

61. Think about God with such intensity that your thinking would become petrified (stunned) in your feelings about

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God. Now your God-thinking would cease to be a thought and for the first time in your life you would see that thing is there and thinking is gone. As when river falls back into ocean then river is not annihilated but river is there and river is gone. From now onward thinking will stay not as an act of mind but as an act of God. You would discover that thinking was never being done by the mind. Mind was just identifying itself with thought. Mind was claiming such a thing which was never initiated by it. Make your Godthinking so dense in space and so frequent in time that gravity and force of thought will cause the mind to collapse as a container of thought. The outer line of thinking will burst apart and vanish because of its own internal pressure. Thought will hover but mind would not be available. Now you will be a free man with free thought. This is the liberation, this is the nirvana and this is the nomind.

62. Thoughts are natural phenomenon. Each thought is independent of the next thought. A thought comes and on arrival of next thought the first one has to leave out. Thoughts have no connection among them; it is the logical part of our brain that builds a story out of these fragmented thoughts. Then our ego adopts this story and our attachment to our thoughts starts. Ego adds further colors, prints and tastes of its like to this story. Our suffering and illusion starts when we weave a story or an idea out of these individual thoughts. Let the thoughts rise and fall as ripples rise and fall back into an ocean. Do not weave story and ideas out of them; do not adopt them as your work. Do not get attached to them. Just watch them arising and falling back. Let them not to shake your peace and equilibrium.

63. It is the Is-ness of God that is holding all things within. I-ness in us has no reality it is just a dream of our drunken

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neurons. Input data is collected by our five senses and is transported to brain as trains of stimulation, where brain dynamics and neural subsystems process this data through different electrochemical actions and this data is then transformed into ideas, impressions, perceptions, opinions and moods. As time goes on, we become more and more attached to our ideas and try to protect them, leading to all sorts of problems. Thoughts rise and fall back into mind as a natural phenomenon but our I-ness wants to retain them. Ego tries hard to engage the consciousness in its own game. If consciousness remains disengaged then ego has no power to sustain the desires beyond a certain limit of time. Thoughts are just waves of energy bursts that rise and fall back into brain as the oceanic ripples rise and fall back into ocean.

64. Mind is always the home of bondage and suffering, there should be something in you bigger than mind and reasoning: that is Ishq (intense divine love). It would give you a sense of freedom and infinity. In the beginning it may appear to you as you are living with a lie or fallacy but if you would stick to it with undismayed resolve then you would feel that this odd thing is providing you a truthful footing to live in the phantom of creation. To face the agonies of mind there must be in you something anti mind, something bigger than mind. Without this life is unbearable misery and perpetual torture. The concept of God has always been a juiceless grass for mind and intellect but it is the life-saving panacea for those whose hearts beat in search of Truth.

65. It is the biggest irony of mans life that he takes mind as his master organ; in fact mind is an agent of environment. Mind is common child of brain and environment. Mind is a product of environmental subjugation. Mind is not mans true self. Mind obscures mans self right from the days of pregnancy to the time

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when breath ceases in the nostril. Mind is a friend and mind is a foe, it may assume various forms. An undisciplined mind always conspires to enslave its master (self) and wastes away the precious life energy. A subdued and quieted mind is your lost paradise.

66. Philosophers have been trying to answer the mind with mind, to silence the mind with mind, to satisfy the thought with thought, to expel the darkness with more darkness and to quieten the noise with even more noise. To silence the mind, to satisfy it what we need is the withdrawal of mind from periphery to the center. Peace can be attained through inner process and following the urge for God.

67. Man not only thinks but he also thinks about his thoughts and organizes them into ideas, thus man becomes his own tormentor, the creator of his own suffering. We suffer only those pains which we create for ourselves. God has not created misery; our minds create it for us. Nature is producing cotton only, it is our minds (intelligence or intellect) that spin, weave, dye, cut and sew it in different fashions. Nature has gifted us with cognition and we use it to develop stories in the head. It is the stories in the head that put us in suffering. Pain is natural, it is destiny of all living things but pain of the pain is a story in the head, a suffering created and sustained by mind.

68. When the Breath wanders, the mind is unsteady and when mind is unsteady breath wanders. To regulate your breath with focus of mind and to controlling the mind with focused breathing is great spiritual practice.

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69. You can be a theist, you can be an atheist, that does not matter; both are intellectual standpoints. You have to drop them both and you have to see without any prejudice, without any hypothesis, without any belief system. Only then you would be able to see the truth in its nakedness and purity, you would become it. And unless you become it you are not enlightened.

70. Imagination can move beyond facts, this is the beauty of imagination. Imagination can never be confined to the facts, if facts controlled the imagination then imagination would have died out of oxygen and would have lost all its power to fly, it would have become castrated.

71. To go beyond mind there must be a mind because if there is no mind then how can you go beyond it. Suppose I draw a red line on the ground and ask you to go beyond the red line then what would you do. Certainly I am not asking you to wipe out the red line but instead I am asking you to go beyond it. No-mind state is not killing the mind out of you but it is meant for going beyond mind. Let the mind wallow in its mud; let it be engaged in its pursuits. You can surpass it; you can go beyond it. Just do it and you will be liberated. You are not in your mind but mind is in you. You are pure awareness that is providing space to all understanding and mind processes. In your nature you are no-mind; a pure and deep silence. Life and world around you have filled you with noise, through spiritual practice you have to regain your lost Silence.

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72. The state of no-mind is the state of the divine. God is not a thought but the experience of thoughtlessness. It is not content in the mind; it is the explosion when the mind is content-less. It is not an object that you can see; it is the very capacity to see. It is not the seen but the seer. It is not like the clouds that gather in the sky, but the sky when there are no clouds. It is that empty sky.

73. All that is structured, definable, knowable and graspable is part of mind and all that is part of mind is part of suffering.

74. No-mind is a mind-state. When all desires and expectations are withdrawn, when the flame of ego itself is blown off, when acceptance and rejection both are gone away, mind becomes silent and suddenly you have a strong feeling of being in the no-mind state. To him who is not involved in God-seeking, these thoughts will appear as craziness and drumming up for an impossibility but he who is in the game, sooner or later, realizes it directly that it is majesty of God that when He comes the mind has to disappear. How can the infinite (God) come to you if the finite (Mind) has not yet departed?

75. When we talk about the attainment of no-mind state it is not an outer achievement of mind, rather it is minds exposure to the core-mind or base-mind or God-mind. It is an implosion of mind towards the point of its genesis. In mind state mind is focused on

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objects whereas in no-mind state mind experiences the source of its creation. When it happens ordinary mind disappears before Godmind as the power of our eyes to see disappears when we try to see the sun directly with naked eyes. The eyes are still there but sight stands bedazzled and suspended due to the intensity of sunlight. Yes! No-mind is the result when we see the un-seeable and we think the unthinkable. No-mind is bedazzlement of ordinary mind before the sun of God. It is collapse of the limitedness of our organs before the infinite divine force. Power of conception is miracle of God within us. God uses our thought capacity as medium for His manifestation upon us. Blessed is the man whose thought has been illuminated by divine light and he has been chosen by God for His manifestation. Thought when illuminated by the divine light becomes so bedazzled that it gives impression of its disappearance. This apparent disappearance of thought before divine light is called a no-mind state.

76. The mind of an adult is full of tendencies that will affect how data is received. In much the same way that one person may appreciate a soprano hitting the high notes and another will cover his ears in distress, the same input may be happily received or seemingly blocked out. Imagine a sandy beach fairly flat and the tide is going out, leaving swathes of wet sand. The water comes in at more or less the same angle with each wave and as the water flows past small rocks and pebbles, it furrows out channels in the sand that correspond to the position of the rocks. Similarly the incoming data stream is modified by obstructions and inclinations in the mind. In another illustration, incoming data follows or bounces off the habits of mind like the ricochet path of a ping pong ball in a pinball machine. This whole process is ongoing and continues unabated until you suddenly or gradually become aware of the game you are involved in. That awareness permits you make a decision to turn off

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your mindless participation in the game or perhaps to try another one. Someone who is unaware that he is playing a game, or more often being played by a game, can be pushed, poked or pulled into nonauthentic moves without noticing what is happening. A person who is carried along on habitual trains of thought and programmed reactions, reinforced by various rewards, is not likely to be aware of the inner workings of his mind. That person is like a marionette whose strings are being pulled from multiple directions constantly. The marionette is dancing to a tune being played by innumerable past conditioning events. Sometimes the marionette may glimpse what is happening and alter the score somewhat but usually it is carried along by the cacophony of conflicting accumulations of old patterning.

77. A prisoner, who is seeing the world through a one inch pipe hole that is fixed in the wall of his prison cell, though sees the real world but it is the belittled version of the world. The world that the prisoner is seeing is only the pipe version of the world. Likewise the God that mind sees through the pipe of ego or I-ness is the ego-version of God. Though it is real but still it is the ego-version of God. To see the God in His totality is not the capacity of mind because the only tool available to mind to judge and understand the things is I-ness. Mind is unable to see the thing that is undifferentiated and uncontained. This is why it is said that mind (logical) can not realize God. But God can only be experienced in a state of Trans that though originates from mind but yet is capable to take off the gravitational pull of mind.

78. The more the mind is stuffed with dead knowledge, the more dull and stupid you become. Knowledge makes people stupid; it dulls their sensitivity. It stuffs them, it becomes a weight on

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them, it strengthens their ego but it does not give light and it does not show them the way. It is not possible.

79. It is as though you have an eye that sees all forms but does not see itself. This is how your mind is. Its light penetrates everywhere and engulfs everything. So why does it not know itself?

80. What you think or what you are caused to think becomes your assumption. Your assumptions become foundation of your emotions and your emotions become driving force of your actions. In turn your actions become your destiny. So, to change your destiny you have to change your thoughts.

81. In a large ocean, in cold countries, the upper part of the ocean becomes solid. It becomes ice. The bottom is liquid and the upper part is solid. And, the solid suddenly does not emerge at one particular spot. There is a gradual solidification of the water becoming thicker and thicker, as it goes up, until it becomes very thick and hard on the top; and when you go down it becomes thinner and thinner, until it becomes very thin like water. Now, how do you reach this ice with the water underneath? What is the connection between the two? What is the connection between ice on the top and the water underneath? Is there a connection, or no connection? There is no "connection," actually; it is one thing only, appearing as two things. Water and ice is one thing only; they are not two things. Liquefied body is mind - that is all - to give you a brief answer. When body liquefies, it becomes mind; when the mind solidifies, it becomes body.

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CHAPTER - 4

Light of Wisdom

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1. Your habits are your masters. A seeker of God ought not to be indulged in any kind of addictions; this will save your energies and will help you focusing on your practice. God alone should become the master of your being.

2. Academic knowledge of truth and Chattering about it in the company of friends gets us nowhere. Without walking on the path we cannot experience the satisfaction of reaching the destination. Many people deceive themselves and also the others by talking a lot of jargon and heaps of words on spirituality. What librates a man is not a ton of words but a bit of action and persistence: Some times when one appears to speak so vehemently upon a subject or boasts about extra achievements, in fact he tries to mask that black spot in his personality that could reveal the bad face of his failures. To achieve some thing and to get anywhere, first of all we must be honest to our own selves. It is well said that an ounce of practice is better than a ton of theory. So Now is the right time to take first step on the path.

3. Wisdom is discernment not only in thought but also in action. Merely recognizing good from bad does not make a man wise. Rather, he is a greater fool who identifies good from bad but takes no steps to attain the good and avoid the bad things. Conviction in truth and persistence in action are pre-requisites for spiritual liberation.

4. It is said; when the student is ready the master appears. In truth there is no student or master, there is only one awareness and its just playing off itself. It asks the questions t hrough one body and gives the answer through another, or it asks and answers in the same body its all one so there is no difference whos answering and whos questioning.

5. Words strung together in compilations, serve only to protect and hide knowledge, as husk and chaff hide the grain; let the wise look for the grain and cast away the chaff of words when that grain of truth has been found.

6. Live neither in the present, nor the future, but in the Eternal, just being there is enough. Nothing that is embodied, nothing that is conscious of separation, nothing that is out of the Eternal, can aid you.

7. To realize the impermanence of sense objects is the foundation of wisdom; not only the physical things but psychological conditions of mind too are subject of transience. So we must not disturb our composure and tranquility for the material losses or gains and conditions of emotional turmoil. Be calm and stayed in your seeking of God. Never look aside. Never look for excuses, go straight and lay down every thing that you cherish in the feet of your Lord.

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8. Experience life in all possible ways -- good-bad, bitter-sweet, dark-light, summer-winter. Experience all the dualities. Don't be afraid of experience, because the more experience you have, the more mature you become.

9. For a greater purpose one has to bear all unwanted things in life. No one ever had total control over life. Have you ever been bitten by a wasp or mosquito? Has it ever happened to you that a fly fell in your cup of milk? If so then what was your reaction? Did you abandon to go to open spaces because some wasp once bit you? Did you decide not going to bed because some mosquito once bit you in the sleep? Did you decide to discard taking milk because some fly once fell in your milk? Certainly you did not do all these things. You are still going on the road, sleeping in your bed and eating your food. Because you have a greater purpose, you love to live your life, which cannot be abandoned because of a wasp or mosquito or fly. We have to tolerate all minor and major emotional upsets because there is a greater reason to continue living. Without patience and tolerance social life is impossible and spiritual growth too is unattainable in the absence of the virtues of patience and tolerance.

10. Logic leads to absurdity (to feel that all things are disconnected and have no ultimate value). But at the same time, this sense of absurdity holds the potential to guide our consciousness towards higher dimensions of life. Through encountering the absurdity with patience and resolve, we can find our way across this darkness. Spiritual action starts by staying calm in the face of absurdity. Staying calm in the face of absurdity means letting it play through you without any resistance on your part. Feeling absurd is

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like sitting in an incineration chamber that can burn away the shackles of mind and illusions of duality out of our psychic structures and prepares us for our journey back to God. We go into absurd feelings as human but we may come out of it as sublime. Being patient and persistent in the face of feelings of absurdity is the greatest worship ever performed by any God seeker. When you feel absurd you are lucky, you have been chosen by God. Let the absurdity engulf you through and through, you would come out of it as a winner.

11. There is a depth in the human nature, which is beyond the reach of mind and reason; and the empirical processes of knowing are inadequate for the purpose on hand. Man cannot know himself by the endowments of reason, intellect, understanding, or even all the psychological operations put together. The potentiality of the human being is deeper than the psychological operations of the human being. That means, in our daily life we are not drawing from the deeper potentialities of ourselves. We are floating on our own surface, ignoring, neglecting, and being unconscious of our own basic rooted-ness in something of which our phenomenal instruments of knowledge have no awareness. Thus, while a perception or sensory contact with things, in collaboration with the mind, the intellect and the reason cannot give us right knowledge, there seems to be some other way of knowing things as they are - some other means altogether different from the reason, the intellect or the mind. Though we operate in our daily life only through the intellect and the reason, it is obvious that we have something in us which is deeper than, profounder than, and superior to the intellect and the reason. We have lost ourselves in forgetting ourselves; and in losing ourselves, we have lost the world also, because in the ignorance of our essential nature we have, also, the ignorance of the true nature of anything else in the world. We do not know ourselves and, therefore, we do not know the world - and vice versa.

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We are caught up in entanglement, involvement and unnecessary botheration. We have been involved and entangled in bondage, because of the fact that we cannot get out of this cycle of the rotation of the wheel. There is God in man, deeper than the reason and the intellect and the psychological functions. The mind, which thinks, the ego that arrogates, the intellect that understands or the reason that argues, is not sufficient. What can they argue? What can the mind think, except that which is already involved in the limitations of time and space? The process of Spiritual Contemplation is the process of diving deep into one's own self, which is a simultaneous diving into the depths of anything else in the world. There is a parallel movement of consciousness in this delving deep into the waters of the cosmos. The subject that is the human individual is co-extensive with the object that is the universe; therefore, the depth of one thing is, also, the depth of another thing. To know oneself is to know the world, and to know the world is to know oneself. So, the great dictum "Know thyself" does not mean to know oneself as a person. To know oneself as one really is, is to know anything in the world as it really is. Godknowledge is world-knowledge, and world-knowledge is, also, Godknowledge. This is the great standpoint of meditation in its psychology, in its philosophy, and in its course of action. The world is not before us, outside us, confronting us. It is a large body, of which we are a part. This is the reason why we are entangled in it in such a way that we cannot understand the way of involvement, the way in which we know things. The difficulty in understanding our relationship with things, as I have pointed out just now, arises because of our intriguing relationship with the world, which is not a relationship in the logical sense of the term. We are part and parcel of this body called the cosmos. That is the reason why we are, on the one hand, incapable of wresting ourselves from it and, on the other hand, unable to know anything about it.

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12. Either we seek God fully, or we do not seek Him at all. There is no halfway. This is an important aspect of our spiritual effort which we have to bear in mind. Most of us would like to have a small percentage of God in our lives, because 100% of God is possibly not something that the mind can accommodate in it. But God will not allow Himself to be partitioned in that way. He would withdraw Himself completely if we try to belittle Him or try to take advantage of His grace upon us by exploiting it for baser motives, the fulfillment of which mind is subtly seeking sometimes at the expense of God and at other times by utilizing God as an instrument for that purpose. This is a very serious aspect which a seeker has to look upon. It is difficult for the mind to accept the greatness of God because it has its own yardstick of measuring greatness; and its measuring rod is of this world. It belongs to this world, so everything has to be measured with the values that are associated with the things of the world even God makes no difference to us. What will it bring to us? This is the question, which is a commercial attitude. We are all business people everyone in the world in the sense that we expect something. What will it bring to me? What is the profit that I would gain by going to God, meditating on God, or even accepting that He exists? What do I gain by saying that God exists? Let Him exist or not exist why does it matter to me? It matters to me because it may bring some advantage to me, so it is better to say that He exists. Someone said, If God does not exist, we have to create one for our purposes, because without the existence of such a being, some of the difficulties of our lives do not seem to be solved. So like an x in an equation, we create a God a non-entity for the time being which will be helpful to us in our earthly joys, which we seek much more than God Himself. This is not merely a joke or a humor; this is a matter-of-fact experience which we have to concede if we are dispassionate in our own self-analysis. We are not so much lovers of God as we appear to be on the surface, because to love God wholly is to die, almost, to the life of the world; and nothing can be more

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fearful than death. While we are not speaking of physical death here, it is something worse than that. Even physical death will not be so horrible as the death that we are expected to pass through for the sake of God. There are more painful forms of death than physical death that is, the death of our ego and personality as a whole, which is more terrifying than even the annihilation of the body. Now, all these are the repelling aspects of Spirituality which will turn us away from it when the whole truth about it is presented before us. Good bye! would be our final word to this wholesome advice which will be so bitter, unpalatable, repelling, and most unwelcome. Even God can be an enemy of man. The God can be our enemy. This is most surprising, indeed. How can it be? But that can be. The God, can be our enemy in the sense that the demands of the higher degree of reality are unpalatable to the lower levels in which we are living. Our immediate needs look sweeter than the requisitions of a wider realm of truth. To practice Spirituality is like embracing the fire, who would embrace fire? But that is what it is. It is not drinking milk or bathing oneself in the sunshine. It is the most arduous of conceivable endeavors on the part of the human being. It is because we are not prepared for this ordeal. The whole point is that we are not prepared; how can it be practicable? The practice comes afterwards, the preparation comes first. The strength of the foundation is not in any way less important than the beauty of the edifice that is raised upon it; but we are always apt to forget that a foundation is necessary. We are always likely to keep an eye on the grandeur of the building on the top, the beauty thereof, and the comforts we can get out of it by living in it, rather than paying due attention to the technicalities involved in laying the foundation. What is the use of digging? Our idea is to raise the walls high, but what we do is go down by digging. Why do we go down when our idea is to go up? Sometimes, it looks that our aims are not going to be fulfilled by the practices that are enjoined upon us in the name of spirituality. The mankind of today is, truly speaking, unfit for a spiritual life. It is of no use merely camouflaging or advertising; all this humdrum of talk in the name of God would finally end up in dirt and dust. One has to be very, very cautious and unselfish in such matters because we are

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playing with God. Even playing with a snake is not as dangerous. This is something unbecoming on our part. Either we should honestly say that it is not for us, or we should take to it wholeheartedly. Why play a joke with God, show our teeth before Him, and mock at Him? This is not a proper attitude on the part of anyone who is genuinely honest; but this is precisely our problem. The difficulty, then, is in incapacity to understand and appreciate ones own inner motives, and often there is an element of hypocrisy in every person. This cannot be avoided because hypocrisy rules the world; otherwise, the world would go to the dogs. If truth triumphs, there would be no world afterwards. That the world continues shows that truth is not triumphing, because the world is made up of hypocritical nets which are the names that we give to artificial makeshifts of relation which we project forth in the external world in our daily routines, in our smiles, and in our roundtable conferences. All this will not work with God, though it may work with man because we can deceive man by various artifices; but no artifice will work with God. Nobody can deceive Him. He is the only Person who cannot be deceived, and everyone else can be deceived. But we are trying to deceive Him only! This is very strange and, therefore, the boomerang comes upon us like a bolt from the blue; and here we are what we are. But it is never too late to mend, as the proverb goes. Even now it is not bad enough. Things are quite all right. We can set things right even now. While nobody can be as fierce as God, nobody can be as kind as God. While the blow He gives can simply smash us to smithereens, the blessings He can pour upon us can make us an emperor of emperors at the same time. Sometimes devotees call Him both father and mother, law and love combined. He is both law and love the strictness of law, and the lenience of love both are present in God. Spiritual Contemplation is the supreme effort that one is called upon to put forth not as a so-called religious attitude of a monastic order, or a much-misunderstood and abused spiritual sense connected with an other-worldly experience of a paradise, but an indispensable scientific and logical attitude called upon every person on account of the very law of ones own being, which no one can violate. The

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practice of Spirituality is the fulfillment of the law of our own being. How can we escape it? No one can. We have only to say that we need a re-education altogether, right from the beginning. The life spiritual is not the prerogative of any religious mendicant. It is not a prescription of any kind of ism, for the matter of that. It is the science of life, and anyone who is alive has to be awake to this spiritual need. First of all, it is necessary to make a distinction between what is necessary and what is unnecessary. Often, even unnecessary things look necessary. So, this is the time for us to exercise our power of discrimination. Is everything necessary that we call necessary, ordinarily speaking? We want four coats and five wrist-watches, ten cell phones, and a huge bungalow with ten stories, and millions of dollars in the bank. Can we call all these the necessities of life? One who has these will say they are necessities, but this is a bungled way of thinking because we cannot call these necessities. A necessity is that without which we cannot exist; and if we can exist appreciably without the so called comforts, with that one we have to be content. Contentment is a great virtue of a God-seeker. We have to be content and satisfied with whatever comes without too much of exertion though a little of exertion, of course, is unavoidable. The exertion should not outweigh the benefit that accrues out of it, because our exertion should be more in the line of our spiritual attunement with God than in the line of the acquisition of material goods and physical comforts in regard to which, we should not exceed limits. Therefore, simplicity of life is called for. We have to be as simple as possible in our lives. That which is low fears no fall; climb not too high under the impression that you are powerful. And so, it is better to give more and take less. All the time is taken only in the manufacture of the matchstick, and the striking of the match takes only a few seconds. Then why are we bothering about the striking of the match? That is a simple affair: we simply strike it. But how much time have we taken to manufacture it? This we forget, and we are worrying only about the striking of the match, which is called enlightenment. There is no difficulty about it; it is the most simple of things, but the difficulty is in preparing

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oneself for it, making oneself ready for it, and in understanding what it really means. That is, we are totally unprepared; and this sort of attitude is not good for us. Otherwise, we will die in this very condition of sorrow. We would achieve nothing. We started showing a sort of disinterest in the things of the world under the notion that the heavens will descend upon us; but the heavens are not coming, and we have left the world. So we are caught in the middle and we are more wretched than the man of the world, if that is to be our fate. So, let there be an honest effort to fully prepare oneself for this great ordeal. Though it may look like an ordeal in the beginning, it is a movement towards the greatest of joys conceivable. Let us be prepared for this, and let us be confident that success (when this preparation is properly done) is bound to come now, not in the distant future.

13. The more we are immersed in social affairs, the more important we appear to be. The greatest men in the world are those who are conscious of what is outside of them, imbued in the affairs of political existence and social problems. We have social workers and political geniuses trying to attack each other with the weapons of warfare and making themselves very prominent; and our prominence increases, like a rise in the thermometer, in proportion to the extent we are immersed in what is totally outside of us. Our life is not physical or social, though it appears to be such. Our life is mainly psychological. We may be politically important persons, socially very busy people and individuals of importance and respectability; in fact all this is a camouflage of what we are at inside. The outer activities and relationships, whatever is the name that we give to them, are the efforts of what we really are within ourselves. This is the reason why we say this is a world of death. This world is called the world of death, and not a world of life. Nobody lives in oneself; and what can be worse than not living within ones own self? The fact that we are forced by circumstances to live in that which is not our very self is the proof of this world being a world of death,

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and not of life. Here is the foundation of our sorrows, the root of our difficulties, and the impossibility to get out of the clutches of this condition, which refuses to be understood by anyone. The grip that the world has upon our minds is so strong, like the crocodiles grip, that we are not permitted even to think freely. Even the mind is caught. When I say that the person is involved in the affairs of what he is not, I do not mean that only our bodies are involved. Everything that we are is totally caught hold of - our reason, our will, our feeling, our emotion, even our values of life - so that we value life in terms of what we are conscious of outwardly, and not in terms of what we are inwardly. A rich man is a valuable man, a powerful person is a valuable person, and a name that appears in the headlines of newspapers is very prominent. An unknown person living in a corner of the world is not so worthwhile. So, the quantum of external involvement has become the thermometer for the reading of the greatness, the value of a person, and of anything else in this world. Philosophers, whether of the East or the West, have mostly been concerned with only three things: God, world and individual. This too is the sum and substance of all metaphysical thinking and every other detail is a ramification and an extended form of discussion arising from these three realities. There is no doubt that we are existent. We are alive. The awareness of I am is an indubitable experience. We need not have to consult books to know that we exist. We do not have to raise questions before other people: Do I exist really, my dear friend? Never such a question is put, just as we do not have a doubt as to whether it is day time or night time; it is so obvious for any sensible person. While everything can be a matter of doubt in the world, there is one thing which we cannot doubt: that we exist. Thank God there is at least something which we need not doubt, and which we cannot doubt. Whoever denies, does not deny himself. He denies everything except himself, because if the denier denies himself, the denial, also, is deniedand minus into minus is plus. Such a possibility is not acceptable. Nobody ever feels that he does not exist. Even the totally unconscious condition of sleep does not obliterate the consciousness of our having existed in sleep. We are able to remember that we did

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exist, even in swoon. We can conclude, by a process of memory and recollection that we did exist. We cannot know God as He is beyond our minds. Rationally, by arguments, by logic, God cannot be known. Why God? We cannot know even a sand particle as it is in itself. We can know it only as it appears under conditions imposed upon it by space-time. And do not think space and time are simple things; they are terrible limitations, and they condition the very way in which we think. So, how do we know things? How do I know that you are, and how do you know that I am, and how does anyone know that anything is? This is the problem of knowledge, the epistemological subject. Here, we should say that the insight of the Eastern sages has gone deeper than the psychological analysis of Western thinkers because they were admittedly empirical philosophers. It was not possible for them to go deeper than the structure of the mind and the psychic reason. Reason is the highest endowment of man, and one cannot imagine that there can be anything else superior to reason in the human being. There were certain geniuses even in the West who have stumbled into a strange way of knowing which is nonempirical, and accepted the possibility of such a thing as a nonempirical mode of knowing things. There was something of a genius character in them, which accepted that there is another faculty in the human being, which is superior to reason, by which reality, as such, can be contacted. Spiritual Contemplation is an effort to unite the reality in us with the reality in the cosmos. The deepest in us confronts the deepest in the cosmos by a commingling of characters, and a blending of features, and a unity of existence. This is the aim of Spiritual Contemplation, finally where being enters being. The root of being in us enters the root of being in the whole universe. We have heard it said often that God is beyond space and time, and hence there is no possibility of knowing God, because we are in space and time. That which is in space and time cannot know that which is not in space and time, so no man can see God. But there is something in man, which is superhuman. Man, though he is empirically drowned in sensory perceptions, has something at the base which is called, in a philosophical style these days, the transcendental unity of

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apperceptionnot an empirical unity of sensory perception, but a transcendental unity of apperception, not perception. The Godcognition, which is attained by a transcendental means of knowledge, is called apperception. It is Self-knowledge, not knowledge of objects. You may say, even now, I have Self-knowledge; I am Mr. or Mrs. How do you say that I have no Self-knowledge? This so-called Selfknowledge of yours as a man or woman, a son or a daughter, an officer, a rich man or a poor man this empirical knowledge of yourself is not transcendental knowledge. When you say, I am sitting here, listening to what you are saying, you are empirically thinking, and not transcendentally knowing anything. Hence, what I am speaking to you is empirically conveyed to your empirical capacity to hear, which is not adequate; therefore, merely listening to what I say is not sufficient. It has to go deep, and sink further down into a stratum of your being, which is a tendency to non-empirical existence. Therefore, eastern sages have insisted upon contemplating deeply on what has been heard from an instructor or a Guru or a teacher. So do not think that everything is over by listening to what somebody says. Listening is an empirical act. This empirical knowledge, which you receive through the teacher, contains a transcendental essence, which has to be separated from the conditions through which it has been conveyed to you. I am speaking to you in a language, a sound process, a means in space and in time, and you are, also, appreciating, and hearing, and understanding through your psychological apparatus, which again is conditioned by space and time. Yet, there is a substance that is conveyed through empirical process. This substance has to sink into you by a deeper reflective analysis.

14. The cycle of life is a divine cycle throughout. It is God that is moving towards God. It is whole moving towards the whole. The whole existence shrinks back to a point of unity and Oneness and then dissipates itself in diversity of creation. The whole life is throbbing with single beat of God. If our ego gets hold of our

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consciousness it will be destroyed uselessly and if we let it go back to its first cause it will be happy and satisfied in a way a baby is satisfied after coming into the lap of her mother.

15. What is it that grasps, and then lets go of grasping? It is this permanence that is forever changing, the flame of this truth that dances and flickers a thousand different ways and yet is always only burning.

16. Relax the habit of trying to control or manipulate thoughts, feelings and sensations in order to experience a sense of well-being and instead, simply allowing the dynamic and unpredictable flow of moment-to-moment experience to be as it is. Through this approach, one begins to discover an ease, clarity, openness and flexibility that is realized to be present, regardless of the particular ways the body-mind may be moving, shaping or patterning itself in any given moment. Allowing difficult mentalemotional states to be as they are rather than reflexively trying to change or avoid them does not represent passivity or an escape from the difficulties and challenges of life, but actually empowers one to meet everything in his or her life more fully, more vulnerably, more openly, and more wisely.

17. Your body and all its abilities are insufficient to sustain you. How can that be a sustainer who itself needs sustenance? Body needs sustenance through food and health. God is your sustainer alone. He needs no food and no sustenance. He is present without any support and dependency.

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18. We are the masters of our unspoken words but once the words slip out of our mouth they become our masters. So it is always wise to be careful about the words we speak.

19. To sit is an art. Sitting does not mean that the upper portion of our body should collapse upon the lower lumbers of our spinal column. We should keep our spine straight and must hold our upper body erect without putting its unnecessary weight on the lower body parts. This way we can enhance the durability of our back column and avoid a great deal of lumber fatigue.

20. To find fault with others creates obstacles for everyone all around: for him who criticizes, for him who is blamed, as well as for those who listen to the criticism. Whereas, what is said in a spirit of appreciation is fruitful to everyone.

21. We have an animal vital, a human mind and a divine heart. How can we use them properly? The animal vital of yours; never use it to challenge the world, to devour the world. Your human mind; never use it to lord it over others, to achieve supremacy. Your divine heart; use it at every moment to establish the oneness-peace in life.

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22. To you, your life is nothing, a perfect zero. To God, your life is everything to be precise, His everything. With you, He sings the Song of immortality. In you, He sees His embodiment. He moulds you. He shapes you. He guides you. He transforms you into His own very Image.

23. This outer physical world that we take as solid reality is not of static nature. The World is always in flux and it is connected to its Lord. It is coming out of Him and falling back on Him. The World is not an action taken in the past rather it is being taken also in the moment of Now. life is like a film coming out of a projector continuously. The moment projector will stop there will be no more scenes on the screen.

24. You seek things because you feel that you are separate from them. Possession of things will not bring peace because you need communion and possession is not a path of communion rather it blocks the possibility of any communion with the essence of life. The more you possess the more you become possessed by the things. The more you would overload you the more you would become slower in your progress.

25. Man in his outer life or his outer achievement is very limited. But the same man, when he enters into the inmost recesses of his consciousness, feels that there is something constantly trying to expand itself. This consciousness links him with the infinite. So when we ask how a man can achieve Infinity in his finite life, we must

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know that it is not in his physical body, in his arms or in his feet or inside his eyes that he will achieve Infinity. But it is in his inner consciousness that man discovers the truth of it.

26. In the field of spiritual life we can never pretend. Our aspiration must ring true. Our whole life must ring true. Nothing is impossible for an ardent aspirant. A higher power guides his steps. God's adamantine will is the safest protection for a seeker. No matter how long or how many times he blunders, he has every right to come back to his own spiritual home. His aspiration is a climbing flame. It has no smoke; it needs no fuel. It is the breath of his inner life. It leads him to a life of liberation.

27. Reality is not any monolith concept but rather it is composed of three parts that all play together to bring forward a unified concept of reality. Once we minus any one actor of the play other two would be unable to keep it going. And the whole structure of reality will just collapse. The first part is World. The world is made of objects; my physical body is also part of it. The World stands outside me and is external to me. Though the nearest object to me in the world of objects is my own body. But I feel it that this body of mine, though it relates to me but it is not me. This world is governed by the rules of cause and effect. The second part is Ego. The feeling of I-ness. This stands between the first and the third part of the reality. It is capable to interact with both of the other parts namely the World and God. When ego interacts with World it undergoes experience of pain and pleasure, good and bad, gain and loss and when it interacts with God it is awarded with the sense of transcendence and immortality and our consciousness passes through an experience that is opposite in direction to physical experiences, which we feel when we interact with World. Our ego can transform and dissolve itself while passing through the spiritual experiences. The third part is

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God. Here God means perceived divinity. One point should be clarified right here. Is there any difference between the real-God and the perceived-God? Yes! There is such a great difference, the former is like ocean and the later is like water in a glass that we pick from ocean. Certainly we cannot judge the totality of ocean from the water in glass. The water in glass is taken from ocean and obviously contains the same chemical properties when put on the laboratory table. But water in the glass is not an ocean. We cannot call it an ocean because there is no pot yet made and never would be made that could hold the whole ocean in it. So the water in glass though is taken from ocean yet we cannot call it ocean. Similarly the perceived God is Divinity but it is not Divinity-in-Whole. Divinity-in-Whole is uncontainable, unperceivable, and unspeakable; we cannot mark it or point towards it. There is no word or gesture, no sound or form that could be used to perceive it in totality. Divinity-in-whole is absolute transcendence and total beyond-ness. When we say that every thing has arisen from Divinity then divinity means divinity-in-whole and not the divinity-in-part. Perceived-God is divinity-in-part. Divinity perceived is an act of empirical consciousness and has its own limitations and impurities. Divinityin-whole is eternal, omnipresent and omnipotent and is ever unchanged reality. But we see that the concepts and forms of perceived God differ so much in different ages and different geographical parts of world that even by merits of common sense we cannot accept the perceived God as the divinity-in-whole. It is grace of God (divinity-in-whole) that all paths lead to Him. Sincerity and aspiration is the only requirement. Any one who wants to reach Him can reach Him, no matter by what name and form the seeker interacts with God and irrespective to the personalized images/concepts of God the seeker will attain the same bliss universally. There could be millions of paths that would lead to the same one Reality.

28. When our consciousness is in the animal world, the force that enters us is destructive. When our consciousness is in the

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human world, the force that enters us cries for domination. When our consciousness is in the divine world, the force that enters us expands our consciousness and perfects our nature. If we are good, if we are divine, if we are perfect, we will not have to use human force, for our very presence will be a divine force that will inspire others to become good, divine and perfect.

29. In the beginning, it is inevitable that seekers fall here and there in their effort of God-seeking but if the seeker is sincere and remains adamant in his cause then God comes to his help and gives life to the suffocating love of the seeker. It is the time when seeker feels strength in his love for God and the frequency of his sidetracking becomes very much minimized. At first God dawns upon the heart of the aspirant as morning dew comes to the blades of the grass then He flows across heart as stream then turns into a river and finally waves of the divine ocean engulf the heart of the seeker and seeker feels fully inundated in divine presence. One star rises, then comes a bigger one, and next a still bigger. As the biggest star appears, the smaller ones become dim. At last the sun, the biggest star, appears, and all the others fade out.

30. We should remember that every opportunity to develop anger is also an opportunity to develop patience. A relationship in which there is a lot of friction and conflict of interests is also an unrivalled opportunity to develop self-control in us. It is through our anger and hatred that we transform people into enemies. We generally assume that anger arises when we encounter a disagreeable person, but actually it is the anger already within us that transforms the person we meet into our imagined foe. Someone who is controlled by anger lives within a paranoid view of the world, surrounded by enemies of his or her own creation. The false belief

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that everyone hates him can become so overwhelming that he might even go insane, the victim of his own delusion.

31. We live the life of a slave and worst upon it, we are bewitched by it. We do not want to come out of this rut. We rather enjoy our own death day-by-day and year-by-year. We have been robed off our natural and primal identity. Not only we are unaware of the fact but also we are afraid of getting freed of this senseless life. But choice is our, it has always been our. God has raised us in a way that we are always free to say yes or no. So be awake please and say no to death, say no to un-divine life and say no to your own disgrace. God has made us free, beautiful, and almighty in His own image. Our goal is never out of our reach. Things that are not available to us, we have the capacity to go beyond them, to go beyond a lower stage of achievement to a better stage of beyondness. And this better state of beyondness is not achieved through the possession of the desired objects but rather through the liberation from the desire. There are material things that are not available to us but why should we brood and weep for them, why we weep for things that would bring disgrace to us. We are spiritual in our very nature and core. We ought not to go after becoming materially well possessed. Why we are so eager to take that burden on our shoulder that does not belong to us. To get free and to get at home we shall have to break the cycle, vicious cycle of habit, vicious cycle of conditioned thinking, we shall have to wake and come out of this life that is polluted by the fungus of ignorance. Ignorance about our own true identity. We are to have the awareness of the fact that we are God in waiting God in preparing. We have to shed off our ties and relevance to the illusive no-Self. Detachment is the key to success and ultimate liberation. We have to depart mindfully.

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32. Thoughts based on negative emotions (anger, hatred, depression, frustration, bias, vanity, confusion, ignorance, failure etc.) cannot be the guiding ideology for life. Nobody can breathe in smoke, quench thirst with acid or wear nudity as costume. Similarly negative thoughts cannot be regarded as code of conduct for peaceful and positive life. Thoughts propounded by the atheists Ignosts and existentialists are ultimately of negative nature and hence have no potential to be the light of path or source of inner satisfaction.

33. Don't try to be too wise; don't always try to search for something profound to say. You don't have to do or say anything to make things better. Just be there as fully as you can.

34. Be your own master. Don't allow yourself to be dependent on any outside personality or so called authority for your life. Don't feel second to anyone. It does not mean you need to make others feel second to you. It means you are not subordinate to anyone. There is you and God and your direct relationship. No one in between. Abandon all the so-called teachers. Have the courage to stand alone. Be a light to yourself.

35. The true teaching of life is to accept the reality as it is and for what it is. Anything other in mind is just greed. Angst is dreaming that life ought to be different. That the present ought to be full of bliss, grace and other rubbish. The present ought to be exactly as it is. Can you bear it?

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36. Can we stop thinking that there is something we ought to do. This is our pattern - our conditioning, orientation - it runs deep and strong. We are spellbound - hypnotized. We believe that there is something we have to get and that to get that we must make an effort. This is how we approach life, trying to achieve something. This approach ensures that we will remain forever busy occupied in our pursuits - lost in our inner world of struggle and calculations. Unless we can break this spell we cannot simply be free.

37. Allowing the rushed state of another person to push you into an anxious state of mind is like letting the horse you're about to ride convince you to wear the saddle!

38. In regard to disagreeable and formidable things, prudence does not consist in evasion or flight but in courage. He who wishes to walk in the most peaceful parts of life with any serenity must screw himself up to resolution. Let him confront the object of his worst apprehension and his stoutness will commonly make his fear groundless.

39. Stop punishing others for their weakness; we must not get angry over others inability to do things in a better way. Because inability is sufficient excuse available to the fools. In such a situation we have a moral duty to behave in such a way that others might learn from our style of doing things in a better way.

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40. Our real spiritual development is under invisible laws: To grow, we must learn. To learn, we must make mistakes. Making mistakes tills the ground in us, making it receptive to new and higher lessons.

41. Always walk in grace and calmness. When we rush through anything, we miss seeing everything.

42. What we become in this life is very much determined by the kind of "interior" company we keep. Even if this idea of "inner" company is new to you, its reality becomes common sense once we learn to look in the right place. Within ourselves we live in perpetual relationship with our own thoughts and feelings. If it helps you to visualize this insight, think of these psychological forms and forces as your invisible circle of friends, for that is exactly what they are. Yet, they are more. Wise men and women understood in their time, as we must now in our own, that the more moments we spend living in the company of the truth, the more the life of what is true courses through us. Its friendship converts us and transforms us.

43. There are natural times when someone you know will actually ask you for some insight or help. Then not only is it natural, but necessary, that you give what "water" you can to ease their thirst. Under no circumstances should you try to teach others anything they haven't asked for. This kind of teaching comes from the wrong parts

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of ourselves and is a secret act of aggression and arrogance. Learn to taste the difference.

44. The person, who is afraid to walk through it alone, can never say "No" to this world. The unseen cost of this baseless fear is not just to keep the company of cowards, but to lose one's possibility forever to know the company of the Divine.

45. Our deeds are seeds and by them we plant the world we will walk through tomorrow.

46. Knots of Man-to-God relation can be untangled because the relation between Man and God is of Lordship and subservience nature. God is Lord beyond any doubt. His Lordship over the realm of known and unknown cannot be challenged from any quarter. Man surrenders his will in the feet of his Lord and harmony prevails. But knots of Man-to-Man relation are harder to be resolved because the nature of Man-to-Man relation is conflict and collision. We all have to share Time, Space and God. We all are partners in the business of life. Our ego or individuality has not yet got rid of our jungle instincts of the past when we were living as animals on this planet. Reason that the global environment for the survival of individual, has not changed much but rather in some cases it has deteriorated in comparison to the past jungle life. In a capitalistic society wild instincts play havoc everywhere. Weakness of any kind is considered an invitation to death and brutality. Every individual feels threatened all the time. He remains intense and ready to defend any real or phobic threats posed to him. War becomes the second nature and psychology of the individuals. No one gives tolerance and forgiveness a chance because each individual

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feels all the time that it is time of high alert for survival. In God-to Man relation, one is the Giver and the other is Receiver but in Manto-Man relation there is no real submission. Even when one submits oneself to other person, it is done on purpose and gain of any kind is expected in return. Man-to-Man relation is always of bargaining type. We do something and expect something in return. Then what is the way out? We see that our body works in complete cooperation and harmony. There are many biological layers and functioning systems in our body but that all work in coordination and in the interest of each other. Then why the organs and layers of the civil society cannot work in harmony without conflict and collision. Yes! There is answer to this burning question. But for any solution we all need a consensus of opinion upon some fundamental ground realities. First hard fact is to concede that all living things have fundamental right to share the universe in space and time. Every person has an irrefutable right over space and time necessary for his survival. Remember that whenever any living being will be forced and pushed to wall and its right to survive in time and space will be threatened then adverse and defensive response will come naturally from the threatened being. The second hard fact is that it is not sufficient to acknowledge the right to survive in time and space but every living being needs a psychological space to survive. Whenever its right to survive psychologically will be denied again there will be no peace. Defensive response will come from the suppressed individual whether it is human or animal. Each individual has a right by birth to grow biologically as well as psychologically. Material opportunities and social justice are two conditions upon which a happy and peaceful society can be built with ease. These two conditions must be guaranteed not to the privileged classes of the society but to each member of the civil society.

47. To become spiritual merely by thinking of spirituality is as farcical as a thirsty person would try to quench his thirst by

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merely thinking about water. Thinking will not quench the thirst. Thinking will not bring peace. Peace comes through communion. Thirst needs water not the mind images of water. Words are mind images of the Real. Go beyond words. Be in direct touch of the Real; let it descend into your blood, bones and breathing. Get out of all shelters and hide outs, experience the Real in total nakedness. This way come the peace. This way come the realization.

48. Why it is needed to be spiritual in our life? Who will answer this question: a spiritual person or a worldly person? If a spiritual person answers this question, we can easily blame the person for giving spirituality extra favors. Moreover, if the answer comes from worldly person, we can easily say that the person has not done justice to the subject. Then whose judgment would be considered valid and unbiased? For the time being, leave the spirituality aside. What is our standard practice in other similar situations? On weather matters we would value the opinion of a meteorologist and on medical matters we would give value to the opinion of a person, properly qualified and having hands on experience in the related field. Now we come back about our question that whose opinion would be valid upon spirituality. Doubtlessly, only the person who is qualified in spirituality is eligible to express any opinion on the subject. Again question arises, that who is the qualified person for the spirituality. As we all know it that any qualification comes by passing through the theory and practice, spirituality is no exception also. So now it can easily be put forward that only a person having in-depth knowledge of spirituality as branch of knowledge and also having gone through such experiences that undeniably fall in the realm of spiritual experience, can give any opinion on the subject. There are no and could not be any traditional institutions from where spiritual graduates come out holding a degree in Spirituality. It is only through the words and actions (by action not only the active states of action are meant but also the passive actions i.e. the responses to

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the actions taken by others or responses to stimuli are also included.) that we judge any person as spiritual or unspiritual. The overall impact of any education on the well being of spiritual life of an individual will decide the quality of spiritual teachings. All the learning in thought and action that helps a person to get nearer to his divine essence, qualify to be called as Spiritual.

49. There are no prerequisites for getting entry into the spiritual realm. If there had been some prerequisites, some personal virtues, required for spiritual entry then what was the need for adoption of a spiritual course? By putting conditions upon the spiritual entry, we indirectly admit two things. One is that spiritual path is not meant for everyone and second is that being good and virtuous is possible without being spiritual first. So there are no preconditions to become a spiritual person. You can start it with all your imperfections, weaknesses and shortcomings. Once you are in, spirituality will take care of the rest. It is capable to make you perfect, strong and noble. If it has not been so then why should hopeless people come to spirituality? When a person is being transformed into divine seeker by the hands of life processes, we see some symptoms there. Thirst for God (intense yearning) is the first and cardinal symptom in a God seeker. It is not necessary that a seeker should identify his thirst as thirst for God but instead if the thirst is for the first cause or for the ultimate meaning then it too should be considered as the thirst for God. God is not only the first cause but the ultimate meaning of life also. To move along the course of Spirituality one has to begin in action. Initiation of Action is the first step. No journey is traveled without taking the first step. Remember that these steps are not any prerequisite of being spiritual but are milestones in the journey of Spirituality. The second is Continuity. Action initiated in Spirituality should be continuous in time. No matter if you are forced to discontinue by the temporary dark states of mind, dont be discouraged, always remember to come back to your spiritual

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passion. These short periods of discontinuation, revulsion and frustration come only to treat and mature our spiritual passion for God. They ripe and purify our vision of the path. The third is that our action should be a Conscious Action. In the beginning only continuity is insisted upon, if it comes it is a great success. But as we have to move along the path, our next aim should be the awareness of our action, awareness of the movement. Only a conscious action can satisfy its doer. Doubtlessly there will be innumerable stumbles but we must not give up. Try again and again to remain mentally with your action; try your level best not to leave your action unattended even for a moment. This step begins with our effort to become conscious of our action and culminates in the attainment of Concentration. Through attainment of Concentration we become able to focus our life energy upon single aim of God-realization. The fourth step is the attainment of Devotion. Devotion is a gradual process of the purification of action. It not only purifies the action but also the goal of the action. Process of the purification is carried out through freeing ourselves of adversaries. And what are these adversaries? Adversaries are dark states of mind that try their best to derail and sidetrack us. Adversaries mainly fall into these groups: Pains, Pleasures, Fears, Worries, Desires, Sleep and Conversation. To ward off all these adversaries is real hard task especially for a beginner. Then what should be the right course of action against these adversaries? Best way advised is dont attend them. Once you start arguing them or you start fighting with them, these dark states will get hold of you, become enemy of you and believe me you would never be able to outperform them. So the best policy is to sit in your place quietly, let these dark states dance around your seat and never attend them. This way these dark states will gradually loose their grip and force and will be no more successful to frighten you, to derail you.

50. Sometimes a divine seeker is overwhelmed by such feelings that life is absurd, it has no meaning at all. Every activity in

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life serves no ultimate purpose. All paths end up in nowhere. A true God seeker who alienates and identifies himself with God also shares this ecstasy of God and sees life as absurd, such feelings rise from the seekers developing skill of alienating himself/herself from the world of objects. This outlook of life comes forth when the seeker speaks about life from the standpoint of divinity. Feeling of absurdity is valuable indication that seeker is making some spiritual development. Because when we judge life as absurd in the same moment we stand in our Lord. At that moment if we dont stand in our lord then we stand in the absurd and again question arises how a blind can see the blind how can one absurd judge the other absurd? Judgment never rises from the absurdity; it is an act of the God within us. When life appears absurd to you, dont feel yourself at loss but rather it is time to be merry and rejuvenate. Feeling of absurdity heralds the feeling of divine attraction. Be happy you are getting nearer to the essence of the existence, to the essence of your own being. The more you feel absurd the more you will come nearer to your inner truth.

51. Knowledge we gain resides in the memory chambers as the beautiful idols of worship stand in any temple. We adorn and worship these idols. However to attain the truth one has to go beyond the spell of knowledge. One has to transcend his psyche and detach from memory imprints, smoky ideas, ever-hungry urge of understanding and detrimental play of desires. A God-seeker has to dispossess himself of all entanglements of sensuous engagements.

52. When we converse with another fellow man on spiritual subject it should be done out of compassion and for the sole purpose of guiding him into spiritual direction. Our words ought not represent the inner trauma of our own personalities. If it comes so

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then we are using others for the projection of our megalomaniac designs and sick selfish motives, which would be highly deplorable.

53. We should not be shy of our imperfections. Imperfection has been woven into the fabric of our physical nature. Once we were child but it did not mean that we were unable to grow into a young man as we did grow into a young man. In the run of biological evolution, there might be a time when we were among the monkeys but eventually we were able to live our refined human life but it does not mean that right now we should identify ourselves as monkeys but we are fully free to lead an intellectual and spiritual life. If a car runs toward west, it does not mean that the car cannot come back towards east. It is a matter of steering direction. We can change our lives forever if we could change the direction of steering ourselves.

54.

The ultimate question is Why? The ultimate answer is Silence The ultimate love is Surrender The ultimate action is Withdrawal The ultimate success is Letting Go The ultimate obstruction is Desire The ultimate comfort is Simplicity The ultimate wisdom is tolerance

55. Misperceptions are the mother of frustration. If I ride on a sheep and start expecting that it will gallop like a stallion then failure and disappointment would certainly be my fate. We must not expect from the material possessions and gains that they would

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inculcate peace in us. Peace comes only from its source and that source is God alone.

56. Knowledge of objects we gain through the operation of senses is conditioned by space-time and also by the limitations of the mind itself. Our social life is a child born of this erroneous knowledge. Our family relations, our community life and every blessed thing that we can call social is finally brittle, like glass; it can break at any moment of time, and that is why we have no real contact and friendship or relationship with anybody for all time to come. Nobody is our friend for all times. Such a thing is not possible, because the world is made in such a way; at least, we have accepted that the world has been made in such a way. As our knowledge, which is perceptional, is far removed from the reality of things, all our social relationships based on this knowledge, also, lose their sense, finally. Nobody belongs to us, and we belong to nobody in this world. Nothing is our belonging. We have no property, whatsoever. Nobody can own a thing which is outside oneself and with which one has no contact and relationship, as it has been accepted by our epistemological knowledge, which holds that things are totally outside. There is a contradiction in our way of living in the world. Life is a contradiction because, on the one hand, we want a sort of intimate relationship with things; on the other hand, we have openly declared that things have no connection with us. Otherwise, there would have been no need for the senses to struggle so hard to come in contact with objects. We are friends and enemies of people at the same time. We are double dealers, artificial in our living, and sorrow is the consequence. We know why we are unhappy in the world by a sort of analysis of our own selves and our relationships with things and the world as a whole.

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57. When liberation comes the otherness goes, there are no other people at all. They do not exist. You will merge into them. You will not see them at that time. They will not be visible to your eyes because just as you don't see dream objects in waking, this also will vanish there. The whole world will disappear.

58. There is nothing wrong with trying to correct others, provided you feel it is a necessity and also a possibility. Otherwise, you need not interfere with anything. But if it is an essential thing for some reason or the other, then you can, unless you are greater than those whom you are reforming, the effort may not lead to success.

59. We are not here to change and transform but we are here only to witness. Every one is exactly that what God wants him to be. If you feel that you are born for seeking God then it is so without any reason and if you are blind, dumb and deaf towards the presence of God then it is so without any reason. Every thing has to follow its course. We cannot ask from earth that why it is revolving around the sun because the earth has to revolve around the sun, it makes no difference whether there is any reason for it or not. We cannot ask a raw green berry that why it wants to become red. Because when the time of ripening approaches, the berry has to become red. We cannot ask a river that why it wants to run towards the ocean? What is point in it? These are silly questions because the river has to flow towards ocean whether there is any point in it or not. What we become is not dependent upon our effort or choice but it is all part of our being here on the face of earth. There is Sun of God inside of us. Every particle of our being is revolving around this divine sun. We have our days and nights inside us. Some times it is

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darkness and some times it is light inside us. When the time comes all of us have to face the Sun of God. We have to revolve around the divine will. It is our destiny and what a wonderful destiny it is.

60. Lovers, singers, actors, painters, sculptors, writers, scientists and philosophers are not made but they are born. Effort and guidance only polish that possibility which already was there.

61. The beauty of hopelessness is that when you truly encounter hopelessness, you STOP! All psychological time dies in hopelessness. What future? There is no future. You stop and settle into yourself as you are. You experience simply being. You are absolutely present and disarmed of all mental and emotional protection. You are open and totally available, and without forewarning, you are swept into an ocean of being without reference. You discover yourself standing in beingness. You quite unexpectedly are on the home ground that you have been seeking. All seeking disappears in the stopping. A silent and still being reveals itself as who you are. This is an unlimited and unconditioned sense of being.

62. God alone IS - this is the voice of the mystics. God IS, and the world also IS - this is the voice of the theologians. World alone IS - this is the voice of the materialists. The experience of the mystic is real, vast, and all-illuminating. The experience of the theologian is mental. The experience of the materialist is purely of the senses. Under the pressures of life, the materialist grows into the theologian, and from the theologian is evolved the mystic. Blessed are those who exceed the crudities of the materialist and are released into the dynamic world of the Mystical Experience!

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63. Great mind perceives God; little mind doubt and deny. Great faith finds Him; little faith complains and is repulsed. Great Love experiences Him; little love is too busy with its own fleeting pleasures.

64. Words of wisdom possess no power at their own to change or transform us. Ideas, theories, logic and isms all are castrated at core. Believe me that they have no power to influence any heart. If it is not so then why the reader or listener is always asked to practice the said words of wisdom with the purity of consciousness, with concentration and persistence. It looks paradox. Wisdom is not meant to demand purity from us but it is meant to purify us. The center of magical power of Making is not in words, ideas, isms, arguments, theories, myths, tales and stories but it lies within us. We are the custodians of that sacred power which can make or break, change or transform. There is a divine point in us that holds all the potential to Make. This divine point is Transcendental. It is nowhere and is everywhere. It is in us and it is holding us. A mind intoxicated with sensuality is blind to its existence and presence. All expressions of wisdom are nothing but tools to attract and invoke this power in us. Once the words succeed to inspire and motivate this power in us then their purpose is served. So have faith in you. You are the Master, you are the Maker. Without you everything is unfertile and unaccomplished.

65. Our very existence on earth is a divine miracle. God has arranged for us the tools for our reunion with Him. He gifted us the horse of breath. We can go back to our Lord by riding on this horse. There is a Rider in us and there is a Track that leads back to

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God. Aspiration is the rider; breath is the horse and Japa (recitation of mantra) is the Track. For a smooth and winning race the Rider, the Horse, the Track all must be locked in and synchronized with each other. All four parts must move in total harmony.

66. Irresolution is as much a curse as laziness for the result is the same, though the irresolute person often suffers from his constant vacillation. Irresolution arises from ignorance, fear, and confusion. Which way should I go? How can I know the right thing? Will I be safe from harm? What will happen to me if I go in that direction? These and many other agonies torture the irresolute. Seeing this weakness evil (negativity) strikes him down and tramples him mercilessly underfoot. The slavery can last for ages. Those who are always looking for pleasure, enjoyment, and gratification in all things are especially vulnerable to evil ways, for they have no standards but I like and I want. Selfish to the core, they have no interest in the consequences of the actions that they take to get the things they want, considering that even wrongdoing is justified if that is needed to obtain their desires. Nor do they care about the real nature of the desired things. Drug addicts and alcoholics embody this foolish disregard of reality, what to speak of sex addicts who refuse to acknowledge the destructive nature of their actions on themselves and others and they are classically blind to the dangers and defects of the objects of thei r romantic love. Addiction to objects can become so deep rooted that the addict in time may even admit their harmful consequences but boldly declare that he simply does not care. Spiritual suicide is the end result of all addiction. The slaves of evil are dragged along the road of life by the wild horses of their senses; horses that they themselves whipped into mad frenzy. The chariot race of their life gives them no pause for reflection or good sense they are too busy living life to the full and know n ot that they are sinking into dullness and death. A rotten tree standing could be toppled by the slightest of breezes because its fibers are no longer strong or even intact. The same is true of those who are lazy,

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irresolute, addicted to pleasure, undisciplined in their sensual indulgence: they have no moral fiber, no strength of will, no inner integrity. Just a puff of evil and over they go, because spiritually they are already fallen to the ground. Being egoistic they are neither the friends of God nor of their own life.

67. The whole world is a war zone of survival and conflict of interests; all paths are wrapped in the fog of confusion. Destination is just a vague idea in the mind of a traveler. To gain decisive and firm knowledge in this jungle of chaos is almost impossible. Only way to attain the purpose is to turn inward and this turning inward must occur with full force of sincerity and focus.

68. Body is lower and mind is higher. Mind is lower and faith is higher. Faith is lower and love is higher. Love is lower and surrender is higher. Surrender is lower and merger is higher. Merger is lower and transcendence is higher. There is no contradiction between lower and the higher. Higher is the goal of the lower. To achieve the higher there is no need to reject the lower. There is no need to despise the lower.

69. Only he knows the meaning of Truth who burns himself in it all others stand as speculators. The subject of Total Truth is so subtle and elusive that no word can indicate towards the core of it. This is the realm where words falter and ideas loose their wings. The means and tools of understanding that we employ to elaborate the subject are merely an effort to elevate the seeker to such a plane of understanding where he or she gets ready to take a quantum leap. A quantum leap into the realm of transcendence; where all

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understanding and even the thinking itself becomes a distant and irrelevant facility.

70. It is better to let the doom come once than fearing it for a million times. Do not be so serious, casual life is a bliss. Do not fall victim to phobic threats. Trust in God and also in your self. Do not let the moment of Now be spoiled by the fear of future or sorrow for past.

71. Every plane of our life holds its own laws and values. When we are at physical plane, we have to follow the laws of physics. When we are at social level, the social laws apply to us. When we are at psychological level, the psychological laws are to be regarded and when we are in the spiritual plane, spiritual laws are to be followed. We cannot apply the law of one plane over to another plane because there will be misplacement of values, and a chaos will take place. Material values, economic values, vital values, ethical values and spiritual values are all important values. We cannot say, I am a lover of God, and I care a hoot for this world of matter. Such talk and such feelings are misplaced. There are confused seekers who do not understand themselves properly and say, I care only for God, and not for man or world. There are other people who say, I dont care for God. I care only for man and world. A seeker must realize first that God whom we are seeking is not outside the world. And the world which we are seeing around us and the people in whose midst we are living are not separate from God.

72. Many truth seekers fail. All truth seekers are basically good folk but all of them are not always very wise. A good person is not essentially a wise person and may make mistakes in spite of his

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goodness. While intention is pious and heart is good but where intelligence lacks the seeker receives kicks from the world that may result in frustration or reversion to the unenlightened mode of living. Seeker suffers hopelessness of all pursuits and coming to a conclusion that perhaps nothing is worthwhile and no good is going to come out from God-seeking. In fact there was nothing wrong with the attempt but unfortunately the modes of execution were unwise.

73. Attachment when intensified becomes passion, when obstructed becomes anger and when defeated becomes frustration. Though money is one thing in life but a miser regards money everything. How does he regard one thing as everything? It is craziness. Fame or power is also one thing but there are people who regard it as everything. There are many other world-objects which can attract our attention in full as if that were all things. So, intense desire, anger, greed etc. emanate from the basic mistake of regarding one thing as everything. A higher form of knowledge is where we do not regard one thing as everything but we regard other things also as equally important and realize that one thing is also related to every other thing. Everything is equally good. This makes us more expanded social personality. But the highest kind of knowledge is that which does not even relate one thing with another thing but regards the whole existence as one indivisible being. Here there is no question of relating one thing with another because things do not exist in isolation. Thus, the lowest knowledge is finitude of consciousness, clinging to only one thing as if it is all things. The higher knowledge is a relativity of things, where we bring all things into consideration but yet the multiplicity of consciousness continues to persist; we regard one thing as different from another thing. The highest knowledge is the oneness of consciousness, where all things become equal.

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74. We live in a world of cause and effect. To get any result from spiritual practice, we have to develop it to the level of a cause, a cause that would hold sufficient physical force to re-mould our lives. Love of God, merely as an intellectual idea, can not bring any tangible change in our worldly life. To have any change in our lives we have to convert the spiritual ideas into live physical force. Our feelings, sufferings, desires, reactions, joy and pain constantly remind us that world is present not merely as an idea but it is a live active force. To bring any change in life Spirituality must be able to handle and rule over all the life situations. It has to manifest itself as a superior force of life. There are brute forces of mind in us that can not be controlled, subdued or overpowered merely by holding the lofty spiritual ideals. To understand the situation at a metaphorical level we take the example of State. State is a sovereign power of any society. We see that there are outlaws in society who do not honor the laws or respect the sovereignty of state. Here state can not handle these evil people merely by its presence as an idea or the highest social and political value. To encounter these gangsters, state has to come down to the level of a brute force. The state has to prove her muscles and react as the superior power. The state will send security personals to control and overpower these outlaws. Even if the force applied by the state proves to be weaker than the force of outlaws, the outlaws will disrespect and harm the state representatives, as well. To overpower these outlaws state has to deploy a superior counter force otherwise rule of law will remain a dream unfulfilled. Same is the case with spirituality. There are outlaws (ego states) inside us. These outlaws use their brute energy to keep us their captive and slave. To defeat these negative forces inside us we have to employ the spiritual force as a better superior force. We have to make God-seeking a sovereign power in us otherwise the spiritualism will always remain castrated. There is no way out there

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for spiritual success without transforming the spiritual Ideas into real controlling Power.

75. Only a jeweler can know the worth of a jewel. God is the Diamond of universe, how can he throw Himself to the hands of ignorant. So to be known properly and befittingly God prepares men among us who are capable to know and cherish the worth of God. Such men love God in total surrender and with the full strength of their passion.

76. All names are symbols, devised by intelligence to indicate towards any unit of sense data. But the core relation of one thing with the other is of intrinsic and essential, it is not dependent merely on names and words. Mother does not know her baby by name but mother has an intrinsic and essential relation with her baby that flows from being to being. If baby becomes unnamed and is deprived of all his social identities even then it will not diminish the mother-child relation and love. Our relation with God is of intrinsic nature. It is not dependent on names, words, theories and ideas. We all respire in God and this is our prime relation with God. Words can not grasp, elaborate and communicate the true nature of this relation. To know it one has to go through it.

77. God helps, guides and safeguards His lovers through better perceptions. Correct perception of any situation holds the key to success. Perceptions influenced by ego are always erroneous. To act righteously, perceptions should be free of desire, attachment, fear and greed and above all our intent to act must always be pure and honest.

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78. Holding on to anger is like grasping a hot coal with the intent of throwing it at someone else; you are the one who gets burned first.

79. The criterion of a Saint is that he's not after show. He does not live on the donations of others. He earns his livelihood. He stands on his own legs, and helps others. He does not charge anything for his teachings. It is not the antelope who searches for the palaces, where its head will be mounted on the wall as a precious piece of craft but it is the riches who search for the head of the antelope as a piece of decor. An accomplished man is not eager to market and introduce himself rather it is the folks who always catch the fragrance of him and seek guidance from him.

80. Only through love and consideration you can turn somebody, not by hatred, not by criticism. If you sit together and love together, then naturally you'll understand each other. If you want to enforce on the other: "You are right, you are wrong", nobody's going to listen to you.

81. Reading, listening and thinking are just mental means to gain some understanding of deeper truth. The understanding of the deeper truth though is reached through the aforementioned tools of knowledge but is transcendent of its means. We can not communicate the final understanding of truth through words because words by nature divide the wholeness of meanings whereas the Truth is unified and indivisible. Truth can only be experienced

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from within. The moment it comes out of mouth it becomes the object of different interpretations and logical contentions. Logic is always motive and interests based, so it gets very hard almost impossible to communicate the essence of truth through traditional means of understanding and communications.

82. The true purpose of having a human form is to make daily progress toward the great goal of God-worship, so sit down each day and see where you are. Remove those things which are obstructing your progress - weed out the imperfections, one by one. A strong man revels in his strength and the weaker man wonders how he got it. When a wrestler walks in arena, people turn their faces to stare at him in admiration but the strength of his body has not come to him overnight. It is an outcome of rigorous exercise and discipline for many years.

83. Our focus is so split among low grade worldly things that our mind itself has become a hell for us. We want to enjoy all the low, worldly things, yet we say we want the highest thing of all - the Self-realization. It is not fair; how far do we think we will go? Most of our precious time is wasted by indulgence into lust, anger, jealousy, ego, scandal, criticizing, backbiting, possessiveness, etc. A consciousness under these influences can never go very far within, for there is no peace and oneness.

84. Out of the abundance of his heart, a man speaks. Whatever the inner condition of a person is -- his words will be charged with that inner atmosphere -- be it anger, lust, or a sweet tranquility.

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85. The foundations of loving, healing and nurturing are simple: gentle attention and non-judgmental acceptance. Do not be judge on people rather accept them as they are. Give them space to grow in experience. Also we can grow in God only through nonjudgmental acceptance of God.

86. Spiritual life of a seeker passes through seven stages of its development. On passing through each developmental stage the consciousness lifts itself up to a new horizon of experience and acceptance. Thirst is intense yearning; it is first step on the path, without yearning there can be no spiritual initiation. Frustration is the second stage; it comes as a result of seekers feeling that knowledge has no power to provide any effective guidance. Acceptance starts coming when the seeker gives up his efforts in Frustration and learns to accept what Is. Spiritual Contemplation or Spiritual Practice is fourth stage. Acceptance alone is not enough on the path, it is like dry wood that needs touch of spark to be inflamed and be something worthy in divine way. Self-effacement starts when seeker enters into a state of total surrender. For this you must have conviction in God that is greater than faith. Self-effacement is really the substance, the crux of spirituality. Even more than the crux, it is the beginning and end of spirituality. One poet so beautifully says (translation): What have I gained, even if all the curtains of ignorance are lifted away from me? The great delight would have been if I were not in between. If I were removed between myself and my Beloved God; Then the problem would be completely resolved.

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The curtains of ignorance mean the curtains of the different spiritual stages. Once lifted, I am still in a state of duality I cannot become united with God so what have I gained? The great delight would be if I were completely self-effaced. I would not have to think about the spiritual line because traversing the path may be done through self-effacement. Ecstasy comes as reward of sincere spiritual effort. It is Goddrunkenness and God-addiction. It is neither pleasure nor happiness rather it is divine bliss beyond all emotions and thought. It is a direct effect of nearing to Gods effulgence and grace. Immersion is a state of becoming one. No shade of duality survives their. One becomes All and All becomes One. This state is indescribable in its true effect as words loose their power and efficacy by reaching there.

87. Fear is an outcome of non-acceptance. Fear disappears when you submit totally before God. Slay your plans before the will of God. Be one with God without any grain and resistance. Stop resisting God and fear will become your best friend.

88. One has to learn a great lesson that there are things you cannot force; you can only remain open, available, waiting to them and they come. The moment you become tense to get hold of them, they slip away. It is just like; in the open fist you have all the air possible. With the closed fist all the air disappears. You may be thinking that with a closed fist you are catching hold of the air. No, it has slipped out. It does not belong to the closed fist; it belongs only to the open hand.

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89. Every now and then, in the name of liberation, we continue filling ourselves with more new ideas and more new thoughts ... thus we constantly endeavor to become more special and more wonderful in the eyes of others or in our own eyes. Believe me this will not work and it has never worked before. Liberation does not come through replacing one thought with another thought. For liberation we have to move from state of thought to the state of nomind.

90. The virtual prison of life has five exit gates that open to five paths. The first gate is gate of death (suicide); which opens up to the path of disgrace and darkness. The second gate is gate of ego and it leads to the path of illusion. The third gate is gate of drugs and this path leads us to disconnection and weakness. The fourth gate is gate of sex and it befools us beautifully. The fifth choice is to surrender before God. Only this last choice leads to the path of true liberation.

91. Life is mysterious, insecure, uncertain and absurd. If it has not been so no one would ever bother to search for God. Man will never be willing to surrender before God. Man will never realize that truth is within. But once we become aware of the immanence of God then life remains no more uncertain, insecure and absurd.

92. You can look upon a million images of sun but they are not substitution of the real sun. if you have never been exposed directly to sun, encounter will never happen. You can read a million

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books on God but you will never encounter God. God is not in books. God is not in reading and knowing. God is not in anecdotes, parables, biographies, stories and metaphors. God is available to you even without reading a single word, even without knowing a single alphabet of any language. You can encounter God only through being available to God. There is no other way.

93. There is no such thing as property; it is an illusion. Nobody can own anything. God is the owner alone. To own you have to be the creator of things. God is the creator alone all else is just manipulation. Any sense of ownership accumulated by mind or ego is just preposterous, whole universe belongs to God. When ego will fall apart you would feel that even your own existence is not your. There will be a sense of belonging but not the sense of ownership.

94. How can the seed know that by dying in the soil it will become a great tree? It will not be there to witness the happening. How can the seed know that one day, if it dies, there will be great foliage, green leaves, great branches, and flowers and fruits? How can the seed know? The seed will not be there. The seed has to disappear before it can happen. The seed has never met the tree. The seed has to disappear and die. Only very few people have that much courage. It really needs guts to discover truth. You will die as yourself. You will certainly be born in a new capacity.

95. When you feel some spiritual uplift then have no desire to put yourself on show. Chances are high that you will end up as a looser. Because when you will show off, the worldly people will come to you loaded with their material expectations and you will be caught up in awkward situation. Either you would acknowledge

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their desires and expectations or you would take risk to frustrate them with your whole spirituality. So putting yourself on show is not desired for a true God-seeker.

96. I am not composed by my limbs but these limbs and organs are there to help me living as a body. My essence is supreme, pure, eternal and infinite.

97. I am not a philosopher. The philosopher thinks about things. It is a mind approach. My approach is a no-mind approach. It is just the very opposite of philosophizing. It is not thinking about things, ideas, but seeing with a clarity which comes when you put your mind aside, when you see through silence, not through logic. Seeing is not thinking. The sun rises there; if you think about it you miss it, because while you are thinking about it, you are going away from it. In thinking you can move miles away; and thoughts go faster than anything possible. If you are seeing the sunrise then one thing has to be certain, that you are not thinking about it. Only then can you see it. Thinking becomes a veil on the eyes. It gives its own color, its own idea to the reality. It does not allow reality to reach you, it imposes itself upon reality; it is a deviation from reality. Hence no philosopher has ever been able to know the truth. All the philosophers have been thinking about the truth. But thinking about the truth is impossibility. Either you know it, or you dont. If you know it, there is no need to think about it. If you dont, then how can you think about it? A philosopher thi nking about truth is just like a blind man thinking about light. If you have eyes, you dont think about light, you see it. Seeing is a totally different process; it is a byproduct of meditation. Hence I would not like my way of life to be ever called a philosophy, because it has nothing to do with philosophy.

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98. Those who understand that their life is an expression of God wipe out all barriers and all distinctions and refuse to hold judgment, criticism, accusation, or condemnation toward any. If a God-seeker sometimes speaks in a worldly mode then he can have some opinion or judgment about some other person, by doing so he would be just making himself acceptable for others because society would not accept a man who has zero opinion about life situations but at heart a God-seeker is not a critic or biased commentator. At his heart he accepts all situations without any prejudice or rejection.

99. State of idealism, though appears very attractive, but is most destructive for spiritual integrity. It kills you, but kills you in such a way that you never become aware of it. It kills you with a style. The only remedy available is to be practical. Tomorrow is nonexistent, it never comes, and idealism believes in the tomorrow. It sacrifices today at the altar of the tomorrow. It goes on saying to you, Do something improve yourself. Do something change yourself. Do something become perfect. It appeals to the ego. Then you go on destroying this moment for the moment which never comes. Then you go on destroying this life for some life which exists nowhere. To sacrifice the moment of Now for the future is to be trapped into death. The idealist mind goes on preparing for something that never happens. It is a nightmare. It goes on preparing and preparing infinite preparations for a journey that never starts. It goes on planning in a thousand and one ways subtle, cunning and clever but the whole thing is pointless, because each moment it is denying life. Life is knocking at your door each moment and you are denying it, because you say you are preparing for it. You say, How can I receive

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the guest right now? I am not ready. By and by you become so accustomed to preparing that preparation becomes your life. The first thing to be understood is that you are always perfect. Whenever you feel imperfect it is not that you are really imperfect but you become under the influence of false ideas that make you think and feel that you are imperfect. Life is already available. You need not prepare for it. You are already entitled to enjoy it. By just being alive, you are already ready. Because you breathe, you are already capable. Because you can be conscious, you are already ready. Nothing is lacking. It is happening right now, here, and your eyes are fixed somewhere far away. It is happening at close quarters. It is already happening near your heart. Where your heart is beating, it is already happening. And you are looking at the sky. Why?

100. Watch your thoughts, they become words. Watch your words, they become actions. Watch your actions, they become habits. Watch your habits, they become character. Watch your character, as it becomes your destiny.

101. Everyone has been created for some particular work, and the desire for that work has also been put in every heart.

102. When the remedy you have offered only increases the disease, then leave him who will not be cured, and tell your story to someone else who seeks the truth.

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103. Each moment God comes and conquers and each moment I am to die without resistance. This is all that I know and this is all that I do (You may call it my worship if you like). It is so simple and so powerful that I do not even need to know it or understand it, the moment I allow it to happen it starts happening. You breathe is it not so simple and powerful? Yes! It is indeed. For breathing there is no need to know and understand and even you do not need to allow it to happen consciously. It is happening on its own. What we have to do is just not to be an obstruction in its way.

104. Fill your bowl to the brim and it will spill. Keep sharpening your knife and it will blunt. Chase after money and security and your heart will never unclench. Care about people's approval and you will become their prisoner. Do your part of work and then step back, never be attached to your effort or to any possible outcome of it. This way you would find peace.

105. To be is naturally characterized with limitedness because when infinity manifests itself into finite forms then it is logically impractical to be finite and infinite at the same time. So Gods manifestation in any single creature is bound to be limited to the nature of that specific creature. Though the monkey and lion both are alive from a single source of spirit but a monkey would remain monkey and would die as monkey, a monkey can not transform itself into a lion. It is so because divine has willed so. Imperfection is the fundamental principle of beingness . To be in wholeness is a prerogative of God alone.

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106. Spirituality is not a quality that someone may acquire through learning. It is not a branch of knowledge to be mastered through traditional means of learning like reading, listening, observing experimenting and recording. Rather it is a kind of fine art (to say it aptly it is the finest art the supreme art). You can not think it or say it, the point is - you have it or you do not have it. Either you can perform it (show signs of being an accomplished man) or you can not perform it. It is a divine potential in you to re-bloom yourself into the original divinity. If you are not born with it, you can not have it through effort. The whole point is if it is there it is there and if it is not there it is not there. Though it is present in all of us but all are not awakened to it. If you are ripened for it, it would dawn upon you from within and if you are not suitable to it, it would remain dormant in you all of your life. If you are not awakened to it even then there is a possibility that some offspring of your future generations would become awakened to it. For example, all of us are equipped with vocal organs but we all are not good singers. Moreover, if you are not a singer but there is a possibility that someone else from your future generations may become a charming singer. If you have a good voiced throat (speech organs) and you are awakened to it then no one can stop you from becoming a singer. You would sing even when there would be no one around to listen. Singing would become a second nature of you. You would sing not for any gain and motive but to obey the inner urge of you. No doubt singers can earn a handsome amount of money through their singing profession but a singer who sings only for money is finished at heart. His voice can not make way to the hearts of other people. A commercial voice becomes a shallow voice. Singing is gone and only noise is left. But the role of practice can not be underestimated. A goldsmith makes gold presentable; the raw divine potential in you can be beautified through practice and it can be polished in discipline.

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And the most important thing about God-realization is that, if you have it then it must perform in you as there is no success without its signs, spiritual success too has its signs. A spiritual man who has fully bloomed in divinity would show some certain signs.

107. All those people who go on playing with beliefs, concepts, philosophies, theologies. They ask questions just to ask questions. The answer is the last thing they are interested in. They don't want the answer. They go on playing with questions, and each answer helps them to create more questions. Each answer is nothing but a jumping board for more questions. The truth is not a question. It is a quest! It is not intellectual; it is existential. The true inquiry is a gamble, a gamble with your life. You play dice putting your own life at stake. It needs tremendous courage. Belief needs no courage. Belief is the way of the coward. You are avoiding the real lion; you are escaping from the real lion. If you want to face the real, then there is no need to go anywhere, because the real surrounds you from inside to outside. You can face it Now and Here -- it is already available. It is ever shining in its grace and infinity. It is not a question of knowing rather it is a question of becoming. you have been avoiding it. You find ways to avoid it. When somebody asks, "What is the way to truth?" in fact he is asking, "What is the way to avoid the truth?" He is asking, "How can I escape? There is consolation in false but the real is very wild, in real there is no respite, there is only becoming, facing and transforming. You can enter the truth only naked. To enter the truth you would have to drop all that you have been taught and attained in social institutions. God is unknown and unknowable. God cannot be controlled and manipulated. God can possess you; you cannot possess Him. Here is the root of fear; the mind is always afraid of anything that can possess it. The mind goes on playing games with words, ideas, philosophies. It can remain the master in this play. While dealing

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with the false, the mind stays as master but when it encounters the real, the mind is taken over and looses its freedom. Mind does not want to loose the driving seat, so the mind tries its best to avoid and escape the Real.

108. God is the first principle. First principle can never be grasped or said by mind, if mind could say it or grasp on it then obviously mind would become the first principle and God would become a second-hand reality. So if you go through logic or inference you will reach the secondhand. If you go through experience you will reach the firsthand.

109. Perception comes from three paths. Assumption, Induction and Encounter. Religion is assumption, science is induction and mysticism is encounter. Encounter is the highest level of understanding.

110. So long you hold the otherness you need knowing and understanding but irony is that so long you hold the otherness you would have no chance of true knowing and understanding.

111. Women stand as a symbol of faith, loyalty, persistence and receptivity. Our modern societies are mostly male dominant societies. In general, we hold a utilitarian view about women (and strangely women too are contributing to the promotion of this sickness in society), which is very tragic and ugly social perception about female part of humanity. We must realize that women are a

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missing part of men and men are a missing part of women; both together form the humanity.

112. The more you possess the more you are possessed, the more you are possessed the more you become unavailable to your own life.

113. A true guide never seeks to impress your mind through dissemination of knowledge and opening of debates rather he influences your feelings by the radiation of his very presence and undisturbed calm.

114. Every man is walking on his path and his path starts from within. You can not put a man on a path that does not start from within him. This inner path is fixed one in its major contours but it is always open to be mended by external conditions in its minor details. This mending comes through learning or training; a man can learn only in the direction for what he is born.

115. When there is no wind on the waterfront ... there is no wave and there is no distance between the two waves ... the waterfront as smooth as a mirror, absolutely calm ... Now you see the ocean.

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116. One evening an old man told his grandson about a battle that goes on inside people. He said, My son, the battle is between two wolves inside us all. One is Evil The other is good. The grandson thought about it for a minute and then asked his grandfather: Which wolf wins? The old man simply replied, The one you feed.

117. There is a proverb that says do not look at moon in the pond while it is available in the sky. But some people have become so much mind-addict that they can not feel the direct presence of any event. They prefer evidence over the fact itself. They want to acknowledge the things through their recorded image instead of a direct encounter with the object of thought. In fact such people are weak and coward and are afraid of their direct encounter with reality. If you would say to such a person that he has two eyes, the person would say that let me look first in the mirror. A psyche infected by doubt and denial becomes unable to host the spiritual bliss.

118. The thing that controls other people is not within them, it is within you. Every man has a snake (ego) sitting inside him; if you would provoke it, it will throw poison on you. To protect your life from the harm of other people, speak to them with love and consideration you would not find them enemy of you. Make other people believe that you are not ignoring them, you are not threatening them, you are not trespassing upon their territory then you would not find them enemy of you. Handle other people with openness, positivity, acceptance and consideration you would not find them enemy.

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119. Through life God has given me an opportunity to be and to have. It is not important in what way I am being and what I am having the pain or happiness. The great thing is that I am here to HAVE and to BE. One day I would neither HAVE nor I would BE, the whole opportunity would disappear into the unknown.

120. How the absurd can decide over absurd. Mind is part of the absurd so it is not mind that feels the absurd but it is aspiration that feels the absurd and wants to guide the mind towards the truth.

121. A true teacher never approaches you through words and understanding rather he teaches you through his presence. His very actions and style of doing the things becomes your mentor.

122. Knowing and understanding come latter but our relation to God is basic thing. This connectivity in itself is nameless. It can not be elaborated through words, terms, isms and ideas. It is present there prior to the very perception of it. It is a live, throbbing and active relation. Only death can alter it. If you would drop all language this connectivity will still be there. When we stop trying naming and terming it in different intellectual ways, this connectivity becomes even more clear and immediate. It becomes available more purely.

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123. Our social system is dying because it only persuades us to desire things. And this endless desiring makes our lives very miserable.

124. Thinking and planning about future is not a vice or unspiritual. All it sprouts from our animal nature. We have developed our living instincts through thousands of years of our past life. Thinking and planning about future and living into it are two different things. When you live in future moment at the cost of the moment of Now, you become a looser, a sick person. You may think and plan about the moment that is yet to come but letting it overwhelm you in such a way that you become disconnected from the Now is a stupid thing. Never skip across the moment of Now, think about future but live in the moment of Now. Now is life and future is only a possibility.

125. If you would attend your worries and forget God then God will multiply your worries through your own unwise deeds and if you would attend God and not your worries then God will take care of your worries in a mysterious way.

126. Life is the joy of presence, not the quality of it. Quality is a construct of mind not the life itself.

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127. Self-awareness is the ultimate asset of any individual. God has ordained it in us. In Ishq (God-seeking) we have to devote this asset for God alone. To devote it we have to worship God every moment of our life. Oneness of God does not mean that man and God are one and same. It is very destructive ideology. How can you grow in spirituality by telling a lie to yourself that you and God are the same and one? Man is creation of God and not the God Himself. If you would deny your own separate existence from God then it would undermine the very possibility of any spiritual practice because if you are considering yourself already a God then how can you initiate any spiritual effort to attain nearness of God. And if we are having faith that God Himself is responsible of all human acts then the whole moral structure of the society will collapse. The legal proceedings of the law courts will become invalid. So we should be clear about the individuality of a person and the legal and moral liabilities of it. Though only at surface, but individuality exists as a fact. In life we can not escape this concept. Though this individuality depends on God for its sustenance but the appearance of it is not a lie.

128. Truth is not to be found outside. No teacher, no scripture can give it to you. It is inside you and if you wish to attain it, seek your own company. Be with yourself.

129. If you love a flower, dont pick it up. Because if you pick it up it dies and it ceases to be what you love. So if you love a flower, let it be. Love is not about possession. Love is about appreciation.

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130. Seeking God is just like breathing in the air. It does not require any knowing or understanding; what it needs is just the presence of air and a natural urge to breathe. Truth has no name and form; all words are there just to cater the mind. To encounter the truth we need no language at all. Even saying the very word of God is just feeding the mind with a vague word and crippled concept of reality. God is not an outside reality. Saying God also includes the whole world and even the person who is saying this word or thinking about it. I do not see any books on How to breathe because there is no need for it. Animals (including man) start breathing as a birth right of them. Man-God relation is like the relation that exists between lungs and air. Education, knowing and understanding are not necessary to breathe in. If you would seek God and would also think about it then certainly you are not going to have it. Thinking about God segregates you from God. It makes God an object of mind. It draws a red line between subject and object, between worshipper and the worshipped.

131. When the ear receives subtly; it turns into a n eye. But if words do not reach the ear in the chest, nothing happens.

132. Death and life are two polarities of the same energy, of the same phenomenon - the tide and the ebb, the day and the night, the summer and the winter. They are not separate and not opposites, not contraries; they are complementaries. Death is not the end of life; in fact, it is a completion of one life, the crescendo of one life, the climax, the finale. And once you know your life and its process, then you understand what death is.

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CHAPTER - 5

Non-duality

1. The world created by thought, the world of words, language, and concepts, is the world of opposites. Up and down, this or that, inside and outside, right and wrong, black and white, true and false, positive and negative, me and you and so on. The world of words, language, thoughts, concepts, is a dualistic world of apparent opposites. But, in reality, do opposites exist? What we are really pointing to when we use the word non -duality is something that goes beyond all of these mind-made opposites. But how can we talk about something that goes beyond opposites, when even our attempt to talk about non-duality is dualistic? So, what the word non-duality actually means is really very difficult to describe or put into words. In fact, you could say its impossible. Non -duality rests in seeing or experiencing non-duality, not merely reading words. To understand non-duality, we need a non-dual mind. What we are really trying to do when we say non -duality is point to life as it is before the appearance of concepts and labels; before thought creates a world of things: table, chair, hand, foot, fear, me, you, past, future. A non-dual mind is a life before thought? Can we even talk about that? Is it possible to capture non-duality into words? You can speak about non-duality only when you are out of it. Those who have immersed into it - can not speak about it. You can believe you are not separate, but you can still feel separate, and experience yourself as separate. Theres a world of difference between simply believing that you are not separate, in other words, intellectually taking non-duality concepts on as a new belief system, and really seeing what those words are pointing to in a very deep way. A non-dual mind is a spiritually liberated mind. Though it may contain thoughts in it but it is certainly not contained in thoughts. There is a great difference between these two conditions. A liberated mind has no clinging to thoughts. A non-dual mind is like an open sky. Clouds of thoughts move here and there but the integrity of the sky remains untouched. Bird fly into it but it is not disturbed by their

flight. Or it is like water of a calm lake; fish of thought move around without leaving any trace behind.

2. Thought hears about non-duality and wants it. And it asks, How do I get it? How do I reach it? How do I see it? Who can take me there? Who can transmit it to me? Who can teach me it or give it to me? Where will I find it? It starts looking for something called non-duality. It starts waiting for it. It lives in hope. That will inevitably happen because the individual is always a seeker. A separate person is always looking for something. The spiritual seeker should seek awakening, enlightenment or a non-dual state instead of money, power and success. Non-duality is not any attainment rather it is the end of all personal attainments. It is the end of all psychology and philosophy.

3. This liberation of mind does not come through forcing the mind to be empty of contents. It is against the nature of things. Focusing the mind on void, silence, emptiness, nothingness can only bring unpleasant mind states and sometimes it may cause even a mental sickness. What we need is not thoughtless emptiness but we need an intense and furious passion that would fill the whole being of us with one pointed love-thought.

4. Oneness with God (Tawheed) means that God alone is the Creator and Sustainer of the universe including human beings. He is the only possessor of all powers. He is Omniscient, Omnipotent, and Omnipresent. That is, He knows everything, He sees everything and is present everywhere, although invisible to the naked eye.

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5. Belief in Oneness makes man humble and modest instead of being proud and arrogant. It is because belief in one Great God implies that man is His humble servant and that modesty alone befits him. Believers know that they must submit to God, on whom they depend utterly. Submission to one God results in individual freedom and dignity because all human beings become equal and all deserve our respect. There is only one God and all of us are servants of the same God. Belief in the oneness of God helps individual to live in unity with others. Belief in one Creator gives a sense of oneness with all creation. Belief in one God gives the believers confidence, for, they trust in God and believe that nothing can happen unless God wills it. Life and death are entirely in His hands. They remain content because they believe that power, wealth and success come from God alone. He gives them to whom He wants and takes them away from whom he wants. Tawheed thus brings about a unique blend of submission to God and human dignity and freedom.

6. Regardless of what spiritual background you come from, the path to God is a path of oneness. It is oneness with God in the heart and mind, which can be achieved by surrendering all lesser pursuits in our life and focusing entirely on being who we are in God. On our path we are not alone, God is with us, if we let him guide us.

7. Oneness of God does not mean that we ought to deny the existence of multiplicity of material world. If we would deny the multiplicity then the concept of Oneness would also become invalid. Though world is coming out of God but world also has its own

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identification. A fruit is a product of tree but it has its own identification too. We should not stop worshipping God on excuse that we are already one with God. God has made us to stand as witness on His oneness. Though we are one with God but God has also ordained sense of separateness in us. So it is very essential that we should allow (through worshipping) our life energy to flow back to its source. This way cycle of life gets completed and revitalized.

8. Circumstances, inherited conditioning, accumulated knowledge, are the obstacles in the way of accepting the oneness of creation and the Creator. Many are not able to do anything other than accepting the duality as reality and remain in the prison of illusion. Spiritual awakening will shake the very base walls of your belief system and understanding of life till date. The early one understands the falsity of his understanding till now the more good it is for him.

9. Our beingness is like circular water ripples. We originate and disappear. God is the axis point of all this ripple effect. Some ripples show high amplitude while others have small amplitude but all ripples share the same fate that they appear and disappear. In our individual capacity we all are ripples. For a short period of time and small place in space we appear on the surface of the ocean of infinity and disappear without leaving a trace.

10. A drop of water is valueless. But the same drop when becomes a part of ocean, acquires imperishable power, beauty, magnificence and value. We obtain the true power, dimension and value of our personality, the real fulfillment of our life, when the drop of our little heart is dropped into the oceanic heart of divine.

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11. It is not the capacity of mind to have true perception of Zero. We can not become zero with zero because if we could have done so there would remain no zero. We can have perception of zero while we stand alongside the zero as an observer. So while we say zero there is always the otherness that perceives zero. Without this otherness the perception of zero is not possible. This otherness is the basis of all perception. Because of this otherness we cannot become one with the object of perception. This otherness is constant source of agony and ignorance. To become One we have to shed off this otherness. We have to be nude of this otherness. This otherness is our darkness. Once we drop it, we will start breathing as part of divinity.

12. There is no conflict between part and the Whole. Part is simply flowing into the Whole, and the Whole is flowing into part. It is like breathing: You breathe in, you breathe out -- when you breathe in the Whole enters you, when you breathe out you enter the Whole. This is an orgasmic experience. Ocean rises into waves and waves fall back into the ocean. God as ocean and the creation as waves still give the impression of duality. This duality is created by mind. Mind is splitting the truth into center and periphery. When we realize the center then there remains no center and no periphery. We suddenly start feeling the unity of wholeness.

13. It is not a question that does God holds actuality or not but question is that is there any actuality without God. In fact every actuality holds God at its center. God and actuality are not two separate things. Where there is God there is actuality and vice versa where there is actuality there is God.

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14. Each moment is an immense opportunity of communion with God. God is heart of the world. Blood of veins is entering the heart and blood of heart is entering the veins. There is no otherness. Each moment is enjoying the beat of divine presence.

15. All is from God [Wahdat ul Shahood (Hama az oost)] God is all [Wahdat ul Wajood ( Hama oost)] are not two contradictory statements but they point out towards a single truth. Tree is from seed and seed is from tree are not two separate facts but a single fact is stated from two different angles of deliberation.

16. In the ocean you will find waves and foam on the surface, large-scale currents below the surface and the stillness of the deep ocean in regions that are far below. The waves and foam, the currents, and the deep ocean waters are not different. Water is the common element which interpenetrates all of them. But, it appears as if the waves, the currents and the deep ocean are different. So is our consciousness, all layers of it are emerging from a single source. Foam and currents and stillness of the deep all are linked together.

17. When air enters into water a bubble is formed. Water and air both are together but yet remain separate. If they mix up bubble will end up. Bubble bursts because water slowly falls down due to gravitational pull and air is released from within. Water retains air but does not interfere into it and air retains water but does not interfere into it. This is God-man relation. If both are mixed up bubble of creation will burst apart. God is both of them water and

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air. God is not only the truth but its seeker as well; God is the knower and the known.

18. God is composer of the great symphony of life. All forms are participating to play this great symphony. This symphony is rising from the unconscious matter but is conscious itself.

19. You may avoid thinking God but you can not avoid living in God. All things are living in God even a stone, a sand particle is living in God. When a man is born he is born in God. No man has ever come to live his own life; we all are living the life of God.

20. The infusion of the Universal Mind into the personal mind is like the entrance of the vastness of the outside air into the impurity of that which has long been held in some close compartment. Life is the temple of God, in this temple the greater is being blended with the lesser through which the lesser becomes one with the greater. The impurity was caused by the separation of the lesser from the greater. The purity is caused by their reunion. So we must know that God is One and all things visible and invisible are one with Him. It is separation from Him that causes suffering and pain. It is union with Him that can cure all illness that is coming from separation.

21. If you have no faith in humanity, you have no faith in God. God is truth unified and men are segments of it. God is running in deer and God is chasing the deer in leopard. What is true nature of

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the game of life mind can not understand it. In fact there is no deer, no leopard, no running and no chasing. What is there - is actually a procession of divine possibilities that is role playing within God Himself. Mind too is one of those acts being played on the stage of virtual reality.

22. If you would see the sunlight entering into your living room through a window, you may notice the dance of innumerable white bright particles in the transparent rays of sunshine and this dance of the particles does not create or cause any disturbance in the flow of light. At that time I get filled with the feeling that in the light of Self all small egos are dancing like small dust particles but the light of divine Self remains un obstructed.

23. A single wave (individual) can not hold the whole ocean in it but the ocean (God) holds all the waves in it.

24. The Seer, the Seeing and the Seen all are flicker of one reality. This is non-duality and unity of Truth. The thought that you are separate from God is God. The sense that you are apart from God is God. Any more questions?

25. There is no little or lower self in you. Actually it is the ego that tries its best to catch on the last straw. It is ego that wants to keep itself alive behind the noble robes of little or lower self. Fact is, even your ego is not your. It is Self that is having the ego experience. In suffering and evil, God enjoys His presence through a dialectical movement of thought. In ego experience, suffering and

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evil God asserts His existence through the use of opposite situations. Here God makes us understand the value of light through the darkness, value of His availability through the situations where, apparently, He appears absent. Thus God shows to us the power of His presence through the suffering of His disappearance in certain situations. Evil, suffering and ego experiences are conditions that arise in the darkness. They are being fed by the dark energy of God. Gods presence in these situations is characterized by His absence. Though this is a difficult concept to be grasped on but God is capable for both - to be or not to be. Unity of opposites is the central category of dialectics, and it is viewed sometimes as a metaphysical concept, a philosophical concept or a scientific concept. It defines a situation in which the existence or identity of a thing (or situation) depends on the co-existence of at least two conditions which are opposite to each other, yet dependent on each other and presupposing each other. For example 'upward' cannot exist unless there is a 'downward', they are opposites but they co-substantiate one another, their unity is that either one exists because the opposite is necessary for the existence of the other, one manifests immediately with the other. Hot would not be hot without cold, due to there being no contrast by which to define it as 'hot' relative to any other condition, it would not and could not have identity whatsoever if not for its very opposite that makes the necessary prerequisite existence for the opposing condition to be. This is the oneness, unity, principle to the very existence of any opposite. In fact there are no opposites, all opposites are just mental constructs that are necessary for the movement of thought.

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CHAPTER 6

Spiritual Contemplation

1. Spiritual practice is our conscious growth into God. When we contemplate what we actually do is enter into calmness and allow ourselves to be nourished and nurtured by Truth itself.

2. Spiritual Contemplation links us to God. It should not be discontinued even in the midst of worst events and circumstances. As we do not stop respiring in any kind of situation because its stoppage will bring a certain and sudden death to us. Similarly, stopping our Contemplation even for a moment is the death of that very moment of our life. A moment without Contemplation is a dead moment. It is wasted forever. It is a loss unrecoverable. One who wastes his time is the greatest fool on earth. Time is an asset more precious than jewels. Time can bring you the God-realization which money and jewels cannot.

3. In Spiritual Contemplation, when reality is contacted, the movements of our true nature sets in, then the knots of our heart start unfolding. We should know that the current of our life has turned towards the Eternal. Giving yourself up to the waves will absorb you, you do not return any more.

4. Spiritual Contemplation is like going to the bottom of the sea, where everything is calm and tranquil. On the surface there may be a multitude of waves, but the sea is not affected below. In its deepest depths, the sea is all silence. When we start meditating, first we try to reach to our own inner existence, our true existence the bottom of the sea. Then, when the waves come from the outside

world, we are not affected. Fear, doubt, worry and all the negative forces will just wash away, because inside us is solid peace. Thoughts cannot trouble us, because our mind is all peace, all silence and oneness. Like fish in the sea, they jump and swim but leave no mark. So when we are in deep of the Spiritual Contemplation we feel that we are the sea, and the animals in the sea cannot affect us. We feel that we are the sky, and all the birds flying past cannot affect us. Our mind is the sky and our heart is the infinite sea. Peace is in the beauty of silenced mind. Peace is the fragrance of surrendered heart.

5. In Spiritual Contemplation, after having detached ourselves from the mind-version of reality, we may still feel not the desired peace. It is because of the fact that we are so much conditioned with our mind that when one gets rid of mind entanglements one starts to feel that he/she now has no ground to stand on. Because we are not in the habit to see our selves in detachment to our mind.

6. The Goal of Spiritual Contemplation is to go beyond the mind. Spiritual Contemplation cannot be done by thinking. All the different paths of Spiritual Contemplation share this common feature of cultivating a silent mind. When our mind is silent we can start to enter a new consciousness, a consciousness not limited by the intellectual mind. With a quiet mind we will experience peace. Spiritual Contemplation is not a work in the sense that you have to "force" yourself to concentrate completely for long periods of time. If we consciously try to prevent thinking, it's going to have a negative impact on Spiritual Contemplation. Instead, whenever we become lost in thought or confusion, we simply acknowledge those thoughts and then gently return the attention to God. We do this as many times as distraction or thought occurs. Eventually, the mind becomes calmer and discursive thoughts begin to slow.

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7. Spiritual Contemplation isn't just sitting someplace with our eyes closed. It is a constant, direct relationship with the essence of us in the moment of Now. When one is truly meditative there is always stillness, because the act of Spiritual Contemplation takes place from the awareness of movement instead of being a captive of movement through reacting to it. When it's time to be still, let you be still... and just see all that isn't. Then don't react or identify with all that isn't. Let go all the noise, the fitfulness that is pulling you left and right, revisiting the past, planning the future, getting caught up with how much you want to be a good spiritual person. Watch it all. If you work at this, and are willing to enter into it, slowly and certainly you will begin to realize that the reason you have not been able to be still is because you have not understood that who you are is not the noise.

8. Our imagination can travel across the globe within no time; perhaps the power of imagination is the fastest thing (though it is not a thing) in the world, even faster than electricity. But when we embark upon a journey practically, we have to travel the path stepby-step and stage-by-stage. Spiritual Contemplation is no exception. Spiritual Contemplation is not a one day cricket match or instant coffee thing. It is a gradual uphill task. Only firm resolve and constantly stepping forward can help us in this hard land. If we lack these two qualities we are bound to fail miserably. Go slow, pause and rethink at new and odd turns, consume your life energy safely and economically, avoid haste and undue apprehensions and above all have firm faith and trust in your Lord. This last quality in you will never let you down on the path of spirituality.

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9. Future is not part of time; it is only part of desire. Ordinarily you think that past, present and future are divisions of time. You are wrong. They are not divisions of time. Time is only present, always present, never otherwise. Past is just in the memory, in the mind. It is not part of time; it is part of the mind. And future is also part of the mind the desire. Past, the memory; future, the desire. And between the two is the very small moment, the atomic moment of time which is present, which is always present. Time comes always as now. If you are missing the Now, you are missing the life.

10. Spiritual Contemplation is not thinking of an object; it is transference of consciousness from the subjectivity of yours and from the objectivity of the object to a central point which is transcendent to both. That is the divinity. You contemplate like this. This is what they call total thinking, and this is the essence of Spiritual Contemplation. You must transfer yourself to the middle point where you have no attachment to yourself any more. Neither is you attached to yourself nor to the object; you are a totally impersonal, isolated, transcendent being which is the controlling principle of both yourself and the other. And there are degrees of this involvement until it reaches the Absolute. This is how you have to contemplate.

11. You cannot concentrate on something with a desire for something else. Your mind is the same as your desire. As a cloth is made up of threads, the mind is made up of thoughts. What are the things that you require? If there is a chaos in the way of your assessment of desires, and if you are not very clear as to what it is

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that you really need in this world, the mind will not be prepared for Spiritual Contemplation or concentration. You will be able to concentrate on that which you desire. You cannot concentrate on anything which you do not desire. Or, to put it more plainly, you can concentrate your mind only on that for which you have deep affection from the bottom of your heart. You cannot concentrate on anything for which you have no affection. Some people say, "concentrate! on the dot on a wall"; "concentrate on the flame of a candle"; "concentrate on a rose flower, or a streak of light." All right; these are wonderful methods of concentration. But, is your heart there, really? Is your heart welling up with joy because it is thinking of a dot on the wall? Or, do you consider it as a kind of imposition inflicted upon you by a hard taskmaster? Is Spiritual Contemplation a kind of unpleasant discipline that is imposed upon you by someone? Or, is it a joyful, spontaneous outpouring of your own feeling, because you want it? These are certain aspects of the background of thought, which you have to keep in mind. How can you love or be affectionate towards a dot on the wall, as you know very well that it has no meaning? But somebody tells you that it is good to concentrate on it, and so you are doing some forced attempt of concentration on that particular thing, which is the dot. Object of Spiritual Contemplation should be "beloved object". That which your mind cannot accept as beloved cannot become an object of attraction; therefore, it cannot become an object of concentration also. You will go on thinking that you are Contemplating; for years together you will be humming something and thinking something. After even twenty years of Contemplation, you will find that you have received nothing, practically, because you have undergone a discipline, like a school-going activity imposed upon you, but your heart was elsewhere. One who loves God wholeheartedly can also practice Contemplation wholeheartedly. But he who loves paltry things in this world, the petty little tinsels which look attractive and beautiful and very worthwhile, but forgets what is really valuable in life - such a person cannot Contemplate spiritually. The ultimate object of Spiritual Contemplation is that which will give you salvation, that which will free you from suffering. Who can save

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you in this world, except that which is not of this world? This world is brittle like a glass. It will vanish like a wisp of wind one day or the other. There is something immortal, which is essential in this cosmos. They call it God Almighty, the Absolute, the Supreme Being. On That you have to Contemplate. The mind has to be led to that Supreme Being, which alone can be called the The beloved object. Nothing else can attract you. Otherwise, it will go jumping here and there because it has not chosen its real object. Deep Contemplation by the power of will should be get blended with the feeling for God.

12. Spiritual Contemplation is the steady, uninterrupted focus on God. This is the principal spiritual activity. Thinking of God now and then cannot be called Spiritual Contemplation. Spiritual Contemplation is thinking of God at all times, under all circumstances. It is a continuous, unceasing process.

13. The seeker's folly is that he believes he is somehow capable of refusing the very Source that sustains him. Awareness gives rise to the sense that there is a "me." The question is, is that me actually there? Or is there just the sense that it is?

14. "All theologies are like straws His Sun burns to dust Knowing takes you to the threshold, but not through the Door Nothing can teach you if you don't unlearn everything How learned I was, before Revelation made me dumb."

15. Self is nothing more than a knot in the fabric of Life. Whether tightly wound or completely unraveled, it is all the garment

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of this Love. An impulse arises to give voice to the mystery of this And yet nothing comes - no words, no thoughts, no images - only this unspeakable Love that is the death of everything the mind imagines it might be.

16. An image in the mirror is not a local thing. Mirror is not producing it rather it is just projecting it to the eyes of the viewer. It relates not to the mirror but to the body standing in front of the mirror. So is our self, it is a live image of Gods real Self into the mirror of our consciousness. Ordinarily, our consciousness mistakenly assumes that this image of self is its own standalone characteristic. And thus becomes oblivious to the Real Self. Awakening to the Real Self is called enlightenment. The moment when mirrored -self becomes awakened to its source that very moment God-seeking starts in us.

17. Silence that follows Spiritual Contemplation is always charged with feelings for God. State of Trans in Spiritual Contemplation and withdrawal of senses in sleep are different in nature. The difference between Trans and sleep is what is between light and darkness or between day and night. Through sleep we renew our bio-energies whereas through Trans in Spiritual Contemplation we transform our bio-energies into self-awareness. Sleep is a transitory condition because we go into sleep and we come out of it. Through Spiritual Contemplation we target to remove all transitory conditions so that Truth may shine in its fullness. In sleep awareness comes down to a dormant state but in Spiritual Contemplation it glows and shines in full alertness. No doubt sleep is essential for a healthy life; food and sleep give us feathers but Spiritual Contemplation makes us fly.

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18. The simpler and more easeful the Spiritual Contemplation is the more deeply it will be effective. This is a universal principle in the realm of inner development and experience. How is this? In the inner world of Spiritual Contemplation things are often just the opposite of the way they are in the outer world. Whereas in the outer world a strong aggressive force is most effective in producing a change, in the inner world it is subtle, almost minimal force or movement that is most effectual even supremely powerful. This is why the simple subtle intonations of mantra are the strongest and most effective tool for transformation. There are no higher techniques of mantra recitation but through its regular and prolonged practice there are higher experiences and effects that will open up for the performer. By and by the efficiency of the practice and the resulting depth of inner experience will increase gradually.

19. The process of Spiritual Contemplation is a turning of the human consciousness from the egoistic state - absorbed in the outward appearances and attractions of things - to a higher state in which the Transcendent start pouring Himself into the individual mould to transform it. The first determining element of the spiritual experience is, therefore, the intensity of the turning, the force which directs the consciousness inward. The power of aspiration of the heart, the force of the will, the concentration of the mind, the perseverance and determination of the applied energy are the signs of that intensity.

20. One of the most serious pitfalls of the spiritual path is an imbalance between ones inner and outer evolution. Some

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misguided seekers suppress their psychological issues, fears and natural desires in the name of the quest for enlightenment. They see their outer reality as a threat to inner peace and stillness, and neglect their emotional development by spending too much time in Spiritual Contemplation and solitude. If one becomes overly attached to the peace and calm of Spiritual Contemplation, or spends excessive amounts of time alone, one tends to develop an unhealthy fear of the world, with its many challenges and distractions. The completion of the human personality requires that we engage in a well-balanced relationship with the world, for one can never be truly whole without psychological stability and emotional maturity.

21. Sleep or sleepiness is the most difficult thing to overcome in Spiritual Contemplation. Anybody who sits on the cushion and calms down the mind a little bit is immediately assaulted by sleepiness. Each time sleepiness comes, it is important that one gets rid of this impediment to Spiritual Contemplation. Sleepiness comes from lack of commitment. Sleep is not all powerful thing. If one tries to continue practice well, the time for sleep diminishes bit by bit. Do not try to keep to the sleeping rather come back to your practice vigorously. Come back to your practice with full investment of your energy sleep will not trap you unnecessarily.

22. If you are feeling silent and a spiritual space within, you can trust that you have entered the bliss of Spiritual Contemplation. Spiritual Contemplation actually is going beyond mind; the mind cannot manage it. So if something in Spiritual Contemplation is happening, you can trust it totally. The questions arise only when you come back to mind. When your Spiritual Contemplation is only for a few moments and then you are back to mind then mind starts creating distrust. That is the nature of mind, to

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create distrust. It starts creating questions. But when you are in Spiritual Contemplation those few moments mind cannot speak at all. For those few moments, mind virtually does not exist; its function stops.

23. The aim of Spiritual Contemplation is not to eliminate the thoughts because it is unnatural and impossible to do so. To think is our very nature; we cannot expel it from our nature. Rather through Spiritual Contemplation we do replace lower multiple thoughts with one cardinal and pure thought of God. And we become so immersed in one pure thought of God that all other petty thoughts and mental entanglements are bypassed.

24. To think is very nature of mind. We can not separate sight from eyes, hearing from ears, taste from tongue and thinking from brain. It is the limit of our human capacity. No one can eliminate it, even the feeling of its elimination under any induced state of mind would itself be a thought. It is a beast within. In its natural state it is a wild animal but good thing is that we can tame it, we can change it. It can work for our benefit. Spiritual Contemplation is the art of taming this beast, this enemy - that is within. Through Spiritual Contemplation we can transform this foe into a friend. In its wild state, thought can scrap away all our personal energies and potential. We have to tame it in order to attain our lost liberation. It is the inherent weakness of mind that it can not think about two things simultaneously. When we adopt one thought the other has to leave us. In Spiritual Contemplation we exploit this weakness of mind to our benefit. We harness the mind to a nucleic thought of one God so that it might return back from its peripheral entanglements. Through Spiritual Contemplation we make God such a loud thought in us that all other thoughts gradually fade away within us. All smaller stars on the horizon of our inner sky get vanished in the presence of the Sun

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of God. God fills all the space available within us. There is no space left for mind to stray away.

25. Even though you may experience some peace when you start in Spiritual Contemplation, don't be in a hurry to congratulate yourselves. Likewise, if there is some confusion, don't blame yourself and run away. If things seem to be good, don't delight in them, and if they're not good don't be averse to them. Just look at it all, look at what you have. Just look, don't be attached with. If it's good don't hold fast to it; if it's bad, don't cling to it. Good and bad both can sting, so don't hold fast to them.

26. Spiritual Contemplation is the art of dying. Your ego is at risk. Because your ego is not going to grow; your ego is going to die in Spiritual Contemplation. You are going to be born with a new face.

27. Spiritual Contemplation is different from concentration. In concentration there is a performer who concentrates and there is an object being concentrated upon. In concentration you have to apply psychic force to bind the mind with the object of thought. In Spiritual Contemplation there is nobody inside and there is nobody outside. It is not concentration. There is no division between the in and the out. The IN goes on flowing into the OUT; the out goes on flowing back into the IN. The demarcation, the boundary, the border, no longer exists. The in is out, the out is in; it is a play of non - dual consciousness. While concentration is a play of duality: that's why concentration creates tiredness and exhaustion. And you cannot concentrate for twenty-four hours; you will have to take holidays to rest. Concentration can never become your nature.

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Spiritual Contemplation does not tire and exhaust you. Spiritual Contemplation can become a twenty-four hour thing - day in, day out, year in, year out. It can become eternity. It is relaxation itself. Concentration is an act, a willed act. Spiritual Contemplation is a relaxation. It is falling back to your own nature. It feels always pleasant.

28. All men have some level of intelligence, even the illiterate people are not without intelligence, though there approach is very simple, direct and practical. They believe in cause and effect. Even a crow is not without intelligence. The crow knows how to break a dried up piece of bread when it dips the hardened piece of bread into pond of water to make it soft and eatable. It is practical wisdom, practical philosophy that comes through experience but Spiritual Contemplation is not a philosophy at all. Spiritual Contemplation comes through exposure. As ripening comes to crops through regular exposure to sunlight; God-realization comes to us through our regular exposure to divine presence. Always remember that God-realization is not the attainment but it is pure revelation. It happens when you are nowhere, no one. It happens when there is eternity, no time, no space.

29. A great dancer once commented, When my dance comes to its crescendo, I am no more. Only dance is. But that happens only for a small fragment of time; then again you are back ... Music, poetry, dance, love are only half way. You disappear for a moment, and then you are back. And the moment is so small ... Poetry, music, dance, love - are poor substitutes for Spiritual Contemplation. They are good and beautiful but they are not Spiritual Contemplation. And Spiritual Contemplation does not come naturally to you, because in it you will have to disappear forever. There is no coming back. That creates fear.

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Spiritual Contemplation is a death - death of all that you are now. Of course there will be a resurrection and that will be a totally new, fresh existence, which you are not even aware is hidden in you. It happens in poetry, in music, in dance, only for a small moment that you slip out of your personality and touch your pure beingness. But only because it happens for a small moment, you are not afraid; you always come back. In Spiritual Contemplation, once you are gone in, you are gone in; there is no possibility of coming back again. That's why it creates fear.

30. Spiritual Contemplation is not something that a seeker has at will rather it is Spiritual Contemplation that is having the seeker without his consent. In the beginning Spiritual Contemplation may appear as part of suffering. For a mind-man Spiritual Contemplation is not something to be proud of rather it is a bad bargain to him. It is only for those who are already IN. The maximum that a seeker knows is that he is choiceless; he has no idea about where he is going and why he is going. He does not know whether it is some superior quality or some psychic weakness. If this is a play of absurdity then the seeker is doomed to play it inescapably and if it is some blessing thing even then he has not played any part to bring it upon him. It is God-developed and God-sustained state. Simply he cannot live without it, the more he runs away of it the more intensely it sucks him back. Though he is yet stumbling in the darkness but positive thing is that he always has some inner feeling that all this will not go in waste. He feels that the truth and the golden moment is not far off, it is moving alongside him but there is a glass wall in-between. He can feel its presence across the foggy glass-wall but it is not allowing itself to be exposed upon his senses.

31. Through Spiritual Contemplation we disengage our awareness from outer objects and allow it to be aligned with the

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inner reality. Let Spiritual Contemplation do work upon you, it wants to uplift you, it wants to transform you in divinity. But you are very much afraid of it because you do not want to be changed, you are afraid of your own liberation, you are afraid of your own inner reality.

32. If you want to be successful in Spiritual Contemplation then you can not do so by antagonizing the mind. Mind is not an evil but it can be used in evil ways. An undisciplined mind is the greatest obstruction in the way of God-realization. Befriend your mind. Train it to be stilled in divinity. Do not consider it your spiritual enemy. Mind helps you in exploring your inner reality. By abusing your mind you are cursing and crippling your own inner potential. We should not conspire against the dignity of mind. Conflict of any type proves to be a spiritual disaster and when you are conflicting with nature and your own mind then the outcome may be madness.

33. All those who do not do their Spiritual Contemplation are dead even if they lived an age of 150 years of healthy and prosperous life. Life does not begin from the pulmonary pumping but it begins only from our first breath taken in submission to God.

34. Each and every state that washes over us is replaced with another state that washes over us in the form of a reaction or resistance to the initial state. Thus, we are never truly in possession of ourselves; our lives are secretly spent running through a series of being possessed by these mechanically alternating states. Think about what it would be like to be more than any mental or emotional state. The purpose of discovering your real internal life is to show you that

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there is something within you that is already much more than any one of these states, or all of them combined. We have the Ground within us upon which these waves of states both move and break. But rather than living upon the Ground that these waves break over, we continually identify and find ourselves in the ever-rolling waves. As long as we continue to find ourselves in these waves, the only thing that we will be is dominated. We'll continue to feel ourselves as victims, longing again and again to possess ourselves, all the while thinking in a response to some wave that just broke over us that, "if only I had 'this' or owned 'that' my life wouldn't be so unsteady." When you refuse to give yourself over to any state that ordinarily dominates you, for the first time you are conscious of the state and the ground it is rolling over. Do you see this? Here's a spiritual fact that will help you to develop this necessary new and higher selfdiscernment. All of your emotional states are visitors. They are not you. They are not self. They are part of you only to the degree you identify your self with them. Therefore, when these psychic visitors come, your ability to recognize them as visitors does what? All of a sudden there's you and the state you are confronting. There's you and the condition that before has dominated you because you didn't recognize it as being a visitor. You thought it was something you had to go along with because you thought it was "you". By keeping your attention to where it belonged (on the ground and not on the waves), you don't give yourself away to something that doesn't belong to you. Instead, you find your new sense of "I" within you. As you can begin waking up to the presence of these visiting states and work to deliberately detach yourself from their inner-influences, you won't lose yourself to them. This is an elementary but powerful form of self-command. Find that immovable ground that is inside of you. Learn to live there by working to not let your life be lived out by visiting states.

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35. Our consciousness has to protect itself from the external assaults in the same way as a tortoise does. When the hounds find a creeping tortoise they try to make it their hunt. But tortoise withdraws its vulnerable limbs inside its armor. It does not make or show any movement and pretends to hounds that it is a nonliving creature. Hounds know its trick but they feel helpless and reluctantly go away. When the assault, propagated by lower mind, does not affect our consciousness then mind becomes confused and starts loosing its grip and force. When our consciousness is alert and well trenched to safeguard its integrity, it starts ignoring the urges propagated by ego-mind and takes no action upon them, it simply lets go all the traps thrown by ego-mind. This way ego-mind gets discouraged for the future and each subsequent try by it will possess lesser force of attack.

36. Whether immature, or naive, or whether there's no understanding at all, it makes no difference. This inner journey of God-realization is made or lost with what is in the heart. Learn to let your heart answer those things in the darkness that want to hurt you. Do that and you will gradually find yourself making your way through the darkness.

37. To really "start over" is not a mental process, although the mind must be used for the approach -- much as a ladder leads up to a wall -- but can't take you over to the other side -- a leap is needed.

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38. A certain kind of loneliness, of feeling ourselves all alone, is a necessary portion of the path to the higher life. This sense of being alone comes out of realizing the inherent limitations in our actual relationships in this life, combined with a growing spiritual longing to commune with others in a deep and meaningful way. Go through this. We easily forget that there is God, a Great Intelligence that guides the steps of anyone who is willing to offer himself before God. This same Intelligence will lead you to new relationships, inner and outer ones, in which not only will you be able to grow in your God-seeking but to live a balanced worldly life.

39. Before you can change the course of and learn to design your own destiny, you must first gain access to that secret place within yourself where your own future is being created moment by moment. Yes, there is such a location. It's real. And yes, you can learn to dwell there and direct your destiny.

40. Dirt on diamond cannot belittle its worth. No amount of material gain or loss can affect the real worth of our essence. Our real self is non-physical in its nature. It cannot be polluted, degraded or upgraded by the physical objects, acts or situations. As a sheet of paper has no worth in itself but its worth is determined by the artwork painted on it. The sum total worth of our existence is always equal to our awakening to God.

41. We are so adamant in the habit of identifying ourselves with the darkness inside us that when, in the wake of

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Spiritual Contemplation, the darkness starts to recede and diminish, a fear speaks from within us that what will happen after the collapse of the (so called) king of our being (Ego). We fear that the whole kingdom of our physical being will face chaos and a total loss of selfcontrol will disastrously hit us. But believe me this is the last trick that the devil (ego) inside us is playing with us to beg for its survival. The collapse of the ego will not cause any chaos or identity crises in us but rather our true identity will dawn upon us. We shall become light weighted and illumined. The snake, when sheds its slough, does not loose its personality or the self-control but rather it gains a new better look and grace. Though in the case of snake the new skin will turn itself into another slough with the passage of time because the snake is replacing a physical thing with another physical thing but when we the humans shed our slough of Ego and gain our true divine vesture, it brings a fundamental and molecular change in us. We become metamorphosed forever. We are now promoted from the lower to the higher, from the imperfection to the perfection, from the pollution to the purity, from the individual to the cosmic, from the mortality to the eternity and from the meanness of the physical to the grace of the transcendence.

42. How can you see an existence that is everywhere, unless you also become everywhere? If you also become everywhere, then you will see that - which everywhere is. You are only in one place, and the God is everywhere, so there is a contradiction between your existence and God's existence.

43. Do not obstruct or suppress the coming of offensive thoughts, let them come freely but do not host them or give them your precious life energy, with the passage of time these naughty and harmful thoughts will wither away and will vanish ultimately. Because everything that comes is bound to go; this is the law of

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nature. It is God alone that never comes and never goes. God is eternal and infinite and seeking of God also must not know any bounds.

44. Leisure is a gift to a divine seeker. The seeker can use it to establish him in God-seeking. If he wastes away his time of leisure then God may put him again in the rut of daily labor.

45. The one purpose behind every spiritual practice is to bring you to the point where you can completely transcend the mind. What happens then is that the mind's prison walls will become more and more transparent and eventually, you can just walk through it and be free.

46. Every God seeker ultimately has to become alone with God. This aloneness is fate of every God seeker because it is this aloneness in which our reunion with God becomes possible. God seekers loose interest in all worldly things and relations around and in response the worldly things also stop taking interest in a God seeker. A communication gap appears between a God seeker and people around. This communication gap leads a God seeker to the required level of aloneness.

47. God is neither the content of any idea nor an object of mental search, but the supra-mental infinite being that transcends all mental phenomena while supporting them. Even man is more than, and transcends, any thought that may rise in him and that he may witness, deal with or dismiss. Like the ladders used for climbing over

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the roof become irrelevant when one is reached on roof, similarly once we are awakened to the presence of God, mental instruments have served their purpose and are no more helpful for going deep into the spiritual experience.

48. Human beings are of two basic types: intellectual and instinctual. By intellectual is not meant academic or scholarly, but those who are more centered in their intelligence comparing to their senses, emotions, or physical bodies. Most people live in an instinctual, reactive manner, rarely letting their intelligence take the lead, and often only use their intelligence to fake up justifications for their irrational (instinctual) behavior. Patiently, little by little, a man must free himself from all mental distractions, with the aid of the intelligent will. He must fix his mind upon God and should never think obsessively of anything else. No matter where the restless and the unquiet mind wanders, it must be drawn back and made to submit to God alone. How easy it all sounds but how tremendously difficult it is to pass from dream to awakening, from inner childhood to inner adulthood. It is a literal life-or-death struggle. And to succeed it must be constant. You must know Him who is above the intelligent will. Get control of the mind through spiritual discrimination. We are ourselves the answer, the secret of success in spiritual striving.

49. At first we have to learn to bear the shocks of the world with the central part of our being untouched and silent, even when the surface mind and heart are strongly shaken; unmoved there on the bedrock of our life, we must separate the consciousness watching behind or immune deep within from these outer workings of our nature. Afterwards, extending this calm and steadfastness of the detached consciousness into all our actions, it will become slowly

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possible to radiate peace from the luminous centre to the darker peripheries.

50. Too many people seek freedom and end up in their ideas and knowledge about enlightenment. Their ideas and knowledge end up being a hindrance to their enlightenment rather than being helpful. Because words, eventually, become knowledge, they become something you "know" and in that knowing, you no longer go where they point to. And so everyone goes from one teaching to the next, changing their techniques, their beliefs, their practice and still nothing happens, they remain stuck in the mind. You have glimpses of the truth and then it disappears again. God Realization is not a mental or intellectual shift, it is an energetic shift.

51. Witnessing is not the work of mind witnessing is not the annihilation of mind but it is mastery over mind. If there will be no mind there will be no mastery.

52. Knowing and understanding are broken bridges; they can not connect us with our God. The only valid medium for mediation is conscious breathing. I am not saying breath-watching but I say conscious-breathing. There is lot of difference between the two. In breath-watching we try to concentrate upon breath by using our mind powers whereas in conscious-breathing we try to evolve a no-mind state with the help of detachment. Conscious-breathing is not thinking about our breath but instead we let ourselves sink into the no-mind state by letting go all the thought process. Detachment is the key to no-mind state. Breathing is the only vital connection between man and God. Breathing is more vital than knowing and understanding. Breathing is Gods gift to all creation. It is that natural

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thread that brings us back to our originator. Do not assume that breathing is specific only to living organisms instead each and every particle of the universe is constantly breathing into God (at atom/quark level this breathing is characterized by On and Off blinks of energy).

53. Our ego-life is full of fears, failures, losses, conflicts, humiliations and other psychosomatic sufferings. While living through life there is no escape from them. The only way that can liberate us is available through waking to our own inner reality. This inner reality of us is also permeating the whole universe. We can not know it through bookish knowledge but through the direct knowledge. As when in a cold day, we sit in sunlight we get the direct knowledge of sun and its sunshine. If you let yourself be influenced by God, you will know your own inner reality and the whole creation will become available to your understanding.

54. In spiritual journey never assume that God belongs only to the Inner. God belongs to the Outer too. Spiritual experience that is based only on interior is incomplete; it needs to be perfected by the experience of the exterior (world).

55. Keep knocking at the door of God. Some times He will allow you to come IN and some times your entry will be disallowed. When your entry is disallowed do not take it as rejection. Be available and surrendered. When you are allowed IN then it is proof that your love for God has been acknowledged. But when you are disallowed it is proof of Gods love for you. God wants you to be more established, elevated and prepared for the next higher level

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entry. Through tantalization God wants us to be available to any new lesson that God wants to teach us.

56. Those who are enlightened know well that philosophy is not going to help. The more you try to know about enlightenment, the more you become ignorant. The very effort to know leads you astray. Enlightenment can only be lived through and cannot be known. When I say it can be lived through, I mean you can be present to it; it can be present to you. There is a possibility of a meeting. There is a possibility of becoming one with it. But there is no way to know it. Enlightenment cannot be objectified. You cannot put it there and see it. You cannot hold it in your hand and see it. You cannot examine it from the outside -- only from the inside, only by becoming one with it, can you feel it. Feeling is the only knowledge possible. Hence, those who are IN say: total submission is the way.

57. Once you start dropping thoughts, the dust that you have collected in the past, the flame arises -- clean, clear, alive, young. Your whole life becomes a flame - a flame without any smoke. That is what awareness is. Consciousness without thinking: that's what awareness is. Being alert and with no thought.

58. There would be some moments, when you would see and feel yourself like a master -- the same grace, the same awareness, the same silence; the same world of beatitudes, of blessings, of benediction. These are moments and glimpses of your own center. They cannot be permanent; again and again you will be thrown back to the periphery. And then it will look weird. Then you will see that "I am not understanding at all; stupid, sad, frustrated; missing the

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meaning of life -- because you exist on two planes: the plane of the periphery and the plane of the center. But, by and by, the weirdness will disappear. By and by, you will become capable of moving from the periphery to the center and from the center to the periphery very smoothly -- just as you walk into your house and out of your house. You don't create any dichotomy. Same way, a man of awareness and understanding moves from periphery to center and from center to periphery. He never gets fixated anywhere. From being extrovert to being introvert -- he continuously goes on moving, because these two are his wings, they are not against each other. They may be balanced in opposite directions -- they have to be; if both the wings are on one side, the bird cannot fly into the sky -- they have to be balancing, they have to be in opposite directions, but still they belong to the same bird, and they serve the same purpose. Your outside and your inside are your wings. If you have chosen only one wing and if frustration comes out of it, it is natural. With one wing frustration is bound to come. Relate with others, but relate with yourself also. Love others, but love yourself also. Go out! The world is beautiful, adventurous; it is a challenge, it enriches. Don't lose that opportunity! Whenever the world knocks at your door and calls you, go out! Go out fearlessly -there is nothing to lose, there is everything to gain. But don't get lost. Don't go on and on and get lost. Sometimes come back home. Sometimes forget the world -- those are the moments for Spiritual Contemplation. If you want to become balanced, each day, you should balance the outer and the inner. They should carry the same weight, so that inside you never become lopsided. Be in the world, but don't be of the world. Be in the world, but don't allow the world to be in you. When you come home, you come home -- as if the whole world has disappeared. And a real man of understanding becomes divine -- divine in the sense that he is in the world and yet he remains out of it; on the periphery and yet he remains mindful of his center. Doing a thousand and one things, yet he remains a non-doer. In tremendous activities, but he is never lost. His inner light burns bright. When you are Contemplating, always remember that the periphery is not to be lost permanently. You have to come to the periphery again

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and again so the route remains clear and the path remains there. Hence my insistence is to Contemplate but not to renounce the world. Contemplate in the morning and then go to the market; Contemplate in the morning and then go to your office. Contemplate and then make love! Don't create any dichotomy, don't create any conflict. Don't say, "Now how can I love? I am a seeker. Then you are moving in a dangerous direction; sooner or later you will lose all contact with the periphery. Then you will become frozen at the center. And life consists of being alive - changing, moving. Life is dynamic, it is not being dead.

59. Each time the mind-stream is cut it lowers the momentum of mind, and cutting the mind-stream lots of times is more important than the length of time it is cut, as that will take care of itself. Keep coming back and just see what happens.

60. The gradual inward progress is mostly silent and unseen, like the quiet unfolding of a bud into flower in the hours of the night. Therefore, do not be dejected. Do not depress yourself with the idea that you are not progressing. Real spiritual progress is really and accurately measured by the peacefulness, serenity, and calmness that you manifest in waking state. You will have a healthy body and mind, the excretions will be scanty, the voice will be sweet, the face will be brilliant, and the eyes will be lustrous. You will be ever calm, tranquil, and poised; you will be ever cheerful, fearless, and contented. There will be no attraction for the world. Things that used to upset you before will not upset you now. You will have an unruffled mind. You will have introversion. Things that used to give you pleasure produce disgust or a reverse effect now. You will have a one-pointed, sharp, subtle mind. You will be longing to have more Spiritual Contemplation. The idea that all forms are forms of the Lord

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will get stronger and stronger in you. You will feel everywhere the presence of God. You will experience the nearness of God.

61. Discard all you are not and go ever deeper. Just as a man digging a well discards what is not water, until he reaches the water-bearing strata, so must you discard what is not your own, till nothing is left which you can disown. You will find that what is left is nothing which the mind can hook on to. You are not even a human being. You just are - a point of awareness, co-extensive with time and space and beyond both.

62. Right at the center of the center inside you there is a point of wholeness, there is a point of infinity. It is up to you whether you decide to stand by the side of your limited nature or you choose to stand by that point of infinity that is called divine.

63. You are not your mind but you are something in which mind is flowing IN and OUT IN and OUT, you are the space in which clouds of thoughts are floating moving IN and moving OUT. You are the center, you are the infinity. Some day when your time would come - you would start exploding into the light of self-realization. Our enlightenment is not something of a kind that has to be achieved; it is already there, it is our very nature. It is the simplest thing in the world, and that has made it the most difficult. Going within yourself just needs a small push, and that push need not be physical. It is not physical; it is more something like magnetic energy, or something more like electricity. Enlightenment is not something to be learned; it is not something like a teaching or a discipline. It is a way of receptivity, of opening, of allowing the master (God) to enter in you. You have to drop your defenses, thats

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all. You have simply to be open and available. Keep your doors open. At the right moment the master is going to step in not physically, but just His divine energy is going to give a new dance to your being.

64. Your outer nature is physical and causal but your deeper nature is divine. The outer is a gateway to the inner and deeper. To reach the inner outer has to be harnessed. Focused mind state is required for the blooming of your inner nature.

65. The reality is that what you call the heart is just a part of your mind. The mind has many capacities: thinking, feeling, imagination, dreaming, and self-hypnosis - these are all qualities of mind. In fact there is no heart as such; everything is being done by the mind. We have lived with this traditional division that imagination is from mind and feelings and emotions are from the heart. But your heart is just a pumping system. Everything that you think or imagine or feel is confined into the mind. Your mind has several hundred centers and they control everything. In Spiritual Contemplation, heart or mind is synonymous. The emphasis is on focus. A mind that is focused positively becomes your guide to the door of God.

66. God-realization is not a single episode play but God realization, actually, comprises a series of realizations over a lengthy span of time. There are primary, secondary and higher realizations. Seeker travels his spiritual journey from one spiritual state to the next one. Each state brings new experience and it also prepares and capacitates the seeker to have the experience of next higher state of realization.

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67. Difference between forced mental states and mystic experience is as wide as there is a difference between rape and love making. In rape action is one way, participation and will of the other part is absent but in love making there is a sense of participation and response. In real mystic experience there is God on the other side, who wants you to be successful in your pursuit of God realization. He guides you and protects you from being strayed. God is great mentor and protector. So it is advised to a seeker that whenever you feel that your action is one way and there is no participation of God hold back and better to discontinue that action.

68. Why one should do Spiritual Contemplation? Before expecting any answer to this query one should ask himself Why should we eat, breathe and bath? Obviously the answer that comes to my mind is because these are essentials of living. Or, we should ask that why a rose bud should blossom into its fullness. Spiritual Contemplation is an essential for a refined and accomplished life. It caters to our more refined and deeper psychic needs. In winter when we feel cold, we like to sit in the sunshine. In darkness, to find our path we need some light. Spiritual Contemplation provides us with that very sunshine, with that very light. It is flowering of our own inner potential. If we do not explore this inner potential in our life time then we do not die better than a street dog. Spiritual Contemplation is an opportunity to go beyond animality and live a divine life.

69. There is no exhaustion, frustration or feeling of imperfection in Spiritual Contemplation. It is not a mind work so it would never exhaust you. It has no beginning or end. There is no

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haste in it. It is not a doing at all rather it is a disconnection from all doing, so it would never make you feel exhausted or frustrated. If still you feel so, rest assured that you are not in Spiritual Contemplation, you are still moving in the orbit of ego power.

70. Do not throw your life problems under the carpet. If you would do so you can never grow in your Spiritual Contemplation. There is a lot of difference between Spiritual Contemplation and a forced spiritual discipline. In a forced spiritual discipline psychic knots and personal problems are still there because the seeker constantly fails to handle them properly. He paints them with his color of choice, labels them and throws them into the space of his subconscious mind. But problems are problems they would not go away unless handled properly. So the junk of these problems gathers and piles up in subconscious. It gets piled up to such a level that it starts frightening you in your sleeps. And in more severe cases it turns into sleep-shocks. Whenever you fall into sleep, the population of your subconscious gives you a shock and you are reawakened with a sick feeling. Your own subconscious becomes an unfaceable horror for you. But Spiritual Contemplation is not a forced spiritual discipline because you consider yourself as a part and parcel of this world. World does not stand outside of God. So the problems of life are also part of the game here. They are welcomed in a positive sense and are handled properly.

71. Silence is the playground of Spiritual Contemplation. And what is this silence? Obviously, silence is the absence of noise but what is this noise. Thought and Emotion are noise. We can not advance on the spiritual path without attaining mastery over this inner noise. Thought and emotion both influence each other. We can not control or change the one in isolation to the other. There co-action resembles the two hands when we rub them they both build heat into

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each other. Intensity of emotion brings intensity of thought and intensity in thought inevitably results into a surge in emotions. We can not annihilate them but we can hush up them through detachment, through letting them pass away unattended. Simply notice that a thought or emotion has appeared, without placing any bias or judgment upon it. Do not pay any further attention to thought or emotion; just allow it to drop away. Continue your practice without concernjust let whatever thoughts, emotions or experiences come up, stay without either attempting to repress them or attach the awareness to them. Maintain your focus upon an effortless visualization of doing your practice. If you would not discontinue, if you would just keep your Doing alive then all the distractions will eventually lose their influence upon the awareness. Only your selfless action can harness and tame the beasts of thought and emotion in you.

72. How many seekers have wasted their lives in fighting with their erroneous perceptions about God and God-realization? They have wasted all their life energies in an effort to still the mind, to annihilate the thoughts. Tell me if anyone has ever succeeded to live a life by stilling his lungs by annihilating the breathing. Certainly no one has ever succeeded in normal conditions to do so. Lungs are organ of breathing. In the same way brain is an organ of thinking and only through thinking we can live a spiritual life. God seeking is in fact God-thinking. We have to concentrate our thinking maximum on God. We must feel maximum the presence of God through our own presence. We must make God-thinking so intensified that if our mind strays into any other direction then it should feel suffocation, it should feel that it has become short of oxygen. There is a natural urge to breathe in respiration but in God-seeking we have to develop this urge in mind. Without this inner urge spiritual life is simply not possible.

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So, do not despise mind or its thinking power. Rather use it to seek God instead of following your mean desires. Stop thinking about God! Start God-thinking! There is a lot of difference between the two.

73. If we would not allow the energy of consciousness to connect and flow back to its source (God) then we would suffer and suffocate like a person who is under the asthma attack and is unable to inhale the required amount of oxygen. Moments of forgetfulness are moments of disconnection from the source of life (God). A life without remembrance of God is a life of disconnection. It is the life of a leaf that has been fallen from its tree. Death through gradual withering away is now its destiny. Remember that all suffering and pain starts from disconnection.

74. So long there is God and there are you also, God will remain a liability, a burden, a one more worry and peace will never become available. To attain peace in Spiritual Contemplation it is essential that there must remain only one being the being of God. You have to die (in your psyche), you have to fall off and vacate the space that is holding you, so that God may pour in fully; there is no other way to peace and liberation. In material attainments there is an attainment and there are you to receive that attainment but in the spiritual attainment there is no receiver at all. Because, the disappearance of the receiver itself prepares the stage for the emergence of the promised spiritual attainment. Problem is neither with God nor with Spiritual Contemplation, problem stands with you, your you-ness itself is the problem. It is playing as an obstruction in the way of God-blooming in you. It is a cloud that is obscuring the light of spiritual Sun. In Spiritual Contemplation, you feel that you are going through an unproductive and self-imposed labor. It is so because you are not yet ready to surrender your illusive

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self in the feet of your true Lord. You are lacking trust in God. You are not yet ready to pay the price. How can God come to you?

75. Spiritual Contemplation is not thinking or feeling but it demands action. Do not think it! Do not feel it! Just do it! To think is avoidance and to do is trust. To feel is weakness and doing is courage. Do it without thinking as your heart is doing (pumping) without thinking, your lungs are doing (breathing) without thinking and your eyes are doing (blinking) without thinking. And remember that never do it for enlightenment, for happiness but for the sake of doing it without any desire of reward and response because to love is already a response already a reward.

76. Spiritual Contemplation is tight rope walking. In fact here the rope is thinner than a hair and sharper than a sword edge. The walker (seeker) has to keep balance all the time through focusing not on the rope, not on the foot, not on the left or right, not on the destination, not on the people but on the thin line of inner equilibrium alone. If this focus is distracted then nothing can save him from falling off the rope.

77. Unshakable deliverance of mind is the highest goal in Spiritual Contemplation. Here, deliverance means: the freeing of the mind from all limitations, fetters, and bonds that tie it to the wheel of suffering. It means: the cleansing of the mind of all defilements that mar its purity; the removing of all obstacles that bar its progress from the mundane to the supramundane consciousness. There are impurities of gold impaired by which it is not pliant and wieldy, lacks radiance, is brittle and cannot be wrought well. These impurities of gold are Iron, copper, tin, lead and silver. But if the gold

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has been freed from these impurities, then it will be plaint and wieldy, radiant and firm, and can be wrought well. Whatever ornaments one wishes to make from it, be it a diadem, earrings, a necklace or a golden chain, it will serve that purpose. Similarly, there are impurities of the mind impaired by which the mind is not pliant and wieldy, lacks radiant lucidity and firmness, and cannot concentrate well upon the eradication of the taints. We can group these impurities of mind into two broad categories namely, Thought and Emotion. If the mind is freed of these impurities, it will be pliant and wieldy, will have radiant lucidity and firmness, and will concentrate well upon the eradication of the taints. Mind will acquire the capacity of realization of higher states.

78. Breathing out is death, breathing in is life. You live by breathing in as much as you live by breathing out. The breathing out is part of breathing in. You cannot breathe in if you stop breathing out. You cannot live if you stop dying. The man who has understood what his life is allows death to happen; he welcomes it. He dies each moment and each moment he is resurrected.

79. So long search for purpose meaning benefit is alive in your Spiritual Contemplation your devotion is fallacious. Your God-seeking is a scam. Do not seek! Do not chase after the meaning and purpose! Just be in this very moment. Do not react just become fully available. Concepts have become very important, explanations have become very important - and the real has been completely forgotten. We don't look to that which is already here, we want rationalizations.

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80. The monkey is reaching for the moon in the water. Until death overtakes him he'll never give up. If he'd let go the branch and disappear in the deep pool, the whole world would shine with dazzling pureness.

81. There are no commandments to be kept; there's no filth to be cleansed. Just stop your wandering, Look penetratingly into your inherent nature and concentrating your spiritual energy, sit in silence and break through.

82. If you want to be free, get to know your real self. It has no form, no appearance, No root, no basis, no abode, but is lively and buoyant. It responds with versatile facility, but its function cannot be located. Therefore when you look for it, you become further from it; when you seek it, you turn away from it all the more.

83. Do not seek God to change your life, to be different or to become higher. Those who seek God to make their lives different have missed the point altogether. God seeking is not to become different but it is meant to annihilate all the distinction. It is meant to become one with God. When the goal is to become one with God then for whom distinction is required for. Desire for distinction is simply an urge of ego and an act of darkness.

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84. Man lives his life at three planes. Ego plane, plane of intellect and Transcendence. Ego plane relates to his survival as an individual in his physical environment. Plane of intellect relates to his understanding, discernment and interpreting different life situations and lastly plane of Transcendence. Transcendence is of three types. Sleep is unconscious transcendence, drug induced sense of transcendence is quasi transcendence and lastly there is spiritual transcendence that is total conscious transcendence. This higher type of transcendence comes through non-attached witnessing. Only in the state of total conscious transcendence God-seeking is possible. Animal force rules the plane of ego, logic rules the plane of intellect and God-seeking rules the plane of transcendence. War, competition and search for means are an out come of ego force. Inventions, innovations, ideas, methods, technologies, teaching, learning etc are product of intellect. And aspiration for God is sign of transcendence. There are no hard demarcations among these planes of being. A person experiences all these planes of life and he keeps moving from one plane to the other in his life span.

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CHAPTER 7

Ego and Desires

1. A desire has its own life cycle. At first, desire appears as attraction and engages the intent of mind. This stage culminates into yearning for the object of desire then at second stage desire compels us to initiate an action to possess that object; outcome of this stage is agitation. And then the final stage of disillusionment when the desirer gets weary of his desire and wants to get rid of it. Desire is nothing but tantalization. Objects of desire promise us satisfaction but fail miserably in delivering any such thing.

2. Desires are different from physical needs. Desires are perceptions but needs are physical demands of body. Desires are imposed upon us by the outside (social, cultural, traditional, dogmatic and commercial) propaganda. To have food is a physical need but to have ice cream after dinner is a desire. If someone rejects all food and insists for the pineapple cake only, then such person certainly has become a victim of desire. Provision of needs is essential for survival and well being of the individual but striving to fulfill the desires makes us disgraced slaves of environment and propaganda.

3. God is an endless possibility, an ever-expanding horizon and an ocean of ecstasy. When we realize God the ego vanishes as the darkness vanishes with the rise of sun and cold vanishes by the fire.

4. Ego is attachment of consciousness with body. So, ego is an attribute of Consciousness not a direct thing or an independent reality.

5. Do not move like a pig. Be patient! You can get only what God has spared for you, your panic is not going to change the will of Lord; it will add only disgrace to you.

6. Egos always resolve in God, sometimes amicably and sometimes after a combat. If you would seek God earnestly then God will protect your in a mysterious way from the egos that invite a clash.

7. Realm of ego is full of anxiety, fear, failures and constant sense of imperfection. Here blow the whirlwinds of desire, here wail the ghosts of deprivation, here move the scorpions of selfishness ready to sting and here everywhere is the stench of decaying corpses of the individual interests. There is no shelter and peace in this realm. Move to the realm of God, you will never want to be out of it.

8. Pursuit of desires is a silly game. It is wild goose chase. Desires get multiplied in the process of their satisfaction. Wise men always avoid this chase. Best way to cope with the desires is to ignore them. Let them go. Do not feed them with your precious life energy, it is not meant for this mean purpose. Keep yourself at safe distance from the monstrous jaws of desires. Let them die their own natural way. As every physical entity has its life cycle staged through birth, growth and death, desires too are not any exception. They will originate, grow and die. Just watch them in indifference and let them die their own way.

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9. Sexual indulgence in its deep analysis is nothing but a mind teaser, which prepares and pushes the mind towards the attainment of self-realization. Hungry heart is behind all the sexuality. What is it our souls hunger for? Relationship. Need for connection is our core appetite. The phenomena of sex, at the lower bodily levels, is an urge for bodily union among persons and at higher levels of purified consciousness it culminates into the cosmic re-union of the individual being with the universal self. We need connection with our creator. If one does not listen and heed to the silent invitations that are present in sexual instinct then the peace of mind will be torn apart. Soul hunger cries for satisfaction. If we dont know ourselves well, we will try to fill an interior appetite with external attachments like people, places and things. These kinds of attachments, however, wont truly satisfy the hungry heart. We find ourselves bouncing between extremes. We strive. We quit. We begin again, only to find the cycle deepens each time. Unless we connect our consciousness to God our consciousness will remain unsatisfied and hungry.

10. Purchase power of money has mesmerized the whole society. The total structure of social psychology has become infected. Dissatisfaction and crime rate is soaring high. No sane person can deny the importance of money in life but attaching undue importance to it is destroying not only the family life but civil society as well. Take the example of domestic edible salt, it is compulsory part of our food but we cannot take it in excessive quantities. Exceeding a certain amount, it can cause death to us. Excessive intake of Sodium chloride causes brain swelling and if not cared properly it proves fatal to the victim. When moneymaking becomes an obsession it produces sickly effects. Excessive indulgence in moneymaking activities is destroying our human values.

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11. Saints never become personal to anything in life i.e. people, events, gain and loss, location and time. Because the true lovers always have their personality dissolved into the personality of their beloved. So when saints advise someone towards the right path, they dont coerce it upon listeners, they dont fight for their personal victory, but speak in a submissive tone. It is the duty of the listeners to take the advice intently and act upon it for their own betterment.

12. Temptation is a universal disease. For a man without aspiration, temptation is always irresistible. But a true seeker can resist temptation and what he cannot resist is transformation, the transformation of his physical nature, his entire consciousness. Of course, this transformation is something he does not want to resist. On the contrary, it is for this transformation that he lives on earth.

13. Following desires is entering into the jaws of a crocodile. When you concentrate on desire, you can feel inwardly that there is no light in the beginning, there is no light in the end and there is no light in the middle. There is only darkness from the beginning to the end, and darkness means the absence of inner light. If you can feel this result before you actually desire, then you can easily turn your life away from desire.

14. World is full of men and men are full of ego (animality). Then how a sensitive man can handle difficult situations in his life. How do you deal with big egos? Dont confront them; remain calm and after they have stated their position, make a positive

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rebuttal that deals with the points or issues, not the person. And if ever you have to take fight, do not fight for vengeance but for the rehabilitation of peace.

15. A great majority of people take their ego as God and they worship it day and night. Few are those who feel need for any God and out of these even fewer are those who are able to perceive God as their inner master.

16. You are your consciousness. Consciousness intoxicated by passion (for God) becomes liberation. As the water trapped in the landlocked pockets near sea shore still considers itself ocean but it is not ocean. Time and space have segregated it from the main body of the ocean. Similarly, consciousness trapped in physicality (cause and effect) becomes ego.

17. Desire is something that binds us. Aspiration is something that frees us. The message of desire is to possess and be possessed. The message of aspiration is to expand, enlarge and immortalize our finite existence. When we desire, we live in the world of anxieties, worries, frustrations, limitations, bondage and death. When we aspire, we live in the divine consciousness right here on earth.

18. Ego is the force in man that pulls him to ground. It binds his consciousness and compels him to lead a life not better than any animal (rather, sometimes it becomes even worst than animals). But the same ego is a gateway to God-realization. It has seed in it that

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if properly nourished can help us to be transformed into a higher being. This ego in us is like a larva that if grown properly can become a full fledged wonderfully beautiful butterfly.

19. Best way to deal with desires is to curtail them. The less you have desires the more you will have the peace of mind. A simple, humble, contented and aspiring (having desire only for God) life can add to your happiness. Always guard the purity of your aspiring, never let your desires pollute and degrade it. A God seeker is not a man without desire but he is the man having the highest desire: the desire for the Highest (God).

20. Craving is an arrow in the heart. The poison of ignorance spreads through desires. While those who've abandoned craving, craving for becoming & non-becoming, though in the world have gone beyond. Craving is the cause through which stress comes into play. If its root remains undamaged & strong, suffering returns again & again. Encircled with craving, people hop round & round like a rabbit caught in a snare. Tied with fetters & bonds they go on to suffering, again & again, for long. For a person forced on by his thinking, fierce in his passion, focused on beauty, craving grows all the more. He's the one who tightens the bond. But one who delights in the stilling of thinking, always mindful, cultivating a focus on God: He's the one, who will make an end to the bonded life.

21. The tragedy of desire comes from the fact that whom it wanted as husband that divorces it in the very first encounter. What we long for is by nature powerless to bring an end to the desire.

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22. Physical needs are not unreal and must be cared for but deficiencies are those psychic black holes in our personality that make us feel that we are imperfect and this imperfection can be corrected through human action. Thus we start drifting into a marsh and we get entrapped into the web of desires.

23. People have a wrong notion that they become stronger by the possession of a larger quantum of things in the world. Rather, the greater is your possession, the weaker is your personality. The more is your property, the weaker you are. It is a weak person that requires property. The weaker you are the greater is your desire to own things in the world.

24. Ego wants its ideas to be displayed throughout the world. People should not wish that their ideas should always prevail over the ideas of others. Ideas are not for lording over other people or imposing on other peoples minds. Ideas should only be expressed, and suggestions sometimes given, and if they are not accepted we should not feel internal agony or annoyance. We should not expect that our thoughts be accepted by others, do not enforce others by any means to appreciate you. We are here merely to cooperate, not to assert.

25. In spirituality anger symbolizes all that outrage and annoyance that results from the failure of desires. Anger can show itself in intense or mild forms. And Hatred symbolizes all that repulsion and dislike that is felt by any person towards other forms

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of creation. Again Hatred too can manifest itself in intense or mild forms. Anger is evil fire that is capable to burn all the positive potential in us. It burns away the future good possibilities. Effects of Hatred are also no less destructive. Hatred brings alienation and alienation is in direct contrast with Love. Love brings us nearer to other forms of creation while alienation builds sense of distance and disconnection. It ruins the prospects of unity-consciousness in us. Remember that it is easier to control the severe forms of anger and hatred but the control of mild forms is very treacherous. Mild forms recur very frequently and mostly remain disguised. It becomes hard even to be aware of their presence. So whenever you feel that the serpent of anger or hatred is creeping in, just Stop immediately then Think about the damage that these monsters can inflict upon you and resolve not to extend any kind of support or cooperation to these hidden enemies. Anger and hatred can survive only upon your blood, so never feed them with your precious life energy. Once we withdraw our support from them, they will recede and suffocate to death. Beware O man they come as friends but play as enemies and what a worst enemies they are.

26. Some times desires are visible and they come forth as demands. But desires also can play in back ground. When they play in back ground they move waves in us as hidden factors move waves in ocean. Generally these passion waves are responsible for unnamed anxiety, fear, obsession and frustration. Only our passion for God can lead us out of this fiasco.

27. We inflate a balloon through blowing air into it and when it is over-inflated it gets exploded. When it explodes where does the air of the balloon go? The air inside the balloon gets reunited with the atmosphere from where it came originally. So is our I

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when it gets exploded the content of it goes back to its Divine Source - the universal I.

28. There is no hope for those who intend to stay in the hog-wallow mud of ignorance and evil: Men of demonic nature know neither what they ought to do, nor what they should refrain from doing. There is no truth in them, or purity, or right conduct. They maintain that the scriptures are a lie, and that the universe is not based upon a moral law but God-less, conceived in lust and created by copulation, without any other cause. Because they believe this in the darkness of their little minds, these degraded creatures do horrible deeds, attempting to destroy the world. They are enemies of mankind. Their lust can never be appeased. They are arrogant, and vain, and drunk with pride. They run blindly after what is evil. Their motives are unclean. They are sure that life has only one purpose: gratification of the senses. And so they are plagued by innumerable cares, from which death alone can release them. Anxiety binds them with a hundred chains, delivering them over to lust and wrath. They are ceaselessly busy, piling up dishonest gains to satisfy their cravings. I wanted this and today I got it. I want that: I shall get it tomorrow. All these riches are now mine: soon I shall have more. I have killed this enemy. I will kill all the rest. I am a ruler of men. I enjoy the things of this world. I am successful, strong and happy. Who is my equal? I am so wealthy and so nobly born. I will sacrifice to the God. I will give alms. I will make merry. That is what they say to themselves, in the blindness of their ignorance. They are addicts of sensual pleasure, made restless by their many desires, and caught in the net of delusion. They fall into the filthy hell of their own evil minds. Conceited, haughty, foolishly proud, and intoxicated by their wealth, they offer sacrifice to God in name only, for outward show. These malignant creatures are full of egoism, vanity, lust, wrath, and consciousness of power.

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29. The I sense in us is nothing but an imaginary peacock that dances colorfully in the plane of our imagination and erroneously we take this peacock of I as our true being. Consequently a ll our actions taken on base of I though appear natural at their face value but are unreal and invalid at core.

30. Thinking becomes source of suffering, when it plays in the hands of ego. Damage to the interests of ego generates sense of loss and imperfection which results into suffering. Thinking itself is not a cause of suffering but it facilitates suffering when it plays in the hands of ego. Ego is an anti-self state. Ego is in us for our sustenance and survival in worldly life but this is capable to enslave us too. When it enslaves us we become an instrument in its hands and start carrying out all the negative duties that the ego assigns to us. Killing the ego maximum is reaching to the God maximum. Life is war between ego and love. We cannot have ego and love simultaneously. One has to leave to give room to the other.

31. Our desires are very wise, like snakes. They know how to act when the time for action comes. They know when to attack and when to withdraw themselves. If circumstances are unfavorable, the desires will hide themselves. But, beware! The desires are only sleeping. A sleeping person is not a dead person. So, when there is a latency of desires it does not mean that they are destroyed, because they are lying in ambush to catch you at the earliest possible opportunity. Desires which are sleeping may become causes of psychic disorders. There can be a manifestation of peculiar complexes of behavior in that person susceptibility to sudden rage or anger at the least provocation, and desire for silly things which a

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normal person would regard as meaningless. Why? Because the desires have been starved. They are hungry like lions, ready to devour anything that comes near them. A hungry lion is a dangerous animal, though it is unable even to get up because it has been starved for days.

32. Adopt a righteous way of life and be content. You may have certain desires, but stop there; don't increase them. Then reconsider the desires that where they will take you. What lies ahead, we are hurrying, scurrying through life; we are not even conscious of what we are doing most of the time. So it is better for us to handle all our affairs with tranquil serenity.

33. Those who are unaware of the demands of spirituality project themselves as spiritual because their ego assures them that doing so can make them special and wonderful in the eyes of fellow beings. But at heart everybody is fearful of becoming spiritual as true spirituality is equal to embracing the death and who in his awaken senses can be ready to meet and embrace death. Spirituality demands death of the ego and all its manifestations in us; spirituality is other name of being no more a person. So people though love to be called as spiritual but are fearful of even the slightest touch of it.

34. When we arrive at the destination of our inner quest, we realize that what we have reached is actually totally ordinary in its essence. The ego believes that behind the idea of enlightenment something absolutely extraordinary awaits. Bored with its own ordinariness and suffering a permanent inferiority complex, the idea of enlightenment holds a seductive charm, since it promises to transform its banal existence into a fairy tale of bliss and ecstasy. The

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ego looks to the path of God-realization as a way to gain spiritual power and collect all sorts of mystical experiences, but all of these projections are ultimately hollow. The ego cannot see the truth of the path unless it surrenders to it. The natural state is nothing special; it is divinely ordinary and perfect in its simplicity. The ability to recognize its tremendous value comes from the surrender of the mind and the awakening of the deeper sensitivity of the soul. In its insensitivity, the ego is unable to even register the absence of the natural state until it gets so stifled by its own falseness that it is finally forced to recognize the lack of any internal space in which it can simply be. The natural state is like the air we breathe or the open space in which we live. No one considers space to be extraordinary, yet it contains all living things and is the very precondition of life. Only in the claustrophobic suffocation we are able to see its priceless value.

35. Ego is like a small mirror in our hands that reflects the I-ness of God but we take it as Me. Ego is that small window if once unlocked can reveal upon us the realm of the Absolute. Mind raises questions and then God appears as ultimate answer. Mind plays as a tool to reach our inner dimension.

36. No matter how sophisticated mind is and how strong its sense of individuality, the irony of the mind is that it remains fundamentally ignorant of its own essence. Mind and ego represent two sides of the same consciousness: the mind is the flow of thoughts, and the ego is the mechanism of selfreference within this flow. The ego must be recreated moment to moment through self-referral. In deep sleep or in a coma state, gap in self-referral is experienced as a moment of blankness. Without the

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mind to fill this gap, individual has no means to confirm his own existence. While entrenched in its pseudo-identity, the ego serves as a shallow substitute for the God. By compulsively clinging to its self-image, it deceives itself into believing it is real. It seeks love and acceptance just to feel that it exists. Yet in spite of all its desperate efforts to escape its own emptiness, the ego will never reach true solidity until it transcends itself by awakening to the light of God. Before we can dissolve the ego, we must accept its presence and submit it to our higher wisdom. For someone who has just entered the inner path, the dissolution of ego is not the proper aspiration. Instead, one should bring more acceptance, wisdom, understanding and purity into how the ego functions in mind so as to align it with the will and light of God. Ego, generally, is denied of any positive role, reduced just to a mere barrier to freedom and liberation, having no reality entirely. However, to negate the ego is pure hypocrisy, for it is the ego itself that is doing the negation. Simplistic negation of the ego is spiritually dangerous, and any teaching that fails to perceive the role of ego as essential to understanding and consciousness is out of touch with reality. The ego cannot simply be negated; its energies must be embraced and redirected so that they may ultimately serve as fuel for our awakening. It is not the ego itself that is false, but its ignorance, unconsciousness, and illusory separation from the God. The proper function of the ego is to bridge the subconscious self with awakened consciousness. By internalizing the psychic energies, the ego begins to support the minds awakening to the realm of pure subjectivity. Having reached this relative spiritual maturity, it can now direct us towards positive enquiry into the nature of God. It questions its own existence and seeks transmutation into a higher Iness. It is when the ego reaches its highest power of attention, intelligence and sensitivity that the realization of I am takes place. The ego also plays an important role in protecting our relatively separate existence. The human being, regardless of his spiritual awakening, still remains bound by the laws of empirical reality. Even an enlightened being needs to have a minimum ego to survive on the physical plane. This minimum, or natural ego, operates not as an

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expression of ignorance, but as an extension of the enlightened reality, a function of intelligence that serves to have experience of selfrealization.

37. When the hard shell of ego is cracked then who meets who? In fact it is not a meeting between the two but is the revelation of the Oneness.

38. It is very disturbing thing that people have been trying to kill this I in the name of spirituality in the name of God. People have been propagating against the character of I. People have been insulting it, abusing it, degrading it. When I is breath of God then how can anyone kill it; how can any one degrade and insult it. I is as much part of God as much our breathing is part of our body. If you are a God-seeker how can you hate the breath of God? I is as sacred as God himself. There is only one I and that is of God. Why the egoistic men hate so much the word of surrender. Because it is most hard thing for man to accept that even his ego, his I does not relate to him. Because he fears that accepting the fact that his I his very ego -- his whole asset belongs to God will make him totally shallow, totally baseless. He will loose all the ground underneath his feet. He will vanish untraceably. For a true and natural spiritual growth we have to re-establish the true value and status of I. Without understanding the true nature of I we can not make any progress in God-realization. I is temple of God. In this temple, God is constantly glorifying Himself. There is nothing like my I or your I there is only one I and this I includes the whole matter, the whole life, the whole humanity, the whole time and space. This I belongs neither to you nor to me but it belongs to God. This I is falling back each moment and coming forth each moment.

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39. I is sacred but the I that identifies itself with mind becomes ego. Hence, I looses its sanctity and becomes a slave of environment. With ego have you ever felt really powerful? With ego you always feel impotent. That's why the ego says, 'Make your empire a little bigger so that you can feel you are powerful: no, this house won't do, a bigger house is needed; no, this much bank balance won't do, a bigger bank balance is needed; no, this much fame won't do, a little more.' The ego always asks for more. Why? If it is powerful, why go on asking for more? The very craving for more shows that the ego feels impotent. You have a million rupees and you are impotent. The ego says, 'No, one million won't do, have ten million rupees.' And I tell you -- with ten million rupees you will be tenfold more impotent, that's all. And then the ego will say, 'No, this won't do ... nothing will do with ego. Everything proves only that you are impotent, powerless. The more power you gain the more powerless you feel in contrast. The richer you become the poorer you feel. The more healthy you are the more afraid of death. Ego has never felt powerful. It only dreams of power, it thinks of power, it contemplates on power -- but those are simply dreams and nothing else. And dreams are there just to hide the impotence that is within you. But dreams cannot hide the reality. Whatsoever you do, from here or from there, from a loophole, again the reality comes in and shatters all dreams.

40. God has given us a body. WE have dressed it with clothes. We have been seeing our body wrapped in clothes since such a long time that now we even feel ashamed to face our own naked body. More upon it, we have become unable to watch our naked body with as much deep respect, interest and involvement as when we see it clad in robes - we love to see it in colorfully printed costumes. We all think that our body is wearing the costume. We

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never realize that body can not wear anything at all. Skin is the last thing that a body can wear. Beyond the skin all is just imposition on body. We deceive our selves by imagining that body is wearing dresses. No! Body is not wearing any dresses rather we have dumped our body into costumes, we have superimposed something extra and extraneous on body. Not only we wrap our body with dresses but we also like to put colors and designs on cloth from which the costumes are sewn. For examples we put color dots on cloth mixed with some tiny flowers. We wear dress made out of such cloth and start feeling that we are wearing these dots and flowers. We feel proud of the designs that are printed upon cloth. We look not our naked body as our body but we consider the dresses as essential part of our body, some narcist personalities even put body in discomfort and force it to adapt to the new fashions in vogue. We are so much accustomed to our dresses and prints on it that we feel difficulty in directly facing our nudity. We feel ourselves imperfect and less worthy in nakedness. When we undress our body, not only the fabric is dropped but all the dots and designs printed on it are also dropped automatically with the fabric. Our ego is a dress put on our self. Ego is an imposition on self. Self needs no dresses; it is already perfect and happy in its nudity. Our efforts to add something to it is just foolishness and illusion. All the possessions, achievements, deprivations and sufferings are just printed dots and designs on the construct of I-ness and hence belong only to I-ness and not to self. God realization is as simple as to get naked. To become naked we drop our dress and for God-realization we drop our ego. It is not the I-ness that is protecting us in life situations but it is self that is protecting itself against itself. All our fears that once we would drop our I-ness we would become incapable to lead a healthy and normal life are utterly false. When we undress our body our body does not stop working. Heart still pumps the blood, lungs still play with air, digestion is going on and nervous system still intact. What has dropped is just our illusion that dress is part of our body, the imposition has gone and reality still works. It is just our idea about our body that is obstructing us to conceive the fact that dress is an imposition and not a part of our body. It is our social education and

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training that has gripped our free judgment and obstructs the true understanding of life situations. In jungle we do not see a lion, a zebra or a buffalo as naked; we see them perfect in their bodies as they appear to our eyes. A lion is not king of the jungle because he is wearing and precious robes or golden crown studded with jewels. Lion is king of jungle because he has been born and built to be a king. His jaws and claws, his power and thrust make him a king.

41. Hunger for recognition is an act of ego. It has befooled and destroyed the lives of millions. Your desire for recognition would spoil the very purity of action and thus your action would loose any power to heal you inwardly and uplift you spiritually.

42. To desire is not a vice but we should not desire for inferior things, to think is not a drawback but we should think the finest thoughts and to have sense of being is not a war against God but we should discover God as the very pulse of our existence. To think, to desire and to be are just gifts of God, by judicious use of them we can attain the sublimity of self-realization. We can not go spiritual by going against our own nature. We are not here to annihilate the thought but we are here to fill it with God, we are not here to get rid of desire but we are here to make God our strongest desire and we are not here to make our mind unaware and empty but we are here to become aware and encounter each moment of the Now with full intensity of our consciousness.

43. As we move in time, dust of experiences, of knowledge, of lived life, of past, collects. That dust becomes our ego. Accumulated, it becomes a crust around you which has to be broken and thrown away. One has to take a bath continuously - every day, in

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fact every moment, so that this crust never becomes a prison. The ego is afraid to love because in love, life comes to a peak. But whenever there is a peak of life there is also a peak of death - they go together.

44. Ego is to our psyche as a center pole is to a circus tent. If the center pole is shaken and dislodged then the whole tent structure will crumble down to earth. Where there is ego there is mess and when ego disappears there can be no mess or distress. Without ego there will be no suffering.

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CHAPTER 8

Pain and Suffering

1. So long as you suffer your consciousness is not librated. Your ego is having control over your vision. Consciousness purified is reflection of divine consciousness that never suffers from anything.

2. World is full of evil and suffering. It is so because our world is coming out of our consciousness. It is the mind version of the world. The same world, when seen from the stand point of nonduality becomes a grand show of divine possibilities.

3. STOP WORRYING ABOUT EVERYTHING: This is the key. Just stop worrying completely. Dont worry about anything. Drop all your worrying, fretting and obsessing about the future and past. Leave everything to life and put yourself in her care. Just tell yourself whatever issues come up in the future, you will deal with them then. Worrying is not just a huge waste of precious energy, it is also one of the activities that binds you to psychological time and prevents you from cherishing the moments of your life. Worrying creates other problems as well, such as stress, suffering and fear, so just let it all go and live without any worry to see what happens. It will be quite a liberating experience. GO WITH THE FLOW: Go with the flow of life completely. Just doing what needs to be done and allowing life to carry you forward. Dont try to control or manipulate the day, just relax and go with it. Do the task that is presented to you and just let yourself be simple and spontaneous.

4. Pains, sufferings and miseries come to you as beggars. They want to take possession of your self because without its possession they are equal to nothing. Whenever they come they come as beggar; they seek your attention. Once you attend them you are bound to become a slave of them. If you would allow them, they would hypnotize you. You would start taking them as your master and you would complain about your helplessness and would think remedies to get rid of their influence. There is only one remedy available to you. Just stop attending them and they would recede to the unknown.

5. All sorrow comes from the sense of separated I. So long you are identified with your body pain is inevitable. All sorrow is coming from the illusion that you are separate from God. When you are with Him all pain disappears. Where there is oneness of God there can be no question of death and birth. The mind that identifies itself with the body can be turned towards the eternal and then the pain that body feels will be a matter of indifference. All desire must be for God only.

6. Problems of evil, illness, injustice, cruelty, poverty etc are there. Questions about absurdity of all life are there. Human minds so far are unable to find any solution to these problems or intellectual questions. Then naturally thought arises that what is the use of any spiritual effort, if these questions are not answered and these problems are not addressed. Apparently situation is heart breaking but those who are in the business of spirituality with a deep passion and wisdom they are not so helpless. They know that there is an answer to all this misery and pain that though remains

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unacceptable for an ego man but the availability of it can not be denied. The modus operandi of the spiritual effort is quite different and subtle. Spiritual effort does not change the pain and misery but it changes the observing mind that is interpreting these situations as suffering. It transforms the ego-nature into the God-nature. In Godnature things exist but they do not cause any suffering. Because no being has ever suffered by its own nature. A snake does not suffer from its own poison because it is part of its nature. When a seeker is uplifted to a plane of divine nature then nothing stands outside. All becomes the part of seekers own nature. Now pain is there, evil is there but suffering is absent.

7. When things go wrong in our life and we encounter difficult situations, we tend to regard the situation itself as our problem, but in reality whatever problems we experience come from the side of the mind. If we responded to difficult situations with positive or peaceful mind they would not be problems for us. Problems arise only if we respond to difficulties with a negative state of mind. Therefore, if we want to be free from problems, we must transform our mind.

8. Misery is the heat resulting from the friction of struggle. It is there as long as your effort to change is there. It is the residue of the process of becoming. To try is to suffer. To not to try is also a state of trying and hence is suffering. The other side, if there is one, is witnessing.

9. There is no such thing as shaky situations. So, any time you start to tremble, don't look around you for the fault. Look inward. It is the inner-ground you are standing on that is not solid.

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That seemingly scary condition, whatever it may be, is not the problem. It's your reaction that has you shaking. And that's why, if you'll become detached to a fearful condition instead of being afraid of it, you'll change forever your relationship with fear.

10. No one wants to be touched by the hand of suffering, so millions spend billions trying to outrun its cold touch. Yet, these are the unwise for a very unseen reason: into every life must come some rain, for without it what else can a heart become other than a desert that never blooms?

11. How many of us spend our precious time and energy fuming over what others may have done to us? Unseen in the steam of our heated emotions and churning thoughts is the one inescapable fact that we are the secret prisoner of anyone we wish to punish. And the more we would punish this person, the less freedom we have to be at peace with ourselves.

12. Start seeing that no mental or emotional suffering belongs to you, and that its presence in your life is invasive -- not essential.

13. Good sleep gives us feeling of wellbeing. But as soon as we awaken, the world and its worries get reloaded in our conscious part of mind from the subconscious layers. World and its worries restart eating out our life energies and soon we get exhausted and once again we feel need for some sleep, some escape. It is a continuous cycle. For any spiritual progress we have to break this rut.

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We have to develop in the art of detachment. Next time when you awake from sleep, let the world be there in its space, let the worries be there in their space and let the mind responses stay in their space but point is do not become available to the world do not become available to your worries. Do not throw your inner self before these dogs of the illusion. Let your self attend the God; let your thought flow only one way the way of God. You would become unavailable to the world and its worries. Do not fear from world do not get shy of its worries, focus only on the part that you have to play.

14. Anytime we are taken over by a negative state, we suffer. In a flash, natural intelligence is replaced by ignorance; healthy flexibility turns into destructive rigidity. The fiery essence of these disabling forces imposes their will upon our own, and in a heartbeat our own actions can be unrecognizable, even to us. In short, to be in spiritual darkness is to be at loss. It's that simple almost.

15. Our suffering can only come to an end when we end our unconscious identification with the negative states responsible for it. The only way to bring an end to our relationship with these unwanted inner states is to become wiser than they are! How is this done? We enter into a whole new conscious relationship with them.

16. When you are transported from your ego-nature to God-nature then you would have no Fear, no Suffering and no Curiosity. Note that I am not saying that there would be no dangers, no pain or no ambiguity. Yes! All that will be there before you like it was in the past but now certainly, you would have no Fear, no Suffering and no Curiosity because now you are part of the God-

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nature. Now you stand liberated. Now you are released from the prison. Prison is still there but you are not in the prison.

17. Dark inner states win the day from us before we even know there has been a contest for control of our lives! How can we hope for self-victory when we have been tricked into surrendering ourselves before an actual engagement has occurred? And in case you're thinking this isn't true, please consider how we invariably submit to these negative states in one of two ways: Either we fear their power and try to escape their wrath by hiding from them or sometimes we just simply deny that they exist. Or (and no less counter-productive in the long run) we embrace the "guidance" these destructive thoughts and feelings offer us as to how we can escape their punishment by following out their rescue plans -- an act not too dissimilar from asking the proverbial fox to guard the chicken coop!

18. Fear's powerful, silent implication is that if we don't become someone in our own eyes or in the eyes of others, we will have no power; and being powerless we will perish and vanish. This is what drives men and women to the point of collapse. You can cut yourself loose from all of your fears and worries. There is no question that this new kind of self-work will take a special effort on your part. But you are not alone. The Truth wants you to succeed. Once you know that you have already been given an independent, timeless identity, you need never worry again about making yourself into Someone. This is real success.

19. Whenever we identify with negative forces, we unknowingly provide them with two conditions they can't have otherwise: First, we give these chaotic states a place to appear within

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a plane of reality to which they ordinarily have no access. And second, at the same time, we lend them the vital life energies they must have to sustain their life-draining presence within our psychic system.

20. Making demands and having expectations just set us up for trouble. We know it's true. We always plan how other people should act and how things should turn out, but they never do what we expect, and then we become angry and disappointed. We sense that we are causing all our own pain. If we could just learn to want for ourselves what life wants for us maybe we wouldn't be afraid anymore.

21. In life there are situations or acts that we can understand with the power of reason but there are situations or acts that we cannot understand through the power of reason but it does not mean that these acts or situations are impenetrable but rather we can understand them through encounter or direct contact. Evil is one of such situations. We cannot understand it through reasoning, as it always remains an anti-logic situation. But we can evaluate it by going through it. We should not be afraid of our encounter with the evil. There is nothing that we can do to ward off the evil. It always comes as inevitable. Mind just reads it and does not cause it to happen. So the elimination or taming down the mind is no sane solution. When evil comes upon us we have no choice but to face it and struggle through it and while we struggle through it we are bound to discover and taste the real meaning of evil. At that point one will wonder to discover that even the path of evil can lead the sufferer towards God. Because the first cause of all the vibrations and situations is God.

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22. In the moments of utter personal tragedies or social catastrophes God appears to us as a cruel, insensitive and more than that an insane presence. We rage and revolt against God. All the beauty of divine love is scrambled at once. We feel that the ground under the feet of our Spiritual Contemplation has lost for ever. We proclaim to ourselves that God is dead from now on. But the death of perceived God is not the end of Real God. In fact this is the very subtle trick of God. This way God helps his devotees to come out of the last hurdle in the way of realization. Few of us realize that in the moments of deep estrangement frustration and alienation is also an unparalleled opportunity to be bonded with divinity seamlessly. Our ego is a conglomerate of the data collected by six sense operations (touch, taste smell, see, hear and thinking). These six senses are mastering over our mundane life. We have become slaves to them. We are caged in the data prison that these six senses collect and process. Spirituality as a discipline of life tries to liberate us from this prison. Through Spiritual Contemplation we potentiate ourselves to have some sort of control over the play of senses. Slowly we succeed in controlling the deceptive powers of five senses but the sixth sense (thinking) is too adamant and resistive to be controlled. Thinking is the master sense and so its grip over our being is the strongest of all. Day and night a seeker is perplexed and puzzled in his efforts to control the sense of thinking. Here God comes forward to help his seekers. God works in strange, subtle and perfect ways. To castrate the power of thinking in us, God makes the seekers to go through such tragic experiences (at physical or perceptive levels) that the very act of perceiving and thinking appears meaningless to us and we feel a great pain and mental agony to identify ourselves with ideas and thinking of any kind. We want to get rid of thinking without delay. At this juncture of time some who are not enlightened indulge themselves into drugs and narcotics to construct a veil between their thinking and their self. And there are some other who are allowed wisdom and adopt a totally different

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path to get rid of the agonies of thinking; they let it die through detachment. When the master sense of thinking falls off then we are transformed into the higher being. Where, things are done without the involvement of thinking. Things become done in their own right. We must not think and expect that God kills some one in an accident just to provide us any opportunity to become more wise and pure. Absolutely this is not the case. Nothing in this universe is being done to please someone or to teach a lesson to someone. All acts are acts of God. There can be no intelligent analysis of the acts of God. These acts originate and end in their own absoluteness.

23. Suffering is mind-fabrication. It is not the natural color of our consciousness. Suffering is conscious and willful act of adoption. Adoption of pain and loss. Suffering is a web that the spider of human mind weaves around consciousness. Thus through trapping our consciousness it starts stealing our life energy and compels us to surrender before the ghostly shadows of erroneous perceptions and provokes us to revolt against God. Except man the other members of animal kingdom do not suffer. No doubt animals can feel pain and loss but they do not suffer. Because animals just go through pain and loss without analyzing, comparing, magnifying and finding some God like being to blame for their pain and loss. Animals do not judge the pain in alienation. Though feeling of pain and loss is natural and essential for a safe living but suffering is unwanted and an a sickness also. Acceptance and total surrender before God can help us to overcome the sense of suffering. Suffering always has its causes in nature and not in God or Transcendence. The seeker must not find causes of suffering in Transcendence and also ought not to blame God for the evil presence of suffering. If we have to blame someone for our sufferings then we alone are responsible for the creation of our sufferings.

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24. Pain, misery, tragedy whatever you call it has no mental answer. In the utmost and deep moments of grief and pain we tend to deny the presence of any God. But even the denial and rejection of God do not cater any answer to our burning queries that is why the life holds pain? It seems God has no connection with the world. When one has faith in God then mind, by its very nature, tries to find a link between God and the world. Thus mind starts an endless game of interpretations of the world. In this game mind retains the status of Subject for itself. We must discern the status of mind first. Can mind really be a subject? Is mind a subject or the object? No! It is not the subject. God is the real mover of all things. God alone is the subject. Surrender is the only way out for us. When mind thinks as subject it creates misery and when mind thinks in surrender it breathes in peace.

25. It is impossible for suffering to be in the center; it is not in the nature of things. It is always on the periphery and you are the center. So when you allow it to happen, when you don't escape, you don't run, you are not in a panic, suddenly you become aware that suffering is there on the periphery, as if happening to someone else, not to you, and you are looking at it. A subtle joy spreads all over your being because you have realized one of the basic truths of life: that you are the center and not the suffering.

26. If you would become irritated by every rub, how will your mirror be polished? God turns you from one feeling to another and teaches by means of opposites, so that you will have two wings to fly, not one. This discipline and rough treatment is a furnace to

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extract the silver from the dross. This testing purifies the gold by boiling the scum away.

27. The ultimate pain is the pain of ones own uniqueness. That is, there is no one else in the universe like you. You are totally unique and there is no other being that can fully meet and embrace who and what you are. That realization is painful if it is truly embraced. However, that pain is the fuel of transformation. When we avoid pain, we put ourselves on escape. We numb the pain or distract ourselves in some way which leads to addictions. When faced with pain, we can choose either to avoid it or stay asleep as to its cause or we awaken to the cause. In awakening to its cause we awake ourselves to what we are. You need others to reveal yourself to yourself. Others will cause you to become aware of ideas, concepts, and the like that you never knew were inside of you. Consciousness defines itself by the experiences it has and as you experience yourself, you give yourself an identity.

28. Suffering is an attitudinal or volitional response of the mind to certain actual or potential information inputs a response of rejection, of wishing or trying to avoid or get rid of certain psychologically unpalatable objects. Suffering and enjoyment are thus two sides of the same coin which we can call attachment. Attachment is the origin, the root of suffering; hence it is the cause of suffering. Suffering is adding pain on to pain; it compounds and prolongs pain by reinforcing our susceptibility. For example, say a motorist rudely drives into the parking place; there is a first reaction of pain at the experience of such an uncouth person, as well as at the loss of the parking place and at the prospect of having to seek another; but if I allow anger to rise in me this is the extra pain of suffering.

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The problem of suffering arises only when pain becomes ones overriding focus, i.e. when any amount of pain (real or imagined) becomes unbearable. Oversensitivity to pain is spiritually unhealthy. It is natural to protect and cure our body from harm and even to look after its wellbeing. The issue here is only to what extent such concerns and pursuits are biologically valuable, and at what point they become harmful in themselves. The limit is attained when our more materialist concerns and pursuits begin to hinder or damage our important spiritual values.

29. Sometimes our minds construct such ideas that in itself become sources of our suffering. In such cases the cause of suffering lies in our self and not in outside world. For example some times the crowing of a neighbors rooster becomes a source of annoyance and irritation for us but we forget that if the crowing of the rooster was really harming then why the owners are immune to it. If the shouts of the cock or the barking of a dog are really harming then logically the owners must be affected more severely because they are more near to the source of so called suffering. Actually this idea of suffering from roosters crowing or dogs barking is just a fiction and story concocted by our egos just to tantalize us and unknowingly we fall a prey to it.

30. The source that is keeping the good alive is also providing sustenance to the evil. The source is neither good nor bad. Good or bad are just an opinion. Rejection of the evil in hatred minimizes your capacity to tackle it in a balanced approach. In hatred you loose the equilibrium of you action.

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31. Our lives are miserable because 99% of the miseries are our own creations. Ask yourself honestly! Are not you catering and watering you own problems? Our miseries sustain because we are constantly making effort to keep them alive.

32. The reason that you are afraid of the world and the hit of the unknown is not in the outside; it is within you. In fact you are afraid of your own failure when the time of encounter would come upon you and it is so because you have no self discipline and self control. It is not the action of the others that hurts you rather it is most often your own reaction to a situation that harms you or rewards you. Be a master of your self, the world will cease to be a threat to you.

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CHAPTER 9

Peace and Happiness

1. Wise people prefer peace to excitement. Happiness that comes from false and shallow sources is also false and shallow. True happiness comes from within.

2. There is nothing bad in being happy. Who says that being happy is not recommended for the divine seekers? Instead divine seekers should be the happiest people on the earth. God alone is the supreme source of happiness; all other sensual objects of pleasure are merely shadows and ghosts. Getting pleasures from the sense objects is not prohibited provided that these pleasures add volume to the love of God and bring depth and richness to the enlightenment. Sensuous pleasures have great tendency to transform themselves into addictions, so a great care and will power is required to go safely through these dangerous fields of experience. Feeling nearer to the origin and root is the greater, real and pure happiness. As a crying baby gets quite just for sensing that it has come into the lap of her mother. Without having the true perception of life and right aspiration, blindly going after sensual objects of pleasure i.e. wealth, sex, fame, possessions and consumables is nothing but a wild goose chase. These play as a mirage and never quench the thirst of a God seeker.

3. World means ceaseless movement, and obviously there can be no rest in movement. How could there be peace in perpetual coming and going? Peace is found where there is no coming and going, no melting and burning. Reverse your course, advance towards God then there will be hope of peace.

4. Every day there is only one thing to learn: how to be honestly happy. But what the happiness is? A bird flying in the sky is happy but as soon as it is put in a cage its happiness is gone. So in this example the freedom is happiness. But human beings are not birds. We live a conscious life. Besides freedom we are in search of meaning. A free life without any meaningful activity might satisfy birds but not human beings. We have needs larger and small. Satisfaction of these needs give us neurotic relaxation for some time but not the happiness. Happiness is such freedom that comes when consciousness is free of all kinds of bondage. Vicious cycle of pain and pleasure, tension and relaxation keeps us bound forever. Attainment of happiness is not possible without freeing our consciousness from all sense of duality.

5. That is the simple secret of happiness. Whatever you are doing, dont let past move your mind; dont let future disturb you. Because the past is no more, and the future is not yet. To live in the memories, to live in the imagination, is to live in the nonexistential. And when you are living in the non-existential, you are missing that which is existential. Naturally you will be miserable, because you will miss your whole life.

6. All anxious states that make us unhappy root down to one of the five causes. First is Ignorance, we take rope as snake and that causes anxiety. We don't know the real nature of the "snake" and hence we take false thing as true. We forget that only God is real and start identifying ourselves with unreal objects of the world. Ignorance also fortifies the other causes of anxiety. Second is Ego, the feeling of I-ness; we start seeing our selves as separate entity from

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other fellow beings. Third is Anger, rise of a feeling when pleasure is obstructed and want is not fulfilled. Fourth is Bitterness, an after taste of any undesired incident. It rises from our shortsightedness and non-spiritual behavior. Fifth is Lust of living, It causes the fear of death. We want to cling to life forever; we feel undue attachment with our body and the world around.

7. Sensuous pleasures are of tantalizing character. Their spell attracts us only so long as we do not possess them. The moment we come in possession of these objects of pleasure their spell starts loosing its grip. Desire starts turning itself into an entanglement. Moreover going after these objects of sense pleasures always prove to be a wild goose chase. There is no limit line where we could stand and declare that what has been captured by me is enough for me. A rich man has great wealth, but he has no children. And so he is pained at heart. A poor man has fourteen children, but he has nothing to eat, and so he is miserable. One man has wealth and children, but his son is a vagabond, and so he is worried. One man has riches and good sons, but his wife is very quarrelsome. No one is happy in this world. The session judge is very discontented. He thirsts to become a high court judge. The minister is also discontented. He longs to become the premier. A millionaire is discontented; he yearns to become a Billionaire. The husband is discontented; his wife is black and thin; he wants to marry another wife with good complexion. The wife is discontented; she wants to divorce and marry a rich, young husband. A lean man is discontented; he wants to put on fat and gulps codliver oil. A fat man takes anti-fat pills. No man is contented in this world. A doctor thinks that the advocate is very happy. The advocate thinks that the businessman is happier. The business person thinks that the judge is happier. The judge thinks that the professor is happier. No one is happy in this world.

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Who is happy then? A sage is happy. A God seeker is happy. He who has controlled his mind is happy. Happiness comes from peace of mind. Peace of mind comes from a state of mind wherein there are no desires, no lust and no thoughts of objects.

8. The Sun is ever shining in us, but our blind eyes cannot behold it. The eternal sound is ringing within us but our deaf ears cannot hear it. Go wherever you may, to mountains, in deserts, on beaches it is all the same. You will not find any real rest. The charming scenery may soothe the retina for a second. Anger, bitterness, jealousy, passion and greed are everywhere. You will find the same earth, the same sky, the same air, and the same water. And you carry with you the same mind. Imagination and change of place have deceived not a few. O man! Be contented. Live where you may, but discipline the mind and the senses. Meditate on the Inner-self ceaselessly. Here you will find everlasting peace. Mind will stop deceiving you now.

9. Worldly men think they are quite happy because they get a few ginger biscuits, some money, and a love partner. O, if they would just taste the nectar of awakening, what should be the intensity of happiness they should feel! Enough, enough of your tea and coffee, enough of soda and lemonade, enough of father, mother, son, daughter, brother, sister and relations. You came alone. You will go alone. None will follow you. Realize God. All miseries will come to an end.

10. Happiness and unhappiness are your moods and don't depend on the outside. This is one of the most basic things to be realized, because then much can be done. So the first thing to do is to

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realize that moods are not dependent on outside circumstances. The second thing to understand is that they depend on your unawareness. So just watch and become aware. If happiness is there, just watch it and don't become identified with it. When unhappiness is there, again just watch it. It is just like morning and evening. In the morning you watch and enjoy the rising sun. When the sun sets and darkness descends, that too you watch and enjoy. Don't use these words 'happiness' and 'unhappiness', because they carry judgments. Simply watch without judging -- this mood 'A', and this mood 'B', do you follow? 'A' mood has gone, now 'B' mood is here, and you are simply a watcher. Suddenly you will realize that when you call happiness 'A', it is not so happy, and when you call unhappiness 'B', it is not so unhappy. Just by calling the moods A and B, a distance is created.

11. Though surrounded by pleasurable or painful objects to disturb your equilibrium of mind, remain immovable as a rock, receiving all things with equanimity. Be always cheerful. Laugh and smile. How can a mind that is gloomy and dull think of God? Try to be happy always. Happiness is your right. Happiness is your very nature. This is termed cheerfulness. All aspirants must cultivate this spirit of cheerfulness.

12. This world is a mere appearance. Mind and the senses are deceiving us every moment. We have mistaken pain for pleasure. There is not even an iota of happiness in this sense-universe. Abandon these selfish struggles and schemes for amassing wealth. March directly to that wirepuller who is moving these toys of fleshy human bodies, who is keeping up this big show. In Him only you will find lasting happiness and perennial joy. Merge in Him by practicing daily Spiritual Contemplation.

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13. What is Delight? It is inner freedom, nothing else. What is the difference between pleasure and Delight? Pleasure is always followed by frustration and frustration is followed by destruction. We can confidently say that todays pleasure will be tomorrows frustration and the destruction of the day after tomorrow. But when we follow the spiritual life, we see deep within us the fountain of joy and delight. This delight continuously increases in our awakened being.

14. Animal minds seek satisfaction, intelligent minds desire peace but spiritual minds are more interested in submission, compliance and total surrender to the will of God. This brings ultimate happiness to the lovers of God though the divine lovers do not love God for the sake of happiness alone. Happiness accompanies love as the fragrance accompanies a flower. Human beings desire millions and millions of things but these objects of desire always bring frustration to the wishing mind. There is only one desire t he desire for God that brings to mind an accomplishment of such a degree that mind desires nothing after that.

15. Everyone wants to be happy and not to suffer, but very few people understand the real causes of happiness and suffering. We tend to look for happiness outside ourselves, thinking that if we had the right house, the right car, the right job, and the right friends we would be truly happy. We spend almost all our time adjusting the external world, trying to make it conform to our wishes. All our life we have tried to surround ourselves with people and things that make us feel comfortable, secure, or stimulated yet still we have not found pure and lasting happiness. It is because we

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sought happiness from a different source. Happiness is a state of mind, so the real source of happiness must lie within the mind, not in external conditions. If our mind is pure and peaceful we shall be happy, regardless of our external circumstances, but if it is impure and anxious we can never be truly happy, no matter how hard we try to change our external conditions. We could change our home or our partner countless times, but until we change our restless, discontented mind we shall never find true happiness.

16. Happiness is here now; it needs no condition. Happiness is na tural. Just see the point of it. Dont make conditions on your happiness. Remain happy for no reason at all. There is no reason to find some cause to be happy. Just be happy. Trees are happy and they will not get any beer in the evening and any cigarettes, and they are perfectly happy. The wind blowing is happy, and the sun is happy, and the sands are happy and the seas are happy, and everything is happy except man because nobody is making any conditions. Just be happy. If you get bothered about something, then some very small thing starts looking very big. You have a small wound, and you start playing with the wound, and you don't allow it to heal and you want the wound to heal. But touching the wound again and again and remaining concentrated on the wound is not going to heal it. Forget all about it. The body has its own wisdom; it will heal it. Don't interfere in the body's way. Remember the higher. Be filled more and more with the higher so that the lower disappears on its own accord. If we get involved in lower concerns, the higher will not appear, and we will feel the lower becoming more and more discursive strong.

17. Freedom, real freedom, does exist. But it is not a condition of events, nor is it found within another person's approval of us. Neither is real freedom ever a mere effect of circumstances,

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otherwise it is not freedom but merely a temporary pleasure we have mistaken for being the same as being free. What, then, is real freedom? Where is it to be found? It is in realizing the truth of ourselves that we are set free. There is no substitute for the self-knowledge.

18. Higher thoughts and right principles are still the same level as the attacking state. We must learn this the hard way, which gradually allows us to stop fighting, stop resisting these negative states. We are not trying to learn how to overpower the darkness, we are learning to dwell inwardly where darkness can't touch us.

19. We are empowered to choose whether to give ourselves over to what hurts us, or to what heals us. We may practice the presence of those states of being that are, in themselves, the source of our unconscious suffering, or we may work to practice, consciously, the presence of those elevated states associated with the Divine.

20. What we should seek in life is clarity, not comfort, for what is made clear becomes pure. Such purity is the heart of peace, while those parts of us that search out ways to comfort our pain keep us in the conflict of serving two masters: the suffering we fear and a pleasure-born peace that always fades away, leaving us to run after it.

21. The next time you feel as though you just have to talk to someone about something that's making you uncomfortable or

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unhappy, don't do it. You can learn to use that pressure to free yourself from all such feelings that want to push you around. Here's the explanation: finding relief is not the same as finding strength. From this moment forward, consciously challenge the right of any dark disturbance to direct your life. Stand on your inner ground until its demands drain away. Negative states have no real life of their own, so consciously withdrawing your life from them is the same as commanding their dark presence to fade. Once the pressure is off, you can then choose to say something, or not, about the conflict that was in question because, at this point, you'll be in command of yourself and the situation, instead of being unconsciously commanded by it.

22. Go silent! This silence and inner light will do for you what you have not been able to do for yourself. It will turn the dark inner-skies into pleasant blue ones. Go silent. Let the threatening clouds of thoughts and feelings go by. Behind them is the sun.

23. Over and over again we plan our escapes, and over and over again we seem to return to the same sad state of feeling caged in or confined. For all of our efforts, nothing really changes. New loves, new jobs, even new homes change only the walls that surround us -- not our feelings of being imprisoned. We sense that all we have done is changed cells! And that's right. But listen to me. We mustn't fight with or in any way fear this shocking conclusion. Why? Because this temporarily disturbing discovery about our actual condition contains a crucial insight. It was never that person or circumstance that was blocking our moment in the light. No! In spite of how things may appear to us, we are never trapped by where we are. The trap is always who we are.

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24. When youre with another person, or in a group of people perhaps around a dinner table, have you ever noticed in those most unexpected moments when a sudden and uncomfortable silence pours in, you feel compelled to fill it with something? You think anything would feel better than that temporary nothing-now, demanding your attention and everyone else's attention. What is it within you that want to rush and fill it in? Among other unconscious and self-compromising ideas is the belief that unless you do it or someone does that the ensuing moment of unfilled space is somehow a formal indictment of social unsuitability! In other words, this silent spot, if left unanswered, will prove that you're not that clever, all-knowing conversationalist you hope others see you as being. Just for the record, everyone involved feels this same brief attack of personal panic. But for us the lesson in moments such as these is to come awake to ourselves and therein to see that this perceived moment of terrible emptiness feels like a pain. In other words, pressure makes you jump in. Don't jump in. Turn around instead. Learn to watch these moments and to use them to be in touch with the inner man, the inner woman, whose true nature doesn't fear anything, letting alone a moment of silence! Working to put yourself in touch with your own fearless, silent essence will change your relationship with yourself and life.

25. Human nature is not fixed. What does this mean to you? You do have the freedom to choose the kind of world you call your own. Why spend your life in a steamy jungle of roaring thoughts, or in a dark valley filled with sad and worried emotions when, by choosing higher, you can live happier? Your days can be as cool and relaxed as a clear mountain stream, if you decide that's the life you want. This means you don't have to remain on any level not

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of your choosing. You have the power to climb. You can change your life experiences by walking away from any of those unwanted worlds within you that create your unpleasant days.

26. We start learning from life when we stop blaming reality, and accept that it was our lack of understanding that created the perceived problem. Our sincere wish to learn cannot fail to attract the healing truth we desire, which can then become a part of us and act through us. This can only happen through our own self-work. No one can tell us the truth, for then it would not become a part of our own nature. We must test our beliefs and question our responses for ourselves. When we begin to understand the truth about reality, and our own place in it, that truth, along with all its power, becomes our own.

27. Real pleasure is not the opposite of pain; it is the absence of it. Think about it. What you really want is to be free of your wants. Here is the key to the ever-pleasant life. Our wants seem to hold the promise of a brighter, more pleasant future when the truth is that it is their very nature that is disturbing the present. Everything is pleasant now. You wouldn't throw a pebble into a pond to quiet its surface.

28. Lasting contentment is being free of our own undeveloped and demanding nature. Our higher nature is able to see that the only thing that makes us unhappy is our ideas about how to make ourselves happy. The selfish mind can't see this error of perception due to its intoxication by senses.

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29. Who is this dark visitor with both a permanent passkey to our inner home, and the power to punish us at will? Our never-ending need to feel approved. No one else holds the keys to your life. Imagine how much stress, fear, doubt, and sorrow we would live without were we only content enough within ourselves to enjoy our own company. As this awakening would dawn on you, your new understanding would also reveal a brand-new view of the world around you. People you once thought of as powerful will be seen as weary pretenders who need you to complete their pretence. What a wonderful, liberating surprise! And from the seed of this special insight flowers the first of much new inner strength. Since you know there's no real advantage in gaining the attention of the world around you. Seeking and receiving approval from others is like sitting down hungry to an imaginary meal. You're invited to eat all you want, but no matter how much imaginary food is served, you can never get your fill. Your hunger remains. No fictional feast ever satisfies.

30. Don't be afraid of not having something to do. If you will permit the inner-echoing to fade, it will disappear -- and with it, the false self. Choose Being over doing and one day there will be no more pain in what you do or don't do, because you won't be doing anything anymore to prove to yourself that you are real. You are and you will know it.

31. How many times in a day do we find ourselves having gone after something that we wanted, only to find ourselves "gotten" or "done in" by what we have reached for? Then what happens? The crying, complaining, bitterness and blaming starts:

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"Oh, why is this happening to me? This isn't right!" We can't see how we actually participated in producing the moment in which we find ourselves compromised, and now it's too late to want to "stop the world and get off."

32. Peace of mind produces right values; right values produce right thoughts. Right thoughts produce right actions, and right actions produce work which will be a material reflection for others to see the serenity at the center of it all.

33. "Worry and Hurry" are evil twins that prey on unwary souls by means of their unseen partnership. As "Worry" paints a negative mental image that promises the worst to come, "Hurry" whispers of the urgency in this emergency -- the emotional effect of which is to send us rushing to repair a problem that probably doesn't even exist!

34. Hatred of anyone, or anything, destroys the one who hates. This is unequivocal spiritual law -- so we should do all that we can to lay down our resentments by seeing that all we are doing is burning ourselves up with wasted energies that could be put to productive purposes.

35. Pure Silence is simply experiencing being as a witness, not as controller or doer or thinker but as observer. There is tremendous freedom and peace in this. Where there is peace, there is certitude and order. From the order comes wisdom and inexplicable

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joy, which is the joy of discovery. The discovery is that your am-ness is part of the am-ness of God.

36. Divine lovers are ever-happy people. Their happiness is not coming from the outside world of sense objects but rather they are happy because of their inner cause and this inner cause is their inner contact with the first cause of the universe.

37. Now, over minor insignificant things you lose your temper and become ridden with tension. Anger and temper are dangerous. They can ruin your life. If you suffer from anger you will not be able to achieve anything worthwhile. You will be looked upon with disgust and derision. You will lose your wealth. All the honors you have enjoyed will turn to ashes. Your anger will even separate you from those who are closest to you. Because of anger people lose everything, and their life becomes a waste. Whatever thoughts you have, they will bring you the corresponding results. Whatever you are feeling will be reflected in your way of talking and acting. In the very first place, you must endeavor to purify your feelings. You have to make your love pure. To do so you have to develop forbearance, which is a serene patience and self-restraint under all circumstances, giving good to all, even to those who may want to harm you. There is nothing greater than having this quality of forbearance. Forbearance is equivalent to truth itself, forbearance is the heart of righteousness, forbearance is the very essence of the ancient wisdom, forbearance is nonviolence in practice, forbearance is contentment, and it is compassion also.

38. Some times we feel that we are a cordless baby in the womb of endless universe. It causes angst of living and existential

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nausea or in the end it may induce a state of emotional blindness and intellectually a state of God-less-ness. But this is not the end of the tunnel, there is light at the other end. God continues His work to evolve our lives into His own Will nothing can stop in the kingdom of God not even the frustration has a permanent life. This state of mind-exhaustion changes too. This utter state of nonrelational existence guides us to the state of psychic death and furthers more into the death of the world (here death means unintrusive behavior of psychic body of the seeker and the world). The interesting point here is that what happens when the psyche is dead and when the world is dead? Big Bang! Believe me then the God is dead (on mental plane) too. Yes! When there is no psyche, there is no world then there is no God too. What comes next? Without God, life becomes a black hole that sucks our minds to its unknown centre with such a great gravitational pull that our minds burn in friction and just vanish into nowhere. What happens next? Next is the unveiling of the true God. Yes! From all this fogy situation of God-less-ness the crystallization of the true God takes place. Now this new God the re-born God throbs directly into our hearts. This God does not need any logical support to be acknowledged by human mind rather He appears the lord of all existence in His own right. Now He creates nothing. He acts nothing, He demands nothing, He desires nothing He exists only in Himself and for Himself. Now He is not known, not worshiped, not sought for, not loved and not hated by any outside cognitive force.

39. There is only one basic fear. All other small fears are byproducts of the one main fear that every human being carries with himself: the fear is of losing yourself. It may be in death, it may be in love, but the fear is the same: you are afraid of losing yourself. And the strangest thing is that only those people are afraid of losing themselves who dont have themselves. Those who have themselves are not afraid. So it is really a question of exposure you dont have anything to lose; you just believe that you have something to lose.

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40. The body can give you only momentary pleasures, and each pleasure is balanced by pain in the same amount, in the same degree. Each pleasure is followed by its opposite because body exists in the world of duality, just as the day is followed by night and death is followed by life and life is followed by death. It is a vicious circle. Your pleasure will be followed by pain; your pain will be followed by pleasure. But you will never be at ease. When you will be in a state of pleasure you will be afraid that you are going to lose it, and that fear will poison it. And when you will be lost in pain, of course, you will be in suffering, and you will try every possible effort to get out of it -- just to fall again back into it. It is called the wheel of birth and death. We go on moving in this wheel, clinging to the wheel ... and the wheel moves on. Sometimes pleasure comes up and sometimes pain comes up, but we are crushed between these two rocks. There is difference between pleasure and happiness: happiness is not a relief, it is enrichment. You become more full, you become a little overflowing. Listening to good music, something is triggered in your being, a harmony arises in you -- you become musical. Or dancing, suddenly you forget your body; your body becomes weightless. The grip of gravitation over you is lost. Suddenly you are in a different space: the ego is not so solid, the dancer melts and merges into the dance. This is far higher, far deeper than the joy that you gain from food or sex. This has a depth. But this is also not the ultimate. The ultimate happens only when you are fully awake, when all sleep is gone and all dreaming is gone, when your whole being is full of light, when there is no darkness within you. All darkness has disappeared and with that darkness, the ego is gone. All tensions have disappeared, all anguish, all anxiety. You are in a state of total contentment. You live in the present; no past, no future anymore. You are utterly here in the Now. This moment is all. Now is the only time and here is the only space. And then suddenly the whole sky drops into you. This is bliss. This is

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real happiness. Seek bliss, it is your birthright. Don't remain lost in the jungle of pleasures; rise a little higher. Reach to happiness and then to bliss. Pleasure is animal, happiness is human, and bliss is divine. Pleasure binds you, it is bondage and it chains you. Happiness gives you a little more rope, a little bit of freedom, but only a little bit. Bliss is absolute freedom. You start moving upwards; it gives you wings. You are no more part of the gross earth; you become part of the sky. You become light, you become joy. Pleasure is dependent on others. Happiness is not so dependent on others, but still it is separate from you. Bliss is not dependent, is not separate either; it is your very being; it is your very nature.

41. Just our being here is such a miracle. It cannot be explained why I am here, why you are here. Why these trees are here, why these stars are here. Why at all this universe exists, and goes on peopling itself with trees and birds and people. Why in the first place it is there, there is no way to know. It simply is there. But it inspires awe! It fills the heart with wonder. It is unbelievably true -- it is incredible! It is absurd, but tremendously beautiful. Why it is there, there is no way to say -- but it is there. Don't waste your time for the why. It is there: delight in it! Celebrate it! Be lost into it! And let it be lost into you. Meet it! Let the meeting be like two lovers entering into each other. Let it be an orgasmic experience.

42. All queries and all answers thereupon are merely ideas. Ideas if not put in action and practice are nothing but only a release of brain pressures through words and mind abstractions. It is the action that embodies the idea and the goal. Mind chattering that revolves around desire to dominate and self-projection leads ultimately to dissolution of inner peace and equilibrium.

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43. Pain and pleasure both are two sides of the same coin. Both root down in bondage and are two different aspects of suffering. Both agitate the mind and all agitation burns away the life energy and end up in fatigue and exhaustion. Whereas happiness never diminish the life energy in you. Instead happiness is the source alone that revitalizes life energy in us. Mind free of all ideas becomes happiness. Agitation of mind brings death nearer to us while happiness makes us feel self-sufficient and perfected.

44. Most of the people are fond of gross or sensuous pleasures. Very few are capable to enjoy the subtle pleasures that come from minds intellectual activity. Gross pleasure come from luxurious foods, sex, clothing, wealth, possessions, authority, name and fame. Whereas subtle pleasures include reading, writing, conversing, listening, contemplating, fine art activities and selfless social activities.

45. If hate arises for someone or against someone, or love arises for someone, what do we do? We project it on the person. If you feel hate toward me, you forget yourself completely in your hate; only I become your object. If you feel love toward me, you forget yourself completely; only I become the object. You project your love or hate or whatsoever upon me. You forget completely the inner center of your being; the other becomes the center. Someone has insulted you anger suddenly erupts, you are feverish. Anger is flowing toward the person who has insulted you. Now you will project this whole anger onto him. He has not done anything. If he has insulted you, what has he done? He has just

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pricked you, he has helped your anger to arise but the anger is yours. The other is not the source; the source is always within you. The other is hitting the source, but if there is no anger within you it cannot come out. If you throw a bucket into a dry well, nothing comes out. In a water-filled well, you throw a bucket and water comes out, but the water is from the well. The bucket only helps to bring it out. So one who is insulting you is just throwing a bucket in you, and then the bucket will come out filled with the anger, hate, or fire that was within you.

46. When you are in the grip of a strong thought, when you are under the surge of an intense emotion you have already lost the game. How can you win by loosing more? Your efforts to execute the thought and your actions to satisfy the emotion in you would just be adding more to a sinking ship. In life the moment you lose the equilibrium in you that very moment you fall off the rope. The very moment you let you tilt to right or left that very moment you become a looser. How can you win by loosing more? An action that fulfils the desire or reinforces any thinking obsession brings only more misery, frustration and pain. Because your strength is not going after Thought and Desire but your strength is in staying centered in balance.

47. "An emotion is an automatic response, an automatic effect of mans value premises. An effect, not a cause. There is no necessary clash, no dichotomy between mans reason and his emotionsprovided he observes their proper relationship. A rational man knowsor makes it a point to discoverthe source of his emotions, the basic premises from which they come; if his premises are wrong, he corrects them. He never acts on emotions for which he cannot account, the meaning of which he does not understand. In

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appraising a situation, he knows why he reacts as he does and whether he is right. He has no inner conflicts, his mind and his emotions are integrated, his consciousness is in perfect harmony. His emotions are not his enemies, they are his means of enjoying life. But they are not his guide; the guide is his mind. This relationship cannot be reversed, however. If a man takes his emotions as the cause and his mind as their passive effect, if he is guided by his emotions and uses his mind only to rationalize or justify them somehowthen he is acting immorally, he is condemning himself to misery, failure, defeat, and he will achieve nothing but destruction his own and that of others."

48. When we experience something, if we pay attention to our inner process, we can observe a consistent pattern. First, we feel something. It may be a sensation in our body; it may be more nebulous: a sense of something. Then we explore that feeling. We analyze it and think about it: what is that? Where is it? Where did it come from? What does it mean? These are our first thoughts about it. Once weve identified the sensation and its source, we connect it to other, similar sensations in our memories and we think about this new one as it relates to those previous experiences. Only after weve begun this second stage of thinking do we engage our emotions, which can be most briefly listed as: glad, sad, or mad. So our emotions are a product of our thinking. When you feel glad/sad/mad you are in an emotion.

49. Emotions are chemical reactions of the body to thoughts. A man is slave of his emotions and his emotions are slave of his thoughts and his thoughts are slave to the feelings that come to body as the first hand knowledge of any specific experience or interaction with the environment.

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CHAPTER 10

Silence is Sublime

1. Silence is a word that embeds in it the ultimate mystery of God. And what is this noise? All creation is a noise and God alone is silence. Our bodies, our needs, our desires, our thoughts, our sufferings, our capital and any loss or gain there on, our property, our relations, our life and death all are part of noise. Even our worship of God, if not purified of the effects of ego, is a part of noise. Every noise holds silence at its center. Without silence noise simply can not be. Seekers always attend and identify themselves with the silence and not with the noise. If we are really up to the business of liberation and God-realization then we have to embrace this Silence. Noise is not the path to God but silence is. Know that how to tackle with noise. Do not challenge it; do not fight with it. Just let it pass on and stay untouched, stay unengaged . Just do not attend the noise. Locate the silence of the Supreme and attend to it. This is the supreme art of spiritual effort.

2. We remain fearful of the Silence because the truth of it is so vast and fathomless that we as humans apprehend that once we looked fully in the eyes of the Silence then our very existence as social entity will be jeopardized. We try our best to shy away of it. We try to shelter ourselves behind the walls of physical pleasures, engagements, drugs, addictions, new friendships, amassment of possessions and other false activities. But doing so we throw ourselves before the hyenas of desires and instincts. The more we indulge the more we are entrapped. We start loosing our spiritual footing and we become a straw that flies helplessly in the fierce winds of desires. Instead we ought to realize that solution is not in fleeing away; we ought to face the Silence in total acceptance. Let the Real devour you in full. Let it come over you. Let your ego-self fall apart. Then suddenly you will feel that all your fears were baseless

and you were constantly running away from what was destined to be your real life.

3. Silence comes forth when the gaze is turned inward. Speech wells up when the eye looks outward. People who have an inferiority complex, shy people and people lacking social exposure will develop talking in the mind. Such talking will come down if they understand the reason. It can be rooted out only when the basic cause is removed. Silence can be realized if one sees God in his inner being. When God touches mind, mind feels it as Silence. The emotions feel it as love, and the sensations feel it as delight.

4. Once we experience reality through silence then words can not separate us from it because now we no longer trust the language entirely as the forum of reality.

5. Concepts can at best only serve to negate one another, as one thorn is used to remove another, and then be thrown away. Only in deep silence do we leave concepts behind. Words and language deal only with concepts, and cannot approach Reality.

6. Body, thought and emotion all three are barriers in spiritual growth. There is no body in separation to God. Thought is localization and enslavement of the Unidentified Consciousness. Mind is local and transitory while Unidentified Consciousness is universal and divine. All feelings are reaction of the body to the influencing data; this data after passing through the bias filters of the psyche excites the relevant centers and initiates a reactionary

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chain of events in psychosomatic structures of the body. To have the experience of enlightenment we have to reenter into Unidentified Consciousness.

7. Truth cannot be forced into a word; the word is so small. Truth can not be transported in simple words or in exactness all words are inadequate. There are not a few words which are less inadequate and a few which are more adequate all are absolutely inadequate. If you want to know what Truth is, you will have to listen to silence. You will have to drop your beingness.

8. Silence holds beauty and perfection; by speaking we turn this beauty into absurdness and imperfection. No sound (word) can contain and transport the heart of silence. So speak only when there is true need of it. Do not speak on the urge of your ego rather speak for guidance and help.

9. Learn silence. And at least with your friends, with your lovers, with your family, with your fellow travelers here, sit in silence sometimes. Dont go on gossiping, dont go on talking. Stop talking, and not only on the outside - stop the inner talk. Be in an interval. Just sit, doing nothing, just being presences to each other. And soon you will start finding a new way to communicate. And that is the right way. Start communicating through silence sometimes. Holding the hand of your friend, sit silently. And see, a communion happens - not only communication, but a communion. Your hearts start beating in the same rhythm. You start feeling the same space. You start feeling the same joy. You start overlapping each others being. That is

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communion. You have said without saying anything, and there will be no misunderstanding.

10. Efforts to communicate the spiritual experience, basically, are an ugly act as it is an endeavor to transport the incommunicable content from the teller to the listener or knower. Spirituality can not be known through the medium of words, ultimate knowledge of it comes from within the seeker and it always comes through the medium of inner silence.

11. By being more expressive, more argumentative, trying to influence other folks by boasting about your personal potentials, resources, abilities and victories, you will never befriend other people rather the distance between you and other people will be enhanced. Talk only when your talk is needed and when your talking would help others positively. Be receptive, non-interfering, tolerant and helping. Respect the sanctity of universe as a whole. Be influenced only by God and let others also be influenced only by God not by you. Share your light with others not your darkness. Be silent! Silence will bring you elegance but your silence should never give an impression of arrogance or inferiority complex. Be influenced by your Lord but never ignore the world because world is not alienated from God. World is creation and radiance of God. World is corridor to go back to its source. World is bigger womb for God-seekers. It prepares us, nourishes us and provides opportunity to us for a fall back onto God. This falling back is different from death; death is the end of this opportunity of falling back. After death we can no more fall-back because death brings an end to that relational gap between God and individual that holds the beatitude of falling back onto God.

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12. Silence means absence of discordant thoughts. Silence is not just sitting with a blank mind instead it is a state of uttermost awareness of the divine presence.

13. Silence cannot come unless the mental watching and observing is dropped. No spiritual practice and progress is possible without mind control. Thoughts generate momentum in mind and this momentum causes more thoughts in return. Momentum of the mind resists our efforts to bring the mind at peace. The Inner Space is not a mind-state but in fact it is no-mind state. And this no-mind state is not an anti-mind state but is above-mind state and essentially is reached through mind. Mind reaches to the no-mind state as a student of high school one day becomes a PhD scholar. This no-mind state comes through mastery and perfection of the mind-state. Nomind is flowering and natural culmination of mind. It is consciousness without content. We can not create our Inner Reality, it is already there but we have been blocked out by our own thinking and understanding. The only thing we are supposed to do is to create the Inner Space next thing (Inner Reality) will dawn upon us spontaneously without any further effort on our part. In the Inner Space the Inner Reality will become available as our body becomes available to us upon waking; what we need is just to be awoken to the ever present Reality.

14. Once upon a time a jungle was on fire a huge inferno and a beautiful butterfly that was flying past this inferno asked the fire what you are? The fire replied If you really want to know then come as close to me as possible you would know but you would not survive to tell it So it is like that: An yone who comes

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to know does not survive to tell real knowing is like experiencing the death any one who has experienced death has neve r come back to us to report his encounter with death.

15. When you are in a state of no-thought you are alone, and aloneness is purity. And in that aloneness happens all that is worth happening. Through aloneness, the ego is shattered. It has nothing to relate to, so it cannot exist. So if you are ready to be alone, unwaveringly alone, neither escaping nor falling back, just accepting the fact of aloneness as it is -- it becomes a great opportunity. Then you are just like a seed that has much potential in it. But remember, the seed must destroy itself for the plant to grow. Ego is a seed, a potentiality. When it is shattered, the divine is born. The divine is neither "I" nor "thou," it is one. Through aloneness, you come to this oneness.

16. Only pure aloneness gives you a clean sanity. You don't need the other; the dependence on the other is no more there, you are enough unto yourself. Language is meaningless because language is a medium to relate with the other. The moment you are no longer dependent on the other, language is meaningless, words are meaningless. In your silence -- when there are no words, no language, nobody else is present -- you are getting in tune with existence. This serenity, this silence, this aloneness will bring you immense rewards. It will allow you to grow to your full potential. For the first time you will feel life, for the first time you will have the touch and the taste of freedom, and for the first time the immensity, the unboundedness of existence will be yours with all its blissfulness. So in silence nothing wrong can ever happen. Whatever happens is going to enhance the beauty of it, deepen the charm of it; anything that happens will bring more and more flowers, more and more fragrance to it.

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17. Loneliness is a state of mind when you are constantly missing the other; aloneness is the state of mind when you are constantly delighted in yourself. Loneliness is miserable, aloneness is blissful. Loneliness is always worried, missing something, hankering for something, desiring for something; aloneness is a deep fulfillment, not going out, tremendously content, happy, celebrating. In loneliness you are off center, in aloneness you are centered and rooted. Aloneness is beautiful. It has elegance around it, a grace and a climate of tremendous satisfaction. Loneliness is; beggarly; all around it there is begging and nothing else. It has no grace around it. In fact it is ugly. Loneliness is dependence, aloneness is sheer independence.

18. Say what you know in a humble way; do not have the sensation that you are putting forward the whole truth. Give others the liberty to learn from you if they understand you and to show dissention if they would prefer having their own thoughts. When we talk it is ample proof that we are not saying the whole truth because the whole truth needs not to be ever said. To know the whole truth is becoming a thought-less being, silence is the language of whole truth. But due to mental obscurities most of us are not able to listen to the language of silence, even sometimes we become afraid of facing the silence because it remind us about our imperfections and weaknesses inherent in us.

19. Do not ask questions, questions are always mothers of some new questions. It is vicious cycle. Just wait in patience, wait and wait when time is ripened, things would unfold themselves before you at their own. Where there is no question there is no need of answers; it is the question, not you, who needs to know the answer.

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A stone needs no answers because it has no questions, be like a stone, stay calm in clear and pure silence, face the silence eyeball to eyeball, if you would not inquire, protest, hate and hasten silence would transform you in its own way.

20. It is never like that you attain no-mind first and then you fill it with positive assertion of God. It does not come so. In fact, the more we allow the positive assertion (acceptance of a God) to occupy our inner space the more we are established in no-mind state. No-mind state without positive assertion is like a seed without embryo. We must resist all ideas having belief that the no-mind state itself is an accomplishment. With the sheer use of will power, psychic force and absurd practices one can force his mind to act as no-mind but a mind numbed in such a way looses all its potential to become a subtle tool of God-realization.

21. Even a teacher of peace and silence needs words to convey his intent. As in the class room when little children are making noise and crying over each other and the teacher wants them to be silent and attentive to their lesson, he orders them to be silent and sit quite. Though his words too are part of the noise but these are used to attain a noiseless state.

22. Silence is not equal to empty-ness. Emptiness is a negative and unspiritual word. To be in Silence is like sitting in the calm sunshine. When you are empty you are in total darkness. There is spiritual Sun (God) shining eternally and there are clouds (thoughts and feelings) always moving across. Be in the sunshine not in the clouds.

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23. Silence is not the name of being thoughtless as we cannot become thoughtless but Silence is capacity to not to be disturbed by thoughts as the fish swim in the lake but the lake is not disturbed by it. The lake just let the fish pass on and swim through. The fish comes and go without leaving behind any mark or trace in water.

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CHAPTER 11

Renunciation and Detachment

1. Ascetic is not a person who wanders in jungles while his heart yearns for the comforts of life, which are available to the non-ascetic persons. Instead ascetic is he, who lives in society but defeats his desires for the sake of getting strength in his love for God. Physical distance is not necessary for the abandonment . A drinker can discard his habit of alcohol while continuing his pub business. A smoker can quit his habit of smoking while having his cigarette shop continued. A man who has been jailed for his crimes is away from his family members but he has not abandoned them in his mind. A man whose dead body is lying in the center of his family members is not with them. All this shows that abandonment and physical distance are two different things. Possession is not necessary for union and physical proximity is no barrier in the way of abandonment. So it is quite possible to disengage ones mind from the outside world. To achieve this state, it is not necessary to depart from ones social or family life. Only right awareness is needed.

2. Spirituality does not mean leaving the world, it means having the strength and courage to play in this world joyfully. It is not renouncing the world but getting detached from things that suck up our energy and give gravity to our growth.

3. Surrendering to God does not involve leaving the world, but realizing that everything happens in accordance with divine plans. In surrender one lets the divine plan rule his life without giving up ones best effort. If you put the reins of your life chariot in His hands, you will be ever happy, ever peaceful. Spiritual effort is absolutely necessary, but the last rung of the ladder to the

Supreme is not traveled by effort alone. All efforts are infertile unless divine grace and sanction accompanies our efforts.

4. Every renouncement is false unless things drop by themselves. Whether it is money, whether it is some childhood memory, whether it is some mental problem, do not try to drop them. In dropping them you are giving them importance. They need to be ignored. Let me repeat it again: no direct action against any negative thing; otherwise you will always be caught in its net. Focus on the positive, on the affirmative. It is the affirmative, the positive that is going to bring you freedom, freedom from life problems.

5. Letting go is the journey and it never ends. Never! It only begins -- over and over again -- each time we can glimpse something higher than our own painful certainty. Letting go is not giving up; it is going up. There is always something higher, a life beyond the limits of our present sight. But to see what is further we must be willing to lift our eyes from their present point of focus. This is letting go. Have no concern if at first you can't see. Vision will come.

6. When you happen to walk in a crowd, you do not fight every man you meet; you just find your way between. When you fight, you invite a fight. But when you do not resist, you meet no resistance. When you refuse to play the game, you are out of it.

7. Money can prolong the life span but it cannot make it better. Those who are struggling to improve the quality of their

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individual lives through more material gains and possessions are doomed to be failed in the end because the quality of life cannot be measured by physical or material gains and losses but it is purely a state of mind.

8. Do you give up the bed when you fall into deep sleep? You just forget it! Liberation is not being free from the world. It is being free of the world.

9. The physical conditions are not our strength, and also they are not our weaknesses. What is in our mind, that is what we really are; that is our strength or weakness. While all our physical organs may be detached from objects of sense, the internal senses may be in contact with the objects, setting up a reactionary force with a more violent contact with objects than we would have entered into merely by physical contact. Psychological contact is worse than physical contact because the mind shakes up the entire personality and churns the bloodstream of our body. The moment the mind thinks of a sensual object the entire bloodstream is affected. It is similar to the way milk curdles by a touch of acid; there is a breaking up of the indivisibility of the milk. The strength of the milk goes, and it is no longer milk at all. It becomes curd. It cannot be converted back into milk. So also, an intense thought of a sensual object is like an acid poured into the bloodstream of our body. It breaks up the indivisibility and the health of the blood, and the energy of the blood is isolated from the blood like butter coming out of milk due to curdling. The vitality of our system is isolated from the bloodstream, and this vitality that is so cut off from the blood is forcefully diverted or directed towards the object which the mind has been craving. We know what happens when vitality is diverted to an object. We become weak mentally and physically; and even as curd cannot be converted into milk, so also

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the energy that is lost is lost forever. Therefore, it is of no use thinking that thought of sense objects is harmless.

10. The causes of attachment are misconceptions that we have in regard to things of the world. We have a wrong notion about things and, therefore, we are attached to them. We do not understand things properly; therefore, we are made to cling to objects. There are many things that can attract us hundreds and thousands of things and conditions but as far as spiritual practice is concerned, one has to be very cautious about desires. These are our weaknesses. These are the weak spots in human nature, and the moment these weak spots are touched, the personality comes out like a hissing snake. These weak spots are always covered by us with great care, and we put on an artificial personality which is itself a kind of disease, on account of which we are never happy any moment of our life.

11. Marriage is not a bar to spirituality, if one lives according to the righteous principles. There may be one duty of begetting children, but that is not the be-all and end-all of married life; there is grossly wrong understanding on this subject. Make your life pure and controlled. If you wish to have one or two children, well and good, but look after them properly and help them to become something good. Set a worthy example for them, and remain aware of the responsibilities of parenthood.

12. It is good to work, and one should work wholeheartedly; and then forget it. To continue concerning oneself with countless petty matters will fritter away the attention. This only causes further enmeshing attachment.

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13. Non-attachment is simply an acceptance of the present moment. It does not mean the absence of negative emotions. It is opening to the present moment, whether it is pleasant or unpleasant, without clinging to it, or rejecting it. If anger comes, if desir e comes, then accept it, without necessarily acting on it. We cant block emotions off. Just feel them completely; welcome them, without acting on them. Slowly, we begin to free ourselves from our own prison, and let the pain go. The first step is to realize that we are not our emotions. We are not sad; there is sadness inside us. We are not angry; there is anger inside us. If we are identified with our emotions, we cant do anything about it. But when we realize it is just a feeling, and it is not us, we remove our investment, and we can take steps to heal it. We can behave in appropriate ways, instead of being controlled by it. Try not to go into mind or your story about your feelings. Doing so will feed the pain like fuel feeds the fire. If we indulge in them, we might be doing the opposite of healing the pain we might in fact be wallowing in it. When your stories or thoughts arise, let them pass without focusing on them, and gently bring your attention back to the raw sensation. Dont give up if you fin d yourself not doing too well at first. Many of us have denied our feelings for far too long, a habit that has been ingrained in us since childhood. We simply dont know how to feel anymore. Just like learning to ride a bicycle, we make mistakes and we dont do too well in the beginning. Dont beat yourself up; just keep practicing. Soon we will find this to be a natural way of being in the world.

14. When we have disease we should not think that taking any treatment or any curing effort would be against the will of God, there is no spirituality in being non-responsive in day to day matters. If something confronts us and we react accordingly then the

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whole thing is quite natural and we are still in the subjugation of Gods will. Our will always act in subjugati on to God. Our smaller will is a vehicle of Gods greater will. No one can disengage himself/herself from the daily chores of life. Rather we should play our part in acceptance of the given situation.

15. Pain and pleasure, success and failure, fame and defamation -- all is accidental. Only your witnessing consciousness is essential. Stick to it! Get more and more rooted in it. And don't spread your attachment to worldly things. I don't mean leave them. I don't mean leave your house, leave your wife, leave your children -but remember that it is just an accident that you are together. It is not going to be an eternal state.

16. A detached and quietened mind is like a non-stick fry pan; food can still be cooked in it but neither the pan nor the food gets contaminated by each other or in an other example to it we can say that a free mind is like sky and thoughts come and go like clouds but sky remains undisturbed.

17. It is of course easier to give up suffering than to give up enjoyment. But one has to understand that both these habits build up the ego (or more precisely, the self-identification with the bodymind complex). If the ego is sustained by enjoyment, it will continue to feed suffering. Such habits cannot of course be stopped overnight: but they can be weeded out over time. Thus, when experiencing pleasures, do not linger on them and try to maximize them, as we all want to do, but instead look upon them meditatively. This will enable you to also find liberation from pains i.e. to contemplate them calmly, without fearing them or trying to minimize them.

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Contentment is not only the opposite of suffering but the antithesis of both suffering and enjoyment. It is freedom of the spirit from passing material and mental phenomena of whatever polarity, freedom from the ups and downs of random emotions. Non-attachment does not mean feigned or forced detachment. Nonattachment is not emotional paralysis, in the way of someone who has built up rigid defenses against emotions. It consists in being cool and collected, not frozen or repressed. It is not getting overly excited over all occurrences. If one meditates sufficiently then nonattachment comes naturally.

18. If you look around yourself you will find many ropes almost a net. Sometimes the content of your mind becomes your rope. And if there was one rope only, it would be easy to cut it and be free. There are so many ropes ... your whole personality consist of ropes. Even though those ropes make you a prisoner they give you nothing but misery and trouble, they dont all ow you to have your dignity and your mastery somehow they are long-time acquaintances and to drop them feels like you are cutting something of your own being. They have become your second nature.

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CHAPTER 12

Surrender

1. To surrender is becoming a baby in the lap of God. It is total submissiveness and dependence. One, who surrenders never complain, has no desire to become or to get rid of. He or she is never happy or aggrieved but remains voiceless and desireless. God becomes the only point in life to live for.

2. Surrender is a spiritual miracle. It teaches us how to see God with our eyes closed, how to talk to Him with our mouth shut. Fear enters into our being only when we withdraw our surrender from the Absolute.

3. The only reason of our spiritual backwardness is that the simplest thing appears to us as the most difficult one. To surrender before God is the simplest thing one can do any time but foolishly we waste away our whole life before we realize this glaring and so near truth.

4. A man has to live at three levels simultaneously. So, we can say that human life is contained in three bodies which are Physical body, Psychic body and Spiritual body. Spiritual body is dependent on psychic body and psychic body is dependent on physical body. To live a healthy and balanced life a seeker has to take care of life at all three levels. Ignoring the needs of any one body will inescapably affect the other two bodies. Remember it always that physical body and psychic body are not any hindrance in the way of spiritual life. To be established in spiritual life, we do not need to torture the physical body or to use violence of any kind against

psychic body. Respect and take care of all three planes of life. Psychic death that is mentioned as a requirement of higher spiritual experience in some texts means that we should not allow the psychic plane of living to become an impediment in the way of spiritual life. We should not allow our thoughts and feelings to become a cause of our spiritual degeneration. To be one with God, that is the apex point of spiritual effort, we have to transcend of all three bodies (physical, psychic and spiritual). This level of spiritual accomplishment can not be described further because words lose power here and mind has no eyes to see through it.

5. You have no power to make or break anything then why you have wants and fears the whole space and its contents are flowing from God and settling back into God.

6. Be a medium to Gods influence. Be open and available to God. Like a canvas be open and blank. Let the hand of God draw whatever He likes to draw on you. Drop all resistance. With the shovel of resistance you are digging only your own grave. And whatever God paints on you accept it in total silence. Only this is trust, surrender and enlightenment.

7. A man who was newly married was on his way back home with his bride in a boat, traversing a river. Suddenly a storm arose and the wife trembled with fear as the man sat calm and composed unmindful of the calamity that raged around them. The wife asked, Are you not scared? You seem to be least bothered about the storm. Are you aware that the boat may capsize and we may be drowned?" The man, who was a warrior, at once removed his sword from the sheath and pointed it close to his wife's neck and

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asked, Are you not scared?" The wife said, Why should I? The sword is in your hand, but I am not frightened as I am aware that you love me" The man replied, Why should I get scared? For the sword is in God's hands, the storm is in God's hands. What ever He does, I take it to be for my good. If we survive or if we die in the storm, I believe it to be for our good. I trust Him" Such should be one's trust towards God. Such trust is capable of transforming one's life and anything lesser will not do.

8. There was a rich man who was a student of a poor teacher. One day, the rich man offered the teacher some gold coins. He knew that the teacher would not care for gold. In fact, the gold was offered in the certainty that it would not be accepted! As expected, the teacher said he did not want the gold, but added the student should cast all of them into the river. The teacher sent a man along to ensure the student carried out his instructions. When the man, whom the teacher had deputed, returned in the evening, the teacher asked him what had kept him so long. He replied that the student had wept over every gold coin he had to cast into the river. His reluctance to part with the gold had delayed things! The students insincerity now stood exposed. The teacher then asked the student why he was attached to the gold. After all, once the student had given it to the teacher, it was the latters wishing to do what he pleased with it. If we are in surrender state then we should not hesitate to accept whatever comes in our way.

9. Surrender in Spiritual Contemplation becomes a systemic need of spiritual development. Here surrender is not a bargain between two entities or an instrument to attain something that is superior to surrender itself rather a seeker surrenders his separateness to have an experience of the divine oneness. Here

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surrender itself is an attainment not a means to any further superior attainment.

10. Surrender is the hardest thing for humans. We do not surrender unless we are totally beaten down by any superior force. People, generally, do not feel comfortable before a person who possesses deep immense knowledge and has the power to answer any question put forward. People become fearful of his all knowingness, they feel themselves vulnerable before su ch a great scholar. Even people try to humiliate such person; they want to remove such person from their way by labeling him as insane and crazy figure. Generally people are resistant to be corrected because to them they consider themselves already wiser than anyone else. Everyone wants to appear wise so people start avoiding such person who appears a threat to their petty wisdom. If the advising person lacks in spiritual powers and only holds word knowledge, then he is doomed to be failed, people will certainly succeed in their sinister designs to degrade and insult such person. But the saints are not such helpless creature; they are supported and fortified with the omnipotence of God. When one realizes God he also realizes the omnipotence of God. People feel awed and submit themselves willingly before enlightened persons. Thus the transfer of wisdom between the learned and the ignorant becomes possible.

11. We have no capacity to amend, change, avoid or reject the Divine Will, only thing that we do is the blurring and degrading of our own possibility to become pure and divine. We ourselves are responsible for all the sufferings we endure in life. Be like a void, like a hollow pipe let the wind of Divine will move through you, whistle through you freely without any resistance and desire on your part. Be a dust particle in the lap of strong wind, run with Air when the Air causes you to run and stop when the Air causes you to stop. Total

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and unconditional surrender to divine will can transform a mans life instantly and for ever.

12. Determinism is not in contradiction to free will. We have free will that is determined to appear as free. Heads and tails are two sides of a coin. Heads side is free to be heads and tails side is free to be tails but both sides are determined to remain part of the coin. Two sides of the coin are two aspects of the one same coin. Both aspects appear free but apart from the coin their existence would be a non-reality and delusion. So the human beings are determined as well as free at the same time. All things are creation of God and so are our body and mind consciousness. Our Will is also emanating from God so it is not free in its genesis but it is free because God has willed for it to appear as free. If a determined thing apparently appears as free then that is free. A judge in court is determined in his service but is free in his judgments. Going further we can say that judge is determined in giving his verdicts according to law but he is free to make his choices from various available precedence and relevant clauses of law. Finally, we can say that all acts either they rise from free will or from determinism root down to one reality and that reality is God. All states of determinism are coming from God and all states of freedom are coming from God too. We are bound to take free things as free and determined things as determined. A man who is not blind his eyes appear free to see and a man who is blind his eyes appear determined to not to see. What prevails in the end is Gods will. Our will i s not free but it is emanating from the free will of God, so it is free. God is tantalizing our intelligence and plays with its inability to understand the first cause. Thus God guides us and draws us towards His infinite Self.

13. We remain volatile in our resolve until the ego-nature in us is replaced by God-nature. Total surrender of all our actions to

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the government of something eternal within us which will replace the ordinary working of the ego-nature is the end of wavering. Ordinarily, we conceive of ourselves as a separate "I" that chooses in full liberty its own self-determined actions and is independent and therefore sole master of its works and responsible. It is not easy for the ordinary mind, the mind that has not thought nor looked deeply into its own constitution and constituents, it is difficult even for minds that have thought but have no spiritual vision and experience, to imagine how there can be anything else in us truer, deeper and more powerful than this apparent "I" and its empire. This ego or "I" is not a lasting truth, much less our essential part; it is only a formation of nature; a mental form of thought, centralization in the perceiving and discriminating mind, a vital form of the centralization of feeling and sensation in our life. All that we internally are is not ego, but consciousness, soul or spirit. An executive cosmic force shapes us and dictates through our temperament and environment. Truly, we do not think, will or act but thought occurs in us, will occurs in us, impulse and act occur in us; our ego-sense gathers around it, refers itself to all this flow of natural activities. It is cosmic force, it is God that forms the thought, imposes the will, and imparts the impulse. Our body, mind and ego are a wave of that sea of force in action and do not govern it, but are governed and directed by it.

14. A wholesome self immolation, a complete equality of mind, an unsparing effacement of the ego, a transforming deliverance of the nature from its ignorant modes of action are the ways by which the surrender to the divine will can be initiated and achieved. Our self-giving must be true, total and without reserve. It must become first the constant will, then the ingrained need in all the being, finally an automatic but living and conscious habit.

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15. When you surrender you become a valley; when you are an ego you are like a peak. Ego means you are above everyone else, you are somebody. The others may recognize you, may not recognize you that is another thing. You recognize that you are above everyone. You are like a peak; nothing can enter you. When you surrender, you become like a valley. You become depth, not height. Then the whole existence begins to pour into you from everywhere. You become just a vacuum, a depth, a bottomless abyss. The whole existence begins to pour from everywhere. You can see God runs from everywhere to you, enters you from every pore, fills you totally.

16. Remember one thing for ever that one man is not the responsibility of another man rather God alone is responsible for all of us. I only owe to God; no other man or situation or condition is my responsibility. I am not born to amend, to repair, to improve, to judge, to respect or to be respected, to guide others or to be guided by others I am born alone to submit my whole existence to my Lord. There is absolutely no other purpose of my life. And this need no techniques, no tricks, no resources it just can be done right Now in this very simple moment. The only investment we need is to say Yes. By saying Yes we surrender totally before God.

17. Surrender is the unconditional fusion of me with the heart of the beloved. Surrender is the true foundation of our liberation from separate consciousness, the ground of our dissolution into the source of creation.

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18. When you surrender you do not surrender to anything outside of you but to your own very core. Through surrender you identify yourself with the Source and not with the states through which the Source moves.

19. God can not be reached through words or thoughts, not through knowing and understanding but God can only be reached through total surrender. Realize that God wants not your possessions, not your ideas, not your worship but God wants you to surrender your very self-ness to God.

20. My whole life is an ink in the pen of Your Will. Write the story of my life in whatever the way you like; I shall read it in full compliance.

21. The best way for us is to accept all situations and all conditions. Do not fight or resist God. Let God move through you as He pleases. He will move through you even if you do not allow Him but in that case you will become a looser and suffering will become your destiny.

22. I am a lover of God. World is not my interest, to be changed is not my interest; God is my interest alone. Desire is venom of the ego and surrender is the flower of love.

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23. In ego you have to struggle, in love you have to surrender. In ego you have to doubt, in love you simply trust. And this trust is not like belief; belief survives against doubt. Trust is simply absence of doubt -- it is not against doubt. You simply feel trustful. So the question is not how to believe; the question is how to change your consciousness from being ego-centered to love-centered. Trust will arise -- trust is an outcome, a by-product. When one comes closer to one's center, one starts trusting more and more. The loving man knows that it is not a question of putting more energy; it is not a question of fighting at all. It is a question of allowing existence to happen. Nothing is needed on your part to be done. Only one thing: a deep trust and surrender.

24. Living in time is living in periphery. Time makes you live in things and events. Psychic split starts only when you start judging, rejecting and accepting things. In love when you surrender you surrender the time also. Surrender means coming from periphery to the center whereas time relates to periphery. By living in time, you stop living in the moment of Now. You assume that life that you want or dream about is somewhere in the ambit of future or it was in the past. You stray away from your own center. You measure your life by hours, days, years and by events. Living in time, you never feel perfection because to live in time is a fallacy. I do not mean that one can not live in time but I am pointing out that living in time is a life of fallacy - - a sin against your own center. Living in time is living in past or in future. The moment of Now is not part of time, it is so short in its nature that when you grasp it it is already gone, it is already a tiny part of past. The moment of Now is not part of time but a flash of divine presence. You can live it but you can not judge it ... you can not record it. When you are in time you are in periphery, you are away from the center. At center there is no time,

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no otherness, no separation, no waiting; at center all things and matters are always in the state of perfection. Living at center is living a life with Innocence of non-expectance.

25. Wealth and poverty both can bring significant volumetric change in life. Wealth will put your life in an uptrend and poverty will push you in a downtrend and also there are times when your life will neither be in uptrend nor in the downtrend but your life will churn in a sideways movement where you would feel your life very ordinary and eventless, you would feel your life like a mechanical routine. But all these states are ultimately worthless. I can easily guess what would you do after getting rich and also I can easily foresee what hardships the poverty can bring into your life. I also know that what the mediocre life is. This know-ability and predictability makes all these three life states worthless. At the end of the day a sensible man feels that nothing can bring a real change in life and thanks God that it is like that because life is not under the control of things. Life is always under the control of Divine. Only our Surrender before Divine can bring a real change in life. Surrender puts our life into a spin and this spin puts our life into a divine momentum where our life is accelerated to the speed of light and we loose all our gravity. We become at par with God. Thus the communion and transformation becomes possible. We feel the utter subtlety of life. Things and states loose their control over our life. Now God is on the driving seat. We become unknowable and unpredictable. We start living a life of ecstasy.

26. When river falls back into ocean it is neither annihilated nor diminished rather it gets multiplied with the volume and power of the ocean. Now river starts its new life as an ocean. What it looses is nothing except its identity as river. Rivers reunion with the ocean is not an act of diminution but is an act of

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multiplication and enhancement. In surrender there is no annihilation instead surrender is an act of magnifying your self. You were a river but through surrender you became an ocean. In surrender we loose our narrowness and become open.

27. If you observe in yourself a non-surrender state Allow it to be. Allow the non-surrender to be! Do not fight it ... You cannot fight it it just adds intensity to it! If your mind forces you for rebellion and denial then be a rebel and a denier for a while and watch out closely that what rebellion and denial brings to you. It will certainly brings to you negativity, depression and chaos. Sometimes these negative states will be used to treat your faith, to ripen your wisdom.

28. Honor this moment, and every form that this moment takes surrender and acceptance is the path of seekers.

29. Be a part of truth not an observer to it. The more we perceptualize the truth the more we are separated from it. The only path available to be a part of truth is Total Acceptance (surrender). If you try to escape from something, how are you going to understand it? And without understanding there is no liberation, no transformation.

30. The maximum that I know, the last thing that I am aware of is the feeling of my own Is-ness but I do not know What I am and from where I am rising and to where I am falling back. This mystery is the wonder and beauty of life. This mystery is the greatest

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learning place for the seekers. This mystery is infinite and unfathomable. This mystery is the mother of all agony and bliss as well. When we surrender to this mystery the mist of it starts melting as the morning fog starts melting before sun. Where there is SUN of God there is no mist there is all light and clarity and deep immanent faith.

31. True submission and total acceptance is difficult to reach but once you reach there then there will be no more suffering. It is immense joy to know and experience these two virtues.

32. Ishq (self-surrendering) is ultimate grace and magnificence of human life. It is very hard for ego to do anything without seeking reward in exchange but so long a seeker seeks for reward he can not reach to the bliss offered by Ishq.

33. What God wants from you is not love but surrender. In love you stand as partner but in total submission you are simply NOT. Do not assume that I am denouncing love and advocating surrender; there is no paradox between them. Submission too is an advanced form of love. Surrender is flowing of the intensity of love. A man who surrenders in love actually accepts totally the Oneness of God. Surrender leaves behind no trace of individual will. Surrender is communion and merger of the part into Whole.

34. Whenever things happen in your desired direction, whenever God lets your desires to be fulfilled, you become happy because you feel that God is on your side and has favored you but

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believe me it is time to be utterly shameful. You have lost the opportunity to let the God fulfill His desire for you. You have lost the opportunity to let the God execute His will on you and be proud of you and say Lo behold! My lover has slain his choice for the sake of my approval. You have not given the love a chance to make difference between an ego-man and God-seeker. If your desire is fulfilled then it is an ordinary thing because there are millions and millions of men whose desires get fulfilled by God daily. God is benevolent even to those who struggle to prove that God is dead now. It is all an ordinary affair. You have missed the opportunity to prove before God that there are men who can accept His will in the silence of total acceptance.

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CHAPTER 13

Flames of Passion

1. Love is flowing back to the source of your own nature and existence. Love is not a tool for solving any worldly problem; if this is the case then love too is a problem. Love is not a cold, bloodless inquiry into the philosophical rigmaroles but it is a journey into our own reality at the level of intense feelings for God. Love deals with our own essence.

2. The creed of Love is a Way unto itself, by itself. It cannot be compared to any other path. It has its own religion, its own worship and its own code of conduct. And to round it up we could say that its religion is sacrifice of self for the sake of the Beloved, its worship is the unceasing contemplation of the Beloved, and its code of conduct is to seek only the pleasure of the Beloved. If we want to attain the state of ecstasy and be alive in Divine Joy, external morality is an insufficient vehicle. What can deliver us to that state of undying happiness is only the devotion which has been fired by an intense longing and Love. Love is the wine-bearer that fills the hearts of the lovers to the brim. Lovers drink whatever is poured for them and grow drunk without understanding why. If we define madness as the act of flinging oneself into the fire of love, to be consumed and immolated like the moth, then yes love is that madness. Love is an exile from the land of duality. Good and evil, right and wrong had no meaning anymore. To love becomes the only profession of a lover: Love is all that he has, all he is, and all he ever wants to be. If you know the reality of Love, you would know that when you scratch a lover, underneath you find his Beloved. This is the crux of the whole matter. True love is not self-satisfaction or sensual gratification. True love is a fire that obliterates all but the image of the Beloved. God is Love and Man is the product of His Longing, His Ishq. It is Love that has given us being. So when flint is struck against flint there is a spark. When Ishq meets Ishq how can

there not be a total consummation? It is the annihilation of Love that makes the Lover and Beloved one. Therefore the ultimate crescendo in the saga of love is the discovery of Love, Lover and Beloved as One.

3. Soul is a space in you, when it is filled with darkness (no-self) it becomes ego and when it is filled with divine light it is love. Love is the replacement of ego. When love comes the ego has to transform as when light comes the darkness has to disappear.

4. Where there is love there is no question, no doubt, no curiosity, no fear, no pride of doership and no pain of separation. There are no claims and no complaining; no wanting and no rejection. The boat of love knows no anchor and no coast; it is always at the mercy of tides of the ocean.

5. There are special souls. Their hearts are kindled with the love of their Lord. They slay their right to understand and surrender their intellect unconditionally at the feet of the Supreme. God takes these souls into His lap and their hearts sing the song of divine love. They experience a life that knows no suffering.

6. Matter is flute, I AM is the rhythm and God is the flutist. God alone is the listener of His song (mantra). Ego remains blind to its true identity (its relation to the flutist) until it undergoes subtle metamorphic processes carried out by divine manipulations. These divine manipulations work through the inner potential of the

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ego and outer support that nurtures this potential to grow into Godseeking.

7. All the mind's arguments, all its protests and all its negotiations, melt like snow before the inner flame of intense love, this Invisible Light that illumines everything, this Light that is everything.

8. Do not fear to fall in love and do not fear the hurt of the loss, instead fear the numb unloving heart that will bring you analgesic life.

9. A lover must feel a true yearning for God. Sometimes momentary impulses are mistaken for such yearning. One may feel a desire for the spiritual life when struck by a blow from the world, in the shape of the death of a near and dear one or loss of money. But one generally recovers from such a shock. True devotees of God, though may possess all kinds of material goods, are not interested in them but they are aware of their impermanent and unsubstantial nature. Such souls pure in thought, word, and deed, are the custodians of divine love.

10. My body holds the image of Self in me as a water pond holds the image of moon in it. Presence of this image has bewitched my soul with the rapture of I AM. This space of I AM in me has absorbed my whole psychology. This space is making and sustaining me in a mysterious way that is not fully graspable or definable.

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11. When a seeker embarks upon the voyage of Godseeking all the assets of word-wisdom are gnawed away slowly by the monstrous sea winds. At that time staying persistent is the wisdom alone that never betrays the seekers and leads them to the coasts of liberation and self-realization. In spirituality persistence is the magic word. It is the ultimate wisdom. Persistence is a force originating from within whereas all other forms of wisdom are external and hence are subject to erosion with the passage of time but the sport that persistence provides is from within and is everlasting.

12. A spiritual mind is as capacious as an ocean. Ocean gives a level play field to the ugliness and the beauty, the mighty monsters and the feeble vulnerable creatures. In our worldly life we should have the courage to accommodate both, the favorites as well as adversities. But this state of mind is reserved only for the spiritual people. In day-to-day life spiritual mind should remain as impartial as the ocean. Ocean neither favors nor disfavors the belligerent parties in its waters. Each creature has equal right to use the ocean waters for the advancement of its life.

13. Those who seek God for any material gain soon run away from seeking. In fact, they are unaware of the reality of love. Love is not an effort, act or struggle focused to attain any out side object of mind. It does not deal with any kind of externality. God is not any goal, reward or achievement subject to our ability, capacity and intellect. Love does not change our lives but it changes our consciousness. It transforms our perception of life. Love is its own reward. Love is pride that only lovers can feel. Love is not a mean to attain any end. Love is ornamentation; it bestows distinction and

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pride upon its followers. Love is flight of God towards God. Let go the bird out of cage, let go the prisoner out of the prison. Let go the ego towards Self. Love is not supposed to cause any hardship in our lives. Love is not any punishment or suffering. It is the most natural state of being in all the phenomenal things. Pure and true love is always marked with ease and contentment.

14. Man is split. Half of him wants to love, half of him pulls back and warns dont go any further, you are to o close, there is danger. Your fear is that if you come in deeper communion with Universal, you will fall apart. Naturally, no one wants to fall apart. And a great fear arises. But there is a strong magnetic pull also, because deep down you know that whatever can fall apart is not you. And whatever can fall apart is going to fall apart sooner or later. How long can you hold it? It is not your authentic reality. It is just allfalse personality, which needs continuous holding. Not even for a moment can you leave it alone, otherwise it will fall apart. You are saying you are afraid that you will fall apart. And I guarantee: you will fall apart! So what is the fear? Do it once and for all! Then there will be no fear. Fall apart and let us see what falls apart. Not your legs, not your hands nor your eyes... Nothing that is really yours is going to fall apart, only your false notions about you. Your personality, your ego, your knowledgeability, these are the things which are going to fall apart. But they are not worth holding. Once they are gone you will have a far more beautiful space available to you. Dont cling to the things, which dont have any authentic reality. And you need not support the authentic reality. It is there; it is not going to fall apart. Only the false can disappear, only your shadow not you. But why should you be afraid if your shadow disappears? Your shadow is not you. Your shadow has nothing to do with you. It has no reality, it has no existence and it has no meaning in your life. But you have become identified too much with your shadows. My suggestion to you is: rather than trembling all your life

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about the false, being afraid about its death, it is better once and for all to get it finished. Why are you so afraid that you cannot function anymore in the world if you come closer to Universal? All divine seekers are closer to Universal and they are all functioning perfectly well, better than anybody else. And then you ask me, what to do? First thing, just fall apart. Come closer, become good for nothing, and just see how existence takes care of you. A little trust will do the miracle.

15. True love is marked more by intensity of passion than the largeness of knowledge. The intensity of passion rises from intensity of yearning. Love devoid of yearning is a crippled and castrated emotion. Intense yearning rises from devotion and devotion rises from deep involvement. Deep involvement rises from constant nearness. Constant nearness rises from the constant remembrance of the beloved.

16. There is dervish dancing. They use dancing as a method. You might have heard the name 'whirling dervishes'. They move on their heels just like a child moves sometimes. If you move like that you will get dizzy - just moving on your heels, whirling ... And they say, "Go on whirling, know that the body is whirling, and remain conscious. Dont get identified with the whirling body. The body is whirling - dont get identified, remain conscious. Then the witnessing will happen." If you remain aware, suddenly you find a center. Then the body becomes a wheel and you become the hub, and the body goes on whirling and the center (self) stands aloof, untouched and uncorrupted.

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17. Before this song is given to you, your faith, love and trust will be tested in millions of ways. When it comes to be known that there exists nothing like doubt in you, not even a tiny part of doubt, when your heart is totally full with trust and love, then this song is given. It can be given to you only when you are ready. And your readiness means that doubt should simply disappear from the mind. It should not be suppressed, you should not try to defeat it, because defeated it will remain in you; suppressed, it will remain part of your unconscious and it will go on affecting you. Don't fight your doubting mind, don't suppress it. Rather, on the contrary, you simply bring more and more energy into trust. You simply be indifferent to your doubting mind, nothing else can be done. Indifference is the key: you simply become indifferent. It is there -accept it. Bring your energies more and more towards trust and love - because it is the same energy which becomes doubt; it is the same energy which becomes trust. Remain indifferent to doubt. The moment you are indifferent your cooperation is broken, you are not feeding it -- because it is through attention that anything is fed. If you pay attention to your doubt, even if you are against it, paying attention to it is dangerous because the very attention is the food; that is your cooperation. One has just to be indifferent, neither for nor against: don't be for doubt, don't be against doubt.

18. Go deeper and you may become afraid, because the deeper you go, the deeper you feel that you are nobody, a nothingness. That's why people become so scared of meditation. It is a death. It is a death of the ego -- and the ego is just a false concept. In deep love people are afraid of becoming mad, or going to die -- of what will happen. The abyss opens its mouth, the whole existence yawns, and you are suddenly there and you can fall into it. In love

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you are not, the other is also not: then only, suddenly, the two disappear and what survives there is only an orgasmic experience.

19. Eventually there comes a time when the seeker realizes that imagination and inspiration cannot carry him far enough. Then he tries to go deep within to discover if there is anything else he needs for his inner journey. He discovers that he is missing something, and that missing thing is aspiration. Once he has discovered aspiration in the inmost recesses of his heart, all his problems are solved. All past, present and future problems put together are helpless in the face of aspiration, for aspiration is the burning, glowing flame within. It is a birth less and endless flame that mounts high, higher, highest and purifies the things that have to be purified in our unlit, obscure, impure nature. While illumining the unlit, obscure, impure qualities in us, it helps the divine qualities to grow in us.

20. Love of God must become the controlling force, the sovereign principle in you. Love must triumph over all obstruction. Mind will struggle hard to keep the reins in its hands but if you are to win the battle of love then you have no choice but to subjugate the mind to the sheer force of love. Mind conspires against you by suggesting you all the time that you are not perfect, you need this, you need that, you need more, you should go after the better, so much is not enough, love is a juiceless effort, spirituality is an impractical path, God -realization has no actuality. By doing so mind pushes you into a wild goose chase. You become a puppet in the hands of carnal forces. You become weak in your soul energy. You become oblivious to your own creator. You life becomes a rudderless boat on high seas, drifting for no coast in sight.

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21. Do not ask the lover that what he gains from his love of God. Ask God, who has created love and the lover, that what He (God) gains from love of the lover. Lover is moving only in the direction for what his existence has been raised by God. It is not the fruit that gains nor it is the tree that gains but it is the seed that once sprouted into a tree and traveled from roots to its trunk, branches, flowers and finally appearing into the fruit. It is the seed that gained through all this journey of self-exploration. It is seed that re-attains its seed-hood in the final show.

22. The impassioned heart believes itself to be incapable of any greater longing than it can bear. But plainly there are greater hearts; hearts whose nature can not only endure greater depths of dark aloneness, but hearts which -- in their deep forbearance -- also realize those depths of love yet undreamed of by more timid minds. Love comes only to those who love so greatly that they neither know, nor care, of their own consumption by its flame.

23. Give others space to go through their changes even when these changes may challenge our own sense of individual interests. As just one simple example of how to help in this way, we must each learn to keep ourselves quiet when the actions of someone close to us start to disturb us. Why is this new kind of self-restraint so important for the growth of both parties involved? Give others the inner room they need to grow and discover themselves. The difficulty here is that in order to give others this space they need, we must first make room within ourselves. Saying it other way, we must remove ourselves from our habitual inner places of judgments, opinions, and knowing better than anyone else. This conscious

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sacrifice of egoistic habits gives new meaning to communal life. This is how we help others to help themselves go higher.

24. Like the fish, swimming in the vast sea and resting in its deeps, and like the bird, boldly mounting high in the sky, so the consciousness feels moving through the vastness and the depth and the unutterable richness of love.

25. There is an eternal relationship between the greater and the lesser; but because the greater is continually giving itself to the lesser, the lesser is always made greater if it will surrender to what the greater wants to give it. Each time the lesser becomes the greater, then it understands the greater work, and will give itself again. This is Love. It never stops, because its genesis is eternal. It is our God-given right to realize this beautiful, creative Love that cannot betray its holder.

26. Sometimes when you (God) rush in, I feel as though I am standing upon the bank of a river rising up in me, and that you are its sudden waters coming over me. Caught up as I am in these moments, all I want is to be carried away. I want to offer myself, toss myself into this upwelling; but I don't know where to find the edge of these waters in order to leap. In these times I feel, as the parched earth must know the summer squall. And I want to run with you. Wherever it is you go, I want to run with you ... for this mere swelling of my consciousness is not enough!

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27. To Love is to grow in other persons self. To hate is to decay in ones own self. Anger deprives your consciousness of its leaves and flowers. Kindness opens new paths before you. To love is not an act pointed towards another but it is coming closer to ones own inner reality.

28. What is this impetus to move towards the fulfillment of the purpose of life? It is an action of the consciousness, taking place for the realization of its own higher dimension. The higher self (God) being sought by the lower self. The higher self is the beloved. The lower self is the lover. God is restless. Why should you not be restless because your real nature is calling you: "Come on! I am here!" And you are here, wretchedly, creeping on the surface of the earth as a lower nature. If your own higher nature calls you, will you keep quiet without responding to it? You are bound to respond to the call of God. This is love! It takes a dualistic form as two persons - two things - at one stage. It takes an organic relationship and at another stage, finally, it takes one unitary face, indescribable in its nature. There are feelings described as devotion to God. Devotion is a kind of feeling, not an ordinary psychological operation in a reckless manner, in a careless way, but a deep root of our personality surging forth to reach up to its own perfection state. The transmutation of human affection into spiritual affection, which is called devotion, is a great art of psychological operation. We classify the functions of the inner organ, into four facets: the thinking, the self-asserting, the understanding, and the memorizing activities. But, there is a root of these fourfold activities. The root has to be taken into consideration and get transmuted completely. It is not sufficient if you merely 'think' God, remember God in a psychological fashion, or accept that God exists. Your root has to accept that. When you love anything, it is the root that loves. It is not the ego that loves, not the memory that

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loves, not merely logical understanding that loves. There is a root in you, which come up to the surface of action and wells up in great intensity. In mortal affection - human love of persons and things in the world - there is an expectation from the object of love. Unexpected, total affection is not seen in this world. When I love you, I expect you to love me also in some way. It is not that I unilaterally love you whatever be your behavior. That is not seen. If there is a give-and-take commercial policy in affection, naturally it ends in tragedy and bereavement. Can you love anything unconditionally let that do anything, let it be anything, in whatever way? Have you seen such affection in this world? No. The partners in affection can separate on the littlest of suspicions and doubts arisen between them in their relation. This can happen everywhere - in the office, in the family and in every way of your life. Bereavement is the necessary consequence of worldly love. But, love being an essential ingredient in our nature; it cannot be set aside also. Though it does not work well in this world, it has to work somehow, as in the case of our activities in the world. Though every action has a defect, you have to act somehow by freeing it from the limitations that may be imposed upon it. Affection becomes complete and it reaches its climax when the lover loses his sense of separation. As long as you exist as a lover, your ego is also influencing upon your love. In intense form of love, the lover loses his awareness (of separation) and merges into the consciousness of that which is being loved. The lover becomes the beloved. As water in two tanks having the liquid on a par of surface level, we do not know which water moves to which water. Likewise is this devotion in its heightened form. Who loves whom? You cannot find out. Does God love you, or do you love God.

29. To act out of justifications makes a man slave of reasoning and to act upon inner voice sets us free. Love is always an act of free man and free will. Slaves are not entitled to enter the blissful state of pure love. When a free man decides to act upon his

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inner voice and gives full strength of his consciousness to it then that act is bound to become a spiritual experience for the doer no matter whatever faith, ideology, ism, purpose or motive lies behind that act. Mans sincerity to his action, devotion, sacrifice, persistence and wholeheartedness are the qualities that do not rise from any preexistent truth but are capable to create their own unchallengeable truth.

30. Those who seek benefit from love are thieves and not the lovers. The whole attention of a thief rests all the time upon the object that he wants to steal. In a sense he becomes captive of his own dark state of mind. It is our perception of love that makes love either a diamond or a piece of worthless rubble for us. If we consider ourselves as subject, our love remains an act of our ego and we target our love upon an object then thi s passion of love inside us is nothing more than a sickness of mind. Better was it if we had not initiated such a dirty play. Love is burden and cause of perpetual torment for those who are not sincere to it and want to extract some benefit from it. For true lovers love is not a hunt of God but instead it is the fragrance of God in which they are inundated. In true love there is no subject. Beloved is not an object of love. True love is not an act of ego but it rises from the sense that all is one and one is all. Pure love is not any burden but it is comfort, freshness and vitality that rises from God and falls back onto God. Pure love is not initiated unless the sense of oneness of all things prevail in us at a conscious level. In true love there is no lust for any gain, no hustle to reach and no pride is derived.

31. There come moments in our life when we feel that God is nowhere and intense frustration overwhelms us throughout. No beam of light comes from any side and the bleak darkness wraps everything. Then we must ask ourselves the question that where does

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the grief and fear and frustration stand. What is holding the grief and fear? From where the space comes that holds the grief, fear and frustration. To your surprise, you will find that the space that was being occupied by these dark states of mind is the space that relates to the Supreme Lord because all the space relates to God. You will be astonished that the very grief and fear that originated from the sense of the absence of God, becomes the evidence of the existence of God. These dark states of mind that torment a divine lover come not from outside but from within. These are fleeting ghostly shadows that play on the screen of our perception. These states of mind are like those tiny particles that dance in the beam of sunlight but when we try to catch them in our hand they just slip out of it. These particles just tantalize us. Nothing can exist without space. The dark states of our mind also need space to exist. So long as the space is there our Lord is there. When we say that God is the basis of everything then we must understand that God is not only the basis of light and happiness but He is basis of darkness and pain. So there is no need to be depressed by the dark states of mind. Always stand in your love for God in pride. When you love the space you love the basis of grief, fear, frustration and deprivation. By this approach we can transform the situation of torment into a situation of strength for our consciousness. Nothing can overpower a true divine lover. And nothing is outside of the love of a true lover. Pure love is all-inclusive and knows no bounds.

32. Those who love Me (God) are not part of the play but are part of Me and they observe this play of life from the height of divine aloofness. Millions and millions situations come upon them, billions and billions ripples of emotion flow upon their hearts but those who love Me never drift away from Me, they always remain anchored in Me. Pain come and go, pleasure come and go, life come and go but they stand untouched in their love for Me. Play ends but eyes stand, life ends but love stand. Life is flow of objects but you are

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not an object, you are beyond the realm of objects, you are subject dont flow with objects, those who stand divine will become divine.

33. Love is never a controlled situation; it is always a wild passion. Those who assume that they are controlling and driving their love they are befooling themselves. Love is not a human act, it is divine and it rules upon its followers.

34. Divine love is not worship of the zero field but instead it is total submission to the Holy Absoluteness.

35. Love is work of God. God never rejects His own work. It needs no further perfection. Love is grace of God. It is not any means to gain any ends. Love is an ultimate privilege. It is its own reward. Those who are chosen for love are given the highest opportunity in life. They are the luckiest of all.

36. Mans feelings for God can be of either pain based or pleasure based or of indifference state. But there is another type of relation between Man and God. That is called Love. All three states mentioned earlier are of partial nature but the last one relation named love is of deeper and total nature. Love is total connection between lower and higher. Therefore, it is of overwhelming nature. It characterizes itself by total acceptance and total surrender to the will of the higher. Love prepares the aspirant for the merger and communion. Love creates capacity in the mortal to assimilate the infinite. When love comes then the dark mind states of pain and pleasure or dullness just vanish, just evaporate. Mind gives space to

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divine light, which ultimately devours all the negative and dark conditions and what prevails in the end is nothing but unpolluted sense of oneness and sweetness.

37. I have lost my ground. It makes me fearful but I know at heart that all God lovers, sooner or later, have to loose their ground. They have to be de-anchored from the coast of mind.

38. Let it be settled once for all. Ask from your self honestly; whether you are born for Gods love or you are born for the material life. If you are born for the material life then you can become a successful businessman, a successful service man, a successful sales person but you can never become a successful lover of God. And if you are born for Gods love then without wasting your time go straight after your inner voice right from now on. Do not brood over the sufferings of the whole world around. World is not your responsibility. You are responsible only for your life. Your prime responsibility is to uncover the reality of your own existence, world comes later.

39. Philosophy provides an alienated overview of life and thus it fails to perceive the life as a unified process. Philosophers always stand outside the object of study. While love is not an overview of the life but is life itself. Love feels life from within and not from outside. Lovers see life as unified phenomenon. A lover is always part and parcel of life. Love provides engagement, enmeshment and bondage between knower and the known. Love leads to integrity while philosophy guides to dissention and alienation.

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40. Rich is the man who is awakened to his essence. Poor is the man who is devoid of divine love. Unfortunate is the man who found the divine love but could not care for it.

41. All word structures and ideas finally play as veil between God and the seeker. They block light of the Real reaching to us. To meet the essence of love we have to move in the area where our passion is not guided by words and ideas but rather it is driven by the intensity of its own inner strength.

42. Listen O man you are not here to eat well and sleep sound. You are not here to build a bank balance and possess the real estates. You are not here to trade smartly or to dominate the other fellow human beings. But you are here to spend a few breaths of your life span. Each breath is an opportunity to get nearer to your Lord. The breath you live without the love of God is breath of death and an opportunity lost for ever.

43. Divine love expressly is flow of mind towards God. The more constantly and uninterruptedly it flows towards God the more we get stronger in our love. The more we get stronger in our love the more we become calm and blessed.

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44. To be able to realize God, you have to want God. It is almost a question of supply and demand. To want God is not merely to think but to feel through your whole being that you cannot exist without Him. The entire personality vibrates with a longing that cannot be satisfied by the beauty and the grandeur of the world. There should be a want for God alone.

45. What true devotion really means? Devotion means an all-absorbing love for God. When you develop devotion and turn all your love towards God, everything that is necessary will be added unto you. You will develop the capacity to sacrifice yourself. You will expand in love.

46. If you want to see the moon there is no need to use a candle or a torch light. The light of the moon is enough to see the moon. If you want to meet God you need only the eyes of your heart opened. Fill yourself with love and you will encounter God. Fill your heart with one-pointed devotion and God will reveal Himself to you from within. Then you will see Him as He truly is. In time, you will merge with Him and become one with Him.

47. Devotion is not merely repeating the name of God. It is an undying and pure flame within. It is complete self-immolation in its nature, pure of any worldly desires. It is pure, permanent and eternal. This divine love should be practiced constantly in your daily life.

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48. Love asks nothing. This is the real spiritual worship, the worship through love. Whether God is merciful is no longer questioned. He is God; He is my love. Whether God is omnipotent and almighty, limited or unlimited is no longer questioned. If He distributes good, all right; if He brings evil, what does it matter? Love never asks. Love knows no fear. You may be cut to pieces but you should still love God. Suppose of a mother, a weak woman, sees a tiger snatching her child. I know where she will be: she will face the tiger. Another time a dog appears in the street, and she will fly. But she jumps at the mouth of the tiger and snatches her child away. Love knows no fear. It conquers all evil. The fear of God is the beginning of religion, but the love of God is the end of religion. Love is its own reward. What can you have higher than love? Love is Gods kiss, it is blessing in itself; pure love never expects anything in reward. Unless there is love, philosophy becomes dry bones, psychology becomes a sort of theory, and work becomes mere labor. If there is love, philosophy becomes poetry; psychology becomes mysticism, and work the most delicious thing in creation. By merely reading books one becomes barren. When we are really in love with God we will not remember the times for meals. We will not know what we are eating. How can you love God and always be so nice and businesslike? The all-conquering, omnipotent power of love how can it come? To be completely turned into love of God there is the real worship! Worship Him as dearer than all your possessions, dearer than all your relations. Do not care if this universe is destroyed. What do we care as long as He is there? Do you see what worship means? All other thoughts must go. Everything must vanish except God. The love the father or mother has for the child, the love the wife has for the husband, the husband for the wife, the friend for the friend all these loves concentrated into one must be given to God.

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49. "With tears in my eyes I nourished the everlasting creeper of love. ..." This is the last, the great goal. What else is there? People want this and that. They all want to have and possess. That is why so few understand love. Here is a beautiful poetic expression about love in three lines: Beyond the sanity of fools is a burning desert Where Your sun is whirling in every atom: Beloved, drag me there, let me roast in Perfection!

50. Consciousness is divine, only held in the bondage of matter; perfection will be reached when this bond will burst, and the word they use for it is therefore liberation; freedom from the bonds of imperfection, freedom from death and misery. And this bondage can only fall off through the mercy of God, and this mercy comes on the pure. So purity is the condition of His mercy. How does that mercy act? He reveals Himself to the pure heart; when the pure and the stainless sees God only then the crookedness of the heart is made straight. Then all doubt ceases. True love does not consist in believing, but in being and becoming. The whole object of love is the constant struggle to become divine. And what becomes of a man when he attains perfection? He lives a life of bliss infinite. God becomes all that space available in man. The tick of every moment appears to be the pulse of God.

51. Knowledge without love (passion) is a lamp without oil and passion without knowledge is a horse without reins.

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52. Deep understanding results in deep faith, deep faith results in deep love and deep love results in realization. No love can sustain without pure and firm faith. Strong faith has three structural layers i.e. (A) righteousness of goal (B) righteousness of path (C) righteousness of action. In God-seeking, God is the goal, love is the path and Zikar (Japa) is the action. Faith without love is a bird without wings and love without faith is a fish out of water.

53. For what our hearts search and yearn does not lie in the knowledge or worldly possessions but our hearts want only the Ecstasy- Ecstasy that sprouts only from divine love; from aspiration. Divine love is a simple transaction. If we want it, we will get it.

54. Many want the show of their love. But the perils to become infected are greater. Virgin stays at home to be safe. She becomes vulnerable to lust when she comes out. So being safe is better. Do not take your Show until God wills for so.

55. When body has played its role the role of propelling the seeker into the realm of no-mind then body becomes a useless part, a burned matchstick. But such body must be respected and buried in honor. Because this body has endured a lot and has come a long way. Such body has hosted the martyrdom of a Godlover.

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56. No real attainment is possible through sleep walking. Wake O lover and stand on ground. Take one step after the other. Be patient and act in grace. Love firmly and purely. Have faith in the Day when all veils will drop and love will attain its perfection.

57. If you do not attend your love how can it bring you at home? Heedlessness brings distance and distance brings disconnection. Always be aware of your mantra recitation. If you are heedless you will get nothing from your Spiritual Contemplation.

58. There are few who want to know and fewer are those who would act upon that what they know. Few are those who purify their love for God up to a level where God responds their love and fewer are those who would take proper care of Gods response and consecrate themselves in total up to a level where God owns their love. Once Mans love is owned by God then love is perfected and librated and from that on it is God who loves God.

59. Pain is deep but passion is even deeper; despair is dense but love is even denser. No pain no despair can ever surpass the glimmer and glory of love. God should become your addiction, madness and the super thought in you.

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60. The love holds immense meanings. The more you immerse in it the more you will get aware, the more you get aware the more you will be ready to act, the more you will act the more you will become, the more you will become the more you will stop going away. First it will come to you as ripples then as currents then as waves then as tides then it will engulf you and will shake you inside out and will help you to be transformed forever in a positive way.

61.

Beware! World is filled with thought and feeling Both generate suffering Peace is in equilibrium And equilibrium is only in surrender Pain and pleasure Both are part of suffering In pleasure we expand In pain we constrict Both are unbearable Both consume the man While love does not consume Love gives you support Love makes you beyond

62. Thinking brings suffering, knowing brings suffering, doing brings suffering. Let go all your fixing, wanting, needing and controlling. Only thing required is just attend your inner voice. Once you see your reality you will fall in love with it; you will live and die for it. You will have no other option left but to love it without any

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motive, purpose and desire. This love will be essential and pure of any scar. Here love sustains and the lover disappears.

63. Anything good or bad can happen to anyone even to the God lovers. Love does not provide a warranty card against tragic events. Love means acceptance of divine will.

64. Life of a divine lover must become a living flame of true passion for God. Any one who sees or visits the saint must remember him afterwards not as an individual or person but as an epitome of pure glowing love.

65. There are three stages of feeling for God the mild, the middling, and the intense; and it is only the intense feeling for God that finally succeeds, not the middling or the mild.

66. How love of God arises in the mind is difficult to explain. It has hundreds and hundreds of ways. Not even the great philosophers can explain satisfactorily how love of God arises in the mind of a person. Sometimes, these divine feelings arise by silly occurrences in life apparently silly and meaningless. A word that is uttered against our will or wish is sufficient to turn us away from everything in the world. Though it may look a small affair, that is the last straw on the camels back; it was all that was needed. A camel can bear a lot of load. Its back will not break easily. But when it has been loaded to the maximum, they say that even a straw added to it will break its back. How can a straw break the back of a camel? It was the last thing; that is why it breaks. The feelings can hibernate like

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frogs sitting inside a hole, not doing anything not coming out, and not acting inside either. When we are frustrated, defeated in our purposes, disillusioned about things in the world, the feelings for the world withdraw themselves. We cannot love the world afterwards, because it has given us a kick. Then what happens to those feelings which were regarding the world as of great value? These feelings come back to their source. Here the feelings get intensified, no doubt. They become more powerful than they were earlier, and they seek for an expression. They must find an outlet. Not finding an outlet, they struggle inside and begin to search for an outlet. In this condition, our feeling for something that is not visible though one may not be quite clear as to what it is becomes strong; and if the pressure which has brought the feeling back to its source continues for a long time, it can break its barriers, and perhaps move in the direction of God. The devotion to God cannot come by human effort. Human effort is inadequate for the purpose, because it would be something like attempting to carry burning coals on a piece of paper. We cannot carry it. Even great masters did not answer this question properly. How does knowledge arise in the inside? Not by human effort. Because effort towards knowledge is possible only when there is knowledge, and we are asking the question how does knowledge arise. How can love of God arise in a person? It cannot arise by effort, because who can have the energy to put forth such effort as to invoke the power of God, which can rouse such a feeling for God. It is very difficult to understand the epistemological grounds of the passion for God. The feeling for the unity of things arises due to the grace of God only by that, and no other way.

67. Love does not care even for moral and ethical codes of society. It breaks all boundaries of human convention. It has not even the shame, to tell you the truth; we may call it shameless, if we like. Such is whole-souled love. A person becomes shameless when the love becomes whole-souled. Whether it is in the world or in the realm

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of spirit, they act in the same way. This is when the taste for the object inundates the personality wholly. We become that which we love; this is the highest form of love. There is no love there, as a matter of fact, because in ordinary language love means the movement of our emotions towards something outside. When we ourselves have become that object, where is the movement of our affection? We have gone mad, that is all. All great devotees were mad people, God-intoxicated; and we become mad when we are possessed by a single feeling, whether it is temporal or spiritual. This very madness is required for the ultimate success in life.

68. There are people who cannot love their hearts have become stones. Their upbringing, their culture, their society has killed the very capacity to love because this whole world is not run by love, it is run by cunningness. To succee d in this world you dont need love, you need a hard heart and a sharp mind. In fact, you dont need the heart at all. In this world the heart is not needed. The people of the heart are crushed, exploited, oppressed. This world is run by the cunning, by the clever, by the heartless and the cruel. So the whole of society is managed in such a way that every child starts losing his heart, and his energy starts moving directly towards the head. The heart is ignored.

69. Love for God can not sustain in man unless it is prepared to face the possible setbacks and pain of living. To be accomplished fully, our passion for God must overpower and surpass the feelings of angst and pain of life.

70. Love is the most compelling logic. Love can not be conveyed through words. If you feel it -- you feel it and if you do not

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-- you dont. Presence of love is like the presence of hunger or sleep or pain or eye-sight or heart beat in us. It can not be shared. It can not be ripped off. It is very personal and private state. Nature of l ove is sensational. It is sensation in the beginning sensation in the middle and sensation in the end. You can talk about love but love never comes through telling. Love is sentiment. Love is an exalted emotion that uplifts the soul of man into a divine Awareness. Love is direct sensation of divine heat. It is divine touch kiss of the divine. Only the nearness can induce it in us, the more we get near to the divine the more we glow in love. It is not like knowing first and becoming later instead it is becoming first and knowing later. Love can not be induced and kept alive through logic rather love gets matured when it successfully survives beyond all logic. Love can not be attained through knowledge rather knowledge has to surrender before the prevalence and supremacy of love. Love is not born of Knowledge rather knowledge is its custodian love is mother of all knowledge. Love is master not the slave. Love does not need approval of man. Love is a process of capacity building. It prepares the lovers to receive the secret of being to listen the whisper of the Infinite.

71. Love is Greater than Wisdom, Logic, Virtue and Prayer. It is more than intelligence, Love quickens talent and genius. Without Love, intelligence can do much harm. More than logic, Love assigns to reason the dignity of an unerring thought. Without Love, logic can be dangerous. Love annihilates all limitations and differentiations. It frees human perception from its errors, human heart from its mistakes and human life from its imperfections. It is the potent remedy for curing the disease of fear, hatred, discord, unhappiness. Love is the soul of all nature, and the divinity in man. Love is the highest good, the highest truth and the highest beauty. Love is the supreme virtue. Love oxygenates our inner being. Above all, Love is to be considered as the highest technique for spiritual realization. Love resists not evil. Love is a peacemaker. Love is humble and God-giving. Love gains

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for you the highest State of God-experience. Love for God, real devotion, is not mere emotionalism; it is the tuning of the will, the heart and the mind to the eternal and indestructible music of the divine. It blossoms into wisdom divine. It leads to God-Experience and end of suffering.

72. Love God with all thy heart, this is the way of the Saints. This is religion. When we love God with all our heart, all our soul, all our might, day after day, day and night, for months and for years, we arrive at a stage of development where we experience God everywhere, at all times, and in all circumstances and environs.

73. To love is like drinking the sweet pure water that gets absorbed by the body cells and restores life energy. But to know is like trying to quench your thirst by drinking the salty sea-water that not only quenches not the thirst but causes nausea, gripe in stomach and in the end may cause bleeding.

74. Love has no motives; love is not a tool to be successful. Love is not a journey to reach any destination. Love is purpose and destination in itself.

75. In love you are required to become egoless but do not think that this is like any instant coffee type thing. You are going to change the sun of your solar system. You are going to challenge such a monster that is well entrenched in every molecule of your body, in every neuron of your brain and in every photon of your thought. It is entrenched and being developed in you even when you were not in

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the womb of your mother. It was being engraved upon the genetic chains of your forefathers through the evolution. It is hoped that now you understand the magnitude of the task you are going to embark upon by initiating the abandonment of your ego and attainment of pure love. In love there are no short cuts, no alternates, no showmanship, and no half-heartedness. (Speaking the commercial jargon) To get anything from the counter of love you have to pay fully in advance. Love is a process of capacity building in you. Love capacitates and prepares you both physically and psychologically to receive God (from within).

76. From what you are afraid? From what you are running away constantly? Are you afraid of your destiny? Why are you shying away from your share of life? Do not try to do it as you will never succeed to avoid your destiny. No one has ever succeeded in avoiding the destiny. All movements are initiated in God then why do you fear from the unknown. Be a lover of God. If you could do that then your duty is discharged. If you could do that failure will never touch you. Loving God is the ultimate attainment. A true lover can not fail in life.

77. Love knows no cause and seeks for no reward. Love is not from someone or for someone; it is whirling of the passion not around any external object or purpose but around its own very axis.

78. You can travel that small gap between your mind and no-mind in a single moment of tremendous intensity and urgency. Or you can travel slowly, hesitantly, stopping, being afraid that you are losing grip on your mind, you are losing grip on your individuality,

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that all boundaries are disappearing. What are you doing? You may think for a moment, This may bring a breakdown; you may not be able to come back to the mind again. And who knows what is going to happen ahead? Things are disappearing... You should enter into the world of divine love without any beliefs, without any security, without any safety, without any gloves. You should enter into love with naked hands, with nudity. God is always there to guide the sincere seekers.

79. Where there is no love there is no link; no matter for how long men live together in a single place. You see in offices men work together for decades, they eat together, travel together, laugh together, gossip together but once a fellow gets retired then he discovers that he has failed to build any personal link with his colleagues. He failed because there was no relation of love between them. His fellows start forgetting him as soon as he steps outside of the main gate of his office building. But on the other side, a mother whose child died even in the first year of her babyhood, remembers her child for the rest of her whole life. Because the link between mother and her baby stands in love.

80. For a worldly mind, an infected mind it is almost impossible to understand that love of God is a supreme state that any mortal can ever experience. When someone says I am in love of God the worldly mind asks what next? The worldly mind is unable to accept that love of God can be a destination in itself ... can be a worth in itself. The worldly mind always believes that love of God is desirable only to the extent that it brings any extra material success to us. A worldly mind is neither interested in God nor in love of God but is interested only in personal gains and uses love of God as a tool to achieve the targets of his ego.

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81. Love is light of the Divine in which whole existence is dancing as the air particles dance in sunlight. Love is ecstasy of divine and we all are already drunk in this ecstasy; some are awaken to it while others though living in it but are asleep. Love is beatitude and magnificence of God in which God Himself (through His creation) is whirling in rapture.

82. Real knowing always comes through love and not through knowledge. Say NO to the life of intelligence and say YES to the life of passion (love). Passion is to soul what intelligence is to mind. Knowing will come to you when you will drop all efforts to know. Because through effort only ignorance can come not the knowing. Knowing is infinite by its very nature so it can not be attained through a finite tool of intelligence.

83. Your encounter with the unknown is the real ultimate thing but your very desire to know and understand has been keeping you out of this possibility. Because when you want to know and understand it signals that you are not yet ready for encounter you are hesitant to trust you are refusing to surrender unconditionally. How the encounter can take place in this situation. Encounter is by nature an event of fusion of the two into one. But desire to know and understand is barring you from the participation into this opportunity of encounter. Your hesitation shows that you are not ready to loose your footing in mind and ego. You are not ready to dislodge your identification in ego. To love is not like doing a trade in which you keep your principal and make some profits on it. Loss prepares you for the gain. In love you want total gain and total gain is not possible until you are

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prepared for a total loss. You have to empty yourself fully. A day can not gain total light until it empties itself totally of darkness. A day gains light in proportion to its loosing the darkness. For a total gain of light (enlightenment) a total loss of darkness (forgetfulness) is required. In love you do not enter for any gain but gain comes as natural fruition. When you jump down from a roof top then the law of gravitational pull gets triggered and resultantly you fall to the ground. You just jump and the rest is handled by the nature (natural laws). Your loving should not be aimed at the encounter but encounter comes as natural fruition. When you will empty yourself totally, when you will trust fully and when you will be ready to surrender without hesitation then encounter will dawn upon you as a bright day dawns upon the dark night.

84. River flows from peaks to ocean, from high to the low. It flows in single direction. It never stops until its goal is achieved and its goal is to fuse back into the ocean. Whenever it faces any hindrance its water stops thinks a while and makes new ways to continue its journey towards ocean. It never tires, never gets distracted, never stops its effort and never forgets its goal.

85. People who are on the periphery of love they take it as a zestful intellectual state of mind and as an idea that can be boasted about and discussed upon in the company of some superficially literate and pseudo intellectual friends but those who are on the center of it, love appears to them as a black hole that constantly is pulling upon them to its unknowable center with such a great gravity and vehemence that lovers feel their very existence as a person or personality under a threat of obliteration. Love becomes real and imminent threat to ones psychic state of living.

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86. Love of God is not a rational business. It is a noble madness from beginning to the end, it can never be rationalized. Only those can advance on this path who are born for this madness. Only those can lead a life of love who put there feet in fire and watch them burning without feeling of pain and desire to complain. They never stride off the path, they never search reason to stand in love and they never find an excuse to turn back.

87. For a God lover each breath is an opportunity to celebrate. His happiness is not conditioned with more possessions and accumulations rather he enjoys his presence for being a part of universal realty a fragment of bigger and omnipotent truth. He feels himself a particle of sand in the vast desert of totality. The happiness that comes through Spiritual Contemplation is marked with feeling of total freedom and sense of getting connected.

88. If you are traveling in a plane and you fall asleep then you are detached from your air journey, your sitting in the plane, your destination and even your sense of being a person is no where. But still your body remains a subject to all the comfort or risks that involve any air journey. If plane gets crashed, your body will be vulnerable to all those dangers that your fellow passengers are going to face. Likewise when we say that enlightened persons become detached to all physicality it does not mean that they are not available to the physical forces that affect a common or unenlightened man. Yes! All the enlightened men and women need food, sleep, shelter, clothes, medicine and money etc, etc. But all theses physical needs do not blemish the purity of their consciousness. They remain detached in a sense that they are not

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focused on physical trivialities they are not engaged in anything but with their own inner reality. Love does not engage your mind and ego it engages your very you-ness, your center, your self. When you are engaged in love, your mind and ego are left behind. They stay there at lower plane to deal with any upcoming worldly issues. While your self is engaged in love you will have to deal the worldly matters in your personal life and for this purpose you would have to energize and animate your mind and ego to deal with trivial routines in day to day life. There is no dichotomy in spiritual and worldly life. Both act in their own orbital environment. The earth revolves around sun but it also revolves around its own axis. There is no disharmony between these two movements.

89. All scholarly attempts to rationalize the divine love are sheer absurdity in themselves. Divine love can never be understood at mind levels, it can only be accepted. Human mind is incapable to grasp its reality. Efforts to rationalize it are like putting the whole train load on the back of a donkey or it is like trying to push an elephant through a needle hole.

90. Ishq is not a thing to do. No one can do it. It is spell of the Isness, when it comes it comes and when it is absent it is absent. It is like sun when it shines the darkness has to recede back and when it is not available then no trick can make it appear.

91. When God sows the seed of love into any heart He Himself takes care of it for all the upcoming stages until it flowers and reaches to its inherent potential of God realization.

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92. God asked His lover, What keeps you unhappy, while I have given you whatever you wanted from me. You wanted knowledge and I have given you knowledge, you wanted wisdom and I have given you wisdom, you wanted understanding and I have given you understanding, you wanted love and I have granted it to you. Now what else you want? The lover trembled and said, Yes! You have granted me all these virtues but I still feel myself unaccomplished, empty and I have perpetual sensation that I am missing something ultimate, now I want to have you to fill this gap. I want to come to you, I want only you God: if you want to come to me then know that you will have to surrender all that what you have received from me. Your body, your mind, your ego, your knowledge, your wisdom, your understanding and even your love would have to be surrendered before me. I-ness in you must dissolve before I reach to you. No man has ever come to me but when a man fully qualifies himself by emptying himself of all the personality attributes then I do com to him. A heart that still holds any remnants of I will never have My fragrance. No I can bear and contain my presence. No I can uphold its existence in the face of my Is-ness.

93. Drop all what you have and you will reach where you want to. Mind (knowledge) goes and consciousness stays consciousness goes and silence stays silence goes and subjectivity stays When subjectivity goes it is divinity that stays now all otherness is gone; lover and beloved, worshiper and worshipped, knower and the known, seer and the seen all go in one swing. This is the real obliteration of the ego. In true love you do not stand apart, you let your I-ness drop into the Isness of God. So long you say I am

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Not in fact you Are, in true obliteration you even do not need to say I am Not.

94. Love has no uttermost, as the stars have no number and the sea no rest. Love is a strange fire it burns the lovers but does not consume them, rather it purifies them.

95. Oh Lord! Hold me in you. I am burnt from end-to-end and now I have no capacity to sustain in separation.

96. No one on the earth knows what light is. We know it moves in waves and we know that it is made of particles (photons), and we know that particles can't move in waves and that waves can't contain particles. But that's what light is. But whatever light is, it is! So is the love of God, it moves through individuals but it can not contain individuality (ego).

97. Be open, sensitive, innocent and you will know the treasure that is surrounding you and it is yours. you cannot grab it but you can dissolve into it hence it is not a finding but a great surrender and dissolution of this wall this separation the moment you become sensitive and soft within all the doors and windows begin to melt and suddenly so much love filters into you.

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98. It is God alone who is the ultimate sustainer and custodian of love. You can grow in your love up to a certain degree or limit but beyond that limit you would not know even what to do with your love. At that time love becomes unmanageable. It takes its control into its own hands. Though you would still feel yourself in love but this love would not bear any personal stamp, here love would sustain without the tinge of any proprietorship. This is the beauty of love that sooner or later it surpasses its initiator, it gains a decisive control over the lover; it guides the lover to ungraspable dimensions of perfection; love becomes its own mentor, rationale, cause and purpose. It is intensity of love that becomes a purifier of its impurities and a healer of its systemic infections. Without intensity love never takes off it always remains a slavery, a drudgery.

99. When you argue, you assert. Assertion is violence, aggression, and the truth cannot be known by an aggressive mind, the truth cannot be discovered by violence. You can come to know the truth only when you are in love. But love never argues. There is no argument in love, because there is no aggression.

100. Love is music of God. Love is fragrance and radiance of God. There is only one love that God holds for Himself. God is the lover alone. Love never originates from man; it only plays through man. Remember always that you are not the doer of love but you are a performer of love. It is always a divine surge within you. Divine love is like the tide of the ocean that rises from ocean and falls back on to the ocean. In love man plays his part just by attending to this divine surge and urge from within. Lovers lie like sand particles on the shores of the ocean of divine love, when tide moves upon them

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they get inundated without excuse and resistance. To love is like breathing in the air. To breathe you have nothing to do special; air is already there in atmosphere, lungs are already there in your body. You have just to inhale it. Even the natural urge for inhalation is already there. Same way, you are not required to DO something in love. Radiance of divine love is already there; to be in love you just have to attend it. You just have to allow it to enter into you. You are the only barrier in the way of love. Be open and available to love. To facilitate love God has embedded in you the thirst for love. This thirst manifests itself in man as desire to be perfect; desire to be one with the totality and as a desire to experience the unknown. Drop your sense of doing it. This sense of doing on your part is the biggest pollutant of love. As the very act of breathing never fatigues you, same way the very act of loving never makes you feel bad or exhausted. It is your fears and distrust that is draining your energy and making you feel ill.

101. Do not be concerned about denial of others or your affirmation because both are two sides of the same coin (mind). All arguments in this regard are futile; one can not win over the other. Without one the other can not exist. For what you should be more concerned is Ishq. Ishq is truth of life and what is truth of Ishq that is Hawalgi (total submission). Ishq stands as Sun and mind revolves around it like earth, which part of mind is exposed towards Ishq that goes through the experience of affirmation and which part is not facing the sun that goes through an experience of denial. Thus day and night of affirmation and denial are formed upon mind. But Ishq is supreme as it is the Sun itself. It is the center and all else is at periphery. It is the independent truth. Ishq is an inferno. Those who come into it they have to be burnt totally by its heat. And from the ashes of ego the phoenix of self-realization takes its emergence to fly in the skies of infinity.

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102. Worldly love sprouts from emotions and it grows through mind. Ishq sprouts from consciousness and it grows through Hawalgi (total submission).

103. Ishq is God-intoxicated state. When a normal person is intoxicated by alcohol or drugs, he enjoys this sensation in a negative way because through alcohol or other drugs self-control dilutes temporarily and the drunkard feels freedom when mind enters into forgetfulness of the memories of failures and sufferings and fears of loss and punishment. But God-intoxication is totally different in its nature. It narrows your consciousness down to a single divine point and contrary to the first state here mind explodes into a deep awareness and does not sink down into the forgetfulness. A drug-intoxicated mind still exerts a gravitational pull on the drunkard but in God-intoxicated state mind becomes the wings of the aspirant and it helps and guides him into the ever widening spiritual horizons.

104. The fire that is burning at the level of your mind (understanding) can not transform you into a spiritual man unless it descends upon your heart (center of emotions). When it would descend upon your heart it would become a force that would be uncontainable by any means and it would transform you from inside out.

105. Perceptual understanding can take you up to a certain level of spiritual growth, beyond that it becomes an obstacle.

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Understanding can not prepare you for the final encounter with truth. At this stage full exposure is required. You need to drop all mental defenses against truth. A day will come in the life of a seeker when he will see a ditch of fire between him and God. Understanding gets pissed off on the very sight of it. Understanding looses its heart and betrays its master cowardly. Here you need a FTL (faster than light) jump into the spiritual space. What helps the seeker here is deep and unfathomable passion for God. If this passion has strength and propulsion then seeker will not fail in God-seeking but if this passion is absent then knowledge and understanding alone will not do. Do not be afraid of any ditch of fire that falls in your way; just let your self experience burning in it. This burning will not hurt you rather it will temper and polish your passion for God.

106. Your Ishq (divine love) can make you fly in the open divine skies but alas! You are not allowing it to happen in your life. You are afraid of being transformed. You feel comfortable in shallow waters but you do not trust God for stepping into the deep waters. You feel safe by flying near to the nest but you do not trust God for entering into the vast open skies. Unless you would allow your self entering into the intensity change is not going to happen. It is the law of growth and creation that pain must happen in you. Change always follows the intensity. Let your God-seeking become so intense that all the chains would melt down in the heat of this Intensity.

107. In love you die and you are reborn. The ego creates all sorts of difficulties, rationalisations not to surrender: 'Think about it, brood about it, be clever about it.' the ego becomes suspicious, doubtful, creates anxiety, because you are coming to life, to a flame where death will also be as much alive as life.

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108. Ego is against both life and death. The ego is afraid to live and the ego is afraid to die. It is afraid to live because each effort, each step towards life, brings death closer. If you live you are coming closer to dying. The ego is afraid to die, hence it is afraid to live also. The ego simply drags. Whenever you come to a total moment of aliveness, suddenly you will see death there also. In love it happens. In love, life comes to a climax - hence people are afraid of love. Because when you really love somebody your ego starts slipping and melting. You cannot love with the ego; the ego becomes a barrier. And when you want to drop the barrier the ego says, 'This is going to be a death. Beware!'

109. Spirituality gives nothing but takes all things from you. Are you ready for this? If this is not acceptable to you then do not put the first step on this path. Then spirituality is not for you. Be a trader, be a business man but do not try to become spiritual. Spirituality is a passion to negate all that is present, to break all that is available but it does not know where it is going what will come next. It is not a calculated game. When you will have nothing, absolutely nothing, then suddenly you will start feeling that you have all things. You are not missing anything in you, you are a born perfection. Purpose and meaning are very worthless. Do not attend them. Just be at the center of your Isness. Love your Isness without doubt, without purpose, without meaning. No conditions are required to qualify for living into your Isness. It is available to you as sea water is available to fish. Just have your swim and be happy.

110. Spirituality is not a simple thing as we know it divine love. It is more than that. It is straight walking into the

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discovery of Truth. If you expect any tangible, self-serving advantages from your spiritual quest, you have completely missed the point. The discovery of the Truth about yourself does not help you gain any higher status or power above others. What you gain from such pursuit is the ultimate truth about who you truly are and total freedom from falsehood. To explore and experience our essence should be our key purpose in life.

111. God has sowed the seed of Ishq (divine love) in the soil of selected hearts and God alone is entitled to reap the benefits of it. Ishq is not for show off in the company of friends and naive listeners. But God tills the soil of one man through the other to sow His seed in the soil of him.

112. No matter, if I can not have God but I have the desire to have Him and this is enough for me. No matter, if I can not reach to God but I have the will to reach to Him and this is enough for me. No matter, if I can not know God but I have the thirst to know Him and this is enough for me. No matter, if I can not understand God but I have hunger to understand Him and this is enough for me. And above all, I have love, I know and I understand that I can die for my love This is enough for me.

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Chapter 14

Practice Makes Difference

1. It requires hard and persistent practice to realize the true meaning of love. It is not like that one morning you wake up and feel to say Oh! Thanks God now I am in love with Him and I am blessed completely; I feel perfection, from now onward nothing can part me from my Lord. Believe me it never happens this way. Love that comes this way is bound to vanish this way too. True love is not a whimsical feeling instead it is pure of haste and agitation. It is the fruit of very long, hard, blood sucking and killing to the bones process, which involves your mind, body, work, time, emotions, family, social relations and whole of your individual life. Love cannot attain success unless it becomes a persistent, ego-free action. Going beyond gross mind images and processes is the key to Godrealization. We cannot cheat truth. We have to reach that point to receive it. It is not a mental achievement. It is not a concept. Love needs investment of energies by you and then the flames of love will come up with their light.

2. Knowledge without action is worthless and action without knowledge often proves to be wastage of time and energy.

3. A baby feels the urge to stand. It sees others standing and starts to try to stand. This activity teaches the baby balance, strengthens its legs, gives coordination, etc. In the beginning the baby falls on its butt a lot, but it keeps trying - the urge is strong and others are standing - thus the baby gets up and tries again. This is the correct attitude. Do not be afraid to fail. Get up and try again.

4. Analysis of the past events or planning about the future life is not a bad quality but the point is that we should not sell out our souls to yesterday or tomorrow. We should not be robed away by these thieves that are product of our own ignorance.

5. What you can say in one word do not say that in hundred words and what you can see through one window do not see that through thousand windows. To see more than is needed shows lack of interest to encounter and saying more than is needed shows lack of interest to act.

6. If a painter writes on canvas the words like light, darkness, shadows, colors, figures, mountains, river, trees, grass, birds etc and assumes that he has painted a great natural landscape and furthermore puts his work before a jury of art critiques for evaluation. Then you can easily guess what will be the worth of his presentation? Judges will not only laugh at the work presented but they will also consider the presenter an insane person. To prove his worth a painter has to prove his skill and craftsmanship through solid form of artistic expression, his work should speak directly about all the ideas that the painter holds in his mind. At the end of the day our worth is not measured by what we think, what we know or what we say but it is determined by what we are and what we can present or deliver through solid physical action or form. If we claim to be good and kind then we should prove it through our actions. If one claims or considers himself a good runner then the running track is the only place where we can judge the worth of his claim. So it is not sufficient to say or to consider that you are a divine lover but you have to prove it in front of all the lures and horrors of every day life.

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7. living within is not simply enough, the harmony of the inner and the outer life -- made one in fullness and transfigured into a play of something beyond them is that what will create the form of a perfect living.

8. The practice which is steady is the important thing. One must practice consistently. Keep refining the practice; don't let it become a disaster. Practice is one thing, disaster is another. Most people usually create disaster. When they feel lazy they don't bother to practice, they only practice when they feel energetic. This is disaster. If you practice when you want and you do not practice when you do not want then your practice is being controlled by ego and its changing moods whereas our goal was to bring the ego under the control of practice. So practice in all times Whether you feel like it or not you should practice just the same. Most people wait till they're in the mood before practicing, when they don't feel like it they don't bother. This is as far as they go. This is called "disaster," it's not practice. In the true practice, whether you are happy or depressed you practice; whether it's easy or difficult you practice; whether it's hot or cold you practice. It's straight like this. In the real practice, whether standing, walking, sitting or reclining you must have the intention to continue the practice steadily. We must cultivate our practice. What this means is that whether you are happy or unhappy you must practice just the same. If you are feeling well you should practice, and if you are feeling sick you should practice as well. This is why the seekers of the past have all maintained the steady training of the heart. If things are to go wrong, just let them be with the body, not in mind.

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9. Whatever happens, don't let your mind stray off the track. Look within yourself and you will see clearly. For the best practice, as I see it, it isn't necessary to read many books. Take all the books and lock them away. Just read your own mind. You have been burying yourselves in books from the time you entered school. I think that now you have this opportunity and have the time, take the books, put them in a cupboard and lock the door. Just read your mind. When your practice reaches this point you won't cling to sensations, because they are all uncertain. Have you ever noticed? Maybe you see a clock and think, "Oh, this is nice." Buy it and see in not many days you're bored with it already. "This pen is really beautiful," so you take the trouble to buy one. In not many months you tire of it again. This is how it is. Where is there any certainty? If we see all these things as uncertain then their value fades away. All things become insignificant. Why should we hold on to things that have no value? We keep them only as we might keep an old rag to wipe our feet with. We see all sensations as equal in value because they all have the same nature. When we understand sensations we understand the world. The world is sensations and sensations are the world. If we aren't fooled by sensations we aren't fooled by the world. If we aren't fooled by the world we aren't fooled by sensations. The mind which sees this will have a firm foundation of wisdom. Such a mind will not have many problems. Any problems it does have it can solve. When there are no more problems there are no more doubts. Peace arises their instead.

10. We should purify our action in all three fields of spiritual practice. These three fields are Zikar (recitation of mantra), Fikar (focused thinking) and Cipher. Zikar means constant Japa of divine mantra (I AM). Fikar means God should become the single

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loud thought in us. Cipher means that we have to zero down the influence of ego in us.

11. What matters for a man who is dying out of thirst is water and not the metal of the pot in which water is being presented to him. Thinking is just a crockery of wisdom the content comes through righteous practice. Righteous thinking without righteous practice is like blind eyes that can not see in time and space.

12. Spiritual effort ought not to be targeted upon any kind of its fruition rather the spiritual effort is meant to be carried out in the wake of a strong inner urge. Fruition comes naturally but desiring for it is unspiritual act and is a discordant thinking that roots down in ego. Attainment of the God-state is natural culmination of all the spiritual effort. God state is flowering of the God seeking. Being spiritual requires a lot of consistent effort; no man could go through such a gigantic effort if it were targeted upon any outside target not even for any outside God. Reason that man willfully undergoes such a demanding effort is that the spiritual effort is not meant only to attain any outside target but it is the very quest for our own inner discovery to reach to our own inner worth, identi ty and centrality. Spirituality relates more to God-discovery than God searching. When one state is reached upon the other is unveiled spontaneously.

13. If you see life through your thoughts then life appears as an unbearable tragedy but if you feel life through sustained and purified action then life is an immense opportunity.

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14. Do not seek for supernatural occurrences in your spiritual practice. It is a form of lust. A person who expects such occurrences in the wake of his spiritual practice is a thief. He is not a seeker; he wants to steal some of divine powers so that he may use them to impress others or to glorify his worldly life.

15. No loss has power upon you. It is you and only you who can harm yourself. If you do not attend the loss, loss would have no life. Remember it for whole life that In what you would sow you life energy that you would reap in return. If you would sow your energy in loss you would become loss, if you would sow your energy in darkness you would become darkness and all negative, if you would sow your energy into the fragrance you yourself would become fragrance, if you would sow your energy in hatred and anger then you yourself would become the first victim of anger and hatred and if you would sow your life energy into the Isness of God you would feel yourself divine at the very center of you. Your life energy holds such a great and immense power because it is directly flowing from God.

16. You can go on thinking, accumulating information -but those are paper boats, they won't help in an ocean voyage. If you remain on the shore and go on talking about them, it is okay -- paper boats are as good as real boats if you never go for the voyage; but if you go for the voyage with paper boats then you will get drowned. And words are nothing but paper boats -- not even that substantial.

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17. Dont let your mind organize, force, impose or evaluate your Spiritual Practice. Practice should occur completely in the Now, without an agenda, without a final objective, without trying to achieve something, or get rid of something.

18. It is necessary to practice spirituality because we are subject to impermanence. Born from our mother's womb, we go through childhood, mature, grow old, get sick, and eventually die. None of us can avoid birth, old age, sickness, and death. We have no control over this. That is why we need to practice spirituality. we need a spiritual practice to reinforce our intention. If one practices the spirituality correctly, then all types of obscurations that veil the nature of the mind are removed. Complete elimination of these obscurations causes the inherent qualities of the mind's nature to manifest fully and spontaneously, which brings the ultimate attainment.

19. "Spirituality is a practical path." This is very true because without any hands on experience of any spiritual learning, everything becomes theory. Spirituality is the path to know yourself. To know yourself, you have to work on yourself. The spiritual path is like taking a class. For example, if you are trying to excel in mathematics, you have to put your learning to the test. The first day of class might be an introduction of theory, but the second day the teacher gives you formulas to test and prove your theories. This way, you can experience getting the answer by yourself. Similarly, we can study all the books about spirituality and self-help in the world, but unless we practice it all ourselves, it brings nothing. We are reading about someone else's experiences, opinions, beliefs,

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and knowledge. It might be interesting and inspiring, but unless we practice it ourselves, it can never become our own. The point of spirituality is to know ourselves. Therefore, we must practice ourselves. Guidance is helpful, but ultimately we have to experience our own self-realization.

20. Spiritual Practice is a lifelong process. Every day, every hour, every minute, is an onward march. Obstacles are innumerable in this great voyage. But, so long as you hold God as thy guide, there is nothing to worry about. You are sure to reach the other shore. Some people have curiosity for the spiritual life. They have no real thirst for liberation. They think that they will get certain psychic powers if they do some spiritual practices. When they do not attain the powers, they lose patience and give up the practices and abandon the spiritual path. You must have interest and liking in your Spiritual Practice. You must understand well the technique and benefits of Spiritual Practice. You must select a Spiritual Practice that is suitable for you. You must have the ability and capacity to do Spiritual Practice. Then you will have joy in doing the Spiritual Practice. Good intentions alone will not do. They must be backed up by good actions. You must enter the spiritual path with the best intention of attaining self-knowledge, but unless you are vigilant and diligent, unless you do intense and rigorous effort, unless you guard yourself against lust, anger and egoism and selfishness, the good intentions alone will not enable you to achieve success. Stern self-discipline is absolutely essential. Self-discipline does not mean suppression, but taming the brute within. It means humanization of the animal and spiritualization of the human. You will have to break the virgin soil before you sow the seed. The seed breaks itself before it sprouts out as a plant. Destruction precedes construction. This is the immutable law of nature. You will

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have to destroy your brutal nature first before you develop divine nature. During the period of Spiritual Practice, do not mix much; do not talk much; do not walk much; do not eat much; do not sleep much. Observe carefully the five 'do-not's'. Mixing will cause disturbances in the mind. Talking much will cause distraction of the mind. Walking much causes exhaustion and weakness. Eating much induces laziness and sleepiness. Keep the mind fully occupied with spiritual pursuits. Keep yourself at the farthest distance from everything that would stir up your ego. Only then you will be safe.

21. Do not stop the Spiritual Practice when you get a few glimpses of realization. Continue practice till you are fully established in The Unconditioned the Great Infinite. This is important. If you stop practice and move about in the world, there is every likelihood of a downfall. The reaction will be tremendous. A glimpse cannot give you perfect safety. Do not be carried away by name and fame. The world is a mighty big thing for a worldly man. It is a straw for the Knower of the God. It is a mustard, a pin's point, a dot, a bubble, an airy nothing for a God-knower. Ignore all trivial things. Be steady with your practice. Never stop the practice till the final beatitude is reached. Never cease Spiritual Practice till you can constantly dwell in full self-consciousness.

22. Every bit of Spiritual Practice done is surely recorded without fail in your hidden consciousness. No Spiritual Practice ever goes in vain. Every bit of it is credited immediately towards your evolution. This is the law. Think not negative thoughts, but calmly go on with the Spiritual Practice. Let the Spiritual Practice be regular, continuous, unbroken, and earnest. Not only regularity, but also continuity in Spiritual Practice is necessary. A spiritual stream once set going does not dry up. Be firm, steady, and steadfast. People will

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mock at you; be silent. People will insult you; be silent. People will spread evil rumors about you; be silent. Stick to the spiritual path. Do not swerve. Seek the truth wherever it may lead you to, and whatever be the cost and sacrifice.

23. Mind control is not a thing which you think and it is done. It requires deep righteous knowledge and sustained spiritual practice.

24. All the stuff that is required by chick to become a chick is already present inside the egg, what is needed further is the incubation alone. The seed of God is already within us but we do not develop it into divinity because we are not ready for incubation.

25. Now is the right time to take the first step. You do not have to know the thousand and one ways to cure a disease; only one method that would work for you is enough. The message is not linguistic. The message is existential. The master can only create a certain situation, a certain device in which, if you allow, if you are receptive, you can be transformed. This transformation is almost a death and a resurrection. Your old personality will fade away; your original face will show.

26. Once you are awakened to your inner divine potential, the role of practice gets immense. Practice would not only nurture your inner potential but would help it grow into its full bloom. So, awakening is the first step then practice then persistence then the complete metamorphosis of consciousness, from a rigid ego

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to an expanded universalized mind. When you are fully ripened for an encounter with reality then the encounter comes and it finally capacitates you to receive the blessed state of God-realization.

27. Knowing what to do is worthless if you don't have the conviction to motivate you to actually do it! Hold tight to your convictions, be resolute, and love without stopping.

28. Your growing into spiritual understanding will not bring peace to you. What is needed more than understanding is spiritual action. After certain level of understanding through ideas and verbal knowledge alone will become itself an obstacle in the way of further growth.

29. There were two friends of the king, and both were proved guilty of a crime. Since he loved them the king wanted to show them mercy, but he could not acquit them because even a king's word cannot prevail over the law. So he gave this verdict: a rope was to be stretched over a deep chasm, and, one after another, the two were to walk across it. Whoever reached to the other side was to be granted his life. It was done as the king ordered, and the first of the friends got safely across. The other, still standing on the same spot, cried to him, 'tell me, friend, how you managed to cross? The first called back, I don't know anything but this: whenever I felt myself toppling over to one side, I leaned to the other.

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CHAPTER 15

Persistence

1. Sand dance with the rushing and whirling waters of river but it does not obstruct or stop the flow of river. Water stream never pays attention to sand. Water flows down its way to the ocean. Excessive accumulation of sand on the bed of river when comes to a point of obstruction the river never argues with sand to get out of its way but instead river shows flexibility and takes turn to avoid the sands and carves out new ways to continue its journey. Life is never empty of problems. Sand of the problems is always there in our life. We should not pay attention to it. We should continue our journey towards God and God-realization. Sand of difficulties will settle down on the riverbed with the passage of time, dont waste your time in quarrelling with sand just continue your journey towards God. The most important thing to remember is always to be with flow not with sand. Your worries are your sand, even your body and your mind is part of sand. You are your consciousness. God Himself is flowing towards God. So always be with God and not with your problems.

2. Feeling love of God is not greater part of it. The greater part of love is revealed upon us when we stay unshaken in the face of adversities that come from within or without. Love of God is always beyond the reach of Ego and if we could harness the mind processes then the selfless and supreme Love can become an inner and abiding reality.

3. Do not allow moods to become your master. Stay watchful of your moods as if you are sitting on top of the hill, and in the valley clouds and sunrises and sunsets come ... sometimes it is

day and sometimes night, Just be a watcher on the hill far away. Moods are a wheel inside you that goes on moving.

4. God-realization is not a one-day cricket match. One has to go through many stages gradually. These stages are very natural, as the seed has to pass through many stages of growth to become a blossom. First stage is having an aspiring heart. Aspiration is the inner flame, the mounting cry within us. This stage is a prerequisite and cannot be acquired through effort, though it comes from within but it comes by mysterious ways. Only God knows who is eligible for His love. This is the first step on the grand path of Godrealization. If this is absent then no amount of word-knowledge, how broad it might be, can bring any qualitative change in personality. The second stage is recognition of God as ultimate truth. Those who are sensitive and brought up in a pure natural environment can attain this stage directly and those who need some external support can realize it through spiritual contemplation. Third stage is to develop the repetition of mantra (remembrance) as the strongest, the deepest and the loudest inner reality. The fourth stage rises from the third stage. It is to feel God as ever pervading bliss and peace. Words look unnecessary at this stage. The fifth stage is the outcome of the fourth stage and is immersion of the individuality into the universality of God. Now the knower and the known or the same. Now the lover and beloved are unified in one flow of the divinity. We feel ourselves sailing with God in the same boat. There is no strict time-line or the demarcation line between these stages. Occasionally a seeker who is enjoying a higher stage will have to recourse, temporarily, to the previous lower stage practices. It is also not possible to predict that how much time, in terms of months or years, a seeker will need to move from a lower stage to a higher stage of God-realization. It all differs from individual to individual.

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5. Clouds come and go. Clouds can mask the shiny face of the full moon for a while but have no power to hide the moon (God) forever. In dark nights some feel sad and some loose faith in moon. But the wise are not dejected by clouds and have infallible faith in the moonlight. When clouds are gone and moonlight again shines then the pride of the true lover is immense for his persistence in love.

6. We sow a seed. We take care of it with water and fertilizer. And one day the seed is transformed into huge tree giving shadow and fruit. Similarly the seed of love that we sow in our heart needs care and support. What we give to the tree that will be returned to us in multiplicity. Our love returns to us what it received from us. Make your love the loudest and strongest roar in the space of your consciousness. Make it an inferno in which all impurities of your ego will burn down to ashes. Then you will be justified to expect the fruits of love and rest assured you will not have to wait for long. If you would focus on your love, your love will come to you running.

7. As progress is never made at a constant level, seeker should remain undisturbed by the ebb and flow of his spiritual life. During the period of ebb, he must hold to the progress he has already made, and during the flow he should move forward swiftly. Through practice mind can be made to flow uninterruptedly toward God.

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8. It is our will that allows each of us to accomplish our goals, not our intellect. Talent is not enough. Luck is not enough. Only the will to suffer hard work and incredible persistence leads to the attainment of the impossible. There are no shortcuts; there is no easy way.

9. When self-discovery becomes more important than winning, then every situation in life presents you with an opportunity to win in a new way. Every time you step past yourself, you win a little more freedom . . . freedom to take another and yet another step into the great unknown; where eventually, fear turns into fearlessness because you have disconnected yourself from yourself.

10. You possess a potential power that is superior to any difficulty that life may ever present. This immense inner capability enables anyone who will claim it to instantly rise above his challenger. It makes no difference what form the challenge may assume or how huge it looms. This latent power of yours can render it harmless and ultimately make it disappear.

11. How do we normally develop a new skill? For example, how do we learn to high jump? We listen to instruction, and perhaps we watch someone else; but for the most part, we learn by doing; by trying it ourselves. Generally, with our first attempts we end up crashing into rather than clearing the bar, and when we do, theres no denying it. We can see, and feel, that weve come up short.

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Our collapsed condition tells us, unmistakably, that weve done something wrong. So now, we try a new angle of approaching the bar, or a new technique of leaving the ground. We do this over and over. And each time we fail to hit the mark, we see weve made a mistake and we alter our behavior, knowing that eventually our selfcorrection will lift us to the success we desire. These elementary but exact laws of learning are the same when it comes to our psychological and spiritual development. Each time we feel an emotional pain, we should use that as a signal that weve made a mistake; that weve crashed and now need to find and try another new way.

12. There is no human being on earth with the power to grant us what our heart of hearts longs for: the end of that empty feeling that as we are, we are simply not enough. The chief cause of why our lives so often wind up in the hands of others is not that they are superior or that the world is too strong for us, but that we don't want to face the uncertainty and aloneness that we think we are too weak to bear. This is the real cause of all of our wrong relationships in life: We have been betrayed by a belief in our own weakness. The conscious refusal to go along with your weakness is what invokes and finally delivers real inner-strength. This new kind of strength gradually becomes the cornerstone of a true individual existence -- the life you've always wanted. The stakes are actually endless -- but self-victory is as certain as the fact that light always triumphs over darkness. If you will stay in the middle of this struggle for true self-possession, not asserting your individuality but allowing it to flourish and to blossom -- bearing what you must bear by refusing to submit yourself to negative, self-betraying influences -you will come to know the highest approval that Life can award. Reality itself will approve you. And when it does, all of your struggles will become a thing of the past. You will possess yourself.

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13. Our attitude determines our altitude in life. The "low" life comes by default. Gravity guarantees we will reach the bottom. To go higher, we must become higher. Do your spiritual Work. If you will do your part, God will see to it that you rise.

14. First attacks the sense of futility of action and afterwards come the feelings of weariness and fatigue. Fatigue is a great symptom of mind distraction and needs immediate correction. We must immediately withdraw our life energy from thoughts that are causing trouble. We should face the difficulties and threats posed by the present moment not with fear and frustration but with hope, resolve and peace of mind. Ultimately we will be the winner. Nothing on earth can defeat the passion for God.

15. If worries and fears distract you most of the times then stop fighting with your fears. Let fears and love go parallel for a while. Concentrate upon your love and try to let the fears come and go unattended. You will see that gradually love is getting stronger and stronger and fears are withering away one by one. Persistence and steady action is the secret. Never give up. Never discontinue action for any reason whatsoever. Never act in haste. If warding off the fears looks impossible for the time being, give them space to move around for a while. Give them space but do not give them attention. Just keep your shin up and stay persistent; the day of victory will come to glorify your love.

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16. Every long journey starts with first step on the road and every long flight of the bird begins with first flutter of the wings. When a caged bird is set free by its keeper, at first we see the bird hesitant and indecisive but then at last bird starts to fly on its wings. No one needs to tell it that look! You are a bird; you ought to fly. The idea to fly is nature of the bird; it is part of its being a bird. A bird has the knowledge of its bird-hood from within; it needs no external realization. You are a divine bird; God has gifted you with wings and instinct to fly. I wonder what keeps you bound to the cage. You alone are the keeper of this bird. Let your bird go. Let it fly to its natural home: the sky. And when you start flying beware of the owls, eagles and hawks. They come from outside and they come to prey you. They want to catch you unnoticed. Never take them as your friends. The moments you feel their presence in the air dont waste a moment, stop flying and be still until the danger is gone. However, danger never goes far off, it goes to come again. So be vigilant forever. And what are these owls, eagles and hawks? Dark states of your mind are your owls, eagles and hawks. And what is this cage? Your attachments are your cage. And who is the keeper? Your ego-self is the keeper. And what is this sky? God is your sky. And what are the wings? Your aspiration is your wings.

17. Initiate in action, persist in trouble, wait in trust, sooner or later the day will come when you will be paid back with all interest and much more will come from the supreme Lord. At that moment of true happiness you will wonder that how sweet and rich fruits humble and steady effort can fetch for you.

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18. Come what may in your life, be it joy or pain, be it loss or gain, be it success or failure, be it life or death, be it honor or humiliation never let any condition be your master and overcome you. Fight back furiously, you are not an object to conditions and situations rather you are from the eternal and you are eternal. That which stands inside you and makes you feel to exist is not perishable but infinite.

19. Dark mind states come and go. Never let them rule over you. Never give up. Never hand over your self-control to evil forces. Fight back and fight them vigorously up to your last breath. God-realization is the ultimate thing in life so naturally it requires the ultimate effort. It is the law of nature as well as the law of love.

20. God-loving requires determination: If you are not growing in your love then perhaps you are not fully interested, also. You are not applying your will. The heart is not eager. Will is nothing but the application of interest. You cannot break a mountain. Much you may try, it will not break. But if you apply dynamite, it will split the mountain into pieces. This dynamite is the will, you have to acquire it. It will split the egoism; the whole thing will break. If you do not want it, that is a different matter. If you have a suspicion that it is perhaps not possible for you, then it will not be possible, also. But, if you say, "No, it is certainly possible for me," then it will become possible. What you feel you are, that you really become. You should not say it is difficult.

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21. We have the problem of discontinuity which so many of us suffer from a seeming incapacity to sustain a course of thought or action unless we are impelled to it by the force of addiction, desire, or aversion. Making a sustained effort of will in the sphere of our personal life is a rare matter, indeed. Yet, we can see that the capacity for active resolve is the first step not some far-off target in our spiritual development.

22. We need to be established in the quality of endurance; we must learn to confront and to assimilate all contacts. Each fiber in us must be taught not to wince away from that which pains and repels and not to run eagerly towards that which pleases and attracts. We must be strong enough to bear all that touches us. We should endure tranquilly the action and impact on us of men and things and forces. We should face all that can possibly come to us down the ways of the soul's infinite experience. But this steadfast endurance of the flesh and heart and mind must be reinforced by a sustained sense of spiritual submission to the divine Will, to the touch of the divine hand that is preparing its perfection.

23. To say a word of wisdom is not such a game and to read that is even lot easier but to act upon that word of wisdom is the point where angels piss and heroes fall. Only unpolluted faith, selfless action and persistence win the trial.

24. Following the spiritual path is difficult. Rare indeed is the person who can contain this idea in the mind, maintain it for a

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long time, make it a part of his or her personality, and live according to this idea. Very difficult! He is a wonder indeed! All this is a miracle. That we can hear such things is a miracle; that we can appreciate such things is a miracle; that we will be able to stick to this principle is a miracle; that we will be able to practice it is a greater miracle: With all this hearing, finally, we will find it is difficult - very, very difficult. It wont enter the head. Even a sincere listener will say I understood. Sorry, it is not going deep. Why is it not going deep? It is because proper effort is not made. We have to brood upon it every day. Our understanding has to sink into feeling. Our difficulty is that feelings are going one way, and our understanding is going another way. We understand everything, but we cannot feel it. Our feelings are moving in another direction altogether. Spiritual Contemplation is the act of fusing the understanding with feeling, of getting understanding absorbed into the feeling. The union of the understanding with feeling is called intuition.

25. Don't be hindered by your doubts and by your uncertainties and by your fears. Everybody has to face them and the more intelligent a person is, the more one has to face them. But real intelligence is to be capable of taking the jump in spite of them all.

26. If you yearn for God and never turn your back then God will guide you, correct you, will give you the required strength to sustain in love. God will make you perfect. The only condition required is that you must keep yourself engaged with God. Come what may in your way but never disengage your self. If you stray away from love time and again then there is no need to brood over your short comings, do not waste time in repenting and criticizing yourself just make a come back as soon as possible.

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27. Our love for God should stand like a mighty solid rock right in the middle of the stormy ocean of sufferings.

28. Do not loose your composure not even in the moment when death seems imminent. In any situation, when we become impatient, anxious or fearful then there is no escape from spiritual failure. When we become anxious or fearful we loose our self-control to the hands of our inner mad dog of ego. Is it possible or so easy to hold such composure? Yes! It is possible but not easy. It takes a lot of mind and heart work to attain this kind of psychic composure. It does not come through reading the slogans or by listening lectures of the personal couch type fools. And it does not come by your firm resolve to become so. Rather it comes through unblemished faith in Gods presence, total surrender of ego and glowing love of divine.

29. Liberation can not come to you until you get immune to all feelings and thought states. Ego-state is an anti-God state because God has willed so for it. If you expect that one day you will start enjoying your labor of love at the mind level then I guarantee you that it will never happen as it has never happened to true seekers in the past. Japa is always subject to stern will of a seeker. Persistence makes you fly. Without stern will and persistence you will never reach to your destination the destination of liberation.

30. The moment of Now is an ultimate opportunity. We have to perform in it. There is no other time except Now. It holds the

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power to transform every loss into gain. The moment of Now can give you everything provided that you have faith in it, you have trust in it. Having trust in the moment of Now is measured by the quantum of your surrendering to it. The power that you would invest into the moment of Now will come back to you with corresponding force. How much you can get out of the moment of Now depends only on how much you can give to the moment of Now. A bird can only fly when it has faith and trust in its wings. This trust does not come overnight. The seed of this faith is already latent in you but you have to realize and nurture it, you have to develop it and give strength to it. You must learn to have faith and trust in it. Once you would gain this trust then flying will be no more difficult.

31. To attain communion with God you have to first be disconnected from all gross mental activity. And note it that this disconnection and communion do not come in sequence but they occur simultaneously at the speed of light. So it is futile to make tricks to attain the surrender or disconnection state prior to the communion. Keep your sincere and persistent efforts on; the day will come when you will be transported, without any warning in advance, to a state of communion with God.

32. Understand clearly the aim of your life. Then you should work hard to realize that ideal. Have your ideal ever before you and try, every second, to live up to it. Develop a strong desire to remove carelessness and forgetfulness from your character. Have confidence in your own powers and faculties. Keep your mental poise in the world, without consideration of failure, without consideration of gain or loss, pleasure or pain. Have the mind always rooted in God, amidst all the activities of life.

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33. There once was a bunch of tiny frogs ... who arranged a running competition. The goal was to reach the top of a very high tower. A big crowd had gathered around the tower to see the race and cheer on the contestants... The race began... No one in the crowd really believed that the tiny frogs would reach the top of the tower. You heard statements such as: "Oh, Way too difficult!!" "They will NEVER make it to the top." The tiny frogs began collapsing. The crowd continued to yell, "It is too difficult!!! No one will make it!" More tiny frogs got tired and gave up ... But one continued higher and higher and higher ... This one wouldn't give up! He was the only one who reached the top! All of the other tiny frogs naturally wanted to know how this one frog managed to do it? A contestant asked the tiny frog how he had found the strength to succeed and reach the goal. It turned out that the winner was DEAF!!!! The wisdom of this story: Never listen to other people's tendencies to be negative or pessimistic. They take your most wonderful dreams and wishes away from you -- the ones you have in your heart! Be POSITIVE! And above all, be DEAF when people tell you that you cannot fulfill your dreams! Always think: I can do this! It's not what someone else says that matters - it's what you THINK about what they say.

34. Being spiritual is not like watching a fanciful movie in leisure hours but it is about bringing a nucleic metamorphosis in us. Do not flirt with your ego; spirituality is very serious business and demands non-stop action and relentless practice. Any half-hearted effort to dislodge the grip of ego would be like putting your head into the cage of a hungry and angry lion. Beware that your ego can move your own physiology and psychology against you. Ego will

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defend its rule and grip over you till its last breath. If you intend to be a spiritual person then believe me you are going to embark upon a voyage that would be very long and turbulent. Sometimes you would enjoy the scene and sometimes you would feel nausea. But have trust and faith that all will settle down amicably in the end because your Lord is steering your ship towards the golden shores of eternal peace. Your God wants you to be successful.

35. You cannot climb the Everest in one jump. There is no jumping on the spiritual path. God-realization is not like a three-year post-graduate course. It is the result of intense protracted practice. There is no short-cut in the spiritual path. There is no royal road to the kingdom of immortal bliss. There is no half-measure in the divine path. Strict, hard discipline is wanted. Then alone you can conquer the illusion (ego). Only then can you control the mind. Spiritual progress is slow, as the spiritual practice is difficult and laborious. It is like the spiral. In the beginning, great striving is needed. Gradually, the circle becomes smaller and smaller. So also, the striving becomes less and less. The aspirant gains spiritual strength slowly. He marches faster and faster. Finally, he does not go by furlongs after furlongs; he proceeds by mile after mile. He gallops and gallops. Therefore, be patient; be persevering; be steady.

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CHAPTER 16

Have Your Mantra

First Stage Mantra

Oh the Witness, Oh the Witnessed Oh the Present, Oh the bodiless Oh the Master, Oh the Beloved Oh the Worshipped, Oh the Sufficient How to pronounce it (for English spoken people): Ya Sha-hid, Ya Mash-hood Ya Ha-Zir, La-Wajood Ya Rub-bun, Ya Habib Ya Allah, Ya Haseeb Considerations 1. Words of first stage mantra are taken from Arabic language. This mantra is meant for disciplining the mind in the early period of God-seeking. But a seeker may fall back to it occasionally even during advanced stages. It will help to realign the mind to the primary goal of God-realization. 2. Recitations should be performed latently (mentally) without producing any sound or any movements of tongue and lips. But occasionally when you feel that enchanting loud will be more beneficial for you or to the other listeners who are in you company then loud or rhythmic recitations can be used. And

during the recitations let not your breathing be violent and out of rhythm. Always keep in mind that spiritual practice should be performed in serene, composed and graceful way. There should be no violence or torture in true spiritual practice. All that is stressful is not a spiritual practice. Whenever you feel discomfort in your mantra recitation, stop it immediately or you may shift from first mantra to the second one. You may take some rest if your body requires it. It is not number of recitations that matters but prime thing is the emotional enmeshment. Once you feel established in your Spiritual Contemplation and have mastered some mind control. And more upon it when you have some direct feel of the non-dual nature of all the existence then you may shift to the second mantra that is more rhythmic, concise and refreshing. The second mantra can not be performed in loud voice because the I part of it can not be uttered in sound. I is uttered while taking the breath in and when you are inhaling obviously you can not say it loud. Recitation of it should not produce any vocal noise. 3. Recitation should continue non-stop covering all the waking time. And when it is essential to have some respite due to some living urgencies even then your intent must remain engaged with the mantra latently and silently. 4. If distractions come, do not fight with them let them flow through you out. Whenever you become aware that your recitation has stopped restart it without delay. Do not be discouraged from recitation breakouts. Just keep coming back the day will come when your straying will stop at its own. And do not expect mastering the undisturbed continuity of mantra in a short period. It may take decades of your life time before the recitation gets established in you in an unstoppable way. 5. Recitation should not be targeted for some material or psychic gains. It must be performed selflessly.

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Second Stage Mantra

I AM
Considerations Considerations for this mantra have been mentioned under the first stage mantra. Third Stage Mantra

The flames of passion

Third stage mantra is not doing your practice on some extra specific words but it is the practice of letting oneself burn into the flames of furious love for God. It is self-immersion and self-immolation through deep involvement of thought and emotion into the light of love. Knowledge alone is not sufficient, it is just a matchstick and if it has not enkindled the flame of love in you then knowledge becomes a cause of even deeper misery and pain. Considerations 1. At night time when calm solitude is available to you, sit in chair or on a stool or on the bedside with lights off. Keep your spinal column straight, hands touched to each other, feet also touching each other, your chin parallel to ground and eyes closed. Breathing should remain normal. The whole body must stay relaxed. 2. Do your practice by focusing at the mantra of I AM with full awareness. Practice to purify your inner space of all thoughts, of all feelings except your deep involvement in your mantra

3.

4. 5. 6.

7.

8.

9.

and during this process keep your body limbs as still as possible (motionless). Remember one thing that your goal in practice is not to gain any reward or any state of spiritual exaltation. You are not here in your practice to be victorious. If you would win any victory for you then your ego will become more powerful, more adamantine. Rather your goal is to pure your awareness of all egocentric thoughts and emotions. You are here in your practice to efface your sense of doership , to eradicate your ego-nature. You are the hindrance. You are the cause of your failure. When you would realize this difference then enlightenment will shine from within. If you feel unbearable fatigue or stress, then stop the practice. Let your body and mind have some respite and resume the practice when you feel restored. Let your love for God rise above all objects of thought and emotions. Let the whole creation fall back onto God and let your soul celebrate the joy of divine love. Do not fight with distractions. Accept them and let them pass away in detachment. And do not lose heart, show persistence. Distractions will come in form of thoughts and emotions. See them coming, listen them knocking at the door and watch them going away. Safety is in being closed; do not open your door at them. Sleep is enemy of this practice. Sleep is a state of darkness and disconnection. Avoid it at all costs. If you have not slept at day time and sleep is crippling your practice then stop your practice and take some sleep first. Do not seek for any outside help, any support. Just be yourself. You have all the power you need for your path. Just do not let the distractions (thought, feelings and motion of limbs) have influence upon you. During practice do not wear any metallic article (watch etc). Do not sit on metallic chair or stool and keep any digital/wireless devices (cell phones etc) away from your body. Because these things have a charge on them while our purpose is to go away from any charge - into a state of no charge (Silence).

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10.Keep a time gap of minimum two hours between you dinner and your practice of Silence. So that body may establish itself in smooth energy flow after last food intake. 11.When you are in the middle of your practice if thoughts and emotions rise say to you (latently) Be Still Dont move Have it not Have it not. You are here to reverse the wheel of creation back into the Silence.

Ideation of Mantra

1. I AM is the mantra coming forth from the Self of God. We can name it as NADH or Naad-e-Elahi (vibration of God). It is the fundamental vibration in universes. This Naad is present in all forms of creation. Some can awaken to it and some others can not. NADH is the rhythm that prepares soul to awaken to God.

2. I-AM embodies the breathing (pulsation) of God into words. This divine pulsation holds the vibrations of life and death. It is a flow of divine rhythm from Himself to Himself. AM is the breath of Expansion; here God expands Himself through the act of creation and I is the breath of Retraction; here creation disappears back into the unmanifested Self of God.

3. Though, thinking and respiring both are manifestation of life but the movement of their force is in opposite directions. Thinking pushes you away into periphery while breathing keeps you tied up with the center or source. The force latent in thinking is centrifugal so we would consider it a negative force but the force latent in breathing is centripetal so we would consider it a

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positive force. In spiritual practice, breathing is used as an instrument to attain the state of Self-realization because it holds the force that pulls you towards the center (God), while the force of thought that is centrifugal in its nature tends to exert a negative effect on the Godseeker because it holds the force that pushes you away from the center (God). Effect of thinking is of dissipating nature while effect of breathing is of collecting nature. Spiritual action fuses these two opposite forces into a single force of mantra. Through mantra we make our focus to ride on the horse of breathing so that it may travel into the unknown lands of nirvana.

4. To reach to the point of liberation Mantra holds the key. Practice of Mantra induces that specific environment within you that is very essential for the seed of God to be sprouted in you. This seed of God is already embedded in you. Without continuity, persistence and focus of Intent all mantras are useless. A seeker should establish himself in Mantra very slowly and naturally. Use of any extra psychic force, haste or impatience in this regard would not only perish the whole process of Spiritual Contemplation but it can also hurt your mental health badly. In I AM I stands as a symbol for Selfhood of God and AM represents His Is-ness (presence). Say I very naturally and mentally when you inhal e and say AM when you exhale. No movement of lips or tongue should be made while practicing on your Mantra and keep your breathing frequency as natural as it was before taking start on the Mantra. No need to sit in any particular posture or place. You can continue your Mantra even when you are dealing with your customers or you are driving a car or you are sitting among your friends or you are lying on your bed. Main thing required is focus of your Intent. At all times you should be aware of your Mantra. Distraction for a moment would be the death of that very moment. You have not lived that moment and it has been wasted away for ever. In Spiritual Contemplation you have to be watchful and vigilant

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all the time. If you would be vigilant sleep or other distractions would not creep in easily.

5. To be a successful seeker of God you need to know the chemistry of Mantra. Your Mantra induces a series of energy waves in the ocean of your consciousness. Series of these waves (vibrations) ultimately turn into a huge tide. This tide turns your consciousness upside down and transforms you into a totally new man. Once you have started on the Mantra, it would mature itself by passing through various stages of its development. We can mention these stages like this: At first stage it would appear as you are saying it (Mantra) and you are listening to it. At next stage it would appear as you are not saying it but you are only listening to it. You are not saying it but it is being said to you. At higher stage you would feel that you are not listening to it but you are In it. At more advanced stage, it would appear to you that you are not only In it but you are it. This is the stage where real nature and mystery of your own existence would start unfolding before you for the first time in your life. For a beginner, repetition of Mantra without any stop and gap is of utmost importance. All the time you are awake: whatever you are doing and wherever you are keep your mantra flowing. Through non-stop mantra recitation a seeker can establish himself in his holy pursuit of God-realization. If you would remain watchful of any gap and stop in your mantra you would not fall prey to unintentional and unwanted sleep. While doing your Spiritual Contemplation, do not overemphasize about the withdrawal of mind rather think more and more about God. Your longing for God would guide you and initiate you in your Mantra. In the beginning your Mantra would have no

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life. You have to animate it with your life energy. Once the mantra is animated it would respond to you, it would start giving energy back to your longing. Your longing would start growing. The more you long for God the more energy would be available for your mantra and more energy your mantra would have the stronger your longing would become. With the passage of time your longing for God would become so strong that it would gradually become very hard, almost impossible for you to retain yourself to your imminent bounds. Your strong yearning would become your wings and you would get ready to take that quantum leap which is very essential to have any mystic experience.

6. You say that you are a God seeker! I say you are an imposter and coward. You love to listen, read, talk and write about God-realization but the thing you are the most reluctant to do is practice. You are shy of action in love and you are afraid of your encounter with God. Through practice you can expose your being to the divine heat and light, your action in love, your mantra can help you to grow in dedication but you are not ready for all this. Then tell me how you can expect the truth of God-experience.

7. Mantra in itself has no power. All the power rests with God. Mantra is just a begging bowl in the hands of mind. To fill it with something is the grace of God. When it is filled with the grace of God it becomes an instrument of self-realization.

8. Whatever God gives to you take it in total silence. Be it pain or pleasure, loss or gain receive all with an equal mind. In all situations play your part when the time of it comes and the will of Lord enwraps you overwhelmingly. Do not expect, desire or plan for

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anything in particular. Keep your focus glued to the mantra of I AM. You must feel that you need the mantra keep going more than your lungs need oxygen or your heart needs blood.

9. If you would remember God sincerely, God will remove labor of living from you and will give you ample time and space for your spiritual pursuit. And if you would use this leisure time for running after egoistic activities then I fear that you would again be put in the juiceless drudgery of living day to day life.

10. You may become oblivious to God, you may become oblivious to Self and you may become oblivious to cosmic mantra of I AM but you can not become oblivious to the beat of your own heart, you can not become oblivious to the pulsation that is happening in every particle of the matter. This beat, this pulsation is nothing but the resonance of that cosmic mantra of I AM that is emanating from the divine Self. We do not have to re-invent this mantra, it is already there and it is already available. What we have to do is just to awaken to it. We have to let it flow through our being. Let your whole being resonate with this mantra without any resistance to it. Transformation will occur on its own. Listening to this mantra will do a miracle to you.

11. Mantra is not a goal in itself. It is a tool to tame the mind. It prepares and capacitates mind to receive the unbound and uncontained experience of divine presence. The experience of God itself is unspeakable, no word can finger towards it. Words and ideas just are invitation to have this experience that sprouts from within.

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12. Mantras are words of power for the internal journey of God-knowledge. The resonance of the mantra operates as a total energy system tha t engages with all levels of an individuals being. Each syllable in a mantra is a set of tonal frequencies that resonate with, and activate the dormant energy centers in the body, connecting and unifying them into a single integrated system. The spiritual vibration of mantra cannot be explained in terms of sound waves in the ordinary sense, for there is much more to it than that. At one level the vibrations of this total energy system operate to engage with and calm the clutter of the mind, so that there is stillness. Once stillness is experienced, then the rest of this vehicle comes into play, providing the arrow to cut through barriers that prevent access to deeper consciousness. This provides the opportunity to experience a deeper level of silence and stillness. The energy encased in the vibrational structure of mantra works on multidimensional levels within the mind and body. When you are distracted by thought processes in Spiritual Contemplation, mantra has the effect of bringing you back to the stillness, and supports you not participating in the thought processes that naturally arise. Mantra is said to protect the mind from the mind. The repetition of the mantra is a way to enter stillness and unify you with Universal Divinity; so that the microcosm of the individual is united with the macrocosm of Universal Consciousness. Mantra provides an integrating power between mind, body and consciousness by providing alignment that lies beyond thought and imagery. It takes you away from mental clutter and ego centered preoccupations into a stillness that allows inner consciousness to rise up and integrate with unbound consciousness.

13. The mantra of I AM is being recited by God Himself not by you. Your very you-ness is an illusion, a dream,

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a transitory condition. There is only one ME or I in the universe. When the water of divine self is pumped up through the narrowness of fountain nozzle (forms) then it jets up in the air to make a show of itself. This water in the air feels itself separate from the source but in fact it is the same water that is being pumped up and it is constantly falling back onto itself. This falling back of human consciousness onto the source consciousness is generating the illusion of witnessing or separated self. Through witnessing God is watching God, God is celebrating His own show. It is God that loves God through His own show. Our limited consciousness is being formed moment to moment by the hands of divine will. It is not a separate self but it is wave falling onto the same wave.

14. God lives in a remote and inaccessible place. But by His benevolence He has provided the chariot of breath that takes His lovers to him. And when lovers reach there they are astonished to discover that the place of God was right within their hearts. Breathing is the most vital function in all living things. So it can play a vital role in attaining the spiritual development. We can regulate our thoughts and grow in Spiritual Contemplation through watchfully observing the in-breaths and out-breaths. But beware that watching and observing the breath does not mean controlling it. As the breathing is an active and moving function so its vigilance and observation cannot be of static nature. For a successful breath watching practice the observation too has to move along with the rhythm of in-breath and out-breath. We may enchant the mantra of I AM to regulate and train the mind. Enchant these words mentally; there should be no sound produced and no lip or tongue movement during practice. Two more points; never be impatient or hasty in your effort and do not waste your precious time in condemning yourself for your imperfections or shortcomings, just concentrate upon the path to attain the goal, shortcomings will vanish with the passage of time and gradually grace of God will envelop you from inside out.

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15. There are many methods of purification. We can wash clothes with water and soap, or we may dry-clean them chemically, or through heat or oxygen or radiation with shortwave. In the same way there are many methods to purify the subconscious, the mind, the heart and the will. The most wonderful method of purification is Zikar (Japa). The Zikar assumes the duty of creating all the necessary conditions and circumstances for your spiritual development and awakening till finally the mantra reveals itself to you as Truth, as God. Constant repetition of the mantra generates a great psychic fire that burns completely all impurities of the body, heart and consciousness.

16. Mantra must flow directly from the heart of the being, like a roar, a flash, a rhythm, a cry, a smile, a moan. It must not hold any mental objectives and should be free of the sense of doership . There must not be any sense of subject and object. A mantra that is not coming from the center of the consciousness and is merely an idea or opinion of peripheral mind will cause fatigue and exhaustion. If practice on mantra is disturbed by emotional vacillations or moods then mantra can not bring peace and enlightenment to you. The mantra is like a rocket engine that propels the mind beyond the "gravitational fields" of the body, through all the turbulence of the subconscious mind to the super consciousness. A mantra must have three qualities to hold the restless mind steady, to energize it, and to transport it to subtler realms. First, it must be Pulsative. It must flow rhythmically with the breathing, for the breathing has a profound effect upon the state of one's consciousness. You may have noticed that whenever you are angry or upset, your breathing gets fast and short; but when you are absorbed in any task, you naturally breathe slowly and deeply. The

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functioning of breathing is closely associated with the flow of vital energy in the body, which in turn greatly affects mind. If the breathing is fast and irregular, the vital energy becomes unsteady and agitated; the mind becomes disturbed and thinking chaos replaces inner peace. Thus regulation of breathing is an important part of spiritual practice. The more the breathing is regulated the greater the composure in the vital energy, and the greater the mind discipline would be. Once there was a minister who had greatly displeased his king. As punishment, the king ordered him imprisoned in the top of a very high tower, and the minister was left there to perish. That night, the minister's faithful wife came to the tower, crying, to see if there was any way she could help him escape. He told her to return to the tower the following night, bringing with her a long rope, some string, some silken thread, a beetle, and a pot of honey. Wondering at this strange command, the wife obeyed, and the next night brought him the desired articles. The minister directed her to tie the silken thread firmly around the beetle's leg, then to smear its feelers with a drop of honey and place it on the tower wall, with its head pointing upward. Attracted by the scent of the honey, the beetle crawled slowly up the wall, drawing the silken thread behind it. Hours later, it reached the top, and the minister caught it and untied the silken thread. Then he told his wife to tie the other end of the thread, dangling on the ground, to the long string. The minister then pulled up the thread until he could grasp the end of the string. Next he instructed her to tie the rope to the other end of the string, and pulling up the string, he grabbed the rope and tied it to the tower window and slid down to freedom. The silken thread is the motion of breathing the string is the vital energy, and the rope is the mind. By regulating the motion of breathing, we can gain control over the vital energy; by regulating the vital energy, we can control the mind. Then we can attain liberation from the prison of separation. The second quality is that mantra must have a certain vibrational pattern so that when it is chanted latently, it should elevate the individual's inner vibration, or "initiative rhythm". The primal source of all rhythmic movement is the one infinite Consciousness. The universe is a vibrational play of varied waves with different

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wavelengths and the subtlest of all these waves is the wave that is produced by repetition of mantra. The third quality is the meaning of the mantra. Mantra should hold perceptive power to guide the mind into the beatitude of God. By daily practice, by the constant ideation, we gradually lessen our false identification with our body and lower mind. As the mind gradually, imperceptibly expands through higher and higher layers, one glorious day we become completely free from all the bondage of ego.

17. The Supreme Consciousness is inside you like butter in milk; churn your mind through Spiritual Contemplation and He will appear you will see that the resplendence of the Supreme Consciousness illumines your whole inner being. He is like a subterranean river in you. Remove the sands of mind and you will find the clear, cool waters within.

18. God is constantly flowing into creation and creation is falling back onto God. This is the whole play of life and world. I AM is the song of God. Those who are lucky enough to listen this song become intoxicated so much that they start resonating on the same pitch and there life becomes an echo of this divine song.

19. Focus on your mantra and your mantra will take care of your focus. As you spend money to feed balanced diet to your cow and your cow returns more money to you by giving some extra litters of milk.

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20. Since your birth you have been feeding your mind with thoughts. Now you have become an addict of thoughts and you do not know any other way of living. And when you decide to walk on the path of divine love your own mind becomes the greatest obstacle in your way. Because now you want to put mind on a different feed the feed of Silence. When mind feels threat it feels fear and becomes rebellious. Bewilderment of mind is an essential sign of any true advancement on spiritual path. If you would keep feeding mind with vibrations of the mantra then slowly you would succeed in stopping the unwanted thoughts at the gate of the mind. Believe me! What you need is not thoughts but the steadfast remembrance of God.

21. Path of enlightenment starts from beautifully groomed mantra. If mantra itself lacks health then how can it heal your spiritual sickness? A dirty piece of cloth can not cleanse the mirror. An infected medicine can not cure the disease. A sick horse can not pull the cart to its destination.

22. Mantra slowly narrows down the living space of mind until it is forced to be undisturbed and calm. All space that was previously the territory of mind now stands conquered by mantra. Though mind makes wild movements and severe noise before it is arrested forever; to narrow down the mind is like narrowing down a wild cat in the jungle.

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23. In deep sleep state we plunge into a dark room whereas in Spiritual Contemplation we are not in a dark room instead we illuminate our darkness with the divine light. So the difference between deep sleep and the state of Spiritual Contemplation is immense. God-thinking is a homeopathic (ilaj bilmisal) treatment of ill-thoughts. Through God-thinking we cure all ill-thoughts with the super thought of Gods Lordship.

24. To feel God no books or lectures or strategies are required. God is available to all those who are ready to take Him. As air is available to all those who are ready to respire in it no hard tricks no advance knowing of any k ind; just let the air come in and it will come to you. So easy is reaching to God. Have thirst of God stick to His remembrance let Him flow into you and stay in you that is it! Attend God in full self-immolation and soon you will know that God was never away from you.

25. Respiration is that sacred language which God has bestowed upon us to communicate back to Him. This language is made up of only two alphabets; one is in -breath and the other is out-breath. This language is so natural, so simple and so powerful that even the illiterates can use it for God-attainment.

26. Utterance of mantra for a single time is like a single drop of rain that is going to make no traceable effect. But persistent falling of rain drops can cause the dry rivers to swell and rush in

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their full grace. So beauty lies in being persistent. Initiate your effort, God will help you to attain momentum and be accomplished.

27. You will make progress in your practice of mantra by three stages. Firstly you would have to build a relationship with the mantra. This stage is called Lagan (inclination). Second stage is of Agan (fire). At this stage seekers practice on mantra recitation matures to a level that he starts feeling within the glowing radiance of mantra and his impurities start burning away in this radiance. The seeker is now well established in his spiritual effort. The third stage is marked with a state when mantra transcends its constituent parts and even there remains no performer of the mantra. This stage is called Bhasam (burnt to ashes). Somewhere in the third stage, mantra recitation now becomes so much furious that it propels its doer into a state of Disappearance where ego unclenches its grip on human consciousness. Now the seeker is no where but the seeking stands everywhere.

28. Mantra is not just a combination of some syllables, it is a supreme rhythm that finally transcends its constituent parts and becomes a force that propels us into the state of no-mind, where our encounter with the divine becomes a possibility. There may be as many mantras as many there are spiritual paths. Words, sounds and structure may differ from region to region or era to era but the basic goal and condition of full devotion remain unchanged. My suggestion and preferred composition of mantra may not be the best of the world but it has proved as the best mantra for me so I have no option but to suggest it to others as well. Recitation of I AM is highly beneficial mantra as it does not involve any naming scheme for God or any mental opinion ab out God. I that is the first syllable of the mantra is not to symbolize the I -ness of the seeker rather it symbolizes the Master-I of God Himself. And

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second part Am symbolizes the Is -ness of God as creation or physical presence. I carries in it th e centripetal force of God and AM carries in it the centrifugal force of God. Both forces are being regulated by divine will.

In the mantra of I AM AM is Nafs -e-Rabubiat (the breath of His Lordship) and I is Nafs -e-Aluhiat (The breath of His Godhood). In Nafs-e-Rabubiat creation takes place and in Nafs-eAluhiat creation falls back onto its source (God). Nafs-e-Rabubiat holds all the forms and states, pain and pleasure, life and death, hope and hopelessness, light and darkness, ego and self, motion and stillness, winning and losing. In Nafs-e-Aluhiat multiplicity of creation disappears in the unity of God. Here Silence rules again without the noise of any duality. When you say AM feel the creation waving out of God and when you say I let all the noise fall back onto God. If you would attain mastery in your mantra recitation then your whole life will become a divine dance, a supreme rhythm.

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CHAPTER 17

Enlightenment

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1. If the Truth in you has not enlightened your own heart then how it can enlighten the hearts of others. Enlightenment is not a thing that you can have in the traditional sense of having. So when you do not have it then how can you deliver it? To be enlightened is like sitting in the sunshine. Either you are in it or you are not. When you are in the sunshine, you can not write a book or poem about sunshine and deliver it to others through this book or poem so that others too may have it without coming out of their dark rooms. To be in sunshine every aspirant of sunshine has to come personally out to it. Once you expose yourself to sun you can receive the sunshine but you can not have it. And once you have received it then you can guide others to the direction from where they too can receive it. Spiritual teachings, books, verses, all just point towards the direction from where you can receive the sunshine. But to receive it you have to expose yourself to it.

2. Enlightenment is like sunrise, the sun rises, but the sun does not jump suddenly up to the top. It rises slowly. It is pitch dark in the night, as if there is no hope of any light. That is the state of ignorance. Nobody can imagine that there can be any such thing as light when it is pitch dark, like coal. Later on what happens, slightly, the sky assumes a grey color. After that, it becomes a little pinkish, and then slightly whitish, and then you will see the great sun rising slowly in the east. When one single sun rises in the east, we can see how much light is there. Here, in the enlightenment, the entire space becomes sun. What would be the radiance? What would be the light?

3. Imagine for a while that there are two circles near to each other, one is bigger and the other small. The big circle may be

thought of as God, the small one as the individual. Here the individual is different and distinct from God; this is dualism. When you bring the smaller circle IN so that it settles within the bigger circle, you have qualified non-dualism; now the individual is part of the Divinity and he exists in God. What then is the meaning of the individual becoming totally merged in God? The small circle has to broaden itself and grow bigger and bigger until it has fully expanded to the size of the big circle. At that point the two circles are indistinguishable and man has merged himself into God. This is complete non-dualism.

4. The truth is always present here and now but you are not ready to meet it in its nakedness. You are afraid of it. You are avoiding your encounter with it by reading books and articles to develop more understandi ng of it, by articulating different techniques to attain it but simple thing that you are not ready to acknowledge is that truth is available to you without any need to find it, to understand it, to amend it, to cook it for you. In fact you are not ready to accept it because its acceptance will bring death on your ego. Its acceptance will end your so-called control over your life. You are afraid of your own disappearance because true acceptance of truth demands disappearance of the seeker (as separate entity). Truth is not outside you, it is within you and rather it is you. But it is available only when your you-ness will disappear. To give way to truth you will have to fall apart. You will have to end all resistance in you against truth. You will have to become a no-body. Truth can not be known and communicated; it can only be experienced and lived through. Oneness of God is the ultimate truth. Your own conditioned mind is blocking this truth from reaching to you. Once your mind would stop clouding the truth, it would become available to you just like your breathing is available to you without any effort, just like your own body is available to you without any doubt. Truth would become immediate to you. You would start sailing in God as an unmanned boat drifts on the high ocean, without any control,

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without any option, you would become choice-less. You would start living a life that is without any meaning and purpose and predefined direction; you would become fully available to truth without any resistance from your own mental plans and objectives in life. So long there is meaning and purpose you are under the control of your ego and mind conditions. You need to become a free man. Truth needs dissolution of your psyche, once you attain it; truth will start flowing to you and through you and you would start feeling that you are nothing more than just a witness on this divine flow. Your life would become a miracle of God.

5. Exactly how difficult Enlightenment is to each person is unclear. Enlightenment is as difficult as you set it to be. You can travel as far as you will on the path, and never reach the end because there is no end: it is only when you know you have reached your goal that you are Enlightened.

6. Enlightenment is the core of all spirituality. But we have quite often a strange picture of what it is. Enlightenment is not something you achieve. It is the absence of something. All your life you have been going forward after something, pursuing some goal. Enlightenment is dropping all that. Im going to ask a series of questions about certain unpleasant states. I am not saying we should not have strong feelings or preferences about them. Nevertheless from these examples we can begin to get a clue; and when we have a clue we can see more clearly where we stand in the enlightenment. Here are the questions. If I am told, you have one more day to live, is that OK with me? Or if someone told you that, is that OK with you? If I am in a severe accident, and my legs and arm have been amputated, is that OK with me? If that were to happen to you, is it OK?

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 If I must lose whatever or whomever I care for, is it OK with me? Now I cant answer OK to any of those. And if youre honest, I dont think that any of you can either. But to answer OK is the enlightened state, if we understand what it means for something to be OK. When there is no longer any separation between myself and the circumstances of my life, whatever they may be, that is it.

7. Whenever you are ready, God knocks at your door; He seeks you whenever you are ready. And the readiness is nothing but a receptivity. When you are completely receptive there is no ego; you become a hollow temple with nobody in it. Become like a hollow bamboo, nothing inside and suddenly, the moment you are a hollow bamboo, the divine lips are on you, the hollow bamboo becomes a flute, and the song starts. You have become a hollow bamboo, and the divine has come, and the song has started. It is the song of the ultimate experience itself.

8. Being enlightened is very much like understanding a joke: often it makes no sense to spell out the terms of the joke. Either you get it, or you don't.

9. Only in aloneness can you attain enlightenment. I am not saying loneliness. The feeling of loneliness is the feeling that comes when one is escaping from aloneness, when one is not ready to accept it. If you do not accept the fact of aloneness, then you will feel lonely. Then you will find some crowd or some means of intoxication in which to forget yourself. You must make a distinction between two words: lonely and alone. In the dictionary they carry the same meaning, but those who have been meditating, they know the

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distinction. They are not the same; they are as different as possible. Loneliness is an ugly thing; loneliness is a depressive thing -- it is a sadness; it is an absence of the other. Loneliness is the absence of the other -- you would like the other to be there, but the other is not, and you feel that you miss the other. You are not there in loneliness; the absence of the other is there. Alone? -- It is totally different. YOU are there, it is your presence; it is a positive phenomenon. You don't miss the other, you meet yourself. If you are alone, you grow, because there is space to grow -- nobody else to hamper, nobody else to obstruct, nobody else to create more complex problems. Alone you grow, and as much as you want to grow you can grow because there is no limit, and you are happy being with yourself, and bliss arises. There is no comparison: because the other is not there you are neither beautiful nor ugly, neither rich nor poor, neither this nor that, neither white nor black, neither man nor woman. Alone, how can you be a woman or a man? Lonely, you are a woman or a man, because the other is missing. Alone, you are no one, empty, empty of the other completely. And remember, when the other is not, the ego cannot exist: it exists with the other. Either present or absent, the other is needed for ego. Fenced from the neighbors I feel 'I'. When there is no neighbor, no fencing, how can you feel 'I'? You will be there, but without any ego. The ego is a relationship, it exists only in relationship.

10. Concentration narrows downs our thoughts to a culmination point, where thought begins to evaporate in its own heat and speed in that thought-free moment consciousness sees its own reality. Concentration is the last point of thought beyond which begins enlightenment.

11. Persons who are enlightened, nothing in fact can be known about them. They don't leave a trace; they don't become a part

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of history. They exist by the side, they are not part of the main traffic where the whole humanity is moving; they don't move there. The whole humanity moves through desiring, and persons who are enlightened move into desirelessness. They simply move away from the main traffic of humanity where history exists. And the more away they go from the traffic, the more mythological they become. They exist like myths, they are no more events in time. And this is as it should be, because they move beyond time, they live beyond time - they live in the eternity. From this dimension of our common humanity, they simply disappear, they evaporate. The moment when they are evaporating, only that moment we remember, that much they are part of us.

12. Seed, sprouting, flowering and finally the fruition are integral parts of a single developing phenomenon. It is the reality of Oneness that passes through all these stages to experience its own sublimity. Reasoning is not paradoxical to transcendence; thinking so would be a biased opinion. Reasoning provides wings to mind to become a consciousness that is called as transcendence. When mind enters into the phase of transcendence the reasoning falls off on its own, this falling off does not require use of any force on your part. Stay calm and just witness the seed of God in you to be developed into a sapling then into strong trunk and branches then its flowering and finally its culmination into its fruition.

13. Thinking in itself brings nothing to us. We do not attain things because we think about them but things come to us when they have to come to us. The tree does not come out of seed because the seed thinks about it, the tree does not attain blossom because the tree thinks about it, the blossom does not attain fruit because the blossom thinks about it and fruit does not attain sweetness because the fruit thinks about it. The emergence of tree,

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blossom, fruit and sweetness all are processes of the inherent potential of the seed. Becoming tree, blossom and fruit are not the thinking attainments of the seed but they were always present in the seed. True knowledge of all things will come to you as part of your being. This knowledge is not outside of you rather it is hidden inside you. The only thing that is veiling and obstructing our encounter with this knowledge is thinking. We are ignorant because we think. Because of thinking we are unable to see that which already stands in front of our eyes. Thinking is constantly taking us away from our home seat (divine essence in us). Our thinking is distorting the true nature of all things. It is veiling the Truth constantly. Thinking, by nature, divides and alienates the knower and the known. True knowledge can only come to us not through thinking but through natural growth of Inner Potential. God is hidden inside you as the aroma of rose is hidden in its seed. God is Inner potential of I. Sow this seed in the soil of love, water it, fertilize it, let it absorb light and grow in its nature. Day will come when this divine seed will blossom and bring aroma and its fruit.

14. Enlightenment dawns upon us as the adulthood dawns upon our body. Adulthood does not come to us in isolated and fragmentary manner but it is slow, gradual, all-inclusive and all encompassing state of physical change.

15. An accomplished man does not know what the God realization is. This is a term that has been coined out by outsiders, biographers, commentators, historians and book sellers. What Godrealization is to these outsiders is only a self -submission to a saint. When a river falls back into sea it does not attain the sea but it is the sea that receives back its own segment to send it back again (through water cycle) with a refreshed energy and purity. As God is non-dual

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and non-duality has always been inexpressible. Mind can not swim through it.

16. Enlightenment is not the static climax of spiritual evolution, but is an eternally expanding movement of intelligence and consciousness that is unique for each soul. It is our individual essence that journeys through the process of evolution, progressively shifting through states of awakening and levels of surrender that lead ever deeper into the supreme beyond. How far we can expand the frontiers of our enlightenment depends upon our spiritual capacity, inspiration, knowledge and intelligence. However, of equal consequence is the limiting factor of our own unconsciousness. Because it exists only as the reversal of its opposite, not only must we see enlightenment in relation to the revelation of truth, but also to the depth of human ignorance. Our expansion into enlightenment is not only an evolution of human consciousness, but a process of breaking through the gravity and resistance of the unenlightened reality. It is the power struggle between the forces of the inertia that bind us to the plane of forgetfulness and our ability to transcend them that ultimately defines the territorial boundaries of our human awakening. The more our consciousness evolves, the more its potential expands for a further, more complete enlightenment. B y complete we do not suggest the end of enlightenment, but our relative completion in the realm of human enlightenment and the realization of the wholeness. The concept of complete enlightenment must be seen from the perspective of the infinite and eternally evolving truth of creation, unfathomable by individual consciousness. No one can be said to be completely enlightened in a literal sense, for applying the notion of completion to the realm of truth presumes its finitude. We must treat the idea of enlightenment with a humility born of an understanding of our human limits within the limitlessness of the divine mystery. Our personal enlightenment is only a point of entry into universal evolution and awakening.

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Now that the relative nature of complete enlightenment is clear, we can look at it in the context of our earthly dimension and human identity. Not all souls are destined to reach exactly the same level of realization, but we can make the generalization that although there are many stages of awakening, the ultimate frontier of enlightenment for a human consciousness is its liberation, the point at which it transcends its personalized identity and earthly ties. When soul transcends the plane of lower intelligence, the consciousness merges with the realm of pure subjectivity, leaving the human ego behind. Although we often use the terms enlightenment and awakening interchangeably, it is important to note that they do not signify the same level of spiritual attainment. When we refer to an enlightened state, we point to God-realization transcendence and the actualization of wholeness. Awakening, on the other hand, indicates a singular expansion beyond the mind within the total course of ones evolution. To have arrived at one of the many states beyond the mind is far from enlightenment in the ultimate sense of the word. It is only by traversing various dimensions of awakening that one finally arrives at complete, multidimensional enlightenment. One must also be clear that after experiencing an awakening to one of the various states beyond the mind, there is a need to stabilize and then integrate that state. Seldom, if ever, does sudden awakening result in a lasting inner realization. Unless the state we have awakened is stabilized, its fluctuations prevent it from becoming a permanent foundation of our progress. Once stabilized, the state must also be integrated so that it can reach its final depth and purity and become energetically and existentially attuned to the body, mind and other aspects of our whole being.

17. Many seekers abandon the inner work altogether having arrived at only a superficial spiritual realization. This is especially true in the case of those who follow the simplistic paradigm of sudden awakening or believe that in order to reach enlightenment it is sufficient to have a purely intellectual insight into

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the nature of reality. Premature claims of enlightenment often lead to false spiritual confidence or even arrogance. To be caught in the delusion that one has reached enlightenment when one has not, only wastes the evolutionary energy one has already accumulated, and can easily block ones further evolution. Right understanding is a bridge between the plane of unconsciousness and the true reality. Superior concepts are not merely intellectual metaphors they resonate with the energy of the truth they represent. Conceptual understanding of ideals such as God, Oneness or enlightenment can even inspire us to initiate the spiritual search. Still, there is always a danger that by becoming overly attached to intellectual ideas we will find ourselves living in a virtual reality of mental constructs that actually separates us from reality as it is. Concepts are only representations of reality in the mind; reality itself is nonconceptual. One can become convinced that there is no God or there is only the God and mentally will experience the existence as such, yet still not be established in any state beyond the mind, as ignorant to ones true self as ever. This is the case of a false, intellectual enlightenment, in which one has been programmed to perceive reality in an enlight ened way through pseudo-sophisticated ideas and spiritual slogans.

18. Enlightenment is the art of turning coal into the diamond. This demands patience, endurance and capacity building under intense pressures.

19. The spiritual journey within is your very own. No one can give this to you; spiritual teachings can only point it out to you. To look in a book of ancient scriptures or the latest best seller, is not the solution. This can only be discovered within oneself. The definition you may find in a book does not come close to this glory that is within you. No word can describe it. That is why one can only

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speak, ambiguously. It is beyond all measure and description. To even call it enlightenment falls short of this glory. There is no feeling that one can compare to it. It is futile to even think that you can pray, praise or worship the nameless. It is so great, it glorifies itself. When you seek it and awaken to its glory beyond the furthest horizon of mind and matter, you would not be able to come back and tell the world what really you have discovered.

20. There is an enormous gap between understanding and reality, between knowing and experiencing. Our efforts to awaken through understanding orient us towards reality, but can never manifest as true God-realization. Enlightenment transcends understanding, for it is beyond the power of our intelligence to fathom the mystery of the God. True understanding is humble; it knows its own limits.

21. A tremendous maturity is needed to meet the essence of me within oneself. This maturity cannot be gained from the outside world, because the world has always conspired against the truth of me by fostering our addiction to the reality of objects. Unconsciousness strives to maintain itself as the status quo by keeping us disconnected from our essence. It is not by chance that so few individuals desire awakening, and even fewer actually reach it. Many seekers pursue the path to enlightenment, but most are merely grasping at goals that have no connection to the essence of me. Rare are those who can experience bliss just by being alone and savoring the taste of I am. Those who truly seek the essence of me are fond of solitude and silence, for in those spaces they can feel their me more deeply. One has to have a natural inclination towards deep intimacy with ones innermost existence. Awakening to the essence of me is a profoundly personal realization, a true love affair with God.

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22. The very purpose of enlightenment is not to evolve or collect some ideas about reality but to become so close to the reality that the sense of separateness dissolves ultimately. Though enlightenment is reached upon through right thinking but in its final nature it is not an idea but a live experience of the Real.

23. Enlightenment can not be brought about through thinking or spiritual effort. You can not do it no one can ever do it. It only comes upon you you can only receive it. It will come upon you as a rain shower comes to the thirsty land, it will come upon you as fertilization comes to an ova when the sperm enters into it. When it will come, you will be transformed for sure. You may not know in advance the time of its coming but you have to keep yourself receptive to it all the time. Your spiritual effort or worshipping only helps you to be in a state of receptivity but it can not make you enlightened on its own. Enlightenment will come to you only when you will be ready to receive it. It will happen in you when you will allow it to happen without feeling fear of any loss or hurt. State of total submission will herald the arrival of enlightenment in you. When the enlightenment will start flowing into you; you will feel that all your limitations are going to burst apart.

24. How difficult the search for truth and enlightenment can be. In fact the path can seem so impassable that many give up without further effort. An enlightened teacher may have hundreds or even thousands of students but only a small percentage obtains a glimpse of all the possibilities that could unfold before them. The physical world of everyday reality presents many challenges to all who reside on the planet. Unfortunately, some are so unaware of

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what may exist beyond their immediate awareness. They only believe what is right in front of them and some aren't even aware of that. They never become equipped to handle the concerns of the past, present or future in an effective manner. The enlightened individual resides in a higher state of awareness. But unless he has achieved the absolute highest states of enlightenment, the resistance and opposition he encounters from others affects him. You would think that with all the pain, suffering and frustration most people suffer they would eagerly search for a higher state of awareness that is filled with joy, pleasure and ecstasy. Tragically, most are unaware that there are higher states of existence to reach. So they never attempt it. They believe happiness is something found in the world around them, not knowing that it is within that they already possess it. They are the uninitiated. When an enlightened one attempts to communicate with the uninitiated he has the double burden of feeling their suffering and having a sudden twinge of frustration. Sadly, he discovers they are unteachable. In fact they are resistant to anyone who attempts to free them from their illusions. They actually oppose him and in some cases they torture and kill him. The ignorant think it a solution that kills the one who sees through their illusion so they could perpetuate their delusions. There is another person who is aware that he is missing a piece or many pieces of the puzzle, so he begins searching for something that could make a difference in his life. He thinks there must be something that can free him from suffering and frustration. So he searches and searches. Unfortunately this person never sticks to anything long enough to learn the lesson. A person can't expect to meditate for only a few weeks and suddenly gain enlightenment. Higher awareness is a lifetime pursuit. It takes a continuous effort, positive knowing, overcoming obstacles and challenges and a balanced approach towards everyday enjoyment of all the pleasures and ecstasies that life has to offer.

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25. Only he can speak about truth who is not yet touched by it. One who has been touched looses all his communication. Because one who lives in truth does not know it he just lives in it. He is part of it. When true revelation comes it burns the ego and its aides (senses) and where there is no ego there is no knowing. What is found there is all about becoming. Revelation of truth is such a forceful experience of wakening that lover feels as a thunderbolt has taken him. The lover becomes numb and so overwhelmed that he does not even notice his own presence then how he could speak about his understanding of anything in that state.

26. Through wakening you will come to know that all thoughts are absurd. All your ropes will be cut. All your supports will be withdrawn and you will get suspended in nothingness. Your fruits will go, your flowers will go, your leaves and branches will go, your trunk and your roots will have to go. You will be no where but you will still be present. You will be present but you will seize to exist because all that exists is absurd and all that is existent is not present. Note it that absurd can not be present. Universe exists so it is absurd it is not present; God does not exist so He is not absurd instead God is present. A spiritual man floats in divine presence. He does not know himself but he feels his presence as a baby that floats inside the placenta does not know herself but can feel her presence. A spiritual man floats in the womb of divinity and total surrender is his umbilical cord. He gets his nourishment directly from God. He lives a life of one in two and two in one.

27. To find God to find the truth you will have to be reborn! You will have to become a new man, because only that new

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man can come to truth and realize it. How will you be able to go and see the truth? How will you encounter God? You will have to go naked. You will have to go in deep humility. You will have to drop all your respectability, all your scholarship. You will have to drop your ego -- that's what it means to be reborn. The first birth is only a physical birth; don't be satisfied with it. It is necessary but not enough. A second birth is needed. The first birth was through your mother and father; the second birth is going to be out of the mind. You have to slip out of the mind and that will be your rebirth -- you will be reborn.

28. When God comes then all faith, all knowing and all thinking disappear. Only Silence is left. And beware that this Silence is not equal to emptiness instead it is the holy presence of God. It is a God-state. World does not stand upon our mind-state. When we take quantum leap into Silence world disappears. This Silence is very much alive. We suffer because we think about suffering; in no-mind state all suffering and sense of separation disappears. And when you take the jump, at one end of this experience you feel that you are disappearing and at the other end of this experience you feel that you have become the whole.

29. My body is weakening, my ego is fallen and my wits are withering. Now love of God alone is the anchor of life in me. Now the only thing that I can see on the horizon of my inner sky is the blaze of God and without this blaze even the presence of the inner sky is impossible.

30. My invitation is to make you aflame, and unless you know a life which is luminous and aflame all your knowledge is just

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a deception. You are gathering it to help you forget that the real knowledge is missing. But however great is your accumulation of the other, the objective, the world, it is not going to become a substitute for your God-knowing. With God-knowing suddenly all darkness disappears, and all separation from existence. I am an invitation to take a courageous jump into the ocean of life. Lose yourself, because that is the only way to find yourself.

31. So long you are, there is no enlightenment. The moment there is enlightenment, you are not. You disappear just like darkness disappears when there is light. Darkness cannot possess light; you cannot possess enlightenment. Those who have become enlightened are agreed, without any exception, on the point that the ego has to disappear. It is false, it is created by society; it is not your original face, it is not you. You have to first move away from the ego. You have to experience in Spiritual Contemplation your own center. But this is not the end. Spiritual Contemplation is only a beginning of the journey. In the end, the seeker is dissolved in the sought, the knower in the known, and the experiencer in the experience. Who is going to have enlightenment? You are absent; you are non-existent when enlightenment explodes. Your absence is an absolute necessity for enlightenment to happen.

32. Men of ego and mind often ridicule the very idea of enlightenment. They ask that what difference the enlightenment makes in life. So this is a great question that What difference the enlightenment makes in life? The honest answer to this question is that the enlightenment does not and can not make any difference in life because when enlightenment comes the life has already gone. There is no meeting point between life and enlightenment. Enlightenment is total death (negation). It is negation of ego and negation of mind and without ego and mind there can not be any

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perception of life. Enlightenment is totally a negative state as it totally negates ego and mind. Inviting others toward enlightenment is like inviting people to death and negativity. How can people heed to this call? No! They can not as they are taught and trained for centuries and millennia that only life available is life of mind and ego. Efforts to attain enlightenment have always been looked upon as streak of madness and it will continue to be looked upon in this fashion. But there are people who are born for this madness. The only question you have to ask yourself honestly is Am I born for this madness If you are born for this madness then this madness is your only life. Those who are born for this can not live without it and those who are not born for it can never understand the urge of it. Lovers are not made but they are born. Education and invitation towards enlightenment is not meant for those who are not born for it. When a peacock cries in the jungle it cries only for other peacocks not for lions, wolves, crows or parrots.

33. Almost everyone who walks on spiritual path will experience some form of fear. Initially, we may be afraid of what family and friends will think of our spiritual interests. We may be afraid of our teacher, or the teachings, or of certain practices, or going on retreat. Later, we may develop a fear of losing all interest in worldly affairs, going insane, or finding out something about ourselves we don't want to know. We may also become afraid of such things as impermanence, death, or even God. But all these different kinds of fear are actually rooted in a single fear, which is the fear of Enlightenment itself. The reason we are afraid of Enlightenment is because we know in our heart of hearts that before we can awaken to our true self, our ego must die. Nor are we deceived, for this is confirmed by the mystics of all traditions. And it is this which will cost you most. No one will find his way to the Court of Magnificence until he is annihilated. From the beginning, then, our attitude towards Enlightenment is fraught with deep-seated ambivalence. On the one hand, we yearn to

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awaken and yet at the same time, we are terrified of the "psychological death" which we must undergo in order to attain enlightenment. What's worse, the closer we get to our goal, the stronger our fear is apt to become. Now, from a teacher's perspective, the appearance of fear on the path is usually a good sign, for it indicates the student is at last starting to glimpse the Truth. Sometimes, however, the fear may become so overwhelming that all further progress is blocked. So the question is, are there any steps you can take when this happens? And the answer, of course, is, yes, there are. Do not attend your fears. Let your attention expand in God, until it completely fills the space of awareness which surrounds and permeates your body and mind. Now relax and allow both the fear and the resistance to effortlessly arise and pass away in this space. Have faith that God trains His devotees through suffering of all kinds. And each suffering will teach your learn one more lesson on the path of God-realization. The more you can open your heart to fear and the suffering it causes, the more you will find that something remarkable happens. The very same energy which manifested as fear becomes transformed into a profound feeling of growth in love.

34. Spiritual accomplishment (enlightenment) can not be brought about but it comes on its own. Flowering and fruition is not the result of any effort of tree but it is the nature and destiny of a tree. Timing and magnitude of enlightenment is not foreseeable or selectable by the seeker. A sand particle lying dry on the shore never knows in advance that when the next wave will come upon it and how big the coming wave will be.

35. Through logic and arguments you may win the debates and gather some followers but knowing truth through experience is totally a different state from having a mere bookish

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knowledge of it. Just being logically more proficient does not mean you have the truth. Somebody may have the truth ... and it is more probable that the man who has the truth would not be able even to say it. The question of arguing about it does not arise. He may not even find words to convey it.

36. The way you walk, the way you talk, the way you see all your gestures indicate your inner reality. It cannot be otherwise, because whatever is shown on the circumference must be coming from the center. The enlightened man becomes part of the abundance of cosmic reality. He is no more an individual. First he drops his personality and attains individuality; then he drops his individuality too and attains the universality. At that point, he is everywhere and nowhere. Everything in and around him changes.

37. Air is for lungs, food for the hungry, medicine for the sick, knowledge is for the curious and enlightenment is for the devotees.

38. While living in this body, Nirvana (enlightenment) can never come to you. It is against the genesis of the spirituality. To receive Nirvana you have to drop this body first. It is rightly said that Spirituality is an art of d ying. Here dropping the body means you have to transfer the rights of entitlement over this body to God. The art of dying is an art of detachment. You will not react no matter whatever comes to you. A dead man in the cave will not react to anything, to react and to feel difference he has to relive the life. While in death state nothing can come to you because you are not available. And what is this reliving It is going back to past condition. Your past condition is

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egoless pure consciousness. Your present condition (living in the world) is a death state. While in death state nothing will come to you. To feel the change you have to go back to your originality (Godnature). You have to be thrown back upon yourself. You have to relive the lost consciousness. Life is a forgetfulness of the original source, and death is again a remembrance. The life you are living is nothing but a dream full of horror; you have to drop this dream and awaken to the reality. The art of dying is actually awakening to the reality. To be with God you have to step down from the throne of ego you have to surrender the kingdom of I. Without doing this enlightenment is not possible.

39. Stop growing into God as the sickness grows in body. All knowledge is inflammation of mind and all understanding is pus of it. Be nobody! Do nothing, desire nothing and just float in God as a baby floats in the womb of mother.

40. God Himself is the seed of enlightenment. This seed travels through the creation and after blooming into its fullness it bears the fruit of God-realization. Thus enlightenment is the journey of God back to God Himself.

41. Your body holds that space where any possibility can grow. This possibility may be either the ignorance or the enlightenment. Mind knows it very well, ego knows it very well. This is the reason that mind and ego fight so furiously against any possibility of your becoming enlightened. They are not ready to give an inch of space in you to any possibility of enlightenment. They are aware that once enlightenment takes possession of even an inch of space in you then they can not stop its growth in you and then they

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have to become nobody in you. They will lose all their authority over you. So, it is very obvious that to become enlightened first you have to win some space in you for enlightenment. Without the availability of this space enlightenment will always remain a dream and impossibility. This space will not become available to you by knocking at the doors of ego and mind; they will never allow the entry of enlightenment in you voluntarily. To win this space you need to reject the influence of mind and ego that they both exert upon you. Without this rejection enlightenment is simply not possible. If you truly want to become spiritual then you have to break the control of ego and mind over the smallest possible space in you, where you could sow the seed of self-realization. Having this spiritual space in you is not like having an air conditioned room in your summer house. Rather it is like having fire in the jungle. Once the jungle catches on fire then it becomes difficult to contain the fire to a limited space. Then this fire put all the jungle creatures (egoistic activities) on run.

42. Enlightenment is not the end point of any process, rather it is the end of all processing in you. It is happening of the impossible. And by the way why we call it happening of the impossible. Because enlightenment comes when you stop being. To be is like living in the network of suffering. In being there is no enlightenment and in enlightenment there is no being. Enlightenment is the end of being. Apparently it looks a dreadful situation and also an impossibility but this is the way of enlightenment. Truth is that you are not the content of your being but the being is your content. It is not the being that is giving you the capacity but it is You from where the being is borrowing its capacity. You are more than your being as an individual. In the heat of Spiritual Aspiration (Spiritual aspiration is the yearning for communion and connection with the Divine) you start evaporating on the fringe of your being and by and by the whole being of you disappears in the unknown. And when you stop being, dont

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suppose that you are no more. Instead this shedding off of the state of being reveals to you the true face of your reality which is transcendence. Henceforth you start living as transcendence. You feel that whole universe has come into you or you have expanded over the whole universe. Your body is no more a restriction, your intelligence is no more a restriction. Now beyondness is your body and unbound awareness is your intelligence. You are no more a man, an individual or the worshipper. You become unidentified awareness. You become whole; you become a perfection. Now time and space, life and death are unnecessary words.

43. Enlightenment happens only when one is not, hence ONE cannot be enlightened. Either one is, or enlightenment is; both cannot be together -- that is an impossibility, that is not in the very nature of things. This is the ultimate law of life. One cannot be enlightened. To be is the barrier, not the bridge. It hinders; in fact, it is the only hindrance. To dissolve, not to be, that becomes the bridge. Another word for enlightenment is nirvana; nirvana means cessation, disappearance. Literally it means when you blow a candle out, when the light of the candle is blown out, when the light disappears. One cannot ask where it has gone, one cannot say where it is now; it is simply no more. This is nirvana: the disappearance of the light. It is very hard to transform the ego into God-loving soul. The ego is so cunning it goes on coming back again and again. It will find subtle ways to catch hold of you. It will come in the name of the self; in fact it will come very loudly in the name of the self. Ordinarily people write self with a lower case s, and the people who philosophize about the ultimate reality start writing Self with a capital S. It is ego magnified, it is ego decorated, it is ego pretending to be holy, it is ego pretending to be eternal. Nirvana cannot be claimed by anyone; to claim it is to falsify it. "Those who know cannot claim, and those who claim cannot know." The knower cannot say "I know," because in the knowing the "I" melts -- there is nobody to claim, there is nobody to brag.

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What is enlightened is not ME; it is beyond the idea of I. It is transcendental to the ego. Knowing or not knowing makes no difference to your nature; your nature remains the same, exactly the same. When you become enlightened you don't become a new person. In fact you don't gain anything, you only lose something: you lose your chains, you lose your bondage, you lose your misery, you go on losing. Enlightenment is a process of losing; you don't gain anything. When there is nothing left to lose, that state is nirvana; that state of utter silence can be called enlightenment. Now you do not claim anything. If one lives passionately, the ego dissolves. If one is total in devotion, the ego is bound to dissolve. It is like when a dancer goes on and on dancing: a moment comes when only the dance remains and the dancer disappears. That is the moment of enlightenment. Whenever the doer is not there, the manipulator is not there; whenever there is nobody inside you and there is only Silence that is enlightenment. And out of that beautiful space whatsoever is born has grace, has glory. And I don't tell you to drop the ego, because if YOU drop the ego then the dropper will become the ego. I don't say become humble, because if YOU become humble then behind the facade of humbleness there will be a very subtle ego hiding. Stop doing all things. Be a no-body. When nothing is left behind, the ego dissolves of its own accord. That's the meaning of nirvana: you have blown the candle out, suddenly it is not there.

44. Disappearance is an effect that has a cause of it. That cause itself survives the disappearance. Disappearance occurs only at the periphery. Center is immune to disappearance. When periphery spins around the center at certain speed then periphery is bound to disappear. Here disappearance is not equal to annihilation rather periphery is still there but it gives an impression of its disappearance. Ego is at periphery and God is center of all creation. Creation is spinning around its axis (God). To purify the egoist

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attachments of the consciousness, we have to spin it around its axis in such intensity that all peripheral entanglements of the consciousness just drop off.

45. When you burn camphor, it burns brightly, but after the flame is exhausted there is no residue. Nothing remains. This camphor represents your identified state; the fire is God-seeking itself. It will remove all your identifications; nothing will be left. Be like this camphor. This is called the disappearance. The sense of doership is a myth. The vital force inherent in consciousness is spontaneously going on and there is the witnessing of this. But you are not the witnesser. Witnessing is spontaneously there. What are you? You can never articulate this effectively. There is no word, no concept that can convey this. Simply you are. Honor this. Don't touch this doer sensation, and then you are free. You have disappeared.

46. There are no efforts, no spiritual or religious gymnastics to perform - only the pilgrimage from the mind to the heart. Don't wait for this to happen. Truth is not a journey. It's where all journeys end. Truth is not some cluster of concepts. All concepts dissolve in this, leaving you as you are. Get used to you without the information of you.

47. We are here to be in the company of God. Drop all your identifications and let the bird (soul) go back to its nest (God). All your efforts to prepare the bird or to know the nest are just delaying the moment. Just open the door of cage (mind) and stay aside bi rd will fly out without any help. Bird does not need any arguments to make its flight. Your ego is the keeper of this bird. Ego needs knowing, understanding, arguments, surrender,

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enlightenment, awakening, spirituality, paths, methods of purifications, philosophies, doctrines, distinctions, incentives, worshiping and rewards but What the bird in you needs is nothing but liberation. If you would allow it to fly back, it will fly back. Only you are the obstruction! You are the barrier! And be aware that it is only your illusion that you are keeping this bird. No! You can not keep it chained. The beauty is that the bird does not need even your allowing. The day will come when you will fall apart and this bird will make its flight. It is capable to make ways for it without any support from you. Nothing that is in form can contain it.

48. You are not capable of maintaining or sustaining the experience of Awakeness, the experience of waking up to what you are. You can't maintain this and you don't need to maintain it. God, Truth, Presence, Awakeness, Love, Life - call it what you will - It creates and sustains itself. It doesn't need you. It IS you.

49. We overlook the miracle that lies before us for the simple reason that we keep looking for it somewhere else, searching for satisfaction in some other moment, hoping to God in some other experience.

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CHAPTER 18

Boredom is a Goldmine

1. Feeling boredom and the fear of emptiness have much bigger role in the spiritual awakening of a person; these are the trickiest pitfalls that can block the way to spiritual development. Try to witness your boredom when it appears instead of automatically looking for some excitement to fill the emotional emptiness. Spiritual practice is sometimes very boring. The good news is that boredom matures spirituality. In fact, boredom + Surrender = enlightenment. One of the most crying sentences that one can say is "I'm bored". What is boredom? Boredom is a mental state of inactivity of the inner life in the absence of external stimuli. Person who is not interested in his inner life on one hand and is giving full attention to the world on the other hand, experiences a state of inner emptiness. In the absence of contact to the inner world, he turns out and looks for stimulation to get him out of his internal desert. When he does not find such stimulation he complains about boredom. But boredom is not the problem, it is what brings the real problem; Boredom is a state of low stress or low internal barometric pressure, into which flows demons with high barometric pressure, such as selfdoubt, self-blame, dissatisfaction, etc. Internal emptiness itself need not be accompanied by a negative sense, because right inside the empty state, is the desire for Liberation One of the reasons why people choose to meet in a cafe or office or home is that for most of the people it is hard to be alone with themselves, and they spend most of the time in the fellowship of the TV or friends. Boredom and emptiness are also linked to consumerism, the more we consume, the more bored we become. We are trying to fill up all space whether it is in our apartment or in our conversation. Our agenda is to fill all that small space through which we can meet the emptiness of our lives. But space is the real entity of the universe and existence. In everything that seemed solid there are huge spaces in

them. This means that the universe is mostly empty. Even our body is one large space, not to mention the atom, in which all particles occupy insignificant part of its volume. Everything else is a vacuum. The universe and nature are one big void, studded here and there with small particles. The feeling of boredom which is the distress of mind due to inactivity is the key to spiritual growth. Most of us deceive ourselves by simply being interested in spirituality as yet another subject that will chase out our boredom instead of dealing and coping with boredom. We should know that how to use boredom and emptiness for spiritual growth instead of using spirituality just to escape boredom. Boredom is a space unfilled by mind images. This space is home of God. Mind is fearful of this space. Mind always try to escape from its encounter with emptiness. When you feel bored, you can satisfy the mind's hunger by picking up a magazine, making a phone call, switching on the TV, surfing the web, going shopping, or taking some more food. Or you can stay bored and restless and observe what it feels like to be bored and restless. As you bring awareness to the feeling, there is suddenly some space and stillness around it. A little at first, but as the sense of inner space grows; the feeling of boredom will begin to diminish in intensity and significance. So even boredom can teach you who you are and who you are not. Nothing that comes and goes is you. "I am bored." Who knows this? "I am angry, sad and afraid." Who knows this? You are the knowing, not the condition that is being known.

2. Face the faceless (boredom) and you will get your liberation. In todays world where every aspect of human life is invaded by high technology and digital tools, boredom has come to mean absence of pleasure. The easy thrills that come from social media sites, emails, cell phones, I-pods is so absorbing that even a few minutes without them seems killing this empty space is called

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boredom these days. When we get tired of digital entertainment we have other options to get quick high in the form of shopping, eating something (called boredom eating), or buying the latest cell phone model. These are wonderful ways to lead a life of addiction to trivialities; in real terms, it implies a thrill followed by gloom trap. As it happens with any addiction, the highs do not last long and we crash back to our base-level only to face the emptiness we have been trying to avoid as boredom. The longer we remain trapped in the world of quick thrills the harder it becomes to come out of it. Actually, it turns the mind into an undisciplined bully. It starts demanding excitements more frequently and goes into depression whenever the dose of excitement is delayed or missing. Dont be surprised if experts give you innovative labels to this mental disease. Whether the labels will cure this illness is unclear but for sure we are left more miserable and confused than before. Boredom is a reminder that your mind wants excitement because we have trained it that way by an undisciplined lifestyle. Boredom is just another side effect of the modern digital lifestyle: we equate the pleasure of thrills and amusements with happiness, which actually has nothing to do with how high or low you feel. It is a wrong notion that we must be excited all the time in order to be happy. Happiness is an internal stuff; it has more to do with the way of being it is a mental state of contentment and satisfaction with what we have; not the other way around. Boredom inherently implies dissatisfaction with what we have and a craving for what we do not possess. Basically we crave for a change in order to feel better. We have to realize that craving is the problem. There is no other problem. The only way to handle craving is by injecting the elements of discipline in life and come out of the I-will-do-what-excites-me attitude. We need to train to do things that are important rather than what we like to do. Doing things just to keep busy is a bad habit. This is a lesson we need to write with stone on our mind.

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3. Some good man said Doing something every minute may be a gesture of despair or the height of a battle against boredom. We engage in many things because we just cant sit quiet. This is the typical lifestyle of people living in this digital world: it does not allow you to rest in peace and demands you to remain always busy. Indulgence in sensual activities and social routines sometime is provoked by genuine needs and some times it all starts due to our inability to confront the boredom and emptiness with proper dignity. We are in the habit to look upon the boredom as our foe. We hate the company of it and want to avoid it at any cost. This mental conditioning is the problem. Very few people realize that boredom is a window to look beyond; it gives us opportunity to learn about the core reality of our own existence.

4. Depression, overeating, smoking, drugs, etc are symptoms of the mental state of boredom. Boredom leads to alienation, followed by resentment and anger.

5. Mind seeks for meaning and knowledge but irony is that world is theater of the absurd and utterly unknowable. World and mind together create an emotional crisis in man and this emotional crisis develops itself into a spiritual crisis that ultimately leads towards God-seeking. So next time do not be afraid of your inner emotional crisis; it is sign that something very positive is going to happen in you but if you would become fearful and start finding sensual ways to escape from it then the same emotional crisis can ruin your whole life.

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6. Boredom is used as a device in Spiritual Contemplation: you are bored to death, and you are not allowed to escape. You are not to go outside, you are not to entertain yourself, you are not to do (anything), you are not to talk, and you are not to read novels and detective stories. No thrill. No possibility to escape anywhere. The whole effort in Spiritual Contemplation is this: be bored but dont escape from it; and keep alert, because if you fall asleep you have escaped, if you start thinking you have escaped. Keep alert! Watch it, witness it. If it is there, then it is there. It has to be looked into, to the very core of it.

7. There is an oyster, holding a pearl in it and this pearl is holding a worth in it, whose grace and glitter is infinite. And know that boredom is the oyster that is holding the pearl of the moment of Now and this pearl of the Now is home of God. God alone is the real worth in all things. He who embraces the boredom without fear and escape will be allowed to enter into the moment of Now and he who enters into the moment of Now would be rewarded to be in the company of God without the trace of any separation.

8. Boredom is a trial of God seekers. We must not run away from it. It plays as a filter. Those who are not sincere in their intent leave their practice out of boredom. It also evaluates the inner strength of a seeker and rectifies the inherent flaws of his resolve. Dont be afraid or shy of boredom. Stay calm in front of it; look deep into it until its veil is torn apart and sun of God dawns upon the darkness of your mind. All spiritual exercises and methods are devised to teach the seeker the art of staying calm in the face of boredom. When you see right in the eyes of it you are showing your

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determination to attain the truth. Any person who has achieved a level of staying calm in front of boredom needs no other tricks to harness the mind because the goal is already achieved. Realization comes through being steady in calmness.

9. The ordinary life of humanity is a continuous effort to avoid oneself. Everybody is doing it, in different ways of course. Nobody can sit silently and be alone. Watch yourself, how fidgety you become if there is nothing to do. If the radio is not there and television is not there and the newspaper is not there and you dont have a book to read and nobody to talk to, just think how fidgety, restless you become. You are almost in a panic, as if you are dying. You need something to remain occupied with, you cannot be with yourself. And whenever you are with yourself you start feeling bored. Now, this is strange. And if somebody else feels bored with you, you feel very hurt, but you yourself feel bored with yourself! And everybody is the same: nobody feels good being alone. Man is constantly escaping from himself; that is his whole activity. In business, chasing money, or in politics, chasing power, a constant need to be amused is there, to be entertained is there. Go to the football match or go to the cricket match or go to the races -- but go somewhere. Join some club, some crowd, go to the movie, be a spectator somewhere or other, but don't ever sit silently. Why? What is the fear? Because the moment you sit silently, the first thing that one experiences is a tremendous loneliness -- and fear arises out of it, and pain and anguish. When you sit silently for a few moments, you suddenly see that your whole life is just illusory. You only believe that you have friends -- because nobody is going to be with you when you die. You only believe that you have a wife, a husband, children, father, mother, brothers. These are all just makebelieves so that you are never allowed to know your loneliness. Whenever you are alone, that loneliness erupts, surfaces. Suddenly you start feeling yourself a stranger in a vast, abysmal and infinite

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world. And you are there, just a tiny speck of dust -- although conscious, but so tiny, so helpless, so powerless, and all alone. That creates pain, panic and anguish. You rush back into some activity, you start doing something or other that keeps you away from this truth. There are only two types of people: one, who escape from their loneliness -- the majority, the ninety-nine point nine percent, who escape from themselves; and the remaining point one percent is the God-seeker, who says, "If loneliness is a truth, then it is a truth; then there is no point in running away from it. It is better to go into it, encounter it and see it face to face, what it is". Meditation means going into your loneliness wholeheartedly, to discover it, to investigate it, to inquire into it. That's what meditation is all about. And the person who is a meditator is religious; all others are just worldly. Meditation means you are not escaping anymore. Though it hurts but you are not escaping. It is painful, but you are not escaping. If it is there, you have to face it, to inquire as deeply as possible into it, because it is your reality. And by knowing it deeply you will become a man of wisdom. But before that joy, there is going to be much pain. It happens only when you have passed through your pain. The pain is just like when somebody wants to leave alcohol; he will feel much pain because he has become addicted to alcohol. Now he will go through withdrawal symptoms. The body will ask, the mind will ask, because they always become settled with routines: the mind will say "I need alcohol"; the body will say "I need alcohol". There is great thirst, great urge -"What are you doing?" And you will feel great pain. If you can persist and remain patient and watching, withdrawal symptoms will disappear sooner or later. It depends on you. If you are really determined to go into it, those withdrawal symptoms will disappear. You are feeling withdrawal symptoms. You have become addicted to the other. Now for the first time you are taking a courageous step of being lonely: the pain will be there. It is a birth pain, pain of growth. It will disappear, nothing to be worried about. It is good, because it is not going to harm you. Escapes harm, encounters never. Facing a truth is always maturing, helps you to become integrated. Escaping from the truth is living a lie. You can deceive, but you are simply

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deceiving yourself and nobody else and you will be the loser in the end. There is pain, but don't do anything about it. Let it be. An old habit is disappearing ... it hurts. Slowly, slowly you will see your inner sky changing -- from darkness to light, from loneliness to aloneness. Aloneness is the joy of being yourself. Loneliness is the misery of missing the other. Aloneness is positive, loneliness is negative.

10. True spirituality knows no boredom. Sitting with God on the throne of silence and watching the whole play of creation and falling back onto God again can not be a bore thing.

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CHAPTER 19

Truth is in the Middle

Living in Truth is like walking in a straight line without tilting to left or right. This walk is like the tight rope walk an art of mastery in balance. Mind feels easy to sort out things in black and white pattern but life situations are so complex, perplexing, intermingling and overlapping that it becomes hard for mind to have a clear verdict about the blackness or whiteness of these situations. Especially, we see this dilemma of mind on the question of God. Mind finds itself unable to have a clear notion on the presence of a God. Evidential value of the world is zero in this regard. Evil situations (war, disease, cruelty, poverty, injustice, ugliness, chaos etc) suggest that there is no God in universe but a close observation of objects of creation at molecular and subatomic level and beauty and discipline that is coded in all organisms clearly shout out for the presence of supreme Lord behind all forms and moves. But sum total evidential value of the world becomes zero. It becomes almost impossible for mind to adopt Yes or No approach on the question of God. The way out is in the middle, in walking on the tight rope with uttermost balance. Having faith in the self contradictory statement God IS NOT provides a practical solution to it. God is neither IS nor NOT but God is IS-NOT. It means that God IS present everywhere in His creation (world) but God is NOT in the mind-state of man. Thought is field of man so God is in passive state in all mindsituations but world is field of God so God is actively present everywhere in His world. Like a baby in the mothers womb our smaller being is floating in the placenta of bigger divine Being, through umbilical cord smaller is being controlled by the bigger but still they are Two-in-One and simultaneously One-in-Two. The mind of the baby though is dependent fully on the feed stream from mother but yet her brain, apparently, shows some separate (independent) functions as a second being. This otherness in the Oneness though appears to mind as a paradox but this is the only expression, available to us, of any grand unified truth. In the salvation process, like the tightrope walker, our path is narrow. We must ponder the path of our feet. Our ways must be established and we cannot turn to the right or left. Focus and Balance are the two secrets of tight rope walking. We are never lonely in this salvation walk. God is giving us the wisdom and strength and is

leading the way. If we have close relationship with God, the journey in front of us will be walked in safety and God will aid us in not allowing our foot to stumble. A tightrope walker needs to be aware of his physical form and its strengths and limitations. He needs to have his sensors fully operational and he needs to be able to interpret incoming data instantly and accurately. He needs to be able to feel his immediate environment with acute sensitivity. He needs to be able to connect with his inner equilibrium and hold his attention on that as he steps out over the abyss. He needs to be able to feel the narrow steel line through the soles of his feet and to feel the tension and the tautness of it. If the wind blows the tightrope, he needs to be able to adjust to movements of the wire appropriately. If he sways too far to the left: he may fall off. If he leans too far to the right: he may fall off. Constantly calibrating with his inner equilibrium, yet sensing the lie of the rope, he focuses on his steps along the path. He cannot indulge in daydreams about arriving at his destination, nor can he invest emotional energy in concerns about the family and friends that he has left behind. It is the focus on the continuous stream of Now moments that carries him forward and over the abyss. A person on the inner journey may create way-stations along the route where he can rest for a while. Concentration alone will not get him across the chasm. Non-stop maximum concentration is not sustainable. A tightrope walker needs to adjust to the prevailing conditions and to interact with them in order to negotiate the fluctuating frequencies set up by the natural environment. What the tightrope walker needs is to maintain a state of creatively focused and appropriate interaction with the prevailing conditions on a moment by moment basis. We too can learn and hone our ability to skywalk to awakening. Little by little, the ability to focus on and ride waves of experience and the tides of reaction and non-reaction in the formal setting of certain forms of meditation, naturally transfers out into the ability to tightrope walk of the vicissitudes of daily life. When a meditator learns the skill of perceiving and participating in both his physical world and the subjective world of internalized

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perceptions with focused open-mindedness and as little biased or prejudiced interpretation as possible, a significant transformation may occur. With practice, much like learning to play a musical instrument such as a guitar, you get better at it. It is no longer a strain. You b egin to enjoy the process and eventually some may even be able to create symphonies. When you open yourself to receive the sensory input the stream of present moments brings experience it fully yet observe it with an attitude of impartiality, i.e. without buying into any particular reaction or judgment and then, let it go in its own time, it is as if you are spring cleaning your mind. The process has the effect of clearing out old stuff to leave more space and clarity. Gradually, the layers of conditioning that have accumulated over time, much like leaves from a tree that have fallen to the floor of an autumn forest, are swept away to reveal the ground beneath. With regular practice over a length of time can morph into a deep experience of awakening. Your field of resonance will change in turn, causing a different set of experiences to come into your life. You will also be clearer when making choices and knowing when and how to act. Focused attention to the tightrope stream of now-moments and the clear and open-minded walk along it bring about a profoundly liberating interaction with the world. Get acquainted with where you are and the environment around you. Check out the path ahead. Tune into your own inner balance. Focus on the path and step out there. Maintain your balance and your focus unwaveringly as you cross over from a sense of victimhood to a joyous confidence that you can and are doing what you know to be right for you right now.

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