The Ultimate Understanding ( Only God alone exists, God is all there is , there is no you )

Ramesh Balsekar - Consciousness Speaks Audiobook
(Abridged) - Ramesh Balsekar - \"God Alone exists\"
[Speaker 1] (0:11 - 26:55)
The universe is uncaused, like a net of jewels, in which each is only the reflection of all
the others, in a fantastic interrelated harmony without end. Self-realization is effortless.
What you are trying to find is what you already are.
Enlightenment is total emptiness of mind. There is nothing you can do to get it. Any
effort you make can only be an obstruction to it.
If you but cease from useless conceptualizing, you will be what you are and what you
have always been. At the phenomenal level, the only thing that is not a concept is this
knowledge which every single human being, every single sentient being at every time in
history has known. I exist.
I am in this moment, here and now. Seeing truly is not merely a change in the direction
of seeing, but a change in its very center, in which the seer himself disappears. The only
true understanding is that nothing is, not even he who understands.
Concepts can at best only serve to negate one another, as when one thorn is used to
remove another. Once removed, both thorns must be thrown away. Only in deep silence
do we leave concepts behind.
Words and language deal only with concepts, and so cannot approach reality. Between
pure awareness and awareness reflected as consciousness, there is a gap which the
mind cannot cross. The reflection of the sun in a drop of dew is not the sun itself.
Manifestation may adopt any number of forms, but the substratum of all the myriad
forms is consciousness, without which there cannot be anything. The source of
consciousness is consciousness. Consciousness is all there is.
The universe goes on its merry, mystical, magical way until you start observing it, and
you, by observing it, create problems. The working of the universe has no problems. We
feel that we can exercise our volition, yet deep down we know that there is an order,
infinitely more powerful, which seems to dictate our life.
The man of wisdom is devoid of evil, even though he may appear to use it. His vacant or
fasting mind is neither doing anything nor not doing anything. He is outside of volition,
neither this nor that.
He is everything and nothing. There is no way you can control the consequences of your
actions. Life is an impersonal flow, and you cannot control either your life or anybody
else\'s life.
Real bliss is the absence of the wanting of bliss. The enlightenment state is not wanting
either bliss or anythingness. Enlightenment is merely an understanding in which there is
no comprehender.
It is a surrender in which there is no one to surrender anything. Your doubts will never be
totally destroyed until perception has gone beyond near phenomenality, and such
perception is not a matter of will but of grace. Only that which was prior to the
appearance of this body consciousness is your true identity.
That is reality. It is here and now, and there is no question of anyone being able to reach
for it or grasp it. When the sense of me disappears completely, duality vanishes in
ecstasy.
To any conceptual problem, there cannot be any valid answer except to see the problem
in perspective as an empty thought. There is no such thing as a problem which is other
than nearly conceptual. It is not possible to make the mind empty.
To meditate, you don\'t have to have any objective, which means you don\'t have any
expectation at all. In these moments, you don\'t find reality. The reality finds you.
Just sit quietly for a moment. The entire phenomenal manifestation is based on the
principle of duality, which starts with the sense of I am. Intellectual understanding is
based on temporal cause and effect.
Intuitive understanding is non-temporal, wherein cause and effect are one. Without selfrealization, no virtue is genuine. It is only when you arrive at the deepest conviction that
the same life flows through everything and that you are that life that you can begin to
love naturally and spontaneously.
The man\'s dread of insecurity and his hope of aid from a superior power against it drives
him to create the concept of a supernatural God. Yet this God and the very entity
seeking security from it are both nothing but concepts. As far as metaphysical duality is
concerned, there is no conflict between opposites.
Man\'s conflict between good and evil, pleasure and pain, happiness and unhappiness is
as unthinkable in nature as an electric current without both positive and negative
polarity. The principle of polaric duality can only be understood metaphysically through
the willing acceptance of all interrelated opposites as the very basis of the universe and
life therein. True meditation means the annihilation of the ego.
The ego doesn\'t want that. When meditation happens, promptly the mind says, stop
wasting time, do something useful. An experience is never factual but only conceptual.
Whatever an experience may be, it is nonetheless only a happening in consciousness.
Silence of the mind, which is the result of a deep understanding that meditation is a
natural, spontaneous meditation which just happens. When you truly realize that this life
and living is an absurdity, then you join in the dance.
You take part in this absurdity. The mind-body organism continues to live in the world
but without any sense of personal doership. Problems need to be dissolved, not solved,
because there is no solution.
The only way the problems get dissolved is as soon as they arise, they are merely
witnessed. When truth is realized, there is neither bondage nor liberation. Both the
worlds we dream of when asleep and this world we dream while awake will have
disappeared into the cosmic dissolution which is the equivalent of the state of deep
sleep.
Love, as the word is generally understood, denotes separation. We\'re in a true, nonobjective relationship. We do not love others, we are others.
Sensory experience cannot bind the person who treats it neither with zeal nor timidity
but with indifference. Absolute Presence is the ubiquitous eye that measures the
universe. It is the center of infinity that sees everything and yet does not see because it
is the seeing itself.
It is not the present which is fleeting past us with sickening speed. The present moment
is indeed eternal. It is our imperfect perception that creates the horizontal succession in
time.
Sequential duration is a consequence of the single track verbalization of our split mind
which does not grasp the outer world instantaneously but interprets it perversely by
extracting bits and pieces and calling them things and events. The only condition for the
realization of truth is that the knowledge of it be desired with tremendous intensity. You
cannot see it, you cannot feel it only because you do not really want it.
You are too preoccupied with enjoying and sorrowing over your finite existence. The
sense of being alive, being present, is so intoxicating that one is enchanted by the
spectacle that really exists or is merely a hallucination, a dream, a mirage. Space and
time, male and female, subject and object, being and non-being, all are lost in the flood
of realization.
Intellect is what brings about the sense of fear because it is the intellect that rejects
change and wants security. For a human being which considers itself an entity to remain
puzzled, consciousness must produce new puzzles. All that is happening is that
consciousness is amusing itself.
When the understanding arises that this too shall pass, whether it is happiness or
misery, that understanding will bring about a tremendous change in perspective. Only
those who are able to see their own face without a mirror will be able to see their true
nature. What kind of seeing is this?
To see without the mirror is to see not with eyes, seeing objects, but as that which sees.
It is the in-seeing or insect-like consciousness itself in which there is no one who sees.
When thought, discipline and experience have done their utmost and finally accept utter
defeat, then they cease to function altogether.
That state is beyond both words and silence. It is neither one thing nor another. The
absolute noumenon cannot be experienced.
To know it is to be it. The knowledge of truth comes about when dispassion arises in a
man after he has learned from personal experience that whatever life provides is truly
hell. The man of the world becomes the man of wisdom through recognizing that nonattachment is liberation, whereas the passion for sensory objects and experience is
bondage.
Both bondage and the resulting suffering are based not merely on identification with the
body, but on identification with a holy imaginary subjective entity inferred from bodily
identity. The very first thought, I am, is the basis of all further thought and indeed the
very source of the mind. As water is serene when free of ripples, so is the mind serene
when free of thought, when it is passive, fully receptive.
When quiet, the mind reflects reality. When absolutely motionless, it dissolves. Only
reality remains.
Trying to control the mind forcefully is like trying to flatten out a wave of the board. It
can only result in further disturbance. The true understanding comes from outside.
It is not of the space-time dimension. Therefore, we can only call it grace. Keeping our
being open and receptive to that other dimension is a matter of grace.
You can\'t fight the ego. Accept the ego and let it go on. This understanding will gradually
push the ego back.
The result of man\'s intellectual development is that, unlike everything else in nature, he
longs for perfect or ideal harmony, which he has only conceptualized, but has not
actually experienced. This is the perpetual problem from which he will never free himself
by means of effort. The basic fallacy of man\'s search is that, instead of being the
universal consciousness or absolute principle, which he numerally is, he endeavors to
attain an imaginary ideal happiness in his existence as a phenomenal object by trying to
become something else.
The dream world contains all the relevant features of the actual, but the continued
appearance of a thing is not proof of its reality, regardless of whether it appears to the
dreaming mind or the waking senses. Only with the dissolution of all appearance does
one awaken to the ultimate reality of the Self. When man accepts, finally, that he cannot
make sense out of life on the basis of anything fixed, then, and only then, can life make
sense.
The personal self, or me, imagines itself to be limited and confined to a particular body.
Self-inquiry seeks the source of this spurious me by focusing on it, the spotlight of
attention or awareness, whereupon the me vanishes because it does not have any
independent existence. It is revealed as being merely an illusion.
What remains is that same universal consciousness that was already always there as the
true nature or very being of the artificial me. To be anxious is to wear oneself out. To
seek power or to use force is to overstrain one\'s system.
If deep down inside you want most desperately to survive and be in control of things,
you cannot genuinely take the attitude of not worrying about it. And trying to stop
worrying means making an effort to control. You must allow yourself the freedom to
worry, to let the mind think whatever it wants to think.
The fact of the matter is it is his will which has always prevailed. It is his will which is now
prevailing, and it is his will which will prevail in the future. That is a fact.
The longer it takes one to accept that fact, the longer one will suffer. Life and death are
both concepts, the one being the absence of the other. The sage ignores such transient
concepts and inheres in the noumenal presence which is everything.
It is only matter that undergoes change or transformation, and which is subject to birth
or death, while the noumenal presence remains eternally changeless.
[Speaker 3] (28:37 - 29:20)
So merriful and pregnant that no other subject has any value in comparison to it. The
subject of truth is without substance, yet so merriful and pregnant that no other subject
has any value in comparison to it.
[Speaker 2] (29:25 - 30:16)
Give one little chance to his will, and see what happens. You think you will be surprised.
Give one little chance to his will, and see what happens.
You think you will be surprised. You are not an individual being, let alone an individual
doer. You\'re not even an individual entity.
You are nothing.
[Speaker 1] (30:17 - 30:28)
You are merely a pattern of vibrating energy. Truly understanding that, with conviction,
will help tremendously.
[Speaker 2] (30:39 - 30:51)
You are not an individual being, let alone an individual doer. You\'re not even an
individual entity. You are nothing.
[Speaker 1] (30:53 - 30:57)
You are merely a pattern of vibrating energy.
[Speaker 3] (30:58 - 31:04)
Truly understanding that, with conviction, will help tremendously.
[Speaker 2] (31:11 - 31:46)
The joke is that it is the ego, the me, that wants enlightenment, and enlightenment
cannot come until the me is demolished. The joke is that it is the ego, the me, that wants
enlightenment, and enlightenment cannot come until the me is demolished.
[Speaker 1] (31:54 - 32:01)
Don\'t try to do anything out of the ordinary. Don\'t try to amend your life.
[Speaker 2] (32:02 - 32:19)
Don\'t try to alter your way of life. Don\'t deliberately add anything. Don\'t deliberately
subtract anything.
Just carry on as you have been doing. What could be simpler than that?
[Speaker 1] (32:25 - 32:39)
Don\'t try to do anything out of the ordinary. Don\'t try to amend your life. Don\'t try to
alter your way of life.
Don\'t deliberately add anything.
[Speaker 3] (32:41 - 32:48)
Don\'t deliberately subtract anything. Just carry on as you have been doing.
[Speaker 2] (32:49 - 32:50)
What could be simpler than that?
[Speaker 1] (32:58 - 33:15)
Instead of getting involved in a mental process, it is simpler and more effective to
remain in a position of joyous acceptance. A thought has come, it is witnessed, and it
gets cut out.
[Speaker 2] (33:16 - 33:19)
The witnessing does not need any mental processes.
[Speaker 1] (33:29 - 33:41)
Instead of getting involved in a mental process, it is simpler and more effective to
remain in a position of joyous acceptance.
[Speaker 2] (33:42 - 33:50)
A thought has come, it is witnessed, and it gets cut out. The witnessing does not need
any mental processes.
[Speaker 3] (33:53 - 33:59)
Instead of getting involved in a mental process, it is simpler and more effective to
remain in a position of joyous acceptance. The ordinary way of seeing is totally
inadequate.
[Speaker 1] (34:01 - 34:06)
A very special kind of seeing is needed for comprehending reality.
[Speaker 2] (34:07 - 34:25)
An intuitive seeing, wherein it is seen that there is nothing to be seen, and no one to see
it. The ordinary way of seeing is totally inadequate.
[Speaker 1] (34:29 - 34:35)
A very special kind of seeing is needed for comprehending reality.
[Speaker 2] (34:36 - 35:15)
An intuitive seeing, wherein it is seen that there is nothing to be seen, and no one to see
it. In the absence of intention, there can be no psychological basis for any involvement in
activity and events or their outcome.
[Speaker 1] (35:16 - 36:20)
There is then perfect alignment with whatever might happen, an acceptance of events
without any feeling of either achievement or frustration. All events must take their
numerically determined course, consistent or inconsistent, and whether the person
concerned in them is a self-realized sage or not. An ordinary individual, however, will feel
gratified or frustrated, while a sage remains always totally unconcerned.
In the absence of intention, there can be no psychological basis for any involvement in
activity and events or their outcome.
[Speaker 2] (36:21 - 36:34)
There is then perfect alignment with whatever might happen, an acceptance of events
without any feeling of either achievement or frustration.
[Speaker 1] (36:42 - 37:24)
All events must take their numerically determined course, consistent or inconsistent, and
whether the person concerned in them is a self-realized sage or not. An ordinary
individual, however, will feel gratified or frustrated, while a sage remains always totally
unconcerned. The whole cosmos is an implicit unity expressed in explicit duality.
[Speaker 2] (37:29 - 37:38)
The whole cosmos is an implicit unity expressed in explicit duality.
[Speaker 1] (37:39 - 38:20)
The original interrelated opposites are beingness and non-beingness. The whole cosmos
is an implicit unity expressed in explicit duality. The original interrelated opposites are
beingness and non-beingness.
Being can only come out of non-being. Precisely this sound only emanates from silence
and light from darkness.
[Speaker 2] (38:21 - 38:51)
The imagined void of non-being, however, is not emptiness but the very fullness of
potential, out of which arises all that exists. Being can only come out of non-being.
[Speaker 1] (38:52 - 39:14)
Precisely this sound only emanates from silence and light from darkness. The imagined
void of non-being, however, is not emptiness but the very fullness of potential, out of
which arises all that exists.
[Speaker 2] (39:20 - 40:12)
Truth consists in being aware of what is, without thinking about it. We do not really live,
but are being lived. There is nothing anywhere but the one, universal, impersonal I, and
not a single object anywhere has any existence independent of it.
Truth consists in being aware of what is, without thinking about it.
[Speaker 1] (40:17 - 40:32)
True Guru is not hiding anything of the truth. He is the very source of knowledge, indeed
the knowledge itself, and everyone is free to take away as much as he can.
[Speaker 2] (40:33 - 40:43)
There is no question of any personal giving or receiving, because no individual ever did
exist.
[Speaker 1] (40:45 - 41:01)
We speak of diversity in the manifest world as of water in a barrage. Time, space, and
duality itself are all notions or concepts, mere thoughts.
[Speaker 2] (41:02 - 41:19)
All is nothing but consciousness, appearing as mind. Time, space, and duality itself are
all notions or concepts, mere thoughts.
[Speaker 1] (41:20 - 41:25)
All is nothing but consciousness, appearing as mind.
[Speaker 2] (41:26 - 41:32)
Whether mountains, oceans, rivers, animals, or human beings.
[Speaker 1] (41:39 - 41:44)
Did you find any need for knowledge a hundred years ago?
[Speaker 3] (41:46 - 41:52)
That which you do not know, and cannot know, is your true state.
[Speaker 1] (41:54 - 42:43)
Did you find any need for knowledge a hundred years ago? That which you do not know,
and cannot know, is your true state. Self, experienced in the egoless state, is the
supreme reality.
The final truth is simple. All things exist in consciousness. All things flow from
consciousness.
[Speaker 2] (42:44 - 42:50)
All things are consciousness, because consciousness is all there is.
[Speaker 1] (43:01 - 43:11)
The final truth is simple. All things exist in consciousness. All things flow from
consciousness.
[Speaker 3] (43:12 - 43:28)
All things are consciousness, because consciousness is all there is. Consciousness is all
there is.
[Speaker 4] (43:36 - 43:41)
Consciousness is all there is.
[Speaker 1] (44:00 - 1:19:01)
I shall now tell you how to be able to acquire that basic secret knowledge, without the
apprehension of which there cannot be anything gained, in which one must keep one\'s
mind concentrated, that knowledge in which the yogi keeps himself constantly
immersed. I shall convey to you clearly the very essence of this knowledge, like the
nectar churned out of the ocean, or butter from the milk. So that you may give up the
various practices that are based on mere untested concepts, and which are therefore
only an exercise in futility, so long as there has not been a clear apprehension of the
significance of the sublime pronouncements of the Mahābhākyas, the great statements.
Who can understand the extent of the seeker\'s misery, so long as he has not clearly
apprehended and experienced the true nature of the Absolute? Those poor souls who
have accepted shackles of physical penances and mental disciplines, have in reality
entangled themselves in doubt and indecision. How can they ever hope to cross the
ocean of samsara?
Worship, pilgrimages, charities, sacrifices, mantric and tantric practices can only provide
time-bound results. Prayers and penances cannot bring about liberation unless there is
self-knowledge. Pure knowledge, reality, cannot shine forth until the basic unity of the
individual phenomenon and the Absolute noumenon is clearly apperceived, and there is
unblemished understanding of the nature of maya, which is the cause of the apparent
difference between the two.
How can there be any question of liberation, so long as the identification with the body
as a separate entity-doer is not lost, through a proper understanding of the terms thou
and that in the Mahābhākya, the great statement that thou art? How can there be
liberation unless there has been instruction on Vedānta from the lips of the guru,
meditation on the guru\'s words, and total absorption in the guru\'s teaching? Rules of
conduct laid down by the śāstras are only meant for the smoother working of the social
structure.
A seeker should seek instruction from the guru regarding the essence of Vedānta,
whereby one would realize that state of liberation, which is prior to thought and word,
and when in that state of liberation there is the union of jīva and śiva, the state of duality
disappears. When the Absolute subject, with the help of its primordial energy,
objectivizes itself as the multifaceted manifestation, the aspects of the creation,
maintenance, and dissolution of the manifested universe happen in consciousness.
Whatever has form and shape, and is therefore perceptible to the senses, is to be
rejected, and that which is unseen and remains as the witness is to be recognized as the
reality.
Know that to be the reality, which is prior to the arising of consciousness, which is
termed the all-knowing, all-controlling principle. That reality is the witness of everything.
It cannot be measured by any criterion.
It has no specific place of abidance. It is all-pervading, limitless, unknowable. That reality
is what remains when everything that is illusory is rejected, and is itself pure knowledge,
pure joy, self-evident.
That reality is all by itself the original fullness of potential, the plenum prior to witnessing
of all that is created, maintained, and dissolved. The absolute reality is totally apart from
all aspects of manifestation, Brahma the creator, Vishnu the one who maintains the
universe, and Rudra the destroyer, and the primeval power, consciousness. It is pure
Brahman.
It is only in this perspective that reality is to be apprehended. It will not be
comprehensible by any other means and practices, based on ignorance and duality. The
superficial meaning of the term Vam, Thou, is conveyed by that which is governed by
Maya, the physical form.
The true meaning of the term Tat, That, is pure Brahman, which cannot be apprehended
except after dual discrimination. A clear apperception of the true meaning of the term
Tat is indeed liberation itself. The same sight in both eyes, the same sound in both ears,
and the same word on both lips.
Similarly, when one sees the same meaning in both Tat, That, and Vam, Thou, the state
of Brahman is attained, which is beyond duality. Just as the difference between the
space in a pot and the space in a house disappears when both are broken up, so also the
duality disappears when both terms are superimposed. The apparent difference between
the two is only because of the illusion of Maya.
As soon as the false is seen as false, only reality remains. The knowledge of the Self is
Advaita. That is non-duality.
But it is obviously to be acquired in apparent duality, so that the duality disappears in
due course when one remains firmly in that knowledge. Instead of looking ahead as one
usually does, one must look back and seek the source in order to realize one\'s true
beingness. What one sees from this transformed perspective is nothing tangible, but an
all-pervading oneness where there is an absence of Maya and non-knowledge,
something immeasurable which one can know only by experiencing it.
That knowledge of Brahman is self-effulgent, like a solid mass of profound happiness, the
realization of which comports the end of conceptualizing. I shall tell you how to acquire
that knowledge, by which you shall have perpetual peace and contentment. But one
must first find out precisely who or what it is that is doing the seeking.
The only thing you know as a matter of certainty is the fact I am. I exist. But you do not
know who this I is.
My friend, why have you forgotten yourself? Who are you and where have you come
from? Indeed, have you really gone anywhere or come from anywhere?
You have never even thought of considering the matter on these lines. The body, or is it
you who have the body? You are the subject and the body is your object.
It is you who have the knowledge of the body, and indeed that you wear this body like a
garment. Although you have acquired this body as a covering made of five elements,
you have identified yourself with it and you struck about as an individual. Be clearly
aware that this body is an object and that you are quite apart from it, and thus give up
this mistaken identity with the body.
You are aware of the constitution of your body, that the hair, skin, veins, flesh, and
bones, the solid part of the body, represent the earth. Saliva, urine, blood, marrow, and
semen, the five fluid materials, represent water. Hunger, thirst, indolence, sleep, and
sex, represent fire.
Movement, running, resisting, relaxing, and contracting, the five kinds of activity,
represent air. And desire, anger, grief, greed, and fear, the five qualities, represent
ether. The physical body with these 25 parts, qualities, and activities, has six natural
changes.
It is conceived, delivered, grows, matures, becomes old, and finally dies. You know the
color and the form of this body, and the name it has been given. How, then, can you
identify your beingness with the body that is something other than you?
You, as the beingness, or consciousness, are formless, whereas you conceive the form of
the body. In the waking state, it is consciousness that acts through the body and has the
various experiences through the senses. The feeling that you have a particular name and
form belongs to the mind, and you, as the knower of the body and the mind, are apart
from both.
Although you are apparently seen as the manifestation of the psyche, mind, intellect,
concentration, and ego, nevertheless, you exist prior to the manifestation of these five
constituents of the subtle body. It is consciousness that is there first, spontaneous, selfeffulgent. The one who is aware of the rising passions and emotions is the mind, and it is
the intellect which discriminates and decides.
That which purposely concentrates on the decisions of the intellect is the citta, or the
operational center, and the one who accepts the doership of actions is the ego. It is you
who are aware of this five-fold analysis of the psyche, because you are the selfawareness, or witness, or atman. The thread is made out of cotton, though it is different
in appearance.
Similarly, mind, intellect, discrimination, and ego may appear to be different, but all arise
from the same source, beingness, or conscious reality. The breeze is the cause of the
ripple on the water, and a twist in the cotton is the cause of the thread. Similarly, maya
is the cause of the appearance of the subtle body.
When the cause is removed, both the ripple and thread disappear. Similarly, with the
arising of self-knowledge and the removal of ignorance, maya becomes exposed and
disappears. When the ripple and the water, or the thread and the cotton, unite, the
duality disappears.
Similarly, when mind merges into consciousness, the sense of duality disappears. The
psyche is the subtle body, and the relevant condition is the dream state that is based on
desire. Mind works through the senses, and such desires that remain dormant in the
mind manifest themselves in the dream state as objects and desires that have been
experienced earlier.
The manifestation of the dream world occurs because of that very speck of
consciousness that illuminates the psyche, just as the heat that heats a metal in sunlight
is the quality of the sun. It is this consciousness that has made manifestation possible. If
consciousness were to disappear, there would be no manifestation to perceive, and you
would be in your original state of the fullness of the potential, the plenum.
If you are able to reject, as illusion, without any substance, all that you see and
experience in your consciousness, then you will be immersed in what remains as reality.
Consciousness will remain merged within itself, without movement. The shadow shows
the shape, form, and parts of the original body, but is really without substance.
Similarly, the one who says, I do not know, is an illusion. There is the prior one who
knows, or witnesses the other one who says, I don\'t know. The fact of the not knowing
was known not to ignorance, but to knowledge.
That knowledge to which the not knowing was known is the Atman. Make no mistake
about it. Even if one believes that one does not have self-knowledge, this very fact could
not have been known in the absence of knowledge.
I know that I do not know. Therefore, ignorance as such is an illusion. If you know that
you do not know, why do you unnecessarily involve yourself in the concept of ignorance?
This ignorance is itself the causal body, of which the physical body and the subtle body
are the instruments. Listen now to the symptoms and the quality of deep sleep. Various
concepts based on the events in the waking state arise in the mind and reflect
themselves in the dream state.
But when consciousness, which is the substratum for both the waking state and the
dream state, suspends its operation, then comes the state of deep sleep. Total nonknowledge. This non-knowledge is true knowledge, because it is the absence of both
knowledge and ignorance, which are both polaric, interrelated opposites.
When consciousness re-emerges into movement, the deep sleep state forgets its true
nature and again identifies itself with the individual entity and accepts the world as real.
When, however, ignorance gets discarded, reality shines, just as gold remains in its
purity when the impurities are destroyed in the fire. After ignorance has been
demolished and self-knowledge has come about, that which sees the physical, the subtle
and causal bodies as a witness is the super-causal body.
This is the Turiya state. When, through self-knowledge, the working bodies and the
causal bodies are demolished, the super-causal body itself cannot survive. When the
effect is destroyed, the cause cannot survive.
That changeless state where one is aware of one\'s self-existence is Parabrahman,
liberation, reality. Meditation along these lines results gradually into firm conviction, and
then one experiences the hollowness of the world. When both knowledge and nonknowledge disappear, then will dawn that knowledge which is the absolute reality.
One must proceed into the Source, whence springs all knowledge. That Source is reality,
the immeasurable potential, the plenum into which consciousness ultimately merges
itself. That reality which is self-effulgent is subjectivity, and therefore cannot have a seer
to see it as an object.
Reality, therefore, cannot be a void. It is neither consciousness in movement, nor
manifestation, nor ignorance, but the fullness of pure knowledge, the limitless potential
beyond comprehension. You are that reality, the absolute plenum, the fullness of
potential that has gobbled up even the concept of the void, that self-effulgent Source of
everything.
It is this reality that you should understand yourself to be, independent, pure, the
witnessing principle whose clear image it is impossible to visualize. You are that reality,
where all that is illusory has been absorbed, where the duality of a thou cannot survive,
and so the terms that and thou have become superfluous. First, convince yourself about
your true nature, as has been expounded so far, and then adopt the regular practice as
follows.
Find a quiet spot, sit quietly, calm and relaxed, and check the outward flow of thoughts.
With an attitude of renunciation towards all that is manifest, the mind should be turned
inwards, away from the sense objects to the core of the heart. Then give up gradually
your identification, first with the gross physical body, and then with the subtle body, and
the causal body, and let your mind be one with space.
Release your attention, smoothly and effortlessly, from the gross senses, and let it
merge with the total mind or consciousness. Wherever the attention strays, it should
again be brought back into the vacant mind, smoothly and gradually, so that with
patience, the period of concentration, not tension, becomes longer and longer. Whatever
object the mind gets attracted to, let your discrimination reject it as illusory and
worthless.
It is only in this manner, that the mind will soon give up its flights of fancy and remain in
quietude. Until the mind naturally remains in consciousness, having given up its affinity
with material things, persistent but gentle persuasion is necessary to make it drop
whatever it tends to get involved in, in return to its source. As you keep watching your
mind and discover yourself as the witness, nothing else can appear on the screen of your
consciousness.
Two things cannot occupy your mind at the same moment. When you understand that
anything with a shape and form is by its very nature a hollow shell without substance,
and that what is real is formless, the light of consciousness, you will be immersed in the
depth of reality. When the mind gets absorbed in consciousness, all objects disappear
from the mind.
Do not put yourself in the position of the person who suddenly wakes up in the deepest
dark of the night and thinks he has become blind. Do not get yourself enveloped in the
darkness of ignorance. See all manifest phenomena as an illusion and remain peacefully
in reality.
Delve within and find out where the thoughts arise. Seek the source of all thought. It is
this source, the consciousness, which must seek and acquire the self-knowledge.
It can only happen. Imagine for a moment that everything that is now manifest, including
one\'s own body, has suddenly disappeared. Where precisely is it that the resulting
nothingness will be registered?
All that remains is I-consciousness. Inside and outside, there is nothing other than the
nothingness of the void, which is the fullness of being, the potential plenum. That on
which consciousness has arisen must surely be prior to consciousness.
Understand beyond any doubt that it is this source of consciousness that you are in
reality. It is in consciousness that everything appears, including your sentience, the I-am
sense of presence, and the psyche consisting of mind, intellect, discrimination, and the
ego. Once this fact is clearly apprehended, nothing can remain other than self.
Whenever you think, it is the mind that does the thinking. When the me is involved in the
thinking, it is the ego. When you are quiet, the very quietude is in the consciousness
itself.
Consider this. If you could have remained absolutely quiet, would any mnemonical
recollection have ever sprouted? Would there have been any wish, any desire?
If you could have remained absorbed in the consciousness, would you have been
troubled by thoughts? Would there have been any cause then to identify yourself with
the body as a separate individual? Therefore, my friend, that wherein all ignorance
disappears is in a totally different dimension.
If there were not something called pure knowledge, the totality of all potential, where
would the ego have arisen? This pure and perfect knowledge, neither knowledge nor
non-knowledge, is not aware of itself. It becomes a witness only when a movement in
consciousness presents some manifestation to witness, giving up your identification with
the body.
If you would remain quietly absorbed in the sense of the totality, in the I am, without
attachment, you will know all that is to be known. When you thus remain immersed in
consciousness, the personal identified consciousness, having lost the power of maya, will
itself take you to its source, which is what you are, reality. In that state there is no
duality of any kind.
All interrelated opposites have been naturally superimposed into nothingness. All there
is, is pure knowledge. Pure beingness.
Pure subjectivity. One cannot hold it. One cannot drop it.
One cannot say it is. One cannot say it isn\'t. Indeed, it cannot be something one can
experience.
It is only something that is nothing, to be aperceived, to be felt to be, and to remain in.
Hold on to the sense I am, to the exclusion of everything else. The mind, being thus
silent, will shine with a new light, and vibrate in the totality.
When you keep the I am feeling in the focus of awareness, and watch yourself
ceaselessly, when there is continuous witnessing of all movements in consciousness, the
conscious and the unconscious will, for a time, play the game of hide and seek. Flip-flops
will happen, until, finally, the two become one, and the one becomes the totality. The
individual then emerges in the witness, a witness in awareness, in pure being.
Who is there then to take a measure of that ecstasy?