Great Throughts Treasury

"Karma is only a store of unspent energies, of unfulfilled desires and fears not understood. The store is being constantly replenished by new desires and fears."

"Keep quiet, undisturbed, and the wisdom and the power will come on their own. You need not hanker. Wait in silence of the heart and mind. It is very easy to be quiet, but willingness is rare. You people want to be supermen overnight. Stay without ambition, without the least desire, exposed, vulnerable, unprotected, uncertain and alone, completely open to and welcoming life as it happens, without the selfish conviction that all must yield you pleasure or profit, material or so-called spiritual."

"Keep the 'I am' in focus of awareness, remember that you are, watch yourself ceaselessly and the unconscious will flow into the conscious without any special effort on your part. Wrong desires and fears, false ideas, social inhibitions are blocking and preventing its free interplay with the conscious. Once free to mingle, the two become one and the one becomes all. The person merges into the witness, the witness into awareness, awareness into pure being, yet identity is not lost. It is transfigured, and becomes the real Self, the eternal friend and guide. You cannot approach it in worship. No external activity can reach the inner self; worship and prayer remain on the surface only; to go deeper meditation is essential, the striving to go beyond the states of sleep, dream and waking. In the beginning the attempts are irregular, then they recur more often, become regular, then continuous and intense, until all obstacles are conquered."

"Keep very quiet and watch what comes to the surface of the mind. Reject the known, welcome the so far unknown and reject it in its turn. Thus you come to a state in which there is no knowledge, only being, in which being itself is knowledge."

"Know yourself as you are - against fear there is no other remedy."

"Knowing that you are not the body, watch the vital breath as a flow of the mind. You are here in the spark of ‘I amness’. When you acknowledge the ‘I amness’ you become the spark. I am like space and do not have an identity – this is my ‘I amness’ from which all the talk is being produced."

"Learn to look at your consciousness as a sort of fever, personal and private, in which you are enclosed like a chick in its shell, out of this very attitude will come the crisis which will break the shell."

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

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

"Let us wait with improving others until we have seen ourselves as we are -- and have changed. There is no need to turn round and round in endless questioning; find yourself and everything will fall into its proper place."

"Liberation is never of the person, it is always from the person."

"Life ceases to be a task and becomes natural and simple, in itself an ecstasy"

"Live your life without hurting anybody. Harmlessness is a most powerful form of Yoga and it will take you speedily to your goal."

"Look at the ‘I am’ as a sign of love between the inner and the outer, the real and the appearance. Just like in a dream all is different, except the sense of ‘I’, which enables you to say ‘I dreamt’, so does the sense of ‘I am’ enable you to say, ‘I am my real Self again. I do nothing nor is anything done to me. I am what I am and nothing can affect me. I appear to depend on everything, but in fact all depends on me’."

"Look at the net and its many contradictions. You do and undo at every step. You want peace, love, happiness and work hard to create pain, hatred and war. You want longevity and overeat, you want friendship and exploit. See your net as made of such contradictions and remove them -- your very seeing will make them go."

"Look at your mind dispassionately; this is enough to calm it. When it is quiet, you can go beyond it. Do not keep it busy all the time. Stop it - and just be. If you give it a rest, it will settle down and recover its purity and strength. Constant thinking makes it decay."

"Look at yourself steadily – it is enough. The door that locks you in is also the door that lets you out. The ‘I am’ is the door. Stay at it until it opens. As a matter of fact, it is open, only you are not at it. You are waiting at the non-existent painted doors, which will never open."

"Look to yourself for the permanent. Dive deep within and find what is real in you."

"Lord Krishna said ‘All are my expressions’. This knowledge ‘I am’ in each species is myself. The very life force – luminous, bright, radiant, indwelling principle is myself."

"Love is not selective, desire is selective. In love there are no strangers. When the center of selfishness is no longer, all desires for pleasure and fear of pain cease; one is no longer interested in being happy; beyond happiness there is pure intensity, inexhaustible energy, the ecstasy of giving from a perennial source."

"Love says "I am everything". Wisdom says "I am nothing". Between the two, my life flows. Since at any point of time and space I can be both the subject and the object of experience, I express it by saying that I am both, and neither, and beyond both."

"Man alone can destroy in himself the roots of pain."

"Manifested Brahma is the ‘I am’, whatever principle is prior to the utterance of sound, that principle proclaims by itself. What I insists is that you must stabilize is that state. The recitation of the mantra ‘So Hum’ must be for a very long time, it is prior to words. When that ‘So Hum’ principle, is pleased, that principle, represented by these words, expounds knowledge."

"Man's fivefold body (physical etc.) has potential powers beyond our wildest dreams... Some of the powers can be developed by specialized training, but the man who flaunts such powers is still in bondage."

"Maya is the primary source of illusion. At that point, love for the Self begins: ‘I am’, the love to be. Its expression is all this manifestation."

"Meditation will help you to find your bonds, loosen them, untie them and cast your moorings."

"Meet your own self. Be with your own self, listen to it, obey it, cherish it, keep it in mind endlessly. You need no other guide. As long as your urge for truth affects your daily life, all is well with you. Live your life without hurting anybody. Harmlessness is a most powerful form of Yoga and it will take you speedily to your goal. This is what I call nisarga yoga, the Natural yoga. It is the art of living in peace and harmony, in friendliness and love. The fruit of it is happiness, uncaused and endless."

"Memory is material - destructible, perishable, transient. On such flimsy foundations we build a sense of personal existence - vague, intermittent, dreamlike. This vague persuasion: 'I am so-and-so' obscures the changeless state of pure awareness and makes us believe that we are born to suffer and to die."

"Mind must be free of desires and relaxed. It comes with understanding, not with determination."

"Most essential is that knowledge ‘I am’. Claim it; appropriate it as your own. If that is not there, nothing is. Knowledge of all stages will be obtained only with the aid of this knowledge ‘I am’ From the Absolute no-knowing state, spontaneously this consciousness ‘I am’ has appeared – no reason, no cause."

"Most of our karma is collective. We suffer for the sins of others, as others suffer for ours. Humanity is one."

"Most of their experiences are valid for you too."

"Multiplicity without strife is joy."

"My actual experience is not different. It is my evaluation and attitude that differ. I see the same world as you do, but not the same way. There is nothing mysterious about it. Everybody sees the world through the idea he has of himself. As you think yourself to be, so you think the world to be. If you imagine yourself as separate from the world, the world will appear as separate from you and you will experience desire and fear. I do not see the world as separate from me and so there is nothing for me to desire, or fear."

"My advice to you is very simple – just remember yourself, ‘I am’, it is enough to heal your mind and take you beyond, just have some trust. I don’t mislead you. Why should I? Do I want anything from you? I wish you well – such is my nature. Why should I mislead you? Commonsense too will tell you that to fulfill a desire you must keep your mind on it. If you want to know your true nature, you must have yourself in mind all the time, until the secret of your being stands revealed."

"My guru further pointed out to me the fact that the only thing you have and which you can utilize to unravel the mystery of life, is this knowledge ‘I am’. Without that there is absolutely nothing, so I got hold of it, as my guru advised me, and then I wanted to find out how the spiritual aspect of ‘me’ came about without my knowledge. On my pure Absoluteness, which has no place, and no shape or form, this knowledge ‘I am’ came, which also has no shape or form. Therefore, it appears; and it is only an illusion."

"My guru ordered me to attend to the sense 'I Am' and to give attention to nothing else. I just obeyed, I did not follow any particular course of breathing or meditation, or study of scriptures. Whatever happened, I would turn my attention from it and remain with the sense 'I Am'....Keep empty, keep available, resist not what comes uninvited. In the end you reach a state of non-grasping, of joyful non-attachment, of inner ease and freedom, indescribable, yet wonderfully real."

"My Guru pointed out to me that originally I had nothing to do with all this and all I have with which to solve this mystery of life is the knowledge ‘I am’; without that there is nothing. So I got hold of it, as my Guru told me, and then I wanted to find out how this body aspect came about without my knowledge and how alone on that any other knowledge come about, and that again is a result of five elements. Therefore, whatever anybody thinks he has, is sheer ignorance, and I know it from my own experience."

"My Guru taught me what ‘I am’, I pondered only on that. My consciousness appeared along with my body form. My original state is to be in that state where there is no ‘I am’. I am explaining my state of affairs, from my standpoint you must realize yourself."

"My Guru told me ‘Divinity’ (Paramatman) is what you are’, I heard it and I accepted it, I did not want to gain anything, I just accepted it. I never knew that ‘I’ existed and suddenly I was aware that ‘I am’ this Absolute Truth. I had complete faith in the words of my Guru and then later on everything happened spontaneously."

"My statement, and that of my guru, is that childhood is a cheat, it is false. The knowledge ‘I am’ itself is a cheat. When the beingness appears, that love for existence is a result of the primary illusion, that ‘maya’. Once you come to know that you exist, you feel like enduring eternally, you always want to be, to exist, to survive. And so the struggle begins, all because of ‘maya’."

"My teacher told me to hold on to the sense ‘I am’ tenaciously and not to swerve from it even for a moment. I did my best to follow his advice and in a comparatively short time I realized within myself the truth of his teaching. All I did was to remember his teaching, his face, his words constantly. This brought an end to the mind, in the stillness of the mind I saw myself as I am – unbound."

"My true position is at all times beyond this consciousness of ‘I am’. Whatever comes out of this ‘I’ consciousness (mind, body, world etc) – when I know that I am not this, why should I depend on any mind, method, idea or technique which come out of this illusory consciousness?"

"My true state is always without this ‘I am’ consciousness – so if you live with this Knowledge, you won’t be always thinking about death and contemplating death, and hence you will live longer physically as your mind and body will be free of unnecessary tensions, thoughts and beliefs."

"No need of faith which is but expectation of results. Here the action only counts. Whatever you do for the sake of truth, will take you to truth. Only be earnest and honest. The shape it takes hardly matters."

"No such (yoga) school is valueless, nor indispensable; in each one can progress up to the point when all desire for progress must be abandoned to make further progress possible. Then all schools are given up, all effort ceases; in solitude and darkness the last step is made which ends ignorance and fear forever."

"No use rebelling against the very pattern of life. If you seek the immutable, go beyond experience. When I say remember ‘I am’ all the time, I mean come back to it repeatedly. No particular thought can be mind’s natural state, only silence. Not the idea of silence but silence itself. When the mind is in its natural state, it reverts to silence spontaneously after every experience, or rather, every experience happens against a background of silence. Now, what you have learnt here becomes the seed. You may forget it – apparently. But it will live and in due season sprout and grow and bring forth flowers and fruits. All will happen by itself. You need not do anything, only don’t prevent it."

"No way to self-realization is short or long, but some people are more in earnest and some are less. I can tell you about myself. I was a simple man, but I trusted my Guru. What he told me to do, I did. He told me to concentrate on ‘I am’ – I did. He told me that I am beyond all perceivables and conceivables – I believed. I gave my heart and soul, my entire attention and the whole of my spare time (I had to work to keep my family alive). As a result of faith and earnest application, I realized my self (‘swarupa’) within three years. You may choose any way that suits you; your earnestness will determine the rate of progress. Establish yourself firmly in the awareness of ‘I am’. This is the beginning and also the end of all endeavour."

"Normally in the name of spirituality, knowledge is expounded. Knowledge is in the realm of five elements and it is talked about as real or unreal so long as the knowledge ‘I am’ is there, it is a product of the knowledge ‘I am’. A ‘jnani’ is that state from which the witnessing of the knowledge ‘I am’ takes place. In that ‘jnani’ state there is no touch of ‘I amness’ (it is a quality-less state) and it is not knowledge – knowledge means ‘I amness’."

"Not an individual but the knowledge ‘I am’ must go to its source. Out of the no-being comes the beingness. It comes as quietly as twilight; just a feel of ‘I am’ and then suddenly the space is there. In the space, the movement starts with the air, the fire, the water, and the earth. All these five elements are you only. Out of your consciousness all this has happened. There is no individual. There is only you, the total functioning is you, the consciousness is you."