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Started reading
November 29, 2017
He can’t take us there, he explains, but he can show us the way: tell us what to look for, warn about missteps, advise us about detours, tell us what to avoid. Most important, he urges us that it is our destiny as human beings to make this journey ourselves. Everything else is secondary.
We are not cabin-dwellers, born to a life cramped and confined; we are meant to explore, to seek, to push the limits of our potential as human beings.
The world of the senses is just a base camp: we are meant to be as much at home in consciousness as in the world of physical reality.
“TOWARD THE MIDPOINT OF LIFE’S way,” as Dante says, I reached what proved a crisis. Everything I had lived for – literature, music, writing, good friends, the joys of teaching – had ceased to satisfy. Not that my enjoyment of these things was less; in fact, I had every innocent source of joy the world offered. But I found myself thirsting for something more, much more, without knowing what or why.
Human beings cannot live without challenge.
The wise, realizing through meditation The timeless Self, beyond all perception, Hidden in the cave of the heart, Leave pain and pleasure far behind.
24 The Self cannot be known by anyone Who desists not from unrighteous ways, Controls not the senses, stills not the mind,
And practices not meditation.
When a person lacks discrimination And his mind is undisciplined, the senses Run hither and thither like wild horses.
They attain the supreme goal of life, To be united with the Lord of Love.
The senses derive from objects of sense-perception, Sense objects from mind, mind from intellect, And intellect from ego; 11 ego from undifferentiated Consciousness, and consciousness from Brahman. Brahman is the First Cause and last refuge. 12 Brahman, the hidden Self in everyone, Does not shine forth. He is revealed only To those who keep their minds one-pointed On the Lord of Love and thus develop A superconscious manner of knowing. 13 Meditation enables them to go Deeper and deeper into consciousness, From the world of words to the world of thoughts, Then beyond thoughts to wisdom in the
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Get up! Wake up! Seek the guidance of an Illumined teacher and realize the Self. Sharp like a razor’s edge, the sages say,
Is the path, difficult to traverse.
The supreme Self is beyond name and form, Beyond the senses, inexhaustible, Without beginning, without end, beyond Time, space, and causality, eternal, Immutable. Those who realize the Self Are forever free from the jaws of death.
A sage withdrew his senses from the world Of change and, seeking immortality,
Can there be anything not known to That Who is the One in all? Know One, know all.
What is here is also there; what is there, Also here. Who sees multiplicity But not the one indivisible Self Must wander on and on from death to death.
Who sees multiplicity But not the one indivisible Self Must wander on and on from death to death.
The Self is the sun shining in the sky, The wind blowing in space; he is the fire At the altar and in the home the guest; He dwells in human beings, in gods, in truth, And in the vast firmament; he is the fish Born in water, the plant growing in the earth, The river flowing down from the mountain. For this Self is supreme!
Eternal peace is theirs who see the Self In their own hearts.
five senses are stilled, when the mind Is stilled, when the intellect is stilled, That is called the highest state by the wise.
They say yoga is this complete stillness In which one enters the unitive state, Never to become separate again.
The unitive state cannot be attained Through words or thoughts or through the eye.
There are two selves, the separate ego And the indivisible Atman. When One rises above I and me and mine, The Atman is revealed as one’s real Self.
The only real source of such insight is almost always, in Indian tradition, a living teacher who is equally ready to impart it; that is why almost all the Upanishads are in the form of dialogues.
My lord, if I could get all the wealth in the world, would it help me to go beyond death?
Of what use then are money and material possessions to me?
you hear about the Self, meditate upon the Self, and finally realize the Self, you come to understand everything in life.
