It is not right to compare and reason saying: “Such and such a person has done sadhana for so many years and yet has not got anywhere”.
How can you judge what is happening to anyone inwardly?
Sometimes it seems that a person who does sadhana seems to have changed for the worse.
But how do you know that this tendency has not always been in him and has now come out so that it may be dealt with and purified as a result of his endeavors?
– Ananadamayi Ma
This is the surest way to handicap oneself. This is burdening of one’s mind with the fear of failure and thought of one’s failing. That fear is not true. The greatest error of a man is to think that he is weak by nature, evil by nature. Every man is divine and strong in his real nature. What are weak and evil are his habits, his desires and thoughts, but not himself.
– Sri Ramana Maharshi
All bodies are composed of the five elements and they are alive because of consciousness. When consciousness departs from them, there is no longer any life in the bodies. Consciousness does not die, but merely separates from the body. Without consciousness, the bodies were already dead. So who dies now ?
Consciousness serves as an instrument and thanks to it, the Absolute is able to be a witness. Without consciousness, the Absolute cannot witness anything whatsoever.
The Absolute is first a witness to consciousness, when it exists, and then, it is a witness to the continuum of consciousness. If consciousness is called *Brahman*, its witness is *Parabrahman*.
– Nisargadatta Maharaj – To be nothing is to be everything. Excerpt p 135
Once, when the satsang was over, an old man was taking leave. ”It is getting late,” he said, ”I must be going home.”
”Late indeed,” agreed Anandamayi, ”there you are right; but go to your real home, not to the dharmasala pilgrim hostel.”
”I am not staying in any dharmasala, I have my own house here,” he replied.
She shook her head and smiled:
”Do you call that home? You won’t be able to stay there for ever. Your days are numbered and when your time is up, you will have to leave. I call it dharmasala. There are rules and regulations; you may remain for a while but then you have to quit. This body tells you to find your real home from which nobody can drive you out, which is not of this world. Dig deep and unearth your real wealth, find your real home in God, who is your own Self.
~ Anandamayi Ma
(Discourse and Dialogue of Anandamayi Ma – Richard Lannoy, Chapter 6)
Q: How to churn up the nadis, so that the kundalini may go up the sushumna?
~ Ramana Maharshi:
Though the yogi may have his methods of breath-control, pranayama, mudras, etc., for this object, the jnani’s method is only that of enquiry. When by this method the mind is merged in the Self, the Self, its shakti or kundalini, rises automatically.
-Sri Ramana Maharshi
Day by Day with Bhagavan
Devotee: The sleep state is the state when the mind is quiet. I consider it a worse state.
Maharshi: If that were so, why do all desire sleep?Devotee: It is the body when tired that goes to sleep.
Maharshi: Does the body sleep?Devotee: Yes. It is the condition in which the wear and tear of the body is repaired.
Maharshi: Let it be so.
But does the body itself sleep or wake up? You yourself said shortly before that the mind is quiet in sleep. The three states are of the mind.Devotee: Are they not states of the soul functioning through the senses, etc.?
Maharshi: They are not of the soul or of the body. The soul remains always
uncontaminated. It is the substratum running through all these three states. Wakefulness passes off, I am;
the dream state passes off, I am;
the sleep state passes off, I am.
They repeat themselves, and yet I am.
They are like pictures moving on the screen in a cinema show.
They do not affect the screen.
Similarly also, I remain unaffected although these states pass off. If it is of the body, are you aware of the body in sleep?
Devotee: No.Maharshi: Without knowing the body to be there how can the body be said to be in sleep?
Devotee: Because it is still found after waking up.Maharshi: The sense of body is a thought; the thought is of the mind, the mind rises after the ‘I-thought’, the ‘I-thought’ is the root thought.
If that is held, the other thoughts will disappear. There will then be no body, no mind, not even the ego.
Devotee: What will remain then?
Maharshi: The Self in its purity.
– Talks with Sri Ramana Maharshi. Talk 244.
An Excerpt.
Walk in the marketplace like a buddha. Live in the world. The world is very enriching because relationship is a mirror. All relationships are mirrorlike. You see your face in the mirror of the other’s being. It is very difficult to see your own face directly – you will need the other, the mirror, to see your own face. And where can you find a better mirror than the eyes of the other?
Sometimes, look in the eyes of your enemy and you will see a facet of your being.Sometimes look in the eyes of your lover, your friend, and you will see another facet of your being. Sometimes look in a person’s eyes who is indifferent to you and you will see yet another facet of your being.
Collect all these faces; they are yours, aspects of your being. In different situations, with different people, in different worlds, move and gather all this richness and awareness and alertness and consciousness. Then go back to the center and take all this awareness with you, and your ecstasy in the meditation will be deeper and richer for that.
– Osho
The practice of the Dhamma is such that you must come to this point where you know the knowing mind, awareness; being aware of your awareness.
Every practice must come to this point.
Knowing mind is the mind that knows the object, watching
mind or ‘one step up mind’ is the one that knows of both of them.Most people don’t know the knowing mind and don’t get to the point where they can see the knowing mind that knows the object..
If you don’t see how the mind works, you don’t know how the
mind creates these concepts. Concepts are created by the mind.If you do not see that the concept is created by the mind, you can’t stop it. (i.e. when we sit and we think that our bodies are going very big or very small and we don’t know that the mind is imagining this).
– Contemplation of the Mind, Cittanupassana,
Bhikku Khemavamsa
The greater the outward show, the greater the inward poverty; but freedom from this poverty is not the loincloth. The cause of this inward emptiness is the desire to become; and, do what you will, this emptiness can never be filled.
– Jiddu Krishnamurti
If you surrender yourself to the Higher Power all is well. That Power sees your affairs through. Only so long as you think that you are the worker you are obliged to reap the fruits of your actions. If on the other hand, you surrender yourself and recognise your individual self as only a tool of the Higher Power, that Power will take over your affairs along with the fruits of actions. You are no longer affected by them and the work goes on unhampered.
Whether you recognise the Power or not the scheme of things does not alter. Only there is a change of outlook.
– Sri Ramana Maharshi, Talk 503
