Take refuge in Me

Set aside all meritorious deeds and religious rituals, and just surrender completely to My will with firm faith and loving devotion. I shall liberate you from all sins, the bonds of Karma. Do not grieve. (18.66)


सर्वधर्मान्परित्यज्य मामेकं शरणं व्रज ।
अहं त्वां सर्वपापेभ्यो मोक्षयिष्यामि मा शुचः ॥१८- ६६॥

Path of Surrender

Hear once again My most secret, supreme word. You are very dear to Me, therefore, I shall tell this for your benefit. (18.64)


सर्वगुह्यतमं भूयः शृणु मे परमं वचः ।
इष्टोऽसि मे दृढमिति ततो वक्ष्यामि ते हितम् ॥१८- ६४॥


Fix your mind on Me, be devoted to Me, offer service to Me, bow down to Me, and you shall certainly reach Me. I promise you because you are very dear to me. (18.65)


मन्मना भव मद्भक्तो मद्याजी मां नमस्कुरु ।
मामेवैष्यसि सत्यं ते प्रतिजाने प्रियोऽसि मे ॥१८- ६५॥


(see also)

Seek refuge in the Self

Seek refuge in the Supreme Lord alone with loving devotion, O Arjuna. By His grace you shall attain supreme peace and the Eternal Abode. (18.62)


तमेव शरणं गच्छ सर्वभावेन भारत ।
तत्प्रसादात्परां शान्तिं स्थानं प्राप्स्यसि शाश्वतम् ॥१८- ६२॥

as near to God as we are ...

Pope John Paul II declared in a public audience
in 1990 that "also the animals possess a soul and
men must love and feel solidarity with our smaller brethren".


He said, too, that they are the "fruit of the creative
action of the Holy Spirit and merit respect," and are
as near to God as men are."


The Pope went on to say that, "animals have the breath of life and were given it by God. In this respect, man created by the hand of God is identical with all living creatures. ... The existence therefore of all living creatures depends on the living spirit/breath of God that not only creates but also sustains and renews the face of the earth."

To the mind that is still, the whole universe surrenders

To the mind that is still, the whole universe surrenders.

Lao Tzu

Do not grieve, Arjuna

The self does not kill, nor is it killed. For the self is never born and never dies, nor may it ever become non-existent. This unborn, everlasting, abiding self is not slain when the body is slain. Knowing the self to be unborn, imperishable, everlasting, changeless, Arjuna, how can a man slay anyone or be slain?

As a man gets rid of worn out clothes and puts on new ones, so the self puts away worn-out bodies and puts on others that are new. Weapons do not cut up the self, fire does not burn it, water does not wet it, the wind does not dry it. Not capable of being cut, burned, wet, or dried, the self is everlasting, present in all things, unchangeable, unmoveable, for ever the same.

Knowing that the soul is immaterial and unalterable, you should not grieve, Arjuna.

Changeless Being

I have always existed, you too have always existed, and those princes have always existed. The time shall never come when we shall all cease to exist.


What is not there cannot exist; what is there cannot be anything but existent. The distinction between these states has been recognized by those who study truth. That which pervades this universe is imperishable; no one can destroy that changeless being. It is these bodies that house the everlasting, imperishable, incomprehensible self that have an end

Eyes cannot see him

Eye cannot see him, nor words reveal him;
by the senses, austerity, or works he is not known. When the mind is cleansed by the grace of wisdom, he is seen by contemplation--the One without parts. 
Mundaka Upanishad 3.1.8




He is the one God, hidden in all beings, all-pervading, the Self within all beings, watching over all works, dwelling in all beings, the witness, the perceiver, the only one, free from qualities. 
Svetasvatara Upanishad 6.11

"I am" is you

"When we examine the mind of the average person, we find that he usually identifies himself with mind or body.

He either thinks that he is body or that he is mind, and therefore he can control

neither mind nor body.

The "I Am" in his nature is submerged

in a bundle of ideas, some of which are true and some of which are not, and his thought is usually controlled by those ideas without receiving any direction whatever from that principle within him

that alone was intended to give direction.

Such a man lives in the lower storey of human existence, but as we can control life only when we give directions from the upper storey, we discover just why the average person neither understands his forces nor has the power to use them.

He must first elevate himself to the upper storey of the human structure, and the first and most important step to be taken in this direction is to recognize the "I Am" as the ruling principle, and that the "I Am" is you."

- Christian D. Larson

from the book A Course In Materialization

Thought is not the Self

Thought is something foreign, alien, to the true Self.

Thought pretends to be the Self.

Thought is not the Self.

Thought is an imposter.
Thought believes that it is a real entity, and that it is a real self.

Humans, are slaves to an imposter “self”.

Thinking that thinking, or thought, is your self, is a delusion, a dream-like illusion.

Stay only as the awareness

Stay only as the awareness, within which the mind is playing, but hold the attention on awareness only.

Bhagavan Ramana's Enlightenment Day - July 17th.

If you seek my advice and help

"If you seek my advice and help, it shall be given to you at once. I am ever living to help and guide all, who come to me, who surrender to me and who seek refuge in me."      
------ Shirdi Saibaba

Advice from Amma

"The real important thing is the control we have over our mind in all situations,” Amma said. “If someone becomes angry at us, we should not react and become angry also. We should reflect, ‘Whom am I becoming angry at?’ In such situations we should remember that it is all the Atma, the Supreme Self. We should think, ‘The consciousness that is within me is within that person also. Can consciousness become angry? And if all is one, to whom can it express its anger?’ We should give more importance to the Self and not the body.”

The fleeting "I", who is aware of it

The mind is incessantly looking not only for food for thought; it is looking for food for its identity, its sense of self. This is how the ego comes into existence and continuously re-creates itself.

When you think or speak about yourself, when you say, "I", what you usually refer to is "me and my story". This is the "I" of your likes and dislikes, fears and desires, the "I" that is never satisfied for long. It is a mind-made sense of who you are, conditioned by the past, and seeking to find its fulfillment in the future.

Can you see that this "I" is fleeting, a temporary formation, like a wave pattern on the surface of the water.

Who is it that sees this?

Who is it that is aware of the fleetingness of your physical and psychological form?

Cow Lakshmi Day - June 23, 2010

The Nature of oneself

Look into the nature of yourself.

(Mahapuja Day - June 6th, 2010)

No clinging to whatever arises

Quietly sitting, body still, speech silent, mind at peace, let thoughts and emotions, whatever arises, come and go without clinging to anything.

Happy Buddha Purnima (May 27th).

Awareness - don't look for anything more

You should look at it like awareness watching awareness is all there is, there is nothing more.

Never add anything to awareness watching awareness, just be content to continue with awareness watching awareness without adding anything to it.

Source.

Rest in pure awareness

In reality, all we need do is simply to rest in the naked, pure awareness of the nature of mind, which is always present.

-- TBLD 51

Have full faith in your being-ness

All of you are like beggars; you have got a begging bowl and you want to collect God in that.

Take it that this "I Amness" of yours is the unadulterated form of Godlihood; the pure Iswara state is your beingness.
It is quite proper and praiseworthy that you are listening to the talks. Nevertheless, you are not getting rid of this attachment to the body-mind. You are constantly surrounded by relations or intimacies connected with your body-mind. Have full faith in your beingness and allow it to grow into the manifest Iswara principle. It is all powerful - meditate on that. It is very simple, yet at the same time, very profound.

The consciousness is the seed of Godliness. If we give it its true importance and pray to it, then it will flower into Godliness. If we don't give it any importance, it will not flower into Godliness.

-- Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj, 1980

Buddha Nature

It is simply your flawless, present awareness, cognizant and empty, naked and awake.

-- TBLD 50

Watching awareness

When awareness is watching awareness something extraordinary is happening.
You are for the first time turning inward.
Your true nature is awareness.
Who you really are at your core is awareness.
Therefore, in awareness watching awareness you are for the first time observing yourself and knowing yourself.

-- Michael Langford. See source.

Be self-aware and still

Once Sri Ramana said the whole truth is contained in the words”Be Still”.

So if one is self-aware and still, one has grasped the method.

You are not what you know, you are the knower.

You are not what you know, you are the knower.

-- Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj, April 1980

Identify only with pure beingness

Give attention to how this "I Am-ness" has appeared - then you will know.

Accept this identification only: that you are this manifest pure beingness,
the very soul of the universe, of this life that you observe, and presently
you are just wearing this bodily attire. Make a note of it; you have taken
down so many things in life, just for fun, why don't you take this down
also and see what happens?

See what happens when you look at the moon and know that the moon is there provided you are there; because you are, the moon is. This grand concept, this joy, you directly experience and enjoy.

-- Prior to Consciousness, Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj (14/04/1980)

Attention to the I-feeling

This path (attention to the "I"/ I-feeling *) is the direct path; all others are indirect ways.

(* self-awareness)

Self-enquiry - awareness of "you"

Self-enquiry is holding on to the simple awareness of being that ‘you already are’, the simple awareness that is reading this.

You must concentrate totally upon the awareness of ‘you’, without thought of any kind.

The I-feeling

Once awareness of the "I-feeling" has been firmly established, further effort is counter-productive. From then on, it is more a process of being than doing, of effortless being, rather than an effort to be.

-Page 53 of Be As You Are, The Teachings of Sri Ramana Maharshi (edited by David Godman)