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WHAT IS 3SRB?
3SRB is an ancient technique of breathing which calms the mind and brings total physical, emotional and mental health in our body-brain system. This technique has come from the Yogasutra of Sage Patanjali and for thousands of years was kept secret in the Guru-Shisya Parampara. Read more
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HOW WILL I BENEFIT?
3SRB has been found to lead those suffering from diseases such as asthma, heart problems, diabetes, arthritis and digestive problems, on the path to recovery. Apart from physical benefits, the practices lead to a state of deep meditation wherein a person can realize his own true divine nature.. Read more
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HOW DO I LEARN 3SRB?
The best way to learn 3SRB is to attend a beginners’ session or contact a 3SRB practitioner near you. Once you’ve been personally trained, you can revise the exercises by watching the videos on this website. Scroll down to see the videos
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YOGI SRI SOLI TAVARIA
Yogi Sri Tavariaji met his master, Sri Ram, when he was only seven years old. Over a period of 12 years, he learnt the practices of a very secret Yoga System from his teacher. He condensed this system into a few simple exercises so that the benefits could be easily available to everyone. Read more
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SRI RAJEN VAKIL
Sri Rajen Vakil, a householder yogi based in India, tours the world giving lectures on 3SRB. Sri Vakil was initiated into the esoteric world by his father, Arvind Vakil. After spending many years under the guidance of Indian mystic Swami Ram Dulaare Bapu, his spiritual journey finally led him to Sri Tavariaji Read more
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ARTICLES BY SRI RAJEN VAKIL
Sri Rajen Vakil has written and spoken on several topics like Ego, Manifestation, Death & Dying, Surrender. His discourses centre around 3SRB, Self Observation, The Law of Octaves and Patanjali's Yoga Sutra, among other themes. He has also penned an exhaustive exposition of the Mahabharata. Read his articles here.
DOWNLOADS
3SRB exercises have been set to a specific rhythm and must be practiced to music tracks downloadable here. This section also includes Notes and 2 books by Shri Tavaria, articles by Rajen Vakil and other audio and video publications. Register and download.
TESTIMONIALS
Thousands of people have been practicing 3SRB in India, the US, the UK and South Africa for over 4 decades and have grown in health - physical, emotional and psychological - and self awareness. Click here to hear their stories.
INTENSITY CHARTS
The doctor can treat but is unable to tell you the origin of disease. Patanjali had stipulated thousands of years ago that all disease has its roots in emotional and psychological imbalance. These intensity charts assign a specific value to disease-generating power of each negative emotion and their positive potential. View charts.
BEGINNERS' EXERCISES
ATTENTIVE RELAXATION
SWISO
REFINING EXERCISES
Sri Tavariaji's Notes
The process of becoming, which leads to Being, is a cosmic event.
There is no cheap and easy way to liberate an immortal soul from the human jungle and lift it into finer ethers.
Moral and spiritual rectitude is won only after hard struggles.
Remnants of the ape and the tiger still crouch beneath the surface. They should be brought before the conscious mind and re-educated.
Years of training are required to relieve mental and moral blindness, before spiritual blindness can be removed.
If I examine my past life honestly, I see enacted there my tendency towards repetition.
Repetition is due to lack of understanding. To repeat perfection entails a kind of waste not provided for by cosmic law. Imperfection repeats.
Only the deep realization of all the horror and futility of an eternal repetition of ordinary life can generate in man sufficient emotional force to undertake the tremendous task of penetrating consciously into that unknown and unimaginable dimension which lies beyond.
Enter into yourself -- you need no longer be in search for something without.
To enter the silence signifies the silencing of all unreality, of doubt, fear, false beliefs, worry, complaining, grief, of everything that is merely of the outer personality, and remaining fixed in the vivifying fires of inpouring, restoring life.
To enter the silence means to turn the mind inward, focusing the mind upon a God-word (mantra), meditating upon it and in it until the spirit of that word flashes into reality and the mental field is alive with it.
To achieve the silence requires lucid work of the highest activity, demanding time, practice and study.
The silence is a tempting word to the lazy mind, thinking to enter a do-nothing state without method or efforts and to remain there inert and passive receiving deific gifts. Knowledge has never been vouchsafed to anyone who is inert and ignorant.
Spiritual consciousness is a matter of growth. It is not attained haphazardly any more than mathematics is learnt by guessing at it.
Perfection is a continuous process and calls for perpetual fires burning on the altar of the heart, consuming the dross of unworthy aims and self-delusions.
Hasten slowly and ye shall arrive soon.
Make a forced beginning in spiritual living. Forget the past achievements. Breadth of vision, inclusiveness of understanding, a widened horizon are the preliminary essentials.
Build on resolve, and not upon regret the structure of thy future; do not grope among the shadows of old sin, but let thine own soul's light shine on the path of hope and dissipate the darkness.
Waste no tears upon the blotted record of lost years, but turn the leaf and smile to see the fair white pages that remain to thee.
Lose sight of your own affairs, your petty sorrows, worries and suspicions, in the urgency of the task to be done and the spread of the cult of unity of all souls, of life and of harmlessness.
...A capacity to overlook the non-essentials and to emphasize the essential. A submergence of personal ambition, a study of preservation of the inner contact.
Learn to know yourself, to change, to rebuild the form aspect. It is the achievement of that spiritual orientation held steadily, no matter what the outer disturbance in the physical plane life may be. It is to submerge and to lose sight of the personal lower self. It will occupy all of a man's attention and time, even his entire thought life.
Accumulate all possible circumstances which shall reinforce the right activities. Put yourself assiduously in conditions that encourage the new way; make arrangements incompatible with the old. Reverse every adverse thought. Character is the moral deposit of a million struggles.
Kill out ambition. Work as those do who are ambitious.
Kill out desire of life. Respect life as those do who desire it.
Kill out desire of comfort. Be happy as those are who live for happiness.
Kill out all sense of separateness, yet stand alone and isolated.
Kill out desire for sensation, yet learn from it and observe it.
Kill out the hunger for growth, yet grow as the flower grows, unconsciously but eagerly anxious to open its soul to the air.
First we must abstain from action which increases separateness.
Secondly we must tranquilize our senses. Thirdly we must harmonize the opposing forces in ourselves.
To feel ourselves different from others is a great heresy, for separateness when the whole is evolving towards unity is opposition to the law.
The people most separated from God are the ascetics with their asceticism, the devotees by their devotion and the knowers by their knowledge.
The relationship between all souls and the oversoul constitutes the basis of brotherhood.
A man must know and understand what he does and why. He must sacrifice self-deception, prejudice and inconsistency.
There can be no divided existence of being one thing and having its opposite.
Nothing short of daily spiritual immersion in the chemical waters of reality will dissolve discordant films and open the way to pure knowing.
The peace that passeth understanding is a peace that is brought about by the conquest of the self from its perpetual discords.
...Reorient desire, redirect desire; a constant process of reorientation of the entire desire nature, so that it eventually becomes a habitual state of mind.
Distinguish the real from the unreal, control the body emotions. Make use of the mind, use thought properly, not only for the use of separative desire. Vivify emotions, (\verify motives,) cast out fear, hate and greed.
Desire only that which is within you.
Desire only that which is beyond you.
Desire only that which is unattainable.
Clear out of your heart any bitter, destructive, unkind, uncharitable feelings. You cannot build a new house with rubbish from the old one.
If you give up nothing, He will give you nothing.
When the heart weeps for what it has lost, the spirit laughs for what it has found.
Spiritual progress is only possible with the aid of the very things which are the cause of man's fall.
The vices of man become steps in the ladder, one by one, as they are surmounted.
Speak no word which can hurt, harm or wound. Waste no time in self-pity, self-justification; and know that the law has placed him where he best can serve, that difficulties are ever a man's own making and the result of his own mental attitude.
Aspirants fail to make good where they are because they find some reason which makes them think they should be elsewhere. Men run away, almost without realizing it, from difficulty, from inharmonious conditions, from places which involve problems, and which are staged to draw out the best that is in a man, provided he stays in them.
When we maintain our first principle, Divine Guidance, secondary matters clear up one by one. Physical resources are paltry compared with the spiritual.
The attainment of right vibrations will work automatically in the production of right conditions.
A certain structure of right living, of thinking, of conduct has to be attained.
Right standards and moral qualities transfigure the gray recording mass into an intricate system of highly developed electric cells, with corresponding effect in the heart centre and the communications throughout consciousness.
...The science of physical breath is the least important aspect. No breathing exercises can be safely used where there is no attempt to improve rhythm upon the life of everyday. The two activities should go hand in hand.
It should be realized that good character, higher ethics, sound morality and spiritual aspiration are basic and unalterable requirements, yet more is needed if the right to enter the master's domain is to be granted.
Seek out the way. Seek the way by retreating within. Seek the way by advancing boldly without.
Seek it by testing all experience, by utilizing the senses in order to understand the growth and meaning of individuality, and the beauty and obscurity of those other divine fragments which are struggling side by side with you, and form the race to which you belong.
Seek to equip your instrument, learn to function in quietness, fulfill your obligations, do your duty, develop restraint of speech, develop calm poise that comes from unselfish life motives.
...The outer duties (dharma) carried out with precision, whilst the inner adjustments proceed in the silence of the heart.
Man has lost connection with his Divine Consciousness. He must reopen the channel through his mental field.
The soul-consciousness aspect, which makes a human being a rational thinking entity, is anchored in the brain.
In the average man, the brain is the only part in which consciousness has definitely become self-conscious -- in all the rest of him consciousness is still groping about.
The commanding ego is the self-conscious mind, standing midway between its higher and lower levels, having the power to open or close the interior lines of communication.
Nothing is achieved until the mind is captured.
All systems, all methods are of value only as they serve one great purpose -- the capture of automatic, random, unproductive thought.
Different methods appeal to different temperaments. Thus it is left to each to make choice of effectual means to achieve this.
The one aim to be achieved in all this is the perfect purity and steadiness of mind.
When the individual awakens to the truth of his spiritual nature and consciously enters upon definite means to clean up his subconscious mind, he will stand guard at the door or conscious thought.
Watchfulness must be constantly exercised. Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty.
Only in the recalling of the projected life, in the withdrawal of our centre to a more inward level of our being is there mastery, freedom, peace.
Indolence, ignorance and self-love; aggressiveness, haste, self-importance; demanding rewards, exercising authority, condemnation, self-pity, self-righteousness -- these hold man in mental slavery.
The barriers that cloud spiritual perception are false human tendencies covering the Soul with seven layers which must be burned away by the divine fire within. These are self-righteousness, avarice, lust, anger, gluttony, envy and inertia. By the simple method of preference of ideas, thought nourishment is denied them.
At the back of the mind are thought habits a little overactive, as self-pity, over-sensitiveness. Every thought enters into the creative process of life, and when little whirlpools of adverse thoughts are created, they strike us as accidents: loss of valuables, fits of temper.
Every adverse thing that happens is a voiceless warning.
No general denial will answer, because there are in the mind certain discordant ideas and conditions, each requiring specific arguments in order to break down and stop its actions. The mental field has got to be brought under sight now exactly as physical action has been disciplined.
Thought should not be allowed to subside into automatic, uncontrolled, sub-conscious undercurrents.
Karmas have their roots in distractions and become powerless for fruition when the distractions have been systematically reduced and brought to an end.
Intelligence should rule desires and reason should triumph over impulses.
A mind governed by reason is greater than a mind governed by emotions, yet it is far from being a perfect mind. It has no other avenues through which to obtain information but through the senses.
Concentration involves steady vision, one-pointedly directed towards a specific object.
Concentration is not a mere word; it is a state of mind. Fear is not a a thing in itself; it is developed by ideas of worry and impatience.
Concentrate with the mind and release the body.
Strive constantly to think inward towards the centre of being.
Regard the body as a mirror capable of reflecting states of mind, and by holding certain ideas in the mind to the exclusion of everything else, man is transformed into a corresponding state.
One idea held in the focus of consciousness sharpens the mind to a point and the mental image is impressed throughout the consciousness.
Within the inner sanctuary, is still a supernal silence. Every thought must be brought captive to ideas of perfect states held by mental and spiritual affiliations, never by force nor by external will power, but by attention to the undivided presence of an idea.
In the careful discipline of the mind and the manipulation of thought matter and the transmutation of the emotions comes the working out on the physical plane.
Act constantly in full faith that your thought form is working out.
Rhythm or vibration is the common denominator of ideas.
An idea received into the brain dynamo by means of the senses is reduced there to its common denominator, wave impulse, and conveyed to the communicating centres in the human organism in the universal code, vibrations, enunciating itself in exact correspondence to the idea.
Every idea completes its circuit in the body; peculiar modes of excitement in the brain leave a sort of tenderness or exalted sensitivity behind them which may take long periods to die away, and as long as it lasts these tracks are liable to have their activities awakened.
A man is a machinery of thought; he should know its laws and how to govern it, because his well-being is involved in every impulse that passes through him.
Fire, electricity, atomic power, mental energy -- all are given to man under the same conditions, viz., that he act to know their laws and bring them under his control.
Thus prayer is another process of engaging miracle-moving energy.
Once the mind is set straight as to what is to be accomplished, moving forward with persistent efforts towards a given end, the force that supports it to completion across the void is faith.
Faith is not an intellectual belief in something or someone, but a state of consciousness. Faith is giving substance to a thing unseen.
Those that ask shall have. But though the ordinary man asks perpetually, his voice is not heard. For he asks with his mind only, and the voice of the mind is only heard on that plane on which the mind acts.
One of the primary conditions is solitude. In solitude the faculties and graces of the higher self can take root and blossom in the personality. In solitude the inner sound is heard.
Measurements in years is a planetary scale created by the motion of the earth and does not refer to the inner time of man.
Each man has his own individual time, irrespective of the calendar and the clock, derived from the uncoiling of the mainspring of his own individual life. It is the hour told by this time which indicates his
position, his outlook, his fate.
Cells within the human body have varying lifetimes.
The blood is fluid life, an unstable, formless medium, exactly fitted to receive the faintest emotional vibration, holding all experience in suspension in it and traversing the entire body.
It communicates corresponding emotions to every cell.
The white corpuscles of the blood are perfectly endowed with the power and the duty of eliminating poisons.
The heart will be found to be not only the engine which circulates the life fluids, but also the generator of a certain type of intelligent essence which is the positive factor in the life of the cell.
There is a difference between the gray and white matter of the brain.
A real distinction must be made by the student between the centres and the rest of the body. The centres are allied to consciousness and are composed of self-conscious units.
There must be some means of exchange or communication between the spiritual Self and the physical self. In other words, there must be some places or points within the human body where the spiritual Self can transmit its power, authority and central control into the grosser elements of nerve energy, blood and vitality of the human mechanism.
Life forms are an expression of consciousness; it became necessary that some control of conscious activity be found, so centres of control developed.
The gland system is the seat of impulses and urges in man.
The endocrine secretes into the blood stream its particular hormone in a rhythmic flow and at any moment of time makes a man what he then is thoughtful, sympathetic, passionate, active, and so on. At the same time, he himself affects the composition by his interest and attention to this or that manifestation in him, he accumulates and restrains his natural tendencies.
The endocrines are the directors in the corporation of organs, tissues and consciousness of the being called man.
Glands are the faithful dogs, and no matter how they are abused they will strive to save the system from serious harm.
The single cell was immortal and had the power to renew itself perpetually, but when the cells began to try to work together they lost the power of everlasting life and had to resort to reproduction and general creative power. To produce this centre the sex glands (gonads) were formed.
These glands must work in harmony and balance, and to do so they needed methods of intercommunication. The parasympathetic system was created for nerve action. Its vibrations are so subtle that the senses do not even detect them.
The sympathetic nervous system is an apparatus of sensation and is related to the emotional or astral body.
Much of your pain is self-chosen. It is the bitter potion by which the physician within you heals your sick self. Therefore trust the physician and drink the remedy in silence.
What can correspond to crime in the human body? The wrong functioning or rebellion of various parts of the organism, and these wrong functionings in turn are started by the retention of inert matter in the body.
Every impression that runs through the senses runs out into muscles, glands and viscera, and builds up or tears down vital processes through the invisible paths of escape -- the nerve currents -- and which remain more or less permanent features of its structure, modifying its actions through all future times.
Destructive thoughts will manufacture diseased conditions. Disease is not the punishment of broken laws, it is the evidence of it.
Diseases have their roots primarily in maladjustment and misdirected forces in the vegetable kingdom.
The mental attitude is the thing that needs healing, the body has no alternative for by its nature and law it is forced to respond. By taking mental remedies, the roots of tumours and cancerous diseases are loosened and the acids of rheumatism are dissolved.
Sickness and discord have been accepted as a legitimate part of life, and unattached to hidden causes.
Get away from the idea that the body is a fixed and unchangeable thing.
It is an ever-changing kaleidoscopic register of thought.
When I repress my emotions, my stomach keeps score.
Overfeeding or wrong feeding will produce a self-poisoning within the digestive track.
In the average home of today, the meal time is the clearing-house time for all the troubles of the family.
The ulcers of the stomach will yield more quickly to the change in/to divine vibrations than to any other method of treatment.
Modern medicine often by-passes and undermines the intelligence of organs.
Man is a citizen of the three worlds.
The entire man is in his being -- the three worlds.
Man is the breath of God working through a marvelous contrivance called the human body.
All grades of matter meet in man and all states of consciousness are possible in him. The human family is responsive to all energies.
When we speak of man, we really speak about his degree of consciousness (or awareness), however rudimentary, for the rest is not human but chemical, biological and animal.
What distinguishes men in their degree of consciousness is what distinguishes suns in their degree of radiance. Light and consciousness obey exactly the same laws and wax and wane in exactly the same way.
We may even say that they are the same phenomenon seen on different scales.
Man is an unfinished house; there is work to be done.
Man is created a self-developing organism. He is incomplete by creation (as distinct from animals), as the Universe is also, but can complete himself by constantly working against the circumstances of life.
The principle of successive existence in different states of matter, we must accept as a completely mechanical feature of the Universe. In it there is nothing desirable or undesirable, nothing depending in the least degree on individual merit or defect.
Although all organic life has to make mechanical efforts, there is only one small part of it that can make conscious efforts -- and that part is man.
The goal for the atom (its evolution) is self-consciousness, as exemplified in the human kingdom.
In the heart of matter, giving it form and power, is something not material.
In the Universe of phenomena, there is no spirit unconditioned by matter, no smallest particle of matter uninformed by spirit.
No so-called matter exists anywhere in the Universe. All forms are built up of infinitesimal lives.
All forms in nature are made up of myriads of tiny lives holding a ertain measure of awareness.
Matter becomes rare or dense according to the thoughts of a consciousness active therein.
The Universe is in fact but a huge aggregate of states of consciousness.
We live unconsciously in this mighty consciousness in which everything is eternally present.
The Universe, with all its phenomena, is nothing more than an incessant and immediate succession of states of properties.
The essential matter descends in a series of separate notes of various densities.
All gradations that appear are not gradations of vital principle, but only of its manifestations.
I am not visible because I am enveloped in the illusion of phenomena.
Yet all is equally divine in time and space and in relation to the point in the evolution of the whole.
The Universe is all one -- nothing can be changed without changing the whole.
Duality and dualism must not be confused. The universe implies conciliated duality, but this is not dualism.
If we stop regarding creation as a whole, but regard it as some things created, our minds perceive the Universe as a space-time where things appear and disappear, integrate and disintegrate.
There exists in the Sun, in the planets, in man and in the atom a central point, a nucleus, and this reaches the bounds of its sphere of influence.
In the Sun, right at the heart is a sea of fire. This central point radiates its warmth to all parts of the solar system.
My centre is universal, my periphery is personal.
Finding the centre within the form, that which we call the Soul.
We cannot imagine a formed and fully functioning physical body without the intervention of Soul.
A candidate must possess a mature Soul.
There is a greater mystery than this, viz. ourselves being the Reality, we seek to gain Reality. We think that there is some thing hiding the Reality and that must be destroyed before Reality is gained. It is ridiculous. A day will dawn when you will yourself laugh at your past efforts.
Liberation is nothing new that is acquired.
Those who do not perceive the truth think in terms of samsara and nirvana.
To desire great nirvana is the karma of birth and death.
Creation means the appearance in active manifestation of some form of energy. Solids refer not solely to the lowest objective manifestation, for a solid form may be ethereal.
The atom has been recognized as an energy unit, but as yet the energy that sweeps atoms into aggregates which we call organisms and forms has not been isolated.
Life is not a function of the form, the form is a product of life.
All life is vibration, and the result of vibration is form, dense or subtle, and even subtler as ascension takes place.
All forms are but experiments.
Every externalized idea is therefore possessed of form, animated by desire and created by the power of the mind.
Man will attract by his pranic energy, coloured by desire, high or low, and animated by the potency of his thoughts just as much of the responsive matter in space as is needed to give body to his form.
All the bodies, whether human or logoic, are the product of desire originating from the planes of abstract mind.
When shielded by his own maya, Brahman is called Purusha.
He will need to understand that this form which he has created will persist as long as the dynamic power of his thoughts holds it together.
There is no permanence whatever in the sheaths (matter); they are built into temporary forms and dissolved when the thinker has exhausted their possibilities.
A form is used consciously for some specific ends and is then vacated. Matter persists, though the form no longer persists.
A man is a psychic entity; a life through vibratory influence has built a form, coloured it with its own psychic qualities, and thus presented an appearance to the environing world which will persist for as long a time as he lives in form.
Man is regarded essentially as an etheric (astral) being and his dense physical body is esoterically regarded as below the threshold (a shadow) and is not considered as principal.
People have for long regarded the form as being the dense physical body, whereas to the occultist the physical body is not a form. The true form is the body of vitality (astral).
The etheric (astral) body is composed of force currents and in it are vital centres linked by lines of force and with the nervous system of the physical man.
The etheric body of man is vitalized and controlled by thought (impulses) and can be brought into full functioning activity.
This is done by right thinking and not by breathing exercises (pranayamas).
The etheric (astral) or vital body is the force and permeates every point of the dense vehicle. According to the force emanating, so will be the physical body. On proper breathing (pranayama) depends the physical body.
Both the astral and mental bodies are material and just as material in their own way as is the dense physical body.
The three bodies are not regarded as principal and so, in a cosmic sense, the three sub-planes are regarded as non-existing and illusory.
The building of a shell leads to separativeness and necessitates the eventual overcoming of the habit of shell-building and a shattering and consuming of the shells already built.
During the life period of the Universe, matter is ever in a condition of incessant internal motion. The sub-stages and the sub-planes of matter are interpenetrated. Finer worlds interpenetrate the coarser.
Everything in the solar system is in a state of flux, as is everything in the universe, and the vital energy (prana) circulates throughout the entire system.
An endless circulation of prana goes on that has not a conceivable beginning nor a possible end.
Akash, fohat, or divine energy is also known on different planes as aether, air, fire, water, electricity -- prana.
Matter and aether are synonymous terms, and this aether is found in some form or other on all planes and is but a gradation of cosmic matter; when undifferentiated it is called mula-prakiti, primordial matter, and, when differentiated, just matter.
The mysterious life-force, the ten organs of perception and action, and the five domains of sensations are the constituents of changing matter.
The rare and the subtle matter exists in space in forms uncognizable by us, outside the limits of the \Universe. This matter is in a peculiar state, the ocean of virgin matter -- mula-prakriti.
The more refined and rarefied a form, the better a receiver of prana will it be.
The word spirit is applied to that undefinable, elusive, essential impulse which is the cause and is that rhythmic inflow of vital energy.
What this something is who can say, though we call this unknown, unknowable something by various names.
Spirit and matter arise together -- it is not that spirit exists and then miraculously produces matter to limit and bind itself, but spirit and matter arise in the eternal simultaneously as a mode of its being, a form of self-expression of all.
There are no two separate somethings, but only two drawn apart but inseparate aspects. The gulf appears when we think of spirit as wholly immaterial and a body as wholly material.
The inseparable half of Purusha (consciousness) is prakriti (matter).
The gunas (qualities) have nothing to do with Purusha.
Consciousness and matter effect each other because they are two constituents of one whole: both appearing as they draw apart, both disappearing as they unite; and a relation exists between them.
The three aspects of divinity, the central energy or spirit, the coordinating force or Soul (Self), and that which these two use and unify, are in reality one vital principle manifesting in diversity.
One life manifesting through matter produces a third factor which is consciousness. It is a relation between spirit and matter and is the soul of all things. It penetrates all substance.
So it will be found that in the world such organisms as the kingdoms of nature have their separate life and functions, yet are so correlated by a vast intricate sensory system which is called the soul of all things and is the underlying consciousness.
Sattvic manas is in a state of mano-nirodh. Sattvic manas is very near Purusha. The impression that they are one and the same is the conjunction that is wrong. This is ignorance.
Mano-nirodh -- the restraint of all the internal and external, subjective and objective wandering of the mind, till it ceases to be what it appears to be and attains to its true being.
How long is the process of restraint to be carried? The shastras say, so long only should it be restrained till it attains dissolution in the heart.
The cause of bondage is not prakriti, but prakriti evolved into manas.
Mind could be vast, all-pervading; but when bound to a body it is bondage.
Consciousness dealing with a definite time, however long or short, with a definite space, however vast or restricted, is individual, that of a concrete being, however gross or subtle, a lord of many universes or any part of the universe, a solar logos or a man.
Consciousness is one, and apparently separate consciousnesses are truly one.
Consciousness ceases when the sense of limitation ceases.
Manas and buddhi are two powers of that Light (two states of higher mind); the former is the power to see things as separate, the latter the power to see things as a unity, all beings related to all.
Consciousness is free and unlimited, and can function in form and out of form. Manas is consciousness in motion.
Consciousness is not an organic conception and has nothing to do with the psychological conception of energy.
Consciousness changes and each change appears in the matter surrounding as a change in vibration.
Memory can only refer to those denser worlds in which perception travels through time slowly enough to yield a sense of past, present and future.
Our chief illusion about memory is that it decays with time. It decays from lack of nourishment. Memory is generated by consciousness/awareness, it must be nourished by consciousness/awareness.
Every celestial influence or stimulation which is brought to bear upon man is thus his opportunity and his danger.
Electronic radiations from heavenly bodies produce molecular changes in the Earth's atmosphere, while such molecular changes in the atmosphere in turn produce changes in the organic bodies dwelling thereon.
Light is matter in electronic form or state and is gradually transmuted back to molecular state on planets and further to cellular state. All life on Earth is a condensation of electronic and solar radiation through the ages.
From the galactic center emerge cosmic rays. They are distinct from and of higher frequency than any known to originate in the Sun.
Each physical structure has a fundamental note or vibration.
Develop intentional suffering through doing small things you do not like to do voluntarily.
In the first place, voluntary suffering is only conceivable for him who has long ago freed himself from involuntary suffering, i.e. from fear, worry, slavery to others' opinion, and so on.
Between the great things that we cannot do and the small things we will not do, the danger is that we shall do nothing.
Temptation is a state in which a struggle is taking place within you as to what will take control.
The Lord does not accept responsibility for any man's merit or demerit.
Men are deluded because in them wisdom (of the Divine Fragment) is submerged in ignorance (of body and mind).
The Lord of this Universe has not ordained activity or any incentive thereto, or any relation between an act and its consequences. All this is the work of Nature.
I am the same to all beings; I favour none and I hate none, but those who follow my laws devotedly, they live in Me and I in them.
The duty that of itself falls to one's lot should not be abandoned, though it may not be pleasant.
If this is my day of harvest, in what fields have I sowed the seeds and in what unremembered seasons.
`Master who did sin, he or his forbear, for he was born blind?'
Neither hath this man sinned nor his forbear, but that the law of God should be made manifest in him,' said Lord Jesus Christ.
It is necessary to consider what is right action, what is wrong action and what is inaction; for mysterious is the law of action.
Commit a wrong unto others, and therefore unto yourself, and for that wrong committed must you knock and wait a while unheeded at the gate of the blessed.
Nothing that is law is not reason.
There is no such thing as luck. Everything is a result of some cause.
Destiny never intended man to be a helpless victim of circumstances or the self-hypnotised tool of an affirmed but undeveloped divinity. Man is intended to be the intelligent arbiter of his own destiny and a conscious exponent of his own innate divinity, of the God within.
The word `spiritual' has a wider significance: an inclusive endeavour towards human betterment, uplift, understanding, tolerance, religious inclusiveness and all trends of thought which concern the esoteric development of the human being.
Let us use the word spiritual to signify the world of light and beauty, of order and of purpose.
The spiritual life is not bought by giving of alms but by giving of self to God.
Spiritual poverty is selfless use of everything one has. I speak not of the absence of things, for absence is not detachment.
True non-attachment does not consist in separating one's self from one's possessions, but in possessing as if one did not possess.
The objects of sense turn away from him who is abstemious. Even the relish for them is lost in him who has seen the Truth.
The self-controlled soul who moves among sense objects, free from either attachment or revulsion, he wins eternal peace.
The happiness of solitude is not found in retreats. It may be had even in busy streets.
Non-attachment is indeed the preliminary of real intuitional knowledge.
The inner severance from the affliction of misery is spirituality. It should be practised with a heart that refuses to be depressed.
This (the non-attached) man is known by some signs. He never complains, never makes excuses, when accused he leaves facts to vindicate him, there is nothing he wants on Earth or in Heaven but what God wills. He is joy itself, he is knowledge without study, richness without money, joyful company without companions.
He works in the world of men, he loves, comforts and serves; he pays no attention to his personality, likes, dislikes and attachments. He stands as a rock of strength and a strong hand in the dark to all whom he contacts.
You give but little when you give of your possessions. It is when you give of yourself that you truly give.
Can earthly things seem important to him who is acquainted with the whole of eternity and the magnitude of the Universe?
Set thy sin beneath thy feet, and thy virtue beneath thy sin.
To vaunt oneslf is to fail of self-respect.
Give up all externalities and show -- even show of piety.
We are to practise virtue, not possess it.
Conceal your good deeds as you conceal your evil deeds.
Learn to know all, but keep yourself unknown.
Use your light, but dim your brightness.
Spiritual progress is not hampered by material things, but we should not be dominated or enslaved by them. Do your duty in all things and have proper perspective.
Both wealth and poverty are divine gifts; wealth is corrupted by forgetfulness, poverty by covetousness.
If there is one law which determines one's duty done before God, it is the law of self-support. Where is the dignity of man in an outstretched hand?
While man lives in a physical body, he is held accountable for an existence of usefulness.
Where there are boundaries of any kind, where a field of influence is circumscribed and where the radius of contact is limited, there you have a prison.
Some lives are prisoners and know it; others are prisoners and know this not. The clue to suffering lies right here in the realm of the mind.
Where there is a realization of worlds to conquer, truths to be learnt, there you will have a festering sense of limitation.
With the problem of limitation is closely linked that of liberation.
Into the prison house of form enter all that live; some enter consciously and this we call manifestation, and some enter unconsciously and we call this birth.
The principle of limitation controls the scope of an incarnation, sets its measure and rhythm.
Easy is the descent into the world of death. But to retrace one's steps, that is the task, that is the labour. Such death and rebirth is the law of the cosmos.
Human life is the opportunity for conscious readjustment to a higher order of consciousness, and yet without losing the best that human life has to offer of work, love, family, and national, civic and social relationships.
...That service in the world is as imperative as prayer, and that a balanced life requires spiritual resource for mental achievement.
Realize that the whole purpose of creation was to produce a body capable of responding to higher and higher degrees of consciousness, the germ of which was breathed into human form.
To be free from attraction and repulsion, from the wish to take or to avoid, to enter into the mood of complete impartiality -- is the art.
The `past' is a memory,
The `future' is a supposition,
The `present' is passed before we can apprehend it.
The only present therefore is presence and must necessarily be what we are.
Such presence then is inevitably outside time and must be intemporality
We can conceive infinity, vaguely perhaps, as unlimited space and intemporality as unlimited time, both continuing forever. But try as we may, we are unable to conceive the absence of space and the absence of time, and we have no words for these conceptual absences. `Outside space and time' is also a vague expression of poetical character, and `spaceless' and `timeless' have no significance that is capable of visualization.
It is the absence of concept for a condition in which neither space nor time exists that is significant, for existence itself, as such, is dependent on the concept of space and time. This has a profound significance since what is objectifiable is conceivable.
What then is non-objectifiable? Anything and everything imaginable is conceived in imagination. What then could be inconceivable? Only that which is conceiving is itself inconceivable -- for only what is conceiving cannot, when conceiving, conceive itself, any more than an eye can see its own looking! This would mean that what we are is conceiving, and so what we are or I am is inconceivable! The phenomenal absence of space-time, being inconceivable, must therefore be our own phenomenal absence!
Objective existence is phenomenal appearance only, non-objective existence is unaware of existing; objective existence is figuration in mind, non-objective existence only `exists' as such mind, cognizing everything except what is cognizing; objective mind is self-elaboration in space-time, non-objective mind is phenomenally void. By whom is this being said? By mind attempting to see itself -- and not succeeding. `It' cannot cognize what is cognizing.
What you are trying to see is what is looking! What else could there be for you to see?
Who is trying to worship what!?
----
Prajna is Light, seeking out darkness, and never finding it; for wherever Light is darkness vanishes, since darkness is absence of the presence of Light. Prajna is knowing, seeking ignorance, and never finding it; for wherever knowing is ignorance vanishes, since ignorance is absence of the presence of knowing. Prajna is functioning, seeking repose, and never finding it; for wherever functioning is repose vanishes, since repose is absence of the presence of functioning. Prajna is subject, seeking object and never finding it; for wherever subject is object vanishes, since object sought is absence of the presence of subject seeking.
The electric current is what is implied by `prajna'; where sentient beings are concerned, it is the act of action, the living of life. Nobody knows what electricity is, nobody knows what prajna is. Both terms are just names given to concepts that seek to describe in dualistic language a basic `energy' that enables appearance to appear and being to be. When contact is made, we know it as light and as life; when contact is broken we know it as darkness and as death. But the source of energy remains intact and intangible. Are we the hot resistance and the light, or the cold resistance and the darkness -- or are we the vital current itself?
----
Communion with your godhead (Chittie) will give you the understanding or inseeing which you seek according to your capacity to receive it. The most infinite Divinity to which we can pray is but a speck of the Absolute of All.
If we clearly apperceive the difference
Between direct perception in Whole-mind
And relative comprehension by reasoning
In mind divided into subject and object,
All the apparent mysteries will disappear;
For that will found to be the key
Which unlocks the doors of incomprehension.
If I am awake, who could there be to know it if you are the dreamer and are asleep?
Here, in Me living as one, O Arjuna! behold the whole universe, movable and immovable, and anything else that thou wouldst see.
----
`Death' is nonsense: what is there to die? Life! How could life die?
Can light become darkness? Light can only cease to be apparent.
Who could there be to be born, to be lived, to be killed?
What could there be to be brought into existence or to be taken out of existence?
Where could there be a space in which objective existence could be extended?
When could there be a time in which objective existence could have duration?
----
The better is one thing, the other more pleasant. Both these are attached to the soul.
The better is one thing, the other more pleasant. Both approach man.
Having examined them from all sides, the wise man discriminates between them and chooses the better rather than the more pleasant.
Wisdom -- that is the balance of the opposites.
Which at first seems like poison but afterwards acts like nectar -that pleasure is pure, for it is born of wisdom.
As a fire is shrouded in smoke, a mirror by dust, and a child by the womb, so is the Universe enveloped in desire.
Desire or aversion is a movement of the psyche towards or away from some object thought of as outside itself. It is thus a movement essentially of ignorance.
Both attraction and repulsion are desire, and they are the two great motor energies in life into which all desires are ultimately resolvable.
Desire works through the senses, the mind and reason, and with their help destroys wisdom and confounds the Soul (self).
The love and hate which are aroused by the objects of sense arise fromnature. Do not yield to them. They only obstruct the path. Oft times, denying yourself pleasure you do/ the desire in the recess of your being.
Insight into the futility of all personal desires is one thing; their utter eradication and uprooting from the heart is another.
Longing to experience again pleasure and avoid pain is the germination of the desire (pattern) aspect. In the lower stages of evolution, the impulses are registered but not recognized, since no method, mental observation, or analysis and judgment are possible. The force of desire is propulsive, not directive. Thought it is that adds the element of direction.
What physical craving is to the body, unlicensed imagination is to the mind.
Thoughts create feelings, repeated feelings create function, and functions become automatic habit.
A star does not cease to be when it sinks below the western horizon and becomes invisible. Our thoughts do not cease to have effect on us simply because we cease to think about them.
There are deep unseen currents that sway the thoughts and deeds of men.
The waste matter of thought remains unexcreted and unexpressed and turns in his mind, giving rise to morbid imaginings, fixed ideas, and recurring thoughts and dreams which he cannot escape. These are mental poisons. There are physical, intellectual and emotional poisons; there are poisonous drugs, insects and men. One may suffer from a poisoned finger, a poisoned mind or a poisoned society.
Call yourself conscious, reasoning beings, talk about God, about eternity and other high matters, but in what chaos is this being we call man?
Man has thought of conquest as relating only to his external world, unmindful of the sea of forces raging within his innermost life.
My Lord, what is it that drives a man to sin, even against his will, as if by compulsion?
I want to know why apparently intelligent individuals so often behave in certain ways against their own inclinations and wishes.
The mind of him who is trying to conquer it is forcibly carried away in spite of his efforts by his tumultuous senses.
Neither is it possible in any way to hold the senses firm by mere strength.
And what may be called `will' in man is nothing but the resultant of his wishes. It is idle to speak of will in a man who is the slave to objects around him. So long as attraction and repulsion determine the path, all talk of freedom is empty and foolish.
Not to be driven by life requires a special inner development.
Why live so automatically that it is enough to have a key for winding up the spring of your mechanism?
If you are so unguarded within, if all your inner life depends on outer events -- then indeed you have no individuality.
Intellectual function wants to read, motor function wants to ride, digestion wants to eat, metabolism wants heat or cold, passion wants its own satisfactions... Such are the many `I's of man, demanding, contradictory and confusing. With restless movements (not only physical, but emotional and mental too) you cannot be anything. You talk when you cease to be at peace with your thoughts.
Sit for one hour alone, relax physically, emotionally and mentally.
Look on your associations as if they belonged to someone else.
All our actions follow the line of least resistance to the pressure of outside circumstances.
All our knowledge, which is merely information, may be valuable or worthless. It is equally easy to lose it because it is poured into us like some liquid.
Positive identity is to exist according to one's own essential pattern, to be what one is. Negative identity is essential non-existence; it is to be what one is not. Being what one is not, and confronted with being what one is, is to have constant internal conflicts. This state of will is called fear.
Fear is negative identity. It is neither a state of consciousness nor a mode of being. Fear is an evil force in all the worlds to which it can penetrate. It is closely allied to other negative forms such as anxiety, suspicion, jealousy, anger, arrogance, and grasping. Fear is contagious.
We must learn to put aside the inhibiting forces of wrong thinking, to become hermetically sealed towards negative emotions; they lead one back to the state of prehistoric man.
If you were to take away all the negative emotions from most people, they would not have any source of happiness left. Doubt is a mild form of expressing something stronger and more
dangerous -- failure.
I stay my haste, I make delays;
For what avails this eager pace?
I stand amid the eternal ways,
And what is mine shall know my face.
Because I had forsaken unity with Thee,
Because I, fool, had made my body Me,
Because I did not know Thee who didst dwell in me,
Therefore I wandered through raging hells,
Because I threw away my very Self,
I, therefore, was in chains.
You have not known what you are, you have slumbered upon yourself all your life, your eyelids have been the same as closed most of the time, what you have done returns already in mockeries. The mockeries are not you; underneath them and within them I see you lurk.
There is no obligation on anyone to tread the path.
We indulge in no particular religion but shall absorb the good in all.
Our obsession for God (as in the Ramakrishna episode) should be there, and yet we should be practical. Our affair with God should be extremely private and confidential, and our love and heart-pouring feelings should be known to no one. Yet at other times we should keep our balance, be of this world and not be emotional and non-practical.
There is no relation of a master (or guru) and disciple between us. Bondage to a guru, even if described as spiritual and sweet bondage, is maintained by chains as heavy as those suffered in any other category of servitude.
Affective fixation on the personality of a master, teacher or guru is a serious obstacle to liberation -- the person of the liberator becomes the gaoler.
No occult teaching is ever wasted. All bear fruit in good time. Out of a thousand seeds sown by the farmer, only a hundred manifest life. But the work is intended for those hundred.
The urge of development is from within the organism itself.
It is impossible to give a person anything that could become his or her inalienable property without work on his or her part. One can only show and direct. Understanding comes only with work.
A working understanding of any law is gained only by study and practice.
Presume not God to scan, the proper study of mankind is man.
I wish to give you one word to ponder well, to observe, to honestly check your heart, mind and actions and see how far you can honestly say that you have lived accordingly: `Mental integrity'. Look at it from all angles and diagnoze your past and present and mold your future. If you find any weaknesses of the mind and heart, be honest and prepare to put an end to it.
The aspirant has to achieve `mental integrity'. This is an unending work -- millions of past memory patterns lurk, especially of ego, sex, possessions and sensitiveness. Be never satisfied with your work, i.e. believe that you have done all that had to be done.
Conscience is not an organ -- I mean a physical organ -- and yet it is something that exists. We may term it the computer not known to man. Conscience, I would say, is the voice of the soul, waiting to be heard if only we do not try and run away from it. This questioning of it helps us build mental integrity, as each action or thought would be performed intentionally and not automatically.
Work is on the subtle emotional and intellectual side -- the side that is not seen easily but is to be `caught' time and again each day.
How does work differ from practices and methods? It is like knowing the law differing from practising the law. How many indulge in the very things they condemn in others? For we may not act or do as those whom we condemn. But subtle linking thoughts, if honestly traced, would be found equally to be condemned within us.
There is not a moment without some duty. One must work beyond one's capacity daily to change one's level of being.
Time does not wait for anyone. One outgoing breath does not guarantee the next incoming breath. Are there things worthy for which your body and mind be put to unnecessary use? Ask yourself why so many false thoughts arise without any valid reason?
You better not compromise yourself -- it is all you have got. He who excuses himself, accuses himself. Give no excuse -- make none, accept none; be ruthless with yourself and
with your own failures and make more determined efforts.
On the path we do not make use of simple mathematics, for if the aspirant were not to practise one day in a week of seven days, he has not practised for the other six days also, for 7-1=0. ...On this quest, the basis of regularity is increased to 30-1=0 and is eventually perfected to 365-1=0.
The guarantee of arrival is practice.
Discipline must precede philosophy.
Talk does not cook rice.
The journey of a thousand miles starts with a first small step. True glory lies not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall. Decay, very often, looks like progress, and progress like decay.
Unlearn whatever you may have learnt uptil now. Begin afresh.
On this path of experience, the first requisite is a clear, unspoiled mind, free from all notions, from wrong thinking, and of all worldly knowledge. Also free from all influence of church, temple, mosque and synagogue; free from all scriptures and shastras, not even influenced by science. No pre-conceived idea is required -- `Bhikshu, empty the boat!' If we are ready and worthy of knowing higher truths we shall come across them; nothing can keep them away from us. But remember to `empty the boat' -- no instructions are given to keep this or throw that away, just empty the boat completely!
No one can come face to face with the `Truth'. Those who dare to ask `What is God or Reality?' should be ready to receive shock after shock that numb the mind and ultimately disintegrate it and leave one `naked' and `exposed' to equally `naked truth'. Such who dare may try! But for those who wish to piously believe in `heaven and hell', `sin and punishment', `prayers and rites', `shastras and scriptures', those who dare not throw overboard `all and everything', for them are these lines not written. Beware, this is not a state of atheism, but one of fresh receptivity.
If Thou were here before I was, I am not here at all;If I am not a part of Thee, there is no such God at all. If I say He is within me, the Universe is ashamed; if I say that He is without (outside) me, it is falsehood. He makes the inner and the outer worlds to be in(di)visibly one.
What Thou art, thus may I be.
God cannot know himself without me.
Jesus said: If the flesh has come into existence because of the spirit,it is a marvel; and if the spirit has come into existence because of the body, it is a marvel of marvels. But I marvel at how this great wealth has made its home in this poverty.
If we place God beyond the limits of Existence, then we cannot invoke the Power of God within Existence! If God intervenes by way of miracles, then the laws of Existence are violated; if He does not intervene at all, then the struggle is doomed to end in disaster. It is not a satisfying picture of God sub-side the hazards of Existence -- but we cannot know beyond Existence.
If the power of corruption (degeneration) had no check, then by the very nature of its contagion the Universe is doomed.
Nothing that exists has of itself the power to change or modify its own nature. It is bound to the laws of recurrence. It does not follow however that Existence is static; but only under the impulse of essence forces can it progress.
The beginning and end of beings are unknowable. We see only the intervening formations.
That which is not shall never be; that which is shall never cease to be.
Nothing can live eternally but that which hath lived from all eternity.
That is perfect, this is perfect, perfect comes from perfect. Take perfect away from perfect, the remainder is perfect.
Whatever that lives is full of the Lord-claim-nothing.
They that know and can distinguish between the shapes of Nature and the seeds of Nature shall by the first cross over the perishable in safety, and shall passing beyond the second attain immortal life.
Every thing has in its heart the seeds of an inevitable taking\passing away.
The son of man hath nowhere to lay his head.
Thus from the first differentiation of Prakriti proceeds mahat, or the germ of individuality.
Where there is mind, there is the world of multiplicity.
Things do exist apart from the mind, but it may still be argued that they do not exist independent of the act of cognizing.
Manifestation is mind; and so is Voidness too.
Enlightenment is mind; and so is blindness too.
Mind is the cause of bondage and liberation of man. Expressed in objects it leads to bondage, free from objects it leads to liberation. The brain (the thinking instrument) of man is the cause both of his bondage and of his liberation. Its attachment to the objects of sense is the reason for his bondage and its separation from the objects of sense is the means of his freedom. He who is capable of this discriminating knowledge should therefore restrain his brain and meditate upon para-brahman to attain liberation.
The Mind, as it is in itself, is free from disturbances, ills and follies, and every thought is thus of transcendental knowledge and wisdom... Being so, there is no use establishing anything. When erroneous thoughts do not arise, this is precept (shila). When erroneous thoughts are no more, this is meditation (dhyana). When the non-existence of erroneous thoughts is perceived, this is transcendental wisdom (prajna).
How, with the conception of a perfect, just and merciful Deity, can be reconciled the existence of the imperfect and the evil? The perfect never becomes the imperfect. It become nothing. It is all spirit and matter, strength and weakness, knowledge and ignorance, peace and strife, bliss and pain, power and impotence. The All includes manifestations and non-manifestations. The puzzle arises when man asserts separately one of the inseparable pairs of the opposites.
'Evil' per se is not existent, as is good. Only in time and space are there varying states of consciousness producing differing outer effects.
Those who recognize this objective world (the organism's world) and yet find their minds (the deeper brain below the top soil) undisturbed are in true dhyana. But to let the mind (the brain's top soil) move on by itself, and perform its inexhaustible functions, this is the way to be in accord with the mind essence.
Whenever there is more of dhyana and less of prajna it helps the growth of ignorance! The more you practise dhyana (meditation), the more the chances of ignorance increasing. Many pass fruitless years in attempts to calm their minds and bring them to rest in meditation. Many do not advance because they stick to penances and particular exercises, while they neglect the love of God, which is the end.
When one's mind is thus known in its nakedness, this doctrine of seeing the Mind naked, this self-liberation, is seen to be exceedingly profound. Seek, therefore, thine own wisdom within this. It is a vast deep.
The brain of a thinking man does not exceed in size the brain of a non-thinking man in anything like the proportion in which the mind of a thinker exceeds the mind of a savage.
Nothing is viewed clearly or objectively, but always through an intervening haze of likes and dislikes, partialities and prejudices, obsessions and idiosyncrasies. How can we ever hope to see things and persons as they are unless we can get rid of this quotient of personal error? How indeed can we obtain any more knowledge, and more especially that kind of knowledge that comes through intuition or direct perception rather than through the intellect, unless the personality can be got out of the way; otherwise, such intuition is only a manifestation of our own prejudices and biases and nothing more than that.
Basic Acceptance
Dear aspirant, you have decided to tread the path; examine well your sub-conscious motives that have prompted you to arrive at this decision. For remember, “above all else, to thine own self be true, for then canst be false to any man.”
Once again to caution you that there is no obligation for anyone to tread the path; and when you do ultimately; also remember, there should be no blind adherence to any presentation of Truth.
Remember the word “presentation”, for Truth ultimately is to be individually realized - all else is a weak attempt to convey - and this is called presentation. Beware of statements like, “This is the Truth”- And when traveling along the path also remember that if you give up nothing, it will give you nothing.
Never make the mistake, that almost every aspirant makes, the practices and methods are not something to be practiced only in the seated hours of meditations. It must be a way of life - something old must die in an aspirant and something new must be born.
Above all do not harbour any pious attitude of “grace” from God. There is no intimation here that the Diety would perform the miracle independent of man’s efforts - the aspirant’s efforts - “tireless endeavour” and “fiery aspiration”.
Keep this law of God and Nature ever in mind - “if there be one law which determines one’s duty done before god; it is the law of self - support.
Finally remember - man does not have to persuade God, but he does have to persuade himself to enter into communion with the substance of life.
Basic Understanding:
Read and understand the deeper meaning of the following simple lines, “If thou were here before I was, I am not here at all; If I am not a part of Him, there is no such God at all.”
Further, “before the eyes can see, they must be incapable of tears. Before the ear can hear, it must have lost its sensitiveness, before the voice can speak in the presence of the masters, it must have lost the power to would. Before the Soul (Self) can stand in the presence of the masters, its feet must be washed in the blood of the heart.”
These are few lines which the aspirant may try to understand - for to realize these lines, many births are essential; the greater the effort - the better and quicker the result.
Basic Misconceptions:
Let the aspirant know that on the path it is more difficult to unlearn the “path” theories and ancient ideas and superstitions and wrong beliefs, then to learn the new practices and methods.
Above all remember the path has nothing to do with Religion - whatever it is - for religion is mere formality.
It be noted that not alone in life but also on the path there is nothing like “something for nothing.”
There is no promise that someone else will atone for you or that any prophet or God incarnate will wash our sins.
The human race has come to maturity. Inculcate a sense of responsibility - blame or merit belong to the disciple - aspirant.
That Bhakti alone will show the way - No! Hard, intelligent and endless efforts at self improvement will take the aspirant high on the road to realization.
Indeed the immense love of Krishna and of Christ - is there to help but in that case the aspirant has to melt in Him.
An aspirant becomes a disciple - like an infant becoming a grand - father
Basic routine and practices:
The path has objective and subjective ways - there are methods and practices external and internal - all equally necessary and important.
On the path we do not make use of simple mathematics - for if the aspirant were not to practice one day in a week of seven days - he has not practiced for six days for on the path seven - minus - one is zero.
Remember that the physical body is the temple within which resides the supreme God - not as believed to be in high heavens - keep the body therefore spotlessly clean both within and without - in flesh, blood, nerves, heart - mind.
Let practices of the eight step of yoga - yama - niyama - asana - pranayama - pratyahara - dharna - dhyana - Samadhi - be a way of life.
Give no excuses - make none - accept none - be ruthless with yourself and with your own failures and make more determined efforts.
Basic work:
How does work differ from practices and methods?
It is like knowing and law differing from practicing the law. How many indulge in the very things they condemn in others; for we do not or may not act or do as these whom we condemn - but subtle linking thoughts - if honestly traced would be found equally to be condemned.
Work is on the subtle side of emotional and intellectual side - the side is not seen easily but is to be “caught” time and again each day.
The aspirant has to achieve “mental integrity”. This is an unending work - millions of past patterns lurk - especially of ego - sex - possessions - sensitiveness Be never satisfied with your work - i. e. believe that you have done, all that had to be done.