16. Desirelessness, the Highest Bliss

Liberation is of the self from its false and self-imposed ideas.

Liberation is not contained in some particular experience, however glorious. All experience is time bound. Whatever has a beginning must have an end.

Why not turn away from the experience to the experiencer and realise the full import of the only true statement you can make: 'I am'?

Just keep in mind the feeling 'I am', merge in it, till your mind and feeling become one. By repeated attempts you will stumble on the right balance of attention and affection and your mind will be firmly established in the thought-feeling 'I am'. Whatever you think, say, or do, this sense of immutable and affectionate being remains as the ever-present background of the mind.

Correct your attitude to your body and leave it alone. Don't pamper, don't torture. Just keep it going, most of the time below the threshold of conscious attention.

The highest happiness, the greatest freedom is to be free from desires. Desirelessness is the highest bliss.

Your aims are small and low. They do not call for more. Only God's energy is infinite - because He wants nothing for Himself. Be like Him and all your desires will be fulfilled.

The higher your aims and vaster your desires, the more energy you will have for their fulfilment. Desire the good of all and the universe will work with you. But if you want your own pleasure, you must earn it the hard way. Before desiring, deserve.

To earn a livelihood some specialised knowledge is needed. General knowledge develops the mind, no doubt. But if you are going to spend your life in amassing knowledge, you build a wall round yourself. To go beyond the mind, a wellfurnished mind is not needed.

Distrust your mind, and go beyond.

There are many starting points - they all lead to the same goal. You may begin with selfless work, abandoning the fruits of action; you may then give up thinking and end in giving up all desires. Here, giving up is the operational factor.

Or, you may not bother about any thing you want, or think, or do and just stay put in the thought and feeling 'I am', focussing 'I am' firmly in your mind. All kinds of experience may come to you - remain unmoved in the knowledge that all perceivable is transient, and only the 'I am' endures.

By all means attend to your duties. Action, in which you are not emotionally involved and which is beneficial and does not cause suffering will not bind you. You may be engaged in several directions and work with enormous zest, yet remain inwardly free and quiet, with a mirror-like mind, which reflects all, without being affected.

Your own self is your ultimate teacher.

The outer teacher is merely a milestone. It is only your inner teacher, that will walk with you to the goal, for he is the goal.

That which sees sensations and perceptions, thoughts and feelings, desires and fears, memories and expectations, and the nothing too, is the inner teacher. He alone is, all else only appears to be. He is your own Self, your hope and assurance of freedom; find him and cling to him and you will be saved and safe.

Self-knowledge helps you to understand what you are not and keeps you free from false ideas, desires and actions. What helps you to know yourself is right. What prevents, is wrong. To know one's real self is bliss, to forget - is sorrow.

The witness is the door through which you pass beyond. Seeing the false as the false, is meditation. This must go on all the time. Deliberate daily exercise in discrimination between the true and the false and renunciation of the false is meditation.

Establish yourself firmly in the awareness of 'I am'. This is the beginning and also the end of all endeavour.