26. Personality, an Obstacle

Weak desires can be removed by introspection and meditation, but strong, deep-rooted ones must be fulfilled and their fruits, sweet or bitter, tasted.

Yes, first hearing, then remembering, pondering and so on. As you are now, the personality is only an obstacle. Self identification with the body may be good for an infant, but true growing up depends on getting the body out of the way. Normally, one should outgrow body-based desires early in life.

As long as you do not see that personality is mere habit, built on memory, prompted by desire, you will think yourself to be a person - living, feeling, thinking, active, passive, pleased or pained.

Question yourself, ask yourself. 'Is it so?' 'Who am I'? 'What is behind and beyond all this?' And soon you will see your mistake. And it is in the very nature of a mistake to cease to be, when seen.

A life lived thoughtfully, in full awareness, is by itself Natural Yoga.

Living in spontaneous awareness, conscious of effortless living, being fully interested in one's life - all this is implied. There are so many who take the dawn for the noon, a momentary experience for full realisation and destroy even the little they gain by excess of pride.

Humility and silence are essential for a seeker, however advanced. Only a fully ripened jnani can allow himself complete spontaneity. The inner fruit must ripen. Until then the discipline, the living in awareness, must go on. Gradually the practice becomes more and more subtle, until it becomes altogether formless.

The world itself is the playground - the totality of all contacts actualised in consciousness. The spirit touches matter and consciousness results. Such consciousness, when tainted with memory and expectation, becomes bondage. Pure experience does not bind; experience caught between desire and fear is impure and creates karma.

The memory of the false cannot but give rise to the true. There is nothing wrong with memory as such. What is false is its content. Remember facts, forget opinions. The fact is What is perceived in pure awareness, unaffected by desire.

It is not what you live, but how you live that matters.

The idea of enlightenment is of utmost importance. Just to know that there is such possibility, changes one's entire outlook. All the great teachers did nothing else. A spark of truth can burn up a mountain of lies. The opposite is also true; The sun of truth remains hidden behind the cloud of self-identification with the body.

The very hearing of it, is a promise of enlightenment. The very meeting a Guru is the assurance of liberation. Perfection is life-giving and creative. Jnani looks at himself without indulging in self-definitions and self-identifications. He is completely rid of himself, like a man who is very rich, but continually gives away his riches. He is not rich, for he has nothing; he is not poor, for he gives abundantly. He is just propertyless.

Similarly, the realised man is egoless; he has lost the capacity of identifying himself with anything. He is without location, placeless, beyond space and time, beyond the world. Beyond words and thoughts is he.