76. To Know that You do not Know, is True Knowledge

There is the body. Inside the body appears to be an observer and outside - a world under observation. The observer and his observation as well as the world observed all appear and disappear together. Beyond it all, there is void. This void is one for all.

Assiduously investigate everything that crosses your field of attention.

With practice the field will broaden and investigation deepen, until they become spontaneous and limitless. Wrong ideas and desires leading to wrong actions, causing dissipation and weakness of mind and body. The discovery and abandonment of the false remove what prevents the real entering the mind.

Word refers to a state of mind, not to reality. The river, the two banks, the bridge across - these are all in the mind. Words alone cannot take you beyond the mind. There must be the immense longing for truth, or absolute faith in the Guru. Believe me, there is no goal, nor a way to reach it.

You are the way and the goal, there is nothing else to reach except yourself. All you need is to understand and understanding is the flowering of the mind. The tree is perennial, but the flowering and the fruit bearing come in season. The seasons change, but not the tree. You are the tree.

You have grown numberless branches and leaves in the past and you may grow them also in the future - yet you remain. Not what was, or shall be, must you know, but what is. Yours is the desire that creates the universe. Know the world as your own creation and be free.

Find to whom this cruel world appears and you will know why it appears so cruel.

Your questions are perfectly legitimate, but just cannot be answered unless you know whose is the world. To find out the meaning of a thing you must ask its maker. I am telling you: You are the maker of the world in which you live - you alone can change it, or unmake it.

Find to whom this cruel world appears and you will know why it appears so cruel. Your questions are perfectly legitimate, but just cannot be answered unless you know whose is the world. To find out the meaning of a thing you must ask its maker. I am telling you: You are the maker of the world in which you live - you alone can change it, or unmake it.

If you stand aloof as observer only, you will not suffer. You will see the world as a show. a most entertaining show indeed. The cause of suffering is in the identification of the perceiver with the perceived. Out of it desire is born and with desire blind action, unmindful of results. Look round and you will see - suffering is a man-made thing.

The memory of the past unfulfilled desires traps energy, which manifests itself as a person.

When its charge gets exhausted, the person dies. Unfulfilled desires are carried over into the next birth. Self-identification with the body creates ever fresh desires and there is no end to them, unless this mechanism of bondage is clearly seen. It is clarity that is liberating, for you cannot abandon desire, unless its causes and effects are clearly seen.

I do not say that the same person is reborn. It dies and dies for good. But its memories remain and their desires and fears. They supply the energy for a new person. The real takes no part in it, but makes it possible by giving it, the light.

As long as one is conscious, there will be pain and pleasure. You cannot fight pain and pleasure on the level of consciousness. To go beyond them you must go beyond consciousness, which is possible only when you look at consciousness as something that happens to you and not in you, as something external, alien, superimposed. Then, suddenly you are free of consciousness, really alone, with nothing to intrude. And that is your true state.

Consciousness is an itching rash that makes you scratch. Of course, you cannot step out of consciousness for the very idea of stepping out is in consciousness. But if you learn to look at your consciousness as a sort of fever, personal and private, in which you are enclosed like a chick in its shell, out of this very attitude will come the crisis which will break the shell.