These thoughts from http://www.prahlad.org "I am That"
Reading this Q&A session, I lifted the following thoughts from the discourse, because they lit up another "AHA" moment for me.
1. Of all the innumerable steps there is only the last which brings you to your destination. Yet you will not consider all previous steps as failures. Each brought you nearer to your goal, even when you had to turn back to by-pass an obstacle. In reality each step brings you to your goal, because to be always on the move, learning, discovering, unfolding, is your eternal destiny.
2. The self understands that success and failure are relative and related, that they are the very warp and weft of life. Learn from both and go beyond.
3. Once you know with absolute certainty that nothing can trouble you but your own imagination, you come to disregard your desires and fears, concepts and ideas and live by truth alone.
4. In the great mirror of consciousness images arise and disappear and only memory gives them continuity. And memory is material -- destructible, perishable, transient. On such flimsy foundations we build a sense of personal existence -- vague, intermittent, dreamlike. This vague persuasion: 'I-am-so-and-so' obscures the changeless state of pure awareness and makes us believe that we are born to suffer and to die.
5. One must not draw conclusions without understanding all the factors. Above all, one must not make judgements of inferiority or superiority.
6.Youthfulness is more a matter of vitality than of wisdom.
7. But the self is beyond both, beyond the brain, beyond the mind. Why should a liberated man necessarily follow conventions? The moment he becomes predictable, he cannot be free. His freedom lies in his being free to fulfil the need of the moment, to obey the necessity of the situation.
8. Still there must be some way of making out who has realised (truth) and who has not?
He who knows himself has no doubts about it. Nor does he care whether others recognise his state or not.
9. You mean to say everybody's life is totally determined at his birth? What a strange idea. Were it so, the power that determines would see to it that nobody should suffer.
10. Man alone can destroy in himself the roots of pain. Others can only help with the pain, but not with its cause, which is the abysmal stupidity of mankind.
11. Not to know, and not to know that one does not know, is the cause of endless suffering.
12. Is there no salvation for the world?
Which world do you want to save? The world of your own projection? I am not aware of any world separate from myself, which I am free to save or not to save. What business have you with saving the world, when all the world needs is to be saved from you? Get out of the picture and see whether there is anything left to save.
13. The description and causation are the remedy for a disease caused by obtuseness and stupidity. Just like a deficiency disease is cured through the supply of the missing factor, so are the diseases of living cured by a good dose of intelligent detachment.
14. The root idea is: 'I am' .
Reading this Q&A session, I lifted the following thoughts from the discourse, because they lit up another "AHA" moment for me.
1. Of all the innumerable steps there is only the last which brings you to your destination. Yet you will not consider all previous steps as failures. Each brought you nearer to your goal, even when you had to turn back to by-pass an obstacle. In reality each step brings you to your goal, because to be always on the move, learning, discovering, unfolding, is your eternal destiny.
2. The self understands that success and failure are relative and related, that they are the very warp and weft of life. Learn from both and go beyond.
3. Once you know with absolute certainty that nothing can trouble you but your own imagination, you come to disregard your desires and fears, concepts and ideas and live by truth alone.
4. In the great mirror of consciousness images arise and disappear and only memory gives them continuity. And memory is material -- destructible, perishable, transient. On such flimsy foundations we build a sense of personal existence -- vague, intermittent, dreamlike. This vague persuasion: 'I-am-so-and-so' obscures the changeless state of pure awareness and makes us believe that we are born to suffer and to die.
5. One must not draw conclusions without understanding all the factors. Above all, one must not make judgements of inferiority or superiority.
6.Youthfulness is more a matter of vitality than of wisdom.
7. But the self is beyond both, beyond the brain, beyond the mind. Why should a liberated man necessarily follow conventions? The moment he becomes predictable, he cannot be free. His freedom lies in his being free to fulfil the need of the moment, to obey the necessity of the situation.
8. Still there must be some way of making out who has realised (truth) and who has not?
He who knows himself has no doubts about it. Nor does he care whether others recognise his state or not.
9. You mean to say everybody's life is totally determined at his birth? What a strange idea. Were it so, the power that determines would see to it that nobody should suffer.
10. Man alone can destroy in himself the roots of pain. Others can only help with the pain, but not with its cause, which is the abysmal stupidity of mankind.
11. Not to know, and not to know that one does not know, is the cause of endless suffering.
12. Is there no salvation for the world?
Which world do you want to save? The world of your own projection? I am not aware of any world separate from myself, which I am free to save or not to save. What business have you with saving the world, when all the world needs is to be saved from you? Get out of the picture and see whether there is anything left to save.
13. The description and causation are the remedy for a disease caused by obtuseness and stupidity. Just like a deficiency disease is cured through the supply of the missing factor, so are the diseases of living cured by a good dose of intelligent detachment.
14. The root idea is: 'I am' .
i am that i that i am.
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