InnerRealisation

The Self is the one Reality that always exists, and it is by the light of the Self that all other things are seen.
We forget it and concentrate on the appearance.

The light in the hall burns both when persons are enacting something, as in a theatre, and when nothing is being enacted. It is the light which enables us
to see the hall, the persons and the acting.

We are so engrossed  with the objects or appearances revealed by the light, that we
pay no attention to the light.

In the waking or dream state in which things appear, and in the sleep state in which we see nothing, there is always the light of Consciousness or Self,
like the hall lamp which is always burning.

The thing to do is to concentrate on the seer and not on the seen, not on the
objects, but on the Light which reveals them.

~  GEMS
FROM BHAGAVAN
A necklace of sayings by
BHAGAVAN SRI RAMANA MAHARSHI
on various vital subjects
Strung together by
A. DEVARAJA MUDALIAR

Water poured into an empty vessel makes a bubbling noise, but when the vessel is full, no sound is heard.
Similarly,
the man who has not found God is full of vain disputation about His existence and nature. But he who has seen Him, silently enjoys the bliss Divine.
Common men talk ‘bagfuls’ of religion but do not practice even a ‘grain’ of it. The wise man speaks little, even though his whole life is religion expressed in action.

The nearer you come to God, the less you are disposed to questioning and reasoning. When you actually attain Him, when you behold Him as the reality,―then all noise, all disputations, come to an end. Then is the time for sleep, i.e., for enjoyment which comes in Samadhi, the state of communion with the Divine.

– Sayings of Sri Ramakrishna. (151,152 & 153).

🎮 Markus “Notch” Persson, the mind behind Minecraft, sold his game to Microsoft for $2.5 billion back in 2014. Despite the massive payday, he later opened up about feeling sad, isolated, and disconnected from others. In a series of honest tweets, he said that even while partying with celebrities in Ibiza, he had “never felt more isolated.” He also mentioned that after making sure his employees were well taken care of, many of them seemed to resent him.

🏡 He bought a $70 million mansion in Beverly Hills, filled with luxury features most people only dream of — but it brought him little happiness. He even shared that someone he cared for walked away because they were intimidated by his lifestyle.

💔 It’s a powerful reminder: money might buy comfort, but it can’t always buy connection or peace of mind.

When the question was raised whether the Buddha was an atheist, the Master said:

“He was no atheist; only he could not speak out his realizations. Do you know what ‘Buddha’ means?- To become one with ‘Bodha’, the ‘Supreme Intelligence-through deep meditation, to become Pure Intelligence Itself. The state of self-realization is something between ‘Asti’ and ‘Nasti’- ‘being’ and ‘non-being’. The ‘being’ and the ‘non-being’ are modifications of Prakriti. The Reality transcends them both.”

~ Bhagawan Sri Ramakrishna
(Sayings of Sri Ramakrishna, Chennai math publications, CHAPTER XVI JNANA, BHAKTI AND KARMA, 918)

At 40 years old, the eagle faces a life-or-death choice.
Its talons have grown too long and curved — they can no longer grasp prey.
Its beak becomes too bent — it can’t tear food.
Its chest and wing feathers are too heavy — they make flight nearly impossible.

Now the eagle has only two options:
die… or endure a long, painful transformation.

It retreats to its mountaintop nest.
There, it begins the brutal process of rebirth.

It smashes its beak against a rock until it breaks off.
Then it waits. Slowly, painfully, a new beak grows.
With that beak, it pulls out its old talons — one by one.
And once those regrow, the eagle uses them to rip out the heavy feathers from its chest and wings.

150 days of struggle. Pain. Isolation. Silence.

But when the process is over — it soars again.
Reborn.
Stronger.
Free.
And it lives on… for another 30 years.

Sometimes, to truly live — we must change.
Change often comes with fear, discomfort, even heartbreak.
But clinging to what no longer serves us — old habits, toxic patterns, outdated beliefs — weighs us down.
Only when we release the burden of the past can we rise into the future.

The pain of transformation is real — but so is the power of rebirth.

-ctto-

Direct association with a God-realized man of wisdom may be through personal contact or deep meditation. The important point is to attune your consciousness with his. When you are in tune with a great soul who loves God, that attunement gradually changes your life in a most wonderful way. Your will does not become enslaved; it becomes expanded. This is the difference between attunement to an ego-centred person and being in tune with a true guru. The magnetism of a God-realized soul will put you in tune with the magnetism of God.

~ Sri Sri Paramahansa Yoganandaji, “Journey to Self-Realization”

“Go to your room and shut the door – make no fuss. Sit down and talk to God. Practice meditation. Let your mind become so intense that the next time you sit to meditate you won’t have to make the effort; your mind will be fixed immediately on Him. If you don’t make a great effort to conquer physical and mental restlessness in the beginning, you will have difficulty every time you meditate throughout the years. But if you make that supreme effort at the start, you will soon be happy and free.”

– Sri Sri Paramahansa Yogananda
Book – Man’s Eternal Quest
Chapter – “Making Religion Scientific”, page 52

N. Maharaj: ” The Consciousness that appears in the body is Lord Narayana. 

Just as a honey bee sucks only the nectar, our attention should be on our Consciousness as our identity.

Narayana is present in the body irrespective of whether it is a man or a woman.

In spirituality the only support we have is of the Guru’s words.

‘Meditate on the timeless cosmic spirit Narayana, who is in you as your Consciousness.’

  It is both the cosmic spirit and the cosmic substance.

The body forms of the male and the female differ, but not the Consciousness, which is the same.

  In this world, there is no God and no true religion other than Consciousness. 

The Consciousness that listens to the Guru is identical to him. 

You can realise their unity through your faith in the Guru and by your insistence to know the Reality.  

Holding His words firmly as the truth is true religious austerity.

The first sign of spiritual progress is to see a diamond-like bright star when your eyes are closed. 

You must know the importance of the Brahmarandha centre in the crown of your head. 

Everything that is seen appears at this point.

When you listen to the Guru with full faith, you lose interest in the material world. 

That is also a sign of your progress.

Otherwise, what is the use of the Guru’s teaching and your listening? “

It is not good to think too much about your meditation practice. Just do it and keep on doing it until you have the firm conviction that nothing that appears in the mind has anything to do with the real you. If you pay attention to thoughts and feelings while you meditate and try to use them to evaluate how well or how badly you are meditating, you will never reach the ultimate silence. Instead, you will just get bogged down in mental concepts.

Some people are distracting their minds in so many different ways: for example, trying to make distinctions between things like turiya [the fourth state] and turiyatita [that which is beyond the fourth].

Reality is very simple: instead of trying to explain it or label it, just be it by giving up all identification with the body and the mind. This is the ultimate jnana. If you follow this path you need not get involved in any mental or philosophical complexities.

People are practicing all kinds of sadhanas to reach the Self.

Some of these methods are hindrances to jnana (meditation). Meditation can be another form of bondage if it starts from the assumption that the body and the mind are real. If this idea is not dropped, meditation will merely enhance it.

— Living by the Words of Bhagavan p. 307

CONVERSATIONS WITH ANNAMALAI SWAMI.

“There is no dharma outside the mind, and there is no mind outside the dharma.”
Explanation:
There is no dharma outside the mind: The mind here is the enlightened essence, the pure true mind. “Dharma” is all phenomena, things, and ideas in the world. This sentence means that all understanding and perception of the world arise from the mind. Without the mind, all dharmas become meaningless and have no real form.
There is no mind outside the dharma: All enlightenment or perception can only exist when there are dharmas. In other words, interacting with the world and experiencing life is the means to realize the truth. In short:
This saying wants to point out the inseparability between the mind and the dharma, between the observer and the observed object. The distinction is just an illusion of the mind; when one sees through this, one will attain enlightenment and be free from all bondage.