🧡 SRIMAN NARAYANA

"There is no spiritual practice that makes you realise the Self. There is the practice that makes you abandon the illusion. That helps illusion dissolve because there won't be anyone there giving attention to it. The spiritual practices are not about realising the Self, they are about letting go of illusion.

Spiritual practice is about making you more simple, less complex.
More simple, more simple, until Silence. From complete noise to complete Silence."

Sri Ramakrishna Paramahansa.

The truth established in the Vedas, the Puranas and the Tantras is but one Sat-cit-ānanda (Existence, Consciousness, and Bliss. Supreme reality). In the Vedas it is called Brahman, in the Puranas it is called Rama, and in the Tantras it is called Shiva. One Sat-cit-ānanda is called Brahman, Rama and Shiva.

As many as are the waves of the sea by Dadu Dayal

As many as are the waves of the sea,

so many are the desires of the mind.

Stilling them all, one sits with contentment

holding the thought of the One

in his self.

As in the presence of a magnet the iron

is drawn,

So do thou attach thy senses, mind

and dispositions to the One alone.

When one discovers the true seat

of the mind, then all regions come

to his sight.

When he brings back all five senses

to that one point, then the secrets

of the holy scriptures are revealed

to him.

The fickle mind wanders in the four

directions. Bind it with the instructions

of the Master,

And bring it into the company

of the Saint, then will it be united

with the Supreme Lord, O Dadu.

Making millions of efforts, many were

consumed by death, but the mind

continued to run in all ten directions.

Only with God's Name as the barrier

will it stop; no other way is there.

Let the mind be the horse, the vigilant

aspirant the rider, and one-pointed

attention the bridle;

Using the Word as a whip,

some wise, holy aspirant will reach

the goal.

Vanquish the mind by means

of the Name; discipline it through

the teachings of the Saints.

Remove whatever duality is there, then

will there be bliss within, O Dadu.

Once the mind is attached to God, how

can it go anywhere else?

Like salt dissolves in water, it enters

into the Lord, O Dadu.

— Hafiz (1315-1390)

“I am in love with every church And mosque And temple And any kind of shrine Because I know it is there That people say the different names Of the One God.”

Caitlin Moran

At 19, I read a sentence that re-terraformed my head: “The level of matter in the universe has been constant since the Big Bang.”

In all the aeons we have lost nothing, we have gained nothing - not a speck, not a grain, not a breath. The universe is simply a sealed, twisting kaleidoscope that has reordered itself a trillion trillion trillion times over.

Each baby, then, is a unique collision - a cocktail, a remix - of all that has come before: made from molecules of Napoleon and stardust and comets and whale tooth; colloidal mercury and Cleopatra’s breath: and with the same darkness that is between the stars between, and inside, our own atoms.

When you know this, you suddenly see the crowded top deck of the bus, in the rain, as a miracle: this collection of people is by way of a starburst constellation. Families are bright, irregular-shaped nebulae. Finding a person you love is like galaxies colliding. We are all peculiar, unrepeatable, perambulating micro-universes - we have never been before and we will never be again. Oh God, the sheer exuberant, unlikely face of our existences. The honour of being alive. They will never be able to make you again.

—The Venerable Bede History of the English People, 731 AD

It seems to me that the life of man on earth is like the swift flight of a single sparrow through the banqueting hall where you are sitting at dinner on a winter’s day with your captains and counsellors. In the midst there is a comforting fire to warm the hall. Outside, the storms of winter rain and snow are raging. This sparrow flies swiftly in through one window of the hall and out through another. While he is inside, the bird is safe from the winter storms, but after a few moments of comfort, he vanishes from sight into the wintry world from which he came. So man appears on earth for a little while – but of what went before this life, or what follows, we know nothing.

David Frawley

We do not live in a secular universe, we live in a mystic universe pervaded by a Divine Consciousness and all-pervasive Self-awareness. Nature is not secular but sacred, holding mysterious deities everywhere. Every place, creature, mountain, river and flower is a temple.

Loren Eiseley

“Perhaps a creature of so much ingenuity and deep memory is almost bound to grow alienated from his world, his fellows, and the objects around him. He suffers from a nostalgia for which there is no remedy upon earth except as it is to be found in the enlightenment of the spirit--some ability to have a perceptive rather than an exploitive relationship with his fellow creatures.”

First Mundaka - Chapter 1

1

Om. Brahma, the Maker of the universe and the Preserver of the world, was the first among the devas. He told His eldest son Atharva about the Knowledge of Brahman, the foundation of all knowledge.

2

The Knowledge of Brahman about which Brahma told Atharva, Atharva, in olden times, told Angir. Angir taught it to Satyavaha, belonging to the clan of Bharadvaja, and the latter taught it, in succession, to Angiras

3

Saunaka, the great householder, approached Angiras in the proper manner and said: Revered sir, what is that by the knowing of which all this becomes known?

4

To him he said: Two kinds of knowledge must be known-that is what the knowers of Brahman tell us. They are the Higher Knowledge and the lower knowledge.

5

Of these two, the lower knowledge is the Rig-Veda, the Yagur-Veda, the Sama-Veda, the Atharva-Veda, siksha (phonetics), kalpa (rituals), vyakaranam (grammar), nirukta (etymology), chhandas (metre), and jyotis (astronomy); and the Higher Knowledge is that by which the Imperishable Brahman is attained.

6

By means of the Higher Knowledge the wise behold everywhere Brahman, which otherwise cannot be seen or seized, which has no root or attributes, no eyes or ears, no hands or feet; which is eternal and omnipresent, all-pervading and extremely subtle; which is imperishable and the source of all beings.

7

As the spider sends forth and draws in its thread, as plants grow on the earth, as hair grows on the head and the body of a living man-so does everything in the universe arise from the Imperishable.

8

Brahman expands by means of austerity, and from It primal matter is produced; from matter, Prana; from Prana, mind; from mind, the elements; from the elements, the worlds; thence works, and from the works, their immortal fruits.

9

For him who knows all and understands everything, whose austerity consists of knowledge-from Him, the Imperishable Brahman, are born Brahma, name, form, and food.

~ The Collected Works of Robert Adams Volume 1.

I can assure you,if you truly surrender, you will always be taken care of. You will always be guided and directed to where you have to be, to do those things that are necessary for you to do at this time.

You become spontaneous. You learn to live in the eternal now. You always bring your mind back, your thoughts back, to the present. You remember to catch your thoughts when you start thinking.

Your thoughts will always think about the past, and worry about the future. This is the nature of your mind. Yet you keep remembering to bring it all back to the now. You stay centered in the now. You surrender everything, and you keep inquiring “Who am I? How did this body arise?" The body, the I thought, the mind, the ego, are all the same. Soon you will awaken and you will understand that there is only the self. There never was anything else.

Your real nature is like a universal screen. On that universal screen planets are being born, universes come and go. The earth is only a small dot on the screen. You are that screen. You are nothing else. You are Parabrahman, all pervading. You are self-contained consciousness, absolute reality, emptiness, nirvana, sat-chit-ananda, I am that I am. That is your real nature.

Therefore make up your mind. Whom shall I follow? Shall I follow my ego, my emotions and what appears to be real, or shall I begin to ignore those things and dive into my self, becoming free? The choice is yours.