When the sun sets, beautiful though it may be, billions of stars appear. The ego is but one sun. When that sun sets, there are endless suns, endless horizons beyond it.
Yoga is a removal of the conscious awareness from the world as you know it - the world that you've constructed - through your focus within your mind, to something else.
Trying to use the power of yoga to improve your life, this is a terrible mistake. Because all you are doing is binding yourself more. You're putting more of your attention into the transient world.
Observe your actions but be so busy that you never contemplate their possible effects. It is only this consciousness that leads to liberation. Everything else is illusion.
Illumination in the outer world is to be happy no matter what is going on. In the inner world, it's more ineffable. It's harder to express.
Self-realization: No ego, no desires, no weight problems, no tax forms, no death to die, no life to live.
Self-realization is a very quiet thing. It's not flashy. No one might see you light up a room. No one might observe anything
Self-realization is a strange term. You don't actually realize your 'self'. If anything, you go away. The caterpillar enters the cocoon of meditation: A butterfly emerges - metamorphosis.
If you are with a fully enlightened being, a jivan mukta, liberated soul, the quality of light is so clear, that you don't really know that it is there until later.
Self-realization is liberation. Liberation is self-realization.
Sri Krishna says whatever role we have in life, we have to play it to the hilt. We have to take it all the way. We have to assume responsibility for our role. To run away from it causes misery.
The directions for meditation that Sri Krishna gives are very exacting. He tells Arjuna exactly how to get past all the things that cause suffering and transient pleasure to something that is perpetual ecstasy. His directions are that exact.
Beyond mind, beyond time, beyond space there is immortal awareness.
There's a source, there's a perennial source from which all things come forth. We call it the Godhead, Nirvana, the Tao, enlightenment. It's big; it's bright; it's perfect, as are all of its children, as are we.
When all of the selves have been dissolved, you will enter into the super-conscious awareness. Then, you are free. Then, there is no suffering. Then, there is no attachment.
Consumer goods become enlightenment, relationships, anything! It doesn't really matter because infinity exists in everything. "Greater than the greatest, smaller than the smallest, the self dwells in the hearts of all," that is the Upanishads.
In the Bhagavad-Gita Krishna says: Arjuna you cannot avoid action. Everyone is stuck in the world of action. The world of action is forever.
Don't become a slave to success or failure, family, friends, possessions. If these things come to you in life, enjoy them, but fix your consciousness on that which does not change.
Mind delineates experience, and through the filter of mind, experience becomes something else; it becomes knowledge in tantra.
The more completely you concentrate, the stronger your mind becomes.
Sit down, keep your back straight, relax and have an object on which to concentrate; you might use a candle flame, a brightly colored rock, a yantra, which is a geometrical designed specifically for the practice of concentration.
Yantras are specific designs that have a great deal of power in them, as do mantras, which are words of power. Yantras are designs of power that tap into other levels of attention. They remind us of things in other worlds.
If one were blind, one can simply focus on a feeling.
Put on the music, and listen. Zazen means to sit, to listen. You're listening to enlightenment, to the universes, to the planes of mind.
If you keep focusing, gradually thoughts will become quieter and quieter, gradually the images will disappear from the mind. What is happening is the kundalini energy begins to radiate and rise, it causes the mind to be quiet.
