Author: John Richards

The Guru liberates you. He initiates you by saying, ‘your true nature is like my own’. He gives you the mantra, not taking you as male or female, but as the consciousness that listens.

Chant your mantra. With faith in the one who has given you the mantra, your consciousness will become stronger. As a result, there will be no weakness in your actions. The greater the faith in the Guru, the earlier the success. If you take your Guru as a human being, your consciousness will harass you. One who follows this faithfully will enjoy liberation in this very body.

When consciousness realizes itself, it is called the grace of the Guru. One must be the proof of the Guru’s words. THE INITIATION WITH MANTRA ESTABLISHES A SPECIAL RELATIONSHIP WITH THE GURU. Hence, you must have faith in the Guru. One could die anytime. Then how can he neglect the Guru’s words?

Silently repeat your mantra. Meditation should be on one’s own nature. Slowly the mind will become pure. The formless consciousness will be uncovered and your true nature will be understood.

If you remember what you have heard now, there is nothing in the world that can harm you. Why? It is because you have understood the meaning of the Self. The birthless one is never born. Still, consciousness is created. The impression of the body goes very deep; it is difficult to make it lighter. The remedy for this is the mantra given by the Guru and faith in the Guru.

The meaning of the mantra is your consciousness. You should make it known to you. While reciting the mantra, whatever you feel, let it be felt. It will go away. The import of the mantra is your beingness. In order to realize it, become more and more quiet.

When the mind-connection is severed you will see the void. To purify the mind one must remember the mantra all through the waking hours. Then your mind will come under your control. When you pay attention to your true nature the mind will disappear, bringing in the whole.

THE MIND SURRENDERS TO YOU IF YOUR INCANTATION OF THE MANTRA IS CONTINUOUS. IT TELLS YOU WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW.

The mind gets modified and behavior changes with repetition of the mantra. The body serves as the food for this consciousness. The mind flows from prana, the vital force. When you realize all this, at the last moment you will clearly witness that you do not die but prana leaves the body. The enlightened person has no hopes, no desires and no passions.Therefore he has no death.

Chanting the mantra, meditation and bhajans (singing devotional songs) bring worthiness beyond imagination. If a great difficulty arises, worship the Guru with devotional songs and surely it will be warded off. Due to devotion to the Guru, one gets limitless power. The seed sown by the Sadguru has sprouted; it is the vital force, chaitanya incarnate. Remembering the mantra constantly is meditation.

When you ripen with the mantra that has been given to you, spiritual knowledge will start expressing itself. Such is its power. You will do nothing. The realization will talk through you. The power of the mantra will increase and it will be understood that the Guru-state is within you.

Your word is of the nature of God. Your speech will sprout with repetition of the mantra and your word will become God’s word. The Guru’s word is final. It does not change. This must be your conviction. It should be remembered constantly.

As your word becomes pure, knowledge will flow through it. The words flow out of your mind according to your worthiness. When you chant the mantra, the vital force takes shape according to the meaning of the mantra.

Your beliefs will give you relevant experiences. Keep reciting your mantra. It will enable you to understand your true identity. You will come to know that you are not the body. For Self-realization it is necessary that consciousness and the vital force be united. This happens by reciting the mantra. It has to be done with love and a sense of urgency. In fact it is the vital force that recites the mantra. A persistent commitment is needed. There is no part-time spiritual effort.

Continue repeating the mantra. Even without repeating, one must know that it is going on within. Ever since the body was born, this incantation has been going on.

You become attached with the known and, hence, you do not notice the knower. He is beyond consciousness. He is revealed by the recitation of the Guru-mantra.

People repeat God’s name in various ways, as they are taught. According to my experience if the mantra is recited with proper breathing, the mind becomes silent and samadhi ensues.

The Guru reveals to the disciple his own worthiness. He initiates the one who has surrendered. The meaning of the mantra is ‘I am Atman, I am not the body’. This is like the name giving ceremony for the newborn.

The name (mantra) given by the Guru is proof in itself of the Guru’s word. The name given by parents is a proof of death.

The more we seek Self-knowledge, the purer the mind will be. One should forget body-consciousness and keep the mind busy with the mantra. Focus attention on your true nature.

Remembering the mantra is necessary to destroy wrong thinking in the mind. After impurity drops off, consciousness will be clear like a jewel in the palm. After dismissing all words, the true nature, which is formless and nameless will become silent. When the mind is purified, consciousness is seen clearly. Consciousness means Sattva guna, which is self-sensing.

By virtue of meditation, the feeling ‘I am so-and-so is lost. To make meditation successful, be faithful to it. Concentrate on the Self with the energy of prana. When the energy is arrested, the consciousness becomes one with it and samadhi ensues. The knowledge received from the books has to be tested with one’s own experience.

To meditate on the Self is possible only with the grace of the Guru. Such meditation is unique, not commonly found in the world. The guru liberates you. He initiates you by saying: “Your true nature is like my own”. He gives you the mantra, not taking you as male or female, but as the consciousness that listens.

As it is difficult to meditate on your own consciousness, worship it as the Guru. You can think of the Guru as standing on your back, with light spreading all over. But you cannot imagine that you, yourself are standing behind you. The early stages of mediation require support of dualism. Your identity has no body-form. Everything will become clear when you realize that there exists nothing other than you.

Chanting the mantra, meditation and bhajans (singing devotional songs) bring worthiness beyond the imagination.

REMEMBERING THE MANTRA CONSTANTLY IS MEDITATION.

The world is vast, but you will realize through meditation that it dwells inside your atomic consciousness. It is love. If you want to go back to the Source, stop wandering, and go on meditating.

Meditate in such a way that you even forget that you are meditating. Truth will reveal itself when one forgets oneself. We are not what we know. We are prior to knowing. One who has understood this has no need to sit in meditation.

Meditation means holding onto consciousness. The consciousness that appears in the morning is the holy sight of God. Everything is known through consciousness. When the heart is pure, one says, ‘The Guru is the Self, He is everything’.

Meditate on how you were before the body-form. As long as what you see and feel affects you, you have not achieved knowledge of the Supreme Self.

Remembering our consciousness is meditation. It is the same as the feet of the Guru. It leads to Self-realization. That which realizes is the same as the holy feet of the Sadguru. Only through meditation will you realize how exactly you are. When consciousness becomes pure ignorance, it is called samadhi.

Excerpt from Meditations With Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

You get used to your body and you love it. Hence, while meditating, if you experience being in a formless state, out of the body, you get scared. The word is Veda and equated to God by the name Vedonarayan. The Vedas are forms of the mind. Some utter the name of a Goddess, without knowing where She is.

The sudden appearance of the astral body is responsible for your sense of being. That body is hidden in the physical body. Its quality is the memory ‘you are’. Slowly, five types of knowledge appear from it.  Just as a child grows, the consciousness develops and grows up to the level of an incarnation. If the flow from it is good, it will go in the right direction.

In order to attain our original worthiness, the right background and attitude is needed. That is the purpose of all spiritual practices, which are recommended. By doing your mantra chanting, you reach up to the astral body. The space contains everything and outside is the pure unstained Self. Your birth is merely the appearance of ‘I am’. The property of the astral body juices is pure consciousness or our own true being. It should be observed and remembered accordingly. You did not notice the space prior to your birth. The space appears from the astral body itself and all other scenes follow thereafter.

The religious services are to clear the unwanted things and to propitiate the pure Self. One must worship and take care to maintain its progress. Thereby, you lose your body-identity, which means meeting Ishwara. That is to act as if there is no body. Just as sugar is sweet and the ocean salty, there is love in the body. There is memory because of the astral body. It is full of various scenes.

The disciple who considers God as greater than the Guru, cannot progress. Visiting a Sage is far better than going to a temple. Do you consider yourself to be a Sadhu any time? One who is immersed in devotion and goes to sleep, full of love for Self, is a Sadhu. One who leaves the state of an individual soul and merges into the original soul is a Mahatma, which means ‘a great soul’. The word is our main instrument. When you utter the name of God, that word becomes God. When you mention the name of a holy place, that word becomes holy. By repeating the mantra, it manifests through your speech. In due course, your word will be God’s word. The Guru’s word doesn’t change and there is no further appeal on it. You must be sure about the truth of the Guru’s words and remember them constantly. When your behaviour is as per your words, they gather more importance. Thereafter, the word becomes Vedonarayana. Never utter any word which will hurt anyone. The words of the ignorant have sharpness, which can hurt, but Sadguru’s words have the sharpness of Self-knowledge. If you understand the Sadguru properly, your words will have great importance. But your body-identity and certainty about death come in your way. When your words become pure, true knowledge will manifest through them. The thoughts and words that come in the mind are as per your worthiness. Due to constant remembrance of mantra, you will see visions as desired. It is the function of prana, which manifests in those forms. Just as the river Ganges purifies those who bathe in her waters, your words will have the power of clearing listeners’ troubles.

To turn dust into gold means to tell a mortal individual soul that it is immortal. This is the main purpose of the various religious services. One has to be very careful to live as per the spiritual advice. Do your activities in such a way that bad habits are minimized. Never imagine a body for the inner Atman, but remember It as body-less and surrender everything to It. When God consumes food, He leaves the leftovers for you; with this attitude you should take your food. This remembrance will make you holy.  It means one doesn’t eat without first offering it to God. Without food there is no prana, and without prana there is no mind, intellect and individual soul. We are alive and active only because of the food juices. Without prana, how can there be Atman? The prana and Atman always co-exist in a body and when prana departs Atman is aware of it. One who remains as per the Guru’s advice has no death. The worshippers become one with Atman. Others have to face the illusion of death.

Prana comes and goes, but not the Atman. Atman is prior to space, which It contains and knows. This is known to only the rare one. Some people call prana as consciousness-God. When you accept someone as your Guru, you must follow Him fully. But how many really follow?

Atman has become everything on Its own. Then how can you desire fruit for any action? Even the worship is done by Hari himself, of Himself. The words acquire a sharp edge of their own. Hence, when your word becomes pure, do not use words which can harm others. Here, I am talking about the utterances of one who chants mantra round the clock. Don’t do anything forcefully, desiring anything. Be energetic in chanting the mantra, without any desires. The purpose of chanting should be to forget yourself and not to achieve anything. Then you will know that all happening is spontaneous. The creation of body, its education and training, all happen spontaneously. There is no reason to be proud of anything that is spontaneous.

Self-Love, The Original Dream: Shri Nisargadatta Maharaj’s Direct Pointers To Reality