Observations placeholder

2: Joy of Self-Realization

Janaka said: 2.1 I am now spotless and at peace-- Awareness beyond Consciousness. All this time I have been duped by illusion.

2.2 By this light alone the body and the universe appear. I am Everything or Nothing.

2.3 Seeing there is no universe or body, by grace the Self is revealed.

2.4 As waves, foam and bubbles are not different from water, so the universe emanating from Self is not different from Self.

2.5 Look closely at cloth, you see only threads. Look closely at creation, you see only Self.

2.6 As sweetness pervades sugarcane juice, I am the essence of creation.

2.7 Not seeing Self, the world is materialized. Seeing Self, the world is vanished. A rope is not a snake, but can appear to be.

2.8 I am not other than Light. The universe manifests at my glance.

2.9 The mirage of universe appears in me as silver appears in mother-of-pearl, as a snake appears in a rope, as water appears on a desert horizon.

2.10 As a pot returns to clay, a wave to water, a bracelet to gold, so will the universe return to Me.

2.11 I am wonderful indeed-- beyond adoration. I cannot decay nor ever die, though God and all the universe should perish to the last blade of grass.

2.12 I am wonderful indeed-- beyond adoration. Even with a body I am One. I neither come nor go. I am everywhere at once.

2.13 I am wonderful indeed-- beyond adoration. I am astounded at my powers. The universe appears within me but I do not touch it.

2.14 I am wonderful indeed-- beyond adoration. I am everything thought or spoken, and have nothing.

2.15 In Reality, knowledge, the knower, and the knowable do not exist. I am the transparent Self in which through ignorance they appear.

2.16 Looking at One and seeing many is the cause of all misery. The only cure is to realize what is seen is not there. I am One—aware, blissful, immaculate.

2.17 I am unbounded Awareness. Only in imagination do I have limits. Reflecting on this, I abide in the Absolute.

2.18 I am neither free nor bound. The illusion of such things has fallen into disbelief. Though I contain creation, it has no substance.

2.19 Having seen for certain that this universe and body is without form or substance, I am revealed as Awareness alone. Imagination has no place here.

2.20 The body exists only in imagination, as do heaven and hell, bondage, freedom, fear. Are these my concern? I, who am pure Awareness?

2.21 I see no differences or separation. Even the multitudes appear as a single formless desert. To what should I cling?

2.22 I am not the body. I do not have a body. I am Awareness, not a person. My thirst for life bound me to a seeming of life.

2.23 In the limitless ocean of Myself the winds of the mind roil the myriad waves of the world.

2.24 But when the wind subsides in the limitless ocean the ark of personhood is swallowed up, along with the universe it carries.

2.25 And how wonderful it is! In the limitless ocean of Myself, waves of beings arise, collide, play for a time, then disappear--as is their nature.