The game of the self

  The universe is the game of the self, which plays hide and seek forever and ever. When it plays 'hide,' it plays it so well, hides so cleverly, that it pretends to be all of us, and all things whatsoever, and we don't know it because it's playing 'hide.' But when it plays 'seek,' it enters onto a path of yoga, and through following this path it wakes up, and the scales fall from one's eyes.

- Alan Watts in “The World as Emptiness”.

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om vacadbhuve namah ॐ वचद्भुवे नमः

I translated this some years ago and it is still available here and there on tinternet . Someone recently asked about the mantra so here is a repost -  ॐ  वचद्भुवे नमः  om vacadbhuve namah the origin of the mantra "om vacadbhuve namaḥ" --------- Chapter 18, verse 10 of sri Ramana Gita - notes below - based on Ganapati Muni's 'gurumantrabhāshyam', also known as 'anubandham 2' (Sri Ramana Gita, Tiruvannamalai; 6th Edition, 1977; p.116) In this verse, Kavyakantha Ganapati Muni, as the Seer, reveals the bījākṣaras (seed syllables and/or letters) which make up Sri Ramana Maharshi's special mantra. This mantra reveals various correspondences and is said to be endowed with śakti (power). vedādi - beginning (and end) of the Vedas - bīja - 'om' pāka damana (indra) uttara - mightier than Indra, the subduer of the demon called Pāka (symbolic of the overcoming of ignorance). Sri Maharshi lies beyond even the Lord of the senses. Lord Indra...
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Breath and mind arise from the same place…

 Breath and mind arise from the same place and when one of them is controlled, the other is also controlled. As a matter of fact, in the quest method — which is more correctly ‘Whence am I?’ and not merely ‘Who am I?’ — we are not simply trying to eliminate saying ‘we are not the body, not the senses and so on,’ to reach what remains as the ultimate reality, but we are trying to find whence the ‘I’ thought for the ego arises within us. The method contains within it, though implicitly and not expressly, the watching of the breath. When we watch wherefrom the ‘I’-thought, the root of all thoughts, springs, we are necessarily watching the source of breath also, as the ‘I’-thought and the breath arise from the same source. - Ramana Maharshi, Day by Day with Bhagavan Sri Ramana Maharshi, 1.12.45
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The time has now come to turn inwards…

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