Behind My Hand

Repost I had to be away from the Ashram for nearly two months and when I returned I saw Sri Cohen in a much worse condition and confined to a wheel-chair. His talk was no longer coherent: "See, Ganesan, I am maimed. Yet, the management has suddenly shifted me to a room on the seventh floor and there is no water there. What can I do?" - "They say they have given me an exclusive room for myself, but see, in the night nearly 12 people sleep here, squatting around me." - "Don't think there is only one Kannan (servant), There are nine Kannans, all looking alike!" I cried on seeing his pathetic condition and told Him: "Mr. Cohen! You are the most intelligent sadhak I have met. Why are you talking so incoherently?" He then adjusted himself and squarely looked at my face and said: "When the body becomes old, you lose control over it. And so over the mind! So, don't give any importance to how the body or mind behaves. They are not 'me&#

The Guru you have in mind, one who gives you information and instructions, is not the real Guru. The real Guru is he who knows the real, beyond the glamour of appearances. To him your questions about obedience and discipline do not make sense, for in his eyes the person you take yourself to be does not exist, your questions are about a non-existing person. What exists for you does not exist for him. What you take for granted, he denies absolutely. He wants you to see yourself as he sees you. Then you will not need a Guru to obey and follow, for you will obey and follow your own reality. realise that whatever you think yourself to be is just a stream of events; that while all happens, comes and goes, you alone are , the changeless among the changeful, the self- evident among the inferred. Separate the observed from the observer and abandon false identifications. Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj in I Am That, p. 169 

The natural state is not a 'thoughtless state' -- that is one of the greatest hoaxes perpetrated for thousands of years on poor, helpless Hindus. You will never be without thought until the body is a corpse, a very dead corpse. Being able to think is necessary to survive. But in this state thought stops choking you; it falls into its natural rhythm. There is no longer a 'you' who reads the thoughts and thinks that they are 'his’. U. G. Krishnamurti in The Mystique of Enlightenment.

M.: The birth of the ‘I-thought’ is one’s own birth, its death is the person’s death. After the ‘I-thought’ has arisen the wrong identity with the   body arises. Thinking yourself the body, you give false values to others and identify them with bodies. Just as your body has been born, grows and will perish, so also you think the other was born, grew up and died. Did you think of your son before his birth? The thought came after his birth and persists even after his death. Inasmuch  as you are thinking of him he is your son. Where has he gone? He  has gone to the source from which he sprang. He is one with you. So long as you are, he is there too. If you cease to identify yourself with  the body, but see the real Self, this confusion will vanish. You are eternal. The others also will similarly be found to be eternal. Until  this truth is realised there will always be this grief due to false values arising from wrong knowledge and wrong identity. -Ramana Maharshi in Talk 276

Vichara is the highest flight of Bhakti. Bhakti is the highest flight of Vichara.

Belief is the final resort of those who have given up the search.

You are the god of your world and you are both stupid and cruel. Let God be a concept -- your own creation. Find out who you are, how did you come to live, longing for truth, goodness and beauty in a world full of evil. Of what use is your arguing for or against God. when you just do not know who is God and what are you talking about. The God born of fear and hope, shaped by desire and imagination, cannot be the Power That is, the Mind and the Heart of the universe.  - “I Am That” - Nisargadatta Maharaj