Self-realization definitely comes first. The mind cannot go beyond itself by itself. It must explode.
Study the prison you have inadvertently built around yourself.
When you are free of the world, you can do something about it. As long as you are a prisoner of it, you are helpless to change it. On the contrary, whatever you do will aggravate the situation.
Exactly as the shadow appears when light is intercepted by the body, so does the person arise when pure self-awareness is obstructed by the “I am the body” idea. And as the shadow changes shape and position according to the lay of the land, so does the person appear to rejoice and suffer, rest and toil, find and lose, according to the pattern of destiny.
Leave alone your desires and fears and give your entire attention to the subject, to he who is behind the experience of desire and fear. Ask: who desires? Let each desire bring you back to yourself.
I cried when I was born and I shall die laughing.
The world is made of rings. The hooks are all yours. Make your hooks straight and nothing can hold you.
What problems can there be which the mind did not create? Life and death do not create problems; pains and pleasures come and go, experienced and forgotten. It is memory and anticipation that create problems of attainment or avoidance, colored by like and dislike. Truth and love are man’s real nature, and mind and heart are the means of its expression.
Know yourself as beyond space and time – in contact with them only at the point of here and now, otherwise all-pervading and all-containing, unapproachable, unassailable, invulnerable – you will be afraid no longer. Know yourself as you are – against fear there is no other remedy.
When the shadow is seen to be only a shadow, you stop following it. You turn around and discover the sun which was there all the time – behind your back!
You cannot be alive, for you are life itself.
It may seem arduous, but it is easy if you are earnest, and quite impossible if you are not. Everything yields to earnestness.
See everything as emanating from the light which is the source of your own being. You will find that in that light there is love and infinite energy.
The world is full of contradictions; hence your search for harmony and peace. These you cannot find in the world, for the world is the child of chaos. To find order you must search within.
When you love the Self and nothing else, you go beyond the selfish and the unselfish. All distinctions lose their meaning. Love of one and love of all merge together in love, pure and simple, addressed to none, denied to none. Stay in that love, go deeper and deeper into it, investigate yourself and love the investigation, and you will solve not only your own problems but also the problems of humanity. You will know what to do.
If you want peace and harmony in the world, you must have peace and harmony in your hearts and minds. Such change cannot be imposed; it must come from within.
Trace your misunderstandings and abandon them, that is all. There is nothing to seek or find, for there is nothing lost. Relax and watch the “I am.” Reality is just behind it. Keep quiet, keep silent; it will emerge or, rather, it will take you in.
It does not matter much what happens, for ultimately the return to balance and harmony is inevitable. The heart of things is at peace.
In reality there are no persons, only threads of memories and habits. At the moment of realization, the person ceases.
The limited is bound to be painful and pleasant in turns. If you seek real happiness, unassailable and unchangeable, you must leave the world with its pains and pleasures behind you.