the world is the river of god

  

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In the depths of meditation, sages
Saw within themselves the Love
which dwells in the heart of every creature.

Deep in the hearts of all, love dwells, hidden
Behind the manifestations of law, energy,
and inertia. It is One. 

The world is the river of God,
Flowing from love and flowing back to love.
Those who perceive it in every creature
See that they are merged in love.

Wake up from this dream of separateness.
Know love to be enshrined in your heart always
As butter lies hidden in cream. 

Truly there is nothing more in life to know.
Meditate and realize that you
are filled with the presence of God. 


—The Shvetashvatara Upanishad
from the Eknath Easwaren version

 

.

Contemplate life as infinite, undivided, ever present, ever active, until you realise yourself as one with it. It is not even very difficult, for you will be returning only to your own natural condition. 

Once you realise that all comes from within, that the world in which you live has not been projected onto you but by you, your fear comes to an end. 

Without this realisation you identify yourself with the externals, like the body, mind, society, nation, humanity, even God or the Absolute. 

But these are all escapes from fear. 

It is only when you fully accept your responsibility for the little world in which you live and watch the process of its creation, preservation and destruction, that you may be free from your imaginary bondage.

—Nisargadatta Maharaj
I Am That

. 

When you know your Self others become that Self, 

the world becomes the Self, 

the tree becomes the Self, 

the sky becomes the Self, 

the planets becomes the Self, 

the whole universe is the Self. 

 

Therefore wherever you go, 

whatever you do, 

you are seeing the Self.

—Robert Adams

.

question

.

Who is this self on whom we meditate?

Is it the self by which we see, hear, smell and taste,
Through which we speak in words? Is self the mind
By which we perceive, direct, understand,
Know, remember, think, will, desire and love?

These are but servants of the Self, who is 
Pure consciousness.
The self is all in all.

He is all the gods, the five elements,
Earth, air, fire, water, and space; all creatures,
Great or small, born of eggs, of wombs, of heat,
Of shoots; horses, cows, elephants, men and women,
All beings that walk, all beings that fly,
And all that neither walk nor fly. Prajna
Is pure consciousness, guiding all. The world
Rests on Prajna, and prajna is Brahman.

Those who realize Brahman live in joy
And go beyond death. Indeed
They go beyond death.

Om shanti shanti shanti


—The Aitareya Upanishad, Part III
Eknath Easwaren version, 
Easwaren's Classics of Indian Spirituality, Book 2

.

we answer each other’s prayers

  

.

That which is awake even in our sleep,
Giving form in dreams to the objects of 
Sense craving, that indeed is pure light,
The one Self, containing all the cosmos.

As the same fire assumes different shapes
When it consumes objects differing in shape,
So does the one Self take the shape of every being. 

As the same air assumes different shapes
When entering objects differing in shape,
So does the one Self fill the shape of all beings.

The one Self multiplies into the heart of all beings,
Changeless amidst the transformations,
Conscious in all beings.
We answer each other’s prayers.

The Self is the light reflected by all.
We shine for each other.

Knowing the senses to be separate
from the Self, and the sense experience
To be fleeting, we grieve no more.

When the five senses are stilled, when the mind
Is stilled, when the intellect is stilled,
There is Yoga, the stillness of unity.

From the heart there radiates a hundred
and one vital tracks. One of them rises 
To the top of the head. This way leads to the truth.

The one love, not larger than the thumb,
Is ever enshrined in the heart. 

Know thyself to be the one Self.
Know thyself to be the one Self.


—The Katha Upanishad
from the Eknath Easwaren version



 

.

 

the idea of the good it(self

 

free course

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… the multiplicity of the perceptual world [unfolds]

as a seed bursts into a tree. 

—Eknath Easwaren

The Upanishads

(treasure)

.