Recall the kind of feeling you have when someone praises you, when you are approved, accepted, applauded. Now contrast that with the kind of feeling that arises within you when you look at the sunset or the sunrise or Nature in general, or when you read a book or watch a movie that you thoroughly enjoy. Get the sense of this feeling and contrast it with the first, namely, the one that was generated within…
Are you listening, as most people do, in order to confirm what you already think? Or are you listening in order to discover something new? That is important. It really doesn’t matter whether you agree with what I’m saying or you don’t. Agreement and disagreement have to do with words and concepts and theories. They don’t have anything to do with truth. Truth is never expressed in words. Truth is sighted suddenly, as a result…
The first thing I want you to understand (if you really want to wake up) is that you don’t want to wake up. No one does. The first step to waking up is to be honest, to admit to yourself that you don’t like it. You don’t want to be happy. You don’t want to make happiness first and foremost in your life. We want other things first. Or to put it more accurately: We…
Spirituality means waking up. Most people, even though they don’t know it, are asleep. They’re born asleep, they live asleep, they marry in their sleep, they breed children in their sleep, they die in their sleep without ever waking up. They never understand the loveliness and the beauty of this thing that we call human existence. Waking up is unpleasant, you know. You are nice and comfortable in bed. It’s irritating to be woken up….
Once, many years ago, I discovered something that revolutionized my life. I met a rickshaw driver in Calcutta named Ramchandra, who, although he was dying of a painful disease and was so poor that he had to sell his skeleton before he died, still he was a man filled with faith and interior joy. He was a man who had reincarnated himself during this life. I suddenly realized, I was in the presence of a…
Come home to yourself. Observe yourself. Self-observation is such a delightful and extraordinary thing. After a while you don’t have to make any effort, because, as illusions begin to crumble, you begin to know things that cannot be described. It’s called happiness. There’s the story of the disciple who went to the master and said, “Could you give me a word of wisdom? Could you tell me something that would guide me through my days?”…
