From ‘Hunting the 'I'’ by Lucy Cornelssen

To view Chidambaram, to be born in Tiruvarur, to die in Benaras, or merely to think of Arunachala is to be assured of Liberation

(Talks, 448)

‘What is the use of Self-Realisation?’

“Why should you seek Self-Realisation? Why do you not rest content with your present state? It is evident that you are discontent with the present state. This discontent is at an end if you realize the Self.”

(Talks, 487)

There is a better chance to catch it between sleeping and awaking. It is very important to try it, if you are serious in your hunting the ‘I’. …..Try at night just before you fall asleep to keep as the last thought your intention to catch as the first thing of all on waking in the morning the experience of your true ‘I’.

Another condition: You should take care not to awaken too abruptly such as by an alarm clock, and also not to jump headlong into your daily morning routine. The moment you awake, don’t stir, but remember your intention from last night.

You will succeed after a few attempts. And what is possible once even for a moment can be extended by practice.

Even a single effort to still at least a single thought even for a trice goes a long way to reach the state of quiescence.

Because the moment you are perceiving something and reacting on it, being interested or emotionally involved, positively or negatively, you have covered up the silent, neutral, pure, witnessing ‘I’ by the reactive, aggressive, personal ‘I’.

Accordingly the sadhana of hunting the ‘I’ includes the practice of attention to our own perceiving, with the purpose of cutting it short just before the stage of reacting sets in. in practicing this kind of detachment the seeker will soon get to a state of pure awareness, which is no longer ‘perceiving’.

To ‘perceiving’ in the customary meaning of the term belongs ‘grasping’, i.e. reacting; it has an object and is an act within time and space. Pure awareness has not object and is beyond time and space. It is the highest wakefulness without all the other characteristics of the waking state.

“…..Remain without thinking. So long as there is thought there will be fear.” (Talks, 202)

“What is meditation? It is the expulsion of thoughts. You are perturbed by thoughts which rush one after another. Hold on to one thought so that others are expelled. Continuous practice gives the necessary strength of mind to engage in meditation.

“….If one is fit for it one might directly hold the thinker, and the thinker will automatically sink into his source, namely Pure Consciousness. If one cannot directly hold the thinker one must meditate on God; and in due course the same individual will have become sufficiently pure to hold the thinker and sink into absolute Be-ing.” (Talks, 453)

“The most potent form of work is silence. However vast and emphatic the sastras may be, they fail in their effect. The guru is quiet and peace prevails in all. This silence is more vast and more emphatic than all the sastras put together …” (Talks, 398)

…….to think is not your real nature (Talks 184)