Jnana Yoga. The yoga of discrimination and absorption.

Discrimination means seeing that which is real. And knowing that which is unreal.

That which is real … is that which is eternal, that which lasts forever.

That which is unreal — or less real we might say — is that which is transitory, temporal, that which does not last but erodes in time.

The yoga of knowledge is a way of reflection. The central question that we ask ourselves again and again is, “Who am I?” To find this out it is necessary to meditate, to still our thoughts, and to go within. We discover, ultimately, that we are the self, we are eternity.

There are a number of different approaches that we can use when we practice the yoga of knowledge. The first is elimination. What we do basically is to examine everything in existence and we come to see that everything that exists is transitory and is temporal. It doesn’t last. That which is left over is eternal and that is our real self. We look, for example, at nature and we see that the creations of nature — plants, animals, human beings, planets, universes — all the things in nature are transitory. They may endure for a moment or perhaps billions of years, but ultimately they fall away, they don’t last. If we look at absolutely everything in the universe and we eliminate all of those things, then that which is left over is God, is eternity, is the Self.

Another way the reflection of knowledge works is to see that there is nothing that is not God. That is to say, when we talk about self-realization, realizing the Self and coming to know that which is, we’re talking from the point of view of limitation of the mind. The mind perceives everything in a limited way. The mind is bound up with the ego. The ego has limited perception. Real knowledge or wisdom is to see that you are that — you are eternity. To talk about realizing the Self in a way is discontinuous because there is nothing but the Self, there is nothing but realization. There is really no one to realize the Self. The illusion of self-hood, of an ego, of a separate identity, is false. There is nothing but eternity — eternity has always been and eternity will always be. To realize the Self involves an action. It implies that there is something to realize, that there is time, that there is a temporal world, and that that Self is not yet realized, but will be realized by the actor through action. This is not the case. There is nothing that is not the Self. The Self does not have to be realized. The Self eternally is. There is nothing but the Self. This is the knowledge that comes through discrimination.

On the pathway of knowledge we view life as in a dream. We feel that all of this world is a dream. Just as when we go to bed at night and we fall asleep and we dream, and in the dream we can have experiences that seem to have a great deal of substance, they’re solid and visceral, but upon waking from a dream — even the most horrible nightmare which filled us with fear, the most beautiful dream that filled us with the greatest joy — all of these dreams fade away. In a dream we can be very thirsty and we can have a drink of water and in the dream our thirst will be satisfied, but upon waking from the dream both the thirst and the satisfaction fall away. Everything and nothing falls away. When we wake from the ignorance of this world, the dream of existence — the dream of perception, seeing our self as a separate body, as an ego, as an identity, as a person — this falls away. All of the experiences that we have ever had fall away. The ideas of life and death, of rebirth, of reincarnation, karma, God, truth, knowledge — all these things fall away. While we’re in the dream these are useful notions. But at the end of the dream, on the other side of the rainbow, there’s only light, undifferentiated reality. In that undifferentiated reality of the Self there is lasting joy, eternal bliss. All the phantoms of existence fall away.

To realize the Self the mind must become very strong. On the path of knowledge we develop the mind through constant discrimination. Discrimination means inner reflection. We have to look within the Self and fathom it. We have to constantly ask ourselves, “Who am I?” We have to remind ourselves that we are not the transitory body, we are not the person who is having experiences. We are not affected by action or inaction. We must constantly remind ourselves that we are eternity, we are infinite, we are beyond birth, we are beyond death. Birth and death are illusions; they are part of the dream. On waking from the dream we see that birth and death, the sense of self, the sense of others, all these things fall away. In the white light of eternity, there is only eternity.

The path of knowledge is said to be difficult in that it is the path of samadhi. For most persons there are three states of existence: the waking consciousness, when we’re awake and walking around in the dream; the dreaming consciousness, when we’re asleep but active in our dreams; and the deep sleep consciousness in which there are no dreams.

But for one who practices the yoga of knowledge there is a fourth state. This is the state of samadhi.

Samadhi is absorption in God. In the state of samadhi one has only the sense that one is perfect being. There is no awareness of separativity. There’s no sense of time, place or condition. Samadhi is the actual awareness of what you really are. There are two types of samadhi: salvikalpa and nirvikalpa samadhi.

In salvikalpa samadhi we are aware that we are God. That is to say, there’s no thought in the mind, there’s no sense of being a physical being, there’s no recollection of a past, there’s no concern for a future, there’s no sense of the senses or the objects of the senses. We are pure, undifferentiated consciousness, but still there is a subtle sense of “I am”.

Now that your awareness has become God, now that you can feel yourself stretching through all of the universes and encompassing them, now that you know that you are the knower, that you bring forth all things and transform them and sustain them, now that you are in that mystical awareness of pure being, absolute reality, still there is a sense of being “that.” There is some self-consciousness, not the self-consciousness of the human nature and the ego, where one feels and believes that one is an individual personality structure, that one has birth and one has death, that you are the doer. This has fallen away. There’s no longer a sense of feeling, “I am this, I am not that, I do this, I accomplish this.” The “I” is gone or we can say the “I” has been transformed into an eternal “I,” into an ever present “I.” The finite forms have fallen away and we have become God.

Nirvikalpa samadhi, on the other hand, is beyond description. It is the entrance into nirvana. Anything that I say to you, anything that we discuss, anything that I describe, is presented from the point of view of the relative world. That is to say, I am addressing to some extent your mind. Your mind works through concepts and ideas. You respond through feelings, emotions. You recollect, you think about the future. Anything I could possibly describe to you has to be couched in these terms, the terms of this world. That which is beyond these terms, that which is beyond description, that which is beyond understanding, is nirvana.

Nirvana is a word that we use to describe that which is indescribable, the endless ocean of existence.

In nirvikalpa samadhi we merge in that endless ocean of existence to such an extent that we dissolve completely and there’s no “we” to even be conscious that we have dissolved. There’s no sense of having ever been anything, there’s no sense of being nothing, there’s no sense at all.

This is precisely the point that stops most people from attaining self-realization. Because while they’re able to meditate and follow the advice of their spiritual teacher and reach a point of great knowledge, while they’re able to enter into salvikalpa samadhi and have that extraordinary illumination experience where you just sense and feel your oneness with God, not as an abstraction, but as a reality, the self is threatened by the idea of dissolution, by the idea of no longer existing.

But you must know that this is an illusion.

Anything that you can think is an illusion. Anything that you can feel is an illusion. Anything that you can see, even your highest understanding of truth, of dharma, is an illusion — an illusion in the sense that it’s a limited thought.

A limited thought is a limited thought.

You must understand that anything you understand is not a true understanding. Anything that you feel is not a true feeling. Anything that you know is not a true knowing. Anything that you believe is not a true believing. While all of the things that you believe, and know, and see, and feel do exist in their own right, in the relative existence, still, they’re finite and limited. They’re ways of looking at existence, but existence is infinite — infinite meaning that it’s beyond all ways of looking.

While I can stand on the Earth and look at the universe, and think all the thoughts I want to about it, that will not alter the universe. The stars will shine. They were shining before I came upon this world, they will shine after I have left this world. But not really. Not truly! If we really reflect and discriminate, we’ll find that all things are created by our perception, that all states exist within the mind, that there is no place to go and there is no one to be. There is nothing to become. There’s nothing to gain and there’s nothing to lose. Everything is created within the mind. The whole objective universe is created, is ordered, by our perception and by our sense of self. We feel that life is one way, the stars are one way, time works one way. But when we erase perception, when we erase that which perceives perception, then the universe dissolves, and we see that it was never really real to begin with. You are a small dot on the blackboard. We take an eraser and erase it. What then? Absorption.

The dream appears to be real. It does really seem that we are here in this world. It does seem that we have bodies. It does seem that there is time and progression. It does really seem that there is birth, and death, and rebirth.

But this is not so.

In deep meditation, in samadhi, there is no body, there is no mind. All the things that we call life, all of the combinations of experiences, fall away.

• What is there?

• No one can say,

• because there’s no one there to say.

Once we remove the self who perceives, once we in effect erase ourselves, then there’s no eraser. There never was anyone to erase. We’ve awakened from the dream and the dream has faded.

All concepts, all knowing, all truths, all religious systems, all beliefs fall away in the white light of eternity. The knowledge is so complete, the bliss is so ecstatic, the perfection of existence is so bright and fathomless, endless — that all of our lives, all of the lives that have ever been or will ever be are but a candle held to the sun. When we hold a candle flame up to the sun we don’t see it; in the light of the sun it is gone. All of the ecstasies that have ever been or will ever be, of all the lives that we have ever had or all have ever had, if placed together are just a candle to the sun — we can’t see them. When we merge with the sun, when we become the sun, then it is limitless and infinite. Eternal Brahman, the Self, the one without a second.

The ego holds us to this world. What is the ego? The ego is a sense of self. The ego is the feeling that you are. But you are not, nor have you ever been, nor will you ever be. You cannot be born and you cannot die because you don’t even exist in the sense that you think of existence. This is just a dream. You have dreamed that you were born. You dream of pleasure and pain, you dream of death, but upon waking from the dream, all this will vanish, all this will go away. Nothing but eternity shall remain and there was really never anything but eternity at all.

When we go to the cinema and we look at the screen we see images projected on the screen. At times we could feel that the images are real. We could feel, if we didn’t know, that what we see on the screen is actually taking place, that those are real people up there. However, if we go up and reach for those images and try and hold onto them, we’ll see that they’re not real, they’re only images. All that exists is the screen.

Consciousness is the screen.

That is what you really are:

• immortal consciousness.

The images on the screen are your perceptions, your feelings, the illusion that life is solid, that there is a material universe. There is no material universe; there is no reality.

All that exists are images. Where do these images come forth from and where do they return? What is it that projects these images? How is it that we are the screen? How is it that we have forgotten our eternal nature, that we are the Self and that nothing but the Self exists? These questions and all questions like them can only be answered in absorption, because there are no answers. Answers can suit the relative mind. In the dream we can be thirsty and get a glass of water and within the dream we can drink the water and our thirst will go away. But upon awaking from the dream, there’s no glass, there’s no water, there’s no thirst. All of this was a dream that passes away. All of these questions about the Self, about eternity, when asked from the relative point of view, fall away in the white light of eternity, in nirvana, because then we have awakened from the dream.

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To practice jnana yoga, to practice the yoga of knowledge and discrimination, it’s necessary to have a highly developed mind, not highly developed in the sense that we necessarily have a vast academic background, but rather the mind, the intellect, must be very, very strong. One who practices the yoga of discrimination has practiced the other yogas for many, many lifetimes. One does not practice the yoga of discrimination and knowledge in a first birth or even for many subsequent births. It is only after, through repeated incarnations, through repeated spiritual practices, that the intellect becomes strong and refined, that we can undertake to discover who and what we really are.

Meditation is an essential part of the practice of discrimination. Meditation and reflection.

When we meditate and make the mind calm and quiet,

• the ego dissolves.

When there’s no thought, there’s no ego.

• Ego gives rise to thought.

• Thought gives rise to desire.

• Desire gives rise to attachment.

• Attachment gives rise to the concept of the limited self.

• The concept of the limited self gives rise to unhappiness, frustration, birth and death, and rebirth.

It is only when you realize that you are not the body and that you are not the mind, that you are not that which is perceived nor that which perceives, that you will be free from the snares of illusion.

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Jnana yoga is a very demanding practice. It’s demanding in the sense that it’s necessary for you to become conscious of the fact …

• that you’re not human.

We like to feel that we’re human beings. We like to feel that we love and care. We like to feel that we have parents, that we have children, that there are those who love us, that there are those who need us. We like to feel that people say good things about us, that after our death others may remember us with fond memories. We like to feel that we serve some purpose in this world, that we aid others, that we help others.

This is all an illusion.

• This is not so.

Sometimes as we practice jnana yoga we come across great obstacles. In our discrimination we feel that life has no meaning and no purpose, which is absolutely true — life has no meaning and no purpose. We then feel that life is purposeless, that there’s no reason to try, that life is empty. This is another illusion. The illusion of happiness is one illusion to be avoided. The illusion of unhappiness is another illusion to be avoided. The illusion of purpose is to be avoided. The illusion of lack of purpose is to be avoided.

It would appear that there is a time in this world. It would appear that we have gone through experiences that we’re having an experience now, just as you’re listening to me, and that we will have experiences in the future. But this is not so. This only appears to be so because we’re caught up in the illusion of selfhood. But when the movie stops and the lights come up, we see that the screen was only a screen and that the movie was just a projection of images. Good and bad, love and hate, life and death, importance, unimportance, all these are mere relative concepts or ideas that fall away with the attainment of knowledge.

It might seem that this knowledge is cold, that it’s devoid of emotion, that it’s empty. This is another illusion. It might seem that this knowledge is useful, that it will help us in life, that it will help us go beyond death. This is another illusion. “It might seem” — this is another illusion. “It” — this is another illusion. The idea that this is an illusion — this is another illusion. Anything that you can say, think, feel, believe, trust, count on or feel is untrue is an illusion. The fact that you supposed that you were thinking these things is an illusion. The fact that there are these things is an illusion. Nothing is as it seems. This is an illusion. There are no illusions. This is a gross illusion.

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Illusion, however, doesn’t mean that something is not real. Everything is real and nothing is real. Illusion simply means that something is less real than something else. This life and this world simply and certainly exist. Dreams exist. Who is to say that the reality within the dream is not real? The dream is real, but it does not last. This is an illusion. The reality is real and it does last. This is an illusion. No matter which way you turn there’s nothing but illusion. How do we find a way out? By realizing that there’s no place to go, that there’s no way out, that there’s no way in. All that exists is the Self. The Self is infinite, the Self is eternal. You are that Self. There is nothing else. Beyond words, thoughts, ideas, forms and belief systems, there is nothing but the Self.

If this is so, if silence only conveys the Self, if all words and thoughts are illusions in the sense that they spring forth from the ego — the ego being a partiality, a dream, a movie shown on a screen, a flickering image — why do we discuss this? What is there to say and who is saying it? Why should we say anything when to say something is to enter into the world of illusion? It is because people exist in varying degrees of dream.

Each one is aware to a certain extent, and it’s necessary to enter into the dreams of others, just as I am entering into your dream right now, to make them aware that they’re dreaming. If I enter into your dream and say, “Wake up, this is a dream,” if you listen to me and you awaken, then the dream will vanish. But when the dream vanishes, where will you and I be? We’ll be right where we always were and always will be — everywhere and nowhere, eternally perfect, infinite consciousness, infinite awareness.

To strengthen yourself for the practice of the knowledge of discrimination, which is really not as bad as it sounds [Rama laughs], it’s necessary to learn to concentrate. Each day when you meditate you should devote the first few minutes of your meditation to concentrating. You can do this as kind of a warm-up procedure for meditation. When you start your meditation each day, focus your attention on a yantra, focus on the dot at the center of the yantra and just for a few minutes concentrate on it. This will develop the power of the intellect. If you don’t have a yantra then use a candle flame.

Focus your attention on a candle flame, on the center of the flame.

Look deeply into it. When you focus on the dot in the center of the yantra, when you focus on the candle flame, you should not move your attention. You should feel that nothing else exists.

When thoughts come in and out of your mind, ignore them. Only concentrate and focus fully on that which you have centered your attention upon.

If your attention is fully centered upon something, there can be no thought, there can be no experience.

If we’re looking through a telescope and all we see is what is at the other side, that is to say that which greets our eyes through the telescope, then we’re not aware of what’s behind us, what’s on either side of us, what’s above us or below us. All we’re aware of is what’s at the end of the telescope, what the telescope is showing us.

When you practice concentration, there should be nothing in your awareness but the object of concentration. You should only do this for a few minutes, for three or four minutes, at the beginning of each meditation session. If you do this you’ll strengthen the intellect, you’ll clear the mind. In order to enter into samadhi, in order to see truth, to see that which is real, it’s necessary to be able to stop all thought completely. While you can meditate for many, many years and have some thought in the mind, to really enter into samadhi, into the deeper stratum of existence, you must be able to control thought perfectly, without any sense of controlling thought. Or we could say that there is nothing but self-realization, there is nothing but perfected consciousness, and all you have to do is become aware of that and become absorbed in that. Concentrating for a few minutes each day will strengthen the intellect. Then when the day comes when you’re ready to cross the threshold of eternity, you will find that your concentrative power will help you terrifically.

When you enter into samadhi and you seek to make that magical walk between salvikalpa and nirvikalpa samadhi, to merge with nirvana, at that time, as I suggested before, you must do something that might appear to be very, very difficult. It’s necessary at that time to focus your awareness not on being or nonbeing, not on truth or ignorance, but to focus it without focusing it. This is the difficult part. That is to say you must realize that you are not the doer, that you are not the action. As you’re sitting there and you have that subtle sense, after you’ve stopped all your thoughts, of self — that subtle self, which is God, that which you’ve always sought and finally become, you must now annihilate without annihilating. You’ve attached yourself to an image, still. That image is no thought, that image is God, that image is merging with the perfect reality, that image is nirvana. Finally all of the things you’ve worked for all of those years and all of those lifetimes, you finally become it. And now that you’ve become it, this is the final illusion. Now that you’ve reached everything you’ve always wanted, you must slay this illusion without slaying it and becoming caught up in the illusion of slaying an illusion. This is the difficult part.

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But if you practice your concentration, you’ll find that that time, all those moments spent in concentration for all those years of meditation, all your spiritual practice, all the things you learned from your teacher, all the experiences life has given you will come forward and stand behind you and will give you a terrific strength. And with that terrific strength you will cut aside all illusions. What then? Then there won’t be emptiness. Emptiness is just another idea, another illusion. Then there won’t be fullness, there won’t be perfection, there won’t be rebirth, nor will there be the lack of it. There won’t be death nor will there be life nor will there be anything other. Then we cannot say anything. That you must experience.

But as I suggested before, let us just say it is a bliss beyond all understanding. It is final liberation. From there - there is no return because there is no one to return. You cannot say, “I have gone into nirvana,” because no one can go into nirvana. In order to enter into nirvana you can’t be nor can you not be. You cannot say, “I have gone out of nirvana,” because the self which could not enter into nirvana cannot possibly leave nirvana. You find yourself in this world, you find yourself out of this world, and then there’s no one to find the self. There’s no self to find.

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The yoga of knowledge is very demanding, in the sense that you must lead a perfect life in order to practice it, but a perfect life is not necessarily what you might think. As a matter of fact a perfect life involves little or no thought whatsoever. A perfect life is to observe, to realize that you have no control over the events in your life, that there are no events in your life, that there is no life. Yet at the same time if you find yourself sitting in the theater watching a good movie, enjoy it! You can enjoy the dreams of selfhood, as long as you remember they’re dreams. You can enjoy the beauties of this world, as long as you remember that this world doesn’t exist. You can enjoy the ideas of salvation, as long as you realize that there’s no one to be saved and nothing to save.

In my estimation, self-realization is nothing that can be willed nor is it particularly desirable. This may sound strange coming from a spiritual teacher, one who has been absorbed countless times into nirvana, in countless lives. But you see, as you pass through bhakti yoga, as you pass through love, you’re elated, you’re fulfilled, and you’re joyous. As you pass through karma yoga, you’re even more joyous because self-giving is the perfect expression of love. Jnana yoga is not devoid of love. As a matter of fact it’s filled with love because the very reason that we practice jnana yoga is out of love. But what happens is we disappear. When we practice bhakti yoga and karma yoga — love and self-giving — there’s a sense of improvement. We’re practicing these things so our lives can become better. We sense that we’re getting happier, reality is more beautiful, we eliminate our attachments that make us unhappy, we just enjoy pure being. But there’s still a sense of, “We’re enjoying being.” We merge with God, there’s a sense of merging with God. There’s this continuous self which is enjoying itself more and more in more delightful and divine ways.

But in jnana yoga we take that very thing that was starting to have such a wonderful time and watch it go away. We watch ourselves become very, very thin, so thin that we disappear. And the curious thing about it is that there’s nothing we can do about it. When you start to go into samadhi, you just find yourself dissolving. It’s as if you’re a patient who’s in a hospital and every day you grow weaker and weaker, and you get so weak that you’re not even quite sure what’s happening to you. And every day your friends and relatives come and visit you and as you lie there in the hospital bed you look up at them. And they smile down at you and you smile at them, but every day you’re falling away, you’re dissolving. There’s less and less of you, and after a time you don’t even recognize them anymore. They come and you see these persons standing over you, but you don’t really remember who they are.

Then one day they come to look at you and perhaps they still see you, but from your point of view they’re not there. There’s no longer an awareness of the objective world. You don’t see it, because you’ve gone away. Where have you gone? Who knows? Who can say? They come to visit you and there’s no one there. Perhaps they imagine someone is there, but if they really look, there’s no one there. The patient has gone away. In the middle of the night the patient left. No one is there. But really, if no one is there, no one is there to watch. The patient is gone, the friends and the relatives are gone, the room is gone, the hospital is gone, the world is gone. Everything has fallen away.

What’s left over? What’s left when the patient has gone, the friends and relatives are gone, the hospital has gone, the world has gone, the sky and the stars are gone, life and death are gone? What’s left? Only that which has ever been, which is and will ever be, that which is God, that which is our true self. And it is only when you become that true self consciously, when all these illusions have fallen away, of time, place and condition, that you will be perfectly free and perfectly happy. Jnana yoga brings peace, perfect understanding. Not only merging and becoming God but going beyond all descriptions. It is the final haven of the spiritual seeker.

But remember, your own attachments will trip you up. In the beginning of your spiritual practice, if you’re new to meditation, then you’re just trying to get over your unhappy attachments, your attachments to people, places, conditions, money, and all this sort of stuff. You become attached to things, you desire things, and then when your desires are not fulfilled, you’re unhappy. When your desires are fulfilled you’re happy for a little while until new desires come and make you unhappy again or until you realize that actually getting what you want is not quite what you thought. But then, one day, all of it falls away and there’s nothing but perfect eternity, perfect being. It is that which each of us really seeks.

There’s something within you that seeks perfection, that seeks absorption, and until that occurs for you you’ll never rest and you’ll never really know peace. While the yoga of love and the yoga of self-giving will lead you along the path and will teach you how to eliminate your unhappy feelings, your unhappy attachments — you’ll learn how to overcome your bitterness and your hates and your jealousies and your angers and frustrations and all those things will go away and be replaced by selfless love and selfless giving, humility, purity, integrity — you’ll have a beautiful wonderful life. But still, it’s a life. Still, even though it has great joy, that great joy is nothing in comparison with the ecstasy of pure undifferentiated being, with true liberation from all ignorance, from the samsara, from notions of birth, death, and rebirth. Only that final liberation, or let us say realization that you have always been liberated, that you’ve never been anything else but undifferentiated consciousness, will cause you perfect freedom, will bring you what you really want and really seek.

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Then, it’s necessary for you to climb the ladder, to practice the yoga of love, which will purify your nature. To practice the yoga of self-giving. The yoga of self-giving will round the rough edges of the ego, will put love into action and cause you to mature spiritually. While the yoga of love wakes you up spiritually, the yoga of self-giving gives you spiritual maturity. But then it is in the yoga of knowledge that you will actually become the sun itself, that you will reach that final harbor, that infinite destination. Which does not suggest that you will die when that happens, since there is no death. It does not suggest anything, in that it is nothing and everything and beyond all things.

The yoga of discrimination is only practiced once you have started to go into samadhi. Until that time, in my opinion, one does not practice the yoga of discrimination. In India and other places there are people who fool themselves. They think they’re practicing the yoga of discrimination. They walk around all day saying, “Who am I? Who am I?” and they go through these analytical processes. But it is impossible to know who you are until you enter into samadhi. It is only in samadhi that you’ll begin to get an inkling of who you are, and finally, it is only in absorption in nirvana that this perfect truth will become clear.

So I wouldn’t really worry too much about practicing the yoga of discrimination at this point in your evolution. When it comes, when the time comes, then you’ll be instructed in this particular yoga by an enlightened soul, an enlightened spiritual teacher — one who has practiced this yoga with success to the point where they can be said neither to exist nor not to exist.

The way you’ll really learn the yoga of discrimination is simply by spending time with someone who has perfected themselves in this yoga. You can sit with them in silence and learn everything there is to learn. Because what they really have to teach you about the yoga of discrimination can never be put in words, since the entire yoga exists beyond words, beyond thoughts, beyond conditions. All they can do is frustrate your mind by telling you that you exist and don’t exist, that you are and are not and things of this nature, which won’t really make a lot of sense to your mind. All it can do is cause you hopefully to rise beyond the mind. But until you can meditate in perfect stillness, until you begin to really enter into salvikalpa samadhi where you can stop all thoughts and become absorbed in eternity, until you’ve reached that point where you’ve perfected your lower nature and cleansed your emotional being, jnana yoga will wait.

Once you’ve done all those things and you have eliminated all of your negative karmas and tendencies, and now instead all you do are good things, all you think are good thoughts, all you do is give endlessly and ceaselessly to others, then when you’ve done that, when you’re getting all A’s, then we have to take all the A’s away — because even though these good karmas are very good, they’re still karmas, they’re still limitations. Even though the good thoughts are good thoughts, they’re still thoughts. Even though the good actions are good actions, they’re still actions and there’s still a sense of acting and thinking. Now that you’ve finally made it to the top we’ve got to take the top away, because while the top may seem wonderful, while getting A’s may be wonderful, still, there’s a sense of self and that sense of self will trap you. That sense of self is an illusion, it’s another dream, and that dream must fall away. And when that dream falls away and that full wakefulness, that perfected being of existence, then eternity alone will abide and remain. Then there are no words, there are no descriptions. Only then will you really be what you truly are.

So we climb the ladder, in a way of speaking. We move from stage to stage, from yoga to yoga, from one journey to another. Yet you will find, in my estimation in daily life, that jnana yoga is actually quite practical. Jnana yoga is discrimination and in life you have to discriminate. You see, we talk about the four paths — I talk about jnana yoga and bhakti and karma and mysticism as if they’re all separate. To be honest, though, they’re all one. There is only one path, there is only one truth, and there is only one reality. Of course, I’m speaking from the point of view of jnana yoga.

Now, there’s nothing to do! There’s no place to go. There’s no one at home to answer the telephone. What telephone? If the telephone rings and there’s no one home, is there a telephone ringing? Of course not. All heavens and hells exist in the mind. What mind? There is no mind. There is no heaven, there is no hell. How discouraging to find out after working for lifetimes for salvation that there is no salvation because there’s no one to be saved.

The danger, as I suggested, is depression. A sense of, “Why bother?” Since there’s no one to be saved, what’s the use?” But remember, that’s only another illusion too. The illusion of meaninglessness, of purposelessness. What is — is so good, so perfect, so simple, so exacting, that it’s beyond both meaning and lack of meaning.

But as I said, jnana yoga is practical. It can help you get through the day. Use discrimination to temper love. While it’s good to love, we can be fooled in love or we can be fooled by our own love. Who are we to be fooled, anyway? What are we? Do we exist? Do we not exist? How can you be fooled if you don’t exist? Well, let’s be practical for a second. When you love without discrimination, then you love blindly. If you love blindly, you don’t see. If you don’t see, you smack into things and get hurt. How can you get hurt if you don’t exist? How can you feel hurt? What hurt? There’s no one to be hurt. There’s no one to hurt. It’s only with this realization that there is no pain. There is only eternity, eternal perfection.

But meanwhile, back in the relative world, if you discriminate, if you use the power of discrimination, then you will see that there is a hidden truth in all things and that you can perceive that truth. Just as all things are not good for us — it’s not good for us to eat arsenic, all things are not meant for human beings, while it is good, perhaps, to eat a salad — so all experiences are not good for us. And we have to discriminate and determine which experiences are good for us.

So if you practice a little jnana yoga in your daily life, it will help you tremendously in this sense. You can learn that which is right and useful and that which should be avoided at your current stage of evolution. The way to do this is very easy, absolutely easy. All you have to do is ask yourself one question and if you ask yourself this question whenever you’re trying to decide what to do, you’ll always do exactly what is right. You’ll discriminate and cut your way through illusion and you’ll always do that which is right. And the question is very, very simple. The question is, “Where is truth? Is there truth in what I am doing now?” That’s all you have to ask yourself.

And if you meditate each day and if you practice your concentration exercises, you will immediately know if what you’re doing is the truth. Don’t try and understand this with your mind. The thoughts will come, and the thoughts will go, and you’ll think a thousand things and have a million philosophies, good ideas, and wonderful ideas which will change from second to second. But there will be no absolute knowing, no certainty in these thoughts and philosophies and ideas. But if you, with your heart, ask yourself that simple question, “Is there truth in what I am about to do?” then you will automatically know. If there is no truth in it, you’ll know, and you won’t do that. If there is truth, you’ll know. But you must honestly ask yourself, “Is there truth in what I am about to do?”

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Always think of the truth, believe in the truth and follow the truth, and finally annihilate the truth with your discrimination. Follow the truth as far as it will go, but then there comes a time when you must go beyond truth. We have a car, we love our car. We’re going to take the car down to the beach and then we’re going to go into the water. We take the car as far as it will go, but once we get there we have to leave it behind. That doesn’t mean that there will be nothing. There’s the ocean. We’ll swim. It’ll be wonderful. Perhaps someday we’ll meet the car again. Who knows? Who is asking the question? The question is eternal. Is there being or is there nonbeing? Is there reality? Is there life after maya? No! Yes!

There’s only silence and the waves — the sound of the waves in eternity. And then one day they go away and you’re the perfection of consciousness, the perfection of God and being. You stretch endlessly. You shine perfectly in your own light — no fear, no worry, no darkness, nothing can interfere with your perfection. You’ve always been this and you will always be this. That is all that exists. Anything else is but a dream, and dreams have an existence but they pass. So come to know that your true self is unchanging, has always been and will always be, and if you become aware of that all pain will leave you, all suffering, all frustration. Even that which you call joy is a frustration when viewed with the absolute ecstasy that is existence, the absolute perfection that is immortal consciousness.

So try and feel deep within yourself that which is real and always follow that which is real. And when you find yourself going into samadhi, some day when that happens, at that point seek a teacher. Find a liberated soul and ask them to teach you the yoga of knowledge, the yoga of discrimination, because then it will be necessary for you to push aside even your samadhi, even your ecstasy and realize that samadhi is transitory and that nirvana is just another word. Then you’ll be in graduate school.

The yoga of knowledge is the yoga of perfection. It is the end and the beginning of all things. It is neither favorable nor unfavorable because there’s no one there to favor it. There is nothing and there has never been anything but the Self. Know this. You are the Self. You are eternity. There is nothing else. There is no world, there is no time, there is no place, there is no condition. There is only the Self. You are the Self. There is nothing and there can be nothing else. Thou art that and beyond. Beyond words, beyond condition, beyond immortality and mortality. Be absorbed in that truth.