Beauty ＆ Pure 140

yaarumaRi yaathen mathiyinai marutti
yevarkoLai koNda tharuNaachalaa?

O Arunachala! Stupefying my mind without any one knowing it, who was it
that ravished me?

The Lord is the arch-thief of the devotee’s heart. He comes without being
seen by any. Is He not the invisible
Indweller of all beings? He knows all; and no one can know Him. He is the
knower of all knowing, seer of all seeing.
In the state of bondage the soul is under the spell of the world of
plurality. This false charm is overpowered by the
superior charm of the Lord’s grace. He comes, comes, ever comes, silently
and stealthily, in order to redeem the soul and
grant it the joy of divine union. The devotee-soul marvels at the limitless
mercy of the Lord, His unbounded solicitude for the soul.

Beauty ＆ Pure 139

Devotee : "Not this -- not this". That is the teaching to the seeker. He is told that
the SELF is Supreme. How is it to be found ?
Sri Bhagavan : The SELF is said to be the hearer, thinker, knower, etc. But, that is
not all. It is also described as the ear of ear, the mind of mind, etc.; and, by what means
to know the knower ?
D.: But, this does not say what the SELF is.
Sri Bhagavan : "Not this -- not this".
D.: It only negates.
Sri Bhagavan : ( Silence ).
The devotee complains that the SELF is not pointed out.
Sri Bhagavan : A man wants to know what he is. He sees animals and objects around him.
He is told : 'You are not a cow, not a horse, not a tree, not this, not that, and so on.' If again
the man asks saying, 'You have not said what I am,' the answer will be, 'It is not said
you are not a man'. He must find out for himself that he is a man. So, you must find out
for yourself what you are.
You are told, 'You are not this body, nor the mind, nor the intellect, nor the ego, nor
anything you can think of; find out what truly you are'. Silence denotes that the questioner
is himself the SELF that is to be found. In a swayamvara (selection of the bridegroom),
the maiden goes on saying 'no' to each one until she faces her choice and then, she looks
downwards and remains silent.

Beauty ＆ Pure 138

"On one of my birthdays while I was in Virupaksha Cave, probably in 1912, those around me insisted on cooking food and eating it there as a celebration of the occasion. (...) When the cooking and eating were over, Iswaraswamy who used to be with me in those days, said, `Swamiji! this is your birthday. Please compose two verses and I too will compose two.' It was then that I composed these two verses which I find in the notebook here. They run as follows:
1. You who intend to celebrate the birthday, first ascertain as to whence you were born. The day that we attain a place in that everlasting life which is beyond the reach of births and deaths is our real birthday.
2. Even on these birthdays that occur once a year, we ought to lament that we have got this body and fallen into this world. Instead we celebrate the event with a feast. To rejoice over it is like decorating a corpse. Wisdom consists in realising the Self and in getting absorbed therein.
This is the purport of those verses. It appears that it is a custom amongst a certain section of people in Malabar to weep when a child is born in the house and celebrate a death with pomp. Really one should lament having left one's real state, and taken birth again in this world, and not celebrate it as a festive occasion".

Beauty ＆ Pure 137

Your duty is to be and not to be this or that.

Beauty ＆ Pure 136

If we unceasingly investigate the form of the mind, we find there is no such thing as the mind. This is the direct path open to all.

Beauty ＆ Pure 135

O Arunachala! Removing my deluded attachment (to sense objects), Thou hast
made me attached to Thee. Yet, why hast Thou not removed this attachment ?

It is by a sort of homoeopathic treatment that the world disease of the
soul is to be remedied. The root of the soul’s
disease is attachment to sense objects. Attachment to the finite, and the
fleeting cannot yield real happiness. Under
the spell of delusion the soul imagines that the objects are the sources of
its joy and gets attached to them. In order that the
soul may be saved from sorrow, it must be detached from the objects. This
may be done in several ways. But the surest and
safest way is to make the soul attached to God. God-love is the potent
remedy for curing the malady of lust for objects.
For cultivating the love of God, God’s grace is absolutely necessary. It is
by His grace that He has to be worshipped.
The soul’s journey to its goal, however, should not stop with the
establishment of worshipper-worshipp ed relation with
God. While the relation with the divine serves to remove the relation with
the undivine, it itself cannot be left unsublated.
The worshipper-worshipp ed relation sublimates all other relations.
And, that itself gets transcended in Advaita experience.
It is for this state of transcendence that the devotee-soul prays in the

Beauty ＆ Pure 134

An educated man asked : Is there an Absolute Being ? What is its relation to the relative existence ?

Sri Bhagavan : Are they different from each other ? All the questions arise only in the 'mind'. The mind arises with waking and subsides in deep sleep. As long as there is a 'mind', so long will there be such questions and doubts.

D.: There must be stage after stage of progress for gaining the Absolute. Are there grades of Reality ?

Sri Bhagavan : There are no grades of Reality. There are grades of experience for the jiva and not of Reality. If anything can be gained anew, it could also be lost, whereas the Absolute is central -- here and now.