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Page 1: Oneness, By Satyananda

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Oneness, by Satyananda

Oneness as described by 

Satyananda 

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Oneness, by Satyananda

Author and contact information:

[email protected]

http://www.oneness-project.net/  

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Oneness, by Satyananda

Table of contents

Before we startA little about me

IntroductionLearn how to watch your thoughtsThe identification with your thoughtsWhat is the Self, and how to identify it?

The body-mind experienceDreamingA guide to the Self 

• The body-identification

• The mind-identification• Self-enquiry

Nothing remains but the Self Traps of the mindFrom separation to OnenessNothingness; The realization of the mindOneness; Always Being, Always Becoming

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 – Before we start –

As a reader, you will notice that there are more spacescompared to a normal book. Spaces like this one:

That was a space, and I have done this deliberately togive you some extra time to reflect upon what I justwrote. May you use it wisely.

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 – A little about me –

First of all, welcome to my story! I am happy that youwant to know more of what I have to share with you,because it is a fantastic spiritual journey that awaitsyou! And there is still more I want to share with youafter the spiritual journey, because I got to realize thatthere had never really been any journey...

Confused? Well, I hope I can make it more clear for youas we continue! But let's start from the beginning, shall

we?!

Let's start with my childhood, where I did so manydifferent things that I would reckon it was just normal,whatever that is. I grew up in Sweden with my littlebrother and my father and mother. I had a prettystandard Swedish life where I went to school (of course), and I did sports and played games with my

family and friends.

And since this was how the reality showed itself for meat that time, I accepted it with the innocence of a child.My parents guided me and my brother morally, butthere was no one there to guide us spiritually, and so itwas not obvious at all that I would choose the spiritualpath later on in life.

And it still is a mystery for me, because already in mychildhood, my approach to life was that of an atheist. Iremember how I thought people who believe in Godwas somehow mislead into a false belief. And since mymind was not so expanded at that time, I could notproperly read and interpret spiritual scriptures like theBible. My attitude towards spiritual scriptures was that

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one have to believe in it if it is going to be true, andthat the mind then makes it true. Since I didn't believein these things, it was not true for me. And therefore,rationally, I could dismiss God as non-existent, and thebelievers of God as fools.

So this was my reality in my youth; God did not exist,and after death all would turn black. Easy and simple, Iliked it!

And this attitude would have continued if it wasn't forsomething called love.

When I came out of my teens, a shift suddenly occurredin my mind. I realized, that I had so far in life beenthinking that I had the answers to everything, that I hadthe solutions to everything, and if everyone wouldthink and do like me, the world would be a much better

place! The only problem with this was that I was notreally happy in my life! Of course, momentaryhappiness came sometimes, but it also left me just assudden, empty and not so happy. By logic, since Isupposedly knew best all the time, I should also be ableto be happy all the time, right?! And yet, I was not.

It wasn't until I accepted that I actually might not know

what is the best for me (or for others for that matter)that my mind started to open up for other possibilities.I started to feel that maybe the answer to everythingcould be unconditional love and acceptance to oneanother I also started to feel that there could besomething behind everything, something that I couldn'tsee nor touch or smell, but somehow it was there,something very subtle. So basically, I opened up for the

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possibility of the existence of God.

This new feeling of God stayed with me and becamemore and more an active search for God. The onlyproblem was, I didn't really know where to look! Howto find what I was searching for, when I didn't evenknow what God really was?! I knew somehow that Icouldn't find it in the conventional religions, since I hadseen so much negativity from them in the form of violence and full-scale wars, so I just continued to be

open for God, and I started to believe in God assomething beyond my reach, something beyond mymind impossible for the mind to fully grasp. I reallywanted to be able to grasp it, but I didn't know how,except for one thing that started to become moredominant inside of me: my “inner voice”, which also isknown as intuition.

I remember I didn't like to use the word “God”, becauseI still related the word too much to a God that wereresponsible for many wars that had been fought in Hisname, witch burnings in the dark medieval times inEurope and stonings that still occur in the Middle-east,etc, all this due to religion. Of course, I had alwaysknown that this was man-made, out of ego, but now Ialso started to feel that God was somehow present as

well, but still out of reach for me.

How to reach God was not on the agenda for me yet,because I didn't have that feeling to search. I simplyaccepted the so called “inner voice” inside of me thatwas guiding me along in my life.

Most of the times, the inner voice was a feeling, or a

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“knowing” beyond words, but sometimes it wasactually a voice that I could hear speaking with words,and it was very powerful when that happened. Thispowerful voice came when it wanted me to not chooseanything else, when it was important beyond all otheroptions to follow the inner voice! And so, whenever theinner voice came, I sincerely tried to follow it (although,when it was a more subtle feeling, I many times wentagainst my inner voice, with the result of failure andsuffering). And whenever I needed guidance, I could ask

my inner voice, and it would answer. Sometimes itanswered and guided me in a direction my ego didn'tlike, but since I knew that it was more wise to follow myinner voice, I sometimes did big changes in my life thatcould seem quite illogical and radical from an outsideobserver. And I know it was illogical many times, but italways showed to be for the best!

I started to feel more and more compassion towardsthe animals as I opened up my heart to love, until oneday when it was clear for me that I didn't have theheart anymore to continue to eat them. This was prettyunsuspected, because I had been eating meat mywhole life, and just a few years earlier I had evenridiculed some vegetarians when I was in high school(I'm SO sorry!).

Some years passed on, and by the grace of God, I wasable to follow this “inner voice” that seemed to bothurge and guide me on in life. Alongside working as acomputer support technician around the age of 23-26, Istarted to do power yoga as an exercise for the body.What I didn't know was that the yoga was preparing mymind sub-consciously for meditation. So after a couple

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of years more, I intuitively felt (aka the inner voice toldme) that the next natural thing to do, or learn, wasmeditation.

A lot of things that I have done in my life, has beencategorized as extreme in one way or the other. For meit has just been a matter of if I should do something,why not do it in a good manner?! I have never been ahalf-measure kind of guy, so instead of just staying inSweden to learn meditation, I went to India, the home

of meditation and yoga.

The type of meditation that I got to learn in India wasVipassana, a Buddhist type of meditation which openedup my mind and heart very much and made me realizesome very important and life-changing things. I'll tellyou more about them later on!

And after coming back to Sweden again, I started tosearch for like-minded people whom I could domeditation with. Some friends of mine recommendedme to go and visit Ananda Marga which did groupmeditation, and so I went. This encounter was also life-changing for me, as I felt like I finally had found what Ihad by now actively started to look for: Unconditionallove!

Ananda Marga had so many good aspects andapproaches to life beside meditation, that I after sometime felt to dedicate my whole life for the organizationand to work for its mission. I decided to become awhole-time worker for Ananda Marga, or in otherwords, a yoga monk with focus on service to thehumanity. Ananda Marga had very conveniently a

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training center for whole-timers in the south of Sweden, so I went there to start a training of yoga andservice that lasted for three whole years.

The time in the training center was very special, andenabled me to understand a lot more about selflessservice, yoga, and in general about life itself! But nomatter how good the education was, I always felt thatthere was something missing inside of me, somethingthe education was not able to show me, and I knew it

was yet something still to be discovered about life!What was bugging me was the feeling of not being One,the feeling of separation from God, that continued tomake itself heard since my first tumbling steps on thepath of spirituality.

And although I sometimes could feel Oneness when Iwas graced by the feeling of bliss, the bliss came, and

then it went, and it could come and go as it pleased.Although I by now had learned in theory that all wasOne, I had no permanent feeling of Oneness. I acceptedthis “coming and going”-feeling of Oneness, becausethe concept of surrendering is one part of tantra yoga(Ananda Margas type of yoga is tantra yoga), and so itwas not a problem for me to surrender to thetemporary feeling of occasional bliss and Oneness.

The three years in the training center went pretty fast,and I was mentally preparing my mind to travel out inthe world and work as a missionary of Ananda Marga.But in the end of the training I stumbled upon anotherpractice to realize God, called Advaita. I had alwaysliked to get to know a little about other spiritualpractices, but not too much, because I felt I already had

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found what I thought was a complete practice withAnanda Marga. But my inner voice told me to check outAdvaita a little more, and so I did.

And in just a few days of studying Advaita (by listeningto a person called Mooji), I realized that I not only couldreach God in a very easy way, but I found myself alreadybeing there! I all of a sudden had a direct experiencewith the Absolute, and I felt very happy as I felt that thesearch for God was over! Only problem was that as I

realized the Absolute, many things in the worldchanged their appearance. One thing was the training,and I simply could not go through with the last part of it. I know that some in the organization becamedisappointed or at least a bit shocked, but it was notpossible to continue with the new insights that I had.

And so, after having renounced the world by going to

the training center and to become a yoga monk, it nowbecame obvious that even renunciation itself had to berenounced.

Muncha muncha hi samsaram

Tyagam muncha hi sarvatha

Tyagatyaga-visam shuddham

Amritam sahajam dhruvam

Renounce, renounce the world of appearance;

Then renounce renunciation as well.

But, whether you renounce or do not renounce,

Enjoy the nectar of your natural state.

From Dattatreya's “Song of the Avadhut”,

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Shloka number 3-46.

After the realization of the Absolute, or in other termsthe realization beyond the mind, I felt complete. I hadgot a taste of the totality that I somehow had knownexisted but was not able to reach before. I thought thatthis was it, that I had finally been realized, but later on Isaw that I was not One yet, there was still therealization of the heart left for me...

Now I have come to a good point to stop writing aboutmy past history... I am going to explain the tworealizations further on in this book; the necessity of blending these two realizations into One. And althoughit will be impossible for me to explain it fully since nowords can explain this completely (words can only beused to point to it), what I have come to realize is thatthis is what we all are, all the time; we are One. And

realizing this (with both intellect and heart) allowed meto stop the search for God, cause I had found what Iwas searching for. It was such a relief! Finally I couldrelax! And it gave a natural happiness, which I alsorealized that we all carry inside! And it is so beautiful,that it didn't take me long before I started to writeabout it... I figured, if anything is worth sharing, thenthis is it!

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 – Introduction –

My dear reader!

Have you noticed that in life most of us wants to behappy and enjoy life, but maybe you also have noticedthat happiness and enjoyment comes and goes? This isbecause we look for it externally. And why doesn't itgive eternal happiness? Because everything external istemporary, it is not ever-lasting, so of course we won't

be able to be fully satisfied with the external world.Never! I'm sorry to say, but if you think you will findeternal happiness and enjoyment solely in the outsideworld, you are gravely mistaken!

So what if I would tell you that there is somethinginside of you that is always happy and enjoying, nomatter what happens, and that you could stay in this

state no matter what happens in your life? What if Iwould tell you that it is possible and even easy to gobeyond all your fears and bondages that you mightthink that you have? And most importantly, what if Icould point you to this, would you take the opportunityto get it?

This book is for you whom are open and ready for that,

it is for your very own Self-realization and merging intoOne!

There are other important books that explain that youare thinking, and that you can take control over yourthoughts. Those books are also an attempt to help youlead a more happy and healthy life through variouspractices for your mind, some with the help of yoga and

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meditation etc. If you were lucky you had the chance toread one of these books that also were explaining thisin a very simple way so you actually got the message. If you read and understood these books, or if you havebeen blessed to be aware of your own thoughtsthrough other means, then this understanding will helpyou a great deal for what will be explained in this book.But if you didn't read any book about how thoughtswork, I have tried to explain it the best I can in a shortand simple form in this book. You don't need to have

any prior knowledge about the mind or yoga orwhatever. If I succeed with this or not, will be up to youas the reader to see for yourself, the only thing I askfrom you is to keep an open mind as you read along!

I have structured this book into parts, or “degrees of awareness”, in an attempt to make it easy for you tofollow. I think many of us goes through these “states” of 

awareness in life, but of course not necessarily inexactly the same order as I have structured it. Anyhow,here is the structure at a glance:

To reach the Self, which is called Self-realization, thereis a need for you to first understand that you arethinking. Then, you can start to watch your thoughts.Then you will be able to realize that your thoughts are

actually objects in front of you and not really you, andthat your “I-feeling” always stay as the subject nomatter what thoughts that comes and goes. Thisrealization enables you to stop identifying with theobjects in front of you (for instance your thoughts). Thisis the part where a simple technique for Self-realizationenters the scene, called Self-enquiry. Simply by askingyourself who is seeing these objects, and thereby go

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from one observer to another deeper and deeperinside of yourself, you finally reach yourself as being thesubject, and you will notice that you are awarenesseven of awareness! When you have attained awarenessover awareness, you will also have attained Self-realization, and you will have freed yourself from anyconcepts that you thought you had to believe in.

Sounds quite easy, no?! Yes?!

Well, both yes and no I guess, it all depends on howmuch we are willing to let go of what we think of ourselves, and how fast we are ready to let go of anyideas of ourselves, and so on. Sometimes it can bequite easy, and sometimes it can be quite a struggle. Iknow this, because I have been struggling quite a lotmyself in this process!

But I dare to say that it is easier than you possibly canimagine, because you will eventually see beyond yourown mind and beyond all your concepts, that you wereand are nothing else BUT Self-realized already! It is ourconcepts that makes us think otherwise. Amazing, isn'tit?!

This first part of the book might be a bit hard on your

ego in a way, because the book will make you awarethat you are not your ego, and the ego generally don'tlike that. The book is probably also going to tear downthe world as you know it, and then I mean completelydismantle it, piece by piece, until there is nothing leftfor you to hold on to. Your imagined world is going byebye, and this can be a bit scary perhaps.

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But when we reach the Self it is very sweet indeed! Youwill get a taste of Totality. And every taste of Totalityseems complete, so you will probably think that there isnothing more to accomplish after this! But I am here totell you that there actually are. You have now had arealization of your mind, but there still awaits therealization of the heart! And the blending of the twomakes you and everything around you One! This lastpart is a bit more difficult to explain how to do, it mayseem more esoteric in nature. But nevertheless, the

blending of the awakened mind and heart makes usOne, and it made me finally relax completely in mysearch for God, as God is in the Oneness of everything.

So that was the basic structure of this book. There willbe some simple practices to do from time to time aswell, and I recommend you to do these practicessincerely in order to fully understand what I am talking

about, and to avoid the potential risk that this bookstays as mere intellectual mumbo-jumbo. My intentionis for you to fully experience permanent happiness,peace and Oneness!

So, shall we start?!

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 – Learn how to watch your thoughts –

Okay, I want to get to the point as quick as possible:What you as the reader need to learn first, is to

understand that you are thinking, and then learn howto watch your thoughts when you are thinking!

The easiest way to do that, and for that matter tounderstand and go deep with anything in this book, isto keep quite and just watch and observe. An ideal

situation would be if you would have some time off andonly could focus on the practices in this book, until thebook has finished. But if you are working or if you arebusy with something else right now, then you don'thave so much time, I understand that. Then maybe youcan use your evenings or weekends to be more silentand read this book for yourself. Make some extra spaceand time for you in the external world so you can look

at yourself in a peaceful way and see what is inside of you.

If you are not aware that you are thinking, I suggestthat you think(!) a little about it and then come backhere again when you are aware of that you are thinking(it is important)!

Maybe you can notice that you are almost alwaysthinking?!

Now we can move on to the next step, which is towatch your thoughts. We can compare our thoughts tothe clouds in the sky. The clouds (just like the thoughts)coming and going, coming and going, coming andgoing. Now recognize, that even if the thoughts come

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and go, you are still there, present and observing.

Recognize that your awareness of being or existing isnot coming and going, it is only your attention that,when it follows different thoughts, comes and goes. If you decide to follow a thought, that thought can be asshort or as long as you want. But sooner or later, youwill come back to your awareness of yourself and yourpresence, and to your existence. And after that, youwould probably start to think another thought. This is

normally how our relationship with our thoughts are inour lives; sometimes we are aware of our thoughts, andother times not.

But have you consciously recognized, that if you don'tgive any attention to a thought, it will disappear asquick as it appeared. But if you do pay attention to athought, you may be able to build your whole reality

around this thought?! No? Then let me give you an easyexample:

Let's say you want to buy a car, and your preference is awhite car. All of a sudden you start to notice all the carsthat are white more than any other car around you. Ormaybe you want a special type of car, then all off asudden you start to see more of these cars in the

traffic. Or if you want a white car that is of a specialtype, you will start to see this special type of white cara lot more in the traffic. This is how our attentionworks.

Whenever you put your attention to something, thatsomething will grow in proportion to theinterest/attention that you give to it. It is easy to see

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that if we give attention to a thought, this thought startto dominate our world as we see it. You might say:“Wow, there are really a lot of cars of this type andcolor”, when in fact it is the same amount as before,

 just that now you are giving more attention to it!

And if you change your mind and you want another cartype and/or color, then your attention goes thereinstead, and your reality starts to take that shape foryou. So what you can see (understand) now, is that

your reality changes with your point of attention.

There are many books about the power of ourattention, and what I am telling is nothing new. But if you didn't read any books or in other ways heard aboutthis phenomenon, then understand now, that your

attention creates your reality! It is good if you can get acomfortable understanding with this fact, and

understand that wherever you are go in this world,there has always been a thought behind it! You mightalready see (understand) now as well, that in mostcases our reality therefore (or how we live our lives) isthought-based.

So now that you can watch your thoughts, the next stepis that you actively start to do it also! Because if you

can do this, it will be easier for you to continue with thecoming practices in this book and to become One.

Here is the important thing to remember: yourawareness is always there with you, when you watchyour thoughts! Okay, I admit, that doesn't seem to beso incredible, of course you are there to watch it! Yes,but who is this watcher? This is very often overlooked,

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but crucial to discover the Self! I will talk more aboutawareness, the so called “watcher” or “observer”, lateron.

Now I have in a short introduction and in a light mannertried to explain this “phenomena of thoughts”, but if you need more help than what I give in this book inorder to understand thoughts, then I recommend youto either just contemplate it for a while, or maybe youwant to discover the power of thoughts in another

book, or with meditation, or similar. I recommendsomething that deals with the mind and its thoughts,something that clearly will show you that you arethinking, that you are having thoughts, and that you

can control and choose your thoughts simply with

your attention.

 – The identification with your thoughts –

Not only do I want you to learn how to watch yourthoughts, but also to learn how to NOT identify withthem. Why? Because if you want to transcend themind, you will have to understand that they are notyou, and you are not them. In other words, you areNOT your thoughts! Not even the feelings that generate

your thoughts, or the thoughts that generate yourfeelings! I know, this can be difficult to recognize atfirst, but give yourself a chance to see this by simplybeing open to this possibility!

You might wonder why this is important? And I tell you,that it is when you stop to identify with your thoughts,and then I mean ANY of your thoughts, that freedom

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comes, when Self-realization and Oneness comes!

So what do I mean with identification with thoughts? Itmeans that we normally identify with our thoughtswith our ego, thinking that we are our thoughts, andnothing more, which is not true. And this is verylimiting for us...

Maybe this sounds strange or unreal, but let me showyou why it is like this with an easy example:

Let's say that you feel angry. Then you say “I am angry!”or “I feel angry!”. In this example you are having afeeling, and you want to express it with the help of thewords “I am angry!”. But is it what you truly are, or is it

 just a temporary feeling/thought? Can you distinguishit? No? Okay, let's try again!

How can you be angry, if it after some time goes away?!Afterwards you might even be able to feel happy again!Then you say “I am happy!” instead. So you are notangry anymore, now you are happy instead. So whatare you? Angry? Or happy? Who are you, really? Areyou just a temporary shift of thoughts and feelings, orare you something permanent? What do you think?

Feelings and thoughts are momentary and comes andgoes like the clouds on the sky. The key word is thatthey are momentary. But are you momentary? Youwould be if you identify with these feelings andthoughts of yours, but let me tell you a little secret: Youare NOT a momentary shift of thoughts! By now I hopeyou can see that you don't disappear just because onethought or feeling of yours that you have identified

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with went away. It is important to realize the differencebetween a thought, and you! Because then you canalso understand that you are not your thoughts andfeelings, which enables you to slowly by slowly stopidentifying with them (ALL of them)!

Many many times we do this (identify with ourthoughts), and we have become so accustomed to it inlife that it has become our reality as we know it! Butthat also puts us into a thought-based reality that

always changes depending on which thought we putour attention to, and in other words, which thoughtswe want to believe in. And before we know it, we endup living in a made-up reality that isn't really real, butwhich we actually chose to believe into existence! Soone important question that you can ask yourself nowis: “If I base my reality on thoughts, how can that behold as a true reality?”. I would rather call it a personal

reality that is real only for the individual, but that yourreality may or may not be real for someone else, it alldepends on the concepts we have chosen to believe inlife. This way of living ones life has been calleddreaming, since we in this stage of reality would beimagining things to be real, even if they are not. Manyof us are living a dream reality!

You know how it is in a dream, how real it can seem tobe, but then when you wake up, you realize thatwhatever was there in the dream was just your ownimagination, and it didn't really exist! If we filter ourreality with concepts and thoughts that we hold to betrue, we automatically enter a dream reality whichnever will be absolutely true!

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So what do I mean with this? I propose (or even claim)that there is one single reality that everyone can see if they don't put their thoughts as a filter in between. Assoon as we judge the reality, that reality becomes animagined reality.

I will give you an example of this in the practical world:Let's say you are a racist. Then if you see a person withdifferent color of you, you would probably feel hate oranger or adverse or similar. But if you are not a racist,

and you see the same person, these feelings will notoccur for you, and you may feel feelings that actuallyare completely in contrary to the feelings of the racist,like love and beauty. And here is the dilemma: Both theracist and the one that is not racist are convinced thatthey see the world properly... So who is right? Who isseeing the reality in the right way?

In my life, I have always seen that both me and peoplearound me filter our reality. I even had the feeling that Iwas seeing things right, and that others were seeingthings wrong. But I realized that I as well was seeingthings “wrong”, or to put it more gently, that I wasseeing it only from my mind and its capacity of graspingreality. And so I realized that my mind creates myreality. And this realization started my search for an

underlying reality that hopefully would exist and at thesame time be the same for everyone. I didn't know if itexisted, I just had a hunch that it existed, and actuallysomething inside of me knew that it existed, I justdidn't know where to look. So I looked here and Ilooked there, but it took me many years until I finallyunderstood how to see it: I realized that if I am filteringthe reality with my own mind, then I need to go beyond

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my mind in order to see the reality. Sounds logical, buthow is one possibly going to go beyond one's ownmind?

It is of course very simple in theory, the answer is to just stop identifying with the mind and its thoughts. Butthis often showed to be quite difficult to do for mepractically, because the identification with my thoughtswere still ingrained in me, I had been doing it for mywhole life, so it was not easy to stop my identifications

 just like that. But with a very simple technique that Iwill explain more about later on, it was actually possiblefor me to go beyond my mind and see what was left!

Have you ever thought about it? If there is no mind tofilter anything, everyone ought to be able to see orexperience the same reality, right? Sounds logical?Well, for me it sounded logical anyway, and I was ready

to take a look for myself...

So all this leads me back to the example of being angryor happy, remember? This is my introduction to you inorder to start the process of going beyond your mind!

By now I hope you can see that wherever you go withyour attention, to whatever thought or feeling that is

changing, your feeling of being present is alwaysthere, whether it is anger or happiness or somethingelse that you are having as an experience!

Are you aware that your feeling of 'I', 'I am' or simplythe feeling of existing, is always there, even if yourthoughts and feelings are shifting? Can you recognizethat this feeling of 'I' never goes away, whatever else

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you are experiencing?!

Notice that when we think or speak, we say “I am”before “angry” or “happy” when saying the sentence “Iam angry” or “I am happy”. The key word here is 'I am',and this is what we are going to focus on more andmore from now on!

So, you start with saying “I am”, which we now can startto notice is always present and have to be there to be

able to say any next word in order to describe how wefeel or are (which in the example is to be angry orhappy). Can you now see that whatever you say thatcomes after the “I am” (like angry or happy) is only amomentary truth, and therefore making it a relativetruth? So can we find any absolute truth here? Could itbe as simple as if the permanent truth is within the 'Iam'-feeling? Let's find out!

Later on you will be able to see that you are everything,and that everything is true! But to be able to not filterthe reality with the mind, and to not stay in a thought-based reality, we will have to go beyond the mind andthen start to look at the world.

I'm sure you have started to wonder who or what you

really are? Meaning, are you relative or absolute?Meaning, do you have the feeling of being or existingonly sometimes, or are you always present with your 'I'-feeling, watching everything that goes on both inside of you and outside of you? In other words, does your 'I'-feeling, your feeling of being, come and go? Or is italways present, observing the phenomenon of yourfeelings and thoughts that come and go?

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By now I hope you can see that you are not relative, asyou stay as the 'I'-feeling, and the only thing that isrelative with you is your thoughts and feelings thatcome and go.

Can we make any conclusion out of this?

It's simple: You are not any of the thoughts or feelingsyou might think you have. They are simply just

momentarily expressions of your Being (your 'I am'-feeling inside of you). They happen, they come and go,but they are not you!

Please pay extra attention to what was just said here.

This is very important for you to be clear with, becauseI am going to show you that this can be applied to our

whole created universe as well! Okay, I just tried to show you what you truly are, andwe are going to dive deeper into it later on. Now, it istime to see whether this universe is a relative orabsolute truth.

What do you think it is? Have you ever even thought

about it? Even if you are not the philosophical kind of person, I think it is rather easy to see that in this

universe, everything is changing all the time, at everyminute, at every moment. Have you ever thought aboutit? Maybe you have, maybe you haven't, or maybe youdid but didn't give it any further thought orimportance? Well, let us see what this changing realityreally means by giving you an example:

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As mentioned in the beginning, when I first learnedmeditation, I learned a meditation technique calledVipassana. The introductory course to this meditation isvery intense, because it requires the participants to besilent for ten days and to do ten hours of sittingmeditation every day during these ten days. Except thatthis gives a beginner of meditation a lot of pain in theback and the legs, it also gives powerful realizations.

What became obvious during this time for me, forinstance, was that everything changes in this world(and universe) all the time. It became very clear, andeven if you haven't done any meditation, I think youstill can understand and imagine it. If you haven'tthought about it before, then let's do it now...

It is quite simple really: If the universe wouldn't be

changing all the time, then only one moment wouldexist at all times and the creation would not be able tochange! Why? Because that single moment wouldalways be the same single moment, unchanging. Justimagine now if this moment that you are in right now,would stop to change, then you would be stuck,immovable, not even breathing, right?! Obviously, ouruniverse is not like this, and therefore you don't have to

do any meditation at all in order to understand thateverything in this universe is changing, all the time!

What I am talking about right now is nothing special,nothing revolutionary at all. But it is important that younow have started to think about it, and also that yourealize this universal truth for yourself: Everything in

the manifested world and in the whole vast universe,

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is changing, all the time!

So the universe at any given moment is like it is, nomore and no less, and at that moment it can be held astrue. But already in the next moment it changes, and atthat moment it is true as well, although it is not thesame as it was before! And therefore we can say thatthe universe is a relative truth, and can not be held asan absolute truth!

This means, that no one can claim to be absolutelyright, and at the same time everyone is right, but onlyin a relative way. This can of course become a bitcomplicated both in theory and practically, but don'tworry, we will be able to overcome this issue later on!

A good thing to notice now is that what we learn toperceive in our lives (usually) are based on external

events through our five senses, and so we base ourreality on something that is relative! Let me say thatagain because this is important to understand: What wenormally experience in our day to day life is based on a“relative truth”!

Got it? Good!

In Sanskrit, this aspect of reality (the relative truth) iscalled Saguna Brahma. Brahma means The Absoluteand encompasses everything; both what is manifestedAND unmanifested, and one could call it God as well,although as soon as we mention the word God, wenormally have some concepts of what God is, so it isbetter sometimes to say it in Sanskrit. Saguna means“with qualities” and it refers to the expressed world, so

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one cold say that Saguna Brahma means “God in anexpressed form” (the whole universe).

But, I am not going to stop here, and it is now that itmight become a little shocking for your mind.

If something is relative, it is only true in a certainmoment. In another moment, it was true, but can notbe held as true anymore, and therefore it is not trueanymore (by the way, this makes much more sense

when you have understood that only the presentmoment is what exists and nothing else). And a truthfor you, might not be true for someone else, even inthat same moment. And what you thought yesterdaymay not be what you think or believe today, nor in thefuture. Therefore (as I have mentioned earlier), arelative truth can not be held as an absolute truth foranyone, not even for yourself.

Why? Because your mind is in the middle of you andthe absolute reality! It filters and scrambles the reality

of what reality is into something that fits the level of 

awareness that you have reached.

Therefore, the expressed world has been called “Maya”in Sanskrit, which can be translated as “the untrue”,

“unreal”, “illusion”, or even “dream”. And (hold on tosomething now), the whole universe becomes untrueor unreal when we filter it with our mind! Why?Because we can not see it for what it is, we are seeing itthrough the veil of Maya, meaning through the filter(s)of our mind.

Maya may seem to be real and true for us, but it can

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never be more than a relative truth (at its best). It isalways changing, and will never reach the state of beingabsolute true by its own.

Have you noticed that your mind continuously andunceasingly keeps sending you one thought after theother? It does that in an attempt to “steal” yourattention in fooling you into believing it is real, althoughit is not. If it wouldn't steal your attention, it would berather easy to go beyond the mind, and this book

would not be necessary!

What your mind does to your reality is to put filters onyour perceived reality, so that you even can't perceivethe pure changing reality (universe) as it is. This isMaya. Maya is to look at something, and at the sametime judge it. Even if you have a positive judgment, it isstill a judgment, and therefore still Maya (dream,

illusion).

Some say that the mind's function is to think, but letme add and say that it is also there to try to fool youinto believing in what it is telling you.

So here is probably the most inconvenient truth in ourlife: As long as we continue to have even the slightest

degree of judgment about our perceived reality, ourwhole life will stay unreal, untrue, or in some kind of dream state or illusion (call it as you like), and everyoneand everything that we encounter in our life, will not bereal for us, as our mind is in the middle filtering andchanging the reality for us. This is why it is necessary togo beyond the mind, and let the reality be as it is;simply Being. Only then will we be able to truly see the

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reality: a reality as it is in its pure form and essence!

Are you okay with what I just said? If not, notice thatyour mind already have judged the present moment(the reality), and also remember that you are not yourfeelings and thoughts, and therefore don't need toidentify with them. Just watch them! If they judgesomething, then watch them judge! Stay with your 'I'-feeling (more about that later on) and try to keep anopen mind to give me a chance to explain what I have

 just said more thoroughly and in a better way!

The question now that naturally follows is: “If everything changes all the time, and nothing isabsolutely real in the manifested world, then is theresomething that is permanent and absolute? And if yes,then how to find it?”.

And I am happy to tell you that: Yes, as a matter of fact,there is something that is permanent, and thereforecan be held as absolute and true.

The good news is that absolute truth can be found, andthe even better good news is, that it is what youalready are, and have always been, and will always be,so you don't even have to make any effort to find it,

because you are already that!

That what?

That which what you really truly are, beyond allconcepts, that part of you that never changes, and willnever change: the Self, the awareness of awareness, ithas been called many different things.

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Somehow we loose focus of it in our lives, and if wewant to discover it again, it is rather simple! We justneed to look at what it is we are doing in order to thinkthat we are not seeing it, what it is we are doing that ismaking us unaware of that!

And I can tell you with 100% certainty that it is possibleto “find” it again, it is just a matter of recognizing thateverything you believe in is relative, and allowing a shift

of attention take place from the relative to theAbsolute.

Okay, I agree, that might not sound so appealing toyour mind, this talk about shifting your attention awayfrom what you believe. But it is important in order to gobeyond the mind. Why? Because what we believe in,can it be true? I mean an absolute truth? Can a belief 

ever be completely true? I'm sure one part of yourmind wants to say yes to that, but I hope there isanother part of your mind that can recognize that a

belief is a thought, and therefore can never be an

absolute truth. And that is why I tell you like this: Leteverything that you believe in go! You can not hold onto any believes if you want to go beyond your mind!You have to become totally blank, and I will show you

how to do this!

But also relax, because whatever you believed in beforeyou can pick up and continue later on if it suits you, noproblem. When you have seen the absolute, you willknow what to hold as true!

And about this relative truth thing, don't worry! You

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can relax your mind a little after this shocking news,because when you have gone beyond your mind andfound yourself in the state of “awareness of awareness”, there is nothing more to discover, hereeverything becomes clear for you of what things reallyare. I dare to tell you that even the untrue becomestrue, because now you will not be judging it anymore,you will simply be able to see what it is without anymind actively distorting the reality anymore. Yes, eventhe changeable becomes true, because you are able to

see beyond the relative reality, and mix the absolutewith the relative, making the world and universe true atevery moment. Then everything becomes the Self,everything becomes One, and I tell you, it is verybeautiful and full of love to see the creation as it reallyis, without any mind judging it for us!

So this is the purpose with this book: to show you all

this, to help you reach the “awareness of awareness”,and to help you “reach” Oneness with yourself andeverything else!

Does it sound like you can not do this? Are youdoubting yourself? No worries, because you are alreadyenlightened! You just need to figure out what it is that

is unenlightening you! Meaning, what are you doing, or

what are you believing, that makes you unenlightened?It is as simple as that, and figuring that out is also onesimple way of going beyond the mind. Simply stopbelieving and judging with your mind, and when youhave stopped that, there is nothing left to hold on to,there will not be anything left for you to see but thereality as it is, beyond your mind and its filters. Wordscan not describe what you will see, but I will make an

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attempt anyway: it is pure love and happiness, God,Brahma, Oneness!

We are soon coming to the techniques on how to helpyou let go of your imagined world, but don't get mewrong: There is nothing wrong to be having thoughts,the only problem or issue that we have with ourthoughts, is that we believe them. We can use ourminds to do great things in this world, but the mindshould be considered as a tool to be used in order to

move around in the manifested world, not necessarilyto be believed in.

Maybe you wonder “Why?”. “Why not believe in ourminds?”. “What is the point with all this?”. Well, forstarters, it will show you who you really are, since you

are not the one you THINK you are, you simply ARE.

Any thought you have about yourself is not 100% true,so I want to give you the chance to see who you reallyare and how the world really is. Also, since this is thefinal goal for everyone and everything (to merge withthe totality of existence), sooner or later you will haveto do it, in this life or the next, there is no escape! Sowhy not find it out now, and stop living in a dreamworld, thinking it to be true, when it is not? Haven't

you slept enough?

Your awakening starts with watching your thoughts. It isa simple practice, but perhaps a new concept for you.One important thing you should notice is thatwhenever you are having a thought, you are also

watching that thought! Maybe you have never thoughtabout it before, but it nevertheless stands as a fact, a

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permanent truth. You stay as the subject, and youwatch the thought, which makes it an object in front of you (and therefore not you)!

Let me say that again, cause I will be coming back tothis over and over: Anything that is an object for you, isnot you! If you can't see this right away, then give itsome time, I'm sure it will get more clear for you as wecontinue.

Also note, that without an observer watching yourthoughts, there can be no thoughts (since it wouldn'tbe recognized), and later on you will see that nothingexists if a “watcher” is not there to recognize it. This“watcher”, or “observer”, is behind everything, butdoesn't do anything except observing. It is not onlyawareness, but “awareness of awareness”, and we'll becoming to this as we move on. This is one part of the

totality, an observer that is your true Self, ever-presentin all your thoughts and actions that you think youhave, or think you do!

Somehow in life we forget our true Self, and it is whenwe remember who we really are again that we awakefrom Maya and we start to see through the veil of illusion or dream that has been pulled over our eyes by

our own minds. This is a fight for complete freedom,only thing is, the arena or battlefield is inside of yourself...

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 – What is the Self, and how to identify it? –

The Self is you, but not what you think is you, or inother words, not your “ego you”, but beyond the realmof what your mind and your thoughts can reach. It ispure Being, ever-present, and therefore it is alwaysmixed and present with our minds and its thoughts, ourfeelings and our body, it is mixed with the wholecreation as we know it, and it exists beyond thecreation as well!

It binds us together, makes us whole, makes us One,and yet it doesn't do anything! And it is when we startto see the One in everything, that the untrue turns intotrue again. One could say that it is the Consciousness orAwareness of God (in Sanskrit called Nirguna Brahma,the unmanifested); the pure existence or Being thatGod is (the Bible mention it as the Holy Spirit*). And it

is when you realize the Self by merging with it (whenyou merge your mind with the Absolute), that you alsorealize what God and you truly are; only One!

Before we continue, I want to give you some othernames of what the Self has been called throughouttime, to try to make it clear for you what we are talkingabout here! The Self has also been called:

• Awareness of awareness

• Being

• Supreme Being

• Consciousness

• Supreme Consciousness

• The Unmanifested

The Absolute

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• The Absolute Truth

• The Holy Spirit*

The Spirit of God*• Soul

• Átman

• Paramátman

• Nirguna Brahma

* The Self as the Holy spirit in Christianity: "For who knows a

 person's thoughts except the spirit of that person, which is in

him? So also no one comprehends the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God."[1Cor. 2:11]

Have you ever had the feeling that there is somethingmore than what meets the eye in this life?

This “feeling” is the Self, ever-present, although

invisible. Some would call it God, but the word God isso full of concepts that I rather would like to use theword Self instead, just to free your mind from anypossible concepts of what God is that might be (hiding)in your mind.

For as long as humans have been wandering this Earth,it has also been the ultimate goal for humans to reach

Self-realization. For many it may seem an impossibletask to accomplish, and for others it may seem like avery difficult one. But why does it seem so difficult, oreven an impossible task, to merge with the Self? Howcan it be difficult if we already are One?

Because the Self can not be reached by the mind, and itrequires you to stop identifying with the mind in order

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to go beyond the mind! And it seems like we are somuch attached to our mind, that we sometimes evendon't want to shift the focus from the mind to the Self (everyone has their own personal reasons). But the Self is always there, so a shift of your attention is all it takes,really! Meaning, you don't have to go anywherephysically to find the Self, because the Self iseverywhere, all the time. And you don't have to waitfor it to happen either, because you are already that,you are already there! You only need to be honest with

yourself, to look at yourself and ask this question: Howam I unenlightening myself? What are the thoughtsthat I am believing into existence, but that is actually

 just covering my ability to see the existence as it reallyis?

In other words, enlightenment is nothing special! What? Yes, it is true, I mean how can it be special if it is

what you already are?!

What is really special and amazing though, is thethoughts you believe into existence, making a mirageout of the world, that is fantastic!

So let me repeat this: Self-realization is nothing special!How could it be special, if it is always there, and it is

what you always are, although you might haveforgotten it in the midst of Maya!?!

To notice it, you just need to shift your attention fromyour mind to the Self, because it is always there in thebackground of your mind. The Self is the origin of everything, without it nothing can exist. It is mixed witheverything in this universe; It is in everyone and

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everything, not only in humans, but in animals, plants,and even in stones and air and ether. It is everywhere,all the time!

In other words, everything has Consciousness, and it isalways there when you are having different experiences(otherwise you wouldn't be able to have anyexperiences). Like when you feel happy, or sad, or hurtor joyful, it is always there, just observing, simply Being.

Maybe that is why it is so difficult to notice it, since it isinside of us already and also around us all the time,ever-present, mixed with everything... How to spotsomething that is so natural, that is always right therein front of us, anywhere we turn? Of course we don'trecognize it at first! It would be more easy to spotsomething that comes and goes (like our thoughts forinstance), but something that is always there,

everywhere?! How to spot that?

Although consciousness is always present, we normallymiss to put focus on it because the changes that occursin the world steals our attention, and it makes uswrongly identify ourselves with our changing bodies,feelings and thoughts, neglecting the Self, missing outon the permanent consciousness “behind” everything.

Identifying ourselves with something that changes willonly limit us, and an identification like that will work asa bondage for us!

Basically what I can say, is that by thinking and thenidentifying with our thoughts, and to hold them as real,makes us dream. But if you switch your attention to the

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Self, then you “wake up” from your dream, and you willbe able to see everything for what it really is! If you areable to stop identifying with your thoughts and feelings,and stay with the “awareness of awareness”, you willhave Self-realization!

Being in this body, and having a mind controlling thisbody, is an experience that the Self “has”. It is difficultto say that the Self “has” anything really, because whatit does is just giving recognition to everything that is

happening.

Actually, for the Self, nothing is really happening, and itdoesn't have anything, because it is beyond the worldas we know it, and it only stays as the witness of everything. And yet again, we can say that it haseverything, because it is everywhere and withineverything! Confused? Don't worry, it will get more

clear later on!

Here is one shloka (Sanskrit for song) that tries toexplain the relationship between our body, our mindand the consciousness (átman, soul):

Átmanam rathinam viddhi

shariiram rathameva tu;

Buddhintu sarathim viddhimanah pragrahameva ca

Know the soul (átman), as the occupant of thechariot; the human body as the chariot; the intellect

(buddhi), as the charioteer; and the mind as the reins.

There are many tools that helps us shift our attention

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and focus to the Self, like love, compassion,understanding, patience, forgiveness, meditation,mantras, austerities, etc. The tool we will focus on inthis book is called Self-enquiry. I will explain about Self-enquiry a little later, but first, let's continue with this“mixing” of Consciousness and mind that I havementioned, so you can get a clearer picture of what weare dealing with here.

The “phenomena” or “mixing” of Consciousness with

everything in the expressed world has been describedas a paper sheet. We know that the paper sheet is one,it is one paper sheet, but it has two sides. One frontside and one back side. So we can say that one side of the paper is the Consciousness (unexpressed), and theother side is the creation (expressed universe). They aretwo, and yet, they are one. Another example is thecoin. It also has two sides, and still it is one coin. This is

a common way of describing the mixing of Consciousness with anything in the expressed world.

But please note, that mind can not exist withoutConsciousness, although Consciousness can and doexist without the mind. Let me try to explain it like this:

Let's say we remove one side of the paper or the coin,

then we automatically have to remove the other side aswell, right? And then what remains? Nothing! And inthis nothing, still Consciousness remains, becausesomething has to be there in order to give recognitionto the action of removing the paper. Consciousness, orawareness, never goes away, it is always there, ever-present and very subtle!

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And this is why only Consciousness can be held assomething permanent, making it the only Absolutetruth. Yogis have tried to convey this in the past withthis Shloka:

Purnamadah purnamidam

purnad purnamudacyate

Purnasya purnamadaya

purnameva vashisyate.

This is infinite, and that also is infinite. The perfecthas given rise to the perfect and if infinite is to be

taken from the infinite, the remainder also isinfinite.

So in a way, it should be rather easy to find the Self,since it is everywhere, right? And I say yes to that! Andin fact, even if your attention is not on the Self yet, youare already the Self, even if you haven’t noticed it yet.

And when you have stopped identifying with your bodyand mind, you will automatically shift your attention tothe Self and see that this is true. You are That, always!

I've mentioned that Consciousness always is, that it isinfinite and ever-present, but I also mentioned thatmind is not, because mind is dependent onConsciousness for it to be recognized, it can not workand function without it! So the great task now will be toestablish a separation between Consciousness and yourindividual mind, in order for you to be able todistinguish and see what the mind is, and what the

Consciousness is! It is good for you to be clear with this

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because it becomes very easy then to stop theidentification with thought and body.

In the beginning it may seem hard, you might think it isvery difficult, but that is only a thought, andConsciousness is therefore always only a thought

away! Remove that thought, and see what is left! Letme say that again, because it is important: Removeyour thoughts, and all that is left is consciousness! Andremember, even if you remove the paper sheet,

Consciousness will be there, mind not!

And don't worry, your mind will probably be therewaiting for you when you shift attention again back toit. But it is now the magic happens, when you will seefor yourself with new and awakened eyes the reality asit is, without any concepts blurring your vision!

So, even if  your mind is still there, you can have Self-realization! The shift from mind to consciousness is liketurning the paper sheet around. It makes you see theSelf first, and then the expressed world. You literally willfilter the reality with nothing! This is how everythingbecomes One, and this is how you reach peace and loveand happiness, because you will be able to see God(One) in everything, all the time! When you don't

identify with your mind, everything of this universe willbecome clear and understandable for you!

That is why you will learn Self-enquiry, because it helpsyou immensely to “filter” or “bend away” the mindfrom pure Consciousness. This process may or may notannihilate the mind, but you will for certain be able tosee clearly what the mind is and what it is not, meaning

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what is Absolute and what is Relative. Self-enquiryhelps you to shift your focus from your mind to the Self,and then experience the world as it really is.

In this process, there might be a feeling of dying. But noneed to panic, and don't be discouraged by this! It isonly the feeling that springs out from the identificationthat you have been accustomed to do with your bodyand mind... There is nothing to fear, you are not dying,it is just a separation from your individual mind (your

thought-projected self, or ego) and the Self that istaking place. It is your identification with your mindthat “dies”, and my recommendation for you is simplyto stay as the observer and watch it (if not, you willcontinue to be in your mind, simple as that). And of course, this sensation of dying can be very strong, butagain: Don't worry! Of course, very few people wants todie, but you will not die! It is only your false

identification to created concepts that are not you thatwill go away. You are going to realize what you are asthe subject, and you will see that this is immortal!

Here is one shloka that signifies this:

Asato má sadgamaya tamaso má jyotirgamaya,

Mrtyormá amrtam gamaya ávirávirmayaedhi.

Lead me from the mutable (asat) to the immutable(sat), from darkness (tamas) to light (jyoti), from

mortality (mrtyu) to immortality (amrta), from theworld of despondency to the world of joy.

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There are of course different techniques to lead youfrom darkness to light etc, and we will be focusing onthe “Self-enquiry tool” in this book. And why was thistool chosen? Because it was this tool that enabled meto take “the last step” to Self-realization, and thereforeI know that it works, simple as that!

Self-enquiry enables you to turn the paper around andfocus on the Self instead of your mind; it puts the Self in the foreground of your attention instead of the

background, where your mind is covering it.

Yes, it is quite amazing! Even though your mind isinfinitely small compared to the Self, it has the ability tocompletely cover the Self for you to not recognize it.Just as you can cover the entire sun with only yourthumb, all you need to to do to see the sun again is toremove your thumb!

Doing this requires a shift of attention, and this mightbe easier said than done, because usually the minddoesn't want to loose your attention. Maybe you thinkthat a lot of time, power and energy is required to dothis shift, and maybe even that you will have to strugglewith your mind when it doesn't want to turn. But don'tgive any heed to this, as it is just a “trick” of your mind

to keep your attention away from the Self!

And in the process of turning the paper and focus onthe unchanging you, the experience can be just aspowerful. I know people can start to laugh, others maycry, some people feel immense joy, others feel panic,and maybe all these come at once for some, whoknows?! It all depends on how you have been

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identifying with your mind in the past. Don't worry,when everything has settled and come into place, besure that everything will be alright!

The shift from your mind to your true Self can be calleda paradigm shift! For some people, this shift to the Self can seem to be the most powerful shift in their lives,because it probably has the most resistance from theirown mind. But it is also the biggest release andfreedom you can experience once you get there!

Since the mind needs your attention in order to exist, italso wants to be in control over your attention, sendingyou stronger and stronger thoughts in the end of theprocess. You will have to deal with parts of yourself thatyou might not even have been fully aware of, and it canbe felt as difficult! But the reward is greater than youcan imagine, because you will become without fear,

greed, and many other things that seemed to hold youback from being happy, free and loving. What awaitsyou is a peace and happiness in such a resplendencethat it is indescribable; it is the feeling of complete joyand bliss in just Being and Loving.

For sure when you have experienced this sort of peaceand happiness, you will want to remain in this peace

forever, but it might be easier said than done. So I willalso tell you how to be able to “stay” as the Self, to“stay” as this feeling of Being. Because even when yourealize that you are That, you are habituated intoidentifying with your mind, and so it can, and probablywill, happen that you many times seemingly go “in andout, in and out” of the Self, kind of loosing yourattention from time to time.

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Don't worry, you will always be the Self! This is onlyyour mind trying to distract you again, it tries to regainpower over your attention. No problem! I'll give yousome examples of what can happen at this point, tomake it clear for you what is mind, and what is the Self,so you'll not be fooled by your mind and loose focus of the Self.

I will show you all this, and guide you to the Self, in an

attempt for your very own Self-realization!

But, as you probably understand, you will not reachthere simply by reading this book, you will have tomake some effort by your own, and continue to do thepractices that are described in it. It will not hurt to stayfor yourself during this time, to stay silent and beintrovert. But it can also be good to interact with the

world, as that will test your progress immensely! I'msure that if you can be a little still and quite and listento what you have inside, your own inner voice will tellyou how you shall progress from now on!

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 – The body-mind experience –

Before we go to the Self, we need to have a look at ourbody and mind first, in an attempt to realize what itreally is. Because as long as we identify with it and giveit a lot of importance, we can not turn the page to seethe Self, as the body-mind experience will be blockingour vision.

The good news is that the body-mind experience can

easily be pointed out, as it comes after Being (the 'Iam'-feeling) in its expression. To be more exact, the Self exists even before the thought of 'I' arises, making itprior to mind. But the Self is also synonymous with thefeeling of existing, or the feeling of 'I am' (that

everyone has), although the Self is not a feeling, it isonly pure awareness.

When consciousness is mixed with the body-mindexperience, we as individual beings get the feeling of 'Iam', and it shows or expresses itself as the feeling orthought of 'I am this' or 'I am that'.

Although the Self is permeating everything that exists,in order to make it simple and clear for you, let's makea distinction and divide your complete existence into

two parts: your 'I am'-feeling, and whatever comesafter that.

We can do this, because we need to hold on to andseparate the Absolute truth from the relative truth atfirst, but in the end you should nevertheless be able tosee that all is the Self, that all is One and the same!

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So, let's give you some examples to make this moreclear!

Let's say that you feel hungry. Then what do you think?'I am hungry' of course! Now let's look into thatthought/feeling a little deeper... There is actually twoparts at work here: One part is 'I am', which we by nowknow never changes (it is the Self). The other part is'hungry', making it a body-mind experience. Can yousee it? Yes? No?

'I am hungry' means that your stomach (a part of yourbody) is telling your mind that it is ready for food, andso you feel that you are hungry. But who is hungry? Areyou hungry? Or is it your body that is hungry? This iswhat you need to start to be clear with for yourself!

If you say “hungry”, it wouldn't make so much sense,...

But if you say “I am hungry”, or “s/he is hungry” or“they are hungry”, or “we are hungry”, or if you put itin a question and ask “are you hungry?”, then it getsmore context, doesn't it?!

And it makes more sense because there has to be anobserver in order to perceive this hunger. This is whyhunger can not exist by itself without the feeling of 'I

am'. And please note (and remember), that the feelingof 'I am' is there even if you are not hungry, thusqualifying it for being absolute!

When I just now mentioned the 'I am'-feeling, I alsosaid the word synonymous, because the sense of 'I am'can not even be expressed by words in the Self, it justis. But to be able to explain what I am talking about, I

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need to use words that “best” describe the Self (we willget back to this later on as well, it should get clearerand clearer for you, don't worry).

To have any kind of experience, there has to be anobserver first, otherwise the action will not and can notbe noted, and therefore making it impossible for any

action to take place without it. This might be new foryou in terms of thinking, so I will show you thisthroughout the book, because it has immense

importance of where you put your attention, andultimately for your Self-realization!

I took hunger as an example, because anyone can relateto that feeling. But many important questions comesnow: Who is the one that is hungry? Who is it that isobserving that? And who is this 'I am'? Or put a littledifferently: W ho is the observer observing that you are

hungry? And can that observer be seen? Thisquestioning will naturally lead to the ultimate questionin our lives: Who am I? When you start asking yourself these series of questions sincerely, it most probablyleads you to your very own awakening.

Did you know that the word Buddha literally means“the awakened one”? Everyone that awakes (turns the

paper and shifts their attention) is a Buddha, andanyone that chooses to investigate and get to thebottom of who they really are, is in the process of awakening, of becoming a Buddha.

Awakening from what? Well, it is the awakening fromthe illusion that the body-mind experience is theabsolute reality, when in fact it is not!

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I will continue to show you why the body-mindexperience is not an absolute truth. My written wordswill help you to see this, but also you will have to dosome effort with the help of Self-enquiry that will beexplained to you later on in order to see this clearly foryourself.

But before we continue with the practice I guess it is inorder to explain a little about the art of dreaming...

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 – Dreaming –

Dreaming in this book means giving attention to athought and to follow it around wherever it takes you,holding it to be real. As long as your attention is in yourmind and not in the Self, it is called dreaming. It canalso be referred to as being hypnotized by a thought,and thereby making the your thought-based reality anillusion (and you accomplish this all by yourself). Why?Because when the hypnotist has hypnotized you, he can

say whatever he wants to you, and you will believe it.He can tell you to do things that you normally wouldn'tdo, etc, and you would think it to be real. This is themind for you, the greatest hypnotist that has ever been,and will ever be!

Here's a question for you: If you are in a dream, andsomeone says to you in your dream that you are

dreaming, how would you know if that was true or not.How would you be able to verify it and wake up? Forsure, the person that tells you can not prove it for youeither, because he is also inside of your dream!

No one else can prove the dream for you, and no oneelse can wake up for you either, you have to realize itfor yourself, and also to wake up by yourself!

Of course, you could simply wait until you would wakeup, that is one solution, but you would never reallyknow if it was a dream or not until you woke up.Another solution would be to ask the other person forhelp. Because if that person knows that you aredreaming inside your very own dream, then that personshould know how to wake you up as well, right?!

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Maybe true, maybe not. The third solution is denial,which only works for a certain period of time, becauseeventually you will wake up from the dream anyway(whether you like it or not)!

But the second option only works to some extent,because it is like the old Buddhist saying: “If you wantto look at the moon, don't look at the finger that pointsto the moon, look at the moon directly!”

Ultimately, it has to be you yourself that wakes up!What others say can help and guide you along, but itstill is you that need to turn your head from the fingerthat is pointing to the moon, and look at the moonyourself. It is you that needs to shift your attentionfrom what you have learned (the realm of the mind), toa direct experience of the Self.

One thing one realizes on the path to Self-realization, isthat whatever path you have chosen in your life,everyone and everything around you is a guide to theSelf! And more importantly, everything that you

encounter is the Self , one simply has to be observantenough to see it.

But, if you can not see the guidance, or if you want very

direct help and ask someone to help you to wake upfrom the dream, then you will certainly need to gethelp from the ones who already are awake. I mean, if you ask someone that is still dreaming, it would not beso direct, or would it? Both of you would probablycontinue to dream for a long time...

Imagine that you are dreaming right now as you are

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reading this, and then in your dream you realize thatyou are dreaming, and want to wake up. What if youwould say to yourself “Wake up!”, and nothinghappened? Probably you realize one more thing at thispoint: You don't know how to wake up by yourself!There could be different feelings running through youat this moment, one of them being that you are stuckinside of your very own dream.

This is why I wrote this book, to aid you in your

awakening! I want to help you remember who youreally are, to gently relax your imagined self into theBeing of Self, and also to help you to not fall asleepagain!

I have mentioned the body-mind experience, and it isan experience to enjoy, it is nothing wrong with it. Theonly issue (if we can call it an issue) is the identification

with this experience. The identification with the body-mind experience instead of the Self causes you to keepon dreaming, it causes you to see the illusion that themind has set up in front of your eyes as something real.Just remember, the mind makes you dream, but youcan wake up from it and start to see it for what it is;something transient that passes like a show in front of you!

Dreaming can also bee described as being in a 3D-movie, just that the movie is being so real, that youactually think the movie is your real reality, and youforget that you are just acting out a role inside of it.What we are going to see though, is that when themovie has ended, the screen of which the movie wasplayed upon, is still there! In this example, the screen is

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the observer, and just like the Self or the 'I am'-feeling itcontinues to exist even though the movie has stoppedto play!

When you have made the shift with your attention, youwill see that the 3D-movie that has been played out infront of you your whole life, the most real movie youhave ever experienced, is just a movie with yourimagined self as the main character in it. But when yourealize who you really are, you also realize that your

body-mind experience are just an act in life itself, andyou can very easily stop to identify with the actor thatyou thought was you, although you can continue toplay that role as as much as you want, or any other rolefor that matter! What makes the difference is yourpoint of attention and (thereby) your identification!

What happens when the movie ends? You go back into

Being the observer (which you always are). Just like theactor on stage might play a king: When the act finishes,he leaves the stage and “becomes” himself again. Hedon't think and act that he is a king when he is of thestage, or if he would, people would call him crazy orschizophrenic!

Realizing this will help you in the process of separation

from the identification of your body and mind. Theseparation is a necessary one if you want to becometruly free and One with the creation, without anyfeeling of separation. You might wonder now, how it ispossible to be One if you have to do a separation withthe body-mind identification, how can you be separatefrom anything and still be One?

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The answer is, that you are merging your individual self with your true infinite Self, and when you have beenable to separate your identification from your personalmind, there is nothing left for your mind to identifywith, only to merge and become One with all. Then youwill see and experience the world, the universe andyourself, as One. In other words, you will see the worldas God, and you know it with your whole being to beGod at all times.

One could say that the expressed universe is a dream of God. Whatever happens in the dream of God, God asConsciousness (Nirguna Brahma) stays unaffected, justlike when you have a dream and something terriblehappens to you in the dream, then, when you wake up,you relax because nothing really happened to you.

This is also one answer to the question “Why God,

why?”. You know, if something very terrible happens toyou, you might ask God “Why did this happen?”. Butsince everything is God, do you really think that Godwould actively hurt Himself? Do you think God is asadomasochist? No, because nothing really happens toGod, He stays unaffected as the observer (the screen)of the dream (the movie). The origin of suffering is

simple: It is all about our mistaken identifications.

Listen up! We have so far been mistaken our body andmind for being the ultimate reality. And with Self-enquiry, you will be able to go to the bottom with whatI am saying now, and see for yourself if it is like this ornot!

Coming this far, you will start to understand what the

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true meaning of immortality means. The Self is beyondthis body, so you will realize that your body can die, butwithout an identification to your body (meaning whenyou understand that you are not your body), who reallydies? It is only your body that grows old and dies, notyou!

And your mind will have gained many experiencesthroughout many lives already, but you are not yourmind either, and so the mind sooner or later will have

to merge with Consciousness and become One. This ishow everything ultimately becomes One, it startsmaybe as a mental attitude for us in our lives, but in theend it is not an attitude, it is our reality. Of course, inthe beginning of the spiritual path, it can be good totrain our mind thinkgin that everything is One. Trainingour mind to see everything as One, expands our mindand makes it more easy to accept the Oneness that is

(behind) everything. Seemingly, it seems that it is justwaiting for us to wake up from the dream and realizeour true Self. And when we wake up, we see that theOneness was always there, and we were always One,and then we don't need to have a mental attitudeabout Oneness anymore, everything just is!

Are you inspired to wake up? Ready to let go of your

imagined world? Ready to see reality for what it reallyis? Yes?! Then let us continue..

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 – A guide to the Self –

I have already introduced you to the fact that in thisuniverse, everything is changing all the time... And themain question has been how to reach That which neverchanges, That which is Ever-Present at all times... Itmight sound tricky, but don't worry, it is not! As I'vementioned already, you are That already, but if youhaven't noticed it yet, then now is the time for you to

shift your focus to it!

Let me demonstrate how to do this in a few simplesteps...

~ The body-identification ~

Let's start with our body. If you identify with your body,

then every part of your body is you, and when we areasked to point to who we are, we can point to any partof our body, saying “this is me”. But if you point to yourfoot for instance, would you really say that your foot isyou? No, you would say that it is a part of you! What if you would loose your foot? It would wither away and“die”, but did you wither away and die? No, youbecause you stay as the 'I', as the Self. If your foot was

not a part of your body anymore, would you still saypoint to the foot and claim that it is you? Probably not.I can understand if you would say that it was you, butnow it is not anymore. This makes us see that the footis part of a changing reality, which ultimately can not beheld as you!

So if you are not your foot or any other part of your

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body for that matter, then what are you? Who ispointing to your foot? It is your mind pointing, becauseif your mind was not seated in your body, you wouldnot be able to move around with your body, and noneof your senses would work. In other words, your bodywould either be in a coma, or it would be dead. If someone would hit your body, you wouldn't be able tofeel it, cause your mind is not there to register it. If someone would flash a light in your eyes, you wouldn'tbe able to see it, cause your mind is not there to

register it. And so it continues with the rest of yoursenses...

So it is your mind that is telling you that you are yourbody, since it is your mind that controls your body. Ourmind is using our body as a vehicle in order to movearound in this world, like the shloka before was tellingus about (about our body being a chariot).

We can now see that we are not our body by thissimple recognition!

Can you see it? Is it tricky? It is only difficult as long asyou wrongly identify you with your body!

Your body is a possession that you “have”, or rather one

could say that you have an experience of.

Let's look into another example: We can say “I have abroken leg” or “I have problems with my back”. You caneasily see that you are referring to your body as apossession, just like you can refer to your car and saythat you have a broken tire, or problem with the engineetc. If your car has a problem, you wouldn't say that

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YOU have a problem, right?! If you can make a cleardistinction of this, it will help you tremendously furtheron!

Here is one example that will continue to explain ourrelation with our body (and I will continue to use itwhen we reach the identification with our mind aswell).

In our life, we have many things. Maybe we have

clothes, a house or an apartment, a garden, a camera, aguitar, a bicycle, a car, we have parents, siblings andfriends. All of these we say we have, but we don't goaround saying that we are them, right? No, we don'tsay that we are a camera or a car, or our mother orfather or brother or sister, or whatever object that isout there. We don't say this, because we can clearly

distinguish them as objects for us, thus making us the

subject. But what is the subject inside of us? Have youever thought about it deeply? Or just assumed thatyour body is you as a subject? But how can that betrue, if you can observe your body? Wouldn't that makeyour body into an object as well?

Yes it would, and yes it does! Your body is an object foryou, and therefore not you! And I ask you to open your

mind for this possibility now!

If you are not your body, who (or what) are you? Orrather, what is 'I'? Because this is what we can say weare, right? Everyone can relate to this 'I'-feeling that weall have inside of us.

Right now, let's only mention that it is only our own

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feeling of 'I' or 'I exist' that can be taken as us being thesubject. And guess what?! It is not your body that hasthis feeling, but your mind!

When you drive your car, it functions as a vehicle foryour body, and it doesn't have a feeling of being you.Let me say that again: Your car doesn't think it is YOU!And this is how your body functions too: a vehicle foryour mind to transport itself around in in this world.

If you haven't realized this yet, please take a moment tothink about it now, because it is essential for you to beable to see this so you can stop to identify with yourbody as being you. Give it time if you need, after all,you have probably been taught to identify with yourbody your whole life, so it is not necessarily easy tostop the identification immediately. No problem, let itbe gradual if needed!

Let me share one experience that I had when I wasdoing the Vipassana meditation in India:

As I was sitting for the fourth day, especially my legshad started to ache a lot, giving me a pain I never hadexperienced before. I have never been tortured in mylife, but I can imagine that this pain must have been

similar to torture. I wanted to move my body, but therehad been clear instructions to not move if possible, so Itook the decision to not move and continue themeditation. Two things became very clear for me atthat point: One was that the pain could only be feltwhen I put my attention to the pain. When I was notfocusing on the pain, but focusing on the meditation, Ifelt no pain, although I was aware (or knew) that the

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pain was there. It was with great effort that I didn'tmove my attention to the pain, and it gave me relief when I was able to keep the attention on themeditation and not the pain. But shortly after thisrealization, somehow the pain became to much for themind to bare, and I had to focus immensely on themeditation, so much that my mind literally “jumped”(or more probably escaped) out of my body, leaving thebody which was still sitting down on the floor. The mindhad freed itself from the body, I had still full awareness

of what was happening, and I could feel a connection tothe body, like an invisible string of energy between thebody and my mind. Since I knew that I was now freefrom my body, I also understood that I could doanything I wanted. So I tried flying, and yes, it worked. Ialso knew that I couldn't be stopped by any physicalwall, so I could simply go or pass through any obstaclein my way. The medium thick string of energy

connecting me to my body was always present (it waskind of like a feeling or notion), and whenever I wanted,I knew intuitively that I just needed to think of goingback to the body if I wanted to go back to my body. Andso, after some time playing around as a mind without abody, I decided to go back inside of my body again. Itonly took me one thought (one intention), and in aninstant I was back! But of course, now also the pain that

the mind had escaped came back with even morevigilance than before. I remember I wanted to screamout loud, but since it was a silent retreat, I kept mymouth shut, waiting for the pain to go away, stretchingmy legs out and I started to massage them.

So this was how I learned that I was not my body. Amore clear experience than this will probably be hard

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to find, but it is very possible for anyone to get to knowthis fact, even without leaving your body (and savingyou some very intense feelings of pain)!

When you don't identify with your body anymore, itcreates a lot of freedom and “space” for you, and youare relieved from the fear of dying, since youunderstand that you can not die! Death (physical death)is only another word for when your mind leaves yourbody for good, or in other words, when the body and

mind looses parallelism, that's all.

This realization is one step “closer” to your true Self,and we will take one or two more steps until we reachthe core of what this book really is about.

When we realize that we are not our body, we have oneidentification less. Still, we might identify ourselves

with our mind and its thoughts and feelings. So anotherquestion arises for us: Are we our mind? Well, let'scheck it out!

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~ The mind-identification ~

So far we have been able to conclude that we are notour body, and we have understood that an object cannot be us; we are more subtle than that. By pointingout our body, we have been able to look at it thanks toour mind. Therefore, we can not be the body, becauseit has appeared as an object in front of us, and you asthe subject has been watching it. But can you watchyour mind? This is an important question, because the

answer will tell you if you are your mind or not.

If you are your mind, you would not be able to see it,because seeing the mind requires an observer that isnot the mind. So if you can see your mind, thenlogically you are not your mind, because it appears asan object in front of you, and you are an observerobserving your mind (a.k.a. your thoughts and feelings

which all together make up your mind)!

In physics there is something called “The observereffect”, which basically says that if you are going toobserve something, you automatically change thenatural course of what you are looking at. Let's say thatyou want to check the pressure in a tire. This is difficultto do without letting out some of the air, thus changing

the original pressure in the tire. This effect can beobserved in many domains of physics, but it also

applies to our perceived reality!

Many times (if not always) when we are havingthoughts and experiences, we usually also at the sametime judge them, have you noticed that?! When we

 judge our thoughts and experiences, this judgment

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then automatically gets mixed with our perception of reality. And from this judgment, we decide what to dowith our thoughts (in other words, if we are going tofollow the thought or not with our attention). What thisleads to, is actions and reactions in the expressedworld, where we constantly are deciding where to goand what to do based upon our judgment. So wheredoes this judgment come from? It comes from thecollective experiences we have gained simply by livingour lives. And since everyone have their unique own

life-experiences, no one will be able to look at thereality in the same way as it is without altering(judging) it when we solely use our minds to look at thereality and leave the Self in the background, unnoticed!This is the “observer effect” when it comes to ourminds and how we perceive reality!

One important thing to remember is that our thoughts

and feelings only exists as long as we give attention tothem! They actually disappear when we don't think of them (when we don't give attention to them). Have younoticed that? Well, think about it, you only have athought, when you think about it, right?! And of course,there are thoughts we can choose to think when weuse our conscious mind, and there are thoughts thatkind of just pops up without us even wanting them to

come to our minds, and they are sent from the sub-conscious mind. I am not going to go into detail aboutthis, but I just want to say that all these thoughts cansteal our attention, and when we give them attention,they stay alive. But (and there is a but)! They exist onlyas long as we give them attention, and when we stopgiving them attention, they also go away just as fast asthey came.

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That is why they are not really real, because they exist,and then they don't exist, they exist, and then theydon't exist. Do you get it? And so now we have to askourselves if this is how we filter our reality? The realityis in front of us in one shape, and the next moment itlooks different, all depending on which filter (thought,feeling) our mind is seeing it with!

This is why some teachings, like Advaita, claim that this

world isn't really real. But this is not something weshould learn with our minds, this is something we haveto realize for ourselves! To see this world as it really is,all the time, and stay aloof of it, one has to go beyondthe mind.

We can of course understand all of what I say now withour minds, but there is a difference between

understanding with the mind, and direct experience bybeing the witness of all. In other words, to see therelative world without having an observer effect, onehas to look from a standpoint that is beyond the mind.

Otherwise, we only see a part of the whole reality,because if we look from the mind, we can only seemind, and what is mind? It is a part of the reality, and

to keep in mind that it is a changing reality displayed infront of us. Remember the movie and the movie-screen. A movie is being played on the movie-screen...Many things can happen in the movie, it is alwayschanging. But when the movie is over and you turn off the projector, what remains? The movie-screen! TheSelf is like the movie-screen, and your mind is playing amovie on it. No matter how real the movie may seem,

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you always know it is a movie! This is similar to being inthe Self, where you can watch the mind play its moviefor you, but you know it is a movie you are watching,and you will never say that the movie is happening toyou, would you?

Of course, it might not nice for the mind to hear this inthe beginning of the process (of the awakening),because the mind wants you to think it to be real,otherwise it will loose its power over you! It wants you

to take it very seriously and think it is real (absolute).But later on as you progress you will be able to relaxmore, because you will start to see that your mind infact is playing a movie in front of you! And the moreyou stop to identify with the movie of your mind, theless powerful it becomes over you in terms of illusion,meaning, the illusion that your mind has set up in frontof you as a movie that you are watching all the time.

When you start to turn the paper (your focus of attention), also you change your identification frombeing an actor in the movie, to being the movie screenwhere reality is observed without judgment.

What is the function of the mind? It thinks, feels,remembers, it draws conclusions etc. Okay, seems to bea myriad of things that the mind is capable of, do we

have to look at all our thoughts, one by one, in order tounderstand if we are that thought or not? That will takea lot of time, no?! Well, there is quite an easy way to dothis, but you will have to do it very thoroughly!

Do you remember the example of your thoughts andfeelings being like clouds on the sky, coming and going,and therefore not permanent? They come and go all

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the time, and therefore we could conclude alreadybefore that we are not our thoughts and feelings. Why?Because we don't come and go! We are here, all thetime! Our bodies and minds might be here and there,but behind that, notice that our feeling of 'I am' is

always present and “here” in every single moment! Also, just by saying that we can look at our feelings andthoughts implies that they are objects in front of us,making us the subject. This understanding has immenseimportance in our process of letting go of our

misplaced identifications!

If you want this thing about “objects in front of you”explained a little more, then let me give you a different,but still straightforward example:

Let's say you are feeling happy. Then something sadhappens and you feel sad. Then another thing happens

that makes you feel happy again. In this scenario, whatwere you? You were happy, then sad, and then happyagain. But was that really true? The key point here is tohelp you locate yourself as the subject, watching thefeelings as objects, making you separate from thefeelings you had.

We might think that we are our thoughts, but now it is

time to figure out what we are when we don't think!

What feeling is it that always remains, even thoughother feelings come and go? It is the 'I'-feeling! Can younotice that your feeling of existing, or your feeling of presence, always is there, even if your feelings comeand go? Your feelings fit into the category of a changingreality, a.k.a. dreaming. But your presence don't,

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because it is always there, wherever your thoughts andfeelings go! Your feeling of presence is there, always!Could this be the subject then? The one thing that doesnot change, making it the Absolute Truth? Is it this thatwe really are? Let's find out!

Just by looking at two feelings; happy and sad, we havebeen able to conclude that we are dreaming them. Of course, when we feel them, they seem very real to us,but why do they seem so real to us? It is because of our

attention and identification with them that we say thatwe are happy or sad. When we identify ourselves withsomething, we immediately start to dream.

But how to stop identifying ourselves with our feelingsthen? The answer is simple: Shift your attention!

So here is the thing: we can at the same time as we

have feelings, observe that we have these feelings! Canyou recognize it? Are you able to recognize, that thereis something present in your life that always is aware of your feelings, that is always there, but at the same timeappearing to be mixed with them? It is time for you torecognize this Presence that just Is! It gives recognitionto your feelings, and though it is mixed with yourfeelings, it can also Be, separate from them. Can you

confirm that this Presence is there in you right now? If not, don't worry, you will get the tool(s) for you to shiftyour attention and to recognize this soon enough. Andif you by now have started to be aware of your ownPresence, then congratulations, because you havetaken one of the last steps unto Self-realization andOneness!

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Now that we can observe our thoughts and feelings(like the feelings of happy or sad), the most importantquestion for us now, is: “Who is watching this?” And of course, the answer will be: “I am watching this!” Yes,that is true, but who, or what, is this 'I' that you referto? So the following question, equally important, wouldbe: “Can it be seen?”

If the observer can be seen by you, it is still not you,because it means that it is an object in front of you and

it is therefore not your true 'I', and you are still in yourmind with a false idea of you. Why? Because if you cansee yourself, that you remains an object for you, andyou will have to go even more deep inside of you untilyou remain as the subject! Or in other words, until youcan no longer be seen, when the only you is the subjectyou without any thought-projected you in front of you!

The thing is, why it can be so hard to discover the Self,is that it is not even a feeling. A feeling requires mind,and can therefore not be hold as true, or at least not asan absolute truth. If you want to discover your real true'I', you will have to go beyond the mind. But as I saidbefore, there is nowhere to go, because it iseverywhere all the time. So what to do? Well,remember what I said before! What is required is to let

all your concepts go of whatever you think is you, andall the concepts that you might have aboutenlightenment for that matter, because any idea of howyou think it should be to be enlightened will not bereally true, as an idea comes from the mind!

Let's continue to talk a little more about the mind,because it might be tricky to make the shift of attention

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in the beginning to your true Self!

Here's a little repetition: Your feelings are not you, andyou can by now see that you have been mistakenyourself with your feelings your whole life. You can alsosee that you always remained, although your feelingscame and went, and your body changed from baby tochild to teenager and so on. Many thoughts andfeelings have you had during this time, but they allcame and went. The big question is: Who is it that

always remained present? Who is it that was watchingyour feelings? Is it another part of your mind perhaps?Let's find out!

First you need to be clear with what a subject and whatan object is. A subject can watch an object, as theobject appears in front of the subject. But can theobject be watching the subject? Then the roles would

change, and the subject becomes the object, and theobject becomes the subject. Meaning, your feelingswould start to watch the Self. Would that be possible?Well, both yes and no! Although you can see yourfeelings and thoughts, these will eventually not existanymore when you reach the Self. Abiding in the Self will cancel out anything, there will be nothing left. Andstill, consciousness is mixed with everything, so it stays

with your thoughts and feelings as well. In other words,with the help of consciousness anything can be seen!

In more easy words: Consciousness is watchingconsciousness. The Self is watching the Self, cause thereis really nothing else to be seen, just different angles of the same thing!

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But for you to go to the Self, if you didn't understandwhat I just said, that is okay! You will see this eventuallyanyway, so let's not dive into that too much now...

Let's get back on track: What happens if the subjectbecomes the object, and vice versa? The roles change.Do you remember what change signifies? Relativereality! It is therefore necessary to stay as the observerof all the changes, and be mindful if you can seeyourself as the observer. In that case, continue to shift

attention to that which is observing the changes, andstay with that; your absolute 'I' which never changes. It

is when we reach our 'I' that never changes that we

have Self-realization!

You need to be clear about if you are the watcher, or if there is a presence even more deep and subtle inside of you that is watching you as the watcher! Be very

honest, because the mind likes to trick you into thinkingthat you have reached the Self when you still haven't.You will know with your entire Being when you havereached the Self, don't worry!

As long as you are watching yourself, you are still beingan object, meaning you are still in your mind, watchingthoughts and feelings that your mind has.

Did I make it too complicated? I'm sorry, let me tryagain!

As long as you can see something, you can very easilyand quickly disregard it from being yourself. It is simplynot you! If you can see it, it means that it is an objectthat has come before you, and what you are seeing is

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an idea of you, nothing else!

So now, basically, there are two more things you needto do before Self-realization: One is to find out whatthis feeling of 'I' is inside of you, and the other one is tostop identifying yourself with objects. And these two gohand in hand!

Of course it would become a big job if we had to go tothe bottom with all our thoughts and feelings, trying to

realize that we are not them. Thoughts and feelingsseems to come in an endless flow in a normal personsmind, so how to shift the attention in an easy way?

You have been reading this far, and sincerely tried to dothe practices, so you should by now be able to watchyour thoughts, feelings and body, and you bothunderstand and see that they are all objects in front of 

you. You are also now starting to understand that it ispossible to go beyond the mind by simply stopping toidentify with the mind (also others you will need tostop identifying with).

So how to reach this natural first state of having nomind?

Since you have started to watch your mind, you willalso start to see that it is an object before you, andwhatever information the mind sends to you in theform of thoughts and feelings, you can see now thatthey are not you as they appear in front of you, and youcan stop identifying with them...

This understanding will enable a shift of attention from

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the direction of your mind, unto the Self, your true 'I'-feeling. As you continue to practice this, you will seethat it becomes easier and easier to recognize themind. If you really want to reach the Self fast, you cango to the bottom with a few thoughts that really arestrong for you and keeps stealing your attention bymaking you think of them, and try to see where theycome from.

Do they come from you? We will take a look on where

they come from in a bit, and when you know wherethey come from, and you have made this perfectly clearfor you, it becomes very easy to see ALL your thoughtsin its true form. Any thoughts that comes to you afterthis point, will be easily recognized and brushed off asnot you!

But of course, there has to be something else that you

need to identify yourself with, right? Well, in a way,no... Because later on, you will be able to recognize thatyou don't need to identify with anything in order to justBe! And the fact that this is impossible for the mind todo, is your key to go beyond the mind and reach theSelf!

It is the mind that identifies with objects, and since

the mind is an object itself, it can never fullycomprehend the Self! And soon you will start to see,

that the mind exists inside of the Self, making the Self 

the eternal observer and ultimate “subject observer”

of everything that is going on. And you will also see,

that this is what you truly are!

You now know how to go beyond the mind, but there is

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one step more before Self-realization...

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~ Self-enquiry ~

Until now, you have learned how to watch basicallyanything that comes before you including your bodyand your mind, and probably realized that anything thatis manifested, is not you, because your 'I'-feeling alwaysstay, it doesn't disappear with the objects that youwatch. So the natural question then comes of who areyou, really? Who or what is this subject inside of youwhich I am speaking of that is watching everything all

the time? This question can not be dealt with with themind, because as I have mentioned, this “you” arebeyond the mind. So how to get to know yourself? By“experiencing” it by yourself! Meaning, by getting rid of anything that is in the way of experiencing what youalready ARE; the Self. Not only knowing that you exist,but to experience the Self by merging your mind withpure Consciousness, and thereby seeing you as the

“subject observer” itself!

The words Self-realization is as you can see compreisedof two words; Self, and realization. This means that youare going to realize (discover) something that is alreadythere, namely the Self! If you are sincere with your ownSelf-realization and want to do the practices, then the

three most important questions for you from now onwill be:

• “Who is watching this?”

• “Can the watcher be seen?”

• “Who am I?” (“Nan Yar?” in Sanskrit)

These three questions are the most important

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questions in your life, because it takes you eventuallyto the Self, to Self-realization! This simple technique iscalled Self-enquiry (in Sanskrit calledVicharasangraham).

There is no particular order for the three questions, solet's give one loose example:

Let's say you are watching a cloud. You ask yourself:“Who is watching this?” When you have a sense of who

it is, you can continue to ask yourself: “Can the watcherbe seen?” And you will most probably be able to see,that the watcher can be seen. Then you can go back tothe first question again, and ask “Who is watching thewatcher?” And by now, it should get a little more clearfor you that the one that you thought were you,watching the cloud, was not you, but your mind. Sowho is watching the watcher and your mind? Continue

to go deeper within with these questions until you cannot point out any more watchers, and then askyourself: “Who am I?”

But then, you have to be smarter than that, becausewho is asking the question of “Who am I?”? Can thequestioner be observed? And yes, s/he can beobserved, so who asked that question? And on it goes,

until you reach... what? What do you reach?

Even if you have an idea of what you are going to reach,you will have to give up this idea as well, because if youkeep clinging to ANY idea in this process, any idea at all,you will not be able to reach the Self! Why? Becausethe Self is without concepts and ideas! You have to giveup ALL your ideas of what Self-realization is if you want

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to reach it!

This question of “Who am I?” is very proper at thismoment, because you have by now seen that the oneyou thought you were, actually didn't exist, it was only

a thought-projected image of yourself! Your mind canfind this rather shocking at first, because now youclearly start to see that you have been living in a dreamworld (a made up world), but relax, everything is fine!Just continue to do the Self-enquiry and ask yourself:

“For whom is this shocking?” and try to see thatperson. When you have found and can see that person,then ask yourself: “Can s/he be seen?” And since youare looking at him/her, you can say yes to that questionand continue the Self-enquiry: “So who is watching thisperson?” And so you continue, until you reach Thatwhich has no observer, That which is the subject, Thatwhich doesn't change. In this state, you will not be able

to explain with words what you are feeling, but I thinkyou will be able to agree that there is an infinite spacethere, total freedom, no more bondages of the mind,only the “sense” of 'I am' or 'I exist' remains.

It is possible to do Self-enquiry on anything that youstill take for granted as being real, on any feeling thatyou think is you, and see if that feeling can be

observed. Remember, that whenever you are able tosay something after the 'I am', this implies a changingyou, and you will therefore have to find the observer of that changing reality if you want to reach the Self.Continue to ask the questions, and go one step moreand see who the observer is. And then, when theobserver has been seen, you continue to see if eventhat observer can be seen! This is the meaning when I

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ask you to go deeper and deeper inside of yourself inorder to wake up from an imagined dream-reality. Thisis “to go beyond” the body-mind- identification.

The funny thing is, that when you have reached theSelf, you will see that there were actually nothing to gobeyond, but if you don't see that yet, just continue yourSelf-enquiry.

As per need, continue the Self-enquiry on all your

feelings and thoughts that you identify yourself with.You might say that it will be a lot of work, because youhave so many thoughts and feelings inside of you. Butdon't worry, because once you start to do Self-enquiryon one thought or feeling that you identify with, andreally go to the bottom of it and you really look at it andsee and realize that it is not you, then the rest of yourfeelings and thoughts will become easier and easier to

deal with, until you don't even pay any attention whenyour thoughts and feelings are trying to steal yourattention from the Self, trying to convince you that theyare you. And after some time, they will stop even tryingto make you confused. When Self-enquiry has settled infor you, also your attention has shifted, the paper sheethas been turned!

But let's continue where we were, shall we?! Your shiftof attention is almost complete at this point!

Watch your thoughts and feelings appear anddisappear as clouds that come and go in the sky. Thesky never changes, the sky never become the clouds,and it for sure doesn't think that it is the clouds! But itcan still “see” the clouds coming and going, and it stays

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untouched, just as you are the Self, and can seeeverything in front of you, and with a little training, youwon't identify with your “clouds of the mind” either,you will just like the sky stay untouched!

If your mind here says in a cynical way that the skydoesn't think and see, then this is of course true, but Ionly try to give you a simple metaphor in order for youto understand what is really going on “behind thescenes” of your mind. And if your mind became cynical,

then this is the best opportunity for you to start theSelf-enquiry. Do it right now! Start by asking yourself who was cynical just a moment ago, and see if you canobserve that person. Probably you can. Then continue...Who is observing that? Who is that? Then continue tosee if you can see the observer... if you can see theobserver, then who is that that is seeing the observer?Like this you start to move away from your imagined

self and closer to your true Self!

Isn't it amazing? You will start to see that the initialperson that you have been identifying yourself with thewhole life, really wasn't you! And the more shockingnews for your mind is that that person don't even exist,s/he is only a thought!

If it is still not clear for you and you want me to explainagain, then here is a little reminder: Your imaginedidentity appears in front of you, just like any otherobject does! Anything that appears in front of you, is anobject for you, and thereby not you! 

For instance, if you aren't that which was being cynical just now, then who was that? Can you see now, that no

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one was actually cynical?! Can you see it? No one wasactually cynical?! Amazing, isn't it!?!

This is the paradigm shift for your mind, and when yourealize it, it is mind-blowing to say the least!

But then, for whom is it mind-blowing? Does it appearin front of you as well? I want to let you know, thateven strong experiences like “mind-blowing” really isnothing as well, because it ALSO appears in front of 

you!

One of the big revelations that we now can see is thatnothing really is happening, everything is onlythoughts, and you as the Self always stay untouched!

Nothing can be traced back to something.

Eventually you will see, that everything has its origin innothing, just like the manifested world springs out fromthe unmanifested; just like Saguna Brahma springs outfrom Nirguna Brahma!

It might not be easy for the mind to accept thatsomething can come out of nothing, it can be verydisturbing for the mind indeed! Even so, when we reach

the Self, this is what we see and realize!

When we are able to understand, and moreimportantly to see and experience this, we naturallycome to the part of the Self-enquiry which shows uswho we really are!

By following these examples, you have already been

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able to move at least two steps away from who youthought you were initially. So, who are you then? Whoare you? Who is this 'I'?

Eventually, nothing remains for you, even the feelingthat you exist will go away, but still you exist. This isyour real you! It is beyond any words, but it can bedescribed as a feeling of simply existing, of infinite andopen space in all the directions without anythingattached to it. It is pure Consciousness, total freedom,

open space, happiness!

The Self-enquiry questions will help you immensely asyou tumble down the rabbit hole. They work assomething to temporary hold on to, as you discoverthat you were not the one you thought you were, andnow maybe you don't know who you are anymore sinceyou don't have any concepts to hold on to.

Maybe you wonder when it is time to panic? Relax,there is no need to panic! But if you do, you have nowlearned to watch it, because by now you already knowthat it is not you that is having panic, that it is only athought, and it will go away! Just watch whatever thatcomes in front of you, and notice that what alwaysremains for you is the sense of 'I', your 'I'-feeling. Just

stay with this 'I'-feeling, and you will see that you won'tdisappear, it is only your mental image of yourself that

is starting to dissolve into the great, vast, endlessnothingness that is you. This is the merging of yoursmall 'I'-feeling (the ego-you) with the great vast 'I'-feeling (your true Self). In yoga this is when the

 jiivátman (unit being) merges with paramátman(Supreme Being).

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Remember: Anything that you can watch is not your

Self, and if you identify yourself with something that

you can watch, this will make you stay with your

attention in your mind! You will not be able to reach

the Self and instead you will continue to dream...

As you understand, Self-enquiry is a very powerful toolin order to go beyond the mind! It is not really ameditation, but you may sit down and do Self-enquiry

 just like you would when you do meditation. But youdon't need to sit down to do Self-enquiry, you can laydown, stand or whatever. I do believe that it is easier if you are still, especially in the beginning, but eventuallySelf-enquiry should be done throughout your wholeday!

Sometimes your mind will fight back, not letting go of 

something inside of you. Well, what can I say? Whenthis happens you might even have to be quite vigilantwith your Self-enquiry to get to the root of what youare attached to, to see where it comes from, to see itfor what it really is, in order to see who you really are.

Although Self-enquiry is going to remove your imaginedworld, it also gives great support when the relative

reality gradually starts to disappear in front of you. Andeventually, even the Self-enquiry will start to fade away,because you will come to a point where you will have tolook upon the person that is doing Self-enquiry as welland realize that that person who is doing the Self-enquiry also is an object in front of you. This is whySelf-enquiry is so good, because even the questionergets questioned, the technique burns itself up, or kind

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of “eats” itself up. Only silence will remain...

Meditation therefore, will only take you so far (usually),because it still requires you to stay as an object thatconcentrates on the subject, but with Self-enquiry, youactually stop being the object! It is very simple really:when you meditate, if you ask yourself “who ismeditating” and look at it, you would sooner or latersee that there is a person that is in front of youmeditating (your imagined self), and that you actually

aren't meditating, you are just observing a thought-based person in front of you that is sitting downmeditating!

After some time, you don't have to do Self-enquiryanymore, as you start to shift your attention from yourmind and body, to the Self. Sometimes in the beginningyou may think that you have lost the focus of the Self,

and that you find yourself struggling to get back to theSelf, but just remember, that you are always the Self,and that it is the THOUGHT that keeps your attention

away from the Self! You can never really loose the Self,it is always there, no worries! But t hinking that you arenot in the Self, makes you automatically loose focus of the Self. I say, get rid of that thought right now and seewhat is left!

And as you get firmly established in Self-enquiry, if youare ready to give up your imagined self, you will finallyreach Self-realization! After this, all you see is the Self...

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 – Nothing remains but the Self –

How do you “know” then, that you have reached theSelf? How do you recognize it?

You will know when you are NOT able to say “This isme” anymore; when you can not go anymore “back” toobserve the observer. It all ends when you reach and

realize you as the subject , when you try to see who youare, but there is nothing but silence and space and

peace, when you are completely without identification.

When you have gone this “far”, nothing remains, noteven your feeling, sense or notion of 'I'; you'll findyourself simply just existing without having to doanything about it. This is what remains when you arewithout identification! Everything else disappears like amirage! Your name that you thought you had is not

there anymore, neither your body, nor your mind,everything is gone, even our beloved world and thewhole universe are gone! Nothing but you as the Self remains.

Does it sound scary? Yes, for the mind it can be scary,because the mind can start to think something like:“Nothing remains? But does that mean that I will

disappear then? No, I don't want to disappear!” Andthe mind can panic in this moment.

But you will not disappear, only your identifications to

what you are not will disappear. And for whom is itscary? You can watch it, right?! It is only scary for themind, and you are not your mind!

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What you have always been, and what you truly are, isalways there, in the form of simply Being, and it willreveal itself for you as you become One with That.

Isaiah 48:12“I am the one;

I am the first and I am the last”.

When nothing remains, no words can describe the Self,

because there is only silence. The first thought orfeeling that comes out of this, is 'I', but prior to this,there is nothing.

Nevertheless, I will try to describe it for you, just to giveyou some comfort and encouragement to continue andreach It (I mean, to reach nothing might not sound sointriguing for the mind)!

When you reach the Self, you reach a “space” that isinfinite, it is pure Being, completely effortless, and youwill realize that this is 'I', this is truly 'I'! There is atotality over it that makes it undeniable, meaning youwill just know that this is it, this is the absolute!

This is the unexpressed pure Consciousness, and it is

called Nirguna Brahma in Sanskrit.

It is impossible to put it in words, but if I have to sayanything, it resembles complete bliss, freedom,happiness, love, and so on. This is what is left when wehave gone beyond all our identifications and nothingelse remains! And all thanks to a shift of your attentionto what was actually always there the whole time, your

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pure Being!

When you are in the Self, nothing is difficult anymore,and there is nothing to fear simply because Nothingexists anymore. Everything just Is, and all obstacles orproblems that you thought you had will vanish assmoke in the wind when you turn your attentionaround.

You realize, that you were, you are, and you will

always Be the subject, anything else is just a passingshow in front of you.

Revelation 1:8“I am the Alpha and the Omega,” says the Lord God,

“the one who is and was and is coming, the Almighty.”

There is no problem in watching the movie either,because you don't identify with it anymore. You areeffortlessly Being the subject, and you see that you willalways be That. And in fact, you were never anythingelse either, only your focus were misguided by the mindand body!

This is Self-realization, and you will realize that it wasnothing special about it at all! Okay, I know that wepeople may struggle for many lifetimes in order toreach enlightenment! But of course it is nothingspecial! It is only special for the mind: You were alwaysrealized, you didn't even enter your normal state of Being, because you were always there anyhow (behindthe clouds of the mind). The only thing your mind didwas to let go of all the things that were “unrealizing”

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you, so it finally could merge with Consciousness!

When you stay with your focus on the 'I'-feeling (thateverybody has and which makes us One), you noticethat to be That requires no effort, you don't have to

do anything to Be (That)! 

And you will realize, that there is nothing you can do toBe. Actually it is quite the opposite; if you would try todo something to be the Self, you would fail with 100%

guarantee!

You actually don't do anything to become realized, onlyyou take away everything that you were not! And evenif you would try not to Be, you wouldn't succeed either,because you will always Be! You are ever-present, youare That, and you have always been That! Your trueessence is That, and everything else is just an idea or a

thought in the passing show of the mind. And at thetime when you thought that you were something else,it was all due to a misplaced attention of yours! No onetaught you in life where to put your attention for you tosee your Self, but now you know!

From this moment on, you are able to look at the worldwith completely new eyes!

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 – Traps of the mind –

There are uncountable traps of the mind in the processof Self-realization, and I was thinking to mention a fewcommon traps so you don't have to spend time figuringit out for yourself...

• One trap of the mind is that it thinks somethingreally spectacular will happen when you reachthe Self. Almost like firecrackers will burst out in

the sky by itself and you will be able to knoweverything at all time of what is going on in theentire universe, and so on. But please, don'thave any expectations of how it is in the Self,because your mind can not reach It! You arereaching something that can at best bedescribed as Nothing, like space, endless. Isanything happening there? Nothing is

happening there! Of course the mind don't liketo hear this, it can be a little disappointing tohear this I guess, but that is because It is not

comprehensible, and therefore the mind can

not entirely grasp the beauty of it!

Relax! Take a deep breath! The process of Self-realization is like dying, it feels like dying, and it

is necessary to go through it, even if it feelsuncomfortable for the mind. The mind can evenpanic in a situation like this, and my advice issimple, just continue the Self-enquiry, askyourself: “Who is dying? Who is feeling panic?”.You will have to face yourself, your “small I-feeling”, your “ego-I”, because it is the ego thatis dying, it is the ego that is panicking, and you

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will have to face this and go through it, don'tgive up! It can seem to be very hard at times,but afterwards you will see that it was actuallynothing. You will have to face many of yourfears, but there is no need to worry, becauseyour Self-enquiry will be there for you and itwill pin-point what is true and what is not trueabout yourself! Yes, you will even be able tolaugh about your imagined fears later on!

Another trap of the mind that seems to becommon is when we think we have somethingto loose. When we are in the Self, we havenothing to loose, but also at the same time wehave gained everything! But when we are in themind, we might feel that we are loosingsomething. It can be something that we think isimportant for us, or something that we hold

very dear to us, it can be status, or whatever,and in this process the feeling can arise that wemust not loose this. This trap of the mind canappear as very strong, but fear not, continuewith the Self-enquiry and ask yourself “Who isloosing something?”. Follow it, face it, you willhave to discard anything that your mind tellsyou, because it is not true. In this process, you

will in a way loose your individual self, inexchange for your True Self. Of course, it can bea little scary for the mind since it doesn't knowwhat it is being exchanged with, but by nowyou have understood that you are gaining thewhole vast ocean in exchange of one small dropof water that is your ego self.

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• Another thing after reaching the Self is that youmight start to continuously deny what is goingon in this world externally, and also in your ownworld internally. The thoughts and feelings thatkeep coming to you, what to do with them?Until now you have understood that you don'tneed to do anything with them as they are apassing show, but how long will you continue todo this? Meaning, if nothing exists, then howare you going to be in this world? How to live in

this world while denying it? If nothing exists,then why do anything? Why get up from bedand live the life we have? And this is a goodquestion!

I continued to do Self-enquiry for about sixmonths after I had reached the Self. Everythingfelt complete, it felt like I had reached the

totality in the absolute. But somehow it didn'tmake sense that I had to deny everything thatwas going on, although I knew that nothingreally was happening. So what to do? Ironically,there was nothing to do about it... But it didn'tmake me feel completely One with everything,it made me stay in the absolute, in NirgunaBrahma, but that made me stay there, and not

here!

There meaning in the absolute, but not herewhere things seemingly happen. Of course I feltnot complete and One with everything!Something was still missing...

The absolute is true of course, but not the

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complete totality, it is a part of the totality! Andafter six months I knew what was “wrong”. Ihave talked about it a little before: Brahma (thetotality and completeness of God) has twoparts or aspects, where one part is NirgunaBrahma (the absolute truth), and the other partis Saguna Brahma (the relative truth).

When I finally could start to accept everythingas God without having to deny everything, the

coin fell down for me, and I felt One, and thistime the feeling of Oneness stayed!

Finally I didn't have to deny the worldanymore, as a matter of fact I didn't have todeny anything as I could see that everythingwas and is always Brahma, nothing else! Sofrom having to say “I am not this, I am not

that”, I could start to see that I was this, and Iwas also that, and I was not afraid to acceptanything as me OR as God (simultaneously),because everything was now One! Such arelief! And an overflowing feeling of lovestarted to pour out from my heart, it wasamazing! And the love continues to flownaturally all the time, what can I say? It is very

beautiful! This realization can be called therealization of the heart...

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 – From separation to Oneness –

The most of my time I spent in finding God was withAnanda Margas Tantra Yoga practices. I started topractice yoga because before in my life there were somany things I was doing with my mind for my mind.After some time I got tired of it and I wanted to findGod instead. At this point I still was doing things withmy mind, but now all my actions was for God instead.But still the separation seemed to exist, because I still

had identifications with the mind. And although Istarted to know and accept that everything was God(Brahma), it is not enough to know this with the mind,cause the mind creates separation. If knowing only withthe mind, separation will still be there...

Some say to reach God only happens through the Graceof God. All I know is that whatever happens with us, we

will somehow have to go beyond our mind to reachtotality. If it happens with the grace of God or not, Idon't know.

The separation to God doesn't really exist, it is anillusion in itself. Since everything is God, how can we beseparated from it? It is impossible! The illusion of beingseparated is created with our own minds, and

seemingly we are taken away from God, but nothingcan change the fact that we are all already a part of God, and more importantly that we already are God,every single one of us, and the same with the wholemanifested world and the universe! Everything is God!

The feeling of separation might not be present ineveryone, many people I know don't know what I mean

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when I talk about separation. That is good, then theydon't have to feel so lost as I did!

I had a feeling of separation that made me feel like Iwas going to explode internally, and that was how mysearch for God started.

For a long time I had the great opportunity to learn andsit and do meditation and yoga, and I learned differentmantras that put focus on God and directed my mind

towards God. I consider myself lucky to have foundmeditation, because this helped me immensely in mysearch for God.

Maybe you have heard about the saying “As you think,so you become”. This is very true for the mind, becausethe mind takes its form of whatever we think of. So if you think about God or learn techniques on how to

keep a constant focus on God, your mind will all thetime try to take the shape of God. This is a goodpreparation for the merging with God, but if God is alsobeyond the mind, at that time I was wondering how Iactually would be able to merge with God with mymind? How would it be possible to really do this? Itseemed to be an impossible task, and I just surrenderedthis to my Guru (one great aspect of tantra yoga is the

concept of surrender).

But it was not yoga that made me take my finalstumbling steps in order to Be One, but the benefit of doing yoga was there for sure. At a certain stage afterhaving “soaked my mind in God enough” just bythinking of God all the time, there was an “opening” forme to go beyond the mind, and it was with Self-enquiry

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this was possible for me."Grace - to open your Heart to God"

Deepak Chopra 

It can all look like a journey, and many say thateveryone has his or her own unique journey, which istrue for the mind, and it is really beautiful.

The mind likes to think about reaching God as a journey, and for a long time I thought it would be

impossible to reach the absolute (Nirguna Brahma). Iwas surrendering the idea of liberation to my Guru, andI was happy just to work and do service for God instead,it felt like the right thing to do, it felt meaningful!

When I look back, I can see that everything has its ownmeaning and purpose, and I also understand now, thateven if something feels correct for the moment, later

on in life it might not, whatever it may be. My completedevotion to yoga was true for a certain period of timein my life, but as I got to see later on, it was not thefinal and ultimate “thing” I would do for the rest of mylife (as I thought it would be when I was up in themiddle of it). In this changing world, I learned that Ineed to be open for change, whatever that change maybe.

Why I decided to write this book, was because I can seehow this subject of unification and oneness has beenspoken about a lot throughout history of mankind, butvery few authors have actually been able to go beyondthe mind, and then put it down in words and make aclear guidance on how to do it for others. And as youknow by now, it can not really be described by words,

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which is the biggest challenge for anyone that want towrite about it!

And for the reader it is also a challenge! Oneness cannot merely be read in a book to be achieved, it requiresthe reader to somehow internalize it, let it sink in andto spend some time with it, until a stable point is foundwithin (meaning until the mind finally surrenders andthe shift of vision can take place).

In yoga there are different ways to reach a union withGod, like physical work (karma yoga), mental work(jinana yoga) and devotional yoga (bhakti yoga). Allhave the function and purpose to focus the mind solelyon God in order to merge with God and become One.

Actually, I guess in one way or the other, all spiritualpractices have this as their goal, but I might be

mistaken!

And in religion it is kind of the same, that we aresupposed to be with God, or am I wrong?

Some people might even see God appear before themin the form of Shiva, Krishna, Jesus, Buddha, etc. All thisis very good, because the mind gets focused more and

more on God, and all this is “preparing the soil” so tospeak.

Also for practitioners of spirituality, religion or anyother kind of practice involving God, their practice andgoal is probably very dear, and many practitionerswould never even dream about turning their backs ontheir faith, religion and practice. I know this myself,

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yoga was something that had become my life so muchthat it was as natural as breathing for me! What wouldhappen if I would stop? A great possibility for the mindto think that I would be lost! That was the feeling forme at least, and so you can surely understand that togive up yoga was unthinkable for me!

And yet it happened. Now don't get me wrong, I am stilldoing ásanas (yoga postures) regularly, and if what Ispeak of would be classified, I guess people would say I

fit in the spiritual department of how people talk andact, I can see that many things I do still resemble tantrayoga for instance.

But I can't say that I am a yoga or spiritual personanymore, even though I believe in reincarnation andmany other things that belong to spiritualism. I am noteven doing any spiritual practices anymore except for

the ásanas which I do to keep my body healthy, becauseat some point along the road there is simply no needfor it anymore.

It was a bit strange at first for me as I had been used toregularly meditate four times per day for many years.But it stood clear for me that I didn't need it anymore,as I had reached my goal already. At least the

meditation that I was doing had the goal to becomeOne and merge with God, so when that was achieved,what would be the reason for me to continue doing it?

I could see that it was a thought-projected image of myself doing the meditation, so I think you canunderstand that it naturally now felt a little strange tocontinue with the meditation! And like this it natural

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 just went away.

In my process I realized that we can not reach God bydoing something, at least not in the end of ourimagined journey. In the beginning, the practices makessense, but in the end, what I see is that we have tounlearn everything that we have learned, and stopdoing any practice what so ever that keeps in the mindif we want to merge and become One.

Whatever we do or think that we need to do will alwayskeep us separated from God in our journey towardsGod. Why? Because we do it with identification! Apractice requires us to stay as an object, and weactually prevent ourselves from becoming One, neverreally taking the last step where we release ourselvesinto Oneness. In the end, any practice works againstitself if we want to become one with God. But of 

course, if merging with God is not our goal, there isusually no harm in doing the practices either. And in thebeginning of our journey, it can be very necessary tohave some kind of practice to rely on, otherwise it canbe difficult for the mind to get one-pointed and focussolely on God.

There is a great metaphor about an individual soul that

merge with Consciousness: “A drop of water mergeswith the sea and becomes the sea”. Maybe you haveheard it before?!

What does the drop of water need to do in order tomerge with the ocean? Does it have to change itself tobecome the ocean? It doesn't have to do anything,since it is already water! It just merges... Of course,

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there is more space for the raindrop to be in, but didsomething really happen with it? The raindrop was justwater, and then it met and merged with another water,they became one. Even though they ha been separated,they were always the same right from the start, simpleas that.

So in the end of our process of becoming One, nopractice is required, nothing is required, not even Self-enquiry. The last thing we might do is Self-enquiry, but

when the questioning is being eaten up by itself,Nothing remains.

When we have given up all the ideas we have aboutourselves, about others, about how things work andnot work, about what to do and not to do, when wehave given up even our ideas and concepts about Self-realization and what that is, that we are able to kind of 

 just relax (merge) into the great vast ocean of nothingness, or in other words pure consciousness (theonly thing that eventually remains).

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 – Nothingness –

~ The realization of the mind ~ 

said:

“I am neither mind, nor buddhitattva (‘I am’ feeling),nor ahamtattva (‘I do’ feeling), nor citta (done ‘I’).

Similarly, I am neither eyes, nor ears, nor nose, nortongue, nor skin; neither ether, nor air, nor fire, norliquid, nor solid. Then what am I or who am I? I am

Shiva-Consciousness bliss personified.”

 Ananda Marga Philosophy in a Nutshell Part 5, 1st edition 

I have mentioned in the beginning of the book thatnothing remains but the 'I'-feeling when we reach theSelf, but that the 'I'-feeling is just a description of whatremains, because not even the 'I'-feeling will remain,only nothingness (Nirguna Brahma, PureConsciousness) remains. It is indescribable. So onlynothingness remains, and your 'I'-feeling merge withnothingness and also become nothing. Now how doesthat work?

The thing is, in this nothingness, everything lies. Notlies as telling a lie, but lies as in lying in a bed. Thewhole creation lies in a vast bed of nothingness, of consciousness, where the whole creation “rests”

unexpressed in the form of potentiality. From here the

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manifested world is waiting to be (continuously)expressed.

Everything emerges out from this nothingness, and thisis why it feels completely complete when we reach thisplace, that is why we can feel realized and happy, full of love, completely in bliss, etc, when we reach this finalgoal of our life. After this, there is nothing more to do,and nothing more to achieve, no more goals in life. Andalthough life will continue, it will now continue without

any illusion or misunderstanding of who or what that isliving our life.

By now, you will have seen that there is no one that isliving your life, and to put it simply, it is Life living it byitself with the help of the laws of the universe (thethree gunas).

When our minds are merged with Nothingness, itsolves all our issues for us automatically, even withoutanything seemingly happen, because we know whatthe issues in our lives and in the world truly are by now,and therefore we are not troubled by them anymore aswe were before.

At this point, our minds are allowed to fully relax

because there is not only mere becoming in life, thereis also Being, simultaneously. It looks externally like webecome free, but we realize that we were already freeright from the start of our search and journey in life!We realize that even if we thought that we were notfree, and even if we didn't feel that we were free, wewere always free!

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Self-realization could also be called “the realization of the mind”. But to experience Oneness and lovepermanent throughout the life, what I could see wasthat the realization of the mind was not “enough” forthe complete totality that Oneness is (although therealization of the mind feels very complete and total atfirst)...

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 – Oneness –

~ Always Being, Always Becoming ~ 

I have been saying that when we reach the Self, we seethat we were already enlightened, already free, and wesee that there is no difference between the unit(individual) 'I' and the Self, it is all the same. What hasmade us not see this before is our mind. And when wereach the Self, we stop identifying with the mind (andbody), and therefore become free.

Two things can happen at the point of total absorptionof our mind in the Self: One is physical death, becausethe mind doesn't come back anymore *“Ananda Marga

Philosophy in a Nutshell Part 5, 1st edition”  , and the other thingthat can happen is that the mind comes back. This isdue to unburnt sam´skaras (sam´skaras are potentialreactions that are waiting to be expressed/exhausted

by the mind). The good news is that when we reach theSelf we don't identify with these sam´skaras anymore,so we can continue to be free, as we are always free,always the Self. We attain the non-attributional stance

 – the highest state of spiritual attainment. Attaining thishighest stage, we establish us in the original stance of the Supreme Entity – Parama Brahma.*“Ananda Marga

Philosophy in a Nutshell Part 5, 1st edition” .

As the realization of the mind brings complete freedomfor us, it also enables us to focus wholeheartedly on therealization of our heart.

The big question is why there should be anything left todo when we have reached the Self, when we see thatwe are not doing anything anyway. Well, this is the last

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part of our unification into being One, when we realizewith our heart that we can stop the Self-enquiry, whenwe can stop to say “I am not this, I am not that”,because this just causes us to be separated anddualistic. Instead, we start to welcome everything as“me”, meaning we start to see that everything is “me”,is “I”, is One. This is where we become One (finally). Butit is only finally for the mind, because we also see andunderstand that we and everything around us werealways One, and nothing changed on that point, and

will never change either. It is at this point we see thateverything is Brahma (God beyond concepts, but alsoGod in our concepts). Brahma is everywhere andeverything, all the time; here, there, and beyond.

(Supreme Consciousness) is what is known as yoga.

From “Ananda Marga Philosophy in a Nutshell Part 5, 1st edition” 

So this is when the journey of yoga ends, and if youhave been practicing yoga there is nothing to worryabout, because now your cherished goal of union into

complete love and freedom shows itself as endless andever-present wherever you look around you. This is thepoint where we see that we are never-changing Self (Nirguna Brahma, simply Being) and at the same timewe are Life, always becoming, and we can see thiswithout conflict inside of us. We see the world that isalways changing and becoming (including our body andour mind) as a part of us, being One. We don't need to

deny the relative reality anymore as non-existent or

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dream or whatever we want to call it, now everythingsimply is God (Brahma).

Now it is possible to open our hearts to the wholecreation, to God (to Brahma) being everywhere and ineverything (including ourselves), and we can simply feelall the love that is here in the creation without denialand instead with full acceptance, understanding,forgiveness, love and Oneness!

It might seem contradictory that everything is One, andstill I am talking about you, me, nothingness, mind,body, thoughts, feelings and whatever else there is totalk about. But this is what Brahma is; Nirguna BrahmaAND Saguna Brahma together. In other words, Beingand Becoming, The Absolute and the Relative, they areall One. It can be understood from the point of mind,but it also needs to be realized by the heart as well to

fully comprehend and enjoy this wonder.

I don't see Maya anymore, I don't see the dreamanymore. It has all become God, it has all become One! 

Maya maya katham tata

chaya chaya navidyate

tattvam ekam idam sarvam

vyomakaram niranjanam

“Maya? Maya? How could that be?A shadow? A shadow? It doesn't exist.

The Reality is One; it's everything.It's all-pervasive; nothing else exists.”

From Dattatreya's “Song of the Avadhut”,

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Shloka number 1-43.