SHIVA SAID:
Do you want to know the truth? Then know that all your ideas about God, about spiritual growth and the meaning of life are like a child’s fantasies. Do not consider yourself an expert in the Vedas and the Scriptures, a bearer of statuses and titles; do not consider yourself a significant figure – in this universe you are smaller than a speck of dust, and your life is like a spark flying off a fire kindled by a hermit. It lasts but a moment.
You want to win freedom? Who are you to be able to do that? Your self-importance is like an ant wishing to move a mountain! Assess yourself soberly. And then cast aside that assessment too.
Freedom is not the result of your actions, nor the result of your efforts. The karmi (the doer) does not attain freedom. Only through the direct seeing of your own nature does the flower of liberation blossom. Only through jnana (wisdom) can you comprehend the source of existence.
For thousands of years you may perform pujas and yajnas, mark your forehead with tilaks and tripundras, wear monastic robes, consider yourself a sannyasi, behave in a special way observing yogic ethics, or grow a long beard and wander like a vagabond – but all this is nothing more than the childish games of an immature mind. Only through jnana can you be rid of ignorance!
You believe in God? But God is more real than you, for you are His thought. So it is God who believes in you, not the other way around. Understand this! Stop believing in ideas – immerse yourself in pure knowledge!
Belief implies duality. Jnana implies nothing. That is why it is pure Advaita.
You seek God outside? But God is the Seer. Where are you looking? Where is your gaze directed? You will not see God, for even He Himself does not see Himself, but sees only His reflections.
Who is the Supreme Personality – Krishna or Shiva? Durga or Brahma? Fool! Stop your mind. Enough playing in the sandbox! It is time to grow up! These arguments will never satisfy your mind. Only direct jnana brings absolute fulfillment.
You are different from God only when you do not know yourself.
Know yourself and be one with Me! The Seer is always one – the reflections are many.
You follow the Guru, but the Guru came to you so that you would stop going back and forth. What are you doing? The Guru came so that you would realize your oneness with him. The Guru came to show you that the Guru is not the one who comes and goes. Stop clinging to the body! Clinging to the body, you see name and form, but you do not see the Reality that stands behind name and form.
The Guru came so that you would give up all karmic attempts to attain something outside. But you have created a whole path, a spiritual teaching, studied a thousand methods; you follow vows and a million regulative principles and rules of conduct. All this is for children, but not for you! Are you ready to accept what I am telling you?
Stop striving to attain! Stop bathing in your past and hoping that in the future you will attain liberation. Cast these children’s fairy tales aside! No one will attain anything in the future. The goal lies in the absence of a goal. Look deeply into this! Be alert, be natural. All actions are performed by Me. And what is it that you do?… Who are you? Inquire into this!