We contemplate that reality in which everything exists, to which everything belongs, from which everything has emerged, which is the cause of everything and which is everything.
Quotes from The Concise Yoga Vasistha
Self-knowledge or knowledge of truth is not had by resorting to a guru (preceptor) nor by the study of scripture, nor by good works: it is attained only by means of inquiry inspired by the company of wise and holy men. One's inner light alone is the means, naught else. When this inner light is kept alive, it is not affected by the darkness of inertia.
When thus the truth is seen, desire to possess does not arise in the heart.
Even as a woman who has a lover goes about doing her housework with her heart absorbed in contemplation of that lover, the enlightened sage functions in this world while his consciousness is firmly established in the truth.
In both these ases it is impossible for anyone to prevent such behavior - i.e. make the woman forget her love for make the sage forget the truth.
There are four gate-keepers at the entrace to the Realm of Freedom [moksha].
Self control
Spirit of Inquiry
Contentment
Good Company
With a pure heart and a receptive mind, and without the veil of doubt and restlessness of the mind, listen to the exposition of the nature and means of liberation.
Do you know who 'god' is? God is not Vishnu or Shiva or Brahma; not the wind, the sun nor the moon; nor the brahmana or the king; not I or you; not Lakshmi or the mind. God is without form and undivided (not in the objects); that splendor which is not made and which has neither beginning nor end is known as god, or Lord Shiva, which is pure consciousness. That alone is fit to be worshipped; that alone is all.
He who ignores the infinite and is devoted to the finite abandons a pleasure-garden and seeks the thorny bush.
In the seed there is nothing but the seed - no diversity. At the same time there is the notion of potential diversity [of flowers, fruits] supposedly present in the seed. Even so, cosmic consciousness is one, devoid of diversity; yet the universe of diversity is said to exist only in notion.
Such a person has nothing to acquire, nor anything to shun. He is untainted by the defects of life, untouched by its sorrow.
He does not come into being nor go out, though he appears to come and go in the eyes of the beholder.
Even religious duties are found to be unnecessary. …His mind has given up its restlessness, and he rests in the bliss that is his essential nature. Such bliss is possible only by self-knowledge, not by any other means. Hence, one should apply oneself constantly to self-knowledge–this alone is one's duty.
For when delusion is gone and the truth is realized by means of inquiry into self-nature, when the mind is at peace and the heart leaps to the supreme truth, when all the disturbing thought-waves in the mind have subsided and there is unbroken flow of peace and the heart is filled with the bliss of the absolute, when thus the truth has been seen in the heart, then this very world becomes an abode of bliss.
He who, while living an apparently normal life, experiences the whole world as an emptiness, is a Jivanmukta. None is afraid of him; he is afraid of none.

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