The vanity of teaching often tempts a man to forget he is a blockhead - selection from The Thinking Man's Dictionary

Ability: the natural equipment to accomplish some small part of the meaner ambitions distinguishing able men from dead ones.

Absence: that which makes the heart grow fonder - of somebody else.

Abstainer: a weak person who yields to the temptation of denying himself a pleasure.

Abyss: the distance between truth and sanity.

Academe: an ancient school where morality and philosophy were taught.

Academy: a modern school where football is taught.

Accountability: the mother of caution.

Affectation: a woman's whole life.

Alliance: in international politics, the union of two thieves who have their hands so deeply inserted in each other's pocket that they cannot separately plunder a third.

Alone: in bad company.

Altruism: (1) mowing your neighbour's lawn. (2) the art of doing unselfish things for selfish reasons.

Ambition: (1) the last refuge of the failure. (2) the grand enemy of all peace. (3) an overmastering desire to be vilified by enemies while living and made ridiculous by friends when dead.

Amusement: the happiness of those that cannot think.

Appeal: in law, to put the dice into the box for another throw.

Art: (1) lying, and the telling of beautiful untrue things. (2) artlessness. (3) prostitution.

Art, abstract: a product of the untalented, sold by the unprincipled to the utterly bewildered.

Articulate: unaware of the foolishness of what one is saying.

Atheist: (1) one who has no invisible means of support. (2) beloved of God. / (3) one who knows he was not merely created.

Author: one who has his head in the clouds and his feet behind the sales counter.

Belladonna: in Italian a beautiful lady; in English a deadly poison. A striking example of the essential identity of the two tongues.

Best-seller: the gilded tomb of a mediocre talent.

Birth: the first and direst of all disasters.

Bohemian: (1) a person who works to live but does not live to work. (2) a person open to the suspicion of irregular and immoral living. (3) a person conventionally unconventional.

Brain: (1) an apparatus with which we think that we think. (2) an appendage of the genital glands.

Charity: that which deals with symptoms instead of causes.

Charm: (1) a delusion of fleeting beauty. (2) the power to make someone else feel that both of you are wonderful.

Cheat: the girl who loves you back.

Circus: a place where horses, ponies and elephants are permitted to see men, women and children acting the fool.

Child prodigy: a child who knows as much when it is a child as it does when it grows up.

Children: a great comfort in your old age - and they help you reach it faster, too.

Chivalry: (1) the deportment of a man toward any woman not his wife. (2) a man's inclination to defend a woman against every man but himself.

Commerce: the school of cheating.

Common-sense: the reason so many people can be wrong at the same time.

Communism: the opiate of the intellectuals.

Congratulations: the civility of envy.

Conscience: (1) an inner voice that warns us somebody is looking. (2) the voice of men in man.

Consolation: the knowledge that a better man is more unfortunate than yourself.

Conspiracy: as in agreeing with everyone else to never speak the truth, and to plead ignorance that one is doing such.

Contentment: (1) moral laziness, the epitome of depravity. (2) the smother of invention. (3) being satisfied with what you haven't got. (4) the best powder for women's faces.

Controversy: a battle in which spittle or ink replaces the injurious cannonball and the inconsiderate bayonet.

Conversation: a vocal competition in which the one who is catching his breath is called the listener.

Coronation: the ceremony of investing a sovereign with the outward and visible signs of his divine right to be blown skyhigh with a dynamite bomb.

Corporation: an ingenious device for obtaining individual profit without individual responsibility.

Corruption: everything we see before us today.

Courage: (1) doing what you are afraid to do. There can be no courage unless you're afraid. (2) the art of being the only one who knows you're scared to death. (3) a quality no one admits he lacks totally. (4) salvation. (5) the only virtue. /

Courtesy: (1) fictitious benevolence. (2) a gift notable in well-bred people and courtesans.

Cowardice: (1) the surest protection against temptation. (2) to sin by silence.

Criminal: someone who gets caught.

Cult: a religion with no political power.

Culture: (1) reading. (2) anything that people do and monkeys don't.

Cynic: (1) a man who tells you the truth about your own motives. (2) a blackguard whose faulty vision sees things as they are, and not as they ought to be. (3) a person who knows everything and believes nothing. (4) one who looks down on those below him. / (5) one who went without when God was handing out congeniality to lies. /

Cynicism: (1) a euphemism for realism. (2) intellectual dandyism.
Daring: one of the most conspicuous qualities of a man in security.

Dawn: the time when men of reason go to bed.

Dead: the majority.

Death: (1) the bursting of a cell. (2) to stop sinning suddenly.

Debate: the death of discussion.

Destiny: (1) a tyrant's authority for crime and a fool's excuse for failure. (2) to leave the known for the unknown.

Diplomacy: (1) the art of letting someone have your way. (2) the patriotic art of lying for one's country.

Dissenter: the dissenter is every human being at those moments of his life when he resigns momentarily from the herd and thinks for himself.

Dullard: a member of the reigning dynasty in letters and life. According to the most trustworthy statistics the number of adult Dullards in the United States is but little short of two hundred millions, including the statisticians.

Duty: that which sternly impels us in the direction of profit, along the line of desire.

Edible: good to eat, and wholesome to digest, as a worm to a toad, a toad to a snake, a snake to a pig, a pig to a man, and a man to a worm.

Editor: one who separates the wheat from the chaff and prints the chaff.

Education: (1) capacity for further education. (2) all the minds of the past. (3) that which shows a person how little other people know. (4) the inculcation of the incomprehensible into the indifferent by the incompetent. (5) persuasion. (6) that which has produced a vast population able to read but unable to distinguish what is worth reading. (7) a process which makes one rogue cleverer than another. (8) to reverence superiority and accept a fact though it slay him is the final test of an educated man. (9) something that puts one almost on a level with the commercial classes.

Enemy: those who have more accurate insights about you than you do yourself.

Enemy, the: made up of human beings just like us - that's why they can't be trusted.

Equality: (1) a proposition to which, at ordinary times, no sane person has ever given his assent. (2) the offspring of envy and covetousness. (3) womens' right to do absolutely whatever they want to do. /

Erudition: dust shaken out of a book into an empty skull.

Exception: a thing which takes the liberty to differ from other things of its class, as an honest man, a truthful woman, etc.

Expert: (1) one who has focused all his ignorance on to one subject. (2) one who avoids the small errors as he sweeps on to the grand fallacy. (3) a person who can take something you already know and make it sound confusing.

Eye: the traitor of the heart.

Face: a book where men may read strange things.

Fact: something that ceases to exist when ignored.

Failure: the fear of failure.

Fame: (1) an inscription on a grave. (2) chiefly a matter of dying at the right time.

Familiarity: a relation into which fools are providentially drawn for their mutual destruction.

Fear: the start of wisdom.

Fiction: the good end happily, the bad unhappily - that is what fiction means.

Fidelity: A virtue peculiar to those who are about to be betrayed.

Fool: (1) one who is without anxiety. (2) one who lacks the wish to personally know everything about life, death, and the purpose of all existence./ (3) a person who pervades the domain of intellectual speculation and diffuses himself through the channels of moral activity. He is omnific, omniform, omnipercipient, omniscient, omnipotent.

Foreign Aid: taxing poor people in rich countries for the benefit of rich people in poor countries.

Forgetting: woman's first and greatest art.

Free speech: (1) no such thing ever existed. No such thing now exists. (2) something that is allowed because nobody listens.

Friendless: having no favors to bestow. Addicted to utterance of truth and common sense.

Friendship: (1) loneliness relieved of the anguish of loneliness. (2) a ship big enough to carry two in fair weather, but only one in foul.

Future: that period of time in which our affairs prosper, our friends are true and our happiness is assured.

Gaiety: the reckless ripple over depths of despair.

Gambling: poverty of mind.

Garden: a thing of beauty and a job forever.

Genealogy: an account of one's decent from an ancestor who did not particularly care to trace his own.

Gratitude: lively expectation of benefits to come.

Grave: the place where beauty fades.

Great men: (1) meteors that burn so that the earth may be lighted. (2) only an actor playing out his own ideal. (3) almost always bad men. (4) insist on publishing their letters before they die. /

Greatness: saying what is true.

Greece: from heroes to shopkeepers.

Grief: the pleasure that lasts the longest.

Happiness: (1) a good stomach and an evil heart. (2) tranquillity and occupation. (3) ignorance. (4) to be very busy with the unimportant.

Hermit: a person to whom civilization has failed to adjust itself.

Hero: one who is afraid to run away.

Hers: His

Hope: (1) the great falsifier of truth. (2) a mask the dying person wears. (3) the dream of those who are awake. (4) the fawning traitor of the mind.

Hospitality: the virtue which induces us to feed and lodge certain persons who are not in need of food and lodging.

Husband: (1) one who, having dined, is charged with the care of the plate. (2) a sweetheart who pushed his luck too far.

I: the first letter of the alphabet, the first word of the language, the first thought of the mind, the first object of affection. Its plural is said to be "We", but how there can be more than one myself is doubtless clearer to the grammarians than it is to the author of this incomparable dictionary.

Idealist: one who will make any sacrifice as long as it won't hurt business.

Idiot: a member of a large and powerful tribe whose influence in human affairs has always been dominant and controlling.

Idleness: the ultimate purpose of the busy.

Ignoramus: someone who doesn't know something that you learned yesterday.

Ignorant: (1) happy and beautiful. / (2) wicked and ugly. /

Ignorance: (1) stupidity reduced to science. (2) a soft . . . easy . . . pillow. (3) the solidified wisdom of ages. (4) not innocence, but sin.

Immodest: having a strong sense of one's own merit, coupled with a feeble conception of worth in others.

Indiscretion: the guilt of woman.

Individuals: what people are because everyone else is. /

Infatuation: love that is not returned. /

Ink: A villainous compound chiefly used to facilitate the infection of idiocy and promote intellectual crime.

Insanity: a rational adjustment to an insane world.

Intimacy: a relation into which fools are providentially drawn for their mutual destruction.

Intuition: reason in a hurry.

Inventor: a person who makes an ingenious arrangement of wheels, levers and springs, and believes it civilization.

Jury: a group of twelve people of average ignorance chosen to decide who has the better lawyer.

Justice: a commodity which in a more or less adulterated condition the State sells to the citizen as a reward for his allegiance, taxes and personal service.

Juvenile delinquent: a child who starts acting like his parents.

Knowledge: when you know a thing, to hold that you know it; and when you do not know a thing, to allow that you do not know it.

Lawful: compatible with the will of a judge having jurisdiction.

Lawyer: one skilled in circumvention of the law.

Laziness: (1) the mental alertness to avoid hard work. (2) unwarranted repose of manner in a person of low degree. (3) there is no such thing. Everyone works hard at whatever they want to do.

Learning: the kind of ignorance distinguishing the studious.

Lecture: a means of transferring information from notes of the lecturer to the notes of the student without passing through the minds of either.

Lecturer: one with his hand in your pocket, his tongue in your ear and his faith in your patience.

Living: (1) the art of knowing how to believe lies. (2) the process of reacting to stress.

Longevity: uncommon extension of the fear of death.

Mammon: the god of the world's leading religion. His chief temple is the holy city of New York.

Manners: a contrivance of wise men to keep fools at a distance.

Martyr: one who moves along the line of least reluctance to a desired death.

Masses: (1) individuals minus quality. (2) the great identifiable majority, characterized by a feeling of general satisfaction, and spouting the first thing that comes into its head.

Matrimony: friendship under difficult circumstances.

Mine: belonging to me if I can hold or seize it.

Mini Skirt: the distillation of 5000 years of female wisdom. /

Minority: they that have achieved all that is noble in the history of the world.

Money: (1) a kind of disease which those who have it don't like to spread. (2) the measure of our distrust.

Murder: to obscure the truth.

Natural: a very difficult pose to maintain.

Necessary evil: an evil we like so much that we don't want it abolished.

Newspapers: (1) a daily spiritual death. (2) a device unable to discriminate between a bicycle accident and the collapse of civilization.

Nihilist: someone who does not believe in anything. That is, a purely literary product.

Noble: has come to mean being strong enough to stand-up against reality. /

Nonsense: the objections that are urged against this excellent dictionary.

Nostalgia: a longing for a place you wouldn't move back to.

Opiate: an unlocked door in the prison of Identity, leading into the jail yard.

Opportunity: a favorable occasion for grasping a disappointment.

Optimism: (1) fatty degeneration of intelligence. (2) the instinct to lie. (3) an intellectual disorder, yielding to no treatment

but death.

Optimist: (1) one who believes (a) that good arises out of evil, and (b) that there is no evil. / (2) a proponent of the doctrine that black is white. (3) a bridegroom who thinks he has no bad habits.

Originality: (1) truthfulness. / (2) undetected plagiarism. (3) the fine art of remembering what you hear but forgetting where you heard it.

Orthodoxy: agnosticism towards deeper meaning.

Overeat: to dine.

Pantheism: the doctrine that everything is God, in contradistinction to the doctrine that God is everything.

Paradox: when premature insight clashes with prevailing nonsense.

Past: the best prophet of the future.

Pastime: a device for promoting dejection. Gentle exercise for intellectual debility.

Patience: a minor form of despair, disguised as a virtue.

Pen: a formidable weapon, but a man can kill himself with it a great deal more easily than he can other people.

Personality: what you are when people are around; character is what you are when everybody goes home.

Pessimism: wisdom relative to optimism but cowardice relative to wisdom.

Pessimist: (1) one who has been intimately acquainted with an optimist. (2) a man who tells the truth prematurely.

Philanthropist: a thief who enjoys tossing a penny or two to beggars.

Philistine: one whose mind is the creature of its environment, following the fashion in thought, feeling and sentiment. He is sometimes learned, frequently prosperous, commonly clean and always solemn.

Philosopher: he who can analyze his delusions.

Philosophy: (1) much words. / (2) homesickness - the longing to be at home everywhere.

Piety: reverence for the Supreme Being, based upon His supposed resemblance to man.

Plagiarism: (1) stealing from thieves. (2) taking something from one man and making it worse. (3) the privilege of the appreciative man.

Plunder: to take the property of another without observing the decent and customary reticences of theft. To wrest the wealth of A from B and leave C lamenting a vanished opportunity.

Politeness: the most acceptable hypocrisy.

Poor: the only class of people who have time to cultivate the intellect.

Popularity: (1) to mingle with the erring throng. (2) what one buys at the cost of self respect.

Possessions: we only possess what we renounce; what we do not renounce escapes us.

Poverty: a great wealth, provided one is also short of a wife and family.

Pray: to ask that the laws of the universe be annulled in behalf of a single petitioner confessedly unworthy.

Prayer: the most odious of concealed narcissisms.

Preacher: a man who advises others concerning things about which he knows nothing.

Press, the: a method of educating people to approach printed matter with distrust.

Principles: another thing no woman can understand.

Professors: those who go to college and never get out.

Psychiatrist: one who lets you see why you are unhappy.

Psychoanalysis: the disease it claims to cure.

Psychology: (1) the science that tells you what you already know in words you don't understand.

Question: something that fools raise which wise men answered a thousand years ago.

Reality: what truths should take account of.

Recognition: what one desires from people who are more concerned with what they are doing than with what you have done.

Resident: unable to leave.

Responsibility: (1) the way of doing the right thing - and of shortening life. (2) a detachable burden easily shifted to the shoulders of God, Fate, Fortune, Luck or one's neighbor.

Revenge: biting a dog because the dog bit you.

Revolution: a successful effort to get rid of a bad government and set up a worse.

Romance: a self-induced state of hallucination that leaves one finally unromantic.

Savage: (1) the most conservative of human beings. (2) those who are content to be what they are.

Self-esteem: an erroneous appraisement.

Selfishness: (1) devoid of consideration for the selfishness of others. (2) seeking your own good at the world's cost.

Semantics: the art of telling someone they agree with you when they don't.

Sex: the castration of man.

Shyness: egotism out of its depth.

Sin: ignorance.

Sociologist: a scientist who blames crime on everything and everyone, except the person who commits it.

Sorrow: the future tense of love.

Spiritual: (1) anything enjoyable that is not easily or comfortably explained. (2) golf.

Statistics: figures used as arguments

Style: (1) the man himself. (2) a noble manner in an easy manner. (3) the physiognomy of the mind, and a safer index to character than the face. (4) the best style is truth. (5) knowing who you are, what you want to say, and not giving a damn.

Success: (1) consuming more irreplaceable resources than others. / (2) having something to offer that morons regard as valuable. / (3) earning more money than your wife can spend, or, for women, finding such a man. (4) go with the crowd.
Suicide: what every gentleman promises to do if he breaks his vow to his beloved.

Superior man: an uneasy obligation.

Superstition: (1) a premature explanation that overstays its time. (2) the belief that all stage kisses give no satisfaction to the actor or actresses.

Suspicion: a coward's virtue.

Tabloids: fast reading for the slow thinking.

Tact: (1) tongue in check. (2) the ability to describe others as they see themselves. (3) the art of not saying what everyone else is thinking. (4) to lie about others as you would have them lie about you.

Take: to acquire, frequently by force but preferably by stealth.

Teacher: (1) the vanity of teaching often tempts a man to forget he is a blockhead. (2) one who in his youth, admired teachers. (3) one whose mission it should be not to make his pupils think, but to make them think right. (4) one who frees his students from extreme modernity.

Telephone: an invention of the devil which abrogates some of the advantages of making a disagreeable person keep his distance.

Telescope: a device having a relation to the eye similar to that of the telephone to the ear, enabling distant objects to plague us with a multitude of needless details. Luckily it is unprovided with a bell summoning us to the sacrifice.

Theology: (1) obsolete psychology. (2) the intent of which is not to tell the truth but to satisfy the questioner. (3) an effort to explain the unknowable in terms of the not worth knowing . . . it is not only opposed to the scientific spirit; it is opposed to every other form of rational thinking.

Thoughts: what you are today, what you will be tomorrow.

Time: (1) the press-agent of genius. (2) the most valuable thing a person can spend.

Today: yesterday's effect and tomorrow's cause.

Tolerance: indifference.

Tradition: (1) the democracy of the dead. (2) that part of history which has proven to be of

value for the present age.

Tragedy: (1) that there should one man die ignorant who had the capacity for knowledge. (2) the utter impossibility of changing what you have done.

Translation: (1) commentary that is sometimes better than the source. / (2) the safest translation is word-for-word.

Travel: (1) too often, instead of broadening the mind it only lengthens the conversation. (2) a fools paradise. A childish delight in being somewhere else.

Trial: a formal inquiry designed to prove and put upon record the blameless characters of judges, advocates and jurors.

Trouble: mistaking love for beauty, success for brains, and television for civilization. /

True love: an old-fashioned sentiment.

Truth: (1) the object of philosophy, but not of philosophers. (2) stranger than fiction but not as popular. (3) what keeps honest men poor. (4) what is true is possible. (5) a flower in whose neighbourhood others must wither. (6) often the refuge of those too cowardly to lie. (7) truth should not be spoken, but communicated. (8) realized by faith, once it has been arrived at by reason. (9) an ingenious compound of desirability and appearance.

T.V: (1) chewing gum for the eyes. (2) automated day-dreaming. (3) the glass teat. (4) the plug-in drug. (5) the crystal bucket. (6) remote control death. (7) democracy at its ugliest. (8) the bland leading the bland. (9) that which enables you to be entertained in your living room by people you wouldn't have in your home.

Ugliness: a gift of the gods to certain women, entailing virtue without humility.

Unconscious, the: a realm of potential hell.

University: a place where pebbles are polished and diamonds are dimmed.

Vagabond: when rich, is called a tourist.

Virtue: (1) a quality which has never been as respectable as money. (2) insufficient temptation. (3) an inexpensive vice.

Wealth: (1) any income that is at least one hundred dollars more a year than the income of one's wife's sister's husband. (2) difficult to dignify.

Whole: that which has a beginning, a middle and an end.

Wise: a reputation that is built by agreeing with everybody.

Woman: (1) an animal usually living in the vicinity of Man, and having a rudimentary susceptibility to domestication. (2) a temple built upon a sewer. (3) a promise that cannot be kept.

Women: the maintenance class.

Women's rights: men's duties.

Wonder: the effect of novelty on ignorance.

Words: (1) things to kill time until our emotions make us inarticulate. (2) the most powerful drug used by mankind.

Work: (1) two kinds: first, altering the position of matter at or near the earth's surface relative to other such matter; second, telling other people to do so. The first kind is unpleasant and ill paid; the second is pleasant and highly paid. (2) what you do so that some time you won't have to do it any more. (3) only one kind: discovering the truth about life and death and then living in accordance with it . . . all else is folly.

Writing: (1) giving the reader the most knowledge in the least time. (2) the art of putting black words on white paper in succession until the impression is created that something has been said. (3) the hardest way of earning a living, with the possible exception of wrestling alligators. (4) a real writer is someone who has something genuinely important to say to others, and not merely to himself. /

X: in the algebra of psychology "x" stands for Woman's mind.

Xerox: A trademark for a photocopying device that can make rapid reproductions of human error, perfectly.

Yawn: a pertinent remark.

Yesterday: the tomorrow that got away.

Youth: life as yet untouched by tragedy.

Zoo: (1) a place which prevents people from getting at the animals. (2) an excellent place to study the habits of human beings.

Compiled and Continued by Kevin Solway
https://www.theabsolute.net/minefield/tmdict.html

Poison for the heart - selected quotes

Ageing

When you're seventeen you know everything. When you're twenty-seven, if you still know everything you're still seventeen.

Unfortunately, most of us don't begin to think until the ripe age of thirty - when things are a little more quiet. The problem is, at this age it is too late to begin doubting one's basic assumptions in life. Pride is a factor - it is too distressing to admit failure and have to start all over again.

As we age we nearly always undergo a hardening of the attitudes, or a hardening of the heart - not unlike hardening of the arteries. All our efforts become directed towards extinguishing the idea that something new may be possible. Up until now we have had some ideals, some faith in reason, but age beats all the hope out of us. Now we need security, and security requires certainty. If our categories are not concrete and beyond doubt we will surely be crucified by them. Therefore, once we reach thirty we know everything - even if it is the cowardly certainty that we can never know absolute truth!
From this time on we are the slaves of abstraction and unable to ask the noble questions of youth.

For young children it is primarily experience that determines character. For the adult it is character that determines experience. That is, the ego is initially built on experience, and later builds experience. Thus the elderly fear change because they have something to lose; while the young are still building, and have everything to gain. Children are therefore curious and open; they are not afraid to ask questions precisely because they do not fear ignorance.
But children become adults, and soon the feelers of abstract thought grow and reach out, bringing a new knowledge, a great knowledge, and great fears also. Soon, everything becomes fearful, and they too will be heard barking, even when the wind rustles through the grasses.
What is it to be a child? A child is one who sees adults as mad. Thus, when you find the people of this world acceptable, you have grown up. It is better to have more of the adolescent in you than the "mature". Strictly speaking, maturity indicates the end of growth, both physically and mentally. If you're green you're growing; if you're ripe, your rotting.

Zeal

As a young child I used to beat-up my parents till they told me the truth; such was my passion for the absolute. By the grace of God that zeal is still with me! These days I beat-up God till he gives me what I want.

Too late for spiritual life?

Age: I'm fifty-four years old I'll have you know! Its too late for me to be embarking on a brand new way of life.
Youth: Perhaps you are right. There's no denying you have become set in your ways. But it's not too late to consider your "future lives". So, you may have made the mistake of ceasing to grow, but you can still use the time you have left to tell others of your mistake, and help prevent them from making the same blunder.

Entertainment

Entertainment: a way of avoiding boredom.
Boredom: when you don't want to think about life and can't find entertainment.
Loneliness: what people who are attached to the company of others call boredom.
Depression: when you are forced to think about life, and don't like what you see.

Work 

A job is not merely a tranquillizing drug forced upon the ego, but is a dangerously addictive and destructive poison.
Work destroys the mind more effectively than anything else, which is precisely why it is enforced. After all, we are all equal, and therefore nobody must be permitted to have a mind. Work saps you of your thought by a process of taking your mind prisoner, monopolizing it, absorbing it, preventing you from thinking about anything other than work. It becomes your life. You become it. What is left?
You may not enjoy your work at first, but you soon change to accommodate it. In time, work comes to possess you so thoroughly that every moment away from work is spent recovering . . . in preparation for work. We come to accept work as a necessary sacrificial ritual, in which we sacrifice ourselves.
"Everybody needs love" and "everybody works" become uttered in the same breath - two dogmas that represent the cornerstones of our entire existence. Together, they successfully banish freedom of thought from society. Yet is this not what we really want?

Your good friends 

An individual cannot have friends - by definition. So let your good friends be your thoughts of the Infinite, and have no friend besides; for what kind of friend could that be? Confide in God alone. Live with eternity.
The last thing you should ever do is offer your hand to a person in need. Look into their eyes; how deep is their delusion! How could you give further poison to one already dying from it?

Spiritual friends 

A spiritual friendship is no ordinary friendship. Your best spiritual friend must also be your best enemy, for they will challenge you, and pinch and poke you into action. Spiritual friends do not wish to flatter you, and make you stronger, but to undermine your false prides and make you weaker; because only the weak are strong enough, and sensitive enough for God. Only the weak can have doubts, a chink in the armour through which God can enter.

Television 

Television represents one thousand more ways to avoid thought. Could there be a more lazy way to live? At least before television we would have to occupy our own minds, which would require some power of will. But now, with the pressing of a button, you can have your mind flooded with the thoughts of another.
Some of you cry "But what about the educational programs?". All I can say is that if those programs are educational then education is dead. Your "education" is merely a self-righteous form of entertainment. The horrifying thing is, that you have been taught to regard education in this distorted way by television!
Research has found that even though we watch television for relaxation, we are less relaxed after watching television than beforehand. I am sure this is because we feel degraded by the way we are treated by this imposing machine. Television is aimed at the lowest common denominator in society - so we the viewers are treated as fools. Nor do we have any direct control over the content or timing of what flashes on the screen before us. Our self-esteem suffers even more when we realize that we are so wretchedly weak that we still love the drug of television despite the utterly disrespectful way it treats us.
Television watching is like smoking, in that the psychological harm it does to a person in terms of guilt, degradation, and demoralization, probably outweighs any other harm.
Simply looking at the night sky and the infinity of space can be enough to awaken us to our true nature. Perhaps this is the very reason we invented television - to keep us indoors, to glue our eyes to, and prevent them from straying.
And perhaps this is also why so many of us live in cities, where atmospheric pollution and bright lights render the stars invisible. We huddle together in these, which we call the great cultural centres, as though digging ourselves a hole to hide in - while all around us the magnificence and glory of Nature go unnoticed.

Lust
(...)
However, if you are not enlightened, then lust is a part of your being and you cannot realistically hope to be instantly free of it. In this case it is good to lust for Truth and for God. Only a ravenous hunger for God can quash lust and desire. If a child cries loudly enough for its mother, she soon comes running. The fire grows until the fire brigade are called into action; then it is rapidly quenched. If you love the Truth enough, it will not be able to evade you.
Likewise, if you wish to possess anything at all, whether it be man, woman, or money, then make sure you always occupy your mind with it, and desire it with all your heart. You will gradually come to identify yourself so closely with the object, that you will feel inseparable from it. The foolish find much pleasure in such loss of identity. They say they "lose themselves" in the things they love. The wise weep over their plight.

Attached or unattached 

The supported man and the standing man look the same, but move quite differently. A puppet does not have the freedom of a human being. A fool does not have the freedom of a sage.

Romantic love 

With our romantic love we are like a dog chasing a car. There is much thrill in the chase, but what to do with the car when you catch it? We are more animal than we give ourselves credit for.

Masturbation and drugs 

All worldly joys are wholly selfish, whether they arise from compassion, love, or greed: thus all worldly happiness is masturbatory in nature.
Similarly, all attachments are drugs: thus we are all drug addicts.

Talk

The reason people talk so much, is because if they didn't, their brains might start to work.

The approval of others 

We poor fools seem to find our identity in how others perceive us. We need their approval before we can do anything! Men especially need the approval of women. Perhaps this is a legacy from childhood, and the wish to please the mother.
The wise are altogether different. They know themselves as individuals; that is, separate from the world, where praise or hatred cannot touch them. They are mere robots, and God is the programmer; and robots do not seek approval as they go about their business. The sun needs approval from no-one, and it shines. The wind needs approval from no-one, and it blows.
Not that it would ever occur to the wise man to seek approval, for who could judge him anyway? And what of it if they could? Who, when faced with the terrifying rawness of true thought, would approve? If the wise man ever meets with the approval of a woman, it is because she has not confronted his thought.
The sagely mind is free and perfect. It has no capacity, and therefore no room for praise or blame. This is no human mind.

Renunciation

Truth appears cold - to one attached to warmth. One cannot throw away attachments - they must be outgrown.
Sometimes it is better to give-in to an attachment - to get it out of the system. The ego must be convinced beyond doubt of the wretchedness of life. Stubbornly, the ego seems only to be able to learn the hard way.
It is not enough to dislike attachments; there must be disgust. Yet nothing conquers quite like love! To actually love being free of attachment, free of life, wild and unrestrained as the wind: that's what I call vicious!

Four entrustments:

1. Entrusting one's mind and thoughts to the attainment of enlightenment.
2.  Entrusting one's life to life as a beggar.
- Accepting poverty.
3.Entrusting one's life to life as a beggar to death  - Not holding any hopes and dreams of success.
4. Entrusting one's life to a barren cave.
- Accepting that society regards you as an enemy, and will make no place for you.

Three diamond-like convictions:

1. To be stalwart towards hindrances caused by friends and relatives.
2. To disregard the opinion of worldly people.
- No matter whether they call you a madman or a saint.
3. To firmly guard one's practice.

Birthday

Ramana Maharishee said: "You who wish to celebrate the birthday, seek first whence was your birth. Your true birthday is when you enter that which transcends birth and death - the eternal being. On your birthday you should mourn your entry into life. To glory in it, and celebrate it, is like decorating a corpse."  To celebrate the birthday is to celebrate the ego, and is to fight against destiny. Only when life and death have been transcended can destiny play its joyful games unrestricted.

To judge another

There is no greater virtue than judgement, and it is so easy to judge truly. You can judge a tree by the fruit that it bears: how can it deceive? How can you be misled or mistaken if you trace the pathways of cause and effect?
Judge a man's character by his actions, look at his friends, and you too will learn to see through walls.

What is history?

Is history a purely academic study of the dead past? Or is it rather a study of human behaviour, and therefore a biological science? I put it to you that history is a living material out of which we are made, and is therefore a study of our "past lives".

Lies

Refraining from speaking the truth is also a form of lying. We argue that "white lies" help us to avoid the unpleasant confrontations that would only upset others; but then our whole existence becomes a white lie. And while snow is pure white, in a blizzard it becomes black.

  "Lying is a refusal to accept and relate the truth exactly as we see it. And lying does not require effort, as we like to imagine. Lies come effortlessly in the form of feelings, convictions and beliefs. And we refuse to believe that we are so evil to be able to lie effortlessly. Another lie!"     Nietzsche

The immortal society

Business owners and advertisers justify corrupting and debasing society with their wares by saying "we only give people what they want." They speak truly enough, the problem is, commercialism serves our base animal nature, rather than our higher intellectual self. Commercialism is geared towards the lowest common denominator in human consciousness - which is sub-human.
Similarly, hypnotists claim that people will not do anything under hypnotic influence they do not really want to do. Again, this may be true, but it is also true that hypnotism removes a person's inhibitions, their conscience - unleashing the raw ego.

Desire

God is like a magnet, which does not attract iron that is rusty and dirty. God cannot draw you to Him when your mind is laden with the rust of material desires, and when the dust of sensual craving sits heavily upon you.
Your many desires are like the coins in your pocket. The more you have, the more they weigh you down. Why don't you convert them into the one paper note of higher currency? - the currency of Heaven?

Two seasons

I once heard a story of two men who had both visited a certain river. In a discussion between the two, the first man said that he saw the river full, while the second man said that it was dry. After much argument they decided to go back to the place and ask the locals. The locals said they were both right, as they saw the river at different times of the year.
Words cause problems in the same manner. If we regard words as the actual objects instead of mere labels, then we are indeed creating problems for ourselves. Two people may hold the same view, yet think they believe differently simply because they use different words. Alternatively, two people may hold conflicting views yet will believe they share the same view because of similar words.

Greed

Greed is good
A noble motto
Which also means
Greed is God

To enlightenment

You must commit yourself to your task as a fish commits itself to water. Thirst for God as much as a dying man thirsts for life. Long for enlightenment as much as a drowning man longs for a breath of air. If you don't strongly determine to get up in the morning, you remain asleep. Similarly, if you don't determine to break the cycle of attachment, it will continue forever. You must will to die to the world. If you are uncertain whether to be truthful or not, how can you possibly live in truth? (...)

The Jump

We people live within a tall container. If you can jump half a metre, you are regarded as talented. If you can jump a little over half a metre, then you are a superman and a genius. But jump clear out of the container - and you are not seen!

God is dead

It is said: God is dead. But if God is dead, then Man too is dead.

Holidays

Someone on holiday forces themselves to let-go of all their worries. They reason they have gone to so much trouble, and spent so much money on their holiday that they would be stupid not to enjoy themselves. They would feel a failure if they were not able to relax. With this powerful motivation they force all disturbing thoughts from the mind.

Now take your case: you have been chosen to take the holiday for the whole human species! The onus is on you to take a rest in God on their behalf. Are you going to forego the holiday that the species is relying on you so much to take?

Capitalism /socialism

A capitalist is someone who selfishly wants more than others. A socialist is someone who selfishly doesn't want others to have more than himself.

The last week of your life

Can you afford to waste time? You could die at any moment. When will you be struck down by a heart attack, a stroke, a mad killer, or a drunken driver? Who can tell?
If this was the last week of your life, what would you like to be doing with it? This could well be the last week of your life! Will you spend it slaving for those extra dollars you don't really need? Will you spend it bowing to your wife's foibles? For what will you be remembered when you die? - if in fact your life is worth remembering at all.
Only the wise are worthy of remembrance. They alone have discovered the mystery of existence and the salvation of man. This is no time to waste you fool!

Teaching too soon

Qualify yourself before you begin teaching others. Don't rush to make your mark. Those with tattoos often wish they did not have them.
When a person begins teaching, they cease learning. Or rather, when they cease learning they begin to teach. When they have taken all they can comfortably take from knowledge, they seek the comforts of the teaching role - money, power, and respect. Now, all their time is spent trying to maintain appearances, playing the guru, and playing up to the expectations of their students. Now they have not the time nor the inclination to seek truth. On the contrary, now they are expected to know it, perish the thought of seeking it.
Now they pile up an armoury of words and categories with which to bludgeon the weak into submission, and to protect against the strong. (...)

Madness

I heard a psychologist say that the most sane person he had ever known, he had to commit to a psychiatric ward.
The weak are struck down by Reality. But those who are never touched by the tongue of its lightning are immeasurably weaker. They close their eyes when truth comes near, set up protective walls to shield themselves from destiny.
They are like a person living in a dark room with a snake. "Be careful of that snake!" you shout. "No, its only a piece of rope" they reply. "Turn on the light and you will see." "No, it would hurt my eyes."

Scholars

Could there be anything more ineffectual and pitiful than "comparative philosophy"? Note that it is neatly removed from philosophy by one word - "comparative". Yet what philosophy today is not comparative? The philosophers of today are mere onlookers and jugglers of other peoples words. They are parasites! Their aim in life is not to learn the truth, but to add to the literature of their genre.
When I read the attempts of these quasi-men to analyze, and even criticize the likes of Nietzsche and Kierkegaard . . . I don't know whether to laugh or cry.
"We are more comfortable with the Infinite these days" they tell me. And there is pride in their voices. A pride that does not infect me. For these cold ones have fashioned their comfort through mental trickery. I see them hiding there behind a hundred new categories, and a thousand new books - and they dare not even peep around the side.

The self

The grand teachers of submission have such magnificent teachings of the self; who could fault their cleverness? Their teaching goes something like this: "All concepts must be conceived by something. Even the concept 'self' must have a conceiver - the self behind all concepts is the True Self." They say "I think therefore I am."  Why must concepts emanate from a conceiver? When we analyze any concept we find that it has neither a beginning nor an end - now, where on earth is this "concept" and "conceiver"? It is all very well to say "I think therefore I am,", but the premise "I think" has no foundation as the "I" only comes into existence after the fact, that is, after the conceiving has been done. "I think therefore I am" really means "I think I am therefore I am."
(...)

Hated by the world

The first time people hear the sage's harsh words they dismiss him as a troublemaker. The second time they dismiss him as an antisocial person with "problems". The third time - and by now his truths are beginning to strike home - they call him "mad". The fourth time, and they are calling for his head!
Society does not hate only what the thinker thinks, but that he thinks. They hate his presumption that he might think for himself. And they hate his superiority when he tells them "I am right to think, and you are wrong for refusing to do so." He is the conscience society never had, and is hated as such.

Kevin Solway 

Kierkegaard - some quotes

I know very well that what I write here will in the course of time be declared to be the loftiest wisdom. I also know that when that happens the shape of the world will not have changed one whit, because those who will be busy showing how profound and true this is will be, of course, assistant professors - those animal-creatures. If any class of men deserves to be called animals in comparison with the rest of us, it is preachers and professors.

Youths have lofty thoughts - but then he gets sensible and these thoughts are forgotten. The exceptions do not have a period of youthfulness. Their youth runs on in dark melancholy - and only when they are also fully educated and matured - only then do these thoughts awaken, and with the enthusiasm of youth.

A man says: I cannot practice self-denial. Charming! And not only that but he wants to be praised for his humility because he is humble enough to be satisfied with ethical shabbiness.
. . . We hypocritically abolish Christianity by saying we are much too humble to aspire to anything so lofty. We say: "I am too humble to want to be significant".

In our society idea-strength is regarded as weakness, and palpable strength is regarded as strength. A person who has the strength to live devoid of ideas is called strong.

"Deathbed renunciation" is like the kind of generosity with which someone threateningly required at pistol point to hand over his money chooses to give the affair a turn and say that he generously offers it as a gift.

Cuckolds - this is what people are in all matters. They know they are being cheated; by their wives who are 100% selfish, by their religion which they know is a fable. But they are such spineless wretches that they don't have the courage to break dependence to them.

Most men think that the more you think about life and the more knowledge you have the happier you become. But the ironical thing, is that it only increases sorrow.

The quality of an individual can be measured by the distance between his understanding and his willing.

When children play together, this relativity becomes actuality to them, an actuality in which they are, each one respectively, a significant magnitude. But then there comes a message, that little Peter, Hans, or Soren, or whatever the person is called, must go home. In this way the absolute disruptively intervenes.
An adult goes and talks with other earnest men about what he wants to be in the world, that he wants to be this and that, and it seems to the other earnest men that he is an earnest man, almost as earnest as the others. But what happens - suddenly there comes a message that he must go home - that is , the God-relationship asserts itself.
The child cannot be allowed to get stuck to the illusion that the relationship with the other children is the whole thing - for then comes the message that he must go home.

Just as a worldly man desires that which tends to nourish his love of life, likewise, he who wishes to live with eternity in mind constantly needs a dose of disgust with life lest he become foolishly enamoured of this world and, still more, in order that he may learn thoroughly to be disgusted and bored and sickened with the folly and lies of this wretched world.

Apart the last one all quotes are from Journals and Papers

On Sluts, Shame, & “Slut Shaming

One of the great constants of the human condition is that women complain. If there is a heaven, we can count on women to complain about the accommodations, for it would not be heaven to them if they could not do so. Men must learn, therefore, not to take female complaints too seriously, nor treat them as evidence that women really have it all that hard. Far more important is the content of their complaints. For example, many wives complain that their husbands do not pay enough attention to them. Properly understood, this is evidence that things are in order: we want women to be wishing for more time with their husbands. If they start complaining that they would prefer the company of some other man instead—then we should start to worry.

Women’s complaints constantly change as society evolves, but they will cease only when human life on earth itself ceases. Some scribe ought to keep track of women’s ever-evolving complaints as possible raw material for the historians and philosophers of the future; a kind of cultural time-capsule, as it were.

In recent years I have been made aware of a female complaint unknown to the world of my youth and (I am inclined to think) to any previous period of recorded history. It is directed against men who engage in “slut-shaming.” The idea is that women have every right to be sluts if they please and must not be subjected to criticism or made to feel embarrassed on that account. It is a remarkable testimony to the age in which we live that women have now taken up this particular complaint, and the present essay is my attempt to analyze the phenomenon and learn what it has to teach us.

I will begin by going back four centuries to the Spain of the siglo de oro and its greatest literary monument, Cervantes’ Don Quixote. Readers of this famous tale will remember the character Maritornes, an ugly slut who works in the kitchen of an inn where the hero and his faithful companion Sancho Panza stop. At first glance, she would seem an object of pity to the reader. Extremely ill-favored by nature, she is the sort of girl people shake their heads over thinking “what a shame—what man will ever marry the poor thing?”

But closer inspection reveals that such pity would be unwarranted. Maritornes in fact has an extremely active love life, far more than most of us ever will. She has achieved this remarkable feat by the simple expedient of throwing herself at every vigorous young stable hand or peasant lad who walks through the door of the inn. Her bed has become the chief center of sport and recreation for the entire province. Every art of Venus is regularly practiced there. Through sheer pluck and determination, the girl has managed to procure for herself a copiousness and variety of sexual experience that the handsomest Don Juan in the Kingdom of Spain could only regard with stupefaction and envy.

As the reader may already have grasped, this enterprising young woman’s achievement in acquiring such a vast horde of lovers is funny. The author is inviting us to laugh at the circumstance that an unsightly scullery wench at a nondescript inn in rural Spain enjoys a more active and rewarding sex life than an oriental despot with an enormous and elaborately guarded haram. And this remarkable accomplishment obviously bears some relation to her being a woman.

Of course, another interpretation of the character would be possible. My regular readers know the frequency with which I recur to the inadequacies, as I see it, of the American conservative press in its attempts to understand and critique the sexual revolution. It is not difficult for me to imagine an American conservative pundit reading Cervantes’ novel, coming upon the story of Maritornes, and (instead of laughing) becoming indignant—not at her, of course, but at the vicious, lust-crazed stable hands who prey upon her innocence. Is it not obvious to these deeply immoral young men that they are simply ruining the poor girl, rendering her unmarriageable, and thus condemning her to a life of shame and regret? Obviously, what is needed in this situation is a robust law providing draconian punishments suitable to the magnitude of the crimes being committed by all these horny young peasant boys at the expense of poor Maritornes!

This interpretation, too, relies heavily on Maritornes being a woman, and thus presumably desirous of the security that only marriage to a man of good character can provide, a man such as everyone writing for the conservative press feels certain he himself is. It is only the failure of all these stable-hands to be such sterling moral characters that has led to the tragic downfall of Maritornes. For according to this interpretation, her story is a tragedy—rather than a comedy.

I should make clear that I am not objecting in any way to the high ideals and deep moral sense of responsibility that inspires such commentators. I merely wish to suggest that they might be a bit deficient in the sense of humor Cervantes presumes in his readers. No doubt it is wrong of all those stable hands to avail themselves of the girl’s excessively welcoming nature. But Maritornes is a volunteer, not a victim. As a practical matter, it might be more useful to urge her to place some slight check upon her own amorous and generous disposition than to try to talk every sexually desperate young stable hand in Spain into practicing monkish celibacy.

Most conservative commentators on the sexual revolution belong to an eternal human type popularly known as the “White Knight.” The White Knight is sure that all women are inherently virtuous, whereas men are disgusting, lust-addled pigs—with the curious exception of the White Knight himself. He sees it as his mission, therefore, to protect the good, innocent women from all those bad men. How fortunate the world’s women are that God in his providence has provided them with a tiny number of male advocates and protectors such as the White Knight!

And the White Knight simply hates to hear any woman called a “slut.” He disapproves of the very word. Instead, his pet term is “predator,” a word he uses constantly to refer to that overwhelming majority of his own sex who fail to be as good and virtuous as himself. Every other man, you see, seeks to use women for mere pleasure—only to abandon them along with their bastard children. The world simply needs more White Knights with plenary powers and shotguns for use against male predators and the protection of innocent, honorable women such as Maritornes.

But, of course, Maritornes is in reality neither innocent nor honorable. She is a slut, a term which—far from being a meaningless insult—has a definite denotation, viz., a woman who engages in multiple short-term amorous adventures with a variety of men, normally without any money changing hands (for there is a separate term applied to women who engage in sluttish behavior for payment). Sluttery has traditionally been regarded as socially harmful because of its incompatibility with marriage and family life. Spain was, of course, a Christian nation. Its sexual ideal was universal lifelong monogamy with an exception only for that minority of men and women who have a special calling to celibacy. Sluttish behavior in women moves society farther from this ideal, and that explains why and how the term “slut” (or its Spanish equivalent) became an insult.

Today, however, women are telling us that they no longer wish to be “slut-shamed.” In other words, they are indignant over being called sluts regardless of how accurately their behavior meets the word’s definition. How seriously should men take this complaint? Must we really recognize a “right” of every woman to behave like Cervantes’ Maritornes? Would this lead to happier marriages, stronger and more loving family bonds, or better cared-for children? Would it, in the long run, even increase the happiness or well-being of the sluts themselves?

It should also be observed that shaming sluts is no easy thing to do, their comparative imperviousness to shame being precisely one of their defining characteristics. Maritornes could never have achieved the success she did with such a broad variety of peasant lads unless she was fairly insensitive to appeals to behave with appropriate feminine modesty.

By the way, many languages—German, for example—do not distinguish between shame and modesty, employing a single word for both. In English usage, shame is an emotional reaction to being discovered guilty of some socially disapproved behavior, whereas modesty is the disposition to avoid such behavior. “Slut shaming” is society’s effort to persuade sluts to behave more modestly and avoid disreputable behavior. Such shaming has always been less effective than might be desired even before women took to complaining about it. The best answer to contemporary women’s objections to slut-shaming would be that if they comported themselves with greater decency, they would not have called forth such social shaming in the first place. But that would require them to put some kind of bridle upon their lusts, something much of contemporary Western womanhood is simply unwilling to do. They will accept nothing less than the right to do exactly as they please with no interference from anyone trying to persuade them to greater self-control. It is men and men alone who are responsible for the harmful consequences of female sluttery through their own failure to practice perfect chastity—just as White Knights have always said. Women’s adroitness at shifting responsibility for their own behavior onto men is matched only by the White Knight’s eagerness to allow them to do so.

As noted above, there are also women who engage in sluttish behavior not out of lust but for financial compensation. Today, such women also have plenty of complaints about the hardness of their lot in life. They admonish us that “sex work is work”—i.e., real work, rather than all fun and games. And no doubt there is some truth to this. Posing under a bunch of Klieg lights while getting your ass drilled by some fellow you hardly know is probably not the pleasantest way of earning one’s living. I personally would not want to do it. But how seriously should we take the complaints of porn whores that their honest and diligent labors in front of the camera are not being repaid with sufficient public respect and esteem? Do they really expect to be honored by society on a par with faithful wives who have raised ten children? Apparently, many of them now do.

These women have White Knights defending them as well, for whom they are merely innocent, naïve girls lured into a life of shame by male pornographers in order to satisfy criminal male lusts. I recently read a comment on the internet about women “getting sucked” into the world of porn like inert pieces of flotsam. No, sir. In pornography it is the men who get sucked—often into a serious addiction—and the women who do the sucking. The motive for their career choice, obviously, is the easy money it offers.

Now the gallant male defenders of whores have devised the new crime of “sex trafficking.” All the contemporary whore has to do to avoid being held responsible for her own actions is to claim she has been “trafficked.” So, of course, this is what all of them have learned to say: they did not decide to become whores, it was men who made whores of them by “trafficking” them.

One difficulty with this interpretation is the emergence of websites such as OnlyFans where women can act as their own freelance pornographers, requiring no male assistance to upload smutty videos of themselves for the titillation of lonely men who pay them for the sterile pleasure of being teased. Some of these young, female entrepreneurs apparently make quite a good living at it. But we must not criticize them for this, because “sex work is work.”

How did sluts and whores become so common in American society? It all began back in the late 1960s with a female complaint. This complaint, which can be heard from time to time even today, concerned what the ladies called a “double standard”, namely, that women who engage in many sexual encounters are unfairly maligned as “sluts” whereas men who do the very same thing are admired as “studs.”

But a woman fornicating with many men and a man fornicating with many women are not, in fact, doing the same thing. The two behaviors would be equivalent only if women and men were interchangeable, which they are not. Biology puts the female in the stronger sexual position, since eggs are a scarcer commodity than sperm. It is, therefore, easy for a woman to find mates, as Maritornes’ success—despite her meagre natural endowments—so vividly demonstrates. Finding mates is much harder for men, so a man who succeeds in mating with many women has overcome a natural difficulty. From a purely biological rather than a moral point of view, seducing many women is something of an achievement, and can be managed only by exceptionally attractive men, whether their attractiveness be due to looks or social status. Of course, this achievement also results in abandoned women and fatherless children, so it is not morally admirable at all, and no sane society approves or even tolerates such behavior from its men. Only women themselves could be foolish enough to admire “studs.”

Nevertheless, ever since the sexual revolution, women have been trying desperately to become the female equivalent of studs. They have only succeeded in becoming sluts whom even Maritornes would blush to associate with. Perhaps shaming is the appropriate response to shameful behavior.

The latest female complaint is that men are not “stepping up” to ply them with wedding rings, a circumstance which just might have something to do with their own sluttish behavior (along with a well-justified fear of divorce). It is almost as if women are returning to the complaint that they do not get to spend enough time with their husbands—except that now the husbands have never come into existence in the first place.

The sexual revolution began in female promiscuity and it will end in male chastity. Eventually, every woman in America will be a whore, but none will be able to land a customer. Remember: you heard it here first.

F. Roger Devlin

After he had given his two brief replies to Sri Ramana he did not speak again for another 13 years

 

Sri Ramana’s face was smiling ‘with more radiance than that of innumerable lightning flashes fused into one.

In that ineffable bliss tears of joy welled down in unending succession, and they could not be resisted.’’* Finally, the ‘I’-thought went back to its source, the picture of Ramana Maharshi disappeared and the Self absorbed his whole being. From that moment on the Self shone alone and the ‘I’-thought, the individual self, never appeared or functioned in him again. Lakshmana had realised the Self in the presence of his Guru and his ‘I’-thought was permanently destroyed. Commenting on his realisation many years later Sri Lakshmana said, ‘“The ‘I’ went back to its source, the Self, and disappeared without trace. The Self remained alone. It is eternal peace and bliss.”’  (...)

The two men looked at each other for a few seconds, and then Ramana Maharshi asked him where he had come from. Sri Lakshmana answered that he had come from Gudur.
‘“That’s in Nellore District, isn’t it?’’ asked Ramana. Sri Lakshmana replied that it was and no more words passed between them. Sri Lakshmana had not spoken since the moment of his realisation.
After he had given his two brief replies to Sri Ramana he did not speak again for another 13 years.
*

Swamy ignored all these events and continued to sit quietly in his room. When he was inside the room he only ever wore a kaupina (two small strips of cloth, one tied around the waist and the other covering the genitals) but none of the thousands of mosquitoes who shared the room with him ever bothered to bite him. The only other occupant of the room was a squirrel which used to sit on his lap while he was in samadhi. Swamy used to keep some peanuts near him and whenever he emerged from his samadhi state the squirrel would eat a few out of his hand.

*
Swamy moved into the hut at the end of October 1950 and was soon spending nearly all his time in a state ‘of Self-absorption that was so intense that he rarely became aware of either his body or the world. He sat motionless in the padmasana position for 20 hours each day and lay down on the mat for the other four hours to give his back and leg muscles a chance to rest.
The hut was infested with poisonous snakes and scorpions but Swamy ignored them, and for the most part they ignored him. His only serious accident occurred when a scorpion bit him in the eye while he was resting on the mat. The eye swelled up immediately and for several days Swamy thought that he would lose the sight in that eye; he was in great pain, and obviously seriously injured, but it never occurred to him to seek medical treatment. After four days the swelling subsided and he discovered that his sight was unim- paired. To avoid a repetition of this accident a bench was provided for him so that he could have his rest away from the snakes and scorpions that crawled on the floor. In one of his rare moments of normal waking consciousness he made a half-hearted attempt to drive away the snakes by flicking water at them. The snakes drank the water and then danced in front of him, as if asking for more.
After that he left them alone.
*
A large party of 500 women, accompanied by a few men, walked to his hut and insisted that they too should be given darshan. This time Swamy refused to come out. The crowd, refusing to be deterred from its intention of having darshan, hit upon a novel way of getting to see him. The mud walls of the hut were quite low and the beams and supports for the leaf roof rested on top of them. The 500 women positioned themselves at strategic points around the hut and tried to lift the roof completely off the building so that they could peer over the walls and have a look at Swamy. When Swamy discovered what they were trying to do he admitted defeat and opened his door. His intention was to come out and see the women, but when the door opened, the weight of the pressing crowd, all eagerly converging on him, pushed him back into the hut. Within a few seconds he found himself trapped in a corner by about 60 agitated women. The women outside the hut were even more agi- tated because they had not been able to get in, and it was some time before some semblance of order was restored. Swamy sat in his corner and looked helplessly at the confused scene in front of him:

‘‘There were no volunteers to help me, and since I was keeping mouna [silence] I couldn’t say anything. I just sat down and waited to see what would happen.” Eventually, the women formed them- selves into a line. One by one they all appeared before him, had his darshan, prostrated and then left. Swamy was sitting cross-legged on the floor with the soles of his feet sticking out on each side. One woman touched both soles simultaneously with her index fingers and then rubbed the fingers on her face, just under each eye. All the women behind her thought that this was a good idea and they all adopted the same practice when their turn came. Swamy didn’t like being touched and he tried to deter the women by closing his eyes, looking as severe as possible, and pretending that he was in samadhi. The rest of the women suddenly became afraid. Thinking that he was angry with them, and that he might put a curse on them if they offended him any more, the rest of the women restricted themselves to a darshan and a prostration. When the last of the women had prostrated and left he thankfully closed his door and went back to his life of solitude.
*
Swamy was not keeping away from devotees as a matter of principle; he told me that if any good devotees had come to his hut seeking Self-realisation he would have been happy to teach them.
Apparently none came during this period and so no teachings were given. Swamy says that the people who came to his hut were either curiosity seekers or people wanting their desires fulfilled. He had no interest in either category of visitor. Swamy has a particularly low opinion of the people who came to see him on darshan days. When he reminisces about this period he usually refers, disparagingly, to the people who came to see him as ‘the mob’.
*
In between the darshan days Swamy ignored all the casual visitors and sat quietly in his room; he never made any attempt to attract devotees. While he was sitting there he had become aware that eventually a young girl would come to him from East Gudur.
Swamy knew that this girl would be spiritually advanced and that she would be ready for Self-realisation when she came. He was content to sit quietly, awaiting her arrival. He had a rough idea of what she would look like because he had seen an image of her as a 10-12 year old girl while he was sitting in his hut. Swamy had no idea how long it would be before she came, he only knew that one day she would come to see him. Twice a year, on darshan day, he would scrutinise the line of people as it filed past his hut, but he never saw anyone whom he considered to be an advanced devotee, and none of the visitors corresponded to the image of the girl he had seen. The girl from East Gudur was Sarada, but Swamy was not destined to see her for more than 20 years.
*
Sri Lakshmana’s privacy was still occasionally disturbed by visitors who wanted to talk to him or have his darshan. One man came and called out to Swamy, “You are a jnani [one who has real- ised the Self] and I am also a jnani. You must come out of the hut and give me darshan.’’ Swamy would normally ignore such people when they came, but on this occasion he passed a note out through his window which read, “If we are both jnanis, who is there to give darshan, and to whom?’’. The man stayed about an hour and then went away. Other people were far more persistent. One such man turned up at 8 p.m. one evening in a slightly drunk condition.
“Swamy!” he cried, “I am your boyhood friend. You are now a great swami but I am a bad man. Why have things turned out like this? Make me like you.

Please give me your teachings.’ The man was in fact a childhood acquaintance of Swamy, but he had not known him very well. When he first started to shout outside the hut Swamy ignored him, but when it became clear that he was not going to leave without some sort of answer, Swamy wrote a s/oka from the Bhagavad Gita (chapter 6, verse 5) on a slip of paper and passed it out through the window. There was no light in or near Swamy’s hut so the man had to take the note to the toddy shop nearby to read It.

The verse read: ‘“‘Let a man lift himself by himself; let him not degrade himself; for the Self alone is the friend of the self and the Self alone is the enemy of the self.”’ The message, although appro- priate, was much too abstruse for a man who was partly drunk and who had no knowledge of spiritual philosophy. He returned to Swamy’s hut, shouted that he didn’t understand the message and asked Swamy to show him what he should do. This time Swamy made no reply. The man then became angry and started to abuse him. Finally, he threatened to burn the hut down if Swamy didn’t answer his questions. When Swamy still declined to give an answer he took out a matchbox and was about to strike a match when he saw a huge cobra on the roof of the hut. It was no ordinary snake; it appeared to him to have five heads. As the snake started sliding towards him he panicked, dropped his matchbox, and started running towards Gudur. The cobra followed him and apparently moved just fast enough to keep him in sight. The man looked over his shoulder several times, and each time he saw that the five-headed cobra was still pursuing him. On the last occasion he saw it he was half a mile from Swamy’s hut.
This man still lives in Gudur and he is still insisting that a five-headed cobra chased him all the way back to town. Whatever the truth of the matter it was certainly a traumatic experience for him.
He gave up drinking, reformed his character a little, and years later, when Swamy was more accessible, he visited the ashram a few times to have his darshan.
*
In 1959 a local advocate, who visited Swamy occasionally, lost his only son. The boy, aged four, died after a sudden illness. Full of grief he wrote to Swamy asking him to explain why his son had to die at such an early age. He also wanted to know if the boy’s death was inevitable and predetermined, and if so, what possible reason could there be for putting a child on this earth for less than five years. Swamy wrote him a fairly long reply which fortunately has been preserved.

Death is inevitable to every born individual. Similarly, birth is inevitable to every dead person. Why do you grieve over inevitable happenings? You are saying that he is your child. Supposing that the child lived for 65 years in his previous life and lived for 5 years in his present life, his span of life would be 70 years in the aggregate. What do you call him? Your father or your child! In the previous life he was the child of one person, in his present life he is your child and in the future life he... [will] be the child of another. So it is not desirable to weep for his death under the illusion that he is your child. God has given him and has taken him back. Don’t grieve. Think that the whole universe is one family. Every second, millions of people take birth and millions die. If one were to weep for all the dead persons... [one] will have to wail ceaselessly for days and nights throughout life. Is it possible? See! How many difficulties are to be faced with this body. It has to be washed thrice. It has to be fed. It has to be clothed. Its endless desires have to be satisfied. The dead are more happy. | They do not grieve. Will anyone weep... [when] he goes to sleep. We are in the three states [waking, dreaming and deep sleep]. We are having the gross inert body in the waking [state], the subtle body in the dream [state], and the cosmic body in sushupti [deep sleep]. Is not the one who transcends all these three states and dissolves himself in the Supreme Self really liberated? Is it wisdom to seek permanence of this inert body either to oneself or to others? Think [it] over. At the time of death, the mind forgets the existing body and enters into another body. Whether [you] will it or not what is destined to happen will certainly happen as ordained by God. Hence it is advisable to leave all sorrows to God and live in peace.’
*
Sarada had no religious inclinations at all during her childhood but she did have a curiously ascetic nature. She had an aversion to wearing good clothes and she had little or no interest in the food that was given to her. When she was taken shopping to buy clothes she would always prefer to buy cheap, coarse material; if her clothes became torn she would prefer to pin them together rather than have them properly mended. These habits were a source of embarrass- ment to her family. Her dark skin (the rest of her family were light-skinned) and her cheap clothes led many people to believe that she was a servant rather than a member of the family. Sarada didn’t care what impression she made on people; she was unperturbed by her parents’ embarrassment, and equally unaffected by the people who looked down on her because of her appearance. Her indiffer- ence even extended to her diet since she cannot ever remember having any interest in food (...)
Although she was indifferent to food and clothes her temperament was far from placid. She was always getting into heated arguments with her brothers and sisters. In the inevitable fights that ensued, she would compensate for her smallness and weakness by fighting ferociously. On many occasions she drew blood by scratching her opponents with her fingernails.
*
After she and her sister had been at- tending the darshans for four weeks they had a heated argument in their house which reduced Sarada to tears. The subject was a trivial domestic matter but Sarada says that the argument was an im- portant milestone in her life: from that day on her feeling of disgust towards the mundane events of everyday life increased, and a strong desire to be detached from all human affairs started to grow in her.
At the conclusion of the argument Sarada wrote a letter to Swamy.
Om Namo Bhagavate Sri Ramanaya. Om Namo Bhagavate Sri Lakshmanaye. Sri Lakshmana Swamy. There is no happiness in this world. In nothing is there any happiness. I should not be attached to anything. Bhagavan, you are my only refuge. I have no support except you. I am surrendering to you. You are my father, mother and Guru, and if you do not exist, then I do not exist either. I am writing this letter in much agony; please show me your grace. I am not compelling you, excuse me, but you are my only refuge. I am giving my life to you, for you are everything to me. No one is loving me except you, and except for you no one is pitying me. I am surrendering to you. Lakshmana Bhagavan. Surrender, surrender, surrender.

SARADA Sri Lakshmana was impressed with the letter and he told his mother that Sarada’s dispassion was very good. However, since it was not his practice to reply to devotees’ letters, the letter went unanswered.
*
Sarada was now free to resume her meditation again since she had no more intruding worries to disturb her. Her mind was constantly turned towards Swamy, and everything else, including her schoolwork, was ignored. On the 23rd of July Sarada came to Swamy and told him: “I cannot read my school books any more because I am always thinking of you. The teachers are now getting angry with me. I want to stop going to school.” Swamy sympathised with her problem and promised to ask her father if she could leave school.
The following day he found an opportunity to speak to Ramana- dham and explained the situation to him. Her father had been hoping that Sarada would complete her 10th standard year, but after listening to Swamy’s request, he allowed her to leave immediately. Sarada’s school career came to an end the same day.

*
After Swamy had given her the lecture on detachment he asked her again about her decision not to marry. When Sarada confirmed her decision Swamy told her, “Then you can get enlightened”.
Sarada thought that Swamy would not be continually asking this question unless he doubted her sincerity. In order to finally convince him she told him, “When I look at Swamy it is as if I am looking at God. I am always in bliss in your presence, but when you ask me about marriage I get angry. I shall remain in brahmacharya [the state of celibacy] or I shall die. I shall not go back on my word for I don’t want that life of a dog.”
*
Unable to bear the separation any longer, Sarada sat down and wrote a letter to Swamy asking him to allow her to come and see him again.

Sri Lakshmana Bhagavan. You are God who gives bliss. I cannot leave you even for a minute. You are my mother, father, Guru, God. Whatever you say I will do. I wish to stay always with you, and I am only happy when I am with you. I have no other direction to go. I cannot forget your name, and I shall always be thinking about your name and form. You are the foundation for me, and my burden is yours forever. If I realise the Self I shall have no business with you.Till then I have to stay with you. You attracted my mind, and now you have stolen it.

At the conclusion of the letter she composed a poem:

In my difficulties you will hear my words and you will help me. In leaving me you cannot go anywhere for you are the Self. Please don’t cast me aside. I am surrendering my life to you. What use is this life without looking at your form?

Bala took the letter to Swamy, but Swamy’s only comment was that the poem was very good.
Sarada’s exile lasted nearly a week. On the 8th of July, when she was paying her first permitted weekly visit to the ashram, Swamy told her that he had only been testing her devotion again. He said that he had wanted to see what her reaction would be if he appeared to take the Old Woman’s side in her long-running dispute with her. Swamy said that she had passed the test well. From then on he always sided with Sarada when she got into fights with the Old Woman.
*
Ramanadham came to the ashram early the following morning. When Swamy told him that he wanted to adopt Sarada as his daughter he raised no objection. The adoption ceremony, which took place immediately, was brief and informal. Swamy assembled everyone who was in the ashram and then addressed the following question to Sarada: “‘Are you going to stay with me always, from today onwards?’’. Sarada replied “Yes’’. Swamy continued, “From today I am taking you from Ramanadham as my adopted daughter. From today onwards you are my daughter.” Then Swamy addressed the Old Woman: ‘From today onwards Sarada is your grand-daughter. Look after her. Give her hot water and attend to her other needs.” The Old Woman deliberately looked away from Swamy’s face while he was speaking to her and his words had no effect. She made no attempt to supply Sarada with any of her needs, nor did she lessen her attempts to drive her from the ashram.
*
At the beginning of October 1978 Sarada’s sister, who lived in Bangalore, became ill] and Sarada was asked to go and look after her for a few days. She left on the 18th, planning to spend only a few days there, but her sister’s condition did not improve and she was unable to return to Swamy until December. (...)

It was during her stay in Bangalore that Sarada first started to go into Kevala nirvikalpa samadhi. She says that at first she had no idea what these states were; the first few times that it happened she thought that she was only falling into a very pleasant sleep. In between these states her mind, which had been quiet and relatively thought-free for several months, suddenly started getting some very strange desires.

During all her years with Swamy she had only ever had one or two cheap outfits to wear, and she had never paid much attention to her personal appearance. Now, in Bangalore, she suddenly started to look at her sister’s expensive clothes with a strong desire to be dressed in a similar way. At one point her mind even developed a strong craving for siddhis. Sarada watched these desires with great interest, but she never made any attempt to fulfil them. She says that for the last few months of that year she was in a completely detached state. This enabled her to witness all her thoughts, desires and emotions dispassionately, without ever becoming involved in them.
In the last few weeks that she was in Bangalore she spent nearly all her time either in a thought-free state, or in a state of samadhi.

She stopped meditating on Swamy, stopped performing puja to his picture, and spent many hours of each day lying on her bed. Her sister thought that she was just being lazy; on one occasion she told Sarada, “‘You live in an ashram, and you are supposed to be a devotee, but you don’t meditate any more and you have stopped doing puja. What kind of devotee are you? You just lie on your bed all day and do nothing.’’ When the remark was made, Sarada was so deeply immersed in one of her thought-free states that she was incapable of either explaining what was happening to her, or of giving any kind of answer at all.

When Deepam day arrived that year (12.12.78) Sarada roused herself from her thought-free state and celebrated the festival by drawing a picture of Arunachala; she put Swamy’s picture and a symbolic light on top of it. As she concentrated on Swamy and Arunachala she entered a thought-free state again; her mind subsided into the Heart and she had a temporary experience of the Self.

The following day she decided that she could not stay in Bangalore any longer and she told her sister that she had to see Swamy urgently.

She says that during all the time that she was in Bangalore the world had appeared to her as if it was a dream. With a desire to see Swamy uppermost in her mind she decided that the dream had to end.

However, her sister had not fully recovered from her illness and this prevented her from leaving for another three days; she was not able to leave for Gudur until the evening of the 16th.

She returned to Gudur by bus and spent most of the journey ina state of samadhi, or near samadhi. This was rather inconvenient because she had to change buses in Tirupati. She was conscious enough to get off the bus there with her bag, but then she relapsed into a thought-free state again. A friendly fellow-traveller found her some time later, standing by the side of the road, staring vacantly into space. When he discovered that Sarada was heading for Gudur he put her on the correct bus. Sarada stayed conscious long enough to pay her fare and then relapsed into a full samadhi state for the remainder of the three-hour trip.

She was met by her family in Gudur and escorted to their house. They tried to entertain her by telling her all the latest news and gossip, but she was unable to keep her attention on what they were saying, and she was unable to make any kind of reply herself. Eventually her family just assumed that she was very tired and let her go to bed.

The next morning, at 10 a.m., she went to the ashram, sat down in front of Swamy and tried to tell him about the thought-free states that she had been experiencing. She was still deeply immersed in such a state and she found it hard to speak. Swamy tried to engage her attention by telling her about a few of the events that had been going on in the ashram in her absence, but Sarada couldn’t concentrate on anything he said. When she told Swamy that she wasn’t capable of paying attention he stopped trying to engage her in conversation. He had been watching her intently ever since she arrived and he could see that the Self was trying to pull the ‘I’-thought towards it. A few minutes later a party of visitors came to look at the ashram. Swamy went into his house because he didn’t want to see them, but Sarada remained sitting on his veranda. She remained there for the next two hours, immersed in a state of kevalu nirvikalpa samadhi. Sometimes her eyes were half open, but she wasn’t aware of seeing anything because her mind had completely subsided into the Heart. When she kept her eyes open for any length of time the ‘I’-thought would rise from the Heart to the brain, but Sarada soon discovered that she could easily make it subside again by closing her eyes.

At about midday Bala brought Swamy and Sarada some food. Swamy called Sarada into the house because he thought that she should have something to eat, but Sarada found that she was incapable of moving by herself. Eventually, Bala and Swamy had to help her into the house. Sarada found it very difficult to eat; the first time she tried she only managed to lift her hand half-way to her mouth. After a few false starts, and with Swamy’s help, she finally managed to swallow a little food and drink a little water. She spent the rest of the day, and all of the following night, in samadhi. During the course of the day Swamy helped her to walk up and down his veranda a few times, but for the rest of the time he allowed her to remain undisturbed.

The next morning she came out of samadhi with a strong awareness that her I’-thought was still existing. She remembered the peace of the previous day and night when she had been in samadhi, with the ‘I’-thought temporarily gone, and she decided to see if she could enter the same state again. She closed her eyes and within a few minutes her I’-thought subsided into the Heart and she went back into samadhi again. The ‘l’-thought emerged from the Heart several times during the day, but each time it subsided Sarada was convinced that she had realised the Self. She was still able to talk and Swamy, thinking that her realisation was near, placed a small tape-recorder near her to record her words. Sarada spoke in short, quiet sentences, with frequent pauses as she was overwhelmed by the bliss of the Self.

I have no body. I have no ‘I’. I am not the body. How I am talking I do not know. Some power is talking through me.

Swamy asked her if she was looking and she replied:

Even though I am looking, I am not looking. Where is the ‘T° to look. When the mind enters the Heart there 1s no I’ to tell that there ts no ‘I’. My I is dead.

Swamy then asked her how she was feeling.

My whole body 1s filled with peace and bliss. I cannot describe it. Everything is filled with peace. The Self is pulling me towards it and I am not able to open my eyes. The whole body is weak.
Swamy remarked, ‘‘It is like an elephant entering a weak hut. The hut cannot stand the strain. Is it beyond time and death?” It is beyond time and death as there is no mind. As the "I" is dead I don’t wish to eat anymore. I am not able to eat. However tasty the food I cannot eat. I have no desire to eat. Everything is filled with peace and bliss. I am content with my realisation. I have recognised my own Self, so I am content.

Swamy then told her that her ‘I’ was not yet dead and that she had not yet reached the final state. Sarada replied:

As the ‘I’ is dead there is no you.

‘‘Have you no mother or father?” asked Swamy.

No father, no mother, no world. Everything is peace and bliss.

Why do I have to eat when there is no ‘I’? The body is inert, it cannot eat. A corpse will not eat. It is like that because the ‘I' is dead. As I cannot eat I cannot talk. Who is talking I do not know.

‘‘Then who is talking?” asked Swamy. Sarada remained silent and so Swamy answered his own question. “‘The Self is talking.” Sarada continued:

Even though I am seeing, I am not seeing. Even though I am talking I am not talking. Whatever I do I am not doing it because the 'I’ is dead. I have no body. All the nerves are filled with peace and bliss. All is Brahman. All is bliss. In the veins instead of blood, love and bliss are flowing. A great power has entered into me.

Three months before Swamy had told Sarada, “Even though I sleep I am not sleeping’’. Sarada remembered this, repeated Swamy’s words and said that she was finally able to understand what he had meant. Sarada continued to talk:

I have no thought of doing anything. I have no fear of death. Before, I feared death, but not anymore. I don’t care about death. I have nothing more to do. I shall give up the body.

Swamy asked her to stay but Sarada answered:

What is death to die now? The body is inert, how can it die? My ‘I is dead, what is there left to die’? Why then fear death?

Swamy then reminded her that her ‘I was not dead and that she was not yet in the final sahaja state. Swamy then stopped the tape we were listening to and talked a little about the state that Sarada was experiencing when she spoke these words.

‘‘Anyone whose mind completely subsides into the Heart for a short time can talk like an enlightened person. Their experience of the Self is the same as that of a realised person. However, their ‘I' thought is not dead and it is likely to re-emerge at any time. Such an experience is not the final state because it is not permanent.” He then played the final portion of Sarada’s comments on her experience.

I am everywhere. J am not the body. I have no body so J have no fear. I am immobile. Whatever I may do I am immobile. I am shining as the Self. Everything is a great void [maha-sunya]. How can I describe the Self in words? It is neither light nor dark. No one can describe what it is. In the past, present and future no one can describe what it is. It is difficult to describe. Self is Self, that is all.

Throughout that day Sarada’s mind kept sinking into the Self, but on each occasion it came out again. At 4 p.m. the ‘I’-thought went from the Heart to the brain and started to bang against the inside of her skull. Sarada said later that it was like an axe trying to split her head open from the inside. Since she was not able to bear the pain she came forward, took Swamy’s hand and placed it on her head. The ‘I’-thought went back to the Heart, but again it was only a temporary subsidence. Three minutes later it rose again and once again started to bang against the inside of her skull. Sarada came forward, placed her head on Swamy’s feet and a few seconds later the ‘I’-thought returned to its source and died forever.

With her ‘I’-thought permanently gone Sarada had realised the Self. Swamy says that in the final few minutes her ‘I’-thought was trying to escape and take birth again, and that had he not been present, the ‘I’-thought would have killed her and escaped.

In the first few minutes after realisation Swamy thought that Sarada was going to give up her body. Her arms and legs went stiff and cold and her blood circulation stopped. Swamy shook her to try and revive her, but she was unable to open her eyes. It occurred to Swamy that if she did give up the body, not only would her family be very angry with him, but he might even be arrested for murder. Eventually he took her to her parents’ house in Gudur, but it took five days before Sarada was able to sustain consciousness of her body for any length of time. Throughout this period she was continually saying that she wanted to give up the body, and Swamy had to use all his powers of persuasion to keep her alive.

Swamy gave her the new name of Mathru Sri Sarada; Mathru means mother and Sni is an honorific prefix. He was most anxious that she stay in the body because he felt that she could offer invaluable help to devotees who were seeking the Self. However, he had great difficulty in keeping her alive; Sarada continued to show no interest in retaining her body and for the next twelve months Swamy was engaged in a daily battle to keep her in contact with the world.
Almost every day Sarada would lose body consciousness and withdraw into the Self. Each time she did it she would say that she no longer wanted her body and that she was going to give it up.
*

Saradamma asserts that the world is nothing but the mind. The logical inference from this is that nani’s do not perceive the world at all since they no longer have a mind. Saradamma confirms that this is so in the following exchange. 

Question: You make two statements: one, the world ts nothing but the mind, and two, the realised person has no mind. If both these statements are true how do you see the world since you no longer have a mind? 

Saradamma: I don’t see the world, I only see the Self. Seeing the Self everywhere I look is such a fundamental property of my being that I sometimes forget that devotees are not also seeing what I am seeing. When this happens it is only when they speak that I am reminded that they all have minds, and that when they look at the world they are only looking at their minds. 

Not having a mind, Saradamma travels through life unencumbered by any mental baggage. The implications of this are sometimes quite surprising. 

Saradamma: Sometimes I go to Bangalore and visit my sister who lives there. While I am away from the ashram I completely forget about it because there is no mind to keep reminding me of its existence. When I come back to the ashram it is very strange. Even though everything is familiar, it is almost as if I am visiting the place for the first time. Since I do not have a mind, there is nothing in me to provide continuity with the past. The Self only exists in the present moment, and since it has no residue of the past attached to it, each experience is new and fresh. When I am in my sister’s house in Bangalore, that household is all that exists for me. When I am here, only the ashram exists. Wherever I am there is no attachment to the past and no anticipation of the future.

*

Saradamma frequently stresses that the Self cannot be described in words, but on many occasions she tries to describe the indescribable. 

The first account in this chapter was written by Saradamma herself in Telugu only ten days after her realisation. It is a glowing account of the jnani’s experience of the Self. 

Saradamma: When I opened my eyes after realisation there was only peace inside and out. I knew that I was the Self and that when I uttered the word ‘I’, this ‘I’ meant only the Self. Even though I may see, I am not seeing; even though I may hear, I am not hearing; even though I may talk I am not talking. When I wake up I am not really waking and when I sleep I am not really sleeping. Sleep, waking and dream are passing before the Self but they cannot touch it. Whatever I may do I am not doing it. I have no sin and no virtue, no sleep and no waking, for I am always in the state of sahaja samadhi. Whatever I may do I am always in that State. 

If there is a mind then there is a world. If there is no mind then there is no world and no body. There is nothing except the Self and the Self has no name and no form. It 1s eternal peace. I am ever content. I have been able to gain the most valuable thing in the world, for all the riches in the world cannot buy or balance the Self. Even though I did not know that it was possible to get it I attained it, for without my knowing it, the Self killed the ‘I’. Everything is the Self and nothing is apart from it; this is my experience and I do not slip from that state. I am shining as the Self and there is no doubt about my experience.

*

Since her Self-realisation Saradamma’s link with her body and the world has been very tenuous and unstable; on many occasions she has withdrawn into the Self and completely lost bodily and worldly consciousness. She calls these withdrawals ‘going into samadhi’. Because of the misleading connotations of the word samadhi, I have substituted the expression ‘Self-absorption’ in the following description of these periodic withdrawals. 

Saradamma: Although my experience of the Self never varies, sometimes awareness of the body and the world fluctuates. I have no interest in keeping this body and sometimes I go into a state of complete Self-absorption where the body and the world cease to exist. This body is a useless appendage for me. The Self does not need a body and sometimes the feeling arises, “Why should I keep it anymore? Every day it needs feeding, washing and clothing. It is a sick weak body, full of pain. Why should I prolong its existence?” When these feelings about the body arise, or when there is a great pain, then I withdraw into the Self. Sometimes I also do it if I am by myself and I feel an urge to dive deep into the peace and bliss of the Self. On these occasions I close my eyes. Then I direct attention within and there is a feeling that I can only describe as ‘closing up’. I cannot describe either the process or the experience even in Telugu because one who has not realised the Self cannot possibly understand it. 

There are several stages or levels of absorption which I can withdraw to. In the first few stages there is a partial loss of body consciousness and the body feels like an inert lump of stone. All pain and touch sensations disappear but I can still hear what people are saying, and with a little effort I can still manage to speak to them. 

In these first few levels it is relatively easy to open the eyes and resume normal body consciousness again, but as I withdraw more and more, it gets progressively more and more difficult to reverse the process. After a long or deep period of Self-absorption it is sometimes very difficult to open the eyes and direct attention outwards rather than inwards; it often takes many attempts before I finally succeed. These periods of Self-absorption are so attractive that Swamy often has to plead with me to get me to come out of them. He knows that if I stay in this state for a long time there is a possibility that I might give up the body. 

The experience of peace, bliss and self-sufficiency is the same whether I am absorbed in the Self or not, but when I am freed from the shackles of the body, and when I know that in that state I need nothing, I am often most unwilling to resume body consciousness again.

*

Saradamma usually describes her experiences of the Self by using such words as ‘peace’, ‘bliss’ and ‘love’. In the following brief exchange she reaffirms that her experience of the Self is continuous and asserts that its real nature is peace and bliss. 

Saradamma: I am always shining as the Self. I am always peace and bliss and nothing can shake me from that state. If I appear to be angry or sad it is only so in the eyes of other people. To me these images are merely emotions which appear and disappear on the screen of the ever-peaceful Self. 

Question: Do you always experience the bliss of the Self, the ananda?

Saradamma: Always! Always! In fact I don’t experience it, I am it.  I am that ananda, it is I.

*

When she is talking about the Self Saradamma often calls it ‘the Heart’. Usually she uses this term as a synonym for the Self but sometimes She also uses it to indicate the Heart-centre on the right side of the chest. This centre is the one which Swamy spoke about as being the source of the ‘I’-thought. In the following conversations she talks about this centre and her experience of it both before and after her Self-realisation. 

Question: I heard Swamy talking about your experience of the Heart-centre. Was this permanent and how did it affect you afterwards? 

Saradamma: When the mind dies in the Heart it is dead forever.  It never rises again. I cannot say what my experience of this state is because it cannot be described in words. But I can say a little about how this affected me. There are now no worries, no fears and no desires; the experience itself I cannot describe. 

Before Self-realisation [ sometimes went into samadhi. As I went into and came out of these states there was an awareness of the Heart-centre on the right side of the chest. However, since realisation, I know that the Heart cannot be located in the body. The Heart is the Self and it is immanent in all things.

It is the source of everything and it is neither inside the body nor outside. It is everywhere.
*
Swamy: In sound sleep the mind (the ‘I’) enters into the Heart but it remains in an ignorance of the Self which cannot be described in words. Just before waking, the mind, which is the ‘I’-thought, rises from the Heart to the brain in a split second through a passage called the amrita nadi. Then the mind experiences the world through the five senses and thinks that it is real. In Self-realisation, the pure mind, without thoughts and problems, returns back to the Heart-cave through this same passage.

As the mind tries to pass through the narrow way, the Self pulls the mind towards it and kills it After the death of the ‘I’ the Self will remain, one without a second; it is eternal peace and bliss. As there is no mind, there is no world, no birth and no death. Just as ornaments are not apart from the gold they are made of, even so, the world is not apart from the Self. As the Self is all-pervading, it is beyond time, directions and the three states of waking, dreaming and sleeping.
*
Saradamma: If you are always thinking about worldly things your mind becomes dirty. From a spiritual point of view the mind is like a mirror; it is only useful when it is clean. If you keep a mirror outside it will get so covered with dust and mud that you cannot see your face in it. If you keep the mirror inside a cupboard it stays clean and you can use it whenever you need it. When the mind wanders among worldly things a layer of vasanas (mental activities) forms on it which prevents it from reflecting or being aware of the light of the Self within. If you stop the mind from wandering and keep it turned towards God, then no outside influences can deposit any vasanas on it. This is the mental equivalent of keeping the mirror in the cupboard. Sometimes you have to use your mind. On such occasions, take it out of the cupboard, let it do its job, and then put it back again. When you don’t need to use your mind, put it back in the cupboard by thinking of God, otherwise it will get dirty.
*

Sitting for many hours in meditation is not necessarily good. Sometimes excessive meditation just dulls the mind and leaves it in a permanent state of tamas. A thought-free state is not necessarily good either because there is a tamasic thought-free state in which there is no peace or bliss, only a semi-conscious stupor. No progress is being made when one is in this state.
*
Saradamma: If you love one person more than another this is not true love; it is an attachment created by desire. To love all things equally, seeing the Self in all of them, is true love. When the Self ts realised, and sometimes even before, one can feel this love animating and flowing through the body in the same way that blood flows through the veins and arteries. It is love which binds the universe together and sustains it. Without love it would be nothing more than a collection of inert matter.

It is the same with the human body; without love, or the Self, the body would just be an inert lump.
All love is the same love, but love other than the love of God is a waste. When two people love each other and get married, what are they loving? They are loving each other’s minds and bodies. If a man loved the Self in his wife he would not grieve when her body dies because he would know that nothing has really happened to the Self. When two people marry and give all their love to each other they are building a wall around themselves. They have no love left for God or the Self, and because of this they can never see and love the Self, which is immanent in all things. Couples who only love each other can never realise the Self because they are preoccupied with their minds and bodies and have no love left for God.

From a spiritual point of view the ideal man-woman relationship is one in which the couple live as brother and sister, and instead of wasting their love on each other, they give it all to God.

from the book No Mind — I Am the Self The lives and teachings of Sri Lakshmana Swamy and Mathru Sri Sarada by David Godman