Fatima (Portugal), 21 Apr. 2005

Message 77

Astavakra: An ancient wisdom that blasts shoddy little belief-systems organized as ‘religion’ and as big business under so many ‘spiritual’ banners and by ‘holy’ buffoons.

The text is big and baffling but blissful, blasting all becoming and thus bringing the energy of being. Only forty random selections are presented in this message and another random forty in the next (message 78), on the analogy of ‘Hanuman Chalisa’ of Saint Tulsidas. Also there are traditions of forty days’ fasting, forty days’ penance in several human religious practices on this planet. Thus forty is a sacred number representing fortification of deep religious consciousness.

In Kriya-Yoga retreats sometime in future in some countries, Kriyabans may enjoy the euphoric and spontaneous commentaries from the body of Shibendu on these two messages along with an interesting symbolic story about the genesis of this profound spiritual text of humanity.

1Shun the pollutions of the mind. | See the purity of truth, | Of love and forgiveness, | Simplicity and happiness.

2The witness of all these, | The heart of awareness, | Is to be completely awake, | Not asleep in concepts and conclusions.

3No duties bind you, as you are | Formless and free, | Beyond the witness of all things, | Without experiences and experiencer. | So be happy¹!

4You² are everywhere, | Forever free. | Forever and truly free.

5“I do this. I do that.” | The big black snake of selfishness | Has bitten you!

6With the fire of the comprehension, | Burn down the forest of ignorance. | Free yourself from sorrow, | And be happy. | Be happy!

7The Self³ is everywhere. | One. | Still. | Free. | Perfect.

8Give up the illusion | Of the separate self. | Give up the feeling, | Within or without, | That you are this or that.

9The separative consciousness is bound | Only by the habit. | Your nature is pure awareness. | You are flowing in all things, | And all things are flowing in you.

10Your natural state is always the same, | Unfathomable awareness, | Limitless and free, | Serene and unperturbed.

11Whatever takes form is false. | Only the formless endures. | When you understand | The truth of this teaching, | You will not be born again⁴ 

12Infinity is within the body and without, | Like a mirror, | And the image in a mirror. | As the air is everywhere. | Flowing around the pot | And filling it.

13As a wave, | Seething and foaming, | Is only water | So all creation, | Streaming out of the Self⁵ | Is only the Self.

14When the Self is unknown | The psychological registrations arise, | Not when it is known.

15And in Intelligence, psychological registrations dissolve, | As a bracelet melts into gold, | A pot crumbles into clay, | A wave subsides into water.

16The whole world may perish, | From Brahma to a blade of grass, | But intelligence is still here. | Indeed how wonderful!

17 I am not the knower, | Nor the known, |  Nor the knowing. | These three are not real. | They only seem to be. | When intelligence is not awake.

18Two from Indivisible! | This is the root of suffering.

19 Real ‘I’ lives beyond all diversity and divisions, | In unbroken meditation. | Indeed, | Real ‘I’ is neither bound nor free! | Because real ‘I’ is intelligence!

20It is all groundless ground, the Space | For the whole of creation, | Though it rests in Me⁶ | Is without fragmentation.

21The psychological registrations are nothing. | When you understand this fully, | How can they be invented?

22Embodied consciousness is not separate. | It is awareness itself.

23When thoughts spring up, | The thousand worlds arise.

24Universal Intelligence is the unbounded deep | In whom all things | Naturally arise, | Rush against each other playfully, | And then subside to arise
again. | And again and again!

25But he who is truly wise | Always sees the absolute natural state, | Celebrated, he is not delighted. | Spurned, he is not angry.

26The true enlightened being feels no elation | Even in that exalted state | Which Indra and all the gods | Unhappily long for!

27From Brahma to a blade of grass, | Only the wise man is strong enough | To give up desire and aversion. | How rare he is!

28 Real You are one and the same | In joy and sorrow, | Hope and despair, | Life and death. | Real You are already fulfilled. | Let ‘yourself’ dissolve.

29There is nothing to accept, | Nothing to reject, | Nothing to dissolve!

30Nothing to hold on to, | Nothing to let go of, | Nothing to dissolve!

31This is the truth. | There is nothing to grasp, | Nothing to spurn, | Nothing to dissolve!

32 This is the whole truth. | There is nothing to embrace, | Nothing to relinquish, | Nothing to dissolve!

33Free from attachment, | Free from desire, | Still. | Even so am I, the Real One, | O how wonderful! | But in this Me, | There is nothing to embrace, |
And nothing to turn away.

34When there is no this shoddy little I, | There is freedom. | Where there is I, | There is bondage. | Consider this. | It is easy.

35 Rest in your own nature. | Set yourself free. | The world is just a set of false impressions. | Give them up. | Give up the illusion. | Give up the world. |
And live freely.

36Striving and craving, | For pleasure or prosperity, | These are your enemies, | Springing up to destroy you and your virtues. | Let all striving and craving go.

37 Enough of the pursuit of pleasure, | Enough of wealth and righteous deeds! | In the dark forest of the world | How you have toiled, | Pressing into painful labor | Your body and your mind and your words. | It is time to stop. | Now!

38 All sorrow comes from fear. | From nothing else. | When you know this, | You become free of it, | And desire melts away.

39You have no thought | For success or failure | Or for mind’s inconsistencies. | Real You is pure. | Real You is still. | When you know this in your heart |
That there is nothing, | You are very still, as you are finished!

40Meditation is needed | Only when the mind is distracted | By false imagining. | Knowing this, mediation is here and now, | Spontaneously!

1 Su-kha (happiness) means near skyness; Du-kha means away from skyness.
2 'You' indicates here a natural state, the 'no-mind'.
3 natural state
4 birth & death of desires will cease 
5 The existential, enduring, eternal emptiness.  
6 Universal Intelligence  

Download the Message in PDF format:  Message 77: "I do this. I do that." (English)