hermit's chronicles

Angels can fly because they take themselves lightly. - G.K. Chesterton

Swami Hari Om explains to Swami Rama: "The finest hours are the hours of night, but very few know how to utilize their worth and silence. Three categories of people remain awake at night: the yogi, the bhogi [sensualist], and the rogi [sick person]. The yogi enjoys bliss in meditation, the bhogi enjoys sensual pleasures, and the rogi keeps awake because of his pain and misery. All three remain awake, but benefitted is he who is in meditation. The bhogi experiences momentary joy – and with a desire to expand that moment, repeats the same experience. Alas, it can never be expanded this way. In meditation real joy expands into ever-lasting peace. "Closing the eyes unconsciously, without having any content in the mind, is sleep. Closing the eyes consciously is a part of meditation. A yogi closes his eyes and withdraws his senses from the sense perceptions. He remains free from the pair of opposites of pain and pleasure. Closing the eyes is for him the opening of the inne...

When he was a youngster Swami Rama met Vishnu Maharaj, a great scholar of Vedanta. Swami Rama asked him: "The Upanishads appear to be full of contradictions. In one place they say that Brahman is one without a second. Somewhere else they say that everything is Brahman. In a third place they say this world is false and Brahman alone is truth. And in a fourth place it is said that there is only one absolute Reality beneath all these diversities. How can one make sense out of these conflicting statements?" Vishnu Maharaj explained: "When the student starts practicing, he realizes that this apparent world is changeable, while truth never changes. Then he knows that the world of forms and names which is full of changes is false, and that behind it there exists an absolute Reality that is unchanging. In the second step, when he has known the truth, he understands that there is only one truth and that truth is omnipresent, so there is really nothing like falsehood. In that...