Tripura Rahasya

Sage Dattatreya said,

Hemalekha continued:

The state which is the result of your closing the eyes cannot be enough, for it is pure intelligence and eternal truth transcending anything else yet serving as the magnificent mirror to reflect the phenomena arising in itself. Prove, if you can, that everything is not contained in it. Whatever you admit as known to you, is in the knowledge conveyed by that consciousness. Even what may be surmised to be in another place and at a different time, is also within your consciousness. Moreover, what is not apparent and unknown to that intelligence is a figment of imagination, like the son of a barren woman. There cannot be anything that is not held by consciousness, just as there cannot be reflection without a reflecting surface.

Therefore I tell you that your conviction, 'I shall lose it by opening my eyes', or 'I know it', is the knot waiting to be cut, and there will be no attainment, though. Remember, it cannot be the perfect state if it can be attained. What you consider the happy state as accomplished by the movements of your eyelids, cannot indeed be perfect because it is certainly intermittent and not unconditional. Is any place found where the effulgence is not, my lord, of the fire blazing at the dissolution of the universe? All will resolve into that fire and no residue will be left. Similarly also the fire of realization will burn away all your sense of duty so that there will be nothing left for you to do. Be strong, root out your thoughts and cut off the deep-rooted knots from your heart, namely, 'I will see', 'I am not this', 'This is non-Self', and such like.

Find wherever you turn the one, undivided, eternal, blissful Self; also watch the whole universe reflected, as in a mirror in the Self, as it arises and subsides in It. Stop contemplating 'I see the Self everywhere and in everything (within and without)'. Reach the residual Reality within and abide as the Self, with your own natural state.