Salutations To My Own Self!

Sage Vasishtha

Indeed, it is through repeated thinking, that this ignorant relationship is strengthened; but I shall now destroy it through right enquiry. When ignorance is destroyed, such illusory relationship between scene, sight and mind will never again arise. The mind alone provides the senses with their intelligence; hence this mind should be destroyed. O mind, why do you vainly get agitated through the five senses? Only he who thinks 'it is my mind' is deluded by you. You do not exist, O mind! I do not care whether you stay or you go from me. You are unreal, inert, illusory. Only a fool is harassed by you, not a wise man. This understanding puts an end to the darkness of ignorance. Get out of this body, O ghost, along with your cravings and your emotions like anger. O mind, I have slain you today because I have realized that you never did exist in truth.

For a very long time, this ghost of a mind generated countless evil notions like lust, anger etc. Now that that ghost has been lain, I laugh at my own past foolishness. The mind is dead; all my worries and anxieties are dead; the demon known as ego-sense is dead, too: all this has been brought about through the mantra of enquiry. I am free and happy now. All my hopes and desires have gone. Salutations to my own self! There is no delusion, no sorrow, no I, no other! I am not the self, nor am I someone else, I am the all in all: salutations to my own self! I am the beginning. I am the consciousness. I am all the universes. There are no divisions in me. Salutations to my own self alone! That which is omnipresent equally in all, to that subtle indwelling omnipresence, that self, salutations!