The way of the bird

eality. Forgetting means ignorance. As long as ignorance remains, it acts as a veil to
keep reality unknown. All the moments of happiness and fullness that you do have are
made possible by the temporary disappearance of the ignorance that is embodied as the
ego. Naturally, you seek more of these experiences, until, eventually, you come to
understand the reality behind them. Then you are satisfied with That.
4.15 "Do things, anything, no harm, but do not forget yourself."
If you are an actor in a play, you do everything written for your character to do, but you
don't forget yourself and mix yourself up with the character. You may kill or be killed in
the play but you still know that your wife or husband is sleeping soundly in bed at home.
This statement from Maharaj is not an exhortation to make some kind of effort to
"remember yourself" in the sense of "being in the moment" and so on. Anything that can
be remembered or forgotten cannot be real. This is really a statement about Karma yoga,
like those in the Bhagavad Gita. As an aspirant, when you perform actions, if you
remember that the divine power is doing everything for you, you will develop devotion
and the ego will be weakened. Later, you understand that the actions have always been
performed by that power without there ever having been any "doer."
4.16 "Reality has no duty."
Electricity has no obligation to the appliances that it supplies with power. A human being
may have many notions about God's responsibilities and duties but they are only the
result of wishful thinking. Man's God often wears a human face and has human traits and
human failings. Such a God is expected to indulge his devotees by fulfilling their desires.
In fact, God has no duty. Great faith may result in a divine vision, but it is the power of
faith that produces it and it is not God's obligation to respond. The power remains as
power. It makes everything happen, but it does not take part in the drama.
4.17 "I am only a thought, and thought is wrong."
Self-realization or enlightenment is actually a very simple thing, really nothing special.
The only thing that happens is that a wrong concept goes off. What is that wrong
concept? The concept that there was somebody there who had something to gain. The
spiritual search ends with the understanding that there is nobody to understand. "I," the
one who was seeking, was only a thought. All thought was wrong that was based on that
illusion. "I" actually refers to the One who was being sought. It was the Self seeking
Itself all along. Now it knows Itself as the subject.
4.18 "You have to go beyond zero. You have to go beyond the space."
Mere absence of thought does not put you into reality. Thought is the subtle body and
absence of thought is the causal body, which is a state of pure ignorance, or zero. When
there is no thought, you simply don't know anything. You are not self-aware. It is the
same as being deeply asleep. The causal body is like a gap between the world of objects
and the Self. You have to go beyond zero, beyond space, to realize the Self. Space is