Discover Yourself (Questions and Answers on Life in the Spirit)

This beautifully produced book, in a question-answer format, gives you insightful answers to several questions pertaining to a wide range of topics such as meditation, life after death, relationship between the guru and the disciple, the art of radiant living, spiritual unfolding and enlightenment.

The questions are answered by Sadhu Vaswani. His elegant, poetic language has its own special charm. His clarity of thought and expression gives him the unique ability to put forth complex ideas in a simple, direct and effective manner.

Sadhu Vaswani was a sage, a seer, a mystic who communed with the deep mysteries of life – a saint who embraced one and all through the power of his love.

He was a versatile genius, the radiance of whose soul was so brilliant that everyone who came into his presence felt their lives touched by Light.

This book is intended to be savoured slowly, and in silence, to be allowed to dissolve into the heart.

Man is born with a questioning spirit. It is the spirit of inquiry which gives him strength and determination to tear the veils within which he is veiled: they are veils of nescience, avidya, ignorance.

The spirit of inquiry is not opposed to faith. Indeed, as a teacher of Wisdom said, "The greater the faith, the stronger the spirit of inquiry, and the stronger the spirit of inquiry, the deeper the attainment of enlightenment."

To inquire is to keep on knocking at the door. And as Jesus said, "Knock, and it shall be opened unto you!" Our tragedy is that we do not knock enough.

The spirit of inquiry is not the spirit of scepticism. The spirit of inquiry is the longing to see, to know, to come in direct contact with the truth of life. And this longing leads us, inevitably, to a Seer of Truth, a Master of Wisdom, one who know: and has seen and who dwells in the Light. For true knowledge is not philosophy or metaphysics. True knowledge is light.

To Sadhu Vaswani there came seekers of truth from different parts of India - and the world. They put to him a number of questions. He was never tired of answering them. Some of the questions and answers are brought together in the following pages, in the hope that they will be of help to pilgrims on the path.

The deepest longing of the human heart is towards peace. But peace will not come to us by running after things which the earth gives and the earth takes away. Peace will not come to us by fighting circumstances and struggling against so- called difficulties and misfortunes. Peace will come to us when we ourselves enter into the Great Peace of God.

Hence the emphasis of Sadhu Vaswani's teaching is on cultivating the inward silence and the inward healing which is the secret of meditation. "Silence", he urges, "is necessary - not merely the outward, but also the inward silence, the silence of the heart. Storms of passion assail us, again and again: these must go. In silence, O seeker, commune with the truth within thee! The heart must find her joy in being alone with 'recollection' of the Beloved Lord."

The great obstacle is the 'I' - the 'ego'. If ye would enter the Kingdom of happiness, be poor in Spirit. The 'I' must go, says Sadhu Vaswani, if life in the Spirit is to grow.

It is the 'ego' that, again and again, makes us feel restless as storm-tossed boats. It is the' ego' that makes life burdensome. "Life has become a burden, and so I kill myself!" wrote a man before committing suicide. And so many, today, ask, "Why is life such an effort?"