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it proclaims experiences. When you live these experiences within yourself -- giving them birth within yourself, allowing them to enter your blood, bones, flesh and tissues, allowing them to merge into your breathing; when you live in listening, remembering and humming them while going through your daily routine of waking, standing, sitting and sleeping -- then, and only then, will their secret, their doors, begin to open to you.
You are given only the first announcement in this sutra. They must have been remarkable people to have said, as they did, all there is to be said in this one sutra. It comes to an end declaring the quietening of the three forms of pain:
OM. SHANTI, SHANTI, SHANTI.
What relation can this sutra have to the quietening of threefold pain? Have anybody's miseries ended by chanting certain formulas? No, but the sage says, "Om!" and that finishes the matter. Can all your miseries be over, can you become free from them all by chanting this sutra?
If it is chanted in all sincerity, with full understanding, it is possible. If it is merely read from the book, it is never possible. This is to say that if it is chanted with the attitude, "I have already read this -- I have already heard it," then nothing is possible. But for those who have said, "Om!" with all their courage and daring, all problems are over. All the miseries of people who have realized the truth are ended. All the afflictions of their body, mind and soul disappear. Such people go beyond affliction.
You think, "There must be some significance when he says this with such ease, such confidence." The significance is this: whoever lives this sutra, whoever gives birth to it within himself, will experience himself free from all afflictions, because there is only one kind of affliction, only one pain -- whether on the mental, physical or spiritual level; there is only one kind, and that is ego. "I am doing this -- this is done by ME," is the only affliction, the only obstacle. "This insult is directed against me -- I am abused thus...." All these happenings accumulate around this I. But when such a vast universe makes no difference to existence, and leaves
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