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DISCOURSE 23
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accordance with its Karmas; its biological background and its cultural heredity and level. Give up your false insistence and compulsion. Throw away the habit of insistence from your mind.
Have contact with the external world only to the extent that is absolutely necessary. The inner world that lies within you is immensely vast and boundless. Set off to traverse and explore that internal universe. Do not think that only that which you can perceive with your eyes is the whole universe. There is a tremendous universe which lies beyond the limits of sense-perception. You have within yourself an infinite, boundless history that knows neither a beginning nor an end. Explore this mystery. That history contains a record of innumerable stories of countless lives. When you have time and when you are disgusted with thinking of others embark upon this internal voyage to explore the mysteries of your own spiritual history. Keep making endeavours in this direction and some day your efforts will be fruitful. "We cannot make such a spiritual voyage. We do not have such knowledge and such penetrating insight". Do not think so. Never give way to thoughts of despair.
WHO ARE ONE'S OWN DEAR AND NEAR? AND WHO ARE THE ALIENS ?
Make a strong determination to liberate yourself from the meaningless reflections that bring only restlessness and agitation. "I should not engage myself in such futile contemplations that bring only worry and agitation. What relationship is there between me and the members of my family or those that are near and dear to me? They are the members of my family only in this janma. In my previous janma, how many such relatives did I have and part from? How can these also be the members of my family? I consider them as dear and near to me but do they consider me as one dear and near to them. They do not consider me as one near and dear to them; then why should I consider them so? No one is really dear and near to you and no one is an alien. In this samsar or the cycle of birth and death, the dear ones become aliens and the aliens become dear ones. No relationship is real or permanent. Only my soul
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