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1 What is the cause of the cosmos? Is it Brahman?

From where do we come? By what live?

Where shall we find peace at last?

What power governs the duality

Of pleasure and pain by which we are driven?

2 Time, nature, necessity, accident,

Elements, energy, intelligence —

None of these can be the First Cause

They are effects, whose only purpose is

To help the self rise above pleasure and pain.

3 In the depths of meditation, sages

Saw within themselves the Lord of Love,

Who dwells in the heart of every creature.

Deep in the hearts of all he dwells, hidden

Behind the gunas of law, energy,

And inertia. He is One. He it is

Who rules over time, space, and causality.

4 The world is the wheel of God, turning round

And round with all living creatures upon its rim.

5 The world is the river of God,

Flowing from him and flowing back to him.

6 On this ever-revolving wheel of life

The individual self goes round and round

Through life after life, believing itself

To be a separate creature, until

It sees its identity with the Lord of Love

And attains immortality in the indivisible whole.

7 He is the eternal reality, sing

The scriptures, and the ground of existence.

Those who perceive him in every creature

Merge in him and are released from the wheel

Of birth and death.

8 The Lord of Love holds in his hand the world,

Composed of the changing and the changeless,

The manifest and the unmanifest.

The separate self, not yet aware of the Lord,

Goes after pleasure, only to become

Bound more and more, When it sees the Lord,

There comes an end to its bondage.

9 Conscious spirit and unconscious matter

Both have existed since the dawn of time,

With maya appearing to connect them,

Misrepresenting joy as outside us.

When all these three are seen as one, the Self

Reveals his universal form and serves

As an instrument of the divine will.

10 All is change in the world of the senses,

But changeless is the supreme Lord of Love.

Meditate on him, be absorbed in him,

Wake up from this dream of separateness.

11 Know God and all fetters will fall away.

No longer identifying yourself

With the body, go beyond birth and death.

All your desires will be fulfilled in him.

Who is One without a second.

12 Know him to be enshrined in your heart always.

Truly there is nothing more in life to know.

Meditate and realize that this world

Is filled with the presence of God.