APHORISM #1: Ultimate Knowledge is gained through 1) listening; 2) thinking or reflection; 3) meditation AND, most importantly, the grace of God. Always apply these three steps to all the aphorisms that make up this treatise and be thankful to God for each new insight that you receive since this is one of the best ways to open oneself to the grace of the Divine.

COMMENTARY: The instruction to listen sounds simple enough and yet, how many individuals can listen without preconceived notions and attachments interfering with what they hear. The instruction to think and reflect also sounds simple until we realize that today’s gurus seldom allow the type of rigorous discussion and challenge needed to work through many of the philosophical, psychological and theological problems related to the subject of salvation or enlightenment. Nor do prospective students demonstrate the necessary reverence, discipline and dedication that inspire the teacher to begin conveying the Knowledge. Finally, the instruction to meditate on the knowledge implies a willingness to be with the knowledge during all the hours of the day, watching for the various identifications and superimpositions that may arise and then falling back on the Self. One does this until the Self becomes self-evident at all times and during all events.

APHORISM #2: Be grateful for suffering; it spurs one to seek enlightenment.

APHORISM #3: Suffering only has lasting value when we transform it into spiritual awareness by not identifying with it.

APHORISM #4: The cause of suffering is ignorance of our Real Nature.

APHORISM #5: Ignorance is removed not by any action or inaction of some illusory doer or enjoyer; it is removed through Pure Knowledge.

APHORISM #6: Identification with negative emotions is a form of suffering and ignorance.

COMMENTARY: Each planet governs one or more negative emotions:

Sun = pride and concern over what other’s think about us.

Moon = cruelty (withholding love from certain disliked people).

Mars = anger, indignation, jealousy and a desire for power over others.

Mercury = self-preoccupation and self-pity.

Jupiter = sattwic attachments.

Venus = impatience, Type-A Behavior and boredom.

Saturn = fear, insecurity and excessive need to control one’s boundaries.

Nodes of the Moon = rebel without a cause.

APHORISM #7: Identification with positive emotions also leads to suffering since no positive emotion is lasting or permanent.

Sun = I am admired.

Moon = I am loved.

Mars = I am powerful.

Mercury = I love myself (body and mind complex).

Jupiter = I love my religion and spiritual teacher.

Venus = I have found my soul mate.

Saturn = I have found security and simplicity of lifestyle.

Nodes of the Moon = I am such a delightful rascal.

APHORISM #8: Excessive preoccupation with the past or future is a sure indication that one is identified with ego(s).

APHORISM #9: The mind should be used to solve present situations or difficulties, not to engage in excessive or idle imaginings. These imaginings indicate a mind caught in the desire for pleasure or pain.

APHORISM #10: Do not become identified with pleasant or unpleasant sounds.

APHORISM #11: When we have a need for being hugged, touched and cuddled, we must come to understand that our sense of separation can never be totally bridged through the sense of touch. Do not become identified with pleasant or unpleasant forms of touch such as those that arise through sexuality or through exposure to excess heat or cold.

APHORISM #12: Do not loss self-awareness through engagement in pleasant sights or unpleasant ones.

APHORISM #13: Do not become identified with any particular taste whether pleasant or unpleasant.

APHORISM #14: Do not become fixated on a particular smell whether pleasant or unpleasant.

APHORISM #15: Do not become fixated on any particular thought or emotion whether pleasant or unpleasant.

APHORISM #16: Through constant attention (meditation) understand that you are not any external or internal perception, you are not anything objective or subjective, you are not the body, the mind or the universe, you are not the knower, the known or the process of knowing that takes place between a knower and a known. Know also that all of these adjuncts arise within you as Pure Consciousness.

APHORISM #17: Internal perceptions revolve around four archetypal desires:

1. The desire for pleasures from the various senses (Kama).
2. The desire for wealth (Artha) so that we can acquire and maintain pleasures.
3. The desire to perform our duty (Dharma).
4. The desire to release ourselves from bondage and suffering and achieve enlightenment (Moksha).

COMMENTARY: Each of these desires must eventually be released through a form of higher understanding (Insight), but it is, for most people, a long process. First, we must learn to be a good Bhogi (enjoyer of life) through pursuing Kama and Artha. At this stage we foster the inner child; we build a strong ego. Slowly we begin to see that selfishness is not the basis for happiness. We begin turning our attention to helping others and thereby helping ourselves. We become more moral and ethical human beings (Dharma). Finally, as some stage of our existence, we turn to the core problem, the ego, and we seek to understand what it is and how to bring it under control; we seek release from our bondage and suffering; we become Yogi’s rather than a Bhogi’s.

This last archetypal desire is a very valuable one, because without a passion for enlightenment one would never discover why there is no bondage or liberation for any illusory seeker of enlightenment. In other words, one will never properly interpret one’s own experience so as to be relieved of the fundamental ignorance (avidya) that overshadows one’s true state.

APHORISM #18: All the positive and negative emotions that we fixate on, or become identified with, relate to one of the four archetypal desires (internal perceptions) or to one or more of the five objects of the senses (external perceptions), or to their interrelationship.

APHORISM #19: The four archetypal desires are subjective in nature; they relate to the knower of knowledge. The external perceptions through the senses are objective in nature; they relate to the known or the object of knowledge. The interaction between the subjective and objective aspects of existence is a twofold process of knowing: reception and projection.

APHORISM #20: Do not become identified with any of these three aspects of conventional knowledge.

COMMENTARY: When the pupil asks Shankara how it is that the object, means and agent of actions are either actually experienced or stated in the scriptures, then Shankara states that it is the effect of nescience. From the standpoint of the highest truth Atman is one alone and only appears as many through a vision affected by nescience just as the Moon can appear as many to one suffering from certain forms of eye-disease.

Joel Goldsmith, speaking from a Christian perspective, states that there are not two powers in the universe, but only one – God. There is no good and evil anymore than there is God and something else, except at the level of conventional knowledge and experience.

APHORISM #21: Meditating on the aphorisms of chapter six is particularly conducive to liberation from the bonds of Ignorance.