How to attain Self Realization?

It is hard to attain self-realization. I do pray to God to help me choose the right guru and march forward fast and firmly to the goal of life: self-realization. Please help me. Thank you so much.

Loving prostration to Your feet.
With all-consuming desire for Eternal Bliss and with Vedantic love,

Here is the reply to the above question from GuruJi.

Love and blessings

The real guru is sadguru who is your own self who has been propelling you towards this direction. I have gone through your appeal; there is nothing to worry; understand that all problems mentioned by you in your email are related to "body"; they are not "your" problem.

You are forever free, in bliss, and truly need no guru, although you can have one or more; the real guru is sadguru who is your own self who has been propelling you towards this direction. Outer guru is just a prop. it does not matter whom you select; the end result will be realization which has less to do with your outer guru, than your inner guru.

Keep just one thought in your mind that you are not this body, nor the student at MIT (except for functional and practical purposes - an assumed role of a MIT student) You are the soul which is indescribable, unimaginable, beyond the ken of intellect.

Understand that the outer world is a projection of your own self and it will vanish with you; there is no world(and its problems) besides your own projection.

Since the world is false, and the brahman(atman, or soul) is real; start focusing all the time on a simple question "who am I"; reject all that you are not; all that is related to your body; all desires, see them thru; the futility of achieving any desire; well, there is no need to suppress any of them; just watch them and disassociate from them, just like you disassociate from the food once it goes below the throat.

There is nothing for you to do; just keep all the time observing your thoughts and actions; there is no need to have any guilt nor any complex; just apathy. Lead a simple life, free of wants; be useful to all around you including creatures, plants and surroundings; hurt none.

There is no need to go anywhere special. You will anyway carry the same mind wherever you go. Cleanse the mind of all desires and mind will start getting cleansed up. When we say desires, we mean all selfish desires.

You have forever been free; all perturbations are in one sense only mock battles; you have never been bound, except in your false belief that you are.

There is book titled "Sadhana" by Swami Sivananda, available from Divine Life Society, which is the essence of all disciplines. It is worth going through that book.

Too much reading will fill the mind with undigested info; whatever we read,
need to put to practice; also pondering on what has been read is
necessary.

Satsangh means company of a great or good soul. When you do not have satsangh, you have the company of sri satya sai baba (Satya sayee speaks) and swami sivananda(thru his 300 books), thru their books; the books talk to you and solve almost all questions.

We have satsangh going on thrice a week for the past 18 yrs. by reading
Satsangh web page or by emailing your questions you may always keep in touch.

love and blessings!