Don’t speak in haste,
Don’t strut, place your feet with care.
King Gorakh says, don’t be an egoist, live naturally.

Swami, going to the forest, hunger arises,
Going to the town, its illusions attract you.
By overeating, sexual desire harasses you,
Why squander this body born of passion?

Don’t attack your food and don’t die of hunger,
Feel the mystery of brahman day and night.
Don’t overwork and don’t lie around, thus says Gorakh Deva.

Overeating stimulates the senses, destroys awareness,
And fills the mind with sex.
Numbness overtakes, death closes in,
Such a man’s heart is always troubled.

The milk-drinking monk’s mind is on others’ cows,
The naked monk always craves firewood.
The monk in silence longs for a companion.
There can be no naturalness and trust without a master.

Die, o yogi, die! Die, sweet is this dying. Die this death that Gorakh embraced and awakened. Man lives in ego. The ego is only a mask, it is not your being. This ego is not your reality it is your performance, your act. This ego is not your truth, it is your belief. In the Ramayana, a play, when someone is cast as Rama he doesn’t actually become Rama; in the same way you are acting a part of someone you are not. Here a vast play, a drama is going on.

When you were born you didn’t come with a name. A name was given to you and you became that name. When you were born you didn’t come with any knowledge. You were taught and made to study; you went to school, to university where many thoughts were poured into your brain. You were molded, created by this knowledge. Then you began to think that this is your knowledge.

Nothing in all of this is yours. Everything is borrowed, everything is just second hand. Your name is not yours, your knowledge is not yours, the image that you have of yourself is not yours – it too has been constructed by others. Someone said you were very beautiful and you accepted it. Someone said you were simply incomparable and you accepted that. Someone praised you – so you wrapped it up and kept it carefully. If someone insulted you, you were hurt.

Your personality is constructed from others’ opinions; others’ hands have created it – others have brought their brushes and painted you. And if you accept this as your being you will never be able to know yourself.

Gorakh says: Die, o yogi, die! – let this false form die so that you can experience your real form. Let your mask fall away. It is good if this covering burns to ashes so that your naked truth can manifest itself in its naturalness. Until the ego is gone there cannot be any experience of being. And how can one who does not even experience his own being, the self, his soul, become conscious of the soul of the universe?