All these things, questioning and questioning intensely, are before realization, not after it. These things can bring you closer to realization, but after realization it is almost like saying to somebody, “When you become healthy, take the medicine more and more.” The medicine was perfectly good when you were sick, but when you are healthy taking it more and more is going to make you sick.

Basui has no realization of his own, otherwise he could not have said:…question yourself even more intensely in this wise…He even shows the way. He is telling you what question to ask:

My body is like a phantom…

All these things happen before realization, not after it. After realization all phantoms have disappeared, all shadows have gone. All that is false is no more; only the real shines in its splendor. No question is possible.

My body is like a phantom, like bubbles on a stream. My mind, looking into itself, is as formless as empty space…

All these questions are for the disciples, not for the master. He has passed through all that gibberish,

…yet, somewhere within, sounds are perceived. Who is hearing?

A man of realization is asking such questions? Then what about a man of no realization, what will he ask? Leave something for the unenlightened, don’t take away everything from them.

These questions are relevant when you don’t know the watching self, the witnessing self, the innermost eye. Before it everything is absolutely clear. No bubbles arise, no sounds are perceived. It is absolute silence, but very alive; the silence of a garden, not the silence of a graveyard.

After realization there is no point in asking any question – and I am saying this on my own authority. I did not ask a single question; it was impossible to ask. You are so peaceful, so calm, so clear, that that which is false, simply disappears, just as when you bring the light in, the darkness disappears.

When you become aware of yourself, all falseness, all lies, all the personality that you have cultivated around your essential being, drop suddenly. You are standing alone, a luminous flame in which everything false is burned. This luminous flame has only one quality and that quality is watchfulness. You simply watch just like a mirror.