Give up what must be cast away, know what must be attained, and then, bliss becomes your unruffled nature! Give up the idea of the world being valid; know the reality of the Self and attain the Source, Brahman! This is the significance of the Upanishadic Prayer which you recite every day before the lessons start at the Institute: “Asato ma Sat gamaya: Lead me from the Unreal to the Real; Tamaso ma Jyotir gamaya: Lead me from darkness to light; Mrityor ma Amrutam gamaya: Lead me from death to immortality.” This prayer is asking to be led from the mundane world, constantly being built and rebuilt, resolved and dissolved, into the Divine whose Being undergoes no change! The darkness symbolises ignorance which induces identification with the body-senses-mind-reason complex. The light reveals the divine core, over which all the rest is superimposed by the fog of faulty vision. Death affects only the body-mind complex. When we are led into the light, we become aware that we are the undying Atma, and so we become immortal. – Divine Discourse, Jan 08, 1983