I AM THAT: CHAPTER 12: THE PERSON IS NOT REALITY

[Guest guest]

12 THE PERSON IS NOT REALITY PG31

 

Q: Kindly tell us how you realized.

 

M: I met my guru when I was 34 and realized by 37.

 

Q: What happened? What was the change?

 

M: Pleasure and pain lost their sway over me. I desire and fear. I

found myself full, needing nothing. I saw that in the ocean of pure

awareness, on the surface of the universal consciousness, the

numberless waves of the phenomenal worlds arise and subside beginning-

lessly and endlessly. As consciousness, they are all me. As events

they are all mine there is a mysterious power that looks after them.

That power is awareness, Self, life, God, whatever name you give it.

It is the foundation, the ultimate support of all that is, just like

gold is the basis for all gold jewelry. And it is so intimately

ours! Abstract the name and shape from the jewelry and the gold

becomes obvious. Be free of name and form and of the desires and

fears they create, then what remains?

 

Q: Nothingness.

 

M: Yes, the void remains. But the void is full to the brim. It is the

eternal potential as consciousness is the eternal actual.

Q: By potential you mean the future?

 

M: Past, present, and future – they are all there. And infinitely

more.

 

Q: But since the void is void, it is of little use to us.

 

M: How can you say so? Without breach in continuity how can there be

rebirth? Can there be renewal without death? Even the darkness of

sleep is refreshing and rejuvenating. without death, we would have

been bogged up for ever in eternal senility.

 

Q: Is there no such thing as immortality?

 

M: When life and death are seen as essential to each other, as two

aspects of one being, that is immortality. To see the end in the

beginning and beginning in the end is the intimation of eternity.

Definitely, immortality is not continuity. Only the process of change

continues. Nothing lasts.

 

Q: Awareness lasts?

 

M: Awareness is not of time. Time exists in consciousness only.

Beyond consciousness where are time and space?

 

Q: Within the field of your consciousness there is your body also.

 

M: Of course. But the idea `my body', as different from other bodies,

is not there. To me it is a `body', not `my body', `a mind', not `my

mind'. The mind looks after the body all right, I need not interfere.

What needs to be done is being done, in the normal and natural way.

You may not be quite conscious of your physiological function, but

when it comes to thoughts and feelings, desires and fears, you become

acutely self-conscious. To me these too are largely unconscious. I

find myself talking to people, or doing things quite correctly and

appropriately, without being very much conscious of them. It looks as

if I live my physical, waking life automatically, reacting

spontaneously and accurately.

 

Q: Does this spontaneous response come as a result of realization, or

by training?

 

M: Both. Devotion to your goal makes you live a clean and orderly

life, given to search for truth and to helping people, and

realization makes noble virtue easy and spontaneous, by removing for

good the obstacles in the shape of desires and fears and wrong ideas.

Q: Don't you have desires and fears any more?

 

M: My destiny was to be born a simple man, a commoner, a humble

tradesman, with little of formal education. My life was of the common

kind, with common desires and fears. When, through my faith in my

teacher and obedience to his words, I realized my true being, I left

behind my human nature to look after itself, until its destiny is

exhausted. Occasionally an old reaction, emotional or mental, happens

in the mind, but it is at once notice and discarded. After all, as

long as one is burdened with a person, one is exposed to its

idiosyncrasies and habits.

 

Q: Are you not afraid of death?

 

M: I am dead already.

 

Q: In what sense?

 

M: I am double dead. Not only am I dead to my body, but to my mind

too.

 

Q: Well, you do not look dead at all.

M: That's what you say! You seem to know my state better than I do!

Q: Sorry. But I just do not understand. You say you are body-less

and mindless, while I see you very much alive and articulate.

M: A tremendously complex work is going on all the time in your brain

and body, are you conscious of it? Not at all. Yet for an outsider

all seems to be going on intelligently and purposefully. Why not

admit that one's entire personal life may sink largely below the

threshold of consciousness and yet proceed sanely and smoothly?

 

Q: Is it normal?

 

M: What is normal? Is your life – obsessed by desires and fears, full

of strife and struggle, meaningless and joyless – normal? To be

acutely conscious of your body is normal? To be torn by feelings,

tortured by thoughts: is it normal? A healthy body, a healthy mind

live largely unperceived by their owner only occasionally, through

pain or suffering they call for attention and insight. Why not extend

the same to the entire personal life? One can function rightly,

responding well and fully to whatever happens, without having to

bring it into the focus of awareness. When self-control becomes

second nature, awareness shifts its focus to deeper levels of

existence and action.

 

Q: Don't you become a robot?

 

M: What harm is there in making automatic, what is habitual and

repetitive? It is automatic anyhow. But when it is also chaotic, it

causes pain and suffering and calls for attention. The entire purpose

of a clean and well-ordered life is to liberate man from the

thralldom of chaos and the burden of sorrow.

 

Q: You seem to be in favor of a computerized life.

 

M: What is wrong with a life which is free from problems? Personality

is merely reflection of the real. Why should not the reflection be

true to the original as a matter of course, automatically? Need the

person have any design of its own? The life of which it is an

expression will guide it. Once you realize that the person is merely

a shadow of the reality, but not reality itself, you cease to fret

and worry. You agree to be guided from within and life becomes a

journey into the unknown.

[Guest guest]

Thanks for posting these dialogues.

Much appreciation for the directness

and poetry of expression.

 

The passage below was noted here:

 

>That power is awareness, Self, life, God, whatever name you give it.

>It is the foundation, the ultimate support of all that is, just like

>gold is the basis for all gold jewelry. And it is so intimately

>ours! Abstract the name and shape from the jewelry and the gold

>becomes obvious. Be free of name and form and of the desires and

>fears they create, then what remains?

>

>Q: Nothingness.

>

>M: Yes, the void remains. But the void is full to the brim. It is the

>eternal potential as consciousness is the eternal actual.

 

The dialogue spins on.

Yet if the questioner for one moment " got " what was

said here -- what is there to question, whom is to be questioned,

where is there to get with information received?

 

If clarity is that no image " imposed " is retained,

then only " awareness " , only " nothingness " remains.

 

This eternal that never arose and never departs --

where does it have to get to, what does it have

to gain, what information would it take in or

process?

 

Namaste,

Dan