Let's see what Niz. had to say: chpts.14-25 I Am That

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14. Appearances and the Reality

Questioner: Repeatedly you have been saying that events are

causeless, a thing just happens and no cause can be assigned to it.

Surely everything has a cause, or several causes. How am I to

understand the causelessness of things?

 

Maharaj: From the highest point of view the world has no cause.

 

Q: But what is your own experience?

 

M: Everything is uncaused. The world has no cause.

 

Q: I am not enquiring about the causes that led to the creation of

the world. Who has seen the creation of the world? It may even be

without a beginning, always existing. But I am not talking of the

world. I take the world to exist -- somehow. It contains so many

things. Surely, each must have a cause, or several causes.

 

M: Once you create for yourself a world in time and space, governed

by causality, you are bound to search for and find causes for

everything. You put the question and impose an answer.

 

Q: My question is very simple: I see all kinds of things and I

understand that each must have a cause, or a number of causes. You

say they are uncaused -- from your point of view. But, to you nothing

has being and, therefore, the question of causation does not arise.

Yet you seem to admit the existence of things, but deny them

causation. This is what I cannot grasp. Once you accept the existence

of things, why reject their causes?

 

M: I see only consciousness, and know everything to be but

consciousness, as you know the picture on the cinema screen to be but

light.

 

Q: Still, the movements of light have a cause.

 

M: The light does not move at all. You know very well that the

movement is illusory, a sequence of interceptions and colour­ings in

the film. What moves is the film -- which is the mind.

 

Q: This does not make the picture causeless. The film is there, and

the actors with the technicians, the director, the producer, the

various manufacturers. The world is governed by causality. Everything

is inter-linked.

 

M: Of course, everything is inter-linked. And therefore everything

has numberless causes. The entire universe contributes to the least

thing. A thing is as it is, because the world is as it is. You see,

you deal in gold ornaments and I -- in gold. Between the different

ornaments there is no causal relation. When you re-melt an ornament

to make another, there is no causal relation between the two. The

common factor is the gold. But you cannot say gold is the cause. It

cannot be called a cause, for it causes nothing by itself. It is

reflected in the mind as 'I am', as the ornament's particular name

and shape. Yet all is only gold. In the same way reality makes

everything possible and yet nothing that makes a thing what it is,

its name and form, comes from reality.

 

But why worry so much about causation? What do causes matter, when

things themselves are transient? Let come what comes and let go what

goes -- why catch hold of things and enquire about their causes?

 

Q: From the relative point of view, everything must have a cause.

 

M: Of what use is the relative view to you? You are able to look

from the absolute point of view -- why go back to the relative? Are

you afraid of the absolute?

 

Q: I am afraid. I am afraid of falling asleep over my so-called

absolute certainties. For living a life decently absolutes don't

help. When you need a shirt, you buy cloth, call a tailor and so on.

 

M: All this talk shows ignorance.

 

Q: And what is the knower's view?

 

M: There is only light and the light is all. Everything else is but

a picture made of light. The picture is in the light and the light is

in the picture. Life and death, self and not-self --- abandon all

these ideas. They are of no use to you.

 

Q: From what point of view you deny causation? From the relative --

the universe is the cause of everything. From the absolute -- there

is no thing at all.

 

M: From which state are you asking?

 

Q: From the daily waking state, in which alone all these

discussions take place.

 

M: In the waking state all these problems arise, for such is its

nature. But, you are not always in that state. What good can you do

in a state into which you fall and from which you emerge, helplessly.

In what way does it help you to know that things are causally

related -- as they may appear to be in your waking state?

 

Q: The world and the waking state emerge and subside together.

 

M: When the mind is still, absolutely silent, the waking state is no

more.

 

Q: Words like God, universe, the total, absolute, supreme are just

noises in the air, because no action can be taken on them.

 

M: You are bringing up questions which you alone can answer.

 

Q: Don't brush me off like this! You are so quick to speak for the

totality, the universe and such imaginary things! They cannot come

and forbid you to talk on their behalf. I hate those irresponsible

generalizations! And you are so prone to personalise them. Without

causality there will be no order; nor purposeful action will be

possible.

 

M: Do you want to know all the causes of each event? Is it possible?

 

Q: I know it is not possible! All I want to know is if there are

causes for everything and the causes can be influenced, thereby

affecting the events?

 

M: To influence events, you need not know the causes. What a

roundabout way of doing things! Are you not the source and the end of

every event? Control it at the source itself.

 

Q: Every morning I pick up the newspaper and read with dismay that

the world's sorrows -- poverty, hatred and wars -- continue unabated.

My questions are concerning the fact of sorrow, the cause, the

remedy. Don't brush me off saying that it is Buddhism! Don't label

me. Your insistence on causelessness removes all hope of the world

ever changing.

 

M: You are confused, because you believe that you are in the world,

not the world in you. Who came first -- you or your parents? You

imagine that you were born at a certain time and place, that you have

a father and a mother, a body and a name. This is your sin and your

calamity! Surely you can change your world if you work at it. By all

means, work. Who stops you? I have never discouraged you. Causes or

no causes, you have made this world and you can change it.

 

Q: A causeless world is entirely beyond my control.

 

M: On the contrary, a world of which you are the only source and

ground is fully within your power to change. What is created can be

always dissolved and re-created. All will happen as you want it,

provided you really want it.

 

Q: All I want to know is how to deal with the world's sorrows.

 

M: You have created them out of your own desires and fears, you deal

with them. All is due to your having forgotten your own being. Having

given reality to the picture on the screen, you love its people and

suffer for them and seek to save them. It is just not so. You must

begin with yourself. There is no other way. Work, of course. There is

no harm in working.

 

Q: Your universe seems to contain every possible experience. The

individual traces a line through it and experiences pleasant and

unpleasant states. This gives rise to questioning and seeking, which

broaden the outlook and enable the individual to go beyond his narrow

and self-created world limited and self-centred. This personal world

can be changed -- in time. The universe is timeless and perfect.

 

M: To take appearance for reality is a grievous sin and the cause of

all calamities. You are the all-pervading, eternal and infinitely

creative awareness -- consciousness. All else is local and temporary.

Don't forget what you are. In the meantime work to your heart's

content. Work and knowledge should go hand in hand.

 

Q: My own feeling is that my spiritual development is not in my

hands. Making one's own plans and carrying them out leads no where. I

just run in circles round myself. When God considers the fruit to be

ripe, He will pluck it and eat it. Whichever fruit seems green to Him

will remain on the world's tree for another day.

 

M: You think God knows you? Even the world He does not know.

 

Q: Yours is a different God. Mine is different. Mine is merciful.

He suffers along with us.

 

M: You pray to save one, while thousands die. And if all stop dying,

there will be no space on earth

 

Q: I am not afraid of death. My concern is with sorrow and

suffering. My God is a simple God and rather helpless. He has no

power to compel us to be wise. He can only stand and wait.

 

M: If you and your God are both helpless, does it not imply that the

world is accidental? And if it is. the only thing you can do is to go

beyond it.

 

15. The Jnani

Questioner: Without God's power nothing can be done. Even you would

not be sitting here and talking to us without Him.

 

Maharaj: All is His doing, no doubt. What is it to me, since I want

nothing? What can God give me, or take away from me? What is mine is

mine and was mine even when God was not. Of course, it is a very tiny

little thing, a speck -- the sense 'I am', the fact of being. This is

my own place, nobody gave it to me. The earth is mine; what grows on

it is God's.

 

Q: Did God take the earth on rent from you?

 

M: God is my devotee and did all this for me.

 

Q: Is there no God apart from you?

 

M: How can there be? 'I am' is the root, God is the tree. Whom am I

to worship, and what for?

 

Q: Are you the devotee or the object of devotion?

 

M: I am neither, I am devotion itself.

 

Q: There is not enough devotion in the world.

 

M: You are always after the improvement of the world. Do you really

believe that the world is waiting for you to be saved?

 

Q: I just do not know how much I can do for the world. All I can

do, is to try. Is there anything else you would like me to do?

 

M: Without you is there a world? You know all about the world, but

about yourself you know nothing. You yourself are the tools of your

work, you have no other tools. Why don't you take care of the tools

before you think of the work?

 

Q: I can wait, while the world cannot.

 

M: By not enquiring you keep the world waiting.

 

Q: Waiting for what?

 

M: For somebody who can save it.

 

Q: God runs the world, God will save it.

 

M: That's what you say! Did God come and tell you that the world is

His creation and concern and not yours?

 

Q: Why should it be my sole concern?

 

M: Consider. The world in which you live, who else knows about it?

 

Q: You know. Everybody knows.

 

M: Did anybody come from outside of your world to tell you? Myself

and everybody else appear and disappear in your world. We are all at

your mercy.

 

Q: It cannot be so bad! I exist in your world as you exist in mine.

 

M: You have no evidence of my world. You are completely wrapped up

in the world of your own making.

 

Q: I see. Completely, but -- hopelessly?

 

M: Within the prison of your world appears a man who tells you that

the world of painful contradictions, which you have created, is

neither continuous nor permanent and is based on a misapprehension.

He pleads with you to get out of it, by the same way by which you got

into it. You got into it by forgetting what you are and you will get

out of it by knowing yourself as you are.

 

Q: In what way does it affect the world?

 

M: When you are free of the world, you can do something about it. As

long as you are a prisoner of it, you are helpless to change it. On

the contrary, whatever you do will aggravate the situation.

 

Q: Righteousness will set me free.

 

M: Righteousness will undoubtedly make you and your world a

comfortable, even happy place. But what is the use? There is no

reality in it. It cannot last.

 

Q: God will help.

 

M: To help you God must know your existence. But you and your world

are dream states. In dream you may suffer agonies. None knows them,

and none can help you.

 

Q: So all my questions, my search and study are of no use?

 

M: These are but the stirrings of a man who is tired of sleeping.

They are not the causes of awakening, but its early signs. But, you

must not ask idle questions, to which you already know the answers.

 

Q: How am I to get a true answer?

 

M: By asking a true question -- non-verbally, but by daring to live

according to your lights. A man willing to die for truth will get it.

 

Q: Another question. There is the person. There is the knower of

the person. There is the witness. Are the knower and the witness the

same, or are they separate states?

 

M: The knower and the witness are two or one? When the knower is

seen as separate from the known, the witness stands alone. When the

known and the knower are seen as one, the witness becomes one with

them.

 

Q: Who is the jnani? The witness or the supreme?

 

M: The jnani is the supreme and also the witness. He is both being

and awareness. In relation to consciousness he is awareness. In

relation to the universe he is pure being.

 

Q: And what about the person? What comes first, the person or the

knower.

 

M: The person is a very small thing. Actually it is a composite, it

cannot be said to exist by itself. Unperceived, it is just not there.

It is but the shadow of the mind, the sum total of memories. Pure

being is reflected in the mirror of the mind, as knowing. What is

known takes the shape of a person, based on memory and habit. It is

but a shadow, or a projection of the knower onto the screen of the

mind.

 

Q: The mirror is there, the reflection is there. But where is the

sun?

 

M: The supreme is the sun.

 

Q: It must be conscious.

 

M: It is neither conscious nor unconscious. Don't think of it in

terms of consciousness or unconsciousness. It is the life, which

contains both and is beyond both.

 

Q: Life is so intelligent. How can it be unconscious?

 

M: You talk of the unconscious when there is a lapse in memory. In

reality there is only consciousness. All life is conscious, all

consciousness -- alive.

 

Q: Even stones?

 

M: Even stones are conscious and alive.

 

Q: The worry with me is that I am prone to denying existence to

what I cannot imagine.

 

M: You would be wiser to deny the existence of what you imagine. It

is the imagined that is unreal.

 

Q: Is all imaginable unreal?

 

M: Imagination based on memories is unreal. The future is not

entirely unreal.

 

Q: Which part of the future is real and which is not?

 

M: The unexpected and unpredictable is real.

 

16. Desirelessness, the Highest Bliss

Questioner: I have met many realised people, but never a liberated

man. Have you come across a liberated man, or does liberation mean,

among other things, also abandoning the body?

 

Maharaj: What do you mean by realisation and liberation?

 

Q: By realisation I mean a wonderful experience of peace, goodness

and beauty, when the world makes sense and there is an all-pervading

unity of both substance and essence. While such experience does not

last, it cannot be forgotten. It shines in the mind, both as memory

and longing. I know what I am talking about, for I have had such

experiences.

 

By liberation I mean to be permanently in that wonderful state. What

I am asking is whether liberation is compatible with the survival of

the body.

 

M: What is wrong with the body?

 

Q: The body is so weak and short-lived. It creates needs and

cravings. It limits one grievously.

 

M: So what? Let the physical expressions be limited. But liberation

is of the self from its false and self-imposed ideas; it is not

contained in some particular experience, however glorious.

 

Q: Does it last for ever?

 

M: All experience is time bound. Whatever has a beginning must have

an end.

 

Q: So liberation, in my sense of the word, does not exist?

 

M: On the contrary, one is always free. You are, both conscious and

free to be conscious. Nobody can take this away from you. Do you ever

know yourself non-existing, or unconscious?

 

Q: I may not remember, but that does not disprove my being

occasionally unconscious.

 

M: Why not turn away from the experience to the experiencer and

realise the full import of the only true statement you can make: 'I

am'?

 

Q: How is it done?

 

M: There is no 'how' here. Just keep in mind the feeling 'I am',

merge in it, till your mind and feeling become one. By repeated

attempts you will stumble on the right balance of attention and

affection and your mind will be firmly established in the thought-

feeling 'I am'. Whatever you think, say, or do, this sense of

immutable and affectionate being remains as the ever-present

background of the mind.

 

Q: And you call it liberation?

 

M: I call it normal. What is wrong with being, knowing and acting

effortlessly and happily? Why consider it so unusual as to expect the

immediate destruction of the body? What is wrong with the body that

it should die? Correct your attitude to your body and leave it alone.

Don't pamper, don't torture. Just keep it going, most of the time

below the threshold of conscious attention.

 

Q: The memory of my wonderful experiences haunts me. I want them

back.

 

M: Because you want them back, you cannot have them. The state of

craving for anything blocks all deeper experience. Nothing of value

can happen to a mind which knows exactly what it wants. For nothing

the mind can visualise and want is of much value.

 

Q: Then what is worth wanting?

 

M: Want the best. The highest happiness, the greatest freedom.

Desirelessness is the highest bliss.

 

Q: Freedom from desire is not the freedom I want. I want the

freedom to fulfil my longings.

 

M: You are free to fulfil your longings. As a matter of fact, you

are doing nothing else.

 

Q: I try, but there are obstacles which leave me frustrated.

 

M: Overcome them.

 

Q: I cannot, I am too weak.

 

M: What makes you weak? What is weakness? Others fulfil their

desires, why don't you?

 

Q: I must be lacking energy.

 

M: What happened to your energy? Where did it go? Did you not

scatter it over so many contradictory desires and pursuits? You don't

have an infinite supply of energy.

 

Q: Why not?

 

M: Your aims are small and low. They do not call for more. Only

God's energy is infinite -- because He wants nothing for Himself. Be

like Him and all your desires will be fulfilled. The higher your aims

and vaster your desires, the more energy you will have for their

fulfilment. Desire the good of all and the universe will work with

you. But if you want your own pleasure, you must earn it the hard

way. Before desiring, deserve.

 

Q: I am engaged in the study of philosophy, sociology and

education. I think more mental development is needed before I can

dream of self-realisation. Am I on the right track?

 

M: To earn a livelihood some specialised knowledge is needed.

General knowledge develops the mind, no doubt. But if you are going

to spend your life in amassing knowledge, you build a wall round

yourself. To go beyond the mind, a well­ furnished mind is not needed.

 

Q: Then what is needed?

 

M: Distrust your mind, and go beyond.

 

Q: What shall I find beyond the mind?

 

M: The direct experience of being, knowing and loving.

 

Q: How does one go beyond the mind?

 

M: There are many starting points -- they all lead to the same goal.

You may begin with selfless work, abandoning the fruits of action;

you may then give up thinking and end in giving up all desires. Here,

giving up (tyaga) is the operational factor. Or, you may not bother

about any thing you want, or think, or do and just stay put in the

thought and feeling 'I am', focussing 'I am' firmly in your mind. All

kinds of experience may come to you -- remain unmoved in the

knowledge that all perceivable is transient, and only the 'I am'

endures.

 

Q: I cannot give all my life to such practices. I have my duties to

attend to.

 

M: By all means attend to your duties. Action, in which you are not

emotionally involved and which is beneficial and does not cause

suffering will not bind you. You may be engaged in several directions

and work with enormous zest, yet remain inwardly free and quiet, with

a mirror-like mind, which reflects all, without being affected.

 

Q: Is such a state realisable?

 

M: I would not talk about it, if it were not. Why should I engage in

fancies?

 

Q: Everybody quotes scriptures.

 

M: Those who know only scriptures know nothing. To know is to be. I

know what I am talking about; it is not from reading, or hearsay.

 

Q: I am studying Sanskrit under a professor, but really I am only

reading scriptures. I am in search of self-realisation and I came to

get the needed guidance. Kindly tell me what am I to do?

 

M: Since you have read the scriptures, why do you ask me?

 

Q: The scriptures show the general directions but the individual

needs personal instructions.

 

M: Your own self is your ultimate teacher (sadguru). The outer

teacher (Guru) is merely a milestone. It is only your inner teacher,

that will walk with you to the goal, for he is the goal.

 

Q: The inner teacher is not easily reached.

 

M: Since he is in you and with you, the difficulty cannot be

serious. Look within, and you will find him.

 

Q: When I look within, I find sensations and perceptions, thoughts

and feelings, desires and fears, memories and expectations. I am

immersed in this cloud and see nothing else.

 

M: That which sees all this, and the nothing too, is the inner

teacher. He alone is, all else only appears to be. He is your own

self (swarupa), your hope and assurance of freedom; find him and

cling to him and you will be saved and safe.

 

Q: I do believe you, but when it comes to the actual finding of

this inner self, I find it escapes me.

 

M: The idea 'it escapes me', where does it arise?

 

Q: In the mind.

 

M: And who knows the mind.

 

Q: The witness of the mind knows the mind.

 

M: Did anybody come to you and say: 'I am the witness of your mind'?

 

Q: Of course not. He would have been just another idea in the mind.

 

M: Then who is the witness?

 

Q: I am.

 

M: So, you know the witness because you are the witness. You need

not see the witness in front of you. Here again, to be is to know.

 

Q: Yes, I see that I am the witness, the awareness itself. But in

which way does it profit me?

 

M: What a question! What kind of profit do you expect? To know what

you are, is it not good enough?

 

Q: What are the uses of self-knowledge?

 

M: It helps you to understand what you are not and keeps you free

from false ideas, desires and actions.

 

Q: If I am the witness only, what do right and wrong matter?

 

M: What helps you to know yourself is right. What prevents, is

wrong. To know one's real self is bliss, to forget -- is sorrow.

 

Q: Is the witness-consciousness the real Self?

 

M: It is the reflection of the real in the mind (buddhi). The real

is beyond. The witness is the door through which you pass beyond.

 

Q: What is the purpose of meditation?

 

M: Seeing the false as the false, is meditation. This must go on all

the time.

 

Q: We are told to meditate regularly.

 

M: Deliberate daily exercise in discrimination between the true and

the false and renunciation of the false is meditation. There are many

kinds of meditation to begin with, but they all merge finally into

one.

 

Q: Please tell me which road to self-realisation is the shortest.

 

M: No way is short or long, but some people are more in earnest and

some are less. I can tell you about myself. I was a simple man, but I

trusted my Guru. What he told me to do, I did. He told me to

concentrate on 'I am' -- I did. He told me that I am beyond all

perceivables and conceivables -- I believed. I gave him my heart and

soul, my entire attention and the whole of my spare time (I had to

work to keep my family alive). As a result of faith and earnest

application, I realised my self (swarupa) within three years.

 

You may choose any way that suits you; your earnestness will

determine the rate of progress.

 

Q: No hint for me?

 

M: Establish yourself firmly in the awareness of 'I am'. This is the

beginning and also the end of all endeavour.

 

17. The Ever-Present

Questioner: The highest powers of the mind are understanding,

intelligence and insight. Man has three bodies -- the physical, the

mental and the causal (prana, mana, karana). The physical reflects

his being; the mental -- his knowing and the causal -- his joyous

creativity. Of course, these are all forms in consciousness. But they

appear to be separate, with qualities of their own. Intelligence

(buddhi) is the reflection in the mind of the power to know (chit).

It is what makes the mind knowledgeable. The brighter the

intelligence, the wider, deeper and truer the knowledge. To know

things, to know people and to know oneself are all functions of

intelligence: the last is the most important and contains the former

two. Misunderstanding oneself and the world leads to false ideas and

desires, which again lead to bondage. Right understanding of oneself

is necessary for freedom from the bondage of illusion. I understand

all this in theory, but when it comes to practice, I find that I fail

hopelessly in my responses to situations and people and by my

inappropriate reactions I merely add to my bondage. Life is too quick

for my dull and slow mind. I do understand but too late, when the old

mistakes have been already repeated.

 

Maharaj: What then is your problem?

 

Q: I need a response to life, not only intelligent, but also very

quick. It cannot be quick unless it is perfectly spontaneous. How can

I achieve such spontaneity?

 

M: The mirror can do nothing to attract the sun. It can only keep

bright. As soon as the mind is ready, the sun shines in it.

 

Q: The light is of the Self, or of the mind?

 

M: Both. It is uncaused and unvarying by itself and coloured by the

mind, as it moves and changes. It is very much like a cinema. The

light is not in the film, but the film colours the light and makes it

appear to move by intercepting it.

 

Q: Are you now in the perfect state?

 

M: Perfection is a state of the mind, when it is pure. I am beyond

the mind, whatever its state, pure or impure. Awareness is my nature;

ultimately I am beyond being and non-being.

 

Q: Will meditation help me to reach your state?

 

M: Meditation will help you to find your bonds, loosen them, untie

them and cast your moorings. When you are no longer attached to

anything, you have done your share. The rest will be done for you.

 

Q: By whom?

 

M: By the same power that brought you so far, that prompted your

heart to desire truth and your mind to seek it. It is the same power

that keeps you alive. You may call it Life or the Supreme.

 

Q: The same power kills me in due course.

 

M: Were you not present at your birth? Will you not be present at

your death? Find him who is always present and your problem of

spontaneous and perfect response will be solved.

 

Q: realisation of the eternal and an effortless and adequate

response to the ever-changing temporary event are two different and

separate questions. You seem to roll them into one. What makes you do

so?

 

M: To realise the Eternal is to become the Eternal, the whole, the

universe, with all it contains. Every event is the effect and the

expression of the whole and is in fundamental harmony with the whole.

All response from the whole must be right, effortless and

instantaneous.

 

It cannot be otherwise, if it is right. Delayed response is wrong

response. Thought, feeling and action must be one and simultaneous

with the situation that calls for them.

 

Q: How does it come?

 

M: I told you already. Find him who was present at your birth and

will witness your death.

 

Q: My father and mother?

 

M: Yes, your father-mother, the source from which you came. To solve

a problem you must trace it to its source. Only in the dissolution of

the problem in the universal solvents of enquiry and dispassion, can

its right solution be found.

 

18. To Know What you Are, Find What you Are Not

Questioner: Your way of describing the universe as consisting of

matter, mind and spirit is one of the many. There are other patterns

to which the universe is expected to conform, and one is at a loss to

know which pattern is true and which is not. One ends in suspecting

that all patterns are only verbal and that no pattern can contain

reality. According to you, reality consists of three expanses: The

expanse of matter-energy (mahadakash), the expanse of consciousness

(chidakash) and of pure spirit (paramakash). The first is something

that has both movement and inertia. That we perceive. We also know

that we perceive -- we are conscious and also aware of being

conscious. Thus, we have two: matter-energy and consciousness. Matter

seems to be in space while energy is always in time, being connected

with change and measured by the rate of change. Consciousness seems

to be somehow here and now, in a single point of time and space. But

you seem to suggest that consciousness too is universal -- which

makes it timeless, spaceless and impersonal. I can somehow understand

that there is no contradiction between the timeless and spaceless and

the here and now, but impersonal consciousness I cannot fathom. To me

consciousness is always focalised, centred, individualised, a person.

You seem to say that there can be perceiving without a perceiver,

knowing without a knower, loving without a lover, acting without an

actor. I feel that the trinity of knowing, knower and known can be

seen in every movement of life. Consciousness implies a conscious

being, an object of consciousness and the fact of being conscious.

That which is conscious I call a person. A person lives in the world,

is a part of it, affects it and is affected by it.

 

Maharaj: Why don't you enquire how real are the world and the person?

 

Q: Oh, no! I need not enquire. Enough if the person is not less

real than the world in which the person exists.

 

M: Then what is the question?

 

Q: Are persons real, and universals conceptual, or are universals

real and persons imaginary?

 

M: Neither are real.

 

Q: Surely, I am real enough to merit your reply and I am a person.

 

M: Not when asleep.

 

Q: Submergence is not absence. Even though asleep, I am.

 

M: To be a person you must be self-conscious. Are you so always?

 

Q: Not when I sleep, of course, nor when I am in a swoon, or

drugged.

 

M: During your waking hours are you continually self-conscious?

 

Q: No, Sometimes I am absent-minded, or just absorbed.

 

M: Are you a person during the gaps in self-consciousness?

 

Q: Of course I am the same person throughout. I remember myself as

I was yesterday and yester year -- definitely, I am the same person.

 

M: So, to be a person, you need memory?

 

Q: Of course.

 

M: And without memory, what are you?

 

Q: Incomplete memory entails incomplete personality. Without memory

I cannot exist as a person.

 

M: Surely you can exist without memory. You do so -- in sleep.

 

Q: Only in the sense of remaining alive. Not as a person.

 

M: Since you admit that as a person you have only intermittent

existence, can you tell me what are you in the intervals in between

experiencing yourself as a person?

 

Q: I am, but not as a person. Since I am not conscious of myself in

the intervals, I can only say that I exist, but not as a person.

 

M: Shall we call it impersonal existence?

 

Q: I would call it rather unconscious existence; I am, but I do not

know that I am.

 

M: You have said just now: 'I am, but I do not know that I am'.

Could you possibly say it about your being in an unconscious state?

 

Q: No, I could not.

 

M: You can only describe it in the past tense: 'I did not know. I

was unconscious', in the sense of not remembering.

 

Q: Having been unconscious, how could I remember and what?

 

M: Were you really unconscious, or you just do not remember?

 

Q: How am I to make out?

 

M: Consider. Do you remember every second of yesterday?

 

Q: Of course, not.

 

M: Were you then unconscious?

 

Q: Of course, not.

 

M: So, you are conscious and yet you do not remember?

 

Q: Yes.

 

M: Maybe you were conscious in sleep and just do not remember.

 

Q: No, I was not conscious. I was asleep. I did not behave like a

conscious person.

 

M: Again, how do you know?

 

Q: I was told so by those who saw me asleep.

 

M: All they can testify to is that they saw you lying quietly with

closed eyes and breathing regularly. They could not make out whether

you were conscious or not. Your only proof is your own memory. A very

uncertain proof it is!

 

Q: Yes, I admit that on my own terms I am a person only during my

waking hours. What I am in between, I do not know.

 

M: At least you know that you do not know! Since you pretend not to

be conscious in the intervals between the waking hours, leave the

intervals alone. Let us consider the waking hours only.

 

Q: I am the same person in my dreams.

 

M: Agreed. Let us consider them together waking and dreaming. The

difference is merely in continuity. Were your dreams consistently

continuous, bringing back night after night the same surroundings and

the same people, you would be at a loss to know which is the waking

and which is the dream. Henceforward, when we talk of the waking

state, we shall include the dream state too.

 

Q: Agreed. I am a person in a conscious relation with a world.

 

M: Are the world and the conscious relation with it essential to

your being a person?

 

Q: Even immersed in a cave, I remain a person.

 

M: It implies a body and a cave. And a world in which they can exist.

 

Q: Yes. I can see. The world and the consciousness of the world are

essential to my existence as a person.

 

M: This makes the person a part and parcel of the world, or vice

versa. The two are one.

 

Q: Consciousness stands alone. The person and the world appear in

consciousness.

 

M: You said: appear. Could you add: disappear?

 

Q: No, I cannot. I can only be aware of my and my world's

appearance. As a person, I cannot say: 'the world is not'. Without a

world I would not be there to say it. Because there is a world, I am

there to say: 'there is a world'.

 

M: Maybe it is the other way round. Because of you, there is a world.

 

Q: To me such statement appears meaningless.

 

M: Its meaninglessness may disappear on investigation.

 

Q: Where do we begin?

 

M: All I know is that whatever depends, is not real. The real is

truly independent. Since the existence of the person depends on the

existence of the world and it is circumscribed and defined by the

world, it cannot be real.

 

Q: It cannot be a dream, surely.

 

M: Even a dream has existence, when it is cognised and enjoyed, or

endured. Whatever you think and feel has being. But it may not be

what you take it to be. What you think to be a person may be

something quite different.

 

Q: I am what I know myself to be.

 

M: You cannot possibly say that you are what you think yourself to

be! Your ideas about yourself change from day to day and from moment

to moment. Your self-image is the most changeful thing you have. It

is utterly vulnerable, at the mercy of a passer by. A bereavement,

the loss of a job, an insult, and your image of yourself, which you

call your person, changes deeply. To know what you are you must first

investigate and know what you are not. And to know what you are not

you must watch yourself carefully, rejecting all that does not

necessarily go with the basic fact: 'I am'. The ideas: I am born at a

given place, at a given time, from my parents and now I am so-and-so,

living at, married to, father of, employed by, and so on, are not

inherent in the sense 'I am'. Our usual attitude is of 'I am this'.

Separate consistently and perseveringly the 'I am' from 'this'

or 'that', and try to feel what it means to be, just to be, without

being 'this' or 'that'. All our habits go against it and the task of

fighting them is long and hard sometimes, but clear understanding

helps a lot. The clearer you understand that on the level of the mind

you can be described in negative terms only, the quicker you will

come to the end of your search and realise your limitless being.

 

19. Reality lies in Objectivity

Questioner: I am a painter and I earn by painting pictures. Has it

any value from the spiritual point of view?

 

Maharaj: When you paint what do you think about?

 

Q: When I paint, there is only the painting and myself.

 

M: What are you doing there?

 

Q: I paint.

 

M: No, you don't. You see the painting going on. You are watching

only, all else happens.

 

Q: The picture is painting itself? Or, is there some deeper 'me',

or some god who is painting?

 

M: Consciousness itself is the greatest painter. The entire world is

a Picture.

 

Q: Who painted the picture of the world?

 

M: The painter is in the Picture.

 

Q: The picture is in the mind of the painter and the painter is in

the picture, which is in the mind of the painter who is in the

picture! Is not this infinity of states and dimensions absurd? The

moment we talk of picture in the mind, which itself is in the

picture, we come to an endless succession of witnesses, the higher

witness witnessing the lower. It is like standing between two mirrors

and wondering at the crowd!

 

M: Quite right, you alone and the double mirror are there. Between

the two, your forms and names are numberless.

 

Q: How do you look at the world?

 

M: I see a painter painting a picture. The picture I call the world,

the painter I call God. I am neither. I do not create, nor am I

created. I contain all, nothing contains me.

 

Q: When I see a tree, a face, a sunset, the picture is perfect.

When I close my eyes, the image in my mind is faint and hazy. If it

is my mind that projects the picture, why need I open my eyes to see

a lovely flower and with eyes closed I see it vaguely?

 

M: It is because your outer eyes are better than your inner eyes.

Your mind is all turned outward. As you learn to watch your mental

world, you will find it even more colourful and perfect than what the

body can provide. Of course, you will need some training. But why

argue? You imagine that the picture must come from the painter who

actually painted it. All the time you look for origins and causes.

Causality is in the mind, only; memory gives the illusion of

continuity and repetitiveness creates the idea of causality. When

things repeatedly happen together, we tend to see a causal link

between them. It creates a mental habit, but a habit is not a

necessity.

 

Q: You have just said that the world is made by God.

 

M: Remember that language is an instrument of the mind; It is made

by the mind, for the mind. Once you admit a cause, then God is the

ultimate cause and the world the effect. They are different, but not

separate.

 

Q: People talk of seeing God.

 

M: When you see the world you see God. There is no seeing God, apart

from the world. Beyond the world to see God is to be God. The light

by which you see the world, which is God is the tiny little spark: 'I

am', apparently so small, yet the first and the last in every act of

knowing and loving.

 

Q: Must I see the world to see God?

 

M: How else? No world, no God.

 

Q: What remains?

 

M: You remain as pure being.

 

Q: And what becomes of the world and of God?

 

M: Pure being (avyakta).

 

Q: Is it the same as the Great Expanse (paramakash)?

 

M: You may call it so. Words do not matter, for they do not reach

it. They turn back in utter negation.

 

Q: How can I see the world as God? What does it mean to see the

world as God?

 

M: It is like entering a dark room. You see nothing -- you may

touch, but you do not see -- no colours, no outlines. The window

opens and the room is flooded with light. Colours and shapes come

into being. The window is the giver of light, but not the source of

it. The sun is the source. Similarly, matter is like the dark room;

consciousness -- the window -- flooding matter with sensations and

perceptions, and the Supreme is the sun the source both of matter and

of light. The window may be closed, or open, the sun shines all the

time. It makes all the difference to the room, but none to the sun.

Yet all this is secondary to the tiny little thing which is the 'I

am'. Without the 'I am' there is nothing. All knowledge is about

the 'I am'. False ideas about this 'I am' lead to bondage, right

knowledge leads to freedom and happiness.

 

Q: Is 'I am' and 'there is' the same?

 

M: 'I am' denotes the inner, 'there is' -- the outer. Both are based

on the sense of being.

 

Q: Is it the same as the experience of existence?

 

M: To exist means to be something, a thing, a feeling, a thought, an

idea. All existence is particular. Only being is universal, in the

sense that every being is compatible with every other being.

Existences clash, being -- never. Existence means becoming, change,

birth and death and birth again, while in being there is silent peace.

 

Q: If I create the world, why have I made it bad?

 

M: Everyone lives in his own world. Not all the worlds are equally

good or bad.

 

Q: What determines the difference?

 

M: The mind that projects the world, colours it its own way. When

you meet a man, he is a stranger. When you marry him, he becomes your

own self. When you quarrel, he becomes your enemy. It is your mind's

attitude that determines what he is to you.

 

Q: I can see that my world is subjective. Does it make it also

illusory?

 

M: It is illusory as long as it is subjective and to that extent

only. Reality lies in objectivity.

 

Q: What does objectivity mean? You said the world is subjective and

now you talk of objectivity. Is not everything subjective?

 

M: Everything is subjective, but the real is objective.

 

Q: In what sense?

 

M: It does not depend on memories and expectations, desires and

fears, likes and dislikes. All is seen as it is.

 

Q: Is it what you call the fourth state (turiya)?

 

M: Call it as you like. It is solid, steady, changeless,

beginningless and endless, ever new, ever fresh.

 

Q: How is it reached?

 

M: Desirelessness and fearlessness will take you there.

 

20. The Supreme is Beyond All

Questioner: You say, reality is one. Oneness, unity, is the attribute

of the person. Is then reality a person, with the universe as its

body?

 

Maharaj: Whatever you may say will be both true and false. Words do

not reach beyond the mind.

 

Q: I am just trying to understand. You are telling us of the

Person, the Self and the Supreme. (vyakti, vyakta, avyakta). The

light of Pure Awareness (pragna), focussed as 'I am' in the Self

(jivatma), as consciousness (chetana) illumines the mind

(antahkarana) and as life (prana) vitalises the body (deha). All this

is fine as far as the words go. But when it comes to distinguishing

in myself the person from the Self and the Self from the Supreme, I

get mixed up.

 

M: The person is never the subject. You can see a person, but you

are not the person. You are always the Supreme which appears at a

given point of time and space as the witness, a bridge between the

pure awareness of the Supreme and the manifold consciousness of the

person.

 

Q: When I look at myself, I find I am several persons fighting

among themselves for the use of the body.

 

M: They correspond to the various tendencies (samskara) of the mind.

 

Q: Can I make peace between them?

 

M: How can you? They are so contradictory! See them as they are --

mere habits of thoughts and feelings, bundles of memories and urges.

 

Q: Yet they all say 'I am'.

 

M: It is only because you identify yourself with them. Once you

realise that whatever appears before you cannot be yourself, and

cannot say 'I am', you are free of all your 'persons' and their

demands. The sense 'I am' is your own. You cannot part with it, but

you can impart it to anything, as in saying: I am young. I am rich

etc. But such self-identifications are patently false and the cause

of bondage.

 

Q: I can now understand that I am not the person, but that which,

when reflected in the person, gives it a sense of being. Now, about

the Supreme? In what way do I know myself as the Supreme?

 

M: The source of consciousness cannot be an object in consciousness.

To know the source is to be the source. When you realise that you are

not the person, but the pure and calm witness, and that fearless

awareness is your very being, you are the being. It is the source,

the Inexhaustible Possibility.

 

Q: Are there many sources or one for all?

 

M: It depends how you look at it, from which end. The objects in the

world are many, but the eye that sees them is one. The higher always

appears as one to the lower and the lower as many to the higher.

 

Q: Shapes and names are all of one and the same God?

 

M: Again, it all depends on how you look at it. On the verbal level

everything is relative. Absolutes should be experienced, not

discussed.

 

Q: How is the Absolute experienced?

 

M: It is not an object to be recognised and stored up in memory. It

is in the present and in feeling rather. It has more to do with

the 'how' than with the 'what'. It is in the quality, in the value;

being the source of everything, it is in everything.

 

Q: If it is the source, why and how does it manifest itself?

 

M: It gives birth to consciousness. All else is in consciousness.

 

Q: Why are there so many centres of consciousness?

 

M: The objective universe (mahadakash) is in constant movement,

projecting and dissolving innumerable forms. Whenever a form is

infused with life (prana), consciousness (chetana) appears by

reflection of awareness in matter.

 

Q: How is the Supreme affected?

 

M: What can affect it and how? The source is not affected by the

vagaries of the river nor is the metal -- by the shape of the

jewellery. Is the light affected by the picture on the screen? The

Supreme makes everything possible, that is all.

 

Q: How is it that some things do happen and some don't?

 

M: Seeking out causes is a pastime of the mind. There is no duality

of cause and effect. Everything is its own cause.

 

Q: No purposeful action is then possible?

 

M: All I say is that consciousness contains all. In consciousness

all is possible. You can have causes if you want them, in your world.

Another may be content with a single cause -- God's will. The root

cause is one: the sense 'I am'.

 

Q: What is the link between the Self (Vyakta) and the Supreme

(Avyakta)?

 

M: From the self's point of view the world is the known, the

Supreme -- the Unknown. The Unknown gives birth to the known, yet

remains Unknown. The known is infinite, but the Unknown is an

infinitude of infinities. Just like a ray of light is never seen

unless intercepted by the specs of dust, so does the Supreme make

everything known, itself remaining unknown.

 

Q: Does it mean that the Unknown is inaccessible?

 

M: Oh, no. The Supreme is the easiest to reach for it is your very

being. It is enough to stop thinking and desiring anything, but the

Supreme.

 

Q: And if I desire nothing, not even the Supreme?

 

M: Then you are as good as dead, or you are the Supreme.

 

Q: The world is full of desires: Everybody wants something or

other. Who is the desirer? The person or the self?

 

M: The self. All desires, holy and unholy, come from the self; they

all hang on the sense 'I am'.

 

Q: I can understand holy desires (satyakama) emanating from the

self. It may be the expression of the bliss aspect of the

Sadchitananda (Beingness -- Awareness --Happiness) of the Self. But

why unholy desires?

 

M: All desires aim at happiness. Their shape and quality depend on

the psyche (antahkarana). Where inertia (tamas) predominates, we find

perversions. With energy (rajas), passions arise. With lucidity

(sattva) the motive behind the desire is goodwill, compassion, the

urge to make happy rather than be happy. But the Supreme is beyond

all, yet because of its infinite permeability all cogent desires can

be fulfilled.

 

Q: Which desires are cogent?

 

M: Desires that destroy their subjects, or objects, or do not

subside on satisfaction are self-contradictory and cannot be

fulfilled. Only desires motivated by love, goodwill and compassion

are beneficial to both the subject and object and can be fully

satisfied.

 

Q: All desires are painful, the holy as well as the unholy.

 

M: They are not the same and pain is not the same. Passion is

painful, compassion -- never. The entire universe strives to fulfil a

desire born of compassion.

 

Q: Does the Supreme know itself? Is the Impersonal conscious?

 

M: The source of all has all. Whatever flows from it must be there

already in seed form. And as a seed is the last of innumerable seeds,

and contains the experience and the promise of numberless forests, so

does the Unknown contain all that was, or could have been and all

that shall or would be. The entire field of becoming is open and

accessible; past and future co­exist in the eternal now.

 

Q: Are you living in the Supreme Unknown?

 

M: Where else?

 

Q: What makes you say so?

 

M: No desire ever arises in my mind.

 

Q: Are you then unconscious?

 

M: Of course not! I am fully conscious, but since no desire or fear

enters my mind, there is perfect silence.

 

Q: Who knows the silence?

 

M: Silence knows itself. It is the silence of the silent mind, when

passions and desires are silenced.

 

Q: Do you experience desires occasionally?

 

M: Desires are just waves in the mind. You know a wave when you see

one. A desire is just a thing among many. I feel no urge to satisfy

it, no action needs be taken on it. Freedom from desire means this:

the compulsion to satisfy is absent.

 

Q: Why do desires arise at all?

 

M: Because you imagine that you were born, and that you will die if

you do not take care of your body. Desire for embodied existence is

the root-cause of trouble.

 

Q: Yet, so many jivas get into bodies. Surely it cannot be some

error of judgement. There must be a purpose. What could it be?

 

M: To know itself the self must be faced with its opposite -- the

not-self. Desire leads to experience. Experience leads to

discrimination, detachment, self-knowledge -- liberation. And what is

liberation after all? To know that you are beyond birth and death. By

forgetting who you are and imagining yourself a mortal creature, you

created so much trouble for yourself that you have to wake up, like

from a bad dream.

 

Enquiry also wakes you up. You need not wait for suffering; enquiry

into happiness is better, for the mind is in harmony and peace.

 

Q: Who exactly is the ultimate experiencer -- the Self or the

Unknown?

 

M: The Self, of course.

 

Q: Then why introduce the notion of the Supreme Unknown?

 

M: To explain the Self.

 

Q: But is there anything beyond the Self?

 

M: Outside the Self there is nothing. All is one and all is

contained in 'I am'. In the waking and dream states it is the person.

In deep sleep and turiya it is the Self. Beyond the alert intentness

of turiya lies the great, silent peace of the Supreme. But in fact

all is one in essence and related in appearance. In ignorance the

seer becomes the seen and in wisdom he is the seeing.

 

But why be concerned with the Supreme? Know the knowers and all will

be known.

 

21. Who am I?

Questioner: We are advised to worship reality personified as God, or

as the Perfect Man. We are told not to attempt the worship of the

Absolute, as it is much too difficult for a brain­centred

consciousness.

 

Maharaj: Truth is simple and open to all. Why do you complicate?

Truth is loving and lovable. It includes all, accepts all, purifies

all. It is untruth that is difficult and a source of trouble. It

always wants, expects, demands. Being false, it is empty, always in

search of confirmation and reassurance. It is afraid of and avoids

enquiry. It identifies itself with any support, however weak and

momentary. Whatever it gets, it loses and asks for more. Therefore

put no faith in the conscious. Nothing you can see, feel, or think is

so. Even sin and virtue, merit and demerit are not what they appear.

Usually the bad and the good are a matter of convention and custom

and are shunned or welcomed, according to how the words are used.

 

Q: Are there not good desires and bad, high desires and low?

 

M: All desires are bad, but some are worse than others. Pursue any

desire, it will always give you trouble.

 

Q: Even the desire to be free of desire?

 

M: Why desire at all? Desiring a state of freedom from desire will

not set you free. Nothing can set you free, because you are free. See

yourself with desireless clarity, that is all.

 

Q: It takes time to know oneself.

 

M: How can time help you? Time is a succession of moments; each

moment appears out of nothing and disappears into nothing, never to

reappear. How can you build on something so fleeting?

 

Q: What is permanent?

 

M: Look to yourself for the permanent. Dive deep within and find

what is real in you.

 

Q: How to look for myself?

 

M: Whatever happens, it happens to you. What you do, the doer is in

you. Find the subject of all that you are as a person.

 

Q: What else can I be?

 

M: Find out. Even if I tell you that you are the witness, the silent

watcher, it will mean nothing to you, unless you find the way to your

own being.

 

Q: My question is: How to find the way to one's own being?

 

M: Give up all questions except one: 'Who am l'? After all, the only

fact you are sure of is that you are. The 'I am' is certain. The 'I

am this' is not. Struggle to find out what you are in reality.

 

Q: I am doing nothing else for the last 60 years.

 

M: What is wrong with striving? Why look for results? Striving

itself is your real nature.

 

Q: Striving is painful.

 

M: You make it so by seeking results. Strive without seeking,

struggle without greed.

 

Q: Why has God made me as I am?

 

M: Which God are you talking about? What is God? Is he not the very

light by which you ask the question? 'I am' itself is God. The

seeking itself is God. In seeking you discover that you are neither

the body nor mind, and the love of the self in you is for the self in

all. The two are one. The consciousness in you and the consciousness

in me, apparently two, really one, seek unity and that is love.

 

Q: How am I to find that love?

 

M: What do you love now? The 'I am'. Give your heart and mind to it,

think of nothing else. This, when effortless and natural, is the

highest state. In it love itself is the lover and the beloved.

 

Q: Everybody wants to live, to exist. Is it not self-love?

 

M: All desire has its source in the self. It is all a matter of

choosing the right desire.

 

Q: What is right and what is wrong varies with habit and custom.

Standards vary with societies.

 

M: Discard all traditional standards. Leave them to the hypocrites.

Only what liberates you from desire and fear and wrong ideas is good.

As long as you worry about sin and virtue you will have no peace.

 

Q: I grant that sin and virtue are social norms. But there may be

also spiritual sins and virtues. I mean by spiritual the absolute. Is

there such a thing as absolute sin or absolute virtue?

 

M: Sin and virtue refer to a person only. Without a sinful or

virtuous person what is sin or virtue? At the level of the absolute

there are no persons; the ocean of pure awareness is neither virtuous

nor sinful. Sin and virtue are invariably relative.

 

Q: Can I do away with such unnecessary notions?

 

M: Not as long as you think yourself to be a person.

 

Q: By what sign shall l know that I am beyond sin and virtue?

 

M: By being free from all desire and fear, from the very idea of

being a person. To nourish the ideas: 'I am a sinner' 'I am not a

sinner', is sin. To identify oneself with the particular is all the

sin there is. The impersonal is real, the personal appears and

disappears. 'I am' is the impersonal Being. 'I am this' is the

person. The person is relative and the pure Being -- fundamental.

 

Q: Surely pure Being is not unconscious, nor is it devoid of

discrimination. How can it be beyond sin and virtue? Just tell us,

please, has it intelligence or not?

 

M: All these questions arise from your believing yourself to be a

person. Go beyond the personal and see.

 

Q: What exactly do you mean when you ask me to stop being a person?

 

M: I do not ask you to stop being -- that you cannot. I ask you only

to stop imagining that you were born, have parents, are a body, will

die and so on. Just try, make a beginning -- it is not as hard as you

think.

 

Q: To think oneself as the personal is the sin of the impersonal.

 

M: Again the personal point of view! Why do you insist on polluting

the impersonal with your ideas of sin and virtue? It just does not

apply. The impersonal cannot be described in terms of good and bad.

It is Being -- Wisdom -- Love -- all absolute. Where is the scope for

sin there? And virtue is only the opposite of sin.

 

Q: We talk of divine virtue.

 

M: True virtue is divine nature (swarupa). What you are really is

your virtue. But the opposite of sin which you call virtue is only

obedience born out of fear.

 

Q: Then why all effort at being good?

 

M: It keeps you on the move. You go on and on till you find God.

Then God takes you into Himself -- and makes you as He is.

 

Q: The same action is considered natural at one point and a sin at

another. What makes it sinful?

 

M: Whatever you do against your better knowledge is sin.

 

Q: Knowledge depends on memory.

 

M: Remembering your self is virtue, forgetting your self is sin. It

all boils down to the mental or psychological link between the spirit

and matter. We may call the link psyche (antahkarana). When the

psyche is raw, undeveloped, quite primitive, it is subject to gross

illusions. As it grows in breadth and sensitivity, it becomes a

perfect link between pure matter and pure spirit and gives meaning to

matter and expression to spirit.

 

There is the material world (mahadakash) and the spiritual

(paramakash). Between lies the universal mind (chidakash) which is

also the universal heart (premakash). It is wise love that makes the

two one.

 

Q: Some people are stupid, some are intelligent. The difference is

in their psyche. The ripe ones had more experience behind them. Just

like a child grows by eating and drinking, sleeping and playing, so

is man's psyche shaped by all he thinks and feels and does, until it

is perfect enough to serve as a bridge between the spirit and the

body. As a bridge permits the traffic; between the banks, so does the

psyche bring together the source and its expression.

 

M: Call it love. The bridge is love.

 

Q: Ultimately all is experience. Whatever we think, feel, do is

experience. Behind it is the experiencer. So all we know consists of

these two, the experiencer and the experience. But the two are really

one -- the experiencer alone is the experience. Still, the

experiencer takes the experience to be outside. In the same way the

spirit and the body are one; they only appear as two.

 

M: To the Spirit there is no second.

 

Q: To whom then does the second appear? It seems to me that duality

is an illusion induced by the imperfection of the psyche. When the

psyche is perfect, duality is no longer seen.

 

M: You have said it.

 

Q: Still I have to repeat my very simple question: who makes the

distinction between sin and virtue?

 

M: He who has a body, sins with the body, he who has a mind, sins

with the mind.

 

Q: Surely, the mere possession of mind and body does not compel to

sin. There must be a third factor at the root of it. I come back

again and again to this question of sin and virtue, because now-a-

days young people keep on saying that there is no such thing as sin,

that one need not be squermish and should follow the moment's desire

readily. They will accept neither tradition nor authority and can be

influenced only by solid and honest thought. If they refrain from

certain actions, it is through fear of police rather than by

conviction. Undoubtedly there is something in what they say, for we

can see how our values change from place to place and time to time.

For instance -- killing in war is great virtue today and may be

considered a horrible crime next century.

 

M: A man who moves with the earth will necessarily experience days

and nights. He who stays with the sun will know no darkness. My world

is not yours. As I see it, you all are on a stage performing. There

is no reality about your comings and goings. And your problems are so

unreal!

 

Q: We may be sleep-walkers, or subject to nightmares. Is there

nothing you can do?

 

M: I am doing: I did enter your dreamlike state to tell you -- " Stop

hurting yourself and others, stop suffering, wake up " .

 

Q: Why then don't we wake up?

 

M: You will. I shall not be thwarted. It may take some time. When

you shall begin to question your dream, awakening will be not far

away.

 

22. Life is Love and Love is Life

Questioner: Is the practice of Yoga always conscious? Or, can it be

quite unconscious, below the threshold of awareness?

 

Maharaj: In the case of a beginner the practice of Yoga is often

deliberate and requires great determination. But those who are

practising sincerely for many years, are intent on self-realisation

all the time, whether conscious of it or not. Unconscious sadhana is

most effective, because it is spontaneous and steady.

 

Q: What is the position of the man who was a sincere student of

Yoga for some time and then got discouraged and abandoned all efforts?

 

M: What a man appears to do, or not to do, is often deceptive. His

apparent lethargy may be just a gathering of strength. The causes of

our behaviour are very subtle. One must not be quick to condemn, not

even to praise. Remember that Yoga is the work of the inner self

(vyakta) on the outer self (vyakti). All that the outer does is

merely in response to the inner.

 

Q: Still the outer helps.

 

M: How much can it help and in what way? It has some control over

the body and can improve its posture and breathing. Over the mind's

thoughts and feelings it has little mastery, for it is itself the

mind. It is the inner that can control the outer. The outer will be

wise to obey.

 

Q: If it is the inner that is ultimately responsible for man's

spiritual development, why is the outer so much exhorted and

encouraged?

 

M: The outer can help by keeping quiet and free from desire and

fear. You would have noticed that all advice to the outer is in the

form of negations: don't, stop, refrain, forego, give up, sacrifice,

surrender, see the false as false. Even the little description of

reality that is given is through denials -- 'not this, not this',

(neti, neti). All positives belong to the inner self, as all

absolutes -- to Reality.

 

Q: How are we to distinguish the inner from the outer in actual

experience?

 

M: The inner is the source of inspiration, the outer is moved by

memory. The source is untraceable, while all memory begins somewhere.

Thus the outer is always determined, while the inner cannot be held

in words. The mistake of students consists in their imagining the

inner to be something to get hold of, and forgetting that all

perceivables are transient and, therefore, unreal. Only that which

makes perception possible, call it Life or Brahman, or what you like,

is real.

 

Q: Must Life have a body for its self-expression?

 

M: The body seeks to live. It is not life that needs the body; it is

the body that needs life.

 

Q: Does life do it deliberately?

 

M: Does love act deliberately? Yes and no. Life is love and love is

life. What keeps the body together but love? What is desire, but love

of the self? What is fear but the urge to protect? And what is

knowledge but the love of truth? The means and forms may be wrong,

but the motive behind is always love -- love of the me and the mine.

The me and the mine may be small, or may explode and embrace the

universe, but love remains.

 

Q: The repetition of the name of God is very common in India. Is

there any virtue in it?

 

M: When you know the name of a thing, or a person, you can find it

easily. By calling God by His name you make Him come to you.

 

Q: In what shape does He come?

 

M: According to your expectations. If you happen to be unlucky and

some saintly soul gives you a mantra for good luck and you repeat it

with faith and devotion, your bad luck is bound to turn. Steady faith

is stronger than destiny. Destiny is the result of causes, mostly

accidental, and is therefore loosely woven. Confidence and good hope

will overcome it easily.

 

Q: When a mantra is chanted, what exactly happens?

 

M: The sound of mantra creates the shape which will embody the Self.

The Self can embody any shape -- and operate through it. After all,

the Self is expressing itself in action -- and a mantra is primarily

energy in action. It acts on you, it acts on your surroundings.

 

Q: The mantra is traditional. Must it be so?

 

M: Since time immemorial a link was created between certain words

and corresponding energies and reinforced by numberless repetitions.

It is just like a road to walk on. It is an easy way -- only faith is

needed. You trust the road to take you to your destination.

 

Q: In Europe there is no tradition of a mantra, except in some

contemplative orders. Of what use is it to a modern young Westerner?

 

M: None, unless he is very much attracted. For him the right

procedure is to adhere to the thought that he is the ground of all

knowledge, the immutable and perennial awareness of all that happens

to the senses and the mind. If he keeps it in mind all the time,

aware and alert, he is bound to break the bounds of non-awareness and

emerge into pure life, light and love. The idea -- 'I am the witness

only' will purify the body and the mind and open the eye of wisdom.

Then man goes beyond illusion and his heart is free of all desires.

Just like ice turns to water and water to vapour, and vapour

dissolves in air and disappears in space, so does the body dissolve

into pure awareness (chidakash), then into pure being (paramakash),

which is beyond all existence and non-existence.

 

Q: The realised man eats, drinks and sleeps. What makes him do so?

 

M: The same power that moves the universe, moves him too.

 

Q: All are moved by the same power: what is the difference?

 

M: This only: The realised man knows what others merely hear; but

don't experience. Intellectually they may seem convinced, but in

action they betray their bondage, while the realised man is always

right.

 

Q: Everybody says 'I am'. The realised man too says 'I am'. Where

is the difference?

 

M: The difference is in the meaning attached to the words 'I am'.

With the realised man the experience: 'I am the world, the world is

mine' is supremely valid -- he thinks, feels and acts integrally and

in unity with all that lives. He may not even know the theory and

practice of self-realisation, and be born and bred free of religious

and metaphysical notions. But there will not be the least flaw in his

understanding and compassion.

 

Q: I may come across a beggar, naked and hungry and ask him 'Who

are you?' He may answer: 'I am the Supreme Self'. 'Well', I

say, 'suffice you are the Supreme, change your present state'. What

will he do?

 

M: He will ask you: 'Which state? What is there that needs changing?

What is wrong with me?

 

Q: Why should he answer so?

 

M: Because he is no longer bound by appearances, he does not

identify himself with the name and shape. He uses memory, but memory

cannot use him.

 

Q: Is not all knowledge based on memory?

 

M: Lower knowledge -- yes. Higher knowledge, knowledge of Reality,

is inherent in man's true nature.

 

Q: Can I say that I am not what I am conscious of, nor am I

consciousness itself?

 

M: As long as you are a seeker, better cling to the idea that you

are pure consciousness, free from all content. To go beyond

consciousness is the supreme state.

 

Q: The desire for realisation, does it originate in consciousness

or beyond?

 

M: In consciousness, of course. All desire is born from memory and

is within the realm of consciousness. What is beyond is clear of all

striving. The very desire to go beyond consciousness is still in

consciousness.

 

Q: Is there any trace, or imprint, of the beyond on consciousness?

 

M: No, there cannot be.

 

Q: Then, what is the link between the two? How can a passage be

found between two states which have nothing in common? Is not pure

awareness the link between the two?

 

M: Even pure awareness is a form of consciousness.

 

Q: Then what is beyond? Emptiness?

 

M: Emptiness again refers only to consciousness. Fullness and

emptiness are relative terms. The Real is really beyond -- beyond not

in relation to consciousness, but beyond all relations of whatever

kind. The difficulty comes with the word 'state'. The Real is not a

state of something else -- it is not a state of mind or consciousness

or psyche -- nor is it something that has a beginning and an end,

being and not being. All opposites are contained in it -- but it is

not in the play of opposites. You must not take it to be the end of a

transition. It is itself, after the consciousness as such is no more.

Then words 'I am man', or 'I am God' have no meaning. Only in silence

and in darkness can it be heard and seen.

 

23. Discrimination leads to Detachment

Maharaj: You are all drenched for it is raining hard. In my world it

is always fine weather. There is no night or day, no heat or cold. No

worries beset me there, nor regrets. My mind is free of thoughts, for

there are no desires to slave for.

 

Questioner: Are there two worlds?

 

M: Your world is transient, changeful. My world is perfect,

changeless. You can tell me what you like about your world -- I shall

listen carefully, even with interest, yet not for a moment shall I

forget that your world is not, that you are dreaming.

 

Q: What distinguishes your world from mine?

 

M: My world has no characteristics by which it can be identified.

You can say nothing about it. I am my world. My world is myself. It

is complete and perfect. Every impression is erased, every

experience -- rejected. I need nothing, not even myself, for myself I

cannot lose.

 

Q: Not even God?

 

M: All these ideas and distinctions exist in your world; in mine

there is nothing of the kind. My world is single and very simple.

 

Q: Nothing happens there?

 

M: Whatever happens in your world, only there it has validity and

evokes response. In my world nothing happens.

 

Q: The very fact of your experiencing your own world implies

duality inherent in all experience.

 

M: Verbally -- yes. But your words do not reach me. Mine is a non-

verbal world. In your world the unspoken has no existence. In mine --

the words and their contents have no being. In your world nothing

stays, in mine -- nothing changes. My world is real, while yours is

made of dreams.

 

Q: Yet we are talking.

 

M: The talk is in your world. In mine -- there is eternal silence.

My silence sings, my emptiness is full, I lack nothing. You cannot

know my world until you are there.

 

Q: It seems as if you alone are in your world.

 

M: How can you say alone or not alone, when words do not apply? Of

course, I am alone for I am all.

 

Q: Are you ever coming into our world?

 

M: What is coming and going to me? These again are words. I am.

Whence am I to come from and where to go?

 

Q: Of what use is your world to me?

 

M: You should consider more closely your own world, examine it

critically and, suddenly, one day you will find yourself in mine.

 

Q: What do we gain by it?

 

M: You gain nothing. You leave behind what is not your own and find

what you have never lost -- your own being.

 

Q: Who is the ruler of your world?

 

M: There are no ruler and ruled here. There is no duality

whatsoever. You are merely projecting your own ideas. Your scriptures

and your gods have no meaning here.

 

Q: Still you have a name and shape, display consciousness and

activity.

 

M: In your world I appear so. In mine I have being only. Nothing

else. You people are rich with your ideas of possession, of quantity

and quality. I am completely without ideas.

 

Q: In my world there is disturbance, distress and despair. You seem

to be living on some hidden income, while I must slave for a living.

 

M: Do as you please. You are free to leave your world for mine.

 

Q: How is the crossing done?

 

M: See your world as it is, not as you imagine it to be.

Discrimination will lead to detachment; detachment will ensure right

action; right action will build the inner bridge to your real being.

Action is a proof of earnestness. Do what you are told diligently and

faithfully and all obstacles will dissolve.

 

Q: Are you happy?

 

M: In your world I would be most miserable. To wake up, to eat, to

talk, to sleep again -- what a bother!

 

Q: So you do not want to live even?

 

M: To live, to die -- what meaningless words are these! When you see

me alive, I am dead. When you think me dead, I am alive. How muddled

up you are!

 

Q: How indifferent you are? All the sorrows of our world are as

nothing to you.

 

M: I am quite conscious of your troubles.

 

Q: Then what are you doing about them?

 

M: There is nothing I need doing. They come and go.

 

Q: Do they go by the very act of your giving them attention?

 

M: Yes. The difficulty may be physical, emotional or mental; but it

is always individual. Large scale calamities are the sum of

numberless individual destinies and take time to settle. But death is

never a calamity.

 

Q: Even when a man is killed?

 

M: The calamity is of the killer.

 

Q: Still, it seems there are two worlds, mine and yours.

 

M: Mine is real, yours is of the mind.

 

Q: Imagine a rock and a hole in the rock and a frog in the hole.

The frog may spend its life in perfect bliss, undistracted,

undisturbed. Outside the rock the world goes on. If the frog in the

hole were told about the outside world, he would say: 'There is no

such thing. My world is of peace and bliss. Your world is a word

structure only, it has no existence'. It is the same with you. When

you tell us that our world simply does not exist, there is no common

ground for discussion. Or, take another example. I go to a doctor and

complain of stomach ache. He examines me and says: 'You are all

right'. 'But it pains' I say. 'Your pain is mental' he asserts. I

say 'It does not help me to know that my pain is mental. You are a

doctor, cure me of my pain. If you cannot cure me, you are not my

doctor.'

 

M: Quite right.

 

Q: You have built the railroad, but for lack of a bridge no train

can pass. Build the bridge.

 

M: There is no need of a bridge.

 

Q: There must be some link between your world and mine.

 

M: There is no need of a link between a real world and an imaginary

world, for there cannot be any.

 

Q: So what are we to do?

 

M: Investigate your world, apply your mind to it, examine it

critically, scrutinise every idea about it; that will do.

 

Q: The world is too big for investigation. All I know is that I am

the world is, the world troubles me and I trouble the world.

 

M: My experience is that everything is bliss. But the desire for

bliss creates pain. Thus bliss becomes the seed of pain. The entire

universe of pain is born of desire. Give up the desire for pleasure

and you will not even know what is pain.

 

Q: Why should pleasure be the seed of pain?

 

M: Because for the sake of pleasure you are committing many sins.

And the fruits of sin are suffering and death.

 

Q: You say the world is of no use to us -- only a tribulation. I

feel it cannot be so. God is not such a fool. The world seems to me a

big enterprise for bringing the potential into actual, matter into

life, the unconscious into full awareness. To realise the supreme we

need the experience of the opposites. Just as for building a temple

we need stone and mortar, wood and iron, glass and tiles, so for

making a man into a divine sage, a master of life and death, one

needs the material of every experience. As a woman goes to the

market, buys provisions of every sort, comes home, cooks, bakes and

feeds her lord, so we bake ourselves nicely in the fire of life and

feed our God.

 

M: Well, if you think so, act on it. Feed your God, by all means.

 

Q: A child goes to school and learns many things, which will be of

no use to it later. But in the course of learning it grows. So do we

pass through experiences without number and forget them all, but in

the meantime we grow all the time. And what is a jnani but a man with

a genius for reality! This world of mine cannot be an accident. It

makes sense, there must be a plan behind it. My God has a plan.

 

M: If the world is false, then the plan and its creator are also

false.

 

Q: Again, you deny the world. There is no bridge between us.

 

M: There is no need of a bridge. Your mistake lies in your belief

that you are born. You were never born nor will you ever die, but you

believe that you were born at a certain date and place and that a

particular body is your own.

 

Q: The world is, I am. These are facts.

 

M: Why do you worry about the world before taking care of yourself?

You want to save the world, don't you? Can you save the world before

saving yourself? And what means being saved? Saved from what? From

illusion. Salvation is to see things as they are. I really do not see

myself related to anybody and anything. Not even to a self, whatever

that self may be. I remain forever -- undefined. I am -- within and

beyond -- intimate and unapproachable.

 

Q: How did you come to it?

 

M: By my trust in my Guru. He told me 'You alone are' and I did not

doubt him. I was merely puzzling over it, until I realised that it is

absolutely true.

 

Q: Conviction by repetition?

 

M: By self-realisation. I found that I am conscious and happy

absolutely and only by mistake I thought I owed being­ consciousness-

bliss to the body and the world of bodies.

 

Q: You are not a learned man. You have not read much and what you

read, or heard did perhaps not contradict itself. I am fairly well

educated and have read a lot and I found that books and teachers

contradict each other hopelessly. Hence whatever I read or hear, I

take it in a state of doubt. 'It may be so, it may not be so' is my

first reaction. And as my mind is unable to decide what is true and

what is not, I am left high and dry with my doubts. In Yoga a

doubting mind is at a tremendous disadvantage.

 

M: I am glad to hear it; but my Guru too taught me to doubt --

everything and absolutely. He said: 'deny existence to everything

except your self.' Through desire you have created the world with its

pains and pleasures.

 

Q: Must it be also painful?

 

M: What else? By its very nature pleasure is limited and transitory.

Out of pain desire is born, in pain it seeks fulfilment, and it ends

in the pain of frustration and despair. Pain is the background of

pleasure, all seeking of pleasure is born in pain and ends in pain.

 

Q: All you say is clear to me. But when some physical or mental

trouble comes, my mind goes dull and grey, or seeks frantically for

relief.

 

M: What does it matter? It is the mind that is dull or restless, not

you. Look, all kinds of things happen in this room. Do I cause them

to happen? They just happen. So it is with you -- the roll of destiny

unfolds itself and actualises the inevitable. You cannot change the

course of events, but you can change your attitude and what really

matters is the attitude and not the bare event. The world is the

abode of desires and fears. You cannot find peace in it. For peace

you must go beyond the world. The root­ cause of the world is self-

love. Because of it we seek pleasure and avoid pain. Replace self-

love by love of the Self and the picture changes. Brahma the Creator

is the sum total of all desires. The world is the instrument for

their fulfilment. Souls take whatever pleasure they desire and pay

for them in tears. Time squares all accounts. The law of balance

reigns supreme.

 

Q: To be a superman one must be a man first. Manhood is the fruit

of innumerable experiences: Desire drives to experience. Hence at its

own time and level desire is right.

 

M: All this is true in a way. But a day comes when you have amassed

enough and must begin to build. Then sorting out and discarding

(viveka-vairagya) are absolutely necessary. Everything must be

scrutinised and the unnecessary ruthlessly destroyed. Believe me,

there cannot be too much destruction. For in reality nothing is of

value. Be passionately dispassionate -- that is all.

 

24. God is the All-doer, the Jnani a Non-doer

Questioner: Some Mahatmas (enlightened beings) maintain that the

world is neither an accident nor a play of God, but the result and

expression of a mighty plan of work aiming at awakening and

developing consciousness throughout the universe. From lifelessness

to life, from unconsciousness to consciousness, from dullness to

bright intelligence, from misapprehension to clarity -- that is the

direction in which the world moves ceaselessly and relentlessly. Of

course, there are moments of rest and apparent darkness, when the

universe seems to be dormant, but the rest comes to an end and the

work on consciousness is resumed. From our point of view the world is

a dale of tears, a place to escape from, as soon as possible and by

every possible means. To enlightened beings the world is good and it

serves a good purpose. They do not deny that the world is a mental

structure and that ultimately all is one, but they see and say that

the structure has meaning and serves a supremely desirable purpose.

What we call the will of God is not a capricious whim of a playful

deity, but the expression of an absolute necessity to grow in love

and wisdom and power, to actualise the infinite potentials of life

and consciousness.

 

Just as a gardener grows flowers from a tiny seed to glorious

perfection, so does God in His own garden grow, among other beings,

men to supermen, who know and love and work along with Him.

 

When God takes rest (pralaya), those whose growth was not completed,

become unconscious for a time, while the perfect ones, who have gone

beyond all forms and contents of consciousness, remain aware of the

universal silence. When the time comes for the emergence of a new

universe, the sleepers wake up and their work starts. The more

advanced wake up first and prepare the ground for the less advanced --

who thus find forms and patterns of behaviour suitable for their

further growth.

 

Thus runs the story. The difference with your teaching is this: you

insist that the world is no good and should be shunned. They say that

distaste for the world is a passing stage, necessary, yet temporary,

and is soon replaced by an all-pervading love, and a steady will to

work with God.

 

Maharaj: All you say is right for the outgoing (pravritti) path. For

the path of return (nivritti) naughting oneself is necessary. My

stand I take where nothing (paramakash) is; words do not reach there,

nor thoughts. To the mind it is all darkness and silence. Then

consciousness begins to stir and wakes up the mind (chidakash), which

projects the world (mahadakash), built of memory and imagination.

Once the world comes into being, all you say may be so. It is in the

nature of the mind to imagine goals, to strive towards them, to seek

out means and ways, to display vision, energy and courage. These are

divine attributes and I do not deny them. But I take my stand where

no difference exists, where things are not, nor the minds that create

them. There I am at home. Whatever happens, does not affect me --

things act on things, that is all. Free from memory and expectation,

I am fresh, innocent and wholehearted. Mind is the great worker

(mahakarta) and it needs rest. Needing nothing, I am unafraid. Whom

to be afraid of? There is no separation, we are not separate selves.

There is only one Self, the Supreme Reality, in which the personal

and the impersonal are one.

 

Q: All I want is to be able to help the world.

 

M: Who says you cannot help? You made up your mind about what help

means and needs and got your self into a conflict between what you

should and what you can, between necessity and ability.

 

Q: But why do we do so?

 

M: Your mind projects a structure and you identify yourself with it.

It is in the nature of desire to prompt the mind to create a world

for its fulfilment. Even a small desire can start a long line of

action; what about a strong desire? Desire can produce a universe;

its powers are miraculous. Just as a small matchstick can set a huge

forest on fire, so does a desire light the fires of manifestation.

The very purpose of creation is the fulfilment of desire. The desire

may be noble, or ignoble, space (akash) is neutral -- one can fill it

with what one likes: You must be very careful as to what you desire.

And as to the people you want to help, they are in their respective

worlds for the sake of their desires; there is no way of helping them

except through their desires. You can only teach them to have right

desires so that they may rise above them and be free from the urge to

create and re-create worlds of desires, abodes of pain and pleasure.

 

Q: A day must come when the show is wound up; a man must die, a

universe come to an end.

 

M: Just as a sleeping man forgets all and wakes up for another day,

or he dies and emerges into another life, so do the worlds of desire

and fear dissolve and disappear. But the universal witness, the

Supreme Self never sleeps and never dies. Eternally the Great Heart

beats and at each beat a new universe comes into being.

 

Q: Is he conscious?

 

M: He is beyond all that the mind conceives. He is beyond being and

not being. He is the Yes and No to everything, beyond and within,

creating and destroying, unimaginably real.

 

Q: God and the Mahatma are they one or two?

 

M: They are one.

 

Q: There must be some difference.

 

M: God is the All-Doer, the jnani is a non-doer. God himself does

not say: 'I am doing all.' To Him things happen by their own nature.

To the jnani all is done by God. He sees no difference between God

and nature. Both God and the jnani know themselves to be the

immovable centre of the movable, the eternal witness of the

transient. The centre is a point of void and the witness a point of

pure awareness; they know themselves to be as nothing, therefore

nothing can resist them.

 

Q: How does this look and feel in your personal experience?

 

M: Being nothing, I am all. Everything is me, everything is mine.

Just as my body moves by my mere thinking of the movement, so do

things happen as I think of them. Mind you, I do nothing. I just see

them happen.

 

Q: Do things happen as you want them to happen, or do you want them

to happen as they happen?

 

M: Both. I accept and am accepted. I am all and all is me. Being the

world I am not afraid of the world. Being all, what am I to be afraid

of? Water is not afraid of water, nor fire of fire. Also I am not

afraid because I am nothing that can experience fear, or can be in

danger. I have no shape, nor name. It is attachment to a name and

shape that breeds fear. I am not attached. I am nothing, and nothing

is afraid of no thing. On the contrary, everything is afraid of the

Nothing, for when a thing touches Nothing, it becomes nothing. It is

like a bottomless well, whatever falls into it, disappears.

 

Q: Isn't God a person?

 

M: As long as you think yourself to be a person, He too is a person.

When you are all, you see Him as all.

 

Q: Can I change facts by changing attitude?

 

M: The attitude is the fact. Take anger. I may be furious, pacing

the room up and down; at the same time I know what I am, a centre of

wisdom and love, an atom of pure existence. All subsides and the mind

merges into silence.

 

Q: Still, you are angry sometimes.

 

M: With whom am l to be angry and for what? Anger came and dissolved

on my remembering myself. It is all a play of gunas (qualities of

cosmic matter). When I identify myself with them, I am their slave.

When I stand apart, I am their master.

 

Q: Can you influence the world by your attitude? By separating

yourself from the world you lose all hope of helping it.

 

M: How can it be? All is myself -- can't I help myself? I do not

identify myself with anybody in particular, for I am all -- both the

particular and the universal.

 

Q: Can you then help me, the particular person?

 

M: But I do help you always -- from within. My self and your self

are one. I know it, but you don't. That is all the difference -- and

it cannot last.

 

Q: And how do you help the entire world?

 

M: Gandhi is dead, yet his mind pervades the earth. The thought of a

jnani pervades humanity and works ceaselessly for good. Being

anonymous, coming from within, it is the more powerful and

compelling. That is how the world improves -- the inner aiding and

blessing the outer. When a jnani dies, he is no more, in the same

sense in which a river is no more when it merges in the sea, the

name, the shape, are no more, but the water remains and becomes one

with the ocean. When a jnani joins the universal mind, all his

goodness and wisdom become the heritage of humanity and uplift every

human being.

 

Q: We are attached to our personality. Our individuality, our being

unlike others, we value very much. You seem to denounce both as

useless. Your unmanifested, of what use is it to us?

 

M: Unmanifested, manifested, individuality, personality (nirguna,

saguna, vyakta, vyakti); all these are mere words, points of view,

mental attitudes. There is no reality in them. The real is

experienced in silence. You cling to personality -- but you are

conscious of being a person only when you are in trouble -- when you

are not in trouble you do not think of yourself.

 

Q: You did not tell me the uses of the Unmanifested.

 

M: Surely, you must sleep in order to wake up. You must die in order

to live, you must melt down to shape anew. You must destroy to build,

annihilate before creation. The Supreme is the universal solvent, it

corrodes every container, it burns through every obstacle. Without

the absolute denial of everything the tyranny of things would be

absolute. The Supreme is the great harmoniser, the guarantee of the

ultimate and perfect balance -- of life in freedom. It dissolves you

and thus re-asserts your true being.

 

Q: It is all well on its own level. But how does it work in daily

life?

 

M: The daily life is a life of action. Whether you like it or not,

you must function. Whatever you do for your own sake accumulates and

becomes explosive; one day it goes off and plays havoc with you and

your world. When you deceive yourself that you work for the good of

all, it makes matters worse, for you should not be guided by your own

ideas of what is good for others. A man who claims to know what is

good for others, is dangerous.

 

Q: How is one to work then?

 

M: Neither for yourself nor for others, but for the work's own sake.

A thing worth doing is its own purpose and meaning, Make nothing a

means to something else. Bind not. God does not create one thing to

serve another. Each is made for its own sake. Because it is made for

itself, it does not interfere. You are using things and people for

purposes alien to them and you play havoc with the world and yourself.

 

Q: Our real being is all the time with us, you say. How is it that

we do not notice it?

 

M: Yes, you are always the Supreme. But your attention is fixed on

things, physical or mental. When your attention is off a thing and

not yet fixed on another, in the interval you are pure being. When

through the practice of discrimination and detachment (viveka-

vairagya), you lose sight of sensory and mental states, pure being

emerges as the natural state.

 

Q: How does one bring to an end this sense of separateness?

 

M: By focussing the mind on 'I am', on the sense of being, 'I am so-

and-so' dissolves; " I am a witness only " remains and that too

submerges in 'I am all'. Then the all becomes the One and the One --

yourself, not to be separate from me. Abandon the idea of a

separate 'I' and the question of 'whose experience?' will not arise.

 

Q: You speak from your own experience. How can I make it mine?

 

M: You speak of my experience as different from your experience,

because you believe we are separate. But we are not. On a deeper

level my experience is your experience. Dive deep within yourself and

you will find it easily and simply. Go in the direction of 'I am'.

 

25. Hold on to `I am'

Questioner: Are you ever glad or sad? Do you know joy and sorrow?

 

Maharaj: Call them as you please. To me they are states of mind only,

and I am not the mind.

 

Q: Is love a state of mind?

 

M: Again, it depends what you mean by love. Desire is, of course, a

state of mind. But the realisation of unity is beyond mind. To me,

nothing exists by itself. All is the Self, all is myself. To see

myself in everybody and everybody in myself most certainly is love.

 

Q: When I see something pleasant, I want it. Who exactly wants it?

The self or the mind?

 

M: The question is wrongly put. There is no 'who'. There is desire,

fear, anger, and the mind says -- this is me, this is mine. There is

no thing which could be called 'me' or 'mine'. Desire is a state of

the mind, perceived and named by the mind. Without the mind

perceiving and naming, where is desire?

 

Q: But is there such a thing as perceiving without naming?

 

M: Of course. Naming cannot go beyond the mind, while perceiving is

consciousness itself.

 

Q: When somebody dies what exactly happens?

 

M: Nothing happens. Something becomes nothing. Nothing was, nothing

remains.

 

Q: Surely there is a difference between the living and the dead.

You speak of the living as dead and of the dead as living.

 

M: Why do you fret at one man dying and care little for the millions

dying every day? Entire universes are imploding and exploding every

moment -- am I to cry over them? One thing is quite clear to me: all

that is, lives and moves and has its being in consciousness and I am

in and beyond that consciousness. I am in it as the witness. I am

beyond it as Being.

 

Q: Surely, you care when your child is ill, don't you?

 

M: I don't get flustered. I just do the needful. I do not worry

about the future. A right response to every situation is in my

nature. I do not stop to think what to do. I act and move on. Results

do not affect me. I do not even care, whether they are good or bad.

Whatever they are, they are -- if they come back to me, I deal with

them afresh. Or, rather, I happen to deal with them afresh. There is

no sense of purpose in my doing anything. Things happens as they

happen -- not because I make them happen, but it is because I am that

they happen. In reality nothing ever happens. When the mind is

restless, it makes Shiva dance, like the restless waters of the lake

make the moon dance. It is all appearance, due to wrong ideas.

 

Q: Surely, you are aware of many things and behave according to

their nature. You treat a child as a child and an adult as an adult.

 

M: Just as the taste of salt pervades the great ocean and every

single drop of sea-water carries the same flavour, so every

experience gives me the touch of reality, the ever fresh realisation

of my own being.

 

Q: Do I exist in your world, as you exist in mine?

 

M: Of course, you are and I am. But only as points in consciousness;

we are nothing apart from consciousness. This must be well grasped:

the world hangs on the thread of consciousness; no consciousness, no

world.

 

Q: There are many points in consciousness; are there as many worlds?

 

M: Take dream for an example. In a hospital there may be many

patients, all sleeping, all dreaming, each dreaming his own private,

personal dreams unrelated, unaffected, having one single factor in

common -- illness. Similarly, we have divorced ourselves in our

imagination from the real world of common experience and enclosed

ourselves in a cloud of personal desire and fears, images and

thoughts, ideas and concepts.

 

Q: This I can understand. But what could be the cause of the

tremendous variety of the personal worlds?

 

M: The variety is not so great. All the dreams are superimposed over

a common world. To some extent they shape and influence each other.

The basic unity operates in spite of all. At the root of it all lies

self-forgetfulness; not knowing who I am.

 

Q: To forget, one must know. Did I know who I am, before I forgot

it?

 

M: Of course. Self-forgetting is inherent in self-knowing.

Consciousness and unconsciousness are two aspects of one life. They

co-exist. To know the world you forget the self -- to know the self

you forget the world. What is world after all? A collection of

memories. Cling to one thing, that matters, hold on to 'I am' and let

go all else. This is sadhana. In realisation there is nothing to hold

on to and nothing to forget. Everything is known, nothing is

remembered.

 

Q: What is the cause of self-forgetting?

 

M: There is no cause, because there is no forgetting. Mental states

succeed one another, and each obliterates the previous one. Self-

remembering is a mental state and self-forgetting is another. They

alternate like day and night. Reality is beyond both.

 

Q: Surely there must be a difference between forgetting and not

knowing. Not knowing needs no cause. Forgetting presupposes previous

knowledge and also the tendency or ability to forget. I admit I

cannot enquire into the reason for not-knowing, but forgetting must

have some ground.

 

M: There is no such thing as not-knowing. There is only forgetting.

What is wrong with forgetting? It is as simple to forget as to

remember.

 

Q: Is it not a calamity to forget oneself?

 

M: As bad as to remember oneself continuously. There is a state

beyond forgetting and not-forgetting -- the natural state. To

remember, to forget -- these are all states of mind, thought­bound,

word-bound. Take for example, the idea of being born. I am told I was

born. I do not remember. I am told I shall die I do not expect it.

You tell me I have forgotten, or I lack imagination. But I just

cannot remember what never happened, nor expect the patently

impossible. Bodies are born and bodies die, but what is it to me?

Bodies come and go in consciousness and consciousness itself has its

roots in me. I am life and mine are mind and body.

 

Q: You say at the root of the world is self-forgetfulness. To

forget I must remember What did I forget to remember? I have not

forgotten that I am.

 

M: This 'I am' too may be a part of the illusion.

 

Q. How can it be? You cannot prove to me that I am not. Even when

convinced that I am not -- I am.

 

M: Reality can neither be proved nor disproved. Within the mind you

cannot, beyond the mind you need not. In the real, the question 'what

is real?' does not arise. The manifested (saguna) and unmanifested

(nirguna) are not different.

 

Q: In that case all is real.

 

M: I am all. As myself all is real. Apart from me, nothing is real.

 

Q: I do not feel that the world is the result of a mistake.

 

M: You may say so only after a full investigation, not before. Of

course, when you discern and let go all that is unreal, what remains

is real.

 

Q: Does anything remain?

 

M: The real remains. But don't be mislead by words!

 

Q: Since immemorial time, during innumerable births, I build and

improve and beautify my world. It is neither perfect, nor unreal. It

is a process.

 

M: You are mistaken. The world has no existence apart from you. At

every moment it is but a reflection of yourself. You create it, you

destroy it.

 

Q: And build it again, improved.

 

M: To improve it, you must disprove it. One must die to live. There

is no rebirth, except through death.

 

Q: Your universe may be perfect. My personal universe is improving.

 

M: Your personal universe does not exist by itself. It is merely a

limited and distorted view of the real. It is not the universe that

needs improving, but your way of looking.

 

Q: How do you view it?

 

M: It is a stage on which a world drama is being played. The quality

of the performance is all that matters; not what the actors say and

do, but how they say and do it.

 

Q: I do not like this lila (play) idea I would rather compare the

world to a work-yard in which we are the builders.

 

M: You take it too seriously. What is wrong with play? You have a

purpose only as long as you are not complete (purna); till then

completeness, perfection, is the purpose. But when you are complete

in yourself, fully integrated within and without, then you enjoy the

universe; you do not labour at it. To the disintegrated you may seem

working hard, but that is their illusion. Sportsmen seem to make

tremendous efforts: yet their sole motive is to play and display.

 

Q: Do you mean to say that God is just having fun, that he is

engaged in purposeless action?

 

M: God is not only true and good, he is also beautiful (satyam-

shivam-sundaram). He creates beauty -- for the joy of It

 

Q: Well, then beauty is his purpose!

 

M: Why do you introduce purpose? Purpose implies movement, change, a

sense of imperfection. God does not aim at beauty -- whatever he does

is beautiful. Would you say that a flower is trying to be beautiful?

It is beautiful by its very nature. Similarly God is perfection

itself, not an effort at perfection.

 

Q: The purpose fulfils itself in beauty.

 

M: What is beautiful? Whatever is perceived blissfully is beautiful.

Bliss is the essence of beauty.

 

Q: You speak of Sat-Chit-Ananda. That I am is obvious. That I know

is obvious. That I am happy is not at all obvious. Where has my

happiness gone?

 

M: Be fully aware of your own being and you will be in bliss

consciously. Because you take your mind off yourself and make it

dwell on what you are not, you lose your sense of well-being of being

well.

 

Q: There are two paths before us -- the path of effort (yoga

marga), and the path of ease (bhoga marga). Both lead to the same

goal -- liberation.

 

M: Why do you call bhoga a path? How can ease bring you perfection?

 

Q: The perfect renouncer (yogi) will find reality. The perfect

enjoyer (bhogi) also will come to it.

 

M: How can it be? Aren't they contradictory?

 

Q: The extremes meet. To be a perfect Bhogi is more difficult than

to be a perfect Yogi. I am a humble man and cannot venture judgements

of value. Both the Yogi and the Bhogi, after all, are concerned with

the search for happiness. The Yogi wants it permanent, the Bhogi is

satisfied with the intermittent. Often the Bhogi strives harder than

the Yogi.

 

M: What is your happiness worth when you have to strive and labour

for it? True happiness is spontaneous and effortless.

 

Q: All beings seek happiness. The means only differ. Some seek it

within and are therefore called Yogis; some seek it without and are

condemned as Bhogis. Yet they need each other.

 

M: Pleasure and pain alternate. Happiness is unshakable. What you

can seek and find is not the real thing. Find what you have never

lost, find the inalienable.