More Niz Biz: Chpts. 36-49 I.A.T.( everyone has chpt. 50)

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36. Killing Hurts the Killer, not the Killed

Questioner: A thousand years ago a man lived and died. His identity

(antahkarana) re-appeared in a new body. Why does he not remember his

previous life? And if he does, can the memory be brought into the

conscious?

 

Maharaj: How do you know that the same person re-appeared in the new

body? A new body may mean a new person altogether.

 

Q: Imagine a pot of ghee. (Indian clarified butter). When the pot

breaks, the Ghee remains and can be transferred to another pot. The

old pot had its own scent, the new -- its own. The Ghee will carry

the scents from pot to pot. In the same way the personal identity is

transferred from body to body.

 

M: It is all right. When there is the body, its peculiarities affect

the person. Without the body we have the pure identity in the sense

of 'I am'. But when you are reborn in a new body, where is the world

formerly experienced?

 

Q: Every body experiences its own world.

 

M: In the present body the old body -- is it merely an idea, or is

it a memory?

 

Q: An idea, of course. How can a brain remember what it has not

experienced?

 

M: You have answered your own question. Why play with ideas? Be

content with what you are sure of. And the only thing you can be sure

of is 'I am'. Stay with it, and reject everything else. This is Yoga.

 

Q: I can reject only verbally. At best I remember to repeat the

formula: 'This is not me, this is not mine. I am beyond all this'.

 

M: Good enough. First verbally, then mentally and emotionally, then

in action. Give attention to the reality within you and it will come

to light. It is like churning the cream for butter. Do it correctly

and assiduously and the result is sure to come.

 

Q: How can the absolute be the result of a process?

 

M: You are right, the relative cannot result in the absolute. But

the relative can block the absolute, just as the non-churning of the

cream may prevent the butter from separating. It is the real that

creates the urge; the inner prompts the outer and the outer responds

in interest and effort. But ultimately there is no inner, nor outer;

the light of consciousness is both the creator and the creature, the

experiencer and the experience, the body and the embodied. Take care

of the power that projects all this and your problems will come to an

end.

 

Q: Which is the projecting power?

 

M: It is imagination prompted by desire.

 

Q: I know all this, but have no power over it.

 

M: This is another illusion of yours, born from craving for results.

 

Q: What is wrong with purposeful action?

 

M: It does not apply. In these matters there is no question of

purpose, nor of action. All you need is to listen, remember, ponder.

It is like taking food. All you can do is to bite off, chew and

swallow. All else is unconscious and automatic. Listen, remember and

understand -- the mind is both the actor and the stage. All is of the

mind and you are not the mind. The mind is born and reborn, not you.

The mind creates the world and all the wonderful variety of it. Just

like in a good play you have all sorts of characters and situations,

so you need a little of everything to make a world.

 

Q: Nobody suffers in a play.

 

M: Unless one identifies himself with it. Don't identify yourself

with the world and you will not suffer.

 

Q: Others will.

 

M: Then make your world perfect, by all means. If you believe in

God, work with Him. It you do not, become one. Either see the world

as a play or work at it with all your might. Or both.

 

Q: What about the identify of the dying man? What happens to it

when he is dead? Do you agree that it continues in another body.

 

M: It continues and yet it does not. All depends how you look at it.

What is identity, after all? Continuity in memory? Can you talk of

identity without memory?

 

Q: Yes, I can. The child may not know its parents, yet the

hereditary characteristics will be there.

 

M: Who identifies them? Somebody with a memory to register and

compare. Don't you see that memory is the warp of your mental life.

And identity is merely a pattern of events in time and space. Change

the pattern and you have changed the man.

 

Q: The pattern is significant and important. It has its own value.

By saying that a woven design is merely coloured threads you miss the

most important -- the beauty of it. Or by describing a book as paper

with ink stains on it, you miss the meaning. Identity is valuable

because it is the basis of individuality; that which makes us unique

and irreplaceable. 'I am', is the intuition of uniqueness.

 

M: Yes and no. Identity, individuality, uniqueness -- they are the

most valuable aspects of the mind, yet of the mind only. 'I am all

there is' too is an experience equally valid. The particular and the

universal are inseparable. They are the two aspects of the nameless,

as seen from without and from within. Unfortunately, words only

mention, but don't convey. Try to go beyond the words.

 

Q: What dies with death?

 

M: The idea 'I am this body' dies; the witness does not.

 

Q: The Jains believe in a multiplicity of witnesses, forever

separate.

 

M: That is their tradition based on the experience of some great

people. The one witness reflects itself in the countless bodies as 'I

am'. As long as the bodies, however subtle, last, the 'I am' appears

as many. Beyond the body there is only the One.

 

Q: God?

 

M: The Creator is a person whose body is the world. The Nameless one

is beyond all gods.

 

Q: Sri Ramana Maharshi died. What difference did it make to him?

 

M: None. What he was, he is -- the Absolute Reality.

 

Q: But to the common man death makes a difference.

 

M: What he thinks himself to be before death he continues to be

after death. His self-image survives.

 

Q: The other day there was a talk about the use by the jnani of

animal skins for meditation etc. I was not convinced. It is easy to

justify everything by referring to custom and tradition. Customs may

be cruel and tradition corrupt. They explain, but do not justify.

 

M: I never meant to say that lawlessness follows self-realisation. A

liberated man is extremely law-abiding. But his laws are the laws of

his real self, not of his society. These he observes, or breaks

according to circumstances and necessity. But he will never be

fanciful and disorderly.

 

Q: What I cannot accept is justification by custom and habit.

 

M: The difficulty lies in our differing points of view. You speak

from the body-mind's. Mine is of the witness. The difference is basic.

 

Q: Still, cruelty is cruelty

 

M: None compels you to be cruel.

 

Q: Taking advantage of other people's cruelty is cruelty by proxy.

 

M: If you look into living process closely, you will find cruelty

everywhere, for life feeds on life. This is a fact, but it does not

make you feel guilty of being alive. You began a life of cruelty by

giving your mother endless trouble. To the last day of your life you

will compete for food, clothing, shelter, holding on to your body,

fighting for its needs, wanting it to be secure, in a world of

insecurity and death. From the animal's point of view being killed is

not the worst form of dying; surely preferable to sickness and senile

decay. The cruelty lies in the motive, not in the fact. Killing hurts

the killer, not the killed.

 

Q: Agreed; then one must not accept the services of hunters and

butchers.

 

M: Who wants you to accept?

 

Q: You accept.

 

M: That is how you see me! How quickly you accuse, condemn, sentence

and execute! Why begin with me and not with yourself?

 

Q: A man like you should set an example.

 

M: Are you ready to follow my example? I am dead to the world, I

want nothing, not even to live. Be as I am, do as I do. You are

judging me by my clothes and food; while I only look at your motives;

if you believe to be the body and the mind and act on it you are

guilty of the greatest cruelty -- cruelty to your own real being.

Compared to it all other cruelties do not count.

 

Q; You are taking refuge in the claim that you are not the body. But

you are in control of the body and responsible for all it does. To

allow the body full autonomy would be imbecility, madness!

 

M: Cool down. I am also against all killing of animals for flesh or

fur, but I refuse to give it first place. Vegetarianism is a worthy

cause, but not the most urgent; all causes are served best by the man

who has returned to his source.

 

Q: When I was at Sri Ramanashram, I felt Bhagwan all over the

place, all-pervading, all-perceiving.

 

M: You had the necessary faith. Those who have true faith in him

will see him everywhere and at all times. All happens according to

your faith and your faith is the shape of your desire.

 

Q: The faith you have in yourself, is not that too a shape of a

desire?

 

M: When I say: 'I am', I do not mean a separate entity with a body

as its nucleus. I mean the totality of being, the ocean of

consciousness, the entire universe of all that is and knows. I have

nothing to desire for I am complete forever.

 

Q: Can you touch the inner life of other people?

 

M: I am the people.

 

Q: I do not mean identity of essence or substance, nor similarity

of form. I mean the actual entering into the minds and hearts of

others and participating in their personal experiences. Can you

suffer and rejoice with me, or you only infer what I feel from

observation and analogy?

 

M: All beings are in me. But bringing down into the brain the

content of another brain requires special training. There is nothing

that cannot be achieved by training.

 

Q: I am not your projection, nor are you mine. I am on my own

right, not merely as your creation. This crude philosophy of

imagination and projection does not appeal to me. You are depriving

me of all reality. Who is the image of whom? You are my image or am I

yours. Or am I an image in my own image! No, something is wrong

somewhere.

 

M: Words betray their hollowness. The real cannot be described, it

must be experienced. I cannot find better words for what I am now.

What I say may sound ridiculous. But what the words try to convey is

the highest truth. All is one, however much we quibble. And all is

done to please the one source and goal of every desire. whom we all

know as the 'I am'.

 

Q: It is pain that is at the root of desire. The basic urge is to

escape from pain.

 

M: What is the root of pain? Ignorance of yourself. What is the root

of desire? The urge to find yourself. All creation toils for its self

and will not rest until it returns to it.

 

Q: When will it return?

 

M: It can return whenever you want it.

 

Q: And the world?

 

M: You can take it with you.

 

Q: Must I wait with helping the world until I reach perfection?

 

M: By all means help the world. You will not help much, but the

effort will make you grow. There is nothing wrong in trying to help

the world.

 

Q: Surely there were people, common people, who helped greatly.

 

M: When the time comes for the world to be helped, some people are

given the will, the wisdom and the power to cause great changes.

 

37. Beyond Pain and Pleasure there is Bliss

Maharaj: You must realise first of all that you are the proof of

everything, including yourself. None can prove your existence,

because his existence must be confirmed by you first. Your being and

knowing you owe nobody. Remember, you are entirely on your own. You

do not come from somewhere, you do not go anywhere. You are timeless

being and awareness.

 

Questioner: There is a basic difference between us. You know the real

while I know only the workings of my mind. Therefore what you say is

one thing, what I hear is another. What you say is true; what I

understand is false, though the words are the same. There is a gap

between us. How to close the gap?

 

M: Give up the idea of being what you think yourself to be and there

will be no gap. By imagining yourself as separate you have created

the gap. You need not cross it. Just don't create it. All is you and

yours. There is nobody else. This is a fact.

 

Q: How strange! The very same words which to you are true, to me

are false. 'There is nobody else'. How obviously untrue!

 

M: Let them be true or untrue. Words don't matter. What matters is

the idea you have of yourself, for it blocks you. Give it up.

 

Q: From early childhood I was taught to think that I am limited to

my name and shape. A mere statement to the contrary will not erase

the mental groove. A regular brain-washing is needed -- if at all it

can be done.

 

M: You call it brain-washing, I call it Yoga -- levelling up all the

mental ruts. You must not be compelled to think the same thoughts

again and again. Move on!

 

Q: Easier said than done.

 

M: Don't be childish! Easier to change, than to suffer. Grow out of

your childishness, that is all.

 

Q: Such things are not done. They happen.

 

M: Everything happens all the time, but you must be ready for it.

Readiness is ripeness. You do not see the real because your mind is

not ready for it.

 

Q: If reality is my real nature, how can I ever be unready?

 

M: Unready means afraid. You are afraid of what you are. Your

destination is the whole. But you are afraid that you will lose your

identity. This is childishness, clinging to the toys, to your desires

and fears, opinions and ideas. Give it all up and be ready for the

real to assert itself. This self-assertion is best expressed in

words: 'I am'. Nothing else has being. Of this you are absolutely

certain

 

Q: 'I am', of course, but 'I know' also. And I know that I am so

and so, the owner of the body, in manifold relations with other

owners.

 

M: It is all memory carried over into the now.

 

Q: I can be certain only of what is now. Past and future, memory

and imagination, these are mental states, but they are all I know and

they are now. You are telling me to abandon them. How does one

abandon the now?

 

M: You are moving into the future all the time whether you like it

or not.

 

Q: I am moving from now into now -- I do not move at all.

Everything else moves -- not me.

 

M: Granted. But your mind does move. In the now you are both the

movable and the immovable. So far you took yourself to be the movable

and overlooked the immovable. Turn your mind inside out. Overlook the

movable and you will find yourself to be the ever-present, changeless

reality, inexpressible, but solid like a rock.

 

Q: If it is now, why am I not aware of it?

 

M: Because you hold on to the idea that you are not aware of it. Let

go the idea.

 

Q: It does not make me aware.

 

M: Wait. You want to be on both sides of the wall at the same time.

You can, but you must remove the wall. Or realise that the wall and

both sides of it are one single space, to which no idea like 'here'

or 'there' applies.

 

Q: Similes prove nothing. My only complaint is this: why do I not

see what you see, why your words do not sound true in my mind. Let me

know this much; all else can wait. You are wise and I am stupid; you

see, I don't. Where and how shall I find my wisdom?

 

M: If you know yourself to be stupid, you are not stupid at all!

 

Q: Just as knowing myself sick does not make me well, so knowing

myself foolish can not make me wise.

 

M: To know that you are ill must you not be well initially?

 

Q: Oh, no. I know by comparison. If I am blind from birth and you

tell me that you know things without touching them, while I must

touch to know, I am aware that I am blind without knowing what does

it mean to see. Similarly, I know that I am lacking something when

you assert things which I cannot grasp. You are telling me such

wonderful things about myself; according to you I am eternal,

omnipresent, omniscient, supremely happy, creator, preserver and

destroyer of all there is, the source of all life, the heart of

being, the lord and the beloved of every creature. You equate me with

the Ultimate Reality, the source and the goal of all existence. I

just blink, for I know myself to be a tiny little bundle of desires

and fears, a bubble of suffering, a transient flash of consciousness

in an ocean of darkness.

 

M: Before pain was, you were. After pain had gone, you remained.

Pain is transient, you are not.

 

Q: I am sorry, but I do not see what you see. From the day I was

born till the day I die, pain and pleasure will weave the pattern of

my life. Of being before birth and after death I know nothing. I

neither accept nor deny you. I hear what you say, but I do not know

it.

 

M: Now you are conscious, are you not?

 

Q: Please do not ask me about before and after. I just know only

what is now.

 

M: Good enough. You are conscious. Hold on to it. There are states

when you are not conscious. Call it unconscious being.

 

Q: Being unconscious?

 

M: Consciousness and unconsciousness do not apply here. Existence is

in consciousness, essence is independent of consciousness.

 

Q: It is void? Is it silence?

 

M: Why elaborate? Being pervades and transcends consciousness.

Objective consciousness is a part of pure consciousness, not beyond

it.

 

Q: How do you come to know a state of pure being which is neither

conscious nor unconscious? All knowledge is in consciousness only.

There may be such a state as the abeyance of the mind. Does

consciousness then appear as the witness?

 

M: The witness only registers events. In the abeyance of the mind

even the sense 'I am' dissolves. There is no 'I am' without the mind.

 

Q: Without the mind means without thoughts. 'I am' as a thought

subsides. 'I am' as the sense of being remains.

 

M: All experience subsides with the mind. Without the mind there can

be no experiencer nor experience.

 

Q: Does not the witness remain?

 

M: The witness merely registers the presence or absence of

experience. It is not an experience by itself, but it becomes an

experience when the thought: 'I am the witness' arises.

 

Q: All I know is that sometimes the mind works and sometimes it

stops. The experience of mental silence I call the abeyance of the

mind.

 

M: Call it silence, or void, or abeyance, the fact is that the

three -- experiencer, experiencing, experience -- are not. In

witnessing, in awareness, self-consciousness, the sense of being this

or that, is not. Unidentified being remains.

 

Q: As a state of unconsciousness?

 

M: With reference to anything, it is the opposite. It is also

between and beyond all opposites. It is neither consciousness nor

unconsciousness, nor midway, nor beyond the two. It is by itself, not

with reference to anything which may be called experience or its

absence.

 

Q: How strange! You speak of it as if it were an experience.

 

M: When I think of it -- it becomes an experience.

 

Q: Like the invisible light, intercepted by a flower, becoming

colour?

 

M: Yes, you may say so. It is in the colour but not the colour.

 

Q: The same old four-fold negation of Nagarjuna: neither this nor

that, nor both, nor either. My mind reels!

 

M: Your difficulty stems from the idea that reality is a state of

consciousness, one among many. You tend to say: " This is real. That

is not real. And this is partly real, partly unreal " , as if reality

were an attribute or quality to have in varying measures.

 

Q: Let me put it differently. After all, consciousness becomes a

problem only when it is painful. An ever-blissful state does not give

rise to questions. We find all consciousness to be a mixture of the

pleasant and the painful. Why?

 

M: All consciousness is limited and therefore painful. At the root

of consciousness lies desire, the urge to experience.

 

Q: Do you mean to say that without desire there can be no

consciousness? And what is the advantage of being unconscious? If I

have to forego pleasure for the freedom from pain, I better keep both.

 

M: Beyond pain and pleasure there is bliss.

 

Q: Unconscious bliss, of what use is it?

 

M: Neither conscious nor unconscious. Real.

 

Q: What is your objection to consciousness?

 

M: It is a burden. Body means burden. Sensations, desires, thoughts -

- these are all burdens. All consciousness is of conflict.

 

Q: Reality is described as true being, pure consciousness, infinite

bliss. What has pain to do with it?

 

M: Pain and pleasure happen, but pain is the price of pleasure,

pleasure is the reward of pain. In life too you often please by

hurting and hurt by pleasing. To know that pain and pleasure are one

is peace.

 

Q: All this is very interesting, no doubt, but my goal is more

simple. I want more pleasure and less pain in life. What am I to do?

 

M: As long as there is consciousness, there must be pleasure and

pain. It is in the nature of the 'I am', of consciousness, to

identify itself with the opposites.

 

Q: Then of what use is all this to me? It does not satisfy.

 

M: Who are you, who is unsatisfied?

 

Q: I am, the pain-pleasure man.

 

M: Pain and pleasure are both ananda (bliss). Here I am sitting in

front of you and telling you -- from my own immediate and unchanging

experience -- pain and pleasure are the crests and valleys of the

waves in the ocean of bliss. Deep down there is utter fullness.

 

Q: Is your experience constant?

 

M: It is timeless and changeless.

 

Q: All I know is desire for pleasure and fear of pain.

 

M: That is what you think about yourself. Stop it. If you cannot

break a habit all at once, consider the familiar way of thinking and

see its falseness. Questioning the habitual is the duty of the mind.

What the mind created, the mind must destroy. Or realise that there

is no desire outside the mind and stay out.

 

Q: Honestly, I distrust this explaining everything as mind-made.

The mind is only an instrument, as the eye is an instrument. Can you

say that perception is creation? I see the world through the window,

not in the window. All you say holds well together because of the

common foundation, but I do not know whether your foundation is in

reality, or only in the mind. I can have only a mental picture of it.

What it means to you I do not know.

 

M: As long as you take your stand in the mind, you will see me in

the mind.

 

Q: How inadequate are words for understanding!

 

M: Without words, what is there to understand? The need for

understanding arises from mis-understanding. What I say is true, but

to you it is only a theory. How will you come to know that it is

true? Listen, remember, ponder, visualise, experience. Also apply it

in your daily life. Have patience with me and, above all have

patience with yourself, for you are your only obstacle. The way leads

through yourself beyond yourself. As long as you believe only the

particular to be real, conscious and happy and reject the non-dual

reality as something imagined, an abstract concept, you will find me

doling out concepts and abstractions. But once you have touched the

real within your own being, you will find me describing what for you

is the nearest and the dearest.

 

38. Spiritual Practice is Will Asserted and Re-asserted

Questioner: The Westerners who occasionally come to see you are faced

with a peculiar difficulty. The very notion of a liberated man, a

realised man, a self-knower, a God-knower, a man beyond the world, is

unknown to them. All they have in their Christian culture is the idea

of a saint: a pious man, law-abiding, God-fearing, fellow-loving,

prayerful, sometimes prone to ecstasies and confirmed by a few

miracles. The very idea of a jnani is foreign to Western culture,

something exotic and rather unbelievable. Even when his existence is

accepted, he is looked at with suspicion, as a case of self-induced

euphoria caused by strange physical postures and mental attitudes.

The very idea of a new dimension in consciousness seems to them

implausible and improbable.

 

What will help them is the opportunity of hearing a jnani relate his

own experience of realisation, its causes and beginnings, its

progress and attainments and its actual practice in daily life. Much

of what he says may remain strange, even meaningless, yet there will

remain a feeling of reality, an atmosphere of actual experiencing,

ineffable, yet very real, a centre from which an exemplary life can

be lived.

 

Maharaj: The experience may be incommunicable. Can one communicate an

experience?

 

Q: Yes, if one is an artist. The essence of art is communication of

feeling, of experience.

 

M: To receive communication, you must be receptive.

 

Q: Of course. There must be a receiver. But if the transmitter does

not transmit, of what use is the receiver?

 

M: The jnani belongs to all. He gives himself tirelessly and

completely to whoever comes to him. If he is not a giver, he is not a

jnani. Whatever he has, he shares.

 

Q: But can he share what he is?

 

M: You mean, can he make others into jnanis? Yes and no. No, since

jnanis are not made, they realise themselves as such, when they

return to their source, their real nature. I cannot make you into

what you already are. All I can tell you is the way I travelled and

invite you to take it.

 

Q: This does not answer my question. I have in mind the critical

and sceptical Westerner who denies the very possibility of higher

states of consciousness. Recently drugs have made a breach in his

disbelief, without affecting his materialistic outlook. Drugs or no

drugs, the body remains the primary fact and the mind is secondary.

Beyond the mind, they see nothing. From Buddha onwards the state of

self-realisation was described in negative terms, as 'not this, not

that'. Is it inevitable? Is it not possible to illustrate it, if not

describe. I admit, no verbal description will do, when the state

described is beyond words. Yet it is also within words. Poetry is the

art of putting into words the inexpressible.

 

M: There is no lack of religious poets. Turn to them for what you

want. As far as I am concerned, my teaching is simple: trust me for a

while and do what I tell you. If you persevere, you will find that

your trust was justified.

 

Q: And what to do with people who are interested, but cannot trust?

 

M: If they could stay with me, they would come to trust me. Once

they trust me, they will follow my advice and discover for themselves.

 

Q: It is not for the training that I am asking just now, but for

its results. You had both. You are willing to tell us all about the

training, but when it comes to results, you refuse to share. Either

you tell us that your state is beyond words, or that there is no

difference; that where we see a difference, you see none. In both

cases we are left without any insight into your state.

 

M: How can you have insight into my state when you are without

insight into your own? When the very instrument of insight is

lacking, is it not important to find it first? It is like a blind man

wanting to learn painting before he regains his eyesight. You want to

know my state -- but do you know the state of your wife or servant?

 

Q: I am asking for some hints only.

 

M: Well, I gave you a very significant clue -- where you see

differences, I don't. To me it is enough. If you think it is not

enough, I can only repeat; it is enough. Think it out deeply and you

will come to see what I see. You seem to want instant insight,

forgetting that the instant is always preceded by a long preparation.

The fruit falls suddenly, but the ripening takes time. After all,

when I talk of trusting me, it is only for a short time, just enough

time to start you moving. The more earnest you are, the less belief

you need, for soon you will find your faith in me justified. You want

me to prove to you that I am trustworthy! How can I and why should l?

After all, what I am offering you is the operational approach, so

current in Western science. When a scientist describes an experiment

and its results, usually you accept his statements on trust and

repeat his experiment as he describes it. Once you get the same or

similar results, you need not trust him any more; you trust your own

experience. Encouraged, you proceed and arrive in the end at

substantially identical results.

 

Q: The Indian mind was made ready for metaphysical experiments by

culture and nurture. To the Indian words like 'direct perception of

the Supreme Reality' make sense and bring out responses from the very

depths of his being. They mean little to a Westerner; even when

brought up in his own variety of Christianity, he does not think

beyond conformity with God's commandments and Christ's injunctions.

First-hand knowledge of reality is not only beyond ambition, but also

beyond conceiving. Some Indians tell me: 'Hopeless. The Westerner

will not, for he cannot. Tell him nothing about self-realisation; let

him live a useful life and earn a rebirth in India. Then only will he

have a chance'. Some say: 'Reality is for all equally, but not all

are equally endowed with the capacity to grasp it. The capacity will

come with desire, which will grow into devotion and ultimately into

total self-dedication. With integrity and earnestness and iron

determination to overcome all obstacles, the Westerner has the same

chance as the Oriental man. All he needs is the rousing of interest'.

To rouse his interest in self-knowledge he needs to be convinced

about its advantages.

 

M: You believe it is possible to transmit a personal experience?

 

Q: I do not know. You speak of unity, identity of the seer with the

seen. When all is one, communication should be feasible.

 

M: To have the direct experience of a country one must go and live

there. Don't ask for the impossible. A man's spiritual victory no

doubt benefits mankind, but to benefit another individual, a close

personal relation is required. Such relation is not accidental and

not everybody can claim it. On the other hand, the scientific

approach is for all. 'Trust-test-taste'. What more do you need? Why

push the Truth down unwilling throats? It cannot be done, anyhow.

Without a receiver what can the giver do?

 

Q: The essence of art is to use the outer form to convey an inner

experience. Of course, one must be sensitive to the inner, before the

outer can be meaningful. How does one grow in sensitivity?

 

M: Whichever way you put it, it comes to the same. Givers there are

many; where are the takers?

 

Q: Can you not share your own sensitivity?

 

M: Yes, I can, but sharing is a two-way street. Two are needed in

sharing. Who is willing to take what I am willing to give?

 

Q: You say we are one. Is this not enough?

 

M: I am one with you. Are you one with me? If you are, you will not

ask questions. If you are not, if you do not see what I see, what can

I do beyond showing you the way to improve your vision?

 

Q: What you cannot give is not your own.

 

M: I claim nothing as my own. When the 'I' is not, where is

the 'mine'?. Two people look at a tree. One sees the fruit hidden

among the leaves and the other does not. Otherwise there is no

difference between the two. The one that sees knows that with a

little attention the other will also see, but the question of sharing

does not arise. Believe me, I am not close-fisted, holding back your

share of reality. On the contrary, I am all yours, eat me and drink

me. But while you repeat verbally: 'give, give', you do nothing to

take what is offered. I am showing you a short and easy way to being

able to see what I see, but you cling to your old habits of thought,

feeling and action and put all the blame on me. I have nothing which

you do not have. Self-knowledge is not a piece of property to be

offered and accepted. It is a new dimension altogether, where there

is nothing to give or take.

 

Q: Give us at least some insight into the content of your mind

while you live your daily life. To eat, to drink, to talk, to sleep --

how does it feel at your end?

 

M: The common things of life: I experience them just as you do. The

difference lies in what I do not experience. I do not experience fear

or greed, hate or anger. I ask nothing, refuse nothing, keep nothing.

In these matters I do not compromise. Maybe this is the outstanding

difference between us. I will not compromise, I am true to myself,

while you are afraid of reality.

 

Q: From the Westerner's point of view there is something disturbing

in your ways. To sit in a corner all by oneself and keep on

repeating: 'I am God, God I am', appears to be plain madness. How to

convince a Westerner that such practices lead to supreme sanity?

 

M: The man who claims to be God and the man who doubts it -- both

are deluded. They talk in their dream.

 

Q: If all is dreaming, what is waking?

 

M: How to describe the waking state in dreamland language? Words do

not describe, they are only symbols.

 

Q: Again the same excuse that words cannot convey reality.

 

M: If you want words, I shall give you some of the ancient words of

power. Repeat any of them ceaselessly; they can work wonders.

 

Q: Are you serious? Would you tell a Westerner to repeat 'Om'

or 'Ram' or 'Hare Krishna' ceaselessly, though he lacks completely

the faith and conviction born of the right cultural and religious

background. Without confidence and fervour, repeating mechanically

the same sounds, will he ever achieve anything?

 

M: Why not? It is the urge, the hidden motive that matters, not the

shape it takes. Whatever he does, if he does it for the sake of

finding his own real self, will surely bring him to himself.

 

Q: No need of faith in the efficacy of the means?

 

M: No need of faith which is but expectation of results. Here the

action only counts. Whatever you do for the sake of truth, will take

you to truth. Only be earnest and honest. The shape it takes hardly

matters.

 

Q: Then where is the need of giving expression to one's longing?

 

M: No need. Doing nothing is as good. Mere longing, undiluted by

thought and action, pure, concentrated longing, will take you

speedily to your goal. It is the true motive that matters, not the

manner.

 

Q: Unbelievable! How can dull repetition in boredom verging on

despair, be effective?

 

M: The very facts of repetition, of struggling on and on and of

endurance and perseverance, in spite of boredom and despair and

complete lack of conviction are really crucial. They are not

important by themselves, but the sincerity behind them is all-

important. There must be a push from within and pull from without.

 

Q: My questions are typical of the West. There people think in

terms of cause and effect, means and goals. They do not see what

causal connection can there be between a particular word and the

Absolute Reality.

 

M: None whatsoever. But there is a connection between the word and

its meaning, between the action and its motive. Spiritual practice is

will asserted and re-asserted. Who has not the daring will not accept

the real even when offered. Unwillingness born out of fear is the

only obstacle.

 

Q: What is there to be afraid of?

 

M: The unknown. The not-being, not-knowing, not-doing. The beyond.

 

Q: You mean to say that while you can share the manner of your

achievement, you cannot share the fruits?

 

M: Of course I can share the fruits and I am doing so all the time.

But mine is a silent language. Learn to listen and understand.

 

Q: I do not see how one can begin without conviction.

 

M: Stay with me for some time, or give your mind to what I say and

do and conviction will dawn.

 

Q: Not everybody has the chance of meeting you.

 

M: Meet your own self. Be with your own self, listen to it, obey it,

cherish it, keep it in mind ceaselessly. You need no other guide. As

long as your urge for truth affects your daily life, all is well with

you. Live your life without hurting anybody. Harmlessness is a most

powerful form of Yoga and it will take you speedily to your goal.

This is what I call nisarga yoga, the Natural yoga. It is the art of

living in peace and harmony, in friendliness and love. The fruit of

it is happiness, uncaused and endless.

 

Q: Still, all this presupposes some faith.

 

M: Turn within and you will come to trust yourself. In everything

else confidence comes with experience.

 

Q: When a man tells me that he knows something I do not know, I

have the right to ask: 'what is if that you know, that I do not know?'

 

M: And if he tells you that it cannot be conveyed in words?

 

Q: Then I watch him closely and try to make out.

 

M: And this is exactly what I want you to do! Be interested, give

attention, until a current of mutual understanding is established.

Then the sharing will be easy. As a matter of fact, all realisation

is only sharing. You enter a wider consciousness and share in it.

Unwillingness to enter and to share is the only hindrance. I never

talk of differences, for to me there are none. You do, so it is up to

you to show them to me. By all means, show me the differences. For

this you will have to understand me, but then you will no longer talk

of differences. Understand one thing well, and you have arrived. What

prevents you from knowing is not the lack of opportunity, but the

lack of ability to focus in your mind what you want to understand. If

you could but keep in mind what you do not know, it would reveal to

you its secrets. But if you are shallow and impatient, not earnest

enough to look and wait, you are like a child crying for the moon.

 

39. By Itself Nothing has Existence

Questioner: As I listen to you I find that it is useless to ask you

questions. Whatever the question, you invariably turn it upon itself

and bring me to the basic fact that I am living in an illusion of my

own making and that reality is inexpressible in words. Words merely

add to the confusion and the only wise course is the silent search

within.

 

Maharaj: After all, it is the mind that creates illusion and it is

the mind that gets free of it. Words may aggravate illusion, words

may also help dispel it. There is nothing wrong in repeating the same

truth again and again until it becomes reality. Mother's work is not

over with the birth of the child. She feeds it day after day, year

after year until it needs her no longer. People need hearing words,

until facts speak to them louder than words.

 

Q: So we are children to be fed on words?

 

M: As long as you give importance to words, you are children.

 

Q: All right, then be our mother.

 

M: Where was the child before it was born? Was it not with the

mother? Because it was already with the mother it could be born.

 

Q: Surely, the mother did not carry the child when she was a child

herself.

 

M: Potentially, she was the mother. Go beyond the illusion of time.

 

Q: Your answer is always the same. A kind of clockwork which

strikes the same hours again and again.

 

M: It can not be helped. Just like the one sun is reflected in a

billion dew drops, so is the timeless endlessly repeated. When l

repeat: 'I am, I am', I merely assert and re-assert an ever-present

fact. You get tired of my words because you do not see the living

truth behind them. Contact it and you will find the full meaning of

words and of silence -- both.

 

Q: You say that the little girl is already the mother of her future

child. Potentially -- yes. Actually -- no.

 

M: The potential becomes actual by thinking. The body and its

affairs exist in the mind.

 

Q: And the mind is consciousness in motion and consciousness is the

conditioned (saguna) aspect of the Self. The unconditioned (nirguna)

is another aspect and beyond lies the abyss of the absolute

(paramartha).

 

M: Quite right -- you have put it beautifully.

 

Q: But these are mere words to me. Hearing and repeating them is

not enough, they must be experienced.

 

M: Nothing stops you but preoccupation with the outer which prevents

you from focussing the inner. It cannot be helped, you cannot skip

your sadhana. You have to turn away from the world and go within,

until the inner and the outer merge and you can go beyond the

conditioned, whether inner or outer.

 

Q: Surely, the unconditioned is merely an idea in the conditioned

mind. By itself it has no existence.

 

M: By itself nothing has existence. Everything needs its own

absence. To be, is to be distinguishable, to be here and not there,

to be now and not then, to be thus and not otherwise. Like water is

shaped by the container, so is everything determined by conditions

(gunas). As water remains water regardless of the vessels, as light

remains itself regardless of the colours it brings out, so does the

real remain real, regardless of conditions in which it is reflected.

Why keep the reflection only in the focus of consciousness? Why not

the real itself?

 

Q: Consciousness itself is a reflection. How can it hold the real?

 

M: To know that consciousness and its content are but reflections,

changeful and transient, is the focussing of the real. The refusal to

see the snake in the rope is the necessary condition for seeing the

rope.

 

Q: Only necessary, or also sufficient?

 

M: One must also know that a rope exists and looks like a snake.

Similarly, one must know that the real exists and is of the nature of

witness-consciousness. Of course it is beyond the witness, but to

enter it one must first realise the state of pure witnessing. The

awareness of conditions brings one to the unconditioned.

 

Q: Can the unconditioned be experienced?

 

M: To know the conditioned as conditioned is all that can be said

about the unconditioned. Positive terms are mere hints and misleading.

 

Q: Can we talk of witnessing the real?

 

M: How can we? We can talk only of the unreal, the illusory, the

transient, the conditioned. To go beyond, we must pass through total

negation of everything as having independent existence. All things

depend.

 

Q: On what do they depend?

 

M: On consciousness. And consciousness depends on the witness.

 

Q: And the witness depends on the real?

 

M: The witness is the reflection of the real in all its purity. It

depends on the condition of the mind. Where clarity and detachment

predominate, the witness-consciousness comes into being. It is just

like saying that where the water is clear and quiet, the image of the

moon appears. Or like daylight that appears as sparkle in the diamond.

 

Q: Can there be consciousness without the witness?

 

M: Without the witness it becomes unconsciousness, just living. The

witness is latent in every state of consciousness, just like light in

every colour. There can be no knowledge without the knower and no

knower without his witness. Not only you know, but you know that you

know.

 

Q: If the unconditioned cannot be experienced, for all experience

is conditioned, then why talk of it at all?

 

M: How can there be knowledge of the conditioned without the

unconditioned? There must be a source from which all this flows, a

foundation on which all stands. Self-realisation is primarily the

knowledge of one's conditioning and the awareness that the infinite

variety of conditions depends on our infinite ability to be

conditioned and to give rise to variety. To the conditioned mind the

unconditioned appears as the totality as well as the absence of

everything. Neither can be directly experienced, but this does not

make it not-existent.

 

Q: Is it not a feeling?

 

M: A feeling too is a state of mind. Just like a healthy body does

not call for attention, so is the unconditioned free from experience.

Take the experience of death. The ordinary man is afraid to die,

because he is afraid of change. The jnani is not afraid because his

mind is dead already. He does not think: 'I live'. He knows: 'There

is life'. There is no change in it and no death. Death appears to be

a change in time and space. Where there is neither time nor space,

how can there be death? The jnani is already dead to name and shape.

How can their loss affect him? The man in the train travels from

place to place, but the man off the train goes nowhere, for he is not

bound for a destination. He has nowhere to go, nothing to do, nothing

to become. Those who make plans will be born to carry them out. Those

who make no plans need not be born.

 

Q: What is the purpose of pain and pleasure?

 

M: Do they exist by themselves, or only in the mind?

 

Q: Still, they exist. Never mind the mind.

 

M: Pain and pleasure are merely symptoms, the results of wrong

knowledge and wrong feeling. A result cannot have a purpose of its

own.

 

Q: In God's economy everything must have a purpose.

 

M: Do you know God that you talk of him so freely? What is God to

you? A sound, a word on paper, an idea in the mind?

 

Q: By his power I am born and kept alive.

 

M: And suffer, and die. Are you glad?

 

Q: It may be my own fault that I suffer and die. I was created unto

life eternal.

 

M: Why eternal in the future and not in the past. What has a

beginning must have an end. Only the beginningless is endless.

 

Q: God may be a mere concept, a working theory. A very useful

concept all the same!

 

M: For this it must be free of inner contradictions, which is not

the case. Why not work on the theory that you are your own creation

and creator. At least there will be no external God to battle with.

 

Q: This world is so rich and complex -- how could I create it?

 

M: Do you know yourself enough to know what you can do and what you

cannot? You do not know your own powers. You never investigated.

Begin with yourself now.

 

Q: Everybody believes in God.

 

M: To me you are your own God. But if you think otherwise, think to

the end. If there be God, then all is God's and all is for the best.

Welcome all that comes with a glad and thankful heart. And love all

creatures. This too will take you to your Self.

 

40. Only the Self is Real

Maharaj: The world is but a show, glittering and empty. It is, and

yet is not. It is there as long as I want to see it and take part in

it. When I cease caring, it dissolves. It has no cause and serves no

purpose. It just happens when we are absent­minded. It appears exactly

as it looks, but there is no depth in it, nor meaning. Only the

onlooker is real. Call him Self or Atma. To the Self the world is but

a colourful show, which he enjoys as long as it lasts and forgets

when it is over. Whatever happens on the stage makes him shudder in

terror or roll with laughter, yet all the time he is aware that it is

but a show. Without desire or fear he enjoys it, as it happens.

 

Questioner: The person immersed in the world has a life of many

flavours. He weeps, he laughs, loves and hates, desires and fears,

suffers and rejoices. The desireless and fearless jnani, what life

has he? Is he not left high and dry in his aloofness?

 

M: His state is not so desolate. It tastes of the pure, uncaused,

undiluted bliss. He is happy and fully aware that happiness is his

very nature and that he need not do anything, nor strive for anything

to secure it. It follows him, more real than the body, nearer than

the mind itself. You imagine that without cause there can be no

happiness. To me dependence on anything for happiness is utter

misery. Pleasure and pain have causes, while my state is my own,

totally uncaused, independent, unassailable.

 

Q: Like a play on the stage?

 

M: The play was written, planned and rehearsed. The world just

spouts into being out of nothing and returns to nothing.

 

Q: Is there no creator? Was not the world in the mind of Brahma,

before it was created?

 

M: As long as you are outside my state, you will have Creators,

Preservers and Destroyers, but once with me you will know the Self

only and see yourself in all.

 

Q: You function nevertheless.

 

M: When you are giddy, you see the world running circles round you.

Obsessed with the idea of means and end, of work and purpose, you see

me apparently functioning. In reality I only look. Whatever is done,

is done on the stage. Joy and sorrow life and death, they all are

real to the man in bondage; to me they are all in the show, as unreal

as the show itself.

 

I may perceive the world just like you, but you believe to be in it,

while I see it as an iridescent drop in the vast expanse of

consciousness.

 

Q: We are all getting old. Old age is not pleasant -- all aches and

pains, weakness and the approaching end. How does a jnani feel as an

old man? How does his inner self look at his own senility.

 

M: As he gets older he grows more and more happy and peaceful. After

all, he is going home. Like a traveller nearing his destination and

collecting his luggage, he leaves the train without regret.

 

Q: Surely there is a contradiction. We are told the jnani is beyond

all change. His happiness neither grows nor wanes. How can he grow

happier because older, and that in spite of physical weakness and so

on?

 

M: There is no contradiction. The reel of destiny is coming to its

end -- the mind is happy. The mist of bodily existence is lifting --

the burden of the body is growing less from day to day.

 

Q: Let us say, the jnani is ill. He has caught some flu and every

joint aches and burns. What is his state of mind?

 

M: Every sensation is contemplated in perfect equanimity. There is

no desire for it, nor refusal. It is as it is and then he looks at it

with a smile of affectionate detachment.

 

Q: He may be detached from his own suffering, but still it is there.

 

M: It is there, but it does not matter. Whatever state I am in, I

see it as a state of mind to be accepted as it is.

 

Q: Pain is pain. You experience It all the same.

 

M: He who experiences the body, experiences its pains and pleasures.

I am neither the body, nor the experiencer of the body.

 

Q: Let us say you are twenty-five years old. Your marriage is

arranged and performed, and the household duties crowd upon you. How

would you feel?

 

M: Just as I feel now. You keep on insisting that my inner state is

moulded by outer events. It is just not so. Whatever happens, I

remain. At the root of my being is pure awareness, a speck of intense

light. This speck, by its very nature, radiates and creates pictures

in space and events in time -- effortlessly and spontaneously. As

long as it is merely aware there are no problems. But when the

discriminative mind comes into being and creates distinctions,

pleasure and pain arise. During sleep the mind is in abeyance and so

are pain and pleasure. The process of, creation continues, but no

notice is taken. The mind is a form of consciousness, and

consciousness is an aspect of life. Life creates everything but the

Supreme is beyond all.

 

Q: The Supreme is the master and consciousness -- his servant.

 

M: The master is in consciousness, not beyond it. In terms of

consciousness the Supreme is both creation and dissolution,

concretion and abstraction, the focal and the universal. It is also

neither. Words do not reach there, nor mind.

 

Q: The jnani seems to be a very lonely being, all by himself.

 

M: He is alone, but he is all. He is not even a being. He is the

beingness of all beings. Not even that. No words apply. He is what he

is, the ground from which all grows.

 

Q: Are you not afraid to die?

 

M: I shall tell you how my Guru's Guru died. After announcing that

his end was nearing, he stopped eating, without changing the routine

of his daily life. On the eleventh day, at prayer time he was singing

and clapping vigorously and suddenly died! Just like that, between

two movements, like a blown out candle. Everybody dies as he lives. I

am not afraid of death, because I am not afraid of life. I live a

happy life and shall die a happy death. Misery is to be born, not to

die. All depends how you look at it.

 

Q: There can be no evidence of your state. All I know about it is

what you say. All I see is a very interesting old man.

 

M: You are the interesting old man, not me! I was never born. How

can I grow old? What I appear to be to you exists only in your mind.

I am not concerned with it.

 

Q: Even as a dream you are a most unusual dream.

 

M: I am a dream that can wake you up. You will have the proof of it

in your very waking up.

 

Q: Imagine, news reach you that I have died. Somebody tells

you: 'You know so-and-so? He died'. What would be your reaction?

 

M: I would be very happy to have you back home. Really glad to see

you out of this foolishness.

 

Q: Which foolishness?

 

M: Of thinking that you were born and will die, that you are a body

displaying a mind and all such nonsense. In my world nobody is born

and nobody dies. Some people go on a journey and come back, some

never leave. What difference does it make since they travel in dream

lands, each wrapped up in his own dream. Only the waking up is

important. It is enough to know the 'I am' as reality and also love.

 

Q: My approach is not so absolute, hence my question. Throughout

the West people are in search of something real. They turn to

science, which tells them a lot about matter, a little about the mind

and nothing about the nature and purpose of consciousness. To them

reality is objective, outside the observable and describable,

directly or by inference; about the subjective aspect of reality they

know nothing. It is extremely important to let them know that there

is reality and it is to be found in the freedom of consciousness from

matter and its limitations and distortions. Most of the people in the

world just do not know that there is reality which can be found and

experienced in consciousness. It seems very important that they

should hear the good news from somebody who has actually experienced.

Such witnesses have always existed and their testimony is precious.

 

M: Of course. The gospel of self-realisation, once heard, will never

be forgotten. Like a seed left in the ground, it will wait for the

right season and sprout and grow into a mighty tree.

 

41. Develop the Witness Attitude

Questioner: What is the daily and hourly state of mind of a realised

man? How does he see, hear, eat, drink, wake and sleep, work and

rest? What proof is there of his state as different from ours? Apart

from the verbal testimony of the so-called realised people, is there

no way of verifying their state objectively. Are there not some

observable differences in their physiological and nervous responses,

in their metabolism, or brain waves, or in their psychosomatic

structure?

 

Maharaj: You may find differences, or you may not. All depends on

your capacity of observation. The objective differences are however,

the least important. What matters is their outlook, their attitude,

which is that of total detachment, aloofness, standing apart.

 

Q: Does not a jnani feel sorrow when his child dies, does he not

suffer?

 

M: He suffers with those who suffer. The event itself is of little

importance, but he is full of compassion for the suffering being,

whether alive or dead, in the body or out of it. After all, love and

compassion are his very nature. He is one with all that lives and

love is that oneness in action.

 

Q: People are very much afraid of death.

 

M: The jnani is afraid of nothing. But he pities the man who is

afraid. After all to be born, to live and to die is natural. To be

afraid is not. To the event, of course, attention is given.

 

Q: Imagine you are ill -- high fever, aches, shivers. The doctor

tells you the condition is serious, there are only a few days to

live. What would be your first reaction?

 

M: No reaction. As it is natural for the incense stick to burn out,

so it is natural for the body to die. Really, it is a matter of very

little importance. What matters is that I am neither the body nor the

mind. I am.

 

Q: Your family will be desperate, of course. What would you tell

them?

 

M: The usual stuff: fear not, life goes on, God will protect you, we

shall be soon together again and so on. But to me the entire

commotion is meaningless, for I am not the entity that imagines

itself alive or dead. I am neither born nor can I die. I have nothing

to remember or to forget.

 

Q: What about the prayers for the dead?

 

M: By all means pray for the dead. It pleases them very much. They

are flattered. The jnani does not need your prayers. He is himself

the answer to your prayers.

 

Q: How does the jnani fare after death?

 

M: The jnani is dead already. Do you expect him to die again?

 

Q: Surely, the dissolution of the body is an important event even

to a jnani.

 

M: There are no important events for a jnani, except when somebody

reaches the highest goal. Then only his heart rejoices. All else is

of no concern. The entire universe is his body, all life is his life.

As in a city of lights, when one bulb burns out, it does not affect

the network, so the death of a body does not affect the whole

 

Q: The particular may not matter to the whole, but it does matter

to the particular. The whole is an abstraction, the particular, the

concrete, is real.

 

M: That is what you say. To me it may be the other way -- the whole

is real, the part comes and goes. The particular is born and reborn,

changing name and shape, the jnani is the Changeless Reality, which

makes the changeful possible. But he cannot give you the conviction.

It must come with your own experience. With me all is one, all is

equal.

 

Q: Are sin and virtue one and the same?

 

M: These are all man-made values! What are they to me? What ends in

happiness is virtue, what ends in sorrow is sin. Both are states of

mind. Mine is not a State of mind.

 

Q: We are like the blind people at a loss to understand what does

it mean to see.

 

M: You can put it as you like.

 

Q: Is the practice of silence as a sadhana effective?

 

M: Anything you do for the sake of enlightenment takes you nearer.

Anything you do without remembering enlightenment puts you off. But

why complicate? Just know that you are above and beyond all things

and thoughts. What you want to be, you are it already. Just keep it

in mind.

 

Q: I hear you saying it, but I cannot believe.

 

M: I was in the same position myself. But I trusted my Guru and he

proved right. Trust me, if you can. Keep in mind what I tell you:

desire nothing, for you lack nothing. The very seeking prevents you

from finding.

 

Q: You seem to be so very indifferent to everything!

 

M: I am not indifferent, I am impartial. I give no preference to the

me and the mine. A basket of earth and a basket of jewels are both

unwanted. Life and death are all the same to me.

 

Q: Impartiality makes you indifferent.

 

M: On the contrary, compassion and love are my very core. Void of

all predilections, I am free to love.

 

Q: Buddha said that the idea of enlightenment is extremely

important. Most people go through their lives not even knowing that

there is such a thing as enlightenment, leave alone the striving for

it. Once they have heard of it, a seed was sown which cannot die.

Therefore, he would send his bhikhus to preach ceaselessly for eight

months every year.

 

M: 'One can give food, clothes, shelter, knowledge, affection, but

the highest gift is the gospel of enlightenment', my Guru used to

say. You are right, enlightenment is the highest good. Once you have

it, nobody can take it away from you.

 

Q: If you would talk like this in the West, people would take you

for mad.

 

M: Of course, they would! To the ignorant all that they can not

understand is madness. What of it? Let them be as they are. I am as I

am, for no merit of mine and they are as they are, for no fault of

theirs. The Supreme Reality manifests itself in innumerable ways.

Infinite in number are its names and shapes. All arise, all merge in

the same ocean, the source of all is one. Looking for causes and

results is but the pastime of the mind. What is, is lovable. Love is

not a result, it is the very ground of being. Wherever you go, you

will find being, consciousness and love. Why and what for make

preferences?

 

Q: When by natural causes thousands and millions of lives are

extinguished (as it happens in floods and earthquakes), I do not

grieve. But when one man dies at the hand of man, I grieve extremely.

The inevitable has its own majesty, but killing is avoidable and,

therefore, ugly and altogether horrible.

 

M: All happens as it happens. Calamities, whether natural or man-

made, happen, and there is no need to feel horrified.

 

Q: How can anything be without cause?

 

M: In every event the entire universe is reflected. The ultimate

cause is untraceable. The very idea of causation is only a way of

thinking and speaking. We cannot imagine, uncaused emergence. This,

however, does not prove the existence of causation.

 

Q: Nature is mindless, hence irresponsible. But man has a mind. Why

is it so perverse?

 

M: The causes of perversity are also natural -- heredity,

environment and so on. You are too quick to condemn. Do not worry

about others. Deal with your own mind first. When you realise that

your mind too is a part of nature, the duality will cease.

 

Q: There is some mystery in it which I cannot fathom. How can the

mind be a part of nature?

 

M: Because nature is in the mind; without the mind where is nature?

 

Q: If nature is in the mind and the mind is my own, I should be

able to control nature, which is not really the case. Forces beyond

my control determine my behaviour.

 

M: Develop the witness attitude and you will find in your own

experience that detachment brings control. The state of witnessing is

full of power, there is nothing passive about it.

 

42. Reality can not be Expressed

Questioner: I have noticed a new self emerging in me, independent of

the old self. They somehow co-exist. The old self goes on its

habitual ways; the new lets the old be, but does not identify itself

with it.

 

Maharaj: What is the main difference between the old self and the new?

 

Q: The old self wants everything defined and explained. It wants

things to fit each other verbally. The new does not care for verbal

explanations -- it accepts things as they are and does not seek to

relate them to things remembered.

 

M: Are you fully and constantly aware of the difference between the

habitual and the spiritual. What is the attitude of the new self to

the old?

 

Q: The new just looks at the old. It is neither friendly nor

inimical. It just accepts the old self along with everything else. It

does not deny its being, but does not accept its value and validity.

 

M: The new is the total denial of the old. The permissive new is not

really new. It is but a new attitude of the old. The really new

obliterates the old completely. The two cannot be together. Is there

a process of self-denudation, a constant refusal to accept the old

ideas and values, or is there just a mutual tolerance? What is their

relation?

 

Q: There is no particular relation. They co-exist.

 

M: When you talk of the old self and new, whom do you have in mind?

As there is continuity in memory between the two, each remembering

the other, how can you speak of two selves?

 

Q: One is a slave to habits, the other is not. One conceptualises,

the other is free from all ideas.

 

M: Why two selves? Between the bound and the free there can be no

relationship. The very fact of co-existence proves their basic unity.

There is but one self -- it is always now. What you call the other

self -- old or new -- is but a modality, another aspect of the one

self. The self is single. You are that self and you have ideas of

what you have been or will be. But an idea is not the self. Just now,

as you are sitting in front of me, which self are you? The old or the

new?

 

Q: The two are in conflict.

 

M: How can there be conflict between what is and what is not?

Conflict is the characteristic of the old. When the new emerges the

old is no longer. You cannot speak of the new and the conflict in the

same breath. Even the effort of striving for the new self is of the

old. Wherever there is conflict, effort, struggle, striving, longing

for a change, the new is not. To what extent are you free from the

habitual tendency to create and perpetuate conflicts?

 

Q: I cannot say that I am now a different man. But I did discover

new things about myself, states so unlike what I knew before that I

feel justified in calling them new.

 

M: The old self is your own self. The state which sprouts suddenly

and without cause, carries no stain of self; you may call it 'god'.

What is seedless and rootless, what does not sprout and grow, flower

and fruit, what comes into being suddenly and in full glory,

mysteriously and marvellously, you may call that 'god'. It is

entirely unexpected yet inevitable, infinitely familiar yet most

surprising, beyond all hope yet absolutely certain. Because it is

without cause, it is without hindrance. It obeys one law only; the

law of freedom. Anything that implies a continuity, a sequence, a

passing from stage to stage cannot be the real. There is no progress

in reality, it is final, perfect, unrelated.

 

Q: How can I bring it about?

 

M: You can do nothing to bring it about, but you can avoid creating

obstacles. Watch your mind, how it comes into being, how it operates.

As you watch your mind, you discover your self as the watcher. When

you stand motionless, only watching, you discover your self as the

light behind the watcher. The source of light is dark, unknown is the

source of knowledge. That source alone is. Go back to that source and

abide there. It is not in the sky nor in the all-pervading ether. God

is all that is great and wonderful; I am nothing, have nothing, can

do nothing. Yet all comes out of me -- the source is me; the root,

the origin is me.

 

When reality explodes in you, you may call it experience of God. Or,

rather, it is God experiencing you. God knows you when you know

yourself. Reality is not the result of a process; it is an explosion.

It is definitely beyond the mind, but all you can do is to know your

mind well. Not that the mind will help you, but by knowing your mind

you may avoid your mind disabling you. You have to be very alert, or

else your mind will play false with you. It is like watching a thief -

- not that you expect anything from a thief, but you do not want to

be robbed. In the same way you give a lot of attention to the mind

without expecting anything from it.

 

Or, take another example. We wake and we sleep. After a day's work

sleep comes. Now, do I go to sleep or does inadvertence --

characteristic of the sleeping state -- come to me? In other words --

we are awake because we are asleep. We do not wake up into a really

waking state. In the waking state the world emerges due to ignorance

and takes one into a waking-dream state. Both sleep and waking are

misnomers. We are only dreaming. True waking and true sleeping only

the jnani knows. We dream that we are awake, we dream that we are

asleep. The three states are only varieties of the dream state.

Treating everything as a dream liberates. As long as you give reality

to dreams, you are their slave. By imagining that you are born as so-

and-so, you become a slave to the so-and-so. The essence of slavery

is to imagine yourself to be a process, to have past and future, to

have history. In fact, we have no history, we are not a process, we

do not develop, nor decay; also see all as a dream and stay out of it.

 

Q: What benefit do I derive from listening to you?

 

M: I am calling you back to yourself. All I ask you is to look at

yourself, towards yourself, into yourself.

 

Q: To what purpose?

 

M: You live, you feel, you think. By giving attention to your

living, feeling and thinking, you free yourself from them and go

beyond them. Your personality dissolves and only the witness remains.

Then you go beyond the witness. Do not ask how it happens. Just

search within yourself.

 

Q: What makes the difference between the person and the witness?

 

M: Both are modes of consciousness. In one you desire and fear, in

the other you are unaffected by pleasure and pain and are not ruffled

by events. You let them come and go.

 

Q: How does one get established in the higher state, the state of

pure witnessing?

 

M: Consciousness does not shine by itself. It shines by a light

beyond it. Having seen the dreamlike quality of consciousness, look

for the light in which it appears, which gives it being. There is the

content of consciousness as well as the awareness of it.

 

Q: I know and I know that I know.

 

M: Quite so, provided the second knowledge is unconditional and

timeless. Forget the known, but remember that you are the knower.

Don't be all the time immersed in your experiences. Remember that you

are beyond the experience ever unborn and deathless. In remembering

it, the quality of pure knowledge will emerge, the light of

unconditional awareness.

 

Q: At what point does one experience reality?

 

M: Experience is of change, it comes and goes. Reality is not an

event, it cannot be experienced. It is not perceivable in the same

way as an event is perceivable. If you wait for an event to take

place, for the coming of reality, you will wait for ever, for reality

neither comes nor goes. It is to be perceived, not expected. It is

not to be prepared for and anticipated. But the very longing and

search for reality is the movement, operation, action of reality. All

you can do is to grasp the central point, that reality is not an

event and does not happen and whatever happens, whatever comes and

goes, is not reality. See the event as event only, the transient as

transient, experience as mere experience and you have done all you

can. Then you are vulnerable to reality, no longer armoured against

it, as you were when you gave reality to events and experiences. But

as soon as there is some like or dislike, you have drawn a screen.

 

Q: Would you say that reality expresses itself in action rather

than in knowledge? Or, is it a feeling of sorts?

 

M: Neither action, nor feeling, nor thought express reality. There

is no such thing as an expression of reality. You are introducing a

duality where there is none. Only reality is, there is nothing else.

The three states of waking, dreaming and sleeping are not me and I am

not in them. When I die, the world will say -- 'Oh, Maharaj is dead!'

But to me these are words without content; they have no meaning. When

the worship is done before the image of the Guru, all takes place as

if he wakes and bathes and eats and rests, and goes for a stroll and

returns, blesses all and goes to sleep. All is attended to in

minutest details and yet there is a sense of unreality about it all.

So is the case with me. All happens as it needs, yet nothing happens.

I do what seems to be necessary, but at the same time I know that

nothing is necessary, that life itself is only a make-belief.

 

Q: Why then live at all? Why all this unnecessary coming and going,

waking and sleeping, eating and digesting?

 

M: Nothing is done by me, everything just happens I do not expect, I

do not plan, I just watch events happening, knowing them to be unreal.

 

Q: Were you always like this from the first moment of enlightenment?

 

M: The three states rotate as usual -- there is waking and sleeping

and waking again, but they do not happen to me. They just happen. To

me nothing ever happens. There is something changeless, motionless,

immovable, rocklike, unassailable; a solid mass of pure being-

consciousness-bliss. I am never out of it. Nothing can take me out of

it, no torture, no calamity.

 

Q: Yet, you are conscious!

 

M: Yes and no. There is peace -- deep, immense, unshakeable. Events

are registered in memory, but are of no importance. I am hardly aware

of them.

 

Q: If I understand you rightly, this state did not come by

cultivation.

 

M: There was no coming. It was so -- always. There was discovery and

it was sudden. Just as at birth you discover the world suddenly, as

suddenly I discovered my real being.

 

Q: Was it clouded over and your sadhana dissolved the mist? When

your true state became clear to you, did it remain clear, or did it

get obscured again? Is your condition permanent or intermittent?

 

M: Absolutely steady. Whatever I may do, it stays like a rock --

motionless. Once you have awakened into reality, you stay in it. A

child does not return to the womb! It is a simple state, smaller than

the smallest, bigger than the biggest. It is self-evident and yet

beyond description.

 

Q: Is there a way to it?

 

M: Everything can become a way, provided you are interested. Just

puzzling over my words and trying to grasp their full meaning is a

sadhana quite sufficient for breaking down the wall. Nothing troubles

me. I offer no resistance to trouble -- therefore it does not stay

with me. On your side there is so much trouble. On mine there is no

trouble at all. Come to my side. You are trouble-prone. I am immune.

Anything may happen -- what is needed is sincere interest.

Earnestness does it.

 

Q: Can I do it?

 

M: Of course. You are quite capable of crossing over. Only be

sincere.

 

43. Ignorance can be Recognised, not Jnana

Questioner: From year to year your teaching remains the same. There

seems to be no progress in what you tell us.

 

Maharaj: In a hospital the sick are treated and get well. The

treatment is routine, with hardly any change, but there is nothing

monotonous about health. My teaching may be routine, but the fruit of

it is new from man to man.

 

Q: What is realisation? Who is a realised man? By what is the jnani

recognised?

 

M: There are no distinctive marks of jnana. Only ignorance can be

recognised, not jnana. Nor does a jnani claim to be something

special. AII those who proclaim their own greatness and uniqueness

are not jnanis. They are mistaking some unusual development for

realisation. The jnani shows no tendency to proclaim himself to be a

jnani. He considers himself to be perfectly normal, true to his real

nature. Proclaiming oneself to be an omnipotent, omniscient and

omnipotent deity is a clear sign of ignorance.

 

Q: Can the jnani convey his experience to the ignorant? Can jnana

be transmitted from one man to another?

 

M: Yes, it can. The words of a jnani have the power of dispelling

ignorance and darkness in the mind. It is not the words that matter,

but the power behind them.

 

Q: What is that power?

 

M: The power of conviction, based on personal realisation, on one's

own direct experience.

 

Q: Some realised people say that knowledge must be won, not got.

Another can only teach, but the learning is one's own.

 

M: It comes to the same.

 

Q: There are many who have practiced Yoga for years and years

without any result. What may be the cause of their failure?

 

M: Some are addicted to trances, with their consciousness in

abeyance. Without full consciousness what progress can there be?

 

Q: Many are practicing samadhis (states of rapturous absorption).

In samadhis consciousness is quite intense, yet they do not result in

anything.

 

M: What results do you expect? And why should jnana be the result of

anything? One thing leads to another, but jnana is not a thing to be

bound by causes and results. It is beyond causality altogether. It is

abidance in the self. The Yogi comes to know many wonders, but of the

self he remains ignorant. The jnani may look and feel quite ordinary,

but the self he knows well.

 

Q: There are many who strive for self-knowledge earnestly, but with

scant results. What may be the cause of it?

 

M: They have not investigated the sources of knowledge sufficiently,

their sensations, feelings and thoughts they do not know well enough.

This may be one cause of delay. The other: some desires may still be

alive.

 

Q: Ups and downs in sadhana are inevitable. Yet the earnest seeker

plods on in spite of all. What can the jnani do for such a seeker?

 

M: If the seeker is earnest, the light can be given. The light is

for all and always there, but the seekers are few, and among those

few, those who are ready are very rare. Ripeness of heart and mind is

indispensable.

 

Q: Did you get your own realisation through effort or by the grace

of your Guru?

 

M: His was the teaching and mine was the trust. My confidence in him

made me accept his words as true, go deep into them, live them, and

that is how I came to realise what I am. The Guru's person and words

made me trust him and my trust made them fruitful.

 

Q: But can a Guru give realisation without words, without trust,

just like this, without any preparation?

 

M: Yes, one can, but where is the taker? You see, I was so attuned

to my Guru, so completely trusting him. there was so little of

resistance in me, that it all happened easily and quickly. But not

everybody is so fortunate. Laziness and restlessness often stand in

the way and until they are seen and removed, the progress is slow.

All those who have realised on the spot, by mere touch, look or

thought, have been ripe for it. But such are very few. The majority

needs some time for ripening. Sadhana is accelerated ripening.

 

Q: What makes one ripe? What is the ripening factor?

 

M: Earnestness of course, one must be really anxious. After all, the

realised man is the most earnest man. Whatever he does, he does it

completely, without limitations and reservations. Integrity will take

you to reality.

 

Q: Do you love the world?

 

M: When you are hurt, you cry. Why? Because you love yourself. Don't

bottle up your love by limiting it to the body, keep it open. It will

be then the love for all. When all the false self­identifications are

thrown away, what remains is all-embracing love. Get rid of all ideas

about yourself, even of the idea that you are God. No self-definition

is valid.

 

Q: I am tired of promises. I am tired of sadhanas, which take all

my time and energy and bring nothing. I want reality here and now.

Can I have it?

 

M: Of course you can, provided you are really fed up with

everything, including your sadhanas. When you demand nothing of the

world, nor of God, when you want nothing, seek nothing, expect

nothing then the Supreme State will come to you uninvited and

unexpected!

 

Q: If a man engrossed in family life and in the affairs of the

world does his sadhana strictly as prescribed by his scriptures, will

he get results?

 

M: Results he will get, but he will be wrapped up in them like in a

cocoon.

 

Q: So many saints say that when you are ripe and ready, you will

realise. Their words may be true, but they are of little use. There

must be a way out, independent of ripening which needs time, of

sadhana which needs effort.

 

M: Don't call it a way; it is more a kind of skill. It is not even

that. Stay open and quiet, that is all. What you seek is so near you,

that there is no place for a way.

 

Q: There are so many ignorant people in the world and so few

jnanis. What may be the cause of it?

 

M: Don't concern yourself with others, take care of yourself. You

know that you are. Don't burden yourself with names, just be. Any

name or shape you give yourself obscures your real nature.

 

Q: Why should seeking end before one can realise?

 

M: The desire for truth is the highest of all desires, yet, it is

still a desire. All desires must be given up to the real to be.

Remember that you are. This is your working capital. Rotate it and

there will be much profit.

 

Q: Why should there be seeking at all.

 

M: Life is seeking, one cannot help seeking. When all search ceases,

it is the Supreme State.

 

Q: Why does the Supreme State come and go?

 

M: It neither comes nor goes. It is.

 

Q: Do you speak from your own experience?

 

M: Of course. It is a timeless state, ever present.

 

Q: With me it comes and goes, with you it does not. Why this

difference?

 

M: Maybe because I have no desires. Or you do not desire the Supreme

strongly enough. You must feel desperate when your mind is out of

touch.

 

Q: All my life I was striving and achieved so little. I was

reading, I was listening -- all in vain.

 

M: Listening and reading became a habit with you.

 

Q: I gave it up too. I do not read nowadays.

 

M: What you gave up is of no importance now. What have you not given

up?. Find that out and give up that. Sadhana is a search for what to

give up. Empty yourself completely.

 

Q: How can a fool desire wisdom? One needs to know the object of

desire, to desire it. When the Supreme is not known, how can it be

desired?

 

M: Man naturally ripens and becomes ready for realisation.

 

Q: But what is the ripening factor?

 

M: Self-remembrance, awareness of 'l am' ripens him powerfully and

speedily. Give up all ideas about yourself and simply be.

 

Q: I am tired of all the ways and means and skills and tricks, of

all these mental acrobatics. Is there a way to perceive reality

directly and immediately?

 

M: Stop making use of your mind and see what happens. Do this one

thing thoroughly. That is all.

 

Q: When I was younger, I had strange experiences, short but

memorable, of being nothing, just nothing, yet fully conscious. But

the danger is that one has the desire to recreate from memory the

moments that have passed.

 

M: This is all imagination. In the light of consciousness all sorts

of things happen and one need not give special importance to any. The

sight of a flower is as marvellous as the vision of God. Let them be.

Why remember them and then make memory into a problem? Be bland about

them; do not divide them into high and low, inner and outer, lasting

and transient. Go beyond, go back to the source, go to the self that

is the same whatever happens. Your weakness is due to your conviction

that you were born into the world. In reality the world is ever

recreated in you and by you. See everything as emanating from the

light which is the source of your own being. You will find that in

that light there is love and infinite energy.

 

Q: If I am that light, why do I not know it?

 

M: To know, you need a knowing mind, a mind capable of knowing. But

your mind is ever on the run, never still, never fully reflecting.

How can you see the moon in all her glory when the eye is clouded

with disease?

 

Q: Can we say that while the sun is the cause of the shadow one

cannot see the sun in the shadow. One must turn round.

 

M: Again you have introduced the trinity of the sun, the body and

shadow. There is no such division in reality. What I am talking about

has nothing to do with dualities and trinities. Don't mentalise and

verbalise. Just see and be.

 

Q: Must I see, to be?

 

M: See what you are. Don't ask others, don't let others tell you

about yourself. Look within and see. All the teacher can tell you is

only this. There is no need of going from one to another. The same

water is in all the wells. You just draw from the nearest. In my case

the water is within me and I am the water.

 

44. 'I am' is True, all else is Inference

Maharaj: The perceiver of the world, is he prior to the world, or

does he come into being along with the world?

 

Questioner: What a strange question! Why do you ask such questions?

 

M: Unless you know the correct answer, you will not find peace.

 

Q: When I wake up in the morning, the world is already there,

waiting for me. Surely the world comes into being first. I do, but

much later, at the earliest at my birth. The body mediates between me

and the world. Without the body there would be neither me nor the

world.

 

M: The body appears in your mind, your mind is the content of your

consciousness; you are the motionless witness of the river of

consciousness which changes eternally without changing you in any

way. Your own changelessness is so obvious that you do not notice it.

Have a good look at yourself and all these misapprehensions and

misconceptions will dissolve. Just as all the little watery lives are

in water and cannot be without water, so all the universe is in you

and cannot be without you.

 

Q: We call it God.

 

M: God is only an idea in your mind. The fact is you. The only thing

you know for sure is: 'here and now I am'. Remove, the 'here and now'

the 'I am' remains, unassailable. The word exists in memory, memory

comes into consciousness; consciousness exists in awareness and

awareness is the reflection of the light on the waters of existence.

 

Q: Still I do not see how can the world be in me when the

opposite 'I am in the world' is so obvious.

 

M: Even to say 'I am the world, the world is me', is a sign of

ignorance. But when I keep in mind and confirm in life my identity

with the world, a power arises in me which destroys the ignorance,

burns it up completely.

 

Q: Is the witness of ignorance separate from ignorance? Is not to

say: 'I am ignorant' a part of ignorance?

 

M: Of course. All I can say truly is: 'I am', all else is inference.

But the inference has become a habit. Destroy all habits of thinking

and seeing. The sense 'I am' is the manifestation of a deeper cause,

which you may call self, God, reality or by any other name. The 'I

am' is in the world; but it is the key which can open the door out of

the world. The moon dancing on the water is seen in the water, but it

is caused by the moon in the sky and not by the water.

 

Q: Still the main point seems to escape me. l can admit that the

world in which I live and move and have my being is of my own

creation, a projection of myself, of my imagination, on the unknown

world, the world as it is, the world of 'absolute matter', whatever

this matter may be. The world of my own creation may be quite unlike

the ultimate, the real world, just like the cinema screen is quite

unlike the pictures projected onto it. Nevertheless, this absolute

world exists, quite independent of myself.

 

M: Quite so, the world of Absolute Reality, onto which your mind has

projected a world of relative unreality is independent of yourself,

for the very simple reason that it is yourself.

 

Q: Is there no contradiction in terms? How can independence prove

identity?

 

M: Examine the motion of change and you will see. What can change

while you do not change, can be said to be independent of you. But

what is changeless must be one with whatever else is changeless. For,

duality implies interaction and interaction meats change. In other

words, the absolutely material and the absolutely spiritual, the

totally objective and the totally subjective are identical, both in

substance and essence.

 

Q: Like in a tri-dimensional picture, the light forms its own

screen.

 

M: Any comparison will do. The main point to grasp is that you have

projected onto yourself a world of your own imagination, based on

memories, on desires and fears, and that you have imprisoned yourself

in it. Break the spell and be free.

 

Q: How does one break the spell?

 

M: Assert your independence in thought and action. After all, all

hangs on your faith in yourself, on the conviction that what you see

and hear, think and feel is real. Why not question your faith? No

doubt, this world is painted by you on the screen of consciousness

and is entirely your own private world. Only your sense 'I am',

though in the world, is not of the world. By no effort of logic or

imagination can you change the 'I am' into 'I am not'. In the very

denial of your being you assert it. Once you realise that the world

is your own projection, you are free of it. You need not free

yourself of a world that does not exist, except in your own

imagination! However is the picture, beautiful or ugly, you are

painting it and you are not bound by it. realise that there is nobody

to force it on you, that it is due to the habit of taking the

imaginary to be real. See the Imaginary as imaginary and be free of

fear.

 

Just as the colours in this carpet are brought out by light but light

is not the colour, so is the world caused by you but you are not the

world.

 

That which creates and sustains the world, you may call it God or

providence, but ultimately you are the proof that God exists, not the

other way round. For, before any question about God can be put, you

must be there to put it.

 

Q: God is an experience in time, but the experiencer is timeless.

 

M: Even the experiencer is secondary. Primary is the infinite

expanse of consciousness, the eternal possibility, the immeasurable

potential of all that was, is, and will be. When you look at

anything, it is the ultimate you see, but you imagine that you see a

cloud or a tree.

 

Learn to look without imagination, to listen without distortion: that

is all. Stop attributing names and shapes to the essentially nameless

and formless, realise that every mode of perception is subjective,

that what is seen or heard, touched or smelt, felt or thought,

expected or imagined, is in the mind and not in reality, and you will

experience peace and freedom from fear.

 

Even the sense of 'I am' is composed of the pure light and the sense

of being. The 'I' is there even without the 'am'. So is the pure

light there whether you say 'I' or not. Become aware of that pure

light and you will never lose it. The beingness in being, the

awareness in consciousness, the interest in every experience -- that

is not describable, yet perfectly accessible, for there is nothing

else.

 

Q: You talk of reality directly -- as the all-pervading, ever-

present, eternal, all-knowing, all-energizing first cause. There are

other teachers, who refuse to discuss reality at all. They say

reality is beyond the mind while all discussions are within the realm

of the mind, which is the home of the unreal. Their approach is

negative; they pinpoint the unreal and thus go beyond it into the

real.

 

M: The difference lies in the words only. After all, when l talk of

the real, I describe it as not-unreal, space-less, time-less, cause-

less, beginning-less and end-less. It comes to the same. As long as

it leads to enlightenment, what does the wording matter? Does it

matter whether you pull the cart or push it, as long as it is kept

rolling? You may feel attracted to reality at one time and repelled

from the false at another; these are only moods which alternate; both

are needed for perfect freedom. You may go one way or another -- but

each time it will be the right way at the moment; just go whole-

heartedly, don't waste time on doubting or hesitating. Many kinds of

food are needed to make the child grow, but the act of eating is the

same. Theoretically -- all approaches are good. In practice, and at a

given moment, you proceed by one road only. Sooner or later you are

bound to discover that if you really want to find, you must dig at

one place only -- within.

 

Neither your body nor mind can give you what you seek -- the being

and knowing your self and the great peace that comes with it.

 

Q: Surely there is something valid and valuable in every approach.

 

M: In each case the value lies in bringing you to the need of

seeking within. Playing with various approaches may be due to

resistance to going within, to the fear of having to abandon the

illusion of being something or somebody in particular. To find water

you do not dig small pits all over the place, but drill deep in one

place only. Similarly, to find your self you have to explore

yourself. When you realise that you are the light of the world, you

will also realise that you are the love of it; that to know is to

love and to love is to know.

 

Of all the affections the love of oneself comes first. Your love of

the world is the reflection of your love of yourself, for your world

is of your own creation. Light and love are impersonal, but they are

reflected in your mind as knowing and wishing oneself well. We are

always friendly towards ourselves. but not always wise. A Yogi is a

man whose goodwill is allied to wisdom.

 

45. What Comes and Goes has no Being

Questioner: I have come to be with you, rather than to listen. Little

can be said in words, much more can be conveyed in silence.

 

Maharaj: First words, then silence. One must be ripe for silence.

 

Q: Can I live in silence?

 

M: Unselfish work leads to silence, for when you work selflessly,

you don't need to ask for help. Indifferent to results, you are

willing to work with the most inadequate means. You do not care to be

much gifted and well equipped. Nor do you ask for recognition and

assistance. You just do what needs be done, leaving success and

failure to the unknown. For everything is caused by innumerable

factors, of which your personal endeavour is but one. Yet such is the

magic of man's mind and heart that the most improbable happens when

human will and love pull together.

 

Q: What is wrong with asking for help when the work is worthy?

 

M: Where is the need of asking? It merely shows weakness and

anxiety. Work on, and the universe will work with you. After all the

very idea of doing the right thing comes to you from the unknown.

Leave it to the unknown as far as the results go, just go through the

necessary movements. You are merely one of the links in the long

chain of causation. Fundamentally, all happens in the mind only. When

you work for something whole-heartedly and steadily, it happens, for

it is the function of the mind to make things happen. In reality

nothing is lacking and nothing is needed, all work is on the surface

only. In the depths there is perfect peace. All your problems arise

because you have defined and therefore limited yourself. When you do

not think yourself to be this or that, all conflict ceases. Any

attempt to do something about your problems is bound to fail, for

what is caused by desire can be undone only in freedom from desire.

You have enclosed yourself in time and space, squeezed yourself into

the span of a lifetime and the volume of a body and thus created the

innumerable conflicts of life and death, pleasure and pain, hope and

fear. You cannot be rid of problems without abandoning illusions.

 

Q: A person is naturally limited.

 

M: There is no such thing as a person. There are only restrictions

and limitations. The sum total of these defines the person. You think

you know yourself when you know what you are. But you never know who

you are. The person merely appears to be, like the space within the

pot appears to have the shape and volume and smell of the pot. See

that you are not what you believe yourself to be. Fight with all the

strength at your disposal against the idea that you are nameable and

describable. You are not. Refuse to think of yourself in terms of

this or that. There is no other way out of misery, which you have

created for yourself through blind acceptance without investigation.

Suffering is a call for enquiry, all pain needs investigation. Don't

be too lazy to think.

 

Q: Activity is the essence of reality. There is no virtue in not

working. Along with thinking something must be done.

 

M: To work in the world is hard, to refrain from all unnecessary

work is even harder.

 

Q: For the person I am all this seems impossible.

 

M: What do you know about yourself? You can only be what you are in

reality; you can only appear what you are not. You have never moved

away from perfection. All idea of self-improvement is conventional

and verbal. As the sun knows not darkness, so does the self know not

the non-self. It is the mind, which by knowing the other, becomes the

other. Yet the mind is nothing else but the self. It is the self that

becomes the other, the not­self, and yet remains the self. All else is

an assumption. Just as a cloud obscures the sun without in any way

affecting it, so does assumption obscure reality without destroying

it. The very idea of destruction of reality is ridiculous; the

destroyer is always more real than the destroyed. Reality is the

ultimate destroyer. All separation, every kind of estrangement and

alienation is false. All is one -- this is the ultimate solution of

every conflict.

 

Q: How is it that in spite of so much instruction and assistance we

make no progress?

 

M: As long as we imagine ourselves to be separate personalities, one

quite apart from another, we cannot grasp reality which is

essentially impersonal. First we must know ourselves as witnesses

only, dimensionless and timeless centres of observation, and then

realise that immense ocean of pure awareness, which is both mind and

matter and beyond both.

 

Q: Whatever I may be in reality, yet I feel myself to be a small

and separate person, one amongst many.

 

M: Your being a person is due to the illusion of space and time; you

imagine yourself to be at a certain point occupying a certain volume;

your personality is due to your self-identification with the body.

Your thoughts and feelings exist in succession, they have their span

in time and make you imagine yourself, because of memory, as having

duration. In reality time and space exist in you; you do not exist in

them. They are modes of perception, but they are not the only ones.

Time and space are like words written on paper; the paper is real,

the words merely a convention. How old are you?

 

Q: Forty-eight!

 

M: What makes you say forty-eight? What makes you say: I am here?

Verbal habits born from assumptions. The mind creates time and space

and takes its own creations for reality. All is here and now, but we

do not see it. Truly, all is in me and by me. There is nothing else.

The very idea of 'else' is a disaster and a calamity.

 

Q: What is the cause of personification, of self-limitation in time

and space?

 

M: That which does not exist cannot have a cause. There is no such

thing as a separate person. Even taking the empirical point of view,

it is obvious that everything is the cause of everything, that

everything is as it is, because the entire universe is as it is.

 

Q: Yet personality must have a cause.

 

M: How does personality, come into being? By memory. By identifying

the present with the past and projecting it into the future. Think of

yourself as momentary, without past and future and your personality

dissolves.

 

Q: Does not 'I am' remain?

 

M: The word 'remain' does not apply. 'I am' is ever afresh. You do

not need to remember in order to be. As a matter of fact, before you

can experience anything, there must be the sense of being. At present

your being is mixed up with experiencing. All you need is to unravel

being from the tangle of experiences. Once you have known pure being,

without being this or that, you will discern it among experiences and

you will no longer be misled by names and forms.

 

Self-limitation is the very essence of personality.

 

Q: How can I become universal?

 

M: But you are universal. You need not and you cannot become what

you are already. Only cease imagining yourself to be the particular.

What comes and goes has no being. It owes its very appearance to

reality. You know that there is a world, but does the world know you?

All knowledge flows from you, as all being and all joy. realise that

you are the eternal source and accept all as your own. Such

acceptance is true love.

 

Q: All you say sounds very beautiful. But how has one to make it

into a way of living?

 

M: Having never left the house you are asking for the way home. Get

rid of wrong ideas, that is all. Collecting right ideas also will

take you nowhere. Just cease imagining.

 

Q: It is not a matter of achievement, but of understanding.

 

M: Don't try to understand! Enough if you do not misunderstand.

Don't rely on your mind for liberation. It is the mind that brought

you into bondage. Go beyond it altogether.

 

What is beginningless cannot have a cause. It is not that you knew

what you are and then you have forgotten. Once you know, you cannot

forget. Ignorance has no beginning, but can have an end. Enquire: who

is ignorant and ignorance will dissolve like a dream. The world is

full of contradictions, hence your search for harmony and peace.

These you cannot find in the world, for the world is the child of

chaos. To find order you must search within. The world comes into

being only when you are born in a body. No body -- no world. First

enquire whether you are the body. The understanding of the world will

come later.

 

Q: What you say sounds convincing, but of what use is it to the

private person, who knows itself to be in the world and of the world?

 

M: Millions eat bread, but few know all about wheat. And only those

who know can improve the bread. Similarly, only those who know the

self, who have seen beyond the world, can improve the world. Their

value to private persons is immense, for they are their only hope of

salvation. What is in the world cannot save the world; if you really

care to help the world you must step out of it.

 

Q: But can one step out of the world?

 

M: Who was born first, you or the world? As long as you give first

place to the world, you are bound by it; once you realise, beyond all

trace of doubt that the world is in you and not you in the world, you

are out of it. Of course your body remains in the world and of the

world, but you are not deluded by it. All scriptures say that before

the world was, the Creator was. Who knows the Creator? He alone who

was before the Creator, your own real being, the source of all the

worlds with their creators.

 

Q: All you say is held together by your assumption that the world

is your own projection. You admit that you mean your personal,

subjective world, the world given you through your senses and your

mind. In that sense each one of us lives in a world of his own

projection. These private worlds hardly touch each other and they

arise from and merge into the 'I am' at their centre. But surely

behind these private worlds there must be a common objective world,

of which the private worlds are mere shadows. Do you deny the

existence of such an objective world, common to all?

 

M: Reality is neither subjective nor objective, neither mind nor

matter, neither time nor space. These divisions need somebody to whom

to happen, a conscious separate centre. But reality is all and

nothing, the totality and the exclusion, the fullness and the

emptiness, fully consistent, absolutely paradoxical. You cannot speak

about it, you can only lose your self in it. When you deny reality to

anything, you come to a residue which cannot be denied .

 

All talk of jnana is a sign of ignorance. It is the mind that

imagines that it does not know and then comes to know. Reality knows

nothing of these contortions. Even the idea of God as the Creator is

false. Do I owe my being to any other being? Because I am, all is.

 

Q: How can it be? A child is born into the world, not the world

into the child. The world is old and the child is new.

 

M: The child is born into your world. Now, were you born into your

world, or did your world appear to you? To be born means to create a

world round yourself as the centre. But do you ever create yourself?

Or did anyone create you? Everyone creates a world for himself and

lives in it, imprisoned by one's ignorance. All we have to do is to

deny reality to our prison.

 

Q: Just as the waking state exists in seed form during sleep, so

does the world the child creates on being born exist before its

birth. With whom does the seed lie?

 

M: With him who is the witness of birth and death, but is neither

born nor dies. He alone is the seed of creation as well as its

residue. Don't ask the mind to confirm what is beyond the mind.

Direct experience is the only valid confirmation.

 

46. Awareness of Being is Bliss

Questioner: By profession I am a physician. I began with surgery,

continued with psychiatry and also wrote some books on mental health

and healing by faith. I came to you to learn the laws of spiritual

health.

 

Maharaj: When you are trying to cure a patient, what exactly are you

trying to cure? What is cure? When can you say that a man is cured?

 

Q: I seek to cure the body as well as improve the link between the

body and the mind. I also seek to set right the mind.

 

M: Did you investigate the connection between the mind and the body?

At what point are they connected?

 

Q: Between the body and the indwelling consciousness lies the mind.

 

M: Is not the body made of food? And can there be a mind without

food?

 

Q: The body is built and maintained by food. Without food the mind

usually goes weak. But the mind is not mere food. There is a

transforming factor which creates a mind in the body. What is that

transforming factor?

 

M: Just like the wood produces fire which is not wood, so does the

body produce the mind which is not the body. But to whom does the

mind appear? Who is the perceiver of the thoughts and feelings which

you call the mind? There is wood, there is fire and there is the

enjoyer of the fire. Who enjoys the mind? Is the enjoyer also a

result of food, or is it independent?

 

Q: The perceiver is independent.

 

M: How do you know? Speak from your own experience. You are not the

body nor the mind. You say so. How do you know?

 

Q: I really do not know. I guess so.

 

M: Truth is permanent. The real is changeless. What changes is not

real, what is real does not change. Now, what is it in you that does

not change? As long as there is food, there is body and mind. When

the food is stopped, the body dies and the mind dissolves. But does

the observer perish?

 

Q: I guess it does not. But I have no proof.

 

M: You yourself are the proof. You have not, nor can you have any

other proof. You are yourself, you know yourself, you love yourself.

Whatever the mind does, it does for the love of its own self. The

very nature of the self is love. It is loved, loving and lovable. It

is the self that makes the body and the mind so interest­ing, so very

dear. The very attention given to them comes from the self.

 

Q: If the self is not the body nor the mind, can it exist without

the body and the mind?

 

M: Yes, it can. It is a matter of actual experience that the self

has being independent of mind and body. It is being -- awareness --

bliss. Awareness of being is bliss.

 

Q: It may be a matter of actual experience to you, but it is not my

case. How can I come to the same experience? What practices to

follow, what exercises to take up?

 

M: To know that you are neither body nor mind, watch yourself

steadily and live unaffected by your body and mind, completely aloof,

as if you were dead. It means you have no vested interests, either in

the body or in the mind.

 

Q: Dangerous!

 

M: I am not asking you to commit suicide. Nor can you. You can only

kill the body, you cannot stop the mental process, nor can you put an

end to the person you think you are. Just remain unaffected. This

complete aloofness, unconcern with mind and body is the best proof

that at the core of your being you are neither mind nor body. What

happens to the body and the mind may not be within your power to

change, but you can always put an end to your imagining yourself to

be body and mind. What­ever happens, remind yourself that only your

body and mind are affected, not yourself. The more earnest you are at

remembering what needs to be remembered, the sooner will you be aware

of yourself as you are, for memory will become experience.

Earnestness reveals being. What is imagined and willed becomes

actuality -- here lies the danger as well as the way out.

 

Tell me, what steps have you taken to separate your real self, that

in you which is changeless, from your body and mind?

 

Q: I am a medical man, I have studied a lot, I imposed on myself a

strict discipline in the way of exercises and periodical fasts and I

am a vegetarian.

 

M: But in the depth of your heart what is it that you want?

 

Q: I want to find reality.

 

M: What price are you willing to pay for reality? Any price?

 

Q: While in theory I am ready to pay any price, in actual life

again and again I am being prompted to behave in ways which come in

between me and reality. Desire carries me away.

 

M: Increase and widen your desires till nothing but reality can

fulfil them. It is not desire that is wrong, but its narrowness and

smallness. Desire is devotion. By all means be devoted to the real,

the infinite, the eternal heart of being. Transform desire into love.

All you want is to be happy. All your desires, whatever they may be,

are expressions of your longing for happiness. Basically, you wish

yourself well.

 

Q: I know that I should not…

 

M: Wait! Who told you that you should not? What is wrong with

wanting to be happy?

 

Q: The self must go, l know.

 

M: But the self is there. Your desires are there. Your longing to be

happy is there. Why? Because you love yourself. By all means love

yourself -- wisely. What is wrong is to love yourself stupidly, so as

to make yourself suffer. Love yourself wisely. Both indulgence and

austerity have the same purpose in view -- to make you happy.

Indulgence is the stupid way, austerity is the wise way.

 

Q: What is austerity?

 

M: Once you have gone through an experience, not to go through it

again is austerity. To eschew the unnecessary is austerity. Not to

anticipate pleasure or pain Is austerity. Having things under control

at all times is austerity. Desire by itself is not wrong. It is life

itself, the urge to grow in knowledge and experience.

 

It is the choices you make that are wrong. To imagine that some

little thing -- food. sex, power, fame -- will make you happy is to

deceive yourself. Only something as vast and deep as your real self

can make you truly and lastingly happy.

 

Q: Since there is nothing basically wrong in desire as an

expression of love of self, how should desire be managed?

 

M: Live your life intelligently, with the interests of your deepest

self always in mind. After all, what do you really want? Not

perfection; you are already perfect. What you seek is to express in

action what you are. For this you have a body and a mind. Take them

in hand and make them serve you.

 

Q: Who is the operator here? Who is to take the body-mind in hand?

 

M: The purified mind is the faithful servant of the self. It takes

charge of the instruments, inner and outer, and makes them serve

their purpose.

 

Q: And what is their purpose?

 

M: The self is universal and its aims are universal. There is

nothing personal about the self. Live an orderly life, but don't make

it a goal by itself. It should be the starting point for high

adventure.

 

Q: Do you advise me to come to India repeatedly?

 

M: If you are earnest, you don't need moving about. You are yourself

wherever you are and you create your own climate. Locomotion and

transportation will not give you salvation. You are not the body and

dragging the body from place to place will take you nowhere. Your

mind is free to roam the three worlds -- make full use of it.

 

Q: If I am free, why am I in a body?

 

M: you are not in the body, the body is in you! The mind is in you.

They happen to you. They are there because you find them interesting.

Your very nature has the infinite capacity to enjoy. It is full of

zest and affection. It sheds its radiance on all that comes within

its focus of awareness and nothing is excluded. It does not know evil

nor ugliness, it hopes, it trusts, it loves. You people do not know

how much you miss by not knowing your own true self. You are neither

the body nor the mind, neither the fuel nor the fire. They appear and

disappear according to their own laws.

 

That which you are, your true self, you love it, and whatever you do,

you do for your own happiness. To find it, to know it, to cherish it

is your basic urge. Since time immemorial you loved yourself, but

never wisely. Use your body and mind wisely in the service of the

self, that is all. Be true to your own self, love your self

absolutely. Do not pretend that you love others as yourself. Unless

you have realised them as one with yourself, you cannot love them

Don't pretend to be what you are not, don't refuse to be what you

are. Your love of others is the result of self-knowledge, not its

cause. Without self-realisation, no virtue is genuine. When you know

beyond all doubting that the same life flows through all that is and

you are that life, you will love all naturally and spontaneously.

When you realise the depth and fullness of your love of yourself, you

know that every living being and the entire universe are included in

your affection. But when you look at anything as separate from you,

you cannot love it for you are afraid of it. Alienation causes fear

and fear deepens alienation. It is a vicious circle. Only self-

realisation can break it. Go for it resolutely.

 

47. Watch Your Mind

Questioner: In one's search for the essential, one soon realises

one's inadequacy and the need for a guide or a teacher. This implies

a certain discipline for you are expected to trust your guide and

follow implicitly his advice and instruction. Yet the social

urgencies and pressures are so great, personal desires and fears so

powerful, that the simplicity of mind and will, essential in

obedience, are not forthcoming. How to strike a balance between the

need for a Guru and the difficulty in obeying him implicitly?

 

Maharaj: What is done under pressure of society and circumstances

does not matter much, for it is mostly mechanical, mere reacting to

impacts. It is enough to watch oneself dispassionately to isolate

oneself completely from what is going on. What has been done without

minding, blindly, may add to one's karma (destiny), otherwise it

hardly matters. The Guru demands one thing only; clarity and

intensity of purpose, a sense of responsibility for oneself. The very

reality of the world must be questioned. Who is the Guru, after all?

He who knows the state in which there is neither the world nor the

thought of it, he is the Supreme Teacher. To find him means to reach

the state in which imagination is no longer taken for reality.

Please, understand that the Guru stands for reality, for truth, for

what is. He is a realist in the highest sense of the term. He cannot

and shall not come to terms with the mind and its delusions. He comes

to take you to the real; don't expect him to do anything else.

 

The Guru you have in mind, one who gives you information and

instructions, is not the real Guru. The real Guru is he who knows the

real, beyond the glamour of appearances. To him your questions about

obedience and discipline do not make sense, for in his eyes the

person you take yourself to be does not exist, your questions are

about a non-existing person. What exists for you does not exist for

him. What you take for granted, he denies absolutely. He wants you to

see yourself as he sees you. Then you will not need a Guru to obey

and follow, for you will obey and follow your own reality. realise

that whatever you think yourself to be is just a stream of events;

that while all happens, comes and goes, you alone are, the changeless

among the changeful, the self-evident among the inferred. Separate

the observed from the observer and abandon false identifications.

 

Q: In order to find the reality, one should discard all that stands

in the way. On the other hand, the need to survive within a given

society compels one to do and endure many things. Does one need to

abandon one's profession and one's social standing in order to find

reality?

 

M: Do your work. When you have a moment free, look within. What is

important is not to miss the opportunity when it presents itself. If

you are earnest you will use your leisure fully. That is enough.

 

Q: In my search for the essential and discarding the unessential,

is there any scope for creative living? For instance, I love

painting. Will it help me if I give my leisure hours to painting?

 

M: Whatever you may have to do, watch your mind. Also you must have

moments of complete inner peace and quiet, when your mind is

absolutely still. If you miss it, you miss the entire thing. If you

do not, the silence of the mind will dissolve and absorb all else.

 

Your difficulty lies in your wanting reality and being afraid of it

at the same time. You are afraid of it because you do not know it.

The familiar things are known, you feel secure with them. The unknown

is uncertain and therefore dangerous. But to know reality is to be in

harmony with it. And in harmony there is no place for fear.

 

An infant knows its body, but not the body-based distinctions. It is

just conscious and happy. After all, that was the purpose for which

it was born. The pleasure to be is the simplest form of self-love,

which later grows into love of the self. Be like an infant with

nothing standing between the body and the self. The constant noise of

the psychic life is absent. In deep silence the self contemplates the

body. It is like the white paper on which nothing is written yet. Be

like that infant, instead of trying to be this or that, be happy to

be. You will be a fully awakened witness of the field of

consciousness. But there should be no feelings and ideas to stand

between you and the field.

 

Q: To be content with mere being seems to be a most selfish way of

passing time.

 

M: A most worthy way of being selfish! By all means be selfish by

foregoing everything but the Self. When you love the Self and nothing

else, you go beyond the selfish and the unselfish. All distinctions

lose their meaning. Love of one and love of all merge together in

love, pure and simple, addressed to none, denied to none. Stay in

that love, go deeper and deeper into it, investigate yourself and

love the investigation and you will solve not only your own problems

but also the problems of humanity. You will know what to do. Do not

ask superficial questions; apply yourself to fundamentals, to the

very roots of your being.

 

Q: Is there a way for me to speed up my self-realisation?

 

M: Of course there is.

 

Q: Who will do this speeding up? Will you do it for me?

 

M: Neither you will do it, nor me. It will just happen.

 

Q: My very coming here has proved it. Is this speeding up due to

holy company? When I left last time, I hoped to come back. And I did!

Now I am desperate that so soon I have to leave for England.

 

M: You are like a newly born child. It was there before but not

conscious of its being. At its birth a world arose in it, and with it

the consciousness of being. Now you have just to grow in

consciousness, that is all. The child is the king of the world --

when it grows up, it takes charge of its kingdom. Imagine that in its

infancy it fell seriously ill and the physician cured it. Does it

mean that the young king owes his kingdom to the physician? Only,

perhaps as one of the contributing factors. There were so many

others; all contributed. But the main factor, the most crucial, was

the fact of being born the son of a king. Similarly, the Guru may

help. But the main thing that helps is to have reality within. It

will assert itself. Your coming here definitely helped you. It is not

the only thing that is going to help you. The main thing is your own

being. Your very earnestness testifies to it.

 

Q: Does my pursuing a vocation deny my earnestness?

 

M: I told you already. As long as you allow yourself an abundance of

moments of peace, you can safely practice your most honourable

profession. These moments of inner quiet will burn out all obstacles

without fail. Don't doubt its efficacy. Try it.

 

Q: But, I did try!

 

M: Never faithfully, never steadily. Otherwise you would not be

asking such questions. You are asking because you are not sure of

yourself. And you are not sure of yourself because you never paid

attention to yourself, only to your experiences. Be interested in

yourself beyond all experience, be with yourself, love yourself; the

ultimate security is found only in self-knowledge. The main thing is

earnestness. Be honest with yourself and nothing will betray you.

Virtues and powers are mere tokens for children to play with. They

are useful in the world, but do not take you out of it. To go beyond,

you need alert immobility, quiet attention.

 

Q: What then becomes of one's physical being?

 

M: As long as you are healthy, you live on.

 

Q: This life of inner immobility, will it not affect one's health?

 

M: Your body is food transformed. As your food, gross and subtle, so

will be your health.

 

Q: And what happens to the sex instinct? How can it be controlled?

 

M: Sex is an acquired habit. Go beyond. As long as your focus is on

the body, you will remain in the clutches of food and sex, fear and

death. Find yourself and be free.

 

48. Awareness is Free

Questioner: I have just arrived from Sri Ramanashram. I have spent

seven months there.

 

Maharaj: What practice were you following at the Ashram?

 

Q: As far as I could, I concentrated on the 'Who am l'?

 

M: Which way were you doing it? Verbally?

 

Q: In my free moments during the course of the day. Sometimes I was

murmuring to myself 'Who am l?' 'I am, but who am l?' Or, I did it

mentally. Occasionally I would have some nice feeling, or get into

moods of quiet happiness. On the whole I was trying to be quiet and

receptive, rather than labouring for experiences.

 

M: What were you actually experiencing when you were in the right

mood?

 

Q: A sense of inner stillness, peace and silence.

 

M: Did you notice yourself becoming unconscious?

 

Q: Yes, occasionally and for a very short time. Otherwise I was

just quiet, inwardly and outwardly.

 

M: What kind of quiet was it? Something akin to deep sleep, yet

conscious all the same. A sort of wakeful sleep?

 

Q: Yes. Alertly asleep. (jagrit-sushupti).

 

M: The main thing is to be free of negative emotions -- desire, fear

etc., the 'six enemies' of the mind. Once the mind is free of them,

the rest will come easily. Just as cloth kept in soap water will

become clean, so will the mind get purified in the stream of pure

feeling.

 

When you sit quiet and watch yourself, all kinds of things may come

to the surface. Do nothing about them, don't react to them; as they

have come so will they go, by themselves. All that matters is

mindfulness, total awareness of oneself or rather, of one's mind.

 

Q: By 'oneself' do you mean the daily self?

 

M: Yes, the person, which alone is objectively observable. The

observer is beyond observation. What is observable is not the real

self.

 

Q: I can always observe the observer, in endless recession.

 

M: You can observe the observation, but not the observer. You know

you are the ultimate observer by direct insight, not by a logical

process based on observation. You are what you are, but you know what

you are not. The self is known as being, the not-self is known as

transient. But in reality all is in the mind. The observed,

observation and observer are mental constructs. The self alone is.

 

Q: Why does the mind create all these divisions?

 

M: To divide and particularise is in the mind's very nature. There

is no harm in dividing. But separation goes against fact. Things and

people are different, but they are not separate. Nature is one,

reality is one. There are opposites, but no opposition.

 

Q: I find that by nature I am very active. Here I am advised to

avoid activity. The more I try to remain inactive, the greater the

urge to do something. This makes me not only active outwardly, but

also struggling inwardly to be what by nature I am not. Is there a

remedy against longing for work?

 

M: There is a difference between work and mere activity. All nature

works. Work is nature, nature is work. On the other hand, activity is

based on desire and fear, on longing to possess and enjoy, on fear of

pain and annihilation. Work is by the whole for the whole, activity

is by oneself for oneself.

 

Q: Is there a remedy against activity?

 

M: Watch it, and it shall cease. Use every opportunity to remind

yourself that you are in bondage, that whatever happens to you is due

to the fact of your bodily existence. Desire, fear, trouble, joy,

they cannot appear unless you are there to appear to. Yet, whatever

happens, points to your existence as a perceiving centre. Disregard

the pointers and be aware of what they are pointing to. It is quite

simple, but it needs be done. What matters is the persistence with

which you keep on returning to yourself.

 

Q: I do get into peculiar states of deep absorption into myself,

but unpredictably and momentarily. I do not feel myself to be in

control of such states.

 

M: The body is a material thing and needs time to change. The mind

is but a set of mental habits, of ways of thinking and feeling, and

to change they must be brought to the surface and examined. This also

takes time. Just resolve and persevere, the rest will take care of

itself.

 

Q: I seem to have a clear idea of what needs be done, but I find

myself getting tired and depressed and seeking human company and thus

wasting time that should be given to solitude and meditation.

 

M: Do what you feel like doing. Don't bully yourself. Violence will

make you hard and rigid. Do not fight with what you take to be

obstacles on your way. Just be interested in them, watch them,

observe, enquire. Let anything happen -- good or bad. But don't let

yourself be submerged by what happens.

 

Q: What is the purpose in reminding oneself all the time that one

is the watcher?

 

M: The mind must learn that beyond the moving mind there is the

background of awareness, which does not change. The mind must come to

know the true self and respect it and cease covering it up, like the

moon which obscures the sun during solar eclipse. Just realise that

nothing observable, or experienceable is you, or binds you. Take no

notice of what is not yourself.

 

Q: To do what you tell me I must be ceaselessly aware.

 

M: To be aware is to be awake. Unaware means asleep. You are aware

anyhow, you need not try to be. What you need is to be aware of being

aware. Be aware deliberately and consciously, broaden and deepen the

field of awareness. You are always conscious of the mind, but you are

not aware of yourself as being conscious.

 

Q: As I can make out, you give distinct meanings to the

words 'mind', 'consciousness', and 'awareness'.

 

M: Look at it this way. The mind produces thoughts ceaselessly, even

when you do not look at them. When you know what is going on in your

mind, you call it consciousness. This is your waking state -- your

consciousness shifts from sensation to sensation, from perception to

perception, from idea to idea, in endless succession. Then comes

awareness, the direct insight into the whole of consciousness, the

totality of the mind. The mind is like a river, flowing ceaselessly

in the bed of the body; you identify yourself for a moment with some

particular ripple and call it: 'my thought'. All you are conscious of

is your mind; awareness is the cognisance of consciousness as a whole.

 

Q: Everybody is conscious, but not everybody is aware.

 

M: Don't say: 'everybody is conscious'. Say: 'there is

consciousness', in which everything appears and disappears. Our minds

are just waves on the ocean of consciousness. As waves they come and

go. As ocean they are infinite and eternal. Know yourself as the

ocean of being, the womb of all existence. These are all metaphors of

course; the reality is beyond description. You can know it only by

being it.

 

Q: Is the search for it worth the trouble?

 

M: Without it all is trouble. If you want to live sanely, creatively

and happily and have infinite riches to share, search for what you

are.

 

While the mind is centred in the body and consciousness is centred in

the mind, awareness is free. The body has its urges and mind its

pains and pleasures. Awareness is unattached and unshaken. It is

lucid, silent, peaceful, alert and unafraid, without desire and fear.

Meditate on it as your true being and try to be it in your daily

life, and you shall realise it in its fullness.

 

Mind is interested in what happens, while awareness is interested in

the mind itself. The child is after the toy, but the mother watches

the child, not the toy.

 

By looking tirelessly, I became quite empty and with that emptiness

all came back to me except the mind. I find I have lost the mind

irretrievably.

 

Q: As you talk to us just now, are you unconscious?

 

M: I am neither conscious nor unconscious, I am beyond the mind and

its various states and conditions. Distinctions are created by the

mind and apply to the mind only. I am pure Consciousness itself,

unbroken awareness of all that is. I am in a more real state than

yours. I am undistracted by the distinctions and separations which

constitute a person. As long as the body lasts, it has its needs like

any other, but my mental process has come to an end.

 

Q: You behave like a person who thinks.

 

M: Why not? But my thinking, like my digestion, is unconscious and

purposeful.

 

Q: If your thinking is unconscious, how do you know that it is

right?

 

M: There is no desire, nor fear to thwart it. What can make it

wrong? Once I know myself and what I stand for, I do not need to

check on myself all the time. When you know that your watch shows

correct time, you do not hesitate each time you consult it.

 

Q: At this very moment who talks, if not the mind?

 

M: That which hears the question, answers it.

 

Q: But who is it?

 

M: Not who, but what. I'm not a person in your sense of the word,

though I may appear a person to you. I am that infinite ocean of

consciousness in which all happens. I am also beyond all existence

and cognition, pure bliss of being. There is nothing I feel separate

from, hence I am all. No thing is me, so I am nothing.

 

The same power that makes the fire burn and the water flow, the seeds

sprout and the trees grow, makes me answer your questions. There is

nothing personal about me, though the language and the style may

appear personal. A person is a set pattern of desires and thoughts

and resulting actions; there is no such pattern in my case. There is

nothing I desire or fear -- how can there be a pattern?

 

Q: Surely, you will die.

 

M: Life will escape, the body will die, but it will not affect me in

the least. Beyond space and time I am, uncaused, uncausing, yet the

very matrix of existence.

 

Q: May I be permitted to ask how did you arrive at your present

condition?

 

M: My teacher told me to hold on to the sense 'I am' tenaciously and

not to swerve from it even for a moment. I did my best to follow his

advice and in a comparatively short time I realised within myself the

truth of his teaching. All I did was to remember his teaching, his

face, his words constantly. This brought an end to the mind; in the

stillness of the mind I saw myself as I am -- unbound.

 

Q: Was your realisation sudden or gradual.

 

M: Neither. One is what one is timelessly. It is the mind that

realises as and when it get cleared of desires and fears.

 

Q: Even the desire for realisation?

 

M: The desire to put an end to all desires is a most peculiar

desire, just like the fear of being afraid is a most peculiar fear.

One stops you from grabbing and the other from running. You may use

the same words, but the states are not the same. The man who seeks

realisation is not addicted to desires; he is a seeker who goes

against desire, not with it. A general longing for liberation is only

the beginning; to find the proper means and use them is the next

step. The seeker has only one goal in view: to find his own true

being. Of all desires it is the most ambitious, for nothing and

nobody can satisfy it; the seeker and the sought are one and the

search alone matters.

 

Q: The search will come to an end. The seeker will remain.

 

M: No, the seeker will dissolve, the search will remain. The search

is the ultimate and timeless reality.

 

Q: Search means lacking, wanting, incompleteness and imperfection.

 

M: No, it means refusal and rejection of the incomplete and the

imperfect. The search for reality is itself the movement of reality.

In a way all search is for the real bliss, or the bliss of the real.

But here we mean by search the search for oneself as the root of

being conscious, as the light beyond the mind. This search will never

end, while the restless craving for all else must end, for real

progress to take place.

 

One has to understand that the search for reality, or God, or Guru

and the search for the self are the same; when one is found, all are

found. When 'I am' and 'God is' become in your mind

indistinguishable, then something will happen and you will know

without a trace of doubt that God is because you are, you are because

God is. The two are one.

 

Q: Since all is preordained, is our self-realisation also

preordained? Or are we free there at least?

 

M: Destiny refers only to name and shape. Since you are neither body

nor mind, destiny has no control over you. You are completely free.

The cup is conditioned by its shape, material, use and so on. But the

space within the cup is free. It happens to be in the cup only when

viewed in connection with the cup. Otherwise it is just space. As

long as there is a body, you appear to be embodied. Without the body

you are not disembodied -- you Just are.

 

Even destiny is but an idea. Words can be put together in so many

ways! Statements can differ, but do they make any change in the

actual? There are so many theories devised for explaining things --

all are plausible, none is true. When you drive a car, you are

subjected to the laws of mechanics and chemistry: step out of the car

and you are under the laws of physiology and biochemistry.

 

Q: What is meditation and what are its uses?

 

M: As long as you are a beginner certain formalised meditations, or

prayers may be good for you. But for a seeker for reality there is

only one meditation -- the rigorous refusal to harbour thoughts. To

be free from thoughts is itself meditation.

 

Q: How is it done?

 

M: You begin by letting thoughts flow and watching them. The very

observation slows down the mind till it stops altogether. Once the

mind is quiet, keep it quiet. Don't get bored with peace, be in it,

go deeper into it.

 

Q: I heard of holding on to one thought in order to keep other

thoughts away. But how to keep all thoughts away? The very idea is

also a thought.

 

M: Experiment anew, don't go by past experience. Watch your thoughts

and watch yourself watching the thoughts. The state of freedom from

all thoughts will happen suddenly and by the bliss of it you shall

recognise it.

 

[picture]

 

Q: Are you not at all concerned about the state of the world? Look

at the horrors in East Pakistan [1971, now Bangla Desh]. Do they not

touch you at all?

 

M: I am reading newspapers, I know what is going on! But my reaction

is not like yours. You are looking for a cure, while I am concerned

with prevention. As long as there are causes, there must also be

results. As long as people are bent on dividing and separating, as

long as they are selfish and aggressive, such things will happen. If

you want peace and harmony in the world, you must have peace and

harmony in your hearts and minds. Such change cannot be imposed; it

must come from within. Those who abhor war must get war out of their

system. Without peaceful people how can you have peace in the world?

As long as people are as they are, the world must be as it is. I am

doing my part in trying to help people to know themselves as the only

cause of their own misery. In that sense I am a useful man. But what

I am in myself, what is my normal state cannot be expressed in terms

of social consciousness and usefulness.

 

I may talk about it, use metaphors or parables, but I am acutely

aware that it is just not so. Not that it cannot be experienced. It

is experiencing itself! But it cannot be described in the terms of a

mind that must separate and oppose in order to know.

 

The world is like a sheet of paper on which something is typed. The

reading and the meaning will vary with the reader, but the paper is

the common factor, always present, rarely perceived. When the ribbon

is removed, typing leaves no trace on the paper. So is my mind -- the

impressions keep on coming, but no trace is left.

 

Q: Why do you sit here talking to people? What is your real motive?

 

M: No motive. You say I must have a motive. I am not sitting here,

nor talking: no need to search for motives. Don't confuse me with the

body. I have no work to do, no duties to perform. That part of me

which you may call God will look after the world. This world of

yours, that so much needs looking after, lives and moves in your

mind. Delve into it, you will find your answers there and there only.

Where else do you expect them to come from? Outside your

consciousness does anything exist?

 

Q: It may exist without my ever knowing it.

 

M: What kind of existence would it be? Can being be divorced from

knowing? All being, like all knowing, relates to you. A thing is

because you know it to be either in your experience or in your being.

Your body and your mind exist as long as you believe so. Cease to

think that they are yours and they will just dissolve. By all means

let your body and mind function, but do not let them limit you. If

you notice imperfections, just keep on noticing: your very giving

attention to them will set your heart and mind and body right.

 

Q: Can I cure myself of a serious illness by merely taking

cognisance of it?

 

M: Take cognisance of the whole of it, not only of the outer

symptoms. All illness begins in the mind. Take care of the mind

first, by tracing and eliminating all wrong ideas and emotions. Then

live and work disregarding illness and think no more of it. With the

removal of causes the effect is bound to depart.

 

Man becomes what he believes himself to be. Abandon all ideas about

yourself and you will find yourself to be the pure witness, beyond

all that can happen to the body or the mind.

 

Q: If I become anything I think myself to be, and I start thinking

that I am the Supreme Reality, will not my Supreme Reality remain a

mere idea?

 

M: First reach that state and then ask the question.

 

49. Mind Causes Insecurity

Questioner: People come to you for advice. How do you know what to

answer?

 

Maharaj: As I hear the question, so do I hear the answer.

 

Q: And how do you know that your answer is right?

 

M: Once I know the true source of the answers, I need not doubt

them. From a pure source only pure water will flow. I am not

concerned with people's desires and fears. I am in tune with facts,

not with opinions. Man takes his name and shape to be himself, while

I take nothing to be myself. Were I to think myself to be a body

known by its name, I would not have been able to answer your

questions. Were I to take you to be a mere body, there would be no

benefit to you from my answers. No true teacher indulges in opinions.

He sees things as they are and shows them as they are. If you take

people to be what they think themselves to be, you will only hurt

them, as they hurt themselves so grievously all the time. But if you

see them as they are in reality, it will do them enormous good. If

they ask you what to do, what practices to adopt, which way of life

to follow, answer: 'Do nothing, just be. In being all happens

naturally.'

 

Q: It seems to me that in your talks you use the words 'naturally'

and 'accidentally' indiscriminately. I feel there is a deep

difference in the meaning of the two words. The natural is orderly,

subject to law; one can trust nature; the accidental is chaotic,

unexpected, unpredictable. One could plead that everything is

natural, subject to nature's laws; to maintain that everything is

accidental, without any cause, is surely an exaggeration.

 

M: Would you like it better if I use the word 'spontaneous' instead

of 'accidental'?

 

Q: You may use the word 'spontaneous' or 'natural' as opposed

to 'accidental'. In the accidental there is the element of disorder,

of chaos. An accident is always a breach of rules, an exception, a

surprise.

 

M: Is not life itself a stream of surprises?

 

Q: There is harmony in nature. The accidental is a disturbance.

 

M: You speak as a person, limited in time and space, reduced to the

contents of a body and a mind. What you like, you call 'natural' and

what you dislike, you call 'accidental'.

 

Q: I like the natural, and the law-abiding, the expected and I fear

the law-breaking, the disorderly, the unexpected, the meaningless.

The accidental is always monstrous. There may be so-called 'lucky

accidents', but they only prove the rule that in an accident-prone

universe life would be impossible.

 

M: I feel there is a misunderstanding. By 'accidental' I mean

something to which no known law applies. When I say everything is

accidental, uncaused, I only mean that the causes and the laws

according to which they operate are beyond our knowing, or even

imagining. If you call what you take to be orderly, harmonious,

predictable, to be natural, then what obeys higher laws and is moved

by higher powers may be called spontaneous. Thus, we shall have two

natural orders: the personal and predictable and the impersonal, or

super-personal, and unpredictable. Call it lower nature and higher

nature and drop the word accidental. As you grow in knowledge and

insight, the borderline between lower and higher nature keeps on

receding, but the two remain until they are seen as one. For, in

fact, everything is most wonderfully inexplicable!

 

Q: Science explains a lot.

 

M: Science deals with names and shapes, quantities and qualities,

patterns and laws; it is all right in its own place. But life is to

be lived; there is no time for analysis. The response must be

instantaneous -- hence the importance of the spontaneous, the

timeless. It is in the unknown that we live and move. the known is

the past.

 

Q: I can take my stand on what I feel I am. I am an individual, a

person among persons. Some people are integrated and harmonised, and

some are not. Some live effortlessly, respond spontaneously to every

situation correctly, doing full justice to the need of the moment,

while others fumble, err and generally make a nuisance of themselves.

The harmonised people may be called natural, ruled by law, while the

disintegrated are chaotic and subject to accidents.

 

M: The very idea of chaos presupposes the sense of the orderly, the

organic, the inter-related. Chaos and cosmos: are they not two

aspects of the same state?

 

Q: But you seem to say that all is chaos, accidental, unpredictable.

 

M: Yes, in the sense that not all the laws of being are known and

not all events are predictable. The more you are able to understand,

the more the universe becomes satisfactory, emotionally and mentally.

Reality is good and beautiful; we create the chaos.

 

Q: If you mean to say that it is the free will of man that causes

accidents, I would agree. But we have not yet discussed free will.

 

M: Your order is what gives you pleasure and disorder is what gives

you pain.

 

Q: You may put it that way, but do not tell me that the two are

one. Talk to me in my own language -- the language of an individual

in search of happiness. I do not want to be misled by non-dualistic

talks.

 

M: What makes you believe that you are a separate individual?

 

Q: I behave as an individual. I function on my own. I consider

myself primarily, and others only in relation to myself. In short, I

am busy with myself.

 

M: Well, go on being busy with yourself. On what business have you

come here?

 

Q: On my old business of making myself safe and happy. I confess I

have not been too successful. I am neither safe nor happy. Therefore,

you find me here. This place is new to me, but my reason for coming

here is old: the search for safe happiness, happy safety. So far I

did not find it. Can you help me?

 

M: What was never lost can never be found. Your very search for

safety and joy keeps you away from them. Stop searching, cease

losing. The disease is simple and the remedy equally simple. It is

your mind only that makes you insecure and unhappy. Anticipation

makes you insecure, memory -- unhappy. Stop misusing your mind and

all will be well with you. You need not set it right -- it will set

itself right, as soon as you give up all concern with the past and

the future and live entirely in the now.

 

Q: But the now has no dimension. I shall become a nobody, a

nothing !

 

M: Exactly. As nothing and nobody you are safe and happy. You can

have the experience for the asking. Just try.

 

But let us go back to what is accidental and what is spontaneous, or

natural. You said nature is orderly while accident is a sign of

chaos. I denied the difference and said that we call an event

accidental when its causes are untraceable. There is no place for

chaos in nature. Only in the mind of man there is chaos. The mind

does not grasp the whole -- its focus is very narrow. It sees

fragments only and fails to perceive the picture. Just as a man who

hears sounds, but does not understand the language, may accuse the

speaker of meaningless jabbering, and be altogether wrong. What to

one is a chaotic stream of sounds is a beautiful poem to another.

 

King Janaka once dreamt that he was a beggar. On waking up he asked

his Guru -- Vasishta: Am I a king dreaming of being a beggar, or a

beggar dreaming of being a king? The Guru answered: You are neither,

you are both. You are, and yet you are not what you think yourself to

be. You are because you behave accordingly; you are not because it

does not last. Can you be a king or a beggar for ever? All must

change. You are what does not change. What are you? Janaka said: Yes,

I am neither king nor beggar, I am the dispassionate witness. The

Guru said. This is your last illusion that you are a jnani, that you

are different from, and superior to, the common man. Again you

identify yourself with your mind, in this case a well-behaved and in

every way an exemplary mind. As long as you see the least difference,

you are a stranger to reality. You are on the level of the mind. When

the 'I am myself' goes, the 'I am all' comes. When the 'I am all'

goes, 'I am' comes. When even 'I am' goes, reality alone is and in it

every 'I am' is preserved and glorified. Diversity without

separateness is the Ultimate that the mind can touch. Beyond that all

activity ceases, because in it all goals are reached and all purposes

fulfilled.

 

Q: Once the Supreme State is reached, can it be shared with others?

 

M: The Supreme State is universal, here and now; everybody already

shares in it. It is the state of being -- knowing and liking. Who

does not like to be, or does not know his own existence? But we take

no advantage of this joy of being conscious, we do not go into it and

purify it of all that is foreign to it. This work of mental self-

purification, the cleansing of the psyche, is essential. Just as a

speck in the eye, by causing inflammation, may wipe out the world, so

the mistaken idea: 'I am the body-mind' causes the self-concern,

which obscures the universe. It is useless to fight the sense of

being a limited and separate person unless the roots of it are laid

bare. Selfishness is rooted in the mistaken ideas of oneself.

Clarification of the mind is Yoga.