I AM THAT.

[Guest guest]

Q: I may go on telling myself: 'I am not the mind, I am not concerned with its

problems,' but the mind remains and its problems remain just as they were. Now,

please do not tell me that it is because I am not earnest enough and I should be

more earnest! I know it and admit it and only ask you -- how is it done?

 

M: At least you are asking! Good enough, for a start. Go on pondering,

wondering, being anxious to find a way. Be conscious of yourself, watch your

mind, give it your full attention. Don't look for quick results; there may be

none within your noticing. Unknown to you, your psyche will undergo a change,

there will be more clarity in your thinking, charity in your feeling, purity in

your behaviour. You need not aim at these -- you will witness the change all the

same. For, what you are now is the result of inattention and what you become

will be the fruit of attention.

 

 

Q: Why should mere attention make all the difference?

 

M: So far your life was dark and restless (tamas and rajas). Attention,

alertness, awareness, clarity, liveliness, vitality, are all manifestations of

integrity, oneness with your true nature (sattva). It is in the nature of sattva

to reconcile and neutralise tamas and rajas and rebuild the personality in

accordance with the true nature of the self. Sattva is the faithful servant of

the self; ever attentive and obedient.

 

 

Q: And I shall come to it through mere attention?

 

M: Do not undervalue attention. It means interest and also love. To know, to do,

to discover, or to create you must give your heart to it -- which means

attention. All the blessings flow from it.

 

 

Q: You advise us to concentrate on 'I am'. Is this too a form of attention?

 

M: What else? Give your undivided attention to the most important in your life

-- yourself. Of your personal universe you are the centre -- without knowing the

centre what else can you know?

 

 

Q: But how can I know myself? To know myself I must be away from myself. But

what is away from myself cannot be myself. So, it looks that I cannot know

myself, only what I take to be myself.

 

M: Quite right. As you cannot see your face, but only its reflection in the

mirror, so you can know only your image reflected in the stainless mirror of

pure awareness.

 

 

Q: How am I to get such stainless mirror?

 

M: Obviously, by removing stains. See the stains and remove them. The ancient

teaching is fully valid.

 

 

Q: What is seeing and what is removing?

 

M: The nature of the perfect mirror is such that you cannot see it. Whatever you

can see is bound to be a stain. Turn away from it, give it up, know it as

unwanted.

 

 

 

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[Guest guest]

Q: What is the right use of mind?

 

M: Fear and greed cause the misuse of the mind. The right use of mind is in the

service of love, of life, of truth, of beauty.

 

 

Q: Easier said than done. Love of truth, of man, goodwill -- what luxury! We

need plenty of it to set the world right, but who will provide?

 

M: You can spend an eternity looking elsewhere for truth and love, intelligence

and goodwill, imploring God and man -- all in vain. You must begin in yourself,

with yourself -- this is the inexorable law. You cannot change the image without

changing the face. First realise that your world is only a reflection of

yourself and stop finding fault with the reflection. Attend to yourself, set

yourself right -- mentally and emotionally. The physical will follow

automatically. You talk so much of reforms: economic, social, political. Leave

alone the reforms and mind the reformer. What kind of world can a man create who

is stupid, greedy, heartless?

 

 

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[Guest guest]

Q: A crude, unevolved man will not work without a reward. Is it not right to

offer him incentives?

 

M: He will create for himself incentives anyhow. He does not know that to grow

is in the nature of consciousness. He will progress from motive to motive and

will chase Gurus for the fulfilment of his desires. When by the laws of his

being he finds the way of return (nivritti) he abandons all motives, for his

interest in the world is over. He wants nothing -- neither from others nor from

himself. He dies to all and becomes the All. To want nothing and do nothing --

that is true creation! To watch the universe emerging and subsiding in one's

heart is a wonder.

 

 

Q: The great obstacle to inner effort is boredom. The disciple gets bored.

 

M: Inertia and restlessness (tamas and rajas) work together and keep clarity and

harmony (sattva) down. Tamas and Rajas must be conquered before Sattva can

appear. It will all come in due course, quite spontaneously.

 

 

Q: Is there no need of effort then?

 

M: When effort is needed, effort will appear. When effortlessness becomes

essential, it will assert itself. You need not push life about. Just flow with

it and give yourself completely to the task of the present moment, which is the

dying now to the now. For living is dying. Without death life cannot be.

 

Get hold of the main thing that the world and the self are one and perfect. Only

your attitude is faulty and needs readjustment.

This process or readjustment is what you call sadhana. You come to it by putting

an end to indolence and using all your energy to clear the way for clarity and

charity. But in reality, these all are signs of inevitable growth. Don't be

afraid, don't resist, don't delay. Be what you are. There is nothing to be

afraid of. Trust and try. Experiment honestly. Give your real being a chance to

shape your life. You will not regret.

 

 

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[Guest guest]

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.

 

 

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[Guest guest]

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.

 

 

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