Questioner: What is the daily and hourly state of mind of a realised man? How do

[Guest guest]

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.

 

 

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[Guest guest]

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.

 

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