Talks, 3rd May 1938

May 22, 2006

3rd May, 1938

The same lady continued: If the world is only a dream, how should

it be harmonised with the Eternal Reality?

Maharshi.: The harmony consists in the realisation of its inseparateness

from the Self.

D.: But a dream is fleeting and unreal. It is also contradicted by the

waking state.

M.: The waking experiences are similar.

D.: One lives fifty years and finds a continuity in the waking

experience which is absent in dreams.

M.: You go to sleep and dream a dream in which the experiences of

fifty years are condensed within the short duration of the dream, say

five minutes. There is also a continuity in the dream. Which is real

now? Is the period covering fifty years of your waking state real or

the short duration of five minutes of your dream? The standards of

time differ in the two states. That is all. There is no other difference

between the experiences.

D.: The spirit remains unaffected by the passing phenomena and by

the successive bodies of repeated births. How does each body get

the life to set it acting?

M.: The spirit is differentiated from matter and is full of life. The

body is animated by it.

D.: The realised being is then the spirit and unaware of the world.

M.: He sees the world but not as separate from the Self.

D.: If the world is full of pain why should he continue the

world-idea?

M.: Does the realised being tell you that the world is full of pain? It is the

other one who feels the pain and seeks the help of the wise saying that

the world is painful. Then the wise one explains from his experience that

if one withdraws within the Self there is an end of pain. The pain is felt

so long as the object is different from oneself. But when the Self is found

to be an undivided whole who and what is there to feel? The realised

mind is the Holy Spirit and the other mind is the home of the devil. For

the realised being this is the Kingdom of Heaven. “The Kingdom of

Heaven is within you.” That Kingdom is here and now.

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