I am That

[Guest guest]

>Body and Mind are symptoms of ignorance

>------

>

>Questioner: Is the universe a product of the senses?

>

>Maharaj: Just as you recreate your world on waking up, so is the universe

>unrolled. The mind, with its five organs of perception, five organs of

>action and five vehicles of consciousness appears as memory, thought,

>reason and selfhood.

>

>Q: Science has made much progress. We know the body and mind much better

>than our ancestors. Your traditional way, describing and analysing the mind

>and matter, is no longer valid.

>

>M: But where are your scientists with their sciences? Are they not again

>images in your own mind?

>

>Q: Here lies the basic difference. To me they are not my own projections.

>They were before I was born and shall be there when I am dead.

>

>M: Of course.. Once you accept time and space as real, you will consider

>yourself minute and shortlived. But are they real? Do they depend on you,

>or you on them? Ad body, you are in space. As mind, you are in time. But

>are you mere body with a mind in it? Have you ever investigated?

>

>Q: I had neither the motive nor the method.

>

>M: I am suggesting both. But the actual work of insight and detachment

>(viveka - vairagya) is yours.

>

>Q: The only motive that I can perceive is my own causeless and timeless

>happiness. And what is the method?

>

>M: Happiness is incidental. The true and effective motive is love. You see

>people suffer and you seek the best way of helping them. The answer is

>obvious - first put yourself beyond the need for help. Be sure your

>attitude is of pure goodwill, free of expectation of any kind. Those who

>seek mere happiness may end up in sublime indifference, while love will

>never rest.

>

>As to method, there is only one - you must come to know yourself - both

>what you appear to be and what you are. Clarity and charity go together -

>each needs and strengthens the other.

>

>Q: Compassion implies the existence of an objective world, full of

>avoidable sorrow.

>

>M: The world is not objective and the sorrow of it is not avoidable.

>Compassion is but another word for the refusal to suffer for imaginary

>reasons.

>

>Q: If the reasons are imaginary, why should the suffering be inevitable?

>

>M: It is always the false that makes you suffer, the false desires and

>fears, the false values and ideas, the false relationships between people.

>Abandon the false and you are free of pain; truth makes happy - truth

>liberates.

>

>Q: The truth is that I am a mind imprisoned in a body and this is a very

>unhappy truth.

>

>M: You are neither the body nor in the body - there is no such thing as the

>body. You have grievously misunderstood yourself; to understand rightly -

>investigate.

>

>Q: But I was born as a body and shall die with the body, as a body.

>

>M: This is your misconception. Enquire, investigate, doubt yourself and

>others. To find truth, you must not cling to your convictions; if you are

>sure of the immediate, you will never reach the ultimate. Your idea that

>you were born and that you will die is absurd: both logic and experience

>contradict it.

>

>Q: All right. I shall not insist that I am the body. You have a point here.

>But here and now, as I talk to you, I am in my body - obviously. The body

>may not be me, but it is mine.

>

>M: The entire universe contributes incessantly to your existence. Hence the

>entire universe is your body. In that sense - I agree.

>

>Q: My body influences me deeply. In more than one way, my body is my

>destiny. My character, my moods, the nature of my reactions, my desires and

>fears - inborn or acquired - they are all based on the body. A little

>alcohol, some drug or other and all changes. Until the drug wears off I

>become another man.

>

>M: All this happens because you think yourself to be the body. Realise

>yourself and even drugs will have no power over you.

>

>Q: You smoke?

>

>M: My body kept a few habits which may well continue till it dies. There is

>no harm in them.

>

>Q: You eat meat?

>

>M: I was born among meat-eating people and my children are eating meat. I

>eat very little - I make no fuss.

>

>Q: Meat eating implies killing.

>

>M: Obviously. I make no claims of consistency. You think absolute

>consistency is possible; prove it by example. Don't preach what you do not

>practise.

>

>Coming back to the idea of having born. You are stuck with what your

>parents told you: all about conception, pregnancy and birth, infant, child,

>youngster, teenager and so on. Now divest yourself of the ides that you are

>the body with the help of the contrary idea that you are not the body. It

>is also an idea, no doubt; treat it like something to be abandoned when its

>work is done. The idea that I am not the body gives reality to the body,

>when in fact, there is no such thing as the body; it is but a state of

>mind. You can have as many bodies and as diverse as you like; just remember

>steadily what you want and reject the incompatibles.

>

>Q: I am like a box within box, within box. The outer box acting as the body

>and the one next to it - as the indwelling soul. Abstract the outer box and

>next becomes the body and the one next to it the soul. It is an infinite

>series, an endless opening of boxes, is the last one the ultimate soul?

>

>M: If you have a body, you must have a soul; here your simile of a nest of

>boxes applies. But here and now, through all your bodies and souls shines

>awareness, the pure light of chit. Hold on to it unswervingly. Without

>awareness the body would not last a second. There is in the body a current

>of energy, affection and intelligence, which guides, maintains and

>energises the body. Discover that current and stay with it.

>

>Of course, all these are manners of speaking. Words are as much a barrier

>as a bridge. Find the spark of life that weaves the tissues of your body

>and be with it. It is the only reality the body has.

>

>Q: What happens to that spark of life after death?

>

>M: It is beyond time. Birth and death are but points in time. Life weaves

>eternally its many webs. The weaving is in time, but life itself is

>timeless. Whatever name and shape you give to its expressions it is like

>the ocean - never changing, ever changing.

>

>Q: All you say sounds beautifully convincing, yet my feeling of being just

>a person in a world strange and alien, often inimical and dangerous, does

>not cease. Being a person, limited in space and time, how can I possibly

>realise myself as the opposite; a de-personalised, universalised awareness

>of nothing in particular?

>

>M: You assert yourself to be what you are not and deny yourself to be what

>you are. You omit the element of pure cognition. Of awareness free from all

>personal distortions. Unless you admit the reality of chit, you will never

>know yourself.

>

>Q: What am I to do? I do not see myself as you see me. Maybe you are right

>and I am wrong. But how can I cease to be what I feel I am.

>

>M: A prince who believes himself to be a beggar can be convinced

>conclusively in one way only: he must behave as a prince and then see what

>happens. Behave as if what I say is true and judge by what actually

>happens. All I ask is the little faith needed for making the first step.

>With experience will come confidence and you will not need me anymore. I

>know what you are and I am telling you. Trust me for a while.

>

>Q: To be here and now, I need my body and its senses. To understand, I need

>my mind.

>

>M: The body and the mind are only symptoms of ignorance, of

>misapprehension. Behave as if you were pure awareness, bodiless and

>mindless, spaceless and timeless, beyond 'where' and 'when' and 'how'.

>Dwell on it, think of it, learn to accept its reality. Don't oppose it and

>deny it all the time. Keep an open mind atleast. Yoga is bending the outer

>to the inner. Make your mind and body express the real which is all and

>beyond all. By doing you succeed, not by arguing.

>

>Q: Kindly allow me to come back to the first question. How does the error

>of being a person originate?

>

>M: The absolute precedes time. Awareness comes first. A bundle of memories

>and mental habits attracts attention, awareness gets focalised and a person

>suddenly appears. Remove the light of awareness - go to sleep or swoon away

>- and the person disappears. The person (vyakthi) flickers, awareness

>(vyaktha) contains all space and time, the absolute (avyaktha) IS.

 

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