Just like a river carries one to the estuary, so the subtle and silent influence of good people will take me to reality.
M: It will take you to the river, but the crossing is your own.
Freedom cannot be gained nor kept without will-to-freedom.
You must strive for liberation; the least you can do is uncover and remove the obstacles diligently. If you want peace you must strive for it. You will not get peace just by keeping quiet.
Q: A child just grows. He does not make plans for growth, nor has he a pattern; nor does he grow by fragments, a hand here a leg there; he grows integrally end unconsciously.
M: Because he is free of imagination. You can also grow like this, but you must not indulge in forecasts and plans, born of memory and anticipation. It is one of the peculiarities of a gnani that he is not concerned with the future. Your concern with future is due to fear of pain and desire for pleasure, to the gnani all is bliss: he is happy with whatever comes.
Q: Surely, there are many things that would make even a gnani miserable.
M: A gnani may meet with difficulties, but they do not make him suffer. Bringing up a child from birth to maturity may seem a hard task, but to a mother the memories of hardships are a joy.
There is nothing wrong with the world. What is wrong is in the 286
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way you look at it. It is your own imagination that misleads you.
Without imagination there is no world. Your conviction that you are conscious of a world is the world. The world you perceive is made of consciousness; what you call matter is consciousness itself. You are the space (akash) in which it moves, the time in which it lasts, the love that gives it life. Cut off imagination and attachment and what remains?
Q: The world remains. I remain.
M: Yes. But how different it is when you can see it as it is, not through the screen of desire and fear.
Q: What for are all these distinctions — reality and illusion, wisdom and ignorance, saint and sinner? Everyone is in search of happiness, everyone strives desperately; everyone is a Yogi and his life a school of wisdom. Each learns his own way the lessons he needs. Society approves of some, disapproves of others; there are no rules that apply everywhere and for all time.
M: In my world love is the only law. I do not ask for love, I give it.
Such is my nature.
Q: I see you living your life according to a pattern. You run a meditation class in the morning, lecture and have discussions regularly; twice daily there is worship (puja) and religious singing (bhajan) in the evening. You seem to adhere to the routine scrupulously.
M: The worship and the singing are as I found them and I saw no reason to interfere. The general routine is according to the wishes of the people with whom I happen to live or who come to listen. They are working people, with many obligations and the timings are for their convenience. Some repetitive routine is inevitable. Even animals and plants have their time-tables.
Q: Yes, we see a regular sequence in all life. Who maintains the order? Is there an inner ruler, who lays down laws and enforces order?
M: Everything moves according to its nature. Where is the need of a policeman? Every action creates a reaction, which balances and neutralizes the action. Everything happens, but there is a continuous cancelling out, and in the end it is as if nothing happened.
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Q: Do not console me with final harmonies. The accounts tally, but the loss is mine.
M: Wait and see. You may end up with a profit good enough to justify the outlays.
Q: There is a long life behind me and I often wonder whether its many events took place by accident, or there was a plan. Was there a pattern laid down before I was born by which I had to live my life? If yes, who made the plans and who enforced them?
Could there be deviations and mistakes? Some say destiny is immutable end every second of life is pre-determined; others say that pure accident decides everything.
M: You can have it as you like. You can distinguish in your life a pattern or see merely a chain of accidents. Explanations are meant to please the mind. They need not be true. Reality is inde-finable and indescribable.
Q: Sir, you are escaping my question! I want to know how you look at it. Wherever we look we find structure of unbelievable intelligence and beauty. How can I believe that the universe is formless and chaotic? Your world, the world in which you live, may be formless, but it need not be chaotic.
M: The objective universe has structure, is orderly and beautiful. Nobody can deny it. But structure and pattern, imply constraint and compulsion. My world is absolutely free; everything in it is self-determined. Therefore I keep on saying that all happens by itself. There is order in my world too, but it is not imposed from outside. It comes spontaneously and immediately, because of its timelessness. Perfection is not in the future. It is now.
Q: Does your world affect mine?
M: At one point only — at the point of the now. It gives it momentary being, a fleeting sense of reality. In full awareness the contact is established. It needs effortless, un-self-conscious attention.
Q: Is not attention an attitude of mind?
M: Yes, when the mind is eager for reality, it gives attention.
There is nothing wrong with your world, it is your thinking yourself to be separate from it that creates disorder. Selfishness is 288
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the source of all evil.
Q: I am coming back to my question. Before I was born, did my inner self decide the details of my life, or was it entirely accidental and at the mercy of heredity and circumstances?
M: Those who claim to have selected their father and mother and decided how they are going to live their next life may know for themselves. I know for myself. I was never born.
Q: I see you sitting in front of me and replying my questions.
M: You see the body only which, of course, was born and will die.
Q: It is the life-story of this body-mind that I am interested in.
Was it laid down by you or somebody else, or did it happen accidentally?
M: There is a catch in your very question: I make no distinction between the body and the universe. Each is the cause of the other; each is the other, in truth. But I am out of it all. When I am telling you that I was never born, why go on asking me what were my preparations for the next birth? The moment you allow your imagination to spin, it at once spins out a universe. It is not at all as you imagine and I am not bound by your imaginings.
Q: It requires intelligence and energy to build and maintain a living body. Where do they come from?
M: There is only imagination. The intelligence and power are all used up in your imagination. It has absorbed you so completely that you just cannot grasp how far from reality you have wandered. No doubt imagination is richly creative. Universe within universe are built on it. Yet they are all in space and time, past and future, which just do not exist.
Q: I have read recently a report about a little girl who was very cruelly handled in her early childhood. She was badly mutilated and disfigured and grew up in an orphanage, completely estranged from its surroundings. This little girl was quiet and obedient, but completely indifferent. One of the nuns who were looking after the children, was convinced that the girl was not mentally retarded, but merely withdrawn, irresponsive. A psychoanalyst was asked to take up the case and for full two years he would see the child once a week and try to break the MATTER IS CONSCIOUSNESS ITSELF
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wall of isolation. She was docile and well-behaved, but would give no attention to her doctor. He brought her a toy house, with rooms and movable furniture and dolls representing father, mother and their children. It brought out a response, the girl got interested. One day the old hurts revived and came to the surface. Gradually she recovered, a number of operations brought back her face and body to normal and she grew into an efficient and attractive young woman. It took the doctor more than five years, but the work was done. He was a real Guru! He did not put down conditions nor talk about readiness and eligibility.
Without faith, without hope, out of love only he tried and tried again.
M: Yes, that is the nature of a Guru. He will never give up. But, to succeed, he must not be met with too much resistance.
Doubt and disobedience necessarily delay. Given confidence and pliability, he can bring about a radical change in the disciple speedily. Deep insight in the Guru and earnestness in the disciple, both are needed. Whatever was her condition, the girl in your story suffered for lack of earnestness in people. The most difficult are the intellectuals. They talk a lot, but are not serious.
What you call realization is a natural thing. When you are ready, your Guru will be waiting. Sadhana is effortless. When the relationship with your teacher is right you grow. Above all, trust him. He cannot mislead you.
Q: Even when he asks me to do something patently wrong?
M: Do it. A Sanyasi had been masked by his Guru to marry. He obeyed and suffered bitterly. But his four children were all saints and seers, the greatest in Maharashtra. Be happy with whatever comes from your Guru and you will grow to perfection without striving.
Q: Sir, have you any wants or wishes. Can I do anything for you?
M: What can you give me that I do not have? Material things are needed for contentment. But I am contented with myself. What else do I need?
Q: Surely, when you are hungry you need food and when sick you need medicine.
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M: Hunger brings the food and illness brings the medicine. It is all nature’s work.
Q: If I bring something I believe you need, will you accept it?
M: The love that made you offer will make me accept.
Q: If somebody offers to build you a beautiful Ashram?
M: Let him, by all means. Let him spend a fortune, employ hundreds, feed thousands.
Q: Is it not a desire?
M: Not at all. I am only asking him to do it properly, not stingily, half-heartedly. He is fulfilling his own desire, not mine. Let him do it well and be famous among men and gods.
Q: But do you want it?
M: I do not want it.
Q: Will you accept it?
M: I don’t need it.
Q: Will you stay in it?
M: If I am compelled.
Q: What can compel you?
M: Love of those who are in search of light.
Q: Yes, I see your point. Now, how am I to go into samadhi?
M: If you are in the right state, whatever you see will put you into samadhi. After all, samadhi is nothing unusual. When the mind is intensely interested, it becomes one with the object of interest
— the seer and the seen become one in seeing, the hearer and the heard became one in hearing, the lover and the loved become one in loving. Every experience can be the ground for samadhi.
Q: Are you always in a state of samadhi?
M: Of course not. Samadhi is a state of mind, after all. I am beyond all experience, even of samadhi. I am the great devourer and destroyer: whatever I touch dissolves into void (akash).
Q: I need samadhi s for self-realization.
M: You have all the self-realization you need, but you do not MATTER IS CONSCIOUSNESS ITSELF
trust it. Have courage, trust yourself, go, talk, act; give it a chance to prove itself. With some realization comes impercepti-bly, but somehow they need convincing. They have changed, but they do not notice it. Such non-spectacular cases are often the most reliable.
Q: Can one believe himself to be realized and be mistaken?
M: Of course. The very idea ‘I am self-realized’ is a mistake.
There is no ‘I am this’, ‘I am that’ in the Natural State.
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In the Supreme the Witness
Appears
Questioner: Some forty years ago J. Krishnamurti said that there is life only and all talk of personalities and individualities has no foundation in reality. He did not attempt to describe life
— he merely said that while life need not and cannot be described, it can be fully experienced, if the obstacles to its being experienced are removed. The main hindrance lies in our idea of, and addiction to, time, in our habit of anticipating a future in the light of the past. The sum total of the past becomes the ‘I was’, the hoped for future becomes the ‘I shall be’ and life is a constant effort of crossing over from what ‘I was’ to what ‘I shall be’. The present moment, the ‘now’ is lost sight of. Maharaj speaks of ‘I am’. Is it an illusion, like ‘I was’ and ‘I shall be’, or is there something real about it? And if the ‘I am’ too is an illusion, 292
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how does one free oneself from it? The very notion of I am free of
‘I am’ is an absurdity. Is there something real, something lasting, about the ‘I am’ in distinction from the ‘I was’, or ‘I shall be’, which change with time, as added memories create new expectations?
Maharaj: The present ‘I am’ is as false as the ‘I was’ and ‘I shall be’. It is merely an idea in the mind, an impression left by memory, and the separate identity it creates is false. This habit of referring to a false centre must be done away with; the notion: ‘I see’, ‘I feel’, ‘I think’, ‘I do’, must disappear from the field of consciousness; what remains when the false is no more, is real.
Q: What is this big talk about elimination of the self? How can the self eliminate itself? What kind of metaphysical acrobatics can lead to the disappearance of the acrobat? In the end he will reappear, mightily proud of his disappearing.
M: You need not chase the ‘I am’ to kill it. You cannot. All you need is a sincere longing for reality. We call it atma-bhakti, the love of the Supreme: or moksha-sankalpa, the determination to be free from the false. Without love, and will inspired by love, nothing can be done. Merely talking about Reality without doing anything about it is self-defeating. There must be love in the relation between the person who says ‘I am’ and the observer of that ‘I am’. As long as the observer, the inner self, the ‘higher’
self, considers himself apart from the observed, the ‘lower’ self, despises it and condemns it, the situation is hopeless. It is only when the observer (vyakta) accepts the person (vyakti) as a projection or manifestation of himself, and, so to say, takes the self into the Self, the duality of ‘I’ and ‘this’ goes and in the identity of the outer and the inner the Supreme Reality manifests itself.
This union of the seer and the seen happens when the seer becomes conscious of himself as the seer; he is not merely interested in the seen, which he is anyhow, but also interested in being interested, giving attention to attention, aware of being aware. Affectionate awareness is the crucial factor that brings Reality into focus.
Q: According to the Theosophists and allied occultists, man consists of three aspects: personality, individuality and spirituality. Beyond spirituality lies divinity. The personality is strictly IN THE SUPREME THE WITNESS APPEARS
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temporary and valid for one birth only. It begins with the birth of the body and ends with the birth of the next body. Once over, it is over for good; nothing remains of it except a few sweet or bitter lessons.
The individuality begins with the animal-man and ends with the fully human. The split between the personality and individuality is characteristic of our present-day humanity. On one side the individuality with its longing for the true, the good and the beautiful; on the other side an ugly struggle between habit and ambition, fear and greed, passivity and violence.
The spirituality aspect is still in abeyance. It cannot manifest itself in an atmosphere of duality. Only when the personality is re-united with the individuality and becomes a limited, perhaps, but true expression of it, that the light and love and beauty of the spiritual come into their own.
You teach of the vyakti, vyakta, avyakta (observer, observed and ground of observation). Does it tally with the other view?
M: Yes, when the vyakti realizes its non-existence in separation from the vyakta, and the vyakta sees the vyakti as his own expression, then the peace and silence of the avyakta state come into being. In reality, the three are one: the vyakta and the avyakta are inseparable, while the vyakti is the sensing-feeling-thinking process, based on the body made of and fed by the five elements.
Q: What is the relation between the vyakta and the avyakta?
M: How can there be relation when they are one? All talk of separation and relation is due to the distorting and corrupting influence of ‘I-am-the-body’ idea. The outer self (vyakti) is merely a projection on the body-mind of the inner self (vyakta), which again is only an expression of the Supreme Self (avyakta) which is all and none.
Q: There are teachers who will not talk of the higher self and lower self. They address the man as if only the lower self existed. Neither Buddha nor Christ ever mentioned a higher self. J.
Krishnamurti too fights shy of any mention of the higher self.
Why is it so?
M: How can there be two selves in one body? The ‘I am’ is one.
There is no ‘higher I-am’ and ‘lower I-am’. All kinds of states of 294
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mind are presented to awareness and there is self-identification with them. The objects of observation are not what they appear to be and the attitudes they are met with are not what they need be. If you think that Buddha, Christ or Krishnamurti speak to the person, you are mistaken. They know well that the vyakti, the outer self, is but a shadow of the vyakta, the inner self, and they address and admonish the vyakta only. They tell him to give attention to the outer self, to guide and help it, to feel responsible for it; in short, to be fully aware of it. Awareness comes from the Supreme and pervades the inner self; the so-called outer self is only that part of one’s being of which one is not aware. One may be conscious, for every being is conscious, but one is not aware. What is included in awareness becomes the inner and partakes of the inner. You may put it differently: the body defines the outer self, consciousness the inner, and in pure awareness the Supreme is contacted.
Q: You said the body defines the outer self. Since you have a body, do you have also an outer self?
M: I would, were I attached to the body and take it to be myself.
Q: But you are aware of it and attend to its needs.
M: The contrary is nearer to truth — the body knows me and is aware of my needs. But neither is really so. This body appears in your mind; in my mind nothing is.
Q: Do you mean to say you are quite unconscious of having a body?
M: On the contrary, I am conscious of not having a body.
Q: I see you smoking!
M: Exactly so. You see me smoking. Find out for yourself how did you come to see me smoking, and you will easily realize that it is your ‘I-am-the-body’ state of mind that is responsible for this
‘I-see-you-smoking’ idea.
Q: There is the body and there is myself. I know the body. Apart from it, what am I?
M: There is no ‘I’ apart from the body, nor the world. The three appear and disappear together. At the root is the sense ‘I am’.
Go beyond it. The idea: ‘I-am-not-the-body’ is merely an antidote to the idea ‘I-am-the-body’ which is false. What is that ‘I IN THE SUPREME THE WITNESS APPEARS
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am’? Unless you know yourself, what else can you know?
Q: From what you say I conclude that without the body there can be no liberation. If the idea: ‘I-am-not-the-body’ leads to liberation, the presence of the body is essential.
M: Quite right. Without the body, how can the idea: ‘I-am-not-the-body’ come into being? The idea ‘I-am-free’ is as false as the idea ‘I-am-in-bondage’. Find out the ‘I am’ common to both and go beyond.
Q: AIl is a dream only.
M: All are mere words, of what use are they to you? You are entangled in the web of verbal definitions and formulations. Go beyond your concepts and ideas; in the silence of desire and thought the truth is found.
Q: One has to remember not to remember. What a task!
M: It cannot be done, of course. It must happen. But it does happen when you truly see the need of it. Again, earnestness is the golden key.
Q: At the back of my mind there is a hum going on all the time. Numerous weak thoughts swarm and buzz and this shapeless cloud is always with me. Is it the same with you? What is at the back of your mind?
M: Where there is no mind, there no back to it. I am all front, no back! The void speaks, the void remains.
Q: Is there no memory left?
M: No memory of past pleasure or pain is left. Each moment is newly born.
Q: Without memory you cannot be conscious.
M: Of course I am conscious, and fully aware of it. I am not a block of wood! Compare consciousness and its content to a cloud. You are inside the cloud, while I look at. You are lost in it, hardly able to see the tips of your fingers, while I see the cloud and many other clouds and the blue sky too and the sun, the moon, the stars. Reality is one for both of us, but for you it is a prison and for me it is a home.
Q: You spoke of the person (vyakti), the witness (vyakta) and the Supreme (avyakta). Which comes first?
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M: In the Supreme the witness appears. The witness creates the person and thinks itself as separate from it. The witness sees that the person appears in consciousness, which again appears in the witness. This realization of the basic unity is the working of the Supreme. It is the power behind the witness, the source from which all flows. It cannot be contacted, unless there is unity and love and mutual help between the person and the witness, unless the doing is in harmony with the being and the knowing. The Supreme is both the source and the fruit of such harmony. As I talk to you, I am in the state of detached but affectionate awareness (turiya). When this awareness turns upon itself, you may call it the Supreme State, (turiyatita). But the fundamental reality is beyond awareness, beyond the three states of becoming, being and not-being.
Q: How is it that here my mind is engaged in high topics and finds dwelling on them easy and pleasant. When I return home I find myself forgetting all I have learnt here, worrying and fret-ting, unable to remember my real nature even for a moment.
What may be the cause?
M: It is your childishness you are returning to. You are not fully grown up; there are levels left undeveloped because unat-tended. Just give full attention to what in you is crude and primitive, unreasonable and unkind, altogether childish, and you will open. It is the maturity of heart and mind that is essential. It comes effortlessly when the main, obstacle is removed — inattention, unawareness. In awareness you grow.
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Notion of Doership is
Bondage
Questioner: We have been staying at the Satya Sai Baba Ashram for some time. We have also spent two months at Sri Ramanashram at Tiruvannamalai. Now we are on our way back.
to the United States.
Maharaj: Did India cause any change in you?
Q: We feel we have shed our burden. Sri Satya Sai Baba told us to leave everything to him and just live from day to day as righteously as possible. ‘Be good and leave the rest to me’, he used to tell us.
M: What were you doing at the Sri Ramanashram?
Q: We were going on with the mantra given to us by the Guru.
We also did some meditation. There was not much of thinking or study; we were just trying to keep quiet. We are on the bhakti path and rather poor in philosophy. We have not much to think about — just trust our Guru and live our lives.
M: Most of the bhaktas trust their Guru only as long as all is well with them. When troubles come, they feel let down and go out in search of another Guru.
Q: Yes, we were warned against this danger. We are trying to take the hard along with the soft. The feeling: ‘All is Grace’ must be very strong. A sadhu was walking eastwards, from where a strong wind started blowing. The sadhu just turned round and walked west. We hope to live just like that — adjusting ourselves to circumstances as sent us by our Guru.
M: There is only life. There is nobody who lives a life.
Q: That we understand, yet constantly we make attempts to live 298
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our lives instead of just living. Making plans for the future seems to be an inveterate habit with us.
M: Whether you plan or don’t, life goes on. But in life itself a little whorl arises in the mind, which indulges in fantasies and imagines itself dominating and controlling life.
Life itself is desireless. But the false self wants to continue —
pleasantly. Therefore it is always engaged in ensuring one’s continuity. Life is unafraid and free. As long as you have the idea of influencing events, liberation is not for you. The very notion of doership, of being a cause, is bondage.
Q: How can we overcome the duality of the doer and the done?
M: Contemplate life as infinite, undivided, ever present, ever active, until you realize yourself as one with it. It is not even very difficult, for you will be returning only to your own natural condition.
Once you realize that all comes from within, that the world in which you live has not been projected onto you but by you, your fear comes to an end. Without this realization you identify yourself with the externals, like the body, mind, society, nation, humanity, even God or the Absolute. But these