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Death of the Mind is Birth of
Wisdom
Questioner: Before one can realize one’s true nature need not one be a person? Does not the ego have its value?
Maharaj: The person is of little use. It is deeply involved in its own affairs and is completely ignorant of its true being. Unless the witnessing consciousness begins to play on the person and it becomes the object of observation rather than the subject, realization is not feasible. It is the witness that makes realization desirable and attainable.
Q: There comes a point in a person’s life when it becomes the witness.
M: Oh, no. The person by itself will not become the witness. It is like expecting a cold candle to start burning in the course of time. The person can stay in the darkness of ignorance forever, unless the flame of awareness touches it.
Q: Who lights the candle?
M: The Guru. His words, his presence. In India it is very often the mantra. Once the candle is lighted, the flame will consume the candle.
Q: Why is the mantra so effective?
M: Constant repetition of the mantra is something the person does not do for one’s own sake. The beneficiary is not the person. Just like the candle which does not increase by burning.
Q: Can the person become aware of itself by itself?
M: Yes, it happens sometimes as a result of much suffering.
The Guru wants to save you the endless pain. Such is his grace.
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Even when there is no discoverable outer Guru, there is always the sadguru, the inner Guru, who directs and helps from within.
The words ‘outer’ and ‘Inner’ are relative to the body only; in reality all is one, the outer being merely a projection of the inner.
Awareness comes as if from a higher dimension.
Q: Before the spark is lit and after, what is the difference?
M: Before the spark is lit there is no witness to perceive the difference. The person may be conscious, but is not aware of being conscious. It is completely identified with what it thinks and feels and experiences. The darkness that is in it is of its own creation. When the darkness is questioned, it dissolves. The desire to question is planted by the Guru. In other words, the difference between the person and the witness is as between not knowing and knowing oneself. The world seen in consciousness is to be of the nature of consciousness, when there is harmony (sattva); but when activity and passivity ( rajas and tamas) appear, they obscure and distort and you see the false as real.
Q: What can the person do to prepare itself for the coming of the Guru.
M: The very desire to be ready means that the Guru had come and the flame is lighted. It may be a stray word, or a page in a book; the Guru’s grace works mysteriously.
Q: Is there no such thing as self-preparation? We hear so much about yoga sadhana?
M: It is not the person that is doing sadhana. The person is in unrest and resistance to the very end. It is the witness that works on the person, on the totality of its illusions, past, present and future.
Q: How can we know that what you say is true? While it is self-contained and free from inner contradictions, how can we know that it is not a product of fertile imagination, nurtured and enriched by constant repetition?
M: The proof of the truth lies in its effect on the listener.
Q: Words can have a most powerful effect. By hearing, or repeating words, one can experience various kinds of trances.
The listener’s experiences may be induced and cannot be considered as a proof.
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M: The effect need not necessarily be an experience. It can be a change in character, in motivation, in relationship to people and one’s self. Trances and visions induced by words, or drugs, or any other sensory or mental means are temporary and inconclusive. The truth of what is said here is immovable and everlasting. And the proof of it is in the listener, in the deep and permanent changes in his entire being. It is not something he can doubt, unless he doubts his own existence, which is unthinkable. When my experience becomes your own experience also, what better proof do you want?
Q: The experiencer is the proof of his experience.
M: Quite, but the experiencer needs no proof. ‘I am, and I know I am’. You cannot ask for further proofs.
Q: Can there be true knowledge of things?
M: Relatively — yes. Absolutely — there are no things. To know that nothing is is true knowledge.
Q: What is the link between the relative and the absolute?
M: They are identical.
Q: From which point of view are they identical?
M: When the words are spoken, there is silence. When the relative is over, the absolute remains. The silence before the words were spoken, is it different from the silence that comes after?
The silence is one and without it the words could not have been heard. It is always there — at the back of the words. Shift your attention from words to silence and you will hear it. The mind craves for experience, the memory of which it takes for knowledge. The gnani is beyond all experience and his memory is empty of the past. He is entirely unrelated to anything in particular. But the mind craves for formulations and definitions, always eager to squeeze reality into a verbal shape. Of everything it wants an idea, for without ideas the mind is not. Reality is essentially alone, but the mind will not leave it alone — and deals instead with the unreal. And yet it is all the mind can do — discover the unreal as unreal.
Q: And seeing the real as real?
M: There is no such state as seeing the real. Who is to see what? You can only be the real — which you are, anyhow. The 360
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problem is only mental. Abandon false ideas, that is all. There is no need of true ideas. There aren’t any.
Q: Why then are we encouraged to seek the real?
M: The mind must have a purpose. To encourage it to free itself from the unreal it is promised something in return. In reality, there is no need of purpose. Being free from the false is good in itself, it wants no reward. It is just like being clean — which is its own reward.
Q: Is not self-knowledge the reward?
M: The reward of self-knowledge is freedom from the personal self. You cannot know the knower, for you are the knower. The fact of knowing proves the knower. You need no other proof.
The knower of the known is not knowable. Just like the light is known in colours only, so is the knower known in knowledge.
Q: Is the knower an inference only?
M: You know your body, mind and feelings. Are you an inference only?
Q: I am an inference to others, but not to myself.
M: So am I. An inference to you, but not to myself. I know myself by being myself. As you know yourself to be a man by being one. You do not keep on reminding yourself that you are a man.
It is only when your humanity is questioned that you assert it.
Similarly, I know that I am all. I do not need to keep on repeating:
‘I am all, I am all’. Only when you take me to be a particular, a person, I protest. As you are a man all the time, so I am what I am — all the time. Whatever you are changelessly, that you are beyond all doubt.
Q: When I ask how do you know that you are a gnani, you answer: ‘I find no desire in me. Is this not a proof?’
M: Were I full of desires, I would have still been what I am.
Q: Myself, full of desires and you, full of desires; what difference would there be?
M: You identify yourself with your desires and become their slave. To me desires are things among other things, mere clouds in the mental sky, and I do not feel compelled to act on them.
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Q: The knower and his knowledge, are they one or two?
M: They are both. The knower is the unmanifested, the known is the manifested. The known is always on the move, it changes, it has no shape of its own, no dwelling place. The knower is the immutable support of all knowledge. Each needs the other, but reality lies beyond. The gnani cannot be known, because there is nobody to be known. When there is a person, you can tell something about it, but when there is no self-identification with the particular, what can be said? You may tell a gnani anything; his question will always be: ‘about whom are you talking? There is no such person’. Just as you cannot say anything about the universe because it includes everything, so nothing can be said about a gnani, for he is all and yet nothing in particular. You need a hook to hang your picture on; when there is no hook, on what will the picture hang? To locate a thing you need space, to place an event you need time; but the timeless and spaceless defies all handling. It makes everything perceivable, yet itself it is beyond perception. The mind cannot know what is beyond the mind, but the mind is known by what is beyond it. The gnani knows neither birth nor death; existence and non-existence are the same to him.
Q: When your body dies, you remain.
M: Nothing dies. The body is just imagined. There is no such thing.
Q: Before another century will pass, you will be dead to all around you. Your body will be covered with flowers, then burnt and the ashes scattered. That will be our experience. What will be yours?
M: Time will come to an end. This is called the Great Death (mahamrityu), the death of time.
Q: Does it mean that the universe and its contents will come to an end?
M: The universe is your personal experience. How can it be affected? You might have been delivering a lecture for two hours; where has it gone when it is over? It has merged into silence in which the beginning, middle and end of the lecture are all together. Time has come to a stop, it was, but is no more. The silence after a life of talking and the silence after a life of silence is 362
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the same silence. Immortality is freedom from the feeling: ‘I am’.
Yet it is not extinction. On the contrary, it is a state infinitely more real, aware and happy than you can possibly think of. Only self-consciousness is no more.
Q: Why does the Great Death of the mind coincide with the
‘small death’ of the body?
M: It does not! You may die a hundred deaths without a break in the mental turmoil. Or, you may keep your body and die only in the mind. The death of the mind is the birth of wisdom.
Q: The person goes and only the witness remains.
M: Who remains to say: ‘I am the witness’. When there is no ‘I am’, where is the witness? In the timeless state there is no self to take refuge in.
The man who carries a parcel is anxious not to lose it — he is parcel-conscious. The man who cherishes the feeling ‘I am’ is self-conscious. The gnani holds on to nothing and cannot be said to be conscious. And yet he is not unconscious. He is the very heart of awareness. We call him digambara clothed in space, the Naked One, beyond all appearance. There is no name and shape under which he may be said to exist, yet he is the only one that truly is.
Q: I cannot grasp it.
M: Who can? The mind has its limits. It is enough to bring you to the very frontiers of knowledge and make you face the immensity of the unknown. To dive in it is up to you.
Q: What about the witness? Is it real or unreal?
M: It is both. The last remnant of illusion, the first touch of the real. To say: I am only the witness is both false and true: false because of the ‘I am’, true because of the witness. It is better to say: ‘there is witnessing’. The moment you say: ‘I am’, the entire universe comes into being along with its creator.
Q: Another question: can we visualize the person and the self as two brothers small and big? The little brother is mischievous and selfish, rude and restless, while the big brother is intelligent and kind, reasonable and considerate, free from body-consciousness with its desires and fears. The big brother knows the little one, but the small one is ignorant of the big one and DEATH OF THE MIND IS BIRTH OF WISDOM
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thinks itself to be entirely on its own. The Guru comes and tells the smaller one: ‘You are not alone, you come from a very good family, your brother is a very remarkable man, wise and kind, and he loves you very much. Remember him, think of him, find him, serve him, and you will become one with him’. Now, the question is are there two in us, the personal and the individual, the false self and the true self, or is it only a simile?
M: It is both. They appear to be two, but on investigation they are found to be one. Duality lasts only as long as it is not questioned. The trinity: mind, self and spirit (vyakti, vyakta, avyakta), when looked into, becomes unity. These are only modes of experiencing: of attachment, of detachment, of transcendence.
Q: Your assumption that we are in a dream state makes your position unassailable. Whatever objection we raise, you just deny its validity. One cannot discuss with you!
M: The desire to discuss is also mere desire. The desire to know, to have the power, even the desire to exist are desires only. Everybody desires to be, to survive, to continue, for no one is sure of himself. But everybody is immortal. You make yourself mortal by taking yourself to be the body.
Q: Since you have found your freedom, will you not give me a little of it?
M: Why little? Take the whole. Take it, it is there for the taking.
But you are afraid of freedom!
Q: Swami Ramdas had to deal with a similar request. Some devotees collected round him one day and began to ask for liberation. Ramdas listened smilingly and then suddenly he became serious and said: You can have it, here and now, freedom absolute and permanent. Who wants it, come forward. Nobody moved. Thrice he repeated the offer. None accepted. Then he said: ‘The offer is withdrawn’.
M: Attachment destroys courage. The giver is always ready to give. The taker is absent. Freedom means letting go. People just do not care to let go everything. They do not know that the finite is the price of the infinite, as death is the price of immortality.
Spiritual maturity lies in the readiness to let go everything. The giving up is the first step. But the real giving up is in realizing 364
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that there is nothing to give up, for nothing is your own. It is like deep sleep — you do not give up your bed when you fall asleep
— you just forget it.
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Truth is Here and Now
Questioner: My question is: What is the proof of truth? Followers of every religion, metaphysical or political, philosophical or ethical, are convinced that their’s is the only truth, that all else is false and they take their own unshakable conviction for the proof of truth. ‘I am convinced, so it must be true’, they say. It seems to me, that no philosophy or religion, no doctrine or ideology, however complete, free from inner contradictions and emotionally appealing, can be the proof of its own truth. They are like clothes men put on, which vary with times and circumstances and follow the fashion trends.
Now, can there be a religion or philosophy which is true and which does not depend on somebody’s conviction? Nor on scriptures, because they again depend on somebody’s faith in them? Is there a truth which does not depend on trusting, which is not subjective?
Maharaj: What about science?
Q: Science is circular, it ends where it starts, with the senses. It deals with experience, and experience is subjective. No two persons can have the same experience, though they may express it in the same words.
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M: You must look for truth beyond the mind.
Q: Sir, I have had enough of trances. Any drug can induce them cheaply and quickly. Even the classical samadhi s, caused by breathing or mental exercises, are not much different. There are oxygen samadhis and carbon dioxide samadhis and self-induced samadhis, caused by repetition of a formula or a chain of thoughts. Monotony is soporific. I cannot accept samadhi, however glorious, as a proof of truth.
M: Samadhi is beyond experience. It is a qualityless state.
Q: The absence of experience is due to inattention. It reappears with attention. Closing one’s eyes does not disprove light.
Attributing reality to negative states will not take us far. The very negation contains an affirmation.
M: In a way you are right. But don’t you see, you are asking for the proof of truth, without explaining what is the truth you have in mind and what proof will satisfy you? You can prove anything, provided you trust your proof. But what will prove that your proof is true? I can easily drive you into an admission that you know only that you exist — that you are the only proof you can have of anything. But I do not identify mere existence with reality. Existence is momentary, always in time and space, while reality is changeless and all-pervading.
Q: Sir, I do not know what is truth and what can prove it. Do not throw me on my own resources. I have none. Here you are the truth-knower, not me.
M: You refuse testimony as the proof of truth: the experience of others is of no use to you, you reject all inference from the con-curring statements of a vast number of independent witnesses; so it is for you to tell me what is the proof that will satisfy you, what is your test of a valid proof?
Q: Honestly, I do not know what makes a proof.
M: Not even your own experience?
Q: Neither my experience, nor even existence. They depend on my being conscious.
M: And your being conscious depends on what?
Q: I do not know. Formerly, I would have said: on my body; now 366
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I can see that the body is secondary, not primary, and cannot be considered as an evidence of existence.
M: I am glad you have abandoned the I-am-the-body idea, the main source of error and suffering.
Q: I have abandoned it intellectually, but the sense of being the particular, a person, is still with me. I can say: ‘I am’, but what I am I cannot say. I know I exist, but I do not know what exists.
Whichever way I put it, I face the unknown.
M: Your very being is the real.
Q: Surely, we are not talking of the same thing. I am not some abstract being. I am a person, limited and aware of its limitations. I am a fact, but a most unsubstantial fact I am. There is nothing I can build on my momentary existence as a person.
M: Your words are wiser than you are! As a person, your existence is momentary. But are you a person only? Are you a person at all?
Q: How am I to answer? My sense of being proves only that I am; it does not prove anything which is independent of me. I am relative, both creature and creator of the relative. The absolute proof of the absolute truth — what is it, where is it? Can the mere feeling ‘I am’ be the proof of reality?
M: Of course not. ‘I am’ and ‘the world is’ are related and conditional. They are due to the tendency of the mind to project names and shapes.
Q: Names and shapes and ideas and convictions, but not truth.
But for you, I would have accepted the relativity of everything, including truth, and learnt to live by assumptions. But then I meet you and hear you talking of the Absolute as within my reach and also as supremely desirable. Words like peace, bliss, eternity, immortality, catch my attention, as offering freedom from pain and fear. My inborn instincts: pleasure seeking and curiosity are roused and I begin to explore the realm you have opened. All seems most attractive and naturally I ask. Is it attainable? Is it real?
M: You are like a child that says: Prove that the sugar is sweet then only I shall have it. The proof of the sweetness is in the mouth not in the sugar. To know it is sweet, you must taste it, TRUTH IS HERE AND NOW
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there is no other way. Of course, you begin by asking: Is it sugar? Is it sweet? and you accept my assurance until you taste it. Then only all doubts dissolve and your knowledge becomes first hand and unshakable. I do not ask you to believe me. Just trust me enough to begin with. Every step proves or disproves itself. You seem to want the proof of truth to precede fitruth. And what will be the proof of the proof? You see, you are falling into a regress. To cut it — you must put a stop to asking for proofs and accept, for a moment only, something as true. It does not really matter what it is. It may be God, or me, or your own self. In each case you accept something, or somebody, unknown as true.
Now, if you act on the truth you have accepted, even for a moment, very soon you will be brought to the next step. It is like climbing a tree in the dark — you can get hold of the next branch only when you are perched on the previous one. In science it is called the experimental approach. To prove a theory you carry out an experiment according to the operational instructions, left by those who have made the experiment before you. In spiritual search the chain of experiments one has to make is called Yoga.
Q: There are so many Yogas, which to choose?
M: Of course, every gnani will suggest the path of his own attainment as the one he knows most intimately. But most of them are very liberal and adapt their advice to the needs of the enquirer. All the paths take you to the purification of the mind. The impure mind is opaque to truth; the pure mind is transparent.
Truth can be seen through it easily and clearly.
Q: I am sorry, but I seem unable to convey my difficulty. I am asking about the proof of truth and am being given the methods of attaining it. Assuming I follow the methods and attain some most wonderful and desirable state, how do I come to know that my state is true? Every religion begins with faith and promises some ecstasy. Is the ecstasy of the real, or the product of faith?
For, if it is an induced state, I shall have nothing to do with it.
Take Christianity that says: Jesus is your Saviour, believe and be saved from sin. When I ask a sinning Christian how is it that he has not been saved from sin inspite of his faith in Christ, he answers: My faith is not perfect. Again we are in the vicious cir-368
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cle — without perfect faith — no salvation, without salvation —
no perfect faith, hence no salvation. Conditions are imposed which are unfulfillable and then we are blamed for not fulfilling them.
M: You do not realize that your present waking state is one of ignorance. Your question about the proof of truth is born from ignorance of reality. You are contacting your sensory and mental states in consciousness, at the point of ‘I am’, while reality is not mediated, not contacted, not experienced. You are taking duality so much for granted, that you do not even notice it, while to me variety and diversity do not create separation. You imagine reality to stand apart from names and forms, while to me names and forms are the ever changing expressions of reality and not apart from it. You ask for the proof of truth while to me all existence is the proof. You separate existence from being and being from reality, while to me it is all one. However much you are convinced of the truth of your waking state, you do not claim it to be permanent and changeless, as I do when I talk of mine.
Yet I see no difference between us, except that you are imagining things, while I do not.
Q: First you disqualify me from asking about truth, then you accuse me of imagination! What is imagination to you is reality to me.
M: Until you investigate. I am not accusing you of anything. I am only asking you to question wisely. Instead of searching for the proof of truth, which you do not know, go through the proofs you have of what you believe to know. You will find you know nothing for sure — you trust on hearsay. To know the truth, you must pass through your own experience.
Q: I am mortally afraid of samadhi s and other trances, whatever their cause. A drink, a smoke, a fever, a drug, breathing, singing, shaking, dancing, whirling, praying, sex or fasting, mantras or some vertiginous abstraction can dislodge me from my waking state and give me some experience, extraordinary because unfamiliar. But when the cause ceases, the effect dissolves and only a memory remains, haunting but fading.
Let us give up all means and their results, for the results are bound by the means; let us put the question anew; can truth be found?
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M: Where is the dwelling place of truth where you could go in search of it? And how will you know that you have found it? What touchstone do you bring with you to test it? You are back at your initial question: What is the proof of truth? There must be something wrong with the question itself, for you tend to repeat it again and again. Why do you ask what are the proofs of truth? Is it not because you do not know truth first hand and you are afraid that you may be deceived? You imagine that truth is a thing which carries the name ‘truth’ and that it is advantageous to have it, provided it is genuine. Hence your fear of being cheated. You are shopping for truth, but you do not trust the merchants. You are afraid of forgeries and imitations.
Q: I am not afraid of being cheated. I am afraid of cheating myself.
M: But you are cheating yourself in your ignorance of your true motives. You are asking for truth, but in fact you merely seek comfort, which you want to last for ever. Now, nothing, no state of mind, can last for ever. In time and space there is always a limit, because time and space themselves are limited. And in the timeless the words ‘for ever’ have no meaning. The same with the ‘proof of truth’. In the realm of non-duality everything is complete, its own proof, meaning and purpose. Where all is one, no supports are needed. You imagine that permanence is the proof of truth, that what lasts longer is somehow more true.
Time becomes the measure of truth. And since time is in the mind, the mind becomes the arbiter and searches within itself the proof of truth — a task altogether impossible and hopeless!
Q: Sir, were you to say: Nothing is true, all is relative, I would agree with you. But you maintain there is truth, reality, perfect knowledge, therefore I ask: What is it and how do you know?
And what will make me say: Yes, Maharaj was right?
M: You are holding on to the need for a proof, a testimony, an authority. You still imagine that truth needs pointing at and telling you: ‘Look, here is truth’. It is not so. Truth is no