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the sense ‘I am’. There is only light, all else appears.
Q: Do you know that light? Have you seen it?
M: To the mind it appears as darkness. It can be known only through its reflections. All is seen in daylight — except daylight.
Q: Have I to understand that our minds are similar?
M: How can it be? You have your own private mind, woven with memories, held together by desires and fears. I have no mind of my own; what I need to know the universe brings before me, as it supplies the food I eat.
Q: Do you know all you want to know?
M: There is nothing I want to know. But what I need to know, I come to know.
Q: Does this knowledge come to you from within or from outside?
M: It does not apply. My inner is outside and my outer is inside.
I may get from you the knowledge needed at the moment, but you are not apart from me.
Q: What is turiya, the fourth state we hear about?
M: To be the point of light tracing the world is turiya. To be the light itself is turiyatita. But of what use are names when reality is so near?
Q: Is there any progress in your condition? When you compare yourself yesterday with yourself today, do you find yourself changing, making progress? Does your vision of reality grow in width and depth?
M: Reality is immovable and yet in constant movement. It is like a mighty river — it flows and yet it is there — eternally. What flows is not the river with its bed and banks, but its water, so does the sattva guna, the universal harmony, play its games against tamas and rajas, the forces of darkness and despair. In sattva there is always change and progress, in rajas there is change and regress, while tamas stands for chaos. The three Gunas play eternally against each other — it is a fact and there can be no quarrel with a fact.
Q: Must I always go dull with tamas and desperate with rajas?
What about sattva?
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M: Sattva is the radiance of your real nature. You can always find it beyond the mind and its many worlds. But if you want a world, you must accept the three gunas as inseparable — matter — energy — life — one in essence, distinct in appearance.
They mix and flow — in consciousness. In time and space there is eternal flow, birth and death again, advance, retreat, another advance, again retreat — apparently without a beginning and without end; reality being timeless, changeless, bodyless, mindless awareness is bliss.
Q: I understand that, according to you, everything is a state of consciousness. The world is full of things — a grain of sand is a thing, a planet is a thing. How are they related to consciousness?
M: Where consciousness does not reach, matter begins: A thing is a form of being which we have not understood. It does not change — it is always the same — it appears to be there on its own — something strange and alien. Of course it is in the chit, consciousness, but appears to be outside because of its apparent changelessness. The foundation of things is in memory — without memory there would be no recognition. Creation reflection — rejection: Brahma — Vishnu — Shiva: this is the eternal process. All things are governed by it.
Q: Is there no escape?
M: I am doing nothing else, but showing the escape. Understand that the One includes the Three and that you are the One, and you shall be free of the world process.
Q: What happens then to my consciousness?
M: After the stage of creation, comes the stage of examination and reflection and, finally, the stage of abandonment and forgetting. The consciousness remains, but in a latent, quiet state.
Q: Does the state of identity remain?
M: The state of identity is inherent in reality and never fades.
But identity is neither the transient personality (vyakti), nor the karma-bound individuality (vyakta). It is what remains when all self-identification is given up as false — pure consciousness, the sense of being all there is, or could be. Consciousness is ALL KNOWLEDGE IS IGNORANCE
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pure in the beginning and pure in the end; in between it gets contaminated by imagination which is at the root of creation. At all times consciousness remains the same. To know it as it is, is realization and timeless peace.
Q: Is the sense ‘I am’ real or unreal?
M: Both. It is unreal when we say: ‘I am this, I am that’. It is real when we mean ‘I am not this, nor that.’
The knower comes and goes with the known, and is transient; but that which knows that it does not know, which is free of memory and anticipation, is timeless.
Q: Is ‘I am’ itself the witness, or are they separate?
M: Without one the other cannot be. Yet they are not one. It is like the flower and its colour. Without flower — no colours; without colour — the flower remains unseen. Beyond is the light which on contact with the flower creates the colour. Realize that your true nature is that of pure light only, and both the perceived and the perceiver come and go together. That which makes both possible, and yet is neither, is your real being, which means not being a ‘this’ or ‘that’, but pure awareness of being and not-being. When awareness is turned on itself, the feeling is of not knowing. When it is turned outward, the knowables come into being. To say: ‘I know myself’ is a contradiction in terms for what is ‘known’ cannot be ‘myself’.
Q: If the self is for ever the unknown what then is realized in self-realization?
M: To know that the known cannot be me nor mine, is liberation enough. Freedom from self-identification with a set of memories and habits, the state of wonder at the infinite reaches of the being, its inexhaustible creativity and total transcendence, the absolute fearlessness born from the realization of the illusoriness and transiency of every mode of consciousness — flow from a deep and inexhaustible source. To know the source as source and appearance as appearance, and oneself as the source only is self-realization.
Q: On what side is the witness? Is it real or unreal?
M: Nobody can say: ‘I am the witness’. The ‘I am’ is always witnessed. The state of detached awareness is the witness-396
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consciousness, the ‘mirror-mind’. It rises and sets with its object and thus it is not quite the real. Whatever its object, it remains the same, hence it is also real. It partakes of both the real and the unreal and is therefore a bridge between the two.
Q: If all happens only to the ‘I am’, if the ‘I am’ is the known and the knower and the knowledge itself, what does the witness do?
Of what use is it?
M: It does nothing and is of no use whatsoever.
Q: Then why do we talk of it?
M: Because it is there. The bridge serves one purpose only —
to cross over. You don’t build houses on a bridge. The ‘I am’
looks at things, the witness sees through them. It sees them as they are — unreal and transient. To say ‘not me, not mine’ is the task of the witness.
Q: Is it the manifested (saguna) by which the unmanifested (nirguna) is represented?
M: The unmanifested is not represented. Nothing manifested can represent the unmanifested.
Q: Then why do you talk of it?
M: Because it is my birthplace.
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Person, Witness and the
Supreme
Questioner: We have a long history of drug-taking behind us, mostly drugs of the consciousness-expanding variety. They gave us the experience of other states of consciousness, high and low, and also the conviction, that drugs are unreliable and, at best, transitory and, at worst, destructive of organism and personality. We are in search of better means for developing consciousness and transcendence. We want the fruits of our search to stay with us and enrich our lives, instead of turning to pale memories and helpless regrets. If by the spiritual we mean self-investigation and development, our purpose in coming to India is definitely spiritual. The happy hippy stage is behind us; we are serious now and on the move. We know there is reality to be found, but we do not know how to find and hold on to it. We need no convincing, only guidance. Can you help us?
Maharaj: You do not need help, only advice. What you seek is already in you. Take my own case. I did nothing for my realization. My teacher told me that the reality is within me; I looked within and found it there, exactly as my teacher told me. To see reality is as simple as to see one’s face in a mirror. Only the mirror must be clear and true. A quiet mind, undistorted by desires and fears, frees from ideas and opinions, clear on all the levels, is needed to reflect the realty. Be clear and quiet — alert and detached, all else will happen by itself.
Q: You had to make your mind clear and quiet before you could realize the truth. How did you do it?
M: I did nothing. It just happened. I lived my life, attending to my family’s needs. Nor did my Guru do it. It just happened, as he said it will.
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Q: Things do not just happen. There must be a cause for everything.
M: All that happens is the cause of all that happens. Causes are numberless; the idea of a sole cause is an illusion.
Q: You must have been doing something specific — some meditation or Yoga. How can you say that realization will happen on its own?
M: Nothing specific. I just lived my life.
Q: I am amazed!
M: So was I. But what was there to be amazed at? My teacher’s words came true. So what? He knew me better than I knew myself, that is all. Why search for causes? In the very beginning I was giving some attention and time to the sense ‘I am’, but only in the beginning. Soon after my Guru died, I lived on. His words proved to be true. That is all. It is all one process. You tend to separate things in time and then look for causes.
Q: What is your work now? What are you doing?
M: You imagine being and doing as identical. It is not so. The mind and the body move and change and cause other minds and bodies to move and change and that is called doing, action. I see that it is in the nature of action to create further action, like fire that continues by burning. I neither act nor cause others to act; I am timelessly aware of what is going on.
Q: In your mind, or also in other minds?
M: There is only one mind; which swarms with ideas; ‘I am this, I am that, this is mine, that is mine’. I am not the mind, never was, nor shall be.
Q: How did the mind come into being?
M: The world consists of matter, energy and intelligence. They manifest themselves in many ways. Desire and imagination create the world and intelligence reconciles the two and causes a sense of harmony and peace. To me it all happens; I am aware, yet unaffected.
Q: You cannot be aware, yet unaffected. There is a contradiction in terms. Perception is change. Once you have experi-PERSON, WITNESS AND THE SUPREME
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enced a sensation, memory will not allow you to return to the former state.
M: Yes, what is added to memory cannot be erased easily. But it can surely be done and, in fact, I am doing it all the time. Like a bird on its wings, I leave no footprints.
Q: Has the witness name and form, or is it beyond these?
M: The witness is merely a point in awareness. It has no name and form. It is like the reflection of the sun in a drop of dew. The drop of dew has name and form, but the little point of light is caused by the sun. The clearness and smoothness of the drop is a necessary condition but not sufficient by itself. Similarly clarity and silence of the mind are necessary for the reflection of reality to appear in the mind, but by themselves they are not sufficient. There must be reality beyond it. Because reality is timelessly present, the stress is on the necessary conditions.
Q: Can it happen that the mind is clear and quiet and yet no reflection appears?
M: There is destiny to consider. The unconscious is in the grip of destiny; it is destiny, in fact. One may have to wait. But however heavy may be the hand of destiny, it can be lifted by patience and self-control. Integrity and purity remove the obstacles and the vision of reality appears in the mind.
Q: How does one gain self-control? I am so weak-minded!
M: Understand first that you are not the person you believe yourself to be. What you think yourself to be is mere suggestion or imagination. You have no parents, you were not born; nor will you die. Either trust me when I tell you so, or arrive to it by study and investigation. The way of total faith is quick, the other is slow but steady. Both must be tested in action. Act on what you think is true — this is the way to truth.
Q: Are deserving the truth and destiny one and the same?
M: Yes, both are in the unconscious. Conscious merit is mere vanity. Consciousness is always of obstacles; when there are no obstacles, one goes beyond it.
Q: Will the understanding that I am not the body give me the strength of character needed for self-control?
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M: When you know that you are neither body nor mind, you will not be swayed by them. You will follow truth, wherever it takes you, and do what needs be done, whatever the price to pay.
Q: Is action essential for self-realization?
M: For realization, understanding is essential. Action is only incidental. A man of steady understanding will not refrain from action. Action is the test of truth.
Q: Are tests needed?
M: If you do not test yourself all the time, you will not be able to distinguish between reality and fancy. Observation and close reasoning help to some extent, but reality is paradoxical. How do you know that you have realized unless you watch your thoughts and feelings, words and actions and wonder at the changes occurring in you without your knowing why and how? It is exactly because they are so surprising that you know that they are real. The foreseen and expected is rarely true.
Q: How does the person come into being?
M: Exactly as a shadow appears when light is intercepted by the body, so does the person arise when pure self-awareness is obstructed by the ‘I-am-the-body’, idea. And as the shadow changes shape and position according to the lay of the land, so does the person appear to rejoice and suffer, rest and toil, find and lose according to the pattern of destiny. When the body is no more, the person disappears completely without return, only the witness remains and the Great Unknown.
The witness is that which says ‘I know’. The person says ‘I do’.
Now, to say ‘I know’ is not untrue — it is merely limited. But to say ‘I do’ is altogether false, because there is nobody who does; all happens by itself, including the idea of being a doer.
Q: Then what is action?
M: The universe is full of action, but there is no actor. There are numberless persons small and big and very big, who, through identification, imagine themselves as acting, but it does not change the fact that the world of action (mahadakash) is one single whole in which all depends on, and affects all. The stars affect us deeply and we affect the stars. Step back from action to consciousness, leave action to the body and the mind; it is PERSON, WITNESS AND THE SUPREME
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their domain. Remain as pure witness, till even witnessing dissolves in the Supreme.
Imagine a thick jungle full of heavy timber. A plank is shaped out of the timber and a small pencil to write on it. The witness reads the writing and knows that while the pencil and the plank are distantly related to the jungle, the writing has nothing to do with it. It is totally super-imposed and its disappearance just does not matter. The dissolution of personality is followed always by a sense of great relief, as if a heavy burden has fallen off.
Q: When you say, I am in the state beyond the witness, what is the experience that makes you say so? In what way does it differ from the stage of being a witness only?
M: It is like washing printed cloth. First the design fades, then the background and in the end the cloth is plain white. The personality gives place to the witness, then the witness goes and pure awareness remains. The cloth was white in the beginning and is white in the end; the patterns and colours just happened
— for a time.
Q: Can there be awareness without an object of awareness?
M: Awareness with an object we called witnessing. When there is also self-identification with the object, caused by desire or fear, such a state is called a person. In reality there is only one state; when distorted by self-identification it is called a person, when coloured with the sense of being, it is the witness; when colourless and limitless, it is called the Supreme.
Q: I find that I am always restless, longing, hoping, seeking, finding, enjoying, abandoning, searching again. What is it that keeps me on the boil?
M: You are really in search of yourself, without knowing it. You are love-longing for the love-worthy, the perfectly lovable. Due to ignorance you are looking for it in the world of opposites and contradictions. When you find it within, your search will be over.
Q: There will be always this sorrowful world to contend with.
M: Don’t anticipate. You do not know. It is true that all manifestation is in the opposites. Pleasure and pain, good and bad, high and low, progress and regress, rest and strife — they all 402
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come and go together — and as long as there is a world, its contradictions will be there. There may also be periods of perfect harmony, of bliss and beauty, but only for a time. What is perfect, returns to the source of all perfection and the opposites play on.
Q: How am I to reach perfection?
M: Keep quiet. Do your work in the world, but inwardly keep quiet. Then all will come to you. Do not rely on your work for realization. It may profit others, but not you. Your hope lies in keeping silent in your mind and quiet in your heart. Realized people are very quiet.
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Questioner: Does it take time to realize the Self, or time cannot help to realize? Is self-realization a matter of time only, or does it depend on factors other than time?
Maharaj: All waiting is futile. To depend on time to solve our problems is self-delusion. The future, left to itself merely repeats the past. Change can only happen now, never in the future.
Q: What brings about a change?
M: With crystal clarity see the need of change. This is all.
Q: Does self-realization happen in matter, or beyond? Is it not an experience depending on the body and the mind for its occurrence?
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M: All experience is illusory, limited and temporal. Expect nothing from experience. Realization by itself is not an experience, though it may lead to a new dimension of experiences. Yet the new experiences, however interesting, are not more real than the old. Definitely realization is not a new experience. It is the discovery of the timeless factor in every experience. It is awareness, which makes experience possible. Just like in all the colours light is the colourless factor, so in every experience awareness is present, yet it is not an experience.
Q: If awareness is not an experience, how can it be realized?
M: Awareness is ever there. It need not be realized. Open the shutter of the mind, and it will be flooded with light.
Q: What is matter?
M: What you do not understand is matter.
Q: Science understands matter.
M: Science merely pushes back the frontiers of our ignorance.
Q: And what is nature?
M: The totality of conscious experiences is nature. As a conscious self you are a part of nature. As awareness, you are beyond. Seeing nature as mere consciousness is awareness.
Q: Are there levels of awareness?
M: There are levels in consciousness, but not in awareness. It is of one block, homogeneous. Its reflection in the mind is love and understanding. There are levels of clarity in understanding and intensity in love, but not in their source. The source is simple and single, but its gifts are infinite. Only do not take the gifts for the source. Realize yourself as the source and not as the river; that is all.
Q: I am the river too.
M: Of course, you are. As an ‘I am’ you are the river, flowing between the banks of the body. But you are also the source and the ocean and the clouds in the sky. Wherever there is life and consciousness, you are. Smaller than the smallest, bigger than the biggest, you are, while all else appears.
Q: The sense of being and the sense of living — are they one and the same, or different?
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M: The identity in space creates one, the continuity in time creates the other.
Q: You said once that the seer, seeing and the seen are one single thing, not three. To me the three are separate. I do not doubt your words, only I do not understand.
M: Look closely and you will see that the seer and the seen appear only when there is seeing. They are attributes of seeing.
When you say ‘I am seeing this’. ‘I am’ and ‘this’ come with seeing, not before. You cannot have an unseen ‘this’ nor an unseeing ‘I’ am’.
Q: I can say: ‘I do not see’.
M: The ‘I am seeing this’ has become ‘I am seeing my not seeing’, or ‘I am seeing darkness’. The seeing remains. In the trip-licity: the known, knowing and the knower, only the knowing is a fact. The ‘I am’ and ‘this’ are doubtful. Who knows? What is known? There is no certainty, except that there is knowing.
Q: Why am I sure of knowing, but not of the knower?
M: Knowing is a reflection of your true nature along with being and loving. The knower and the known are added by the mind. It is in the nature of the mind to create a subject-object duality, where there is none.
Q: What is the cause of desire and fear?
M: Obviously, the memory of past pains and pleasures. There is no great mystery about it. Conflict arises only when desire and fear refer to the same object.
Q: How to put an end to memory?
M: It is neither necessary, nor possible. Realize that all happens in consciousness and you are the root, the source, the foundation of consciousness. The world is but a succession of experiences and you are what makes them conscious, and yet remain beyond all experience. It is like the heat, the flame and the burning wood. The heat maintains the flame, the flame consumes the wood. Without heat there would be neither flame not fuel. Similarly, without awareness there would be no consciousness, nor life, which transforms matter into a vehicle of consciousness.
Q: You maintain that without me there would be no world, and AWARENESS
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that the world and my knowledge of the world are identical. Science has come to a quite different conclusion: the world exists as something concrete and continuous, while I am a by-product of biological evolution of the nervous system, which is primarily not so much a seat of consciousness, as a mechanism of survival as individual and species. Yours is altogether a subjective view, while science tries to describe everything in objective terms. Is this contradiction inevitable?
M: The confusion is apparent and purely verbal. What is, is. It is neither subjective nor objective. Matter and mind are not separate, they are aspects of one energy. Look at the mind as a function of matter and you have science; look at matter as the product of the mind and you have religion.
Q: But what is true? What comes first, mind or matter?
M: Neither comes first, for neither appears alone. Matter is the shape, mind is the name. Together they make the world. Pervading and transcending is Reality, pure being — awareness —
bliss, your very essence.
Q: All I know is the stream of consciousness, an endless succession of events. The river of time flows, bringing and carrying away relentlessly. Transformation of the future into past is going on all the time.
M: Are you not the victim of your language? You speak about the flow of time, as if you were stationary. But the events you have witnessed yesterday somebody else may see tomorrow. It is you who are in movement and not time. Stop moving and time will cease.
Q: What does it mean — time will cease?
M: Past and future will merge in the eternal now.
Q: But what does it mean in actual experience? How do you know that for you time has ceased?
M: It may mean that past and future do not matter any more. It may also mean that all that happened and will happen becomes an open book to be read at will.
Q: I can imagine a sort of cosmic memory, accessible with some training. But how can the future be known? The unexpected is inevitable.
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M: What is unexpected on one level may be certain to happen, when seen from a higher level. After all, we are within the limits of the mind. In reality nothing happens, there is no past nor future; all appears and nothing is.
Q: What does it mean, nothing is? Do you turn blank, or go to sleep? Or do you dissolve the world and keep us all in abeyance, until we are brought back to life at the next flicker of your thought?
M: Oh, no, it is not that bad. The world of mind and matter, of names and shapes, continues, but it does not matter to me at all. It is like having a shadow. It is there — following me wherever I go, but not hindering me in any way. It remains a world of experiences, but not of names and forms related to me by desires and fears. The experiences are qualityless, pure experiences, if I may say so. I call them experiences for the lack of a better word. They are like the waves on the surface of the ocean, the ever-present, but not affecting its peaceful power.
Q: You mean to say an experience can be nameless, formless, undefined?
M: In the beginning all experience is such. It is only desire and fear, born of memory, that give it name and form and separate it from other experiences.
It is not a conscious experience, for it is not in opposition to other experiences, yet it is an experience all the same.
Q: If it is not conscious, why talk about it?
M: Most of your experiences are unconscious. The conscio