M: Or, rather, it is the willow of which the basket is woven. When you think of yourself as a woman, do you mean that you are a woman, or that your body is described as female?
Q: It depends on my mood. Sometimes I feel myself to be a mere centre of awareness.
M: Or, an ocean of awareness. But are there moments when you are neither man nor woman, not the accidental, occasioned by circumstances and conditions?
Q: Yes, there are, but I feel shy to talk about it.
M: A hint is all that one can expect. You need not say more.
Q: Am I allowed to smoke in your presence? I know that it is not the custom to smoke before a sage and more so for a woman.
M: By all means, smoke, nobody will mind. We understand.
Q: I feel the need of cooling down.
M: It is very often so with Americans and Europeans. After a stretch of sadhana they become charged with energy and frantically seek an outlet. They organize communities, become teachers of Yoga, marry, write books — anything except keeping quiet and turning their energies within, to find the source of the inexhaustible power and learn the art of keeping it under control.
Q: I admit that now I want to go back and live a very active life because I feel full of energy.
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M: You can do what you like, as long as you do not take yourself to be the body and the mind. It is not so much a question of actual giving up the body and all that goes with it, as a clear understanding that you are not the body, a sense of aloofness, of emotional non-involvement.
Q: I know what you mean. Some four years ago I passed through a period of rejection of the physical; I would not buy myself clothes, would eat the simplest of foods, sleep on bare planks. It is the acceptance of the privations that matters, not the actual discomfort. Now I have realized that welcoming life as it comes and loving all it offers, is the best of it. I shall accept with a glad heart whatever comes and make the best of it. If I can do nothing more than give life and true culture to a few children — good enough; though my heart goes out to every child, I cannot reach all.
M: You are married and a mother only when you are man-woman conscious. When you do not take yourself to be the body, then the family life of the body, however intense and interesting, is seen only as a play on the screen of the mind, with the light of awareness as the only reality.
Q: Why do you insist on awareness as the only real? Is not the object of awareness as real; while it lasts?
M: But it does not last! Momentary reality is secondary; it depends on the timeless.
Q: Do you mean continuous, or permanent?
M: There can be no continuity in existence. Continuity implies identity in past, present and future. No such identity is possible, for the very means of identification fluctuate and change. Continuity, permanency, these are illusions created by memory, mere mental projections of a pattern where no pattern can be; abandon all ideas of temporary or permanent, body or mind, man or woman; what remains? What is the state of your mind when all separation is given up? I am not talking of giving up distinctions, for without them there is no manifestation.
Q: When I do not separate, I am happily at peace. But somehow I lose my bearings again and again and begin to seek happiness in outer things. Why is my inner peace not steady, I cannot understand.
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M: Peace, after all, is also a condition of the mind.
Q: Beyond the mind is silence. There is nothing to be said about it.
M: Yes, all talk about silence is mere noise.
Q: Why do we seek worldly happiness, even after having tasted one’s own natural spontaneous happiness?
M: When the mind is engaged in serving the body, happiness is lost. To regain it, it seeks pleasure. The urge to be happy, is right, but the means of securing it are misleading, unreliable and destructive of true happiness.
Q: Is pleasure always wrong?
M: The right state and use of the body and the mind are intensely pleasant. It is the search for pleasure that is wrong. Do not try to make yourself happy, rather question your very search for happiness. It is because you are not happy that you want to be happy. Find out why you are unhappy. Because you are not happy you seek happiness in pleasure; pleasure brings in pain and therefore you call it worldly; you then long for some other pleasure, without pain, which you call divine. In reality, pleasure is but a respite from pain. Happiness is both worldly and un-worldly, within and beyond all that happens. Make no distinction, don’t separate the inseparable and do not alienate yourself from life.
Q: How well I understand you now! Before my stay at Ramanashram I was tyrannized by conscience, always sitting in judgement over myself. Now I am completely relaxed, fully accepting myself as I am. When I return to the States, I shall take life as it comes, as Bhagavan’s grace, and enjoy the bitter along with the sweet. This is one of the things I have learnt in the Ashram — to trust Bhagavan. I was not like this before. I could not trust.
M: Trusting Bhagavan is trusting yourself. Be aware that whatever happens, happens to you, by you, through you, that you are the creator, enjoyer and destroyer of all you perceive and you will not be afraid. Unafraid, you will not be unhappy, nor will you seek happiness.
In the mirror of your mind all kinds of pictures appear and dis-SURRENDER TO YOUR OWN SELF
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appear. Knowing that they are entirely your own creations, watch them silently come and go, be alert, but not perturbed.
This attitude of silent observation is the very foundation of Yoga.
You see the picture, but you are not the picture.
Q: I find that the thought of death frightens me because I do not want to be reborn. I know that none compels, yet the pressure of unsatisfied desires is overwhelming and I may not be able to resist.
M: The question of resistance does not arise. What is born and reborn is not you. Let it happen, watch it happen.
Q: Why then be at all concerned?
M: But you, are concerned! And you will be concerned as long as the picture clashes with your own sense of truth, love and beauty. The desire for harmony and peace is ineradicable. But once it is fulfilled, the concern ceases and physical life becomes effortless and below the level of attention. Then, even in the body you are not born. To be embodied or bodyless is same to you. You reach a point when nothing can happen to you.
Without body, you cannot be killed; without possessions you cannot be robbed; without mind, you cannot be deceived.
There is no point where a desire or fear can hook on. As long as no change can happen to you, what else matters?
Q: Somehow I do not like the idea of dying.
M: It is because you are so young. The more you know yourself the less you are afraid. Of course, the agony of dying is never pleasant to look at, but the dying man is rarely conscious.
Q: Does he return to consciousness?
M: It is very much like sleep. For a time the person is out of focus and then it returns.
Q: The same person?
M: The person, being a creature of circumstances, necessarily changes along with them, like the flame that changes with the fuel. Only the process goes on and on, creating time and space.
Q: Well, God will look after me. I can leave everything to Him.
M: Even faith in God is only a stage on the way. Ultimately you abandon all, for you come to something so simple that there are 470
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no words to express it.
Q: I am just beginning. At the start I had no faith, no trust; I was afraid to let things happen. The world seemed to be a very dangerous and inimical place. Now, at least I can talk of trusting the Guru or God. Let me grow. Don’t drive me on. Let me proceed at my own pace.
M: By all means proceed. But you don’t. You are still stuck in the ideas of man and woman, old and young, life and death. Go on, go beyond. A thing recognized is a thing transcended.
Q: Sir, wherever I go people take it to be their duty to find faults with me and goad me on. I am fed up with this spiritual fortune making. What is wrong with my present that it should be sacrificed to a future, however glorious? You say reality is in the now. I love my now. I want it. I do not want to be eternally anxious about my stature and its future. I do not want to chase the more and the better. Let me love what I have.
M: You are quite right; do it. Only be honest — just love what you love — don’t strive and strain.
Q: This is what I call surrender to the Guru.
M: Why exteriorize? Surrender to your own self, of which everything is an expression.
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Questioner: A friend of mine, a young man of about twenty-five, was told that he is suffering from an incurable heart disease. He wrote to me that instead of slow death he preferred suicide. I replied that a disease incurable by Western medicine may be cured in some other way. There are yogic powers that can bring almost instantaneous changes in the human body. Effects of repeated fasting also verge on the miraculous. I wrote to him not to be in a hurry to die; rather to give a trial to other approaches.
There is a Yogi living not far from Bombay who possesses some miraculous powers. He has specialized in the control of the vital forces governing the body. I met some of his disciples and sent through them to the Yogi my friend’s letter and photo.
Let us see what happens.
Maharaj: Yes, miracles often take place. But there must be the will to live. Without it the miracle will not happen.
Q: Can such a desire be instilled?
M: Superficial desire, yes. But it will wear out. Fundamentally, nobody can compel another to live. Besides, there were cultures in which suicide had its acknowledged and respected place.
Q: Is it not obligatory to live out one’s natural span of life?
M: Natural — spontaneously — easy — yes. But disease and suffering are not natural. There is noble virtue in unshakable endurance of whatever comes, but there is also dignity in the refusal of meaningless torture and humiliation.
Q: I was given a book written by a siddha. He describes in it many of his strange, even amazing experiences. According to him the way of a true sadhaka ends with his meeting his Guru 472
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and surrendering to him body, mind and heart. Henceforth the Guru takes over and becomes responsible for even the least event in the disciple’s life, until the two become one. One may call it realization through identification. The disciple is taken over try a power he cannot control, nor resist, and feels as helpless as a leaf in the storm. The only thing that keeps him safe from madness and death is his faith in the love and power of his Guru.
M: Every teacher teaches according to his own experience.
Experience is shaped by belief and belief is shaped by experience. Even the Guru is shaped by the disciple to his own image.
It is the disciple that makes the Guru great. Once the Guru is seen to be the agent of a liberating power, which works both from within and without, whole-hearted surrender becomes natural and easy. Just as a man gripped by pain puts himself completely in the hands of a surgeon, so does the disciple en-trust himself without reservation to his Guru. It is quite natural to seek help when its need is felt acutely. But, however powerful the Guru may be, he should not impose his will on the disciple.
On the other hand, a disciple that distrusts and hesitates is bound to remain unfulfilled for no fault of his Guru.
Q: What happens then?
M: Life teaches, where all else fails. But the lessons of life take a long time to come. Much delay and trouble is saved by trusting and obeying. But such trust comes only when indifference and restlessness give place to clarity and peace. A man who keeps himself in low esteem, will not be able to trust himself, nor anybody else. Therefore, in the beginning the teacher tries his best to reassure the disciple as to his high origin, noble nature and glorious destiny. He relates to him the experiences of some saints as well as his own, instilling confidence in himself and in his infinite possibilities. When self-confidence and trust in the teacher come together, rapid and far-going changes in the disciple’s character and life can take place.
Q: I may not want to change. My life is good enough as it is.
M: You say so because you have not seen how painful is the life you live. You are like a child sleeping with a lollypop in its mouth.
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but it is enough to have a good look at human faces to perceive the universality of suffering. Even your own happiness is so vulnerable and short-lived, at the mercy of a bank-crash, or a stomach ulcer. It is just a moment of respite, a mere gap between two sorrows. Real happiness is not vulnerable, because it does not depend on circumstances.
Q: Are you talking from your own experience? Are you too unhappy?
M: I have no personal problems. But the world is full of living beings whose lives are squeezed between fear and craving. They are like the cattle driven to the slaughter house, jumping and frisking, carefree and happy, yet dead and skinned within an hour.
You say you are happy. Are you really happy, or are you merely trying to convince yourself. Look at yourself fearlessly and you will at once realize that your happiness depends on conditions and circumstances, hence it is momentary, not real.
Real happiness flows from within.
Q: Of what use is your happiness to me? It does not make me happy.
M: You can have the whole of it and more for the mere asking.
But you do not ask; you don’t seem to want.
Q: Why do you say so? I do want to be happy.
M: You are quite satisfied with pleasures. There is no place for happiness. Empty your cup and clean it. It cannot be filled otherwise. Others can give you pleasure, but never happiness.
Q: A chain of pleasurable events is good enough.
M: Soon it ends in pain, if not in disaster. What is Yoga after all, but seeking lasting happiness within?
Q: You can speak only for the East. In the West the conditions are different and what you say does not apply.
M: There is no East or West in sorrow and fear. The problem is universal — suffering and the ending of suffering. The cause of suffering is dependence and independence is the remedy.
Yoga is the science and the art of self-liberation through self-understanding.
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Q: I do not think I am fit for Yoga.
M: What else are you fit for? All your going and coming, seeking pleasure, loving and hating — all this shows that you struggle against limitations, self-imposed or accepted. In your ignorance you make mistakes and cause pain to yourself and others, but the urge is there and shall not be denied. The same urge that seeks birth, happiness and death shall seek understanding and liberation. It is like a spark of fire in a cargo of cotton. You may not know about it, but sooner or later the ship will burst in flames. Liberation is a natural process and in the long run, inevitable. But it is within your power to bring it into the now.
Q: Then why are so few liberated people in the world?
M: In a forest only some of the trees are in full bloom at a given moment, yet every one will have its turn.
Sooner or later your physical and mental resources will come to an end. What will you do then? Despair? All right, despair.
You will get tired of despairing and begin to question. At that moment you will be fit for conscious Yoga.
Q: I find all this seeking and brooding most unnatural.
M: Yours is the naturalness of a born cripple. You may be unaware but it does not make you normal. What it means to be natural or normal you do not know, nor do you know that you do not know.
At present you are drifting and therefore in danger, for to a drifter any moment anything may happen. It would be better to wake up and see your situation. That you are — you know. What you are — you don’t know. Find out what you are.
Q: Why is there so much suffering in the world?
M: Selfishness is the cause of suffering. There is no other cause.
Q: I understood that suffering is inherent in limitation.
M: Differences and distinctions are not the causes of sorrow.
Unity in diversity is natural and good. It is only with separateness and self-seeking that real suffering appears in the world.
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Idea
Questioner: We are like animals, running about in vain pursuits and there seems to be no end to it. Is there a way out?
Maharaj: Many ways will be offered to you which will but take you round and bring you back to your starting point. First realize that your problem exists in your waking state only, that however painful it is, you are able to forget it altogether when you go to sleep. When you are awake you are conscious; when you are asleep, you are only alive. Consciousness and life — both you may call God; but you are beyond both, beyond God, beyond being and not-being. What prevents you from knowing yourself as all and beyond all, is the mind based on memory. It has power over you as long as you trust it; don’t struggle with it; just disregard it. Deprived of attention, it will slow down and reveal the mechanism of its working. Once you know its nature and purpose, you will not allow it to create imaginary problems.
Q: Surely, not all problems are imaginary. There are real problems.
M: What problems can there be which the mind did not create?
Life and death do not create problems; pains and pleasures come and go, experienced and forgotten. It is memory and anticipation that create problems of attainment or avoidance, coloured by like and dislike. Truth and love are man’s real nature and mind and heart are the means of its expression.
Q: How to bring the mind under control? And the heart, which does not know what it wants?
M: They cannot work in darkness. They need the light of pure 476
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awareness to function rightly. All effort at control will merely subject them to the dictates of memory. Memory is a good servant, but a bad master. It effectively prevents discovery. There is no place for effort in reality. It is selfishness, due to a self-identification with the body, that is the main problem and the cause of all other problems. And selfishness cannot be removed by effort, only by clear insight into its causes and effects.
Effort is a sign of conflict between incompatible desires. They should be seen as they are — then only they dissolve.
Q: And what remains?
M: That which cannot change, remains. The great peace, the deep silence, the hidden beauty of reality remain. While it can not be conveyed through words, it is waiting for you to experience for yourself.
Q: Must nor one be fit and eligible for realization? Our nature is animal to the core. Unless it is conquered, how can we hope for reality to dawn?
M: Leave the animal alone. Let it be. Just remember what you are. Use every incident of the day to remind you that without you as the witness there would be neither animal nor God. Understand that you are both, the essence and the substance of all there is, and remain firm in your understanding.
Q: Is understanding enough? Don’t I need more tangible proofs?
M: It is your understanding that will decide about the validity of proofs. But what more tangible proof do you need than your own existence? Wherever you go you find yourself. However far you reach out in time, you are there.
Q: Obviously, I am not all-pervading and eternal. I am only here and now.
M: Good enough: The ‘here’ is everywhere and the now — always. Go beyond ‘I-am-the-body’ idea and you will find that space and time are in you and not you in space and time. Once you have understood this, the main obstacle to realization is removed.
Q: What is the realization which is beyond understanding?
M: Imagine a dense forest full of tigers and you in a strong steel GO BEYOND THE I-AM-THE-BODY IDEA
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cage. Knowing that you are well protected by the cage, you watch the tigers fearlessly. Next you find the tigers in the cage and yourself roaming about in the jungle. Last — the cage disappears and you ride the tigers!
Q: I attended one of the group meditation sessions, held recently in Bombay, and witnessed the frenzy and self-abandon of the participants. Why do people go for such things?
M: These are all inventions of a restless mind pampering to people in search of sensations. Some of them help the unconscious to disgorge suppressed memories and longings and to that extent they provide relief. But ultimately they leave the prac-titioner where he was — or worse.
Q: I have read recently a book by a Yogi on his experiences in meditation. It is full of visions and sounds, colours and melodies; quite a display and a most gorgeous entertainment!
In the end they all faded out and only the feeling of utter fearlessness remained. No wonder — a man who passed through all these experiences unscathed need not be afraid of anything!
Yet I was wondering of what use is such book to me?
M: Of no use, probably, since it does not attract you. Others may be impressed. People differ. But all are faced with the fact of their own existence. ‘I am’ is the ultimate fact; ‘Who am I?’ is the ultimate question to which everybody must find an answer.
Q: The same answer?
M: The same in essence, varied in expression.
Each seeker accepts, or invents, a method which suits him, applies it to himself with some earnestness and effort, obtains results according to his temperament and expectations, casts them into the mould of words, builds them into a system, establishes a tradition and begins to admit others into his ‘school of Yoga’. It is all built on memory and imagination. No such school is valueless, nor indispensable; in each one can progress up to the point, when all desire for progress must be abandoned to make further progress possible. Than all schools are given up, all effort ceases; in solitude and darkness the last step is made which ends ignorance and fear forever.
The true teacher, however, will not imprison his disciple in a prescribed set of ideas, feelings and actions; on the contrary, 478
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he will show him patiently the need to be free from all ideas and set patterns of behaviour, to be vigilant and earnest and go with life wherever it takes him, not to enjoy or suffer, but to understand and learn.
Under the right teacher the disciple learns to learn, not to remember and obey. Satsang, the company of the noble, does not mould, it liberates. Beware of all that makes you dependent.
Most of the so-called ‘surrenders to the Guru’ end in disappointment, if not in tragedy. Fortunately, an earnest seeker will disentangle himself in time, the wiser for the experience.
Q: Surely, self-surrender has its value.
M: Self-surrender is the surrender of all self-concern. It cannot be done, it happens when you realize your true nature. Verbal self-surrender, even when accompanied by feeling, is of little value and breaks down under stress. At the best it shows an aspiration, not an actual fact.
Q: In the Rigveda there is the mention of the adhi yoga, the Primordial Yoga, consisting of the marriage of pragna with Prana, which, as I understand, means the bringing together of wisdom and life. Would you say it means also the union of Dharma and Karma, righteousness and action?
M: Yes, provided by righteousness you mean harmony with one’s true nature and by action — only unselfish and desireless action.
In adhi yoga life itself is the Guru and the mind — the disciple.
The mind attends to life, it does not dictate. Life flows naturally and effortlessly and the mind removes the obstacles to its even flow.
Q: Is not life by its very nature repetitive? Will not following life lead to stagnation?
M: By itself life is immensely creative. A seed, in course of time, becomes a forest. The mind is like a forester — protecting and regulating the immense vital urge of existence.
Q: Seen as the service of life by the mind, the adhi yoga is a perfect democracy: Everyone is engaged in living a life to his best capacity and knowledge, everyone is a disciple of the same Guru.
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M: You may say so. It may be so — potentially. But unless life is loved and trusted, followed with eagerness and zest, it would be fanciful to talk of Yoga, which is a movement in consciousness, awareness in action.
Q: Once I watched a mountain-stream flowing between the boulders. At each boulder the commotion was different, according to the shape and size of the boulder. Is not every person a mere commotion over a body, while life is one and eternal?
M: The commotion and the water are not separate. It is the disturbance that makes you aware of water. Consciousness is always of movement, of change. There can be no such thing as changeless consciousness. Changelessness wipes out consciousness immediately. A man deprived of outer or inner sensations blanks out, or goes beyond consciousness and unconsciousness into the birthless and deathless state. Only when spirit and matter come together consciousness is born.
Q: Are they one or two?
M: It depends on the words you use: they are one, or two, or three. On investigation three become two and two become one.
Take the simile of face — mirror — image. Any two of them presuppose the third which unites the two. In sadhana you see the three as two, until you realize the two as one.
A long as you are engrossed in the world, you are unable to know yourself: to know yourself, turn away your attention from the world and turn it within.
Q: I cannot destroy the world.
M: There is no need. Just understand that what you see is not what is. Appearances will dissolve on investigation and the underlying reality will come to the surface. You need not burn the house to get out of it. You just walk out. It is only when you cannot come and go freely that the house becomes a jail. I move in and out of consciousness easily and naturally and therefore to me the world is a home, not a