Q: I watched the Yogis and their enormous efforts. Even when THE BEGINNINGLESS BEGINS FOREVER
103
they realize, there is something bitter or astringent about it. They seem to spend much of their time in trances and when they speak, they merely voice their scriptures. At their best such gnanis are like flowers — perfect, but just little flowers, shed-ding their fragrance within a short radius. There are some others, who are like forests — rich, varied, immense, full of surprises, a world in themselves. There must be a reason for this difference.
M: Well, you said it. According to you one got stunted in his Yoga, while the other flourished in Bhoga.
Q: Is it not so? The Yogi is afraid of life and seeks peace, while the Bhogi is adventurous, full of spirits, forward going. The Yogi is bound by an ideal, while the Bhogi is ever ready to explore.
M: It is a matter of wanting much or being satisfied with little.
The Yogi is ambitious while the Bhogi is merely adventurous.
Your Bhogi seems to be richer and more interesting, but it is not so in reality. The Yogi is narrow as the sharp edge of the knife.
He has to be — to cut deep and smoothly, to penetrate uner-ringly the many layers of the false. The Bhogi worships at many altars; the Yogi serves none but his own true Self.
There is no purpose in opposing the Yogi to the Bhogi. The way of outgoing (pravritti) necessarily precedes the way of returning (nivritti). To sit in judgement and allot marks is ridiculous.
Everything contributes to the ultimate perfection. Some say there are three aspects of reality — Truth-Wisdom-Bliss. He who seeks Truth becomes a Yogi, he who seeks wisdom becomes a gnani; he who seeks happiness becomes the man of action.
Q: We are told of the bliss of non-duality.
M: Such bliss is more of the nature of a great peace. Pleasure and pain are the fruits of actions — righteous and unrighteous.
Q: What makes the difference?
M: The difference is between giving and grasping. Whatever the way of approach, in the end all becomes one.
Q: If there be no difference in the goal, why discriminate between various approaches?
M: Let each act according to his nature. The ultimate purpose will be served in any case. All your discriminations and classifi-104
I AM THAT
cations are quite all right, but they do not exist in my case. As the description of a dream may be detailed and accurate, though without having any foundation, so does your pattern fit nothing but your own assumptions. You begin with an idea and you end with the same idea under a different garb.
Q: How do you see things?
M: One and all are the same to me. The same consciousness (chit) appears as being (sat) and as bliss (ananda): Chit in movement is Ananda; Chit motionless is being.
Q: Still you are making a distinction between motion and motionlessness.
M: Non-distinction speaks in silence. Words carry distinctions.
The unmanifested (nirguna) has no name, all names refer to the manifested (saguna). It is useless to struggle with words to express what is beyond words. Consciousness (chidananda) is spirit (purusha), consciousness is matter (prakriti). Imperfect spirit is matter, perfect matter is spirit. In the beginning as in the end, all is one.
All division is in the mind (chitta); there is none in reality (chit).
Movement and rest are states of mind and cannot be without their opposites. By itself nothing moves, nothing rests. It is a grievous mistake to attribute to mental constructs absolute existence. Nothing exists by itself.
Q: You seem to identify rest with the Supreme State?
M: There is rest as a state of mind (chidaram) and there is rest as a state of being (atmaram). The former comes and goes, while the true rest is the very heart of action. Unfortunately, language is a mental tool and works only in opposites.
Q: As a witness, you are working or at rest?
M: Witnessing is an experience and rest is freedom from experience.
Q: Can’t they co-exist, as the tumult of the waves and the quiet of the deep co-exist in the ocean.
M: Beyond the mind there is no such thing as experience. Experience is a dual state. You cannot talk of reality as an experience. Once this is understood, you will no longer look for being THE BEGINNINGLESS BEGINS FOREVER
105
and becoming as separate and opposite. In reality they are one and inseparable, like roots and branches of the same tree. Both can exist only in the light of consciousness, which again, arises in the wake of the sense ‘I am’. This is the primary fact. If you miss it, you miss all.
Q: Is the sense of being a product of experience only? The great saying (Mahavakya) tat-sat is it a mere mode of mentation?
M: Whatever is spoken is speech only. Whatever is thought is thought only. The real meaning is unexplainable, though experienceable. The Mahavakya is true, but your ideas are false, for all ideas (kalpana) are false.
Q: Is the conviction: ‘I am That’ false?
M: Of course. Conviction is a mental state. In ‘That’ there is no ‘I am’. With the sense ‘I am’ emerging, ‘That’ is obscured, as with the sun rising the stars are wiped out. But as with the sun comes light, so with the sense of self comes bliss (chidananda). The cause of bliss is sought in the ‘not — I’ and thus the bondage begins.
Q: In your daily life are you always conscious of your real state?
M: Neither conscious, nor unconscious. I do not need convictions. I live on courage. Courage is my essence, which is love of life. I am free of memories and anticipations, unconcerned with what I am and what I am not. I am not addicted to self-descriptions, soham and brahmasmi (‘I am He’, ‘I am the Supreme’) are of no use to me, I have the courage to be as nothing and to see the world as it is: nothing. It sounds simple, just try it!
Q: But what gives you courage?
M: How perverted are your views! Need courage be given?
Your question implies that anxiety is the normal state and courage is abnormal. It is the other way round. Anxiety and hope are born of imagination — I am free of both. I am simple being and I need nothing to rest on.
Q: Unless you know yourself, of what use is your being to you?
To be happy with what you are, you must know what you are.
M: Being shines as knowing, knowing is warm in love. It is all one. You imagine separations and trouble yourself with ques-106
I AM THAT
tions. Don’t concern yourself overmuch with formulations. Pure being cannot be described.
Q: Unless a thing is knowable and enjoyable, it is of no use to me. It must become a part of my experience, first of all.
M: You are dragging down reality to the level of experience.
How can reality depend on experience, when it is the very ground (adhar) of experience. Reality is in the very fact of experience, not in its nature. Experience is, after all, a state of mind, while being is definitely not a state of mind.
Q: Again I am confused! Is being separate from knowing?
M: The separation is an appearance. Just as the dream is not apart from the dreamer, so is knowing not apart from being. The dream is the dreamer, the knowledge is the knower, the distinction is merely verbal.
Q: I can see now that sat and chit are one. But what about bliss (ananda)? Being and consciousness are always present together, but bliss flashes only occasionally.
M: The undisturbed state of being is bliss; the disturbed state is what appears as the world. In non-duality there is bliss; in duality — experience. What comes and goes is experience with its duality of pain and pleasure. Bliss is not to be known. One is always bliss, but never blissful. Bliss is not an attribute.
Q: I have another question to ask: Some Yogis attain their goal, but it is of no use to others. They do not know, or are not able to share. Those who can share out what they have, initiate others.
Where lies the difference?
M: There is no difference. Your approach is wrong. There are no others to help. A rich man, when he hands over his entire fortune to his family, has not a coin left to give a beggar. So is the wise man (gnani) stripped of all his powers and possessions.
Nothing, literally nothing, can be said-about him. He cannot help anybody, for he is everybody. He is the poor and also his poverty, the thief and also his thievery. How can he be said to help, when he is not apart? Who thinks of himself as separate from the world, let him help the world.
Q: Still, there is duality, there is sorrow, there is need of help. By denouncing it as mere dream nothing is achieved.
THE BEGINNINGLESS BEGINS FOREVER
107
M: The only thing that can help is to wake up from the dream.
Q: An awakener is needed.
M: Who again is in the dream. The awakener signifies the beginning of the end. There are no eternal dreams.
Q: Even when it is beginningless?
M: Everything begins with you. What else is beginningless?
Q: I began at birth.
M: That is what you are told. Is it so? Did you see yourself beginning?
Q: I began just now. All else is memory.
M: Quite right. The beginningless begins forever. In the same way, I give eternally, because I have nothing. To be nothing, to have nothing, to keep nothing for oneself is the greatest gift, the highest generosity.
Q: Is there no self-concern left?
M: Of course I am self-concerned, but the self is all. In practice it takes the shape of goodwill, unfailing and universal. You may call it love, all-pervading, all-redeeming. Such love is supremely active — without the sense of doing.
108
I AM THAT
28
All Suffering is Born of
Desire
Questioner: I come from a far off country. I had some inner experiences on my own and I would like to compare notes.
Maharaj: By all means. Do you know yourself?
Q: I know that I am not the body. Nor am I the mind.
M: What makes you say so?
Q: I do not feel I am in the body. I seem to be all over the place, everywhere. As to the mind, I can switch it on and off, so to say.
This makes me feel I am not the mind.
M: When you feel yourself everywhere in the world, do you remain separate from the world? Or, are you the world?
Q: Both. Sometimes I feel myself to be neither mind nor body, but one single all-seeing eye. When I go deeper into it, I find myself to be all I see and the world and myself become one.
M: Very well. What about desires? Do you have any?
Q: Yes, they come, short and superficial.
M: And what do you do about them?
Q: What can I do? They come, they go. I look at them. Sometimes I see my body and my mind engaged in fulfilling them.
M: Whose desires are being fulfilled?
Q: They are a part of the world in which I live. They are just as trees and clouds are there.
M: Are they not a sign of some imperfection?
Q: Why should they be? They are as they are, and I am as I am.
How can the appearance and disappearance of desires affect ALL SUFFERING IS BORN OF DESIRE
109
me? Of course, they affect the shape and content of the mind.
M: Very well. What is your work?
Q: I am a probation officer.
M: What does it mean?
Q: Juvenile offenders are let off on probation and there are special officers to watch their behaviour and to help them get training and find work.
M: Must you work?
Q: Who works? Work happens to take place.
M: Do you need to work?
Q: I need it for the sake of money. I like it, because it puts me in touch with living beings.
M: What do you need them for?
Q: They may need me and it is their destinies that made me take up this work. It is one life, after all.
M: How did you come to your present state?
Q: Sri Ramana Maharshi’s teachings have put me on my way.
Then I met one Douglas Harding who helped me by showing me how to work on the ‘Who am I?’
M: Was it sudden or gradual?
Q: It was quite sudden. Like something quite forgotten, coming back into one’s mind. Or, like a sudden flash of understanding.
‘How simple’, I said, ‘How simple; I’m not what I thought I am!
I’m neither the perceived nor the perceiver; I’m the perceiving only’.
M: Not even the perceiving, but that which makes all this possible.
Q: What is love?
M: When the sense of distinction and separation is absent, you may call it love.
Q: Why so much stress on love between man and woman?
M: Because the element of happiness in it is so prominent.
Q: Is it not so in all love?
110
I AM THAT
M: Not necessarily. Love may cause pain. You call it then compassion.
Q: What is happiness?
M: Harmony between the inner and the outer is happiness. On the other hand, self-identification with the outer causes is suffering.
Q: How does self-identification happen?
M: The self by its nature knows itself only. For lack of experience whatever it perceives it takes to be itself. Battered, it learns to look out (viveka) and to live alone (vairagya). When right behaviour (uparati), becomes normal, a powerful inner urge (mukmukshutva) makes it seek its source. The candle of the body is lighted and all becomes clear and bright (atmaprakash).
Q: What is the real cause of suffering?
M: Self-identification with the limited (vyaktitva). Sensations as such, however strong, do not cause suffering. It is the mind, bewildered by wrong ideas, addicted to thinking: ‘I am this’. ‘I am that’, that fears loss and craves gain and suffers when frustrated.
Q: A friend of mine used to have horrible dreams night after night. Going to sleep would terrorise him. Nothing could help him.
M: Company of the truly good (satsang) would help him.
Q: Life itself is a nightmare.
M: Noble friendship (satsang) is the supreme remedy for all ills, physical and mental.
Q: Generally one cannot find such friendship.
M: Seek within. Your own self is your best friend.
Q: Why is life so full of contradictions?
M: It serves to break down mental pride. We must, realize how poor and powerless we are. As long as we delude ourselves by what we imagine ourselves to be, to know, to have, to do, we are in a sad plight indeed. Only in complete self-negation there is a chance to discover our real being.
ALL SUFFERING IS BORN OF DESIRE
111
Q: Why so much stress on self-negation?
M: As much as on self-realization. The false self must be abandoned before the real self can be found.
Q: The self you choose to call false is to me most distressingly real. It is the only self I know. What you call the real self is a mere concept, a way of speaking, a creature of the mind, an attractive ghost. My daily self is not a beauty, I admit, but it is my own and only self. You say I am, or have, another self. Do you see it — is it a reality to you, or do you want me to believe what you yourself don’t see?
M: Don’t jump to conclusions rashly. The concrete need not be the real, the conceived need not be false. Perceptions based on sensations and shaped by memory imply a perceiver, whose nature you never cared to examine. Give it your full attention, examine it with loving care and you will discover heights and depths of being which you did not dream of, engrossed as you are in your puny image of yourself.
Q: I must be in the right mood to examine myself fruitfully.
M: You must be serious, intent, truly interested. You must be full of goodwill for yourself.
Q: I am selfish all right.
M: You are not. You are all the time destroying yourself, and your own, by serving strange gods, inimical and false. By all means be selfish — the right way. Wish yourself well, labour at what is good for you. Destroy all that stands between you and happiness. Be all — love all — be happy — make happy. No happiness is greater.
Q: Why is there so much suffering in love?
M: All suffering is born of desire. True love is never frustrated.
How can the sense of unity be frustrated? What can be frustrated is the desire for expression. Such desire is of the mind. As with all things mental, frustration is inevitable.
Q: What is the place of sex in love?
M: Love is a state of being. Sex is energy. Love is wise, sex is blind. Once the true nature of love and sex is understood there will be no conflict or confusion.
112
I AM THAT
Q: There is so much sex without love.
M: Without love all is evil. Life itself without love is evil.
Q: What can make me love?
M: You are love itself — when you are not afraid.
29
Living is Life’s only Purpose
Questioner: What does it mean to fail in Yoga? Who is a failure in Yoga (yoga bhrashta)?
Maharaj: It is only a question of incompletion. He who could not complete his Yoga for some reason is called failed in Yoga.
Such failure is only temporary, for there can be no defeat in Yoga. This battle is always won, for it is a battle between the true and the false. The false has no chance.
Q: Who fails? The person (vyakti) or the self (vyakta)?
M: The question is wrongly put. There is no question of failure, neither in the short run nor in the long. It is like travelling a long and arduous road in an unknown country. Of all the innumerable steps there is only the last which brings you to your destination.
Yet you will not consider all previous steps as failures. Each brought you nearer to your goal, even when you had to turn back to by-pass an obstacle. In reality each step brings you to your goal, because to be always on the move, learning, discovering, unfolding, is your eternal destiny. Living is life’s only purpose. The self does not identify itself with success or LIVING IS LIFE’S ONLY PURPOSE
113
failure — the very idea of becoming this or that is unthinkable.
The self understands that success and failure are relative and related, that they are the very warp and weft of life. Learn from both and go beyond. If you have not learnt, repeat.
Q: What am I to learn?
M: To live without self-concern. For this you must know your own true being (swarupa) as indomitable, fearless, ever victorious. Once you know with absolute certainty that nothing can trouble you but your own imagination, you come to disregard your desires and fears, concepts and ideas and live by truth alone.
Q: What may be the reason that some people succeed and others fail in Yoga? Is it destiny or character, or just accident?
M: Nobody ever fails in Yoga. It is all a matter of the rate of progress. It is slow in the beginning and rapid in the end. When one is fully matured, realization is explosive. It takes place spontaneously, or at the slightest hint. The quick is not better than the slow. Slow ripening and rapid flowering alternate. Both are natural and right.
Yet, all this is so in the mind only. As I see it, there is really nothing of the kind. In the great mirror of consciousness images arise and disappear and only memory gives them continuity.
And memory is material — destructible, perishable, transient.
On such flimsy foundations we build a sense of personal existence — vague, intermittent, dreamlike. This vague persuasion:
‘I-am-so-and-so’ obscures the changeless state of pure awareness and makes us believe that we are born to suffer and to die.
Q: Just as a child cannot help growing, so does a man, compelled by nature, make progress. Why exert oneself? Where is the need of Yoga?
M: There is progress all the time. Everything contributes to progress. But this is the progress of ignorance. The circles of ignorance may be ever widening, yet it remains a bondage all the same. In due course a Guru appears to teach and inspire us to practise Yoga and a ripening takes place as a result of which the immemorial night of ignorance dissolves before the rising sun of wisdom. But in reality nothing happened. The sun is always there, there is no night to it; the mind blinded by the ‘I-114
I AM THAT
am-the-body’ idea spins out endlessly its thread of illusion.
Q: If all is a part of a natural process, where is the need of effort?
M: Even effort is a part of it. When ignorance becomes obsti-nate and hard and the character gets perverted, effort and the pain of it become inevitable. In complete obedience to nature there is no effort. The seed of spiritual life grows in silence and in darkness until its appointed hour.
Q: We come across some great people, who, in their old age, become childish, petty, quarrelsome and spiteful. How could they deteriorate so much?
M: They were not perfect Yogis, having their bodies under complete control. Or, they might not have cared to protect their bodies from the natural decay. One must not draw conclusions without understanding all the factors. Above all, one must not make judgements of inferiority or superiority. Youthfulness is more a matter of vitality (prana) than of wisdom (gnana).
Q: One may get old, but why should one lose all alertness and discrimination?
M: Consciousness and unconsciousness, while in the body, depend on the condition of the brain. But the self is beyond both, beyond the brain, beyond the mind. The fault of the instrument is no reflection on its user.
Q: I was told that a realized man will never do anything un-seemly. He will always behave in an exemplary way.
M: Who sets the example? Why should a liberated man necessarily follow conventions? The moment he becomes predictable, he cannot be free. His freedom lies in his being free to fulfil the need of the moment, to obey the necessity of the situation.
Freedom to do what one likes is really bondage, while being free to do what one must, what is right, is real freedom.
Q: Still there must be some way of making out who has realized and who has not. If one is indistinguishable from the other, of what use is he?
M: He who knows himself has no doubts about it. Nor does he care whether others recognize his state or not. Rare is the realized man who discloses his realization and fortunate are LIVING IS LIFE’S ONLY PURPOSE
115
those who have met him, for he does it for their abiding welfare.
Q: When one looks round, one is appalled by the volume of unnecessary suffering that is going on. People who should be helped are not getting help. Imagine a big hospital ward full of incurables, tossing and moaning. Were you given the authority to kill them all and end their torture, would you not do so?
M: I would leave it to them to decide.
Q: But if their destiny is to suffer? How can you interfere with destiny?
M: Their destiny is what happens. There is no thwarting off destiny. You mean to say everybody’s life is totally determined at his birth? What a strange idea! Were it so, the power that determines would see to it that nobody should suffer.
Q: What about cause and effect?
M: Each moment contains the whole of the past and creates the whole of the future.
Q: But past and future exist?
M: In the mind only. Time is in the mind, space is in the mind.
The law of cause and effect is also a way of thinking. In reality all is here and now and all is one. Multiplicity and diversity are in the mind only.
Q: Still, you are in favour of relieving suffering, even through destruction of the incurably diseased body.
M: Again, you look from outside while I look from within. I do not see a sufferer, I am the sufferer. I know him from within and do what is right spontaneously and effortlessly. I follow no rules nor lay down rules. I flow with life — faithfully and irresistibly.
Q: Still you seem to be a very practical man in full control of your immediate surroundings.
M: What else do you expect me to be? A misfit?
Q: Yet you cannot help another much.
M: Surely, I can help. You too can help. Everybody can help.
But the suffering is all the time recreated. Man alone can destroy in himself the roots of pain. Others can only help with the pain, but not with its cause, which is the abysmal stupidity of mankind.
116
I AM THAT
Q: Will this stupidity ever come to an end?
M: In man — of course. Any moment. In humanity — as we know it — after very many years. In creation — never, for creation itself is rooted in ignorance; matter itself is ignorance. Not to know, and not to know that one does not know, is the cause of endless suffering.
Q: We are told of the great avatars, the saviours of the world.
M: Did they save? They have come and gone — and the world plods on. Of course, they did a lot and opened new dimensions in the human mind. But to talk of saving the world is an exaggeration.
Q: Is there no salvation for the world?
M: Which world do you want to save? The world of your own projection? Save it yourself. My world? Show me my world and I shall deal with it. I am not aware of any world separate from myself, which I am free to save or not to save. What business have you with saving the world, when all the world needs is to be saved from you? Get out of the picture and see whether there is anything left to save.