I am That
Talks with
Sri Nisarga Datta Maharaj
Q: How can I see the world as God? What does it mean to see the world as God?
M: It is like entering a dark room. You see nothing -- you may touch, but you do not see -- no colours, no outlines. The window opens and the room is flooded with light. Colours and shapes come into being. The window is the giver of light, but not the source of it. The sun is the source. Similarly, matter is like the dark room; consciousness -- the window -- flooding matter with sensations and perceptions, and the supreme is the sun the source both of matter and of light. The window may be closed, or open, the sun shines all the time. It makes all the difference to the room, but none to the sun. Yet all this is secondary to the tiny little thing which is the 'I am'. Without the 'I am' there is nothing. All knowledge is about the 'I am'. False ideas about this 'I am' lead to bondage, right knowledge leads to freedom and happiness.
Q: Is 'I am' and 'there is' the same?
M: 'I am' denotes the inner, 'there is' -- the outer. Both are based on the sense of being.
Q: Is it the same as the experience of existence?
M: To exist means to be something, a thing, a feeling, a thought, an idea. All existence is particular. Only being is universal, in the sense that every being is compatible with every other being. Existences clash, being -- never. Existence means becoming, change, birth and death and birth again, while in being there is silent peace.
Q: If I create the world, why have I made it bad?
M: Everyone lives in his own world. Not all the worlds are equally good or bad.
Q: What determines the difference?
M: The mind that projects the world, colours it its own way. When you meet a man, he is a stranger. When you marry him, he becomes your own self. When you quarrel, he becomes your enemy. It is your mind's attitude that determines what he is to you.
Q: I can see that my world is subjective. Does it make it also illusory?
M: It is illusory as long as it is subjective and to that extent only. Reality lies in objectivity.
Q: What does objectivity mean? You said the world is subjective and now you talk of objectivity. Is not everything subjective?
M: Everything is subjective, but the real is objective.
Q: In what sense?
M: It does not depend on memories and expectations, desires and fears, likes and dislikes. All is seen as it is.
Q: Is it what you call the fourth state (turiya)?
M: Call it as you like. It is solid, steady, changeless, beginningless and endless, ever new, ever fresh.
Q: How is it reached?
M: Desirelessness and fearlessness will take you there.
Questioner: You say, reality is one. Oneness, unity, is the attribute of the person. Is then reality a person, with the universe as its body?
Maharaj: Whatever you may say will be both true and false. Words do not reach beyond the mind.
Q: I am just trying to understand. You are telling us of the Person, the Self and the Supreme. (vyakti, vyakta, avyakta). The light of Pure Awareness (pragna), focussed as 'I am' in the Self (jivatma), as consciousness (chetana) illumines the mind (antahkarana) and as life (prana) vitalizes the body (deha). All this is fine as far as the words go. But when it comes to distinguishing in myself the person from the Self and the Self from the Supreme, I get mixed up.
M: The person is never the subject. You can see a person, but you are not the person. You are always the Supreme which appears at a given point of time and space as the witness, a bridge between the pure awareness of the Supreme and the manifold consciousness of the person.
Q: When I look at myself, I find I am several persons fighting among themselves for the use of the body.
M: They correspond to the various tendencies (samskara) of the mind.
Q: Can I make peace between them?
M: How can you? They are so contradictory! See them as they are -- mere habits of thoughts and feelings, bundles of memories and urges.
Q: Yet they all say 'I am'.
M: It is only because you identify yourself with them. Once you realize that whatever appears before you cannot be yourself, and cannot say 'I am', you are free of all your 'persons' and their demands. The sense 'I am' is your own. You cannot part with it, but you can impart it to anything, as in saying: I am young. I am rich etc. But such self identifications are patently false and the cause of bondage.
Q: I can now understand that I am not the person, but that which, when reflected in the person, gives it a sense of being. Now, about the Supreme? In what way do I know myself as the Supreme?
M: The source of consciousness cannot be an object in consciousness. To know the source is to be the source. When you realize that you are not the person, but the pure and calm witness, and that fearless awareness is your very being, you are the being. It is the source, the Inexhaustible Possibility.
Q: Are there many sources or one for all?
M: It depends how you look at it, from which end. The objects in the world are many, but the eye that sees them is one. The higher always appears as one to the lower and the lower as many to the higher.
Q: Shapes and names are all of one and the same God?
M: Again, it all depends on how you look at it. On the verbal level everything is relative. Absolutes should be experienced, not discussed.
Q: How is the Absolute experienced?
M: It is not an object to be recognized and stored up in memory. It is in the present and in feeling rather. It has more to do with the 'how' than with the 'what'. It is in the quality, in the value; being the source of everything, it is in everything.
Q: If it is the source, why and how does it manifest itself?
M: It gives birth to consciousness. All else is in consciousness.
Q: Why are there so many centres of consciousness?
M: The objective universe (mahadakash) is in constant movement, projecting and dissolving innumerable forms. Whenever a form is infused with life (prana), consciousness (chetana) appears by reflection of awareness in matter.
Q: How is the Supreme affected?
M: What can affect it and how? The source is not affected by the vagaries of the river nor is the metal -- by the shape of the jewellery. Is the light affected by the picture on the screen? The Supreme makes everything possible, that is all.
Q: How is it that some things do happen and some don't?
M: Seeking out causes is a pastime of the mind. There is no duality of cause and effect. Everything is its own cause.
Q: No purposeful action is then possible?
M: All I say is that consciousness contains all. In consciousness all is possible. You can have causes if you want them, in your world. Another may be content with a single cause -- God's will. The root cause is one: the sense 'I am'.
Q: What is the link between the Self (Vyakta) and the Supreme (Avyakta)?
M: From the self's point of view the world is the known, the Supreme -- the Unknown. The Unknown gives birth to the known, yet remains Unknown. The known is infinite, but the Unknown is an infinitude of infinities. Just like a ray of light is never seen unless intercepted by the specs of dust, so does the Supreme make everything known, itself remaining unknown.
Q: Does it mean that the Unknown is inaccessible?
M: Oh, no. The Supreme is the easiest to reach for it is your very being. It is enough to stop thinking and desiring anything, but the Supreme.
Q: And if I desire nothing, not even the Supreme?
M: Then you are as good as dead, or you are the Supreme.
Q: The world is full of desires: Everybody wants something or other. Who is the desirer? The person or the self?
M: The self. All desires, holy and unholy, come from the self; they all hang on the sense 'I am'.
Q: I can understand holy desires (satyakama) emanating from the self. It may be the expression of the bliss aspect of the Sadchitananda (Beingness -- Awareness --Happiness) of the Self. But why unholy desires?
M: All desires aim at happiness. Their shape and quality depend on the psyche (antahkarana). Where inertia (tamas) predominates, we find perversions. With energy (rajas), passions arise. With lucidity (sattva) the motive behind the desire is goodwill, compassion, the urge to make happy rather than be happy. But the Supreme is beyond all, yet because of its infinite permeability all cogent desires can be fulfilled.
Q: Which desires are cogent?
M: Desires that destroy their subjects, or objects, or do not subside on satisfaction are self contradictory and cannot be fulfilled. Only desires motivated by love, goodwill and compassion are beneficial to both the subject and object and can be fully satisfied .
Q: All desires are painful, the holy as well as the unholy.
M: They are not the same and pain is not the same. Passion is painful, compassion--never. The entire universe strives to fulfil a desire born of compassion.
Q: Does the Supreme know itself? Is the Impersonal conscious?
M: The source of all has all. Whatever flows from it must be there already in seed form. And as a seed is the last of innumerable seeds, and contains the experience and the promise of numberless forests, so does the Unknown contain all that was, or could have been and all that shall or would be. The entire field of becoming is open and accessible; past and future coexist in the eternal now.
Q: Are you living in the Supreme Unknown?
M: Where else?
Q: What makes you say so?
M: No desire ever arises in my mind.
Q: Are you then unconscious?
M: Of course not! I am fully conscious, but since no desire or fear enters my mind, there is perfect silence.
Q: Who knows the silence?
M: Silence knows itself. It is the silence of the silent mind, when passions and desires are silenced.
Q: Do you experience desires occasionally?
M: Desires are just waves in the mind. You know a wave when you see one. A desire is just a thing among many. I feel no urge to satisfy it, no action needs be taken on it. Freedom from desire means this: the compulsion to satisfy is absent.
Q: Why do desires arise at all?
M: Because you imagine that you were born, and that you will die if you do not take care of your body. Desire for embodied existence is the root cause of trouble.
Q: Yet, so many jivas get into bodies. Surely it cannot be some error of judgement. There must be a purpose. What could it be?
M: To know itself the self must be faced with its opposite -- the not self. Desire leads to experience. Experience leads to discrimination, detachment, self knowledge --liberation. And what is liberation after all? To know that you are beyond birth and death. By forgetting who you are and imagining yourself a mortal creature, you created so much trouble for yourself that you have to wake up, like from a bad dream. Enquiry also wakes you up. You need not wait for suffering; enquiry into happiness is better, for the mind is in harmony and peace.
Q: Who exactly is the ultimate experiencer -- the Self or the Unknown?
M: The Self, of course.
Q: Then why introduce the notion of the Supreme Unknown?
M: To explain the Self.
Q: But is there anything beyond the Self?
M: Outside the Self there is nothing. All is one and all is contained in 'I am'. In the waking and dream states it is the person. In deep sleep and turiya it is the Self. Beyond the alert intentness of turiya lies the great, silent peace of the Supreme. But in fact all is one in essence and related in appearance. In ignorance the seer becomes the seen and in wisdom he is the seeing. But why be concerned with the Supreme? Know the knowers and all will be known. Who am l?
Questioner: We are advised to worship reality personified as God, or as the Perfect Man. We are told not to attempt the worship of the Absolute, as it is much too difficult for a brain centered consciousness.
Maharaj: Truth is simple and open to all. Why do you complicate? Truth is loving and lovable. It includes all, accepts all, purifies all. It is untruth that is difficult and a source of trouble. It always wants, expects, demands. Being false, it is empty, always in search of confirmation and reassurance. It is afraid of and avoids enquiry. It identifies itself with any support, however weak and momentary. Whatever it gets, it loses and asks for more. Therefore put no faith in the conscious. Nothing you can see, feel, or think is so. Even sin and virtue, merit and demerit are not what they appear. Usually the bad and the good are matter of convention and custom and are shunned or welcomed, according to how the words are used.
Q: Are there not good desires and bad, high desires and low?
M: All desires are bad, but some are worse than others. Pursue any desire, it will always give you trouble.
Q: Even the desire to be free of desire?
M: Why desire at all? Desiring a state of freedom from desire will not set you free. Nothing can set you free, because you are free. See yourself with desireless clarity, that is all.
Q: It takes time to know oneself.
M: How can time help you? Time is a succession of moments; each rnoment appears out of nothing and disappears into nothing, never to reappear. How can you build on something so fleeting?
Q: What is permanent?
M: Look to yourself for the permanent. Dive deep within and find what is real in you.
Q: How to look for rnyself?
M: Whatever happens, it happens to you. What you do, the doer is in you. Find the subject of all that you are as a person.
Q: What else can I be?
M: Find out. Even if I tell you that you are the witness, the silent watcher, it will mean nothing to you, unless you find the way to your own being.
Q: My question is: How to find the way to one's own being?
M: Give up all questions except one: 'Who am l'? After all, the only fact you are sure of is that you are. The 'I am' is certain. The 'I am this' is not. Struggle to find out what you are in reality.
Q: I am doing nothing else for the last 60 years.
M: What is wrong with striving? Why look for results? Striving itself is your real nature.
Q: Striving is painful.
M: You make it so by seeking results. Strive without seeking, struggle without greed.
Q: Why has God made me as I am?
M: Which God are you talking about? What is God? Is he not the very light by which you ask the question? 'I am' itself is God. The seeking itself is God. In seeking you discover that you are neither the body nor mind, and the love of the self in you is for the self in all. The two are one. The consciousness in you and the consciousness in me, apparently two, really one, seek unity and that is love.
Q: How am I to find that love?
M: What do you love now? The 'I am'. Give your heart and mind to it, think of nothing e!se. This, when effortless and natural, is the highest state. In it love itself is the lover and the beloved.
Q: Everybody wants to live, to exist. Is it not self love?
M: All desire has its source in the self. It is all a matter of choosing the right desire.
Q: What is right and what is wrong varies with habit and custom. Standards vary with societies.
M: Discard all traditional standards. Leave them to the hypocrites. Only what liberates you from desire and fear and wrong ideas is good. As long as you worry about sin and virtue you will have no peace.
Q: I grant that sin and virtue are social norms. But there may be also spiritual sins and virtues. I mean by spiritual the absolute. Is there such a thing as absolute sin or absolute virtue?
M: Sin and virtue refer to a person only. Without a sinful or virtuous person what is sin or virtue? At the level of the absolute there are no persons; the ocean of pure awareness is neither virtuous nor sinful. Sin and virtue are invariably relative.
Q: Can I do away with such unnecessary notions?
M: Not as long as you think yourself to be a person.
Q: By what sign shall l know that I am beyond sin and virtue?
M: By being free from all desire and fear, from the very idea of being a person. To nourish the ideas: 'I am a sinner' 'I am not a sinner', is sin. To identify oneself with the particular is all the sin there is. The impersonal is real, the personal appears and disappears. 'I am' is the impersonal Being. 'I am this' is the person. The person is relative and the pure Being -- fundamental.
Q: Surely pure Being is not unconscious, nor is it devoid of discrimination. How can it be beyond sin and virtue? Just tell us, please, has it intelligence or not?
M: All these questions arise from your believing yourself to be a person. Go beyond the personal and see.
Q: What exactly do you mean when you ask me to stop being a person?
M: I do not ask you to stop being - that you cannot. I ask you only to stop imagining that you were born, have parents, are a body, will die and so on. Just try, make a beginning -- it is not as hard as you think.
Q: To think oneself as the personal is the sin of the impersonal.
M: Again the personal point of view! Why do you insist on polluting the impersonal with your ideas of sin and virtue? It just does not apply. The impersonal cannot be described in terms of good and bad. It is Being -- Wisdom -- Love -- all absolute. Where is the scope for sin there? And virtue is only the opposite of sin.
Q: We talk of divine virtue.
M: True virtue is divine nature (swarupa). What you are really is your virtue. But the opposite of sin which you call virtue is only obedience born out of fear.
Q: Then why all effort at being good?
M: It keeps you on the move. You go on and on till you find God. Then God takes you into Himself -- and makes you as He is.
Q: The same action is considered natural at one point and a sin at another. What makes it sinful?
M: Whatever you do against your better knowledge is sin.
Q: Knowledge depends on memory.
M: Remembering your self is virtue, forgetting your self is sin. It all boils down to the mental or psychological link between the spirit and matter. We may call the link psyche (antahkarana). When the psyche is raw, undeveloped, quite primitive, it is subject to gross illusions. As it grows in breadth and sensitivity, it becomes a perfect link between pure matter and pure spirit and gives meaning to matter and expression to spirit. There is the material world (mahadakash) and the spiritual (paramakash). Between lies the universal mind (chidakash) which is also the universal heart (premakash). It is wise love that makes the two one.
Q: Some people are stupid, some are intelligent. The difference is in their psyche. The ripe ones had more experience behind them. Just like a child grows by eating and drinking, sleeping and playing, so is man's psyche shaped by all he thinks and feels and does, until it is perfect enough to serve as a bridge between the spirit and the body. As a bridge permits the traffic; between the banks, so does the psyche bring together the source and its expression.
M: Call it love. The bridge is love.
Q: Ultimately all is experience. Whatever we think, feel, do is experience. Behind it is the experiencer. So all we know consists of these two, the experiencer and the experience. But the two are really one -- the experiencer alone is the experience. Still, the experiencer takes the experience to be outside. In the same way the spirit and the body are one; they only appear as two.
M: To the Spirit there is no second.
Q: To whom then does the second appear? It seems to me that duality is an illusion induced by the imperfection of the psyche. When the psyche is perfect, duality is no longer seen.
M: You have said it.
Q: Still I have to repeat my very simpie question: who makes the distinction between sin and virtue?
M: He who has a body, sins with the body, he who has a mind, sins with the mind.
Q: Surely, the mere possession of mind and body does not compel to sin. There must be a third factor at the root of it. I come back again and again to this question of sin and virtue, because now a days young people keep on saying that there is no such thing as sin, that one need not be squermish and should follow the moment's desire readily. They will accept neither tradition nor authority and can be influenced only by solid and honest thought. If they refrain from certain actions, it is through fear of police rather than by conviction. Undoubtedly there is something in what they say, for we can see how our values change from place to place and time to time. For instance -- killing in war is great virtue today and may be considered a horrible crime next century.
M: A man who moves with the earth will necessarily experience days and nights. He who stays with the sun will know no darkness. My world is not yours. As I see it, you all are on a stage performing. There is no reality about your comings and goings. And your problems are so unreal!
Q: We may be sleep walkers, or subject to nightmares. Is there nothing you can do?
M: I am doing: I did enter your dreamlike state to tell you "Stop hurting yourself and others, stop suffering, wake up"
Q: Why then don't we wake up?
M: You will. I shall not be thwarted. It may take some time. When you shall begin to question your dream, awakening will be not far away.
Questioner: Is the practice of Yoga always conscious? Or, can it be quite unconscious, below the threshold of awareness?
Maharaj: In the case of a beginner the practice of Yoga is often deliberate and requires great determination. But those who are practlslng sincerely for many years, are intent on self realization all the time, whether conscious of it or not. Unconscious sadhana is most effective, because it is spontaneous and steady.
Q: What is the position of the man who was a sincere student of Yoga for some time and then got discouraged and abandoned all efforts?
M: What a man appears to do, or not to do, is often deceptive. His apparent lethargy may be just a gathering of strength. The causes of our behaviour are very subtle. One must not be quick to condemn, not even to praise. Remember that Yoga is the work of the inner self (vyakta) on the outer self (vyakti). All that the outer does is merely in response to the inner.
Q: Still the outer helps.
M: How much can it help and in what way? It has some control over the body and can improve its posture and breathing. Over the mind's thoughts and feelings it has little mastery, for it is itself the mind. It is the inner that can control the outer. The outer will be wise to obey.
Q: If it is the inner that is ultimately responsible for man's spiritual development, why is the outer so much exhorted and encouraged?
M: The outer can help by keeping quiet and free from desire and fear. You would have noticed that all advice to the outer is in the form of negations: don't, stop, refrain, forego, give up, sacrifice, surrender, see the false as false. Even the little description of reality that is given is through denials -- 'not this, not this', (neti, neti). All positives belong to the inner self, as all absolutes to Reality.
Q: How are we to distinguish the inner from the outer in actual experience?
M: The inner is the source of inspiration, the outer is moved by memory. The source is untraceable, while all memory begins somewhere. Thus the outer is always determined, while the inner cannot be held in words. The mistake of students consists in their imagining the inner to be something to get hold of, and forgetting that all perceivables are transient and, therefore, unreal. Only that which makes perception possible, call it Life or Brahman, or what you like, is real.
Q: Must Life have a body for its self expression?
M: The body seeks to live. It is not life that needs the body; it is the body that needs life.
Q: Does life do it deliberately?
M: Does love act deliberately? Yes and no. Life is love and love is life. What keeps the body together but love? What is desire, but love of the self? What is fear but the urge to protect? And what is knowledge but the love of truth? The means and forms may be wrong, but the motive behind is always love -- love of the me and the mine. The me and the mine may be small, or may explode and embrace the universe, but love remains.
Q: The repetition of the name of God is very common in India. Is there any virtue in it?
M: When you know the name of a thing, or a person, you can find it easily. By calling God by His name you make Him come to you.
Q: In what shape does He come?
M: According to your expectations. If you happen to be unlucky and some saintly soul gives you a mantra for good luck and you repeat it with faith and devotion, your bad luck is bound to turn. Steady faith is stronger than destiny. Destiny is the result of causes, mostly accidental, and is therefore loosely woven. Confidence and good hope will overcome it easily.
Q: When a mantra is chanted, what exactly happens?
M: The sound of mantra creates the shape which will embody the Self. The Self can embody any shape -- and operate through it. After all, the Self is expressing itself in action -- and a mantra is primarily energy in action. It acts on you, it acts on your surroundings.
M: It is like entering a dark room. You see nothing -- you may touch, but you do not see -- no colours, no outlines. The window opens and the room is flooded with light. Colours and shapes come into being. The window is the giver of light, but not the source of it. The sun is the source. Similarly, matter is like the dark room; consciousness -- the window -- flooding matter with sensations and perceptions, and the supreme is the sun the source both of matter and of light. The window may be closed, or open, the sun shines all the time. It makes all the difference to the room, but none to the sun. Yet all this is secondary to the tiny little thing which is the 'I am'. Without the 'I am' there is nothing. All knowledge is about the 'I am'. False ideas about this 'I am' lead to bondage, right knowledge leads to freedom and happiness.
Q: Is 'I am' and 'there is' the same?
M: 'I am' denotes the inner, 'there is' -- the outer. Both are based on the sense of being.
Q: Is it the same as the experience of existence?
M: To exist means to be something, a thing, a feeling, a thought, an idea. All existence is particular. Only being is universal, in the sense that every being is compatible with every other being. Existences clash, being -- never. Existence means becoming, change, birth and death and birth again, while in being there is silent peace.
Q: If I create the world, why have I made it bad?
M: Everyone lives in his own world. Not all the worlds are equally good or bad.
Q: What determines the difference?
M: The mind that projects the world, colours it its own way. When you meet a man, he is a stranger. When you marry him, he becomes your own self. When you quarrel, he becomes your enemy. It is your mind's attitude that determines what he is to you.
Q: I can see that my world is subjective. Does it make it also illusory?
M: It is illusory as long as it is subjective and to that extent only. Reality lies in objectivity.
Q: What does objectivity mean? You said the world is subjective and now you talk of objectivity. Is not everything subjective?
M: Everything is subjective, but the real is objective.
Q: In what sense?
M: It does not depend on memories and expectations, desires and fears, likes and dislikes. All is seen as it is.
Q: Is it what you call the fourth state (turiya)?
M: Call it as you like. It is solid, steady, changeless, beginningless and endless, ever new, ever fresh.
Q: How is it reached?
M: Desirelessness and fearlessness will take you there.
Questioner: You say, reality is one. Oneness, unity, is the attribute of the person. Is then reality a person, with the universe as its body?
Maharaj: Whatever you may say will be both true and false. Words do not reach beyond the mind.
Q: I am just trying to understand. You are telling us of the Person, the Self and the Supreme. (vyakti, vyakta, avyakta). The light of Pure Awareness (pragna), focussed as 'I am' in the Self (jivatma), as consciousness (chetana) illumines the mind (antahkarana) and as life (prana) vitalizes the body (deha). All this is fine as far as the words go. But when it comes to distinguishing in myself the person from the Self and the Self from the Supreme, I get mixed up.
M: The person is never the subject. You can see a person, but you are not the person. You are always the Supreme which appears at a given point of time and space as the witness, a bridge between the pure awareness of the Supreme and the manifold consciousness of the person.
Q: When I look at myself, I find I am several persons fighting among themselves for the use of the body.
M: They correspond to the various tendencies (samskara) of the mind.
Q: Can I make peace between them?
M: How can you? They are so contradictory! See them as they are -- mere habits of thoughts and feelings, bundles of memories and urges.
Q: Yet they all say 'I am'.
M: It is only because you identify yourself with them. Once you realize that whatever appears before you cannot be yourself, and cannot say 'I am', you are free of all your 'persons' and their demands. The sense 'I am' is your own. You cannot part with it, but you can impart it to anything, as in saying: I am young. I am rich etc. But such self identifications are patently false and the cause of bondage.
Q: I can now understand that I am not the person, but that which, when reflected in the person, gives it a sense of being. Now, about the Supreme? In what way do I know myself as the Supreme?
M: The source of consciousness cannot be an object in consciousness. To know the source is to be the source. When you realize that you are not the person, but the pure and calm witness, and that fearless awareness is your very being, you are the being. It is the source, the Inexhaustible Possibility.
Q: Are there many sources or one for all?
M: It depends how you look at it, from which end. The objects in the world are many, but the eye that sees them is one. The higher always appears as one to the lower and the lower as many to the higher.
Q: Shapes and names are all of one and the same God?
M: Again, it all depends on how you look at it. On the verbal level everything is relative. Absolutes should be experienced, not discussed.
Q: How is the Absolute experienced?
M: It is not an object to be recognized and stored up in memory. It is in the present and in feeling rather. It has more to do with the 'how' than with the 'what'. It is in the quality, in the value; being the source of everything, it is in everything.
Q: If it is the source, why and how does it manifest itself?
M: It gives birth to consciousness. All else is in consciousness.
Q: Why are there so many centres of consciousness?
M: The objective universe (mahadakash) is in constant movement, projecting and dissolving innumerable forms. Whenever a form is infused with life (prana), consciousness (chetana) appears by reflection of awareness in matter.
Q: How is the Supreme affected?
M: What can affect it and how? The source is not affected by the vagaries of the river nor is the metal -- by the shape of the jewellery. Is the light affected by the picture on the screen? The Supreme makes everything possible, that is all.
Q: How is it that some things do happen and some don't?
M: Seeking out causes is a pastime of the mind. There is no duality of cause and effect. Everything is its own cause.
Q: No purposeful action is then possible?
M: All I say is that consciousness contains all. In consciousness all is possible. You can have causes if you want them, in your world. Another may be content with a single cause -- God's will. The root cause is one: the sense 'I am'.
Q: What is the link between the Self (Vyakta) and the Supreme (Avyakta)?
M: From the self's point of view the world is the known, the Supreme -- the Unknown. The Unknown gives birth to the known, yet remains Unknown. The known is infinite, but the Unknown is an infinitude of infinities. Just like a ray of light is never seen unless intercepted by the specs of dust, so does the Supreme make everything known, itself remaining unknown.
Q: Does it mean that the Unknown is inaccessible?
M: Oh, no. The Supreme is the easiest to reach for it is your very being. It is enough to stop thinking and desiring anything, but the Supreme.
Q: And if I desire nothing, not even the Supreme?
M: Then you are as good as dead, or you are the Supreme.
Q: The world is full of desires: Everybody wants something or other. Who is the desirer? The person or the self?
M: The self. All desires, holy and unholy, come from the self; they all hang on the sense 'I am'.
Q: I can understand holy desires (satyakama) emanating from the self. It may be the expression of the bliss aspect of the Sadchitananda (Beingness -- Awareness --Happiness) of the Self. But why unholy desires?
M: All desires aim at happiness. Their shape and quality depend on the psyche (antahkarana). Where inertia (tamas) predominates, we find perversions. With energy (rajas), passions arise. With lucidity (sattva) the motive behind the desire is goodwill, compassion, the urge to make happy rather than be happy. But the Supreme is beyond all, yet because of its infinite permeability all cogent desires can be fulfilled.
Q: Which desires are cogent?
M: Desires that destroy their subjects, or objects, or do not subside on satisfaction are self contradictory and cannot be fulfilled. Only desires motivated by love, goodwill and compassion are beneficial to both the subject and object and can be fully satisfied .
Q: All desires are painful, the holy as well as the unholy.
M: They are not the same and pain is not the same. Passion is painful, compassion--never. The entire universe strives to fulfil a desire born of compassion.
Q: Does the Supreme know itself? Is the Impersonal conscious?
M: The source of all has all. Whatever flows from it must be there already in seed form. And as a seed is the last of innumerable seeds, and contains the experience and the promise of numberless forests, so does the Unknown contain all that was, or could have been and all that shall or would be. The entire field of becoming is open and accessible; past and future coexist in the eternal now.
Q: Are you living in the Supreme Unknown?
M: Where else?
Q: What makes you say so?
M: No desire ever arises in my mind.
Q: Are you then unconscious?
M: Of course not! I am fully conscious, but since no desire or fear enters my mind, there is perfect silence.
Q: Who knows the silence?
M: Silence knows itself. It is the silence of the silent mind, when passions and desires are silenced.
Q: Do you experience desires occasionally?
M: Desires are just waves in the mind. You know a wave when you see one. A desire is just a thing among many. I feel no urge to satisfy it, no action needs be taken on it. Freedom from desire means this: the compulsion to satisfy is absent.
Q: Why do desires arise at all?
M: Because you imagine that you were born, and that you will die if you do not take care of your body. Desire for embodied existence is the root cause of trouble.
Q: Yet, so many jivas get into bodies. Surely it cannot be some error of judgement. There must be a purpose. What could it be?
M: To know itself the self must be faced with its opposite -- the not self. Desire leads to experience. Experience leads to discrimination, detachment, self knowledge --liberation. And what is liberation after all? To know that you are beyond birth and death. By forgetting who you are and imagining yourself a mortal creature, you created so much trouble for yourself that you have to wake up, like from a bad dream. Enquiry also wakes you up. You need not wait for suffering; enquiry into happiness is better, for the mind is in harmony and peace.
Q: Who exactly is the ultimate experiencer -- the Self or the Unknown?
M: The Self, of course.
Q: Then why introduce the notion of the Supreme Unknown?
M: To explain the Self.
Q: But is there anything beyond the Self?
M: Outside the Self there is nothing. All is one and all is contained in 'I am'. In the waking and dream states it is the person. In deep sleep and turiya it is the Self. Beyond the alert intentness of turiya lies the great, silent peace of the Supreme. But in fact all is one in essence and related in appearance. In ignorance the seer becomes the seen and in wisdom he is the seeing. But why be concerned with the Supreme? Know the knowers and all will be known. Who am l?
Questioner: We are advised to worship reality personified as God, or as the Perfect Man. We are told not to attempt the worship of the Absolute, as it is much too difficult for a brain centered consciousness.
Maharaj: Truth is simple and open to all. Why do you complicate? Truth is loving and lovable. It includes all, accepts all, purifies all. It is untruth that is difficult and a source of trouble. It always wants, expects, demands. Being false, it is empty, always in search of confirmation and reassurance. It is afraid of and avoids enquiry. It identifies itself with any support, however weak and momentary. Whatever it gets, it loses and asks for more. Therefore put no faith in the conscious. Nothing you can see, feel, or think is so. Even sin and virtue, merit and demerit are not what they appear. Usually the bad and the good are matter of convention and custom and are shunned or welcomed, according to how the words are used.
Q: Are there not good desires and bad, high desires and low?
M: All desires are bad, but some are worse than others. Pursue any desire, it will always give you trouble.
Q: Even the desire to be free of desire?
M: Why desire at all? Desiring a state of freedom from desire will not set you free. Nothing can set you free, because you are free. See yourself with desireless clarity, that is all.
Q: It takes time to know oneself.
M: How can time help you? Time is a succession of moments; each rnoment appears out of nothing and disappears into nothing, never to reappear. How can you build on something so fleeting?
Q: What is permanent?
M: Look to yourself for the permanent. Dive deep within and find what is real in you.
Q: How to look for rnyself?
M: Whatever happens, it happens to you. What you do, the doer is in you. Find the subject of all that you are as a person.
Q: What else can I be?
M: Find out. Even if I tell you that you are the witness, the silent watcher, it will mean nothing to you, unless you find the way to your own being.
Q: My question is: How to find the way to one's own being?
M: Give up all questions except one: 'Who am l'? After all, the only fact you are sure of is that you are. The 'I am' is certain. The 'I am this' is not. Struggle to find out what you are in reality.
Q: I am doing nothing else for the last 60 years.
M: What is wrong with striving? Why look for results? Striving itself is your real nature.
Q: Striving is painful.
M: You make it so by seeking results. Strive without seeking, struggle without greed.
Q: Why has God made me as I am?
M: Which God are you talking about? What is God? Is he not the very light by which you ask the question? 'I am' itself is God. The seeking itself is God. In seeking you discover that you are neither the body nor mind, and the love of the self in you is for the self in all. The two are one. The consciousness in you and the consciousness in me, apparently two, really one, seek unity and that is love.
Q: How am I to find that love?
M: What do you love now? The 'I am'. Give your heart and mind to it, think of nothing e!se. This, when effortless and natural, is the highest state. In it love itself is the lover and the beloved.
Q: Everybody wants to live, to exist. Is it not self love?
M: All desire has its source in the self. It is all a matter of choosing the right desire.
Q: What is right and what is wrong varies with habit and custom. Standards vary with societies.
M: Discard all traditional standards. Leave them to the hypocrites. Only what liberates you from desire and fear and wrong ideas is good. As long as you worry about sin and virtue you will have no peace.
Q: I grant that sin and virtue are social norms. But there may be also spiritual sins and virtues. I mean by spiritual the absolute. Is there such a thing as absolute sin or absolute virtue?
M: Sin and virtue refer to a person only. Without a sinful or virtuous person what is sin or virtue? At the level of the absolute there are no persons; the ocean of pure awareness is neither virtuous nor sinful. Sin and virtue are invariably relative.
Q: Can I do away with such unnecessary notions?
M: Not as long as you think yourself to be a person.
Q: By what sign shall l know that I am beyond sin and virtue?
M: By being free from all desire and fear, from the very idea of being a person. To nourish the ideas: 'I am a sinner' 'I am not a sinner', is sin. To identify oneself with the particular is all the sin there is. The impersonal is real, the personal appears and disappears. 'I am' is the impersonal Being. 'I am this' is the person. The person is relative and the pure Being -- fundamental.
Q: Surely pure Being is not unconscious, nor is it devoid of discrimination. How can it be beyond sin and virtue? Just tell us, please, has it intelligence or not?
M: All these questions arise from your believing yourself to be a person. Go beyond the personal and see.
Q: What exactly do you mean when you ask me to stop being a person?
M: I do not ask you to stop being - that you cannot. I ask you only to stop imagining that you were born, have parents, are a body, will die and so on. Just try, make a beginning -- it is not as hard as you think.
Q: To think oneself as the personal is the sin of the impersonal.
M: Again the personal point of view! Why do you insist on polluting the impersonal with your ideas of sin and virtue? It just does not apply. The impersonal cannot be described in terms of good and bad. It is Being -- Wisdom -- Love -- all absolute. Where is the scope for sin there? And virtue is only the opposite of sin.
Q: We talk of divine virtue.
M: True virtue is divine nature (swarupa). What you are really is your virtue. But the opposite of sin which you call virtue is only obedience born out of fear.
Q: Then why all effort at being good?
M: It keeps you on the move. You go on and on till you find God. Then God takes you into Himself -- and makes you as He is.
Q: The same action is considered natural at one point and a sin at another. What makes it sinful?
M: Whatever you do against your better knowledge is sin.
Q: Knowledge depends on memory.
M: Remembering your self is virtue, forgetting your self is sin. It all boils down to the mental or psychological link between the spirit and matter. We may call the link psyche (antahkarana). When the psyche is raw, undeveloped, quite primitive, it is subject to gross illusions. As it grows in breadth and sensitivity, it becomes a perfect link between pure matter and pure spirit and gives meaning to matter and expression to spirit. There is the material world (mahadakash) and the spiritual (paramakash). Between lies the universal mind (chidakash) which is also the universal heart (premakash). It is wise love that makes the two one.
Q: Some people are stupid, some are intelligent. The difference is in their psyche. The ripe ones had more experience behind them. Just like a child grows by eating and drinking, sleeping and playing, so is man's psyche shaped by all he thinks and feels and does, until it is perfect enough to serve as a bridge between the spirit and the body. As a bridge permits the traffic; between the banks, so does the psyche bring together the source and its expression.
M: Call it love. The bridge is love.
Q: Ultimately all is experience. Whatever we think, feel, do is experience. Behind it is the experiencer. So all we know consists of these two, the experiencer and the experience. But the two are really one -- the experiencer alone is the experience. Still, the experiencer takes the experience to be outside. In the same way the spirit and the body are one; they only appear as two.
M: To the Spirit there is no second.
Q: To whom then does the second appear? It seems to me that duality is an illusion induced by the imperfection of the psyche. When the psyche is perfect, duality is no longer seen.
M: You have said it.
Q: Still I have to repeat my very simpie question: who makes the distinction between sin and virtue?
M: He who has a body, sins with the body, he who has a mind, sins with the mind.
Q: Surely, the mere possession of mind and body does not compel to sin. There must be a third factor at the root of it. I come back again and again to this question of sin and virtue, because now a days young people keep on saying that there is no such thing as sin, that one need not be squermish and should follow the moment's desire readily. They will accept neither tradition nor authority and can be influenced only by solid and honest thought. If they refrain from certain actions, it is through fear of police rather than by conviction. Undoubtedly there is something in what they say, for we can see how our values change from place to place and time to time. For instance -- killing in war is great virtue today and may be considered a horrible crime next century.
M: A man who moves with the earth will necessarily experience days and nights. He who stays with the sun will know no darkness. My world is not yours. As I see it, you all are on a stage performing. There is no reality about your comings and goings. And your problems are so unreal!
Q: We may be sleep walkers, or subject to nightmares. Is there nothing you can do?
M: I am doing: I did enter your dreamlike state to tell you "Stop hurting yourself and others, stop suffering, wake up"
Q: Why then don't we wake up?
M: You will. I shall not be thwarted. It may take some time. When you shall begin to question your dream, awakening will be not far away.
Questioner: Is the practice of Yoga always conscious? Or, can it be quite unconscious, below the threshold of awareness?
Maharaj: In the case of a beginner the practice of Yoga is often deliberate and requires great determination. But those who are practlslng sincerely for many years, are intent on self realization all the time, whether conscious of it or not. Unconscious sadhana is most effective, because it is spontaneous and steady.
Q: What is the position of the man who was a sincere student of Yoga for some time and then got discouraged and abandoned all efforts?
M: What a man appears to do, or not to do, is often deceptive. His apparent lethargy may be just a gathering of strength. The causes of our behaviour are very subtle. One must not be quick to condemn, not even to praise. Remember that Yoga is the work of the inner self (vyakta) on the outer self (vyakti). All that the outer does is merely in response to the inner.
Q: Still the outer helps.
M: How much can it help and in what way? It has some control over the body and can improve its posture and breathing. Over the mind's thoughts and feelings it has little mastery, for it is itself the mind. It is the inner that can control the outer. The outer will be wise to obey.
Q: If it is the inner that is ultimately responsible for man's spiritual development, why is the outer so much exhorted and encouraged?
M: The outer can help by keeping quiet and free from desire and fear. You would have noticed that all advice to the outer is in the form of negations: don't, stop, refrain, forego, give up, sacrifice, surrender, see the false as false. Even the little description of reality that is given is through denials -- 'not this, not this', (neti, neti). All positives belong to the inner self, as all absolutes to Reality.
Q: How are we to distinguish the inner from the outer in actual experience?
M: The inner is the source of inspiration, the outer is moved by memory. The source is untraceable, while all memory begins somewhere. Thus the outer is always determined, while the inner cannot be held in words. The mistake of students consists in their imagining the inner to be something to get hold of, and forgetting that all perceivables are transient and, therefore, unreal. Only that which makes perception possible, call it Life or Brahman, or what you like, is real.
Q: Must Life have a body for its self expression?
M: The body seeks to live. It is not life that needs the body; it is the body that needs life.
Q: Does life do it deliberately?
M: Does love act deliberately? Yes and no. Life is love and love is life. What keeps the body together but love? What is desire, but love of the self? What is fear but the urge to protect? And what is knowledge but the love of truth? The means and forms may be wrong, but the motive behind is always love -- love of the me and the mine. The me and the mine may be small, or may explode and embrace the universe, but love remains.
Q: The repetition of the name of God is very common in India. Is there any virtue in it?
M: When you know the name of a thing, or a person, you can find it easily. By calling God by His name you make Him come to you.
Q: In what shape does He come?
M: According to your expectations. If you happen to be unlucky and some saintly soul gives you a mantra for good luck and you repeat it with faith and devotion, your bad luck is bound to turn. Steady faith is stronger than destiny. Destiny is the result of causes, mostly accidental, and is therefore loosely woven. Confidence and good hope will overcome it easily.
Q: When a mantra is chanted, what exactly happens?
M: The sound of mantra creates the shape which will embody the Self. The Self can embody any shape -- and operate through it. After all, the Self is expressing itself in action -- and a mantra is primarily energy in action. It acts on you, it acts on your surroundings.
(My humble salutations to Advaita Vedanta Library for the collection)
Editing over upto page 114
Note: This text may have spelling and grammatical mistakes.
Note: This text may have spelling and grammatical mistakes.
(Continued .......)
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