Talks with
Sri Nisarga Datta Maharaj
Q: If somebody offers to build you a beautiful Ashrams
M: Let him, by all means. Let him spend a fortune, employ hun- dreds, feed thousands.
Q: Is it not a desire?
M: Not at all. I am only asking him to do it properly, not stingily, halfheartedly. He is fulfilling his own desire, not mine. Let him do it well and be famous among men and gods.
Q: But do you want it?
M: I do not want it.
Q: Will you accept it?
M: I don't need it.
Q: Will you stay in it?
M: If I am compelled.
Q: What can compel you'd
M: Love of those who are in search of light.
Q: Yes, I see your point. Now, how am I to go into samad~i?
M: If you are in the right state, whatever you see will put you into samadhi. After all, samadhi is nothing unusual. When the mind is intensely interested, it becomes one with the object of interest --the seer and the seen become one in seeing, the hearer and the heard become one in hearing, the lover and the loved be- come ore in loving. Every experience can be the ground for samadhi.
Q: Are you always in a state of samadhi?
M: Of course not Samadhi is a state of mind, after all. I am beyond all experience, even of samadhi. I am the great de- vourer and destroyer: whatever I touch dissolves into void (awash).
Q: I need samadhis for self-realization.
M: You have alp the self-realization you need, but you do not MATTER IS CONSCIOUSNESS ITSELF 291 trust- it. Have courage, trust yourself, go, talk, act; give it a chance to prove itself. With some realization comes impercepti- bly, but somehow they need convincing. They have changed, but they do not notice it. Such non-spectacular cases are often the most reliable.
Q: Can one believe himself to be realized and be mistaken?
M: Of course. The very idea 'I am self-realized' is a mistake. There is no 'I am this'. 'I am that' in the Natural State. ù--- 62 In the Supreme the Witness Appears
Questioner: Some forty years ago J. Krishnamurti said that there is life only and all talk of personalities and individualities has no foundation in reality. He did not attempt to describe life --he merely said that while life need not and cannot be de- scribed, it can be fully experienced, if the obstacles to its being experienced are removed. The main hindrance lies in our idea of, and addiction to, time, in our habit of anticipating a future in the light of the past. The sum total of the past becomes the 'I was', the hoped for future becomes the 'I shall be' and life is a constant effort of crossing over from what 'I was' to what PI shall be'. The present moment, the. 'now' is 1(St. sight of. Maharaja speaks of 'I am'. Is it an illusion, like 'I was' and 'I shall be', or is there something real about it? And if the PI am' too is an illusion, 292 i AM THAT how does one free oneself from it? The very notion of I am free of 'I am' is an absurdity. Is there something real, something lasting about the 'I am' in distinction from the 'I was', or 11 shall be', which change with time, as added memories create new expec- tations? Maharaja: The present 'I am' is as false as the 'I was' and 'I shall be'. It is merely an idea in the mind, an impression left by mem- ory, and the separate identity it creates is false. this habit of re- ferring to a false center must be done away with, the notion 'I see', 'I feel', 'I think', 'I do', must disappear from the field of con- sciousness; what remains when the false is no more, is real.
Q: What is this big talk about elimination of the self? How can the self eliminate itself? What kind of metaphysical acrobatics can lead to the disappearance of the acrobat? In the end he will reappear, mightily proud of his disappearing.
M: You need not chase the 'I am' to kill it. You cannot. All you need is a sincere longing for reality. We call it atma-bhakti, the love of the Supreme: or moksha-sankalpa, the determination to be free from the false. Without love, and will inspired by love, no- thing can be done. Merely talking about Reality without doing anything about it is self-defeating. There must be love in the re- lation between the person who says 'I am' and the observer of that 'I am'. As long as the observer, the inner self, the 'higher' self, considers himself apart from the observed, the 'lower' self, despises it and condemns it, the situation is hopeless. It is only when the observer (vacuity) accepts the person (vacuity) as a pro- jection or manifestation of himself, and, so to say, takes the self into the Self, the duality of 'I' and 'this' goes and in the identity of the outer and the inner the Supreme Reality manifests itself. This union of the seer and the seen happens when the seer becomes conscious of himself as the seer, he is not merely in- terested in the seen, which he is anyhow, but also interested in being interested, giving attention to attention, aware of being aware. Affectionate awareness is the crucial factor that brings Reality into focus.
Q: According to the Theosophists and allied occultists, man consists of three aspects: personality, individuality and spiritua- lity. Beyond spirituality lies divinity. The personality is strictly I No THF .~1 IPRFME THE WITNESS APPEARS 293 temporary and valid for one birth only. It begins with the birth of the body and ends ~A~ith the birth of the next body. Once over, it is over~for good; nothing remains of it except a few sweet or bit- ter le;sons. The individuality begins with the animal-man and ends with the fully human. The split between the personality and individu- ality is characteristic of our present-day humanity. On one side the individuality with its longing for the true, the good and the beautiful; on the other side an ugly struggle between habit and ambition, fear and greed, passivity and violence. The spirituality aspect is still in abeyance. It cannot manifest itself in an atmosphere of duality. Only when the personality is reunited with the individuality and becomes a limited, perhaps, but true expression ot it, that the light and love and beauty of the spiritual come into their own. You teach of the vyakh, vacuity, avyakta (observer, observed and ground of observation). Does it tally with the other view?
M: Yes, when the vyaktl realizes its non-existence in separation from the vacuity, and the vacuity sees the vacuity as his own ex- pression, then the peace and silence of the avyakta state come into being. In reality, the three are one: the vacuity and the avyakta are inseparable, while the vyakV is the sensing-feeling- thinking process, based on the body made of and fed by the five elements.
Q: What is the relation between the vacuity and the avyakta?
M: How can there be relation when they are one? All talk of separation and relation is due to the distorting and corrupting in- fluence of 'I-am-the-body' idea. The outer self (vacuity) is merely a projection on the body-mind of the inner self (vacuity), which again is only an expression of the Supreme Self (avyakta) which nd none.
Q: There are teachers who will not talk of the higher self and lower self. They address the man as if only the lower self ex- isted. Neither Buddha nor Christ ever mentioned a higher self. J. Krishnamurti too fights shy of any mention of the higher self. Why is it so?
M: How can there be two selves in one body? The 'I am' is one. There is no ~higher loam' and slower loam'. All kinds of states of 294 1 AM THAT mind are presented to awareness and there is self-identification with them. The objects of observation are not what they appear to be and the attitudes they are met with are not what they need be. If you think that Buddha, Christ or Krishnamurti speak to the person, you are mistaken. They know well that the vacuity, the outer self, is but a shadow of the vacuity, the inner self, and they address and admonish the vacuity only. They tell him Jo give at- tention to the outer self, to guide and help it, to feel responsible for it; in short, to be fully aware of it. Awareness comes from the Supreme and pervades the inner self; the so-called outer self is onlythat part of one's being of which one is not aware. One may be conscious, for every being is conscious, but one is not aware. What is included in awareness becomes the inner and partakes of the inner. You may put it differently: the body de- fines the outer self, consciousness the inner, and in pure awareness the Supreme is contacted.
Q: You said the body defines the outer self. Since you have a body, do you have also an outer self?
M: I would, were I attached to the body and take it to be myself.
Q: But you are aware of it and attend to its needs.
M: The contrary is nearer to truth--the body knows me and is aware of my needs. But neither is really so. This body appears in your mind; in my mind nothing is.
Q: Do you mean to say you are quite unconscious of having a body?
M: On the contrary, I am conscious of not having a body.
Q: I see you smoking !
M: Exactly so. You see me stoking. Find out for yourself how did you come to see me Smoking, and you will easily realize that it is your 'I-am-the-body' state of mind that is responsible for this 'I-see-you-smoking' idea.
Q: There is the body and there is myself. I know the body. Apart from it, what am l?
M: There is no 'I' apart from the body, nor the world. The three appear and disappear together. At the root is the sense 'I am'. Go beyond it. The idea: 'I-am-not-the-body' is merely an anti- dote to the idea 'I-am-the-body' which is false. What is that 'I IN THE SUPREME THE WITNESS APPEARS 295 aim Unless you know yourself, what else can you know?
Q: From what you say I conclude that without the body there can be no liberation. ,f the idea: 'I-am-not-the-body' leads to lib- eration, the presence of the body is essential.
M: Quite right.'Without the body, how can the idea: ~1- am-not-the-body' come into being? The idea II-am-free' is as false as the idea 'I-am-in-bondage'. Find out the 11 am' common to both and go beyond.
Q: All is a dream only.
M: All are mere words, of what use are they to you? You are en- tangled in the web of verbal definitions and formulations. Go beyond your concepts and ideas; in the silence of desire and thought the truth is found.
Q: One has to remember not to remember. What a task!
M: It cannot be done, of course. It must happen. But it does happen when you truly see the need of it. Again, earnestness is the golden key.
Q: At the back of my mind there is a hum going on all the time. Numerous weak thoughts swarm and buzz and this shape- less cloud is always with me. Is it the same with you? What is at the back of your mind?
M: Where there is no mind, where no back to it. I am all front, no back! The void spears, the void remains.
Q: Isthere no memory left?
M: No memory of past pleasure or pain is left. Each moment is newly born.
Q: Without memory you cannot be conscious.
M: Of course I am conscious, and fully aware of it. I am not a block of wool Compare consciousness and its content to a cloud. You are inside the cloud, while I look at. You are lost in it, hardly able to see the tips of your fingers, while I see the loud and many other clouds and the blue sky too and the sun, the mocnl the stars. Reality is one for Beth of USA but for you t is a prison and for me it is a home. .
Q: You spoke of the person (vacuityAl the witness (vyakta~ and the Supreme (avyakta). Which comes first? 296 1 AM THAT
M: In the Supreme the witness appears. The witness creates the person and thinks itself as separate from it. The witness sees that the person appears in consciousness which again appears in the witness. This realization of the basic unity is the working of the Supreme. It is the power behind the witness, the source from which all flows. It cannot be contacted, unless there is unity and love and mutual help between the person and the witness, unless the doing is in harmony with the being and the knowing. The Supreme is both the source and the fruit of such harmony. As I talk to you, I am in the state of detached but affec- tionate awareness (tarry). When this awareness turns upon it- self, you may call it the Supreme State, (turiyatita). But the fun- damental reality is beyond awareness, beyond the three states of becoming, being and not-being. 0: How is it that here my mind is engaged in high topics and finds dwelling on them easy and pleasant. When I return home I find myself forgetting all l have learnt here, worrying and fret- ting, unable to remember my real nature even for a moment. What may be the cause?
M: It is your childishness you are returning to. You are not fully grown up; there are levels left undeveloped because unat- tended. Just give full attention to what in you is crude and primi- tive, unreasonable and unkind, altogether childish, and you will ripen. It is the maturity of heart and mind that is essential. It comes effortlessly when the main obstacle is removed--inat- tention, unawareness. In awareness you grow. ..~ Notion of Doership is Bondage 63
Questioner: We have been staying at the Satya Sai Baba As- hram for some time. We have also spent two months at Sri Ramanashram at Tiruvannamalai. Now we are on our way back to the United States. Maharaja: Did India cause any change in you?
Q: We feel we have shed our burden. Sri Satya Sai Baba told us to leave everything to him and just live from day to day as right- eously as possible. 'Be good and leave the rest to me', he used to tell us.
M: What were you doing at the Sri Ramanashram?
Q: We were going on with the monetary given to us by the Guru. We also did some meditation. There was not much of thinking or study; we were just trying to keep quiet. We are on the bhakti path and rather poor in philosophy. We have not much to think about--just trust our Guru and live our lives. M Most of the bhaktas trust their Guru only as long as all is well with them. When troubles come, they feel let down and go out in search of another Guru.
Q: Yes, we were warned against this danger. We are trying to take the hard along with the soft. The feeling: 'All is Grace' must be very strong. A sadhu was walking eastwards, from where a strong wind started blowing. The sadhu just turned round and walked west. We hope to live just like that--adjusting ourselves to circumstances as sent us by our Guru.
M: There is only life. There is nobody who lives a life.
Q: That we understand, yet constantly we make atterrpts to live 298 1 AM THAT our lives instead of just living. Making plans for the future seems to be an inveterate habit with us.
M: Whether you plan or don't, life goes on. But in life itself a little whorl arises in the mind, which indulges in fantasies and im- agines itself dominating and controlling life. Live itself is desire less. But the false self wants to continue-- plerisantly. Therefore it is always engaged in ensuring one's con auntie. Life is unafraid and free. As long as you have the idea of influencing events, liberation is not for you: The very no- tion of doer ship, of being a cause, is bondage.
Q: How can we overcome the duality of the doer and the done?
M: Contemplate life as infinite, undivided, ever present, ever active, until you realize yourself as one with it. It is not even very difficult, for you will be returning only to your own natural condi- tion . Once you realize that all comes from within, that the world in which you live has not been projected onto you but by you, your fear comes to an end. Without this realization you identify your- self with the externals, like the body, mind, society, nation, hu- manity, even God or the Absolute. But these are all escapes frown fear. It is only when you fully accept your responsibility for the little world in which you live and watch the process of its creation, preservation and destruction, that you may be free from your imaginary bondage.
Q: Why should I imagine myself so wretched'?
M: You do it by habit only. Change your ways of feeling and thinking, take stock of them and examine them closely. You are in bondage by inadvertence. Attention liberates. You are taking so many things for granted. Begin to question. The most obvi- ous things are the most doubtful. Ask yourself such questions as: Was I really born?' 'Am I really so-and-so? 'How do I know that I exist? 'Who are my parents?/ 'Have they created me, or nave I created them?' 'Must I believe all I am told about myself?' Who am 1, anyhow?' You have put so much energy into building a prison for yourself. Now spend as much on demolishing it. In fact, demolition is easy, for the false dissolves when it is disco- vered. All hangs on the idea 'I am'. Examine it very thoroughly. It lies at the root of every trouble. It is a sort of skin that separates NOTION OF DOERSHIP IS BONDAGE 299 you from the reality. The real is both within and without the skin, but the skin itself is not real. This 'I am' idea was not born with you. You could have lived very well without it. It came later due to your self-identification with the body. It created an illusion of separation where there was none. It made you a stranger in your own world and made the world alien and inimical. Without the sense of 'I am' life goes on. There are moments when we are without the sense of 'I am'. at peace and happy. With the return of the 'I am' trouble starts.
Q: How is one to be free from the 'I'-sense?
M: You must deal with the 'I'-sense if you want to be free of it. Watch it in operation and at peace, how it starts and when it ceases, what it wants and how it gets it, till you see clearly and understand fully. After all, all the Yogas, whatever their source and character, have only one ai
M: to save you from the calamity of separate existence, of being a meaningless dot in a vast and beautiful picture. You suffer because you have alienated yourself from reality and now you seek an escape from this alienation. You cannot escape from your own obsessions. You can only cease nursing them. It is because the PI am' is false that it wants to continue. Reality need not continue--knowing itself indestructible, it is indiffer- ent to the destruction of forms and expressions. To strengthen, and stabilize the 'I am' we do all sorts of things--all in vain, for the 'I am' is being rebuilt from moment to moment. It is unceas- ing work and the only radical solution is to dissolve the separa- tive sense of 'I am such-and-such person' once and for good. Being remains, but not self-being.
Q: I have definite spiritual ambitions. Must I not work for their fulfillment?
M: No ambition is spiritual. All ambitions are for the sake of the 'I am'. If you want to make real progress you must give up all idea of personal attainment. The ambitions of the so-called Yogis are preposterous. A man's desire for a woman is inno- cence itself compared to the lusting for an everlasting personal bliss. The mind is a cheat. The more pious it seems, the worse the betrayal. 300 1 AM THAT
Q: People come to you very often with their worldly troubles and ask for help. How do you know what to tell them?
M: I just tell them what comes to my mind at the moment. I have no standardized procedure in dealing with people.
Q: You are sure of yourself. But when people come to me for advice, how am I to be sure that my advice is right?
M: Watch in what state you are, from what level you talk. If you talk from the mind, you may be wrong. If you talk from full insight Into the situation, with your own mental harts in abeyance your advice may be a true response. The main point is to be fully aware that neither you nor the man in front of you are mere boles; If your awareness is clear and full. a mistake it lo.c.c probable. 64 Whatever pleases you, Keeps you Back
Questioner: I am a retired chartered accountant and my wife is engaged in social work for poor women. Our son is leaving for the United States and we came to see him off. We are Panjabis but we live in Delhi. We have a Guru of the Radha-Soami faith and we value satsan~ highly. We feel very fortunate to be brought here. We have met many holy people and we are glad to gnat one more. Maharaja: You have met many uncourteous and ascetics, but a WHATFvFR PLEASES YOU. KEEPS YOU SACK 301 fully realized man conscious of his divinity (syrupy) is hard to find. The saints and Yogis, by immense efforts and sacrifices, acquire many miraculous pavers and can do much good in the way of helping people and inspiring faith, yet it does not make them perfect. It is not a way to reality, but merely an enrichment of the false. All effort leads to more effort; whatever was built up must be maintained, whatever was acquired must be protected against decay or loss. Whatever can be lost is not really one's own; and what is not your own of what use can it be to you? In my world nothing is pushed about, all happens by itself. All exis- tence is in space and time, limited and temporary. He who ex- periences existence is also limited and temporary. I am not concerned either with 'what exists' or with 'who exists'. I take my stand beyond, where I am both and neither. The persons who, after much effort and penance, have fulfil- led their ambitions and secured higher levels of experience and action, are usually acutely conscious of their standing; they grade people into hierarchies, ranging from the lowest none achiever to the highest achiever. To me all are equal. Differ- ences in appearance and expression are there, but they do not matter. Just as the shape of a gold ornament does not affect the gold, so does man's essence remain unaffected. Where this sense of equality is lacking it means that reality had not been touched. Mere knowledge is not enough; the knower must be known. The Pandits and the Yogis may know many things, but of what use is mere knowledge when the self is not known? It will be cer- tainly misused. Without the knowledge of the knower there can be no peace.
Q: How does one come to know the knower?
M: I can only ten, you what I know from my own experience. When I met my Guru, he told me: 'You are not what you take yourself to be. Find out what you are. Watch the sense 'I am', find your real self'. I obeyed him, because I trusted him. I did as he told me. All my spare time I would spend looking at myself in silence. And what a difference it made, end how soon! It took me only three years to realize my true nature. My Guru died soon after I met him, but it made no difference. I remembered whit he told me and l~ersevered. The fruit of it is here, with me.302 1 AM THAT
Q: What is it?
M: I know myself as I am in reality. I am neither the body, nor the mind, nor the mental faculties. I am beyond all these.
Q: Are you just nothing?
M: Come on, be reasonable. Of course I am, most tangibly. Only I am not what you may think me to be. This tells you all.
Q: It ten!s me nothing.
M: Because it cannot be told. You must gain your own experi- ence. You are accustomed to deal with things, physical and mental. I am not a thing, nor are you. We are neither matter nor energy, neither body nor mind. Once you have a glimpse of your own being, you will not find me difficult to understand. We believe in so many things on hearsay. We believe in dis- tant lands and people, in heavens and hells, in gods and god- desses, because we were told. Similarly, we were told about ourselves, our parents, name, position, duties and so on. We never cared to verify. The way to truth lies through the destruc- tion of the false. To destroy the false, you must question your most inveterate beliefs. Of these the idea that you are the body is the worst. With the body comes the world, with the world-- God, who is supposed to have created the world and thus it starts--fears, religions, prayers, sacrifices, all sorts of -systems --all to protect and support the child-man, frightened out of his wits by monsters of his own making. Realize that what you are cannot be born nor die and with the fear gone all suffering ends. What the mind invents, the mind destroys. But the rear is not invented and cannot be destroyed. Hold on to that over which the mind has no power. What I am telling you about is neither in the past nor in the future. Nor is it in the daily life as it flows in the now. It is timeless and the total timelessness of it is beyond the mind. My Guru and his words: 'You are myself' are timelessly with me. In the beginning I had to fix my mind on them, but now it has become natural and easy. The point when the mind ac- cepts the words of the Guru as true and lives by them spon- taneously and in every detail of daily life is the threshold of reali- zation. In a way it is salvation by faith, but the faith must be in- tense and lasting. However, you must not think that faith itself is enough. Faith WHATEVER PLEASES YOU, KEEPS YOU BACK 303 expressed in action is a sure means to realization. Of all the means it is the most effective. There are teachers who deny faith and trust reason only. Actually it is not faith they deny, but blind beliefs. Faith is not blind. It is the willingness to try.
Q: We were told that of all forms of spiritual practices the prac- tice of the attitude of a mere witness is the most efficacious. How does it compare with faith?
M: The witness attitude is also faith; it isfaith in oneself. You be- lieve that you are not what you experience and you look at everything as from a distance. There is no effort in witnessing . You understand that you are the witness only and the understanding acts. You need nothing more, just remember that you are the witness only. If in the state of witnessing you ask yourself: 'Who am 1?', the answer comes at once, though it is wordless and sil- ent. Cease to be the object and become the subject of all that happens; once having turned within, you will find yourself beyond the subject. When you have found yourself, you will find that you are also beyond the object, that both the subject and the object exist in you, but you are neither.
Q: You speak of the mind, of the witnessing consciousness beyond the mind and of the Supreme, which is beyond aware- ness. Do you mean to say that even awareness is not real?
M: As long as you deal in terms: real--unreal; awareness is the only reality that can be. But the Supreme is beyond all dis- tinctions and to it the term 'real' does not apply, for in it all is real and, therefore, need not be label led as such. It is the very source of reality, it imparts reality to whatever it touches. It just cannot be understood through words. Even a direct experience, however sublime, merely bears testimony, nothing more.
Q: But who creates the world?
M: The Universal Mind (chidakash) makes and unmakes every- thing. The Supreme (paramakash) imparts reality to whatever comes into being. To say that it is the universal love may be the nearest we can come to it in words. Just like love it makes every- thing real, beautiful, desirable.
Q: Why desirable?
M: Why not? Wherefrom come all the powerful attractions that ** No page found ** 304 1 AM THAT make all created things respond to each other, that bring peo- ple together, if not from the Supreme? Shun not desire; see only that it flows into the right channels. Without desire you are dead. But with low desires you are a ghost.
Q: What is the experience which comes nearest to the Sup- reme?
M: Immense peace and boundless love. Realize that whatever there is true, noble and beautiful in the universe, it all comes from you, that you yourself are at the source of it. The gods and gc dresses that supervise the world may be most wonderful and glorious beings; yet they are like the gorgeously dressed ser- vants who proclaim the power and the riches of their master.
Q: How does one reach the Supreme State?
M: By renouncing all lesser desires. As long as you are pleased with the lesser, you cannot have the highest. Whatever pleases you, keeps you back. Until you realize the unsatisfactoriness of everything, its transiency and limitation, and collect your ener- giesyin one great longing, even the first step is not made. On the other hand, the integrity of the desire for the Supreme is by itself a call from the Supreme. Nothing, physical or mental, can give you freedom. You are free once you understand that your bon- dage is of your own making and you cease forging the chains that bind you.
Q: How does one find the faith in a Guru?
M: To find the Guru and also the trust in him is rare luck. It does not happen often.
Q: Is it destiny that ordains?
M: Calling it destiny explains little. When it happens you can- not say why it happens and you merely cover up your ignorance by calling it karma or Grace, or the Will of (:~od.
Q: Krishnamurti says that Guru is not needed.
M: Somebody must tell you about the Supreme Reality and the way that leads to it. Krishnamurti is doing nothing else. In a way he is right--most of the so-called disciples do not trust their Gurus; they disobey them and finally abandon them. For such disciples it would have been infinitely better if they had no Guru at all and just looked within for guidance. to find a living Guru is ;~ V~Hal EVER PLEASES YOU, KEEPS YOU BACK 305 a rare opportunity and a great responsibility. One should not treat these matters lightly. You people are out to buy yourself the heaven and you imagine that the Guru will supply it for a price. You seek to strike a bargain by offering little but asking much. You cheat nobody except yourselves.
Q: You were told by your Gutu that you are the Supreme and you trusted him and acted on it. What gave you this trust?
M: Say, I was just reasonable. It would have been foolish to dis- trust him. V\lhat interest could he possibly have in misleading me?
Q: You told a questioner that we are tune same, that we are equals. I cannot believe it. Since I do not believe it, of what use is your statement to me?
M: Your disbelief does not matter. My words are true and they will do their work. This is the beauty of noble company (sat sang).
Q: Just sitting near you can it be considered spiritual practice?
M: Of course. The river of life is flowing. Some of its water is here, but so much of it has already reached its goal. You know only the present. I see much further into the past and future, into what you are and what you' can be. I cannot but see you as my- self. It is in the very nature of love to see no difference.
Q: How can I come to see myself as you see me?
M: It is enough if you do not imagine yourself to be the body. It is the 'I-am-the body' idea that is so calamitous. It blinds you completely to your real nature. Even for a moment do not think that you are the body. Give yourself no name, no shape. In the darkness and the silence reality is found.
Q: Must not I think with some conviction that I am not the body? Where am I to find such conviction?
M: Behave as if you were fully convinced and the confidence will come. What is the use of mere words? A formula, a mental pattern will not he!p you. But unselfish action, free from all con- cern with the body and its interests will carry you into the vie!y heart of Reality.
Q: Where am I to get the courage to act without con/lctlon? 306 1 AM THAT
M: Love will give you the courage. When you meet somebody wholly admirable, love-worthy, sublime, your love and admirat- ion will give you the urge to act nobly.
Q: Not everybody knows to admire the admirable. Most of the people are totally insensitive.
M: Life will make them appreciate. The very weight of accumu- lated experience will give them eyes to see. When you meet a worthy man, you wilMove and trust him and follow his advice. This is the role of the realized people--to set an example of perfection for others to admire and love. Beauty of life and character is a tremendous contribution to the common good.
Q: Must we not suffer to grow?
M: It is enough to know that there is suffering, that the world suf- fers. By themselves neither pleasure nor pain enlighten. Only understanding does. Once you have grasped the truth that the world is full of suffering, that to be born is a calamity, you will find the urge and the energy to go beyond it. Pleasure puts you to sleep and pain wakes you up. If you do not want to suffer, don't go to sleet. You cannot know yourself through bliss alone, for bliss is your very nature. You must face the opposite, what you are not, to find enlightenment. 65 A Quiet Mind is All You Need
Questioner: I am not well. I feel rather weak. What am I to do? Maharaja: Who is unwell, you or the body?
Q: My body, of course.
M: Yesterday you felt well. What felt well?
Q: The body.
M: You were glad when the body was well and you are sad when the body is unwell. Who is glad one day and sad the next?
Q: The mind.
M: And who knows the variable mind?
Q: The mind.
M: The mind is the knower. Who knows the knower?
Q: Does not the knower know itself?
M: The mind is discontinuous. Again and again it blanks out, like in sleep or swoon, or distraction. There must be something continuous to register discontinuity.
Q: The mind remembers. This stands for continuity.
M: Memory is always partial, unreliable and evanescent. It does not explain the strong sense of identity pervading con- sciousness, the sense 'I am'. Find out what is at the root of it.
Q: However deeply I look, I find only the mind. Your words 'beyond the mind' give me no clue.
M: While looking with the mind, you cannot go beyond it. To go beyond, you must look away from the mind and its contents.
Q: In what direction am I to look?
M: All directions are within the mind! I am not asking you to look in any particular direction. Just look away from ail that happens ** No page found ** 308 1 AM THAT in your mind and bring it to the feeling 'I am'. The 'I am' is not a direction. It is the negation of all direction. Ultimately even the 'I am' will have to go, for you need not keep on asserting what is obvious. Bringing the mind to the feeling 'I am' merely helps in turning the mind away from everything else.
Q: Where does it all lead me?
M: When the mind is kept away from its preoccupations, it be- comes quiet. If you do not disturb this quiet and stay in it, you find that it is permeated with a light and a love you have never known; and yet you recognize it at once as your own nature. Onceyou have passed through this experience, you will never be the same man again; the unruly mind may break its peace and obliterate its vision; but it is bound to return, provided the ef- fort is sustained; enable the day when all bonds are broken, Del ;lions and attachments end and life becomes supremely con- centrated in the present.
Q: What difference does it make?
M: The mind is r;lo more. There is only love in action.
Q: How shall I recognize this state when I reach it?
M: There will be no fear.
Q: Surrounded by a world full of mysteries and dangers, how can I remain unafraid?
M: Your own ! title body too is full ot mysteries and dangers, yet you are not afraid of it, fur you take it as your own. What you do not know is that the entire universe is your body and you need not be afraid of it. You may say you have two bodies; the per- sonal and the universal. The personal comes and goes, the uni- versal is always with you. The entire creation is your universal body. You are so blinded by what is personal, that you do not see the universal. This blindness will not end by itself--it must be undone skillfully and deliberately. When all illusions are un- derstood and abandoned, you reach the error-free and perfect state in which all distinctions between the personal and the uni- versal are no more. (;~: I am a person and therefore limited in space and time. I oc- cupy little space and last but a few moments; I cannot even ~onreive muse!f to be eternal and all-pervadinc~. A QUIET MIND IS ALL YOU NEED 309
M: Nevertheless you ore. As you dive deep into yourself In search of your true nature, you will discover that only your body is small and only your memory is short; while the vast ocean ct life is yours.
Q: The very words 'I' and 'us!versal' are contradictory. One ex- cludes the other.
M: They don't. The sense of identity pervades the universal. Search and you shall discover the Universal Person, who is yourself and infinitely more. Anyhow, begin by realizing that the world is in you, not you in the world.
Q: How can it be? I am only a part of the world. How can the whole world be contained in the part, except by reflection, mir- ror like?
M: What you say is true. Your personal body is a part in which the whole is wonderfully reflected. But you have also a universal body. You cannot even say that you do not know it, because you see and experience it all the time. Only you call it 'the world' and are afraid of it.
Q: I feel I know my little body, while the other I do not know, ex- cept through science.
M: Your little body is full of mysteries and wonders which you do not know. There also science is your only guide. Both anatomy and astronomy describe you.
Q: Even If I accept your doctrine of the universal body as a working theory, in what way can I test it and of what use is it to me?
M: Knowing yourself as the dwelleMn both the bodies you will disown nothing. All the universe will be your concern; every liv- ing thing you will love and help most tenderly and wisely. There will be no clash of interests between you and others. All exploi- tation will cease absolutely. Your every action will be beneficial, every movement will be a blessing.
Q: It is all very tempting, but how am I to proceed to realize my universal being?
M: You have two ways: you can give your heart and mind tG self-discovery, or you accept my words on trust and act accord- 310 1 AM THAT tingly. In other words, either you become totally self-concerned, or totally un-self-concerned. It is the word 'totally' that is impor- tant. You must be extreme to reach the Supreme.
Q: How can I aspire to such heights, small and limited as I am?
M: Realize yourself as the ocean of consciousness in which all happens. This is not difficult. A little of attentiveness, of close observation of oneself, and you will see that no event i5 outside your consciousness.
Q: The world is full of events which do not appear in my con- sciousness.
M: Even your body is furl of events which do not appear in your consciousness. This does not prevent you from claiming your body to be your own. You know the world exactly as you know your body--through your senses. It is your miend that has sepa- rated the world outside your skin from the world inside and put them in opposition. This created fear and hatred and all the miseries of living.
Q: What I do not follow is what you say about gayer,g beyond consciousness. I understand the words, but I cannot visualize he experience. After all, you yourself have said that all experi- ence is in consciousness.
M: You are right, there can be no experience beyond con- sciousness. Yet there is the experience of just being. There is a state beyond consciousness, which is not unconscious. Some call it super-consciousness, or pure consciousness, or supreme consciousness. It is pure awareness free from the subject- object nexus.
Q: I have studied Theosophy and I find nothing familiar in what you say. I admit Theosophy deals with manifestation only. It des- cribes the universe and its inhabitants in great details. It admits many levels of matter and corresponding levels of experience, but it does not seem to go beyond. What you say goes beyond all experience. If it is not experience able, why at all talk about it?
M: Consciousness is intermittent, full of gaps. Yet there is the continuity of identity. What is this sense of identity due to, if not to something beyond consciousness?
Q: If I am beyond the mind, how can I change myself? A QUIET MIND IS ALL YOU NEED 311
M: Where is the need of changing clnything? The mind is changing anyhow all the time. Look at your mind dispassion- ately; this is enough to calm it. When it is quiet, you can go beyond it. Do not keep it busy all the time. Stop it--and just be. If you give it rest, it will settle down and recover its purity and strength. Constant thinking makes it decay.
Q: If my true being is always with me, how is it that I am ignorant of it?
M: Because it is very subtle and your mind is gross, full of gross thoughts and feelings. Calm and clarify your mind and you will know yourself as you are.
Q: Do I need the mind to know myself?
M: You are beyond the mind, but you know with your mind. It is obvious that the extent, depth and character of knowledge de- pend on what instrument you use. Improve your instrument and your knowledge will improve.
Q: To know perfectly I need a perfect mint.
M: A quiet mind is all you need. All else will happen rightly, once your mind is quiet. As the sun on rising makes the world active, so does self-awareness affect changes in the mind. In the light of calm and steady self-awareness inner energies wake up and work miracles without any effort on your part.
Q: You mean to say that the greatest work is done by not work- ing?
M: Exactly. Do understand that you are destined for enlighten- ment. Co-operate with your destiny, don't go against it, Don thwart it. Allow it to fulfill itself. All you have to do is to give atten- tion to the obstacles created by the foolish mind. ~ All Search for Happiness is Misery 66
Questioner: I have come frown England and I am on my way to Madras. There I shall meet my father and we shall go by car overland to London. I am to study psychology, but I do not yet know what I shall do when I get my degree. I may try industrial psychology, or psychotherapy. My father is a general physician, I may follow the same line. But this does not exhaust my interests. There are certain questions which do not change with time. I understand you have some answers to such questions and this made me come to see you. Maharaja: I wonder whether I am the right man to answer your questions. I know little about things and people. I know only that I am, and that much you also know. We are equals.
Q: Of course I know that I am. But I do not know what it means.
M: What you take to be the 'I' in the 'I am' is not you. To know that you are is natural, to know what you are is the result of much investigation. You will have to explore the entire field of con- sciousness and go beyond it. For this you must find the right teacher and create the conditions needed for discovery. Gene- rally speaking, there are two ways: external and internal. Either you live with somebody who knows the Truth and submit your- self entirely to his gulping and mounding influence, or you seek the inner guide and follow the inner light wherever it takes you. In both cases your personal desires and fears must be dis- regarded. You learn either by proximity or by investigation, the passive or the active way. You either let yourself be carried by the river of life and love represented by your Guru, or you make Al I SEARCH FOR HAPPINESS IS MISERY 313 your own efforts, guided by your in net star. In both cases you must move on, you must be earnest. Rare are the people who are lucky to find somebody worthy of trust and love. Most of them must take the hard way, the way of intelligence and under- standing, of discrimination and detachment (viveka-vairagya). This is the way open to all.
Q: I am lucky to have come here: though I am leaving tomor- row, one talk with you may affect my entire life.
M: Yes, once you say 'I want to find Truth', all your life will be deeply affected by it. All your mental and physical habits, feel- ings and emotions, desires and fears, plans and decisions will undergo a most l-adlcal transformation.
Q: Once I have made up my mind to find The Reality, what do I do next?
M: It depends on your temperament. If you are earnest, what- ever way you choose will take you to your goal. It is the ear- nestness that is the decisive factor.
Q: What is the source of earnestness?
M: ll is the homing instinct, which makes the bird return to its nest and the fish to the mountain stream where it was born. The seed returns to the earth, when the fruit is ripe. Ripeness is all.
Q: And what will ripen me? Do I need experience?
M: You already have all the experience you need, otherwise ù you would not have come here. You need not gather any more, rather you must go beyond experience. Whatever effort you make, whatever method (sadhana) you follow, will merely gene- rate more experience, but will not take you beyond. Nor will reading books help you. They will enrich your mind, but the per- son you are will remain intact. If you expect any benefits from your search, material, mental or s~piritual, you have missed the point. Truth gives no advantage. It gives you no higher status, no power over others; all you get is truth and the freedom from the false.
Q: Surely truth gives you the power to help others.
M: This is mere imagination, however noble! In truth you do no' help others, because there are no others. You divide people into noble and ignoble and you ask the noble to help the ignoble. 314 1 AM THAT You separate, you evaluate, you judge and condemn--in the name of truth you destroy it. Your very desire to formulate truth denies it, because it cannot be contained in words. Truth can be expressed only by the denial of the false--in action. For this you must see the false as false (viveka) and reject it (verge). Renunciation of the false is liberating and energizing. It lays open the road to perfection.
Q: When do I know that I have discovered truth?
M: When the idea 'this is true', 'that is true' does not arise. Truth does not assert itself, it is in the seeing of the false as false and rejecting it. It is useless to search for truth, when the mind is blind to the false. It must be purged of the false completely be- fore truth can dawn on It.
Q: But what is false?
M: Surely, what has no being is false.
Q: What do you mean by having no being? The false is there, hard as a Nazi.
M: What contradicts itself, has no being. Or it has only momen- tary being, which comes to the same. For, what has a beginning and an end has no middle. It is hollow. It has only the name and shape given to it by the mind, but it has neither substance nor essence.
Q: If all that passes has no being, then the universe has no being either. Aisle: Who ever denies it? Of course the universe has no being.
Q: What has?
M: That which Ares not depend for its existence, which does not arise with the universe arising, nor set with the universe set- ting, which does not need any proof, but imparts reality to all it touches. It is the nature of the false that it appears real for a moment. One could say that the true becomes the father of the false. But the false is limited in time and space and is produced by circumstances.
Q: How am I to get rid of the false and secure the real?
M: To what purpose?
Q: In order to live pa better, a more satisfactory life, integrated ALL SEARCH FOR HAPPINESS lS MISERY 315 and- happy.
M: Whatever is conceived by the mind must be false, for it is bound to be relative and limited. The real is inconceivable and cannot be harnessed to a purpose. It must be wanted for its own sake.
Q: How can I want the inconceivable?
M: VVhat else is there worth wanting? Granted, the real cannot t: e wanted, as a thing is wanted. But you can see the unreal as unreal-and discard it. It is the discarding the false [hat opens the way to the true.
Q: I understand, but how does it look in actual daily life?
M: Self-interest and self-concern are the focal points of the false. Your daily life vibrates between desire and fear. Watch it intently and you will see how the mind assumes innumerable names and shapes, like a river foaming between the boulders. Trace every action to its selfish motive and look at the motive in- tently till it dissolves.
Q: To live, one must look after oneself, one must earn money for oneself .
M: You need not earn for yourself, but you may have to--for a woman and a child. You may have to keep on working for the sake of others. Even just to keep alive can be a sacrifice. There is no need whatsoever to be selfish. Discard every self-seeking motive as soon as it is seen and you need not search for truth; truth will find you.
Q: There is a minimum of needs. M,: Were they not supplied since you were conceived? Give up the bondage of self-concern and be what you are--intelli- gence and love in action.
Q: But one must survive!
M: You can't help surviving! The real you is timeless Ann beyond birth and death. And the body will survive as long as it is needed. It is not important that it should live long. A full life is better than a long life. .
Q: Who is to say what is a full life? It depends on my cultural background. 316 1 AM THAT
M: If you seek reality you must set yourself free of all back- grounds, of all cultures, of all patterns ot thinking and feeling. Even the idea of being man or woman, or even human, should be discarded. The ocean of life contains all, not only humans. So, first of all abandon all self-identification, stop thinking of yourself as such-and-such, so-and-so, this or that. Abandon all self-concern, worry not about your welfare, material or spiritual, abandon every desire, gross or subtle, stop thinking of achievement of any kind. You are complete here and now, you need absolutely nothing. It does not mean that you must be brainless and foolhardy, improvident or indifferent; only the basic anxiety for oneself must go. You need some food, clothing and shelter for you and yours, but this will not create problems as long as greed is not taken for a need. Live in tune with things as they are and not as they are imagined.
Q: What am I if not human?
M: That which makes you think that you are a human is not human. It is but a dimensionless point of consciousness, a con- scious nothing; all you can say about yourself is: 'I am.' You are pure being--awareness--bliss. To realize that is the end of all seeking. You come to it when you see all you think yourself to be as mere imagination and stand aloof in pure awareness of the transient as transient, imaginary as imaginary, unreal as unreal. It is not at a!l difficult, but detachment is needed. It is the cling- ing to the false that makes the true so difficult to see. Once you understand that the false needs time and what needs time is false, you are nearer the Reality, which is timeless, ever in the now. Eternity in time is mere repetitiveness, like the movement of a clock. It flows from the past into the future endlessly, an empty perpetuity. Reality is what makes the present so vital, so different from the past and future, which are merely mental. If you need time to achieve something, it must be false. The real is always with you; you need not wait to be what you are. Only you must not allow your mind to go out of yourself in search. When you want something, ask yourself: do I really need it? and if the answer is no, then just drop it. Q; Must I not be happy? I may not need a thing, yet if it can ALL SEARCH NOR HAPPINESS l~i Ml.SFRY .'117 make me nippy, should I not grasp it?
M: Nothing can make you happier than you are. All search for happiness is misery and leads to more misery. The only happi- ness worth the name is the natural happiness of conscious being .
Q: Don't I need a lot of experience before I can reach such high level of awareness?
M: Experierce leaves only memories behind and adds to the burden which is heavy enough. You need no more experiences. The past ones are sufficient. An-i if you feel you need more, look into the hearts of people around you. You will find a variety of experiences which you would not be able to go through in a thousand years. Learn from the sorrows of others and save yourself your own. It is not experience that you need, but the freedom from all experience. Don't be greedy for experience; you need none.
Q: Don't you pass through experiences yourself?
M: Things happen round me, but I take no part in them. An event becomes an experience only when I am emotionally in- volved. I am in a state which is complete, which seeks not to im- prove on itself. Of what use is experience to me?
Q: One needs knowledge, education.
M: To deal with things knowledge of things is needed. To deal with people, you need insight, sympathy. To deal with yourself you need nothing. Be what you are: conscious being and don't stray away from yourself.
Q: University education is most useful.
M: No doubt, It helps you to earn a living. But it does not teach you how to live. YOIJ are a student of psychology. It may help you in certain situations. But can you live by psychology? Life is worthy of the name only when it reflects Reality in action. No university will teach you how to live so that when the Tim of dying comes, you can say: I lived well I do not need to live again. Most of us die wisher,g we could live again. So many mis- takes committed, so much left undone. Most of the ,c people vege- tate, but do not live. They merely gather experience and enrich their memory But experience is the denial of Reality, which is 318 1 AM THAT neither sensory nor conceptual, neither of the body, nor of the mind, though it includes and transcends both.
Q: But experience is most useful. By experience you learn not to touch a flame.
M: I have told you already that knowledge is most useful in dea- ling with things. But it does not tell you how to deal with people and yourself, how to live a life. We are not talking. of driving a car, or earning money. For this you need experience. But for being a light unto yourself material knowledge will not help you. You need something much more intimate and deeper than mediate knowledge, to be your self in the true sense of the word. Your outer life is unimportant. You can become a night watchman and live happily. It is what you are inwardly that mat- ters. Your inner peace and joy you have to earn. It is much more difficult than earning money. No university can teach you to be yourself. The only way to learn is by practice. Right away begin to be yours!f. Discard all you are not and go ever deeper. Just as a man digging a well discards what is not water, until he reaches the water-bearing strata, so must you discard what is not your own, till nothing is left which you can disown. You will find that what is left is nothing which the mind can hook on to You are not even a human being. You just are--a point of awareness, co-extensive with time and space and beyond both, the ultimate cause, itself encased. If you ask me: 'Who are you?' My answer would be: 'Nothing in particular. Yet, I am.'
Q: If you are nothing in particular, then you must be the univer- sal.
M: What is to be universal--not as a concept, but as a way of life? Not to separate, not to oppose, but to understand and love whatever contacts you, is living universally. To be able to say truly: I am the world., the world is me, I am at home in the world, the world is my own. Every existence is my existence, every consciousness is my consciousness, every sorrow is my sorrow and every joy is my joy--this is universal life. Yet, my real being, and yours too, is beyond the universe and, therefore, beyond the categories of the particular and the universal. It is what it is, totally self-contained and independent.
Q: I find it hard to understand. ALL SEARCH FOR HAPPINESS IS MISERY 31~ Al: You must give yourself time to brood over these things. The old grooves must be erased in your brain, without forming new ones. You must realize yourself as the immovable, behind and beyond the movable, the silent witness of all that happens. 0: Does it mean that I must give up all idea of an active life?
M: Not at all. There will be marriage, there will be children, there will be earning money to maintain a family; all this will happen in the natural course of events, for destiny must fLIlfjl itself; you will go through it without Rexstance, facing tasks as they come, at- tentive and thorough, both in small things and big. But the ge- neral attitude will be of affectionate detachment, enormous goodwill, without expectation of return, constant giving without asking. In marriage you are neither the husband nor the wife; you are the love between the two. You are the clarity and kind- ness that makes everything orderly and happy. It may seem vague to you, but if you think a little, you will find that the mysti- cal is most practical, for it makes your life creatively happy. Your consciousness is raised to a higher dimension, from which you see everything much clearer and with greater intensity. You realize that the person you became at birth and will cease to be at death is temporary and false. You are not the sensual, emo- tional and intellectual person, gripped by desires and fears. Find out your real being. What am l? is the fundamental question of all philosophy and psychology. Go into it deeply. ...~ Experience is not the Real Thins 67
Maharaj: The seeker is he who is in search of himself. Soon he discovers that his own body he cannot be. Once the conviction: 'I am not the body' becomes so well grounded that he can no longer feel, think and act for and on behalf of the body, he will easily discover that he is the universal being, knowing, acting, that in him and through him the entire universe is real, conscious and active. This is the heart of the problem. Either you are body-conscious and a slave of circumstances, or you are the universal consciousness itself--and in full control of every event. Yet consciousness, individual or universal, is not my true abode; I am not in it, it is not mine, there is no 'me' in it. I am beyond, though it is not easy to explain how one can be neither conscious, nor unconscious, but just beyond. I cannot say that I am in God or I am God; God is the universal light and love, the universal witness: I am beyond the universal even.
Questioner: In that case you are without name and shape. What kind of being have you?
M: I am what I am, neither with form nor formless, neither con- scious nor unconscious. I am outside all these categories.
Q: You are thing the neh-neti (not this, not this) approach.
M: You cannot find me by mere denial. I am as well everything, as nothing. Nor both, nor either. These definitions apply to the Lord of the Universe, not to me. Q Do you intend to convey that you are just nothing.
M: Oh, no! I am complete and perfect. I am the being Ness of EXPERIENCE IS NOT THE REAL THING 321 being, the knowing Ness of knowing, the fullness of happiness. You cannot reduce me to emptiness!
Q: If you are beyond words, what shall we talk about? Metaphysically speaking, what you say holds together; there is no inner contradiction. But there Oceania food for me in what you say. It is so completely beyond my urgent needs. When I ask for bread, you are giving jewels. They are beautiful, no doubt, but I am hungry.
M: It is not so. I am offering you exactly what you need-- awakening. You are not hungry and you need no bread. You needcessation, relinquishing, disentanglement. What you be- lieve you need is not what you need. Your real need I know, not you. You need to return to the state in which I am--your natural state. Anything else you may think of is an illusion and an obsta- cle. Believe me, you need nothing except to be what you are. You imagine you will increase your value by acquisition. It is like gold imagining that an addition of copper will improve it. Elimi- nation and purification, renunciation of all that is foreign to your nature is enough. All else is vanity.
Q: It is easier said than done. A man comes to you with stomach-ache and you advise him to disgorge his stomach. Of course, without the mind there will be no problems. But the mind is there--most tangibly.
M: It is the mind that tells you that the mind is there. Don't be deceived. All the endless arguments about the mind are pro- duced by the mind itself, for its own protection, continuation and expansion. It is the blank refusal to consider the convolutions and convulsions of the mind that can take you beyond it.
Q: Sir I am an humble seeker, while you are the Supreme Rea- lity itself. Now the seeker approaches the Supreme in order to be enlightened. What does the Supreme do?
M: Listen to what I keep on telling you and do not move away from it. Think of it all the time and of nothing else. Having reached that far, abandon all thoughts, not only of the world, but of yourself also. Stay beyond all thoughts, in silent being- awareness. It is. not progress, for what you come to is already there in you, waiting for you.
Q: So you say I should try to stop thinking and stay steady in 322 1 AM THAT the idea: 'I am'.
M: Yes, and whatever thoughts come to you in connection with the 'I am', empty them of all meaning, pay them no attention. a I happen to meet many young people coming from the West and I find that there is a basic difference when I compare them to the Indians. It looks as if their psyche (antahkarana) is differ- ent. Concepts like Self, Reality, pure mind, universal conscious- ness the Indian mind grasps easily. They ring familiar, they taste sweet. The Western mind does not respond, or just rejects them. It concretizes and wants to utilize at once in the service of accepted values. These values are often personal: health well-being, prosperity; sometimes they are social--a better society, a happier life for all; all are connected with worldly prob- lems, personal or impersonal. Another difficulty one comes ac- ross quite often in talking with the Westerners IS that to them everything is experience--as they want to experience food drink and women, art and travels, so do they want to experience Yoga, realization and liberation. To them it is just another ex- perience, to be had for a price. They imagine such experience can be purchased and they bargain about the cost. When one Guru quotes too high, in terms of time and effort, they go to another, who offers installment terms, apparently very easy, but beset with unfulfillable conditions. It is the old story of not think- ing of the Greg monkey when taking the medicine! In this case it is not thinking of the world, 'abandoning all self-hood', 'extin- guishing every desire', 'becoming perfect celibates' etc. Natu- rally there is vast cheating going on all levels and the results are nil. Some Gurus in sheer desperation abandon all discipline, prescribe no conditions, advise effortlessness, naturalness, simply living in passive awareness, without any pattern of 'must' and 'must not' And there are many disciples whose past ex- periences brought them to dislike themselves so bad!y that they just do not want to look at themselves. If they are not disgusted, they are bored. They have surfeit of self-knowledge, they want something else.
M: Let them not think of themselves, if they do not like it. Let them stay with a Guru, watch him, think of him. Soon they will experience a kind nf bliss, quite new, never experienced be- F~PFRIFNl~F l.S Nat THF RFAL THING ~123 fore, except, maybe, in childhood. The experience is so unmis- takably new, that it wit! attract their attention Ann create interest; once the interest is roused, orderly application will follow.
Q: These people are very critical and suspicious. They cannot be otherwise, having passed through much I earning and much disappointment. On one hand they want experience, on the other they mistrust it. How to reach them, God alone knows!
M: True insight and love will reach them.
Q: When they have some spiritual experience, another difficulty arises. They complain that the experience does not last, that it comes and goes in-a haphazard way. Having got hold ot the lollipop, they want to suck it all the time.
M: Experience, however sublime, is not the real thing. By its very nature it comes and goes. Self-realization is not an acquisi- tion. It is more of the nature of understanding. Once arrived at, it cannot be lost. On the other hand, consciousness is changeful, flowing, undergoing transformation from moment to moment. Do not hold on to consciousness and its contents. Consciousness held, ceases. To try to perpetuate a flash of insight, or a burst of happiness is destructive of what it wants to preserve. What comes must go. The permanent is beyond all comings and go- ings. Go to the root of all experience, to the sense of being. Beyond being and not-being lies the amnesty of the real. Try and try again.
Q: To try one needs faith.
M: There must be the desire first. When the desire is strong, the willingness to try will come. You do not need assurance of suc- cess, when the desire is strong. You are ready to gamble.
Q: Strong desire, strong faith--it comes to the same. These people do not trust either their parents or the society, or even themselves. Allthey touched turned to ashes. Give them one experience absolutely genuine, indubitable, beyond the ar- gumentations of the mind and they will follow you to the world's end.
M: But I am doing nothing else! Tirelessly I draw their attention to the one incontrovertible factor--that of being. Being needs no proofs--it proves all else. If only they go deeply into the fact of being and discover the vastness and the glory to which the 'I I Gil 1 AM THAT am' is the door, and cross the door Ann go beyond, their life will be tulle of happiness Ann light. Believe me, the effort needed is as nothing when compared with the discoveries arrived at.
Q: W~iat you say is right. But these people have neither confi- dence nor patience. Even a short effort tires them. It is really pathetic to see them groping blindly and yet unable to hold on to the helping hand. They are such nice people fundamentally but totally bewildered. I tell the
M: you cannot have truth on your own terms. You must accept the conditions. To this they answer: Some will accept the conditions and some will not. Acceptance or non-acceptance are superficial and accidental; reality is in all; there must be a way for all to tread--with no conditions at- tached.
M: There is such a way, open to all, on every level, in every walk of life. Everybody is aware of himself. The deepening and broadening of self-awareness is the royal way. Call it mindful- ness, or witnessing, or just attention--it is for all. None is unripe for it and none can fail. But, of course, your must not be merely alert. Your mindfulness must include the mind also. Witnessing is primarily awareness of consciousness and its movements. ù-- Seek the Source of Consciousness 68
Questioner: We were talking the other day about the ways of the modern Western mind and the difficulty it finds in submitting to the moral and intellectual discipline of the Vedanta. Oneof the obstacles lies in the young European's or American's pre- occupation with the disastrous condition of the world and the urgent need of setting it right. They have no patience with people like you who preach per- sonal improvement as a precondition for the betterment of the world. They say it is neither possible nor necessary. Humanity is ready for a change of systems--social, economic, political. A world-government, world-police, world-planning and the aboli- tion of all physical and ideological barriers: this is enough, no personal transformation is needed. No doubt, people shape . society, but society shapes people too. In a humane society people will be humane; besides, science provides the answer to many questions which formerly were in the domain of religion. Maharaja: No doubt, striving for the improvement of the world is a most praiseworthy occupation. Done selflessly, it clarifies the mind and purifies the heart. But soon man will realize that he pursues a mirage. Local and temporary improvement is always possible and was achieved again and again under the influence of a great king or teacher; but it would soon come to an end, leaving humanity in a new cycle of misery. It is in the nature of all manifestation that the good and the bad follow each other and in equal measure. The true refuge is only in the unmanifested.
Q: Are you not advising escape?
M: On the contrary. The only way to renewal lies through de- 326 1 AM THAT struction. You must melt down the old jewelry into formless geld before you can mound a new one. Only the people who have gone beyond the world can change the world. It never happened otherwise. The few whose impact was long lasting were all knowers of reality. Reach their level and then only talk of helping the world.
Q: It is not the rivers and mountains that we want to help, but the people
M: There is nothing wrong with the world, but for the people who make it bad. Go and ask them to behave.
Q: Desire and fear make them behave as they do.
M: Exactly. As long as human behavior is dominated by de- sire and fear, there is not much hope. And to know how to ap- proach the people effectively, you must yourself be free of all desire and fear.
Q: Certain basic desires and fears are inevitable, such as are connected with food, sex and death.
M: These are needs and, as needs, they are easy to meet.
Q: Even death is a need?
M: Having lived a long and fruitful life you feel the need to die. Only when wrongly applied, desire and fear are destructive. By all means desire the right and fear the wrong. But when people desire what is wrong and fear what is right, they create chaos and despair.
M: Let him, by all means. Let him spend a fortune, employ hun- dreds, feed thousands.
Q: Is it not a desire?
M: Not at all. I am only asking him to do it properly, not stingily, halfheartedly. He is fulfilling his own desire, not mine. Let him do it well and be famous among men and gods.
Q: But do you want it?
M: I do not want it.
Q: Will you accept it?
M: I don't need it.
Q: Will you stay in it?
M: If I am compelled.
Q: What can compel you'd
M: Love of those who are in search of light.
Q: Yes, I see your point. Now, how am I to go into samad~i?
M: If you are in the right state, whatever you see will put you into samadhi. After all, samadhi is nothing unusual. When the mind is intensely interested, it becomes one with the object of interest --the seer and the seen become one in seeing, the hearer and the heard become one in hearing, the lover and the loved be- come ore in loving. Every experience can be the ground for samadhi.
Q: Are you always in a state of samadhi?
M: Of course not Samadhi is a state of mind, after all. I am beyond all experience, even of samadhi. I am the great de- vourer and destroyer: whatever I touch dissolves into void (awash).
Q: I need samadhis for self-realization.
M: You have alp the self-realization you need, but you do not MATTER IS CONSCIOUSNESS ITSELF 291 trust- it. Have courage, trust yourself, go, talk, act; give it a chance to prove itself. With some realization comes impercepti- bly, but somehow they need convincing. They have changed, but they do not notice it. Such non-spectacular cases are often the most reliable.
Q: Can one believe himself to be realized and be mistaken?
M: Of course. The very idea 'I am self-realized' is a mistake. There is no 'I am this'. 'I am that' in the Natural State. ù--- 62 In the Supreme the Witness Appears
Questioner: Some forty years ago J. Krishnamurti said that there is life only and all talk of personalities and individualities has no foundation in reality. He did not attempt to describe life --he merely said that while life need not and cannot be de- scribed, it can be fully experienced, if the obstacles to its being experienced are removed. The main hindrance lies in our idea of, and addiction to, time, in our habit of anticipating a future in the light of the past. The sum total of the past becomes the 'I was', the hoped for future becomes the 'I shall be' and life is a constant effort of crossing over from what 'I was' to what PI shall be'. The present moment, the. 'now' is 1(St. sight of. Maharaja speaks of 'I am'. Is it an illusion, like 'I was' and 'I shall be', or is there something real about it? And if the PI am' too is an illusion, 292 i AM THAT how does one free oneself from it? The very notion of I am free of 'I am' is an absurdity. Is there something real, something lasting about the 'I am' in distinction from the 'I was', or 11 shall be', which change with time, as added memories create new expec- tations? Maharaja: The present 'I am' is as false as the 'I was' and 'I shall be'. It is merely an idea in the mind, an impression left by mem- ory, and the separate identity it creates is false. this habit of re- ferring to a false center must be done away with, the notion 'I see', 'I feel', 'I think', 'I do', must disappear from the field of con- sciousness; what remains when the false is no more, is real.
Q: What is this big talk about elimination of the self? How can the self eliminate itself? What kind of metaphysical acrobatics can lead to the disappearance of the acrobat? In the end he will reappear, mightily proud of his disappearing.
M: You need not chase the 'I am' to kill it. You cannot. All you need is a sincere longing for reality. We call it atma-bhakti, the love of the Supreme: or moksha-sankalpa, the determination to be free from the false. Without love, and will inspired by love, no- thing can be done. Merely talking about Reality without doing anything about it is self-defeating. There must be love in the re- lation between the person who says 'I am' and the observer of that 'I am'. As long as the observer, the inner self, the 'higher' self, considers himself apart from the observed, the 'lower' self, despises it and condemns it, the situation is hopeless. It is only when the observer (vacuity) accepts the person (vacuity) as a pro- jection or manifestation of himself, and, so to say, takes the self into the Self, the duality of 'I' and 'this' goes and in the identity of the outer and the inner the Supreme Reality manifests itself. This union of the seer and the seen happens when the seer becomes conscious of himself as the seer, he is not merely in- terested in the seen, which he is anyhow, but also interested in being interested, giving attention to attention, aware of being aware. Affectionate awareness is the crucial factor that brings Reality into focus.
Q: According to the Theosophists and allied occultists, man consists of three aspects: personality, individuality and spiritua- lity. Beyond spirituality lies divinity. The personality is strictly I No THF .~1 IPRFME THE WITNESS APPEARS 293 temporary and valid for one birth only. It begins with the birth of the body and ends ~A~ith the birth of the next body. Once over, it is over~for good; nothing remains of it except a few sweet or bit- ter le;sons. The individuality begins with the animal-man and ends with the fully human. The split between the personality and individu- ality is characteristic of our present-day humanity. On one side the individuality with its longing for the true, the good and the beautiful; on the other side an ugly struggle between habit and ambition, fear and greed, passivity and violence. The spirituality aspect is still in abeyance. It cannot manifest itself in an atmosphere of duality. Only when the personality is reunited with the individuality and becomes a limited, perhaps, but true expression ot it, that the light and love and beauty of the spiritual come into their own. You teach of the vyakh, vacuity, avyakta (observer, observed and ground of observation). Does it tally with the other view?
M: Yes, when the vyaktl realizes its non-existence in separation from the vacuity, and the vacuity sees the vacuity as his own ex- pression, then the peace and silence of the avyakta state come into being. In reality, the three are one: the vacuity and the avyakta are inseparable, while the vyakV is the sensing-feeling- thinking process, based on the body made of and fed by the five elements.
Q: What is the relation between the vacuity and the avyakta?
M: How can there be relation when they are one? All talk of separation and relation is due to the distorting and corrupting in- fluence of 'I-am-the-body' idea. The outer self (vacuity) is merely a projection on the body-mind of the inner self (vacuity), which again is only an expression of the Supreme Self (avyakta) which nd none.
Q: There are teachers who will not talk of the higher self and lower self. They address the man as if only the lower self ex- isted. Neither Buddha nor Christ ever mentioned a higher self. J. Krishnamurti too fights shy of any mention of the higher self. Why is it so?
M: How can there be two selves in one body? The 'I am' is one. There is no ~higher loam' and slower loam'. All kinds of states of 294 1 AM THAT mind are presented to awareness and there is self-identification with them. The objects of observation are not what they appear to be and the attitudes they are met with are not what they need be. If you think that Buddha, Christ or Krishnamurti speak to the person, you are mistaken. They know well that the vacuity, the outer self, is but a shadow of the vacuity, the inner self, and they address and admonish the vacuity only. They tell him Jo give at- tention to the outer self, to guide and help it, to feel responsible for it; in short, to be fully aware of it. Awareness comes from the Supreme and pervades the inner self; the so-called outer self is onlythat part of one's being of which one is not aware. One may be conscious, for every being is conscious, but one is not aware. What is included in awareness becomes the inner and partakes of the inner. You may put it differently: the body de- fines the outer self, consciousness the inner, and in pure awareness the Supreme is contacted.
Q: You said the body defines the outer self. Since you have a body, do you have also an outer self?
M: I would, were I attached to the body and take it to be myself.
Q: But you are aware of it and attend to its needs.
M: The contrary is nearer to truth--the body knows me and is aware of my needs. But neither is really so. This body appears in your mind; in my mind nothing is.
Q: Do you mean to say you are quite unconscious of having a body?
M: On the contrary, I am conscious of not having a body.
Q: I see you smoking !
M: Exactly so. You see me stoking. Find out for yourself how did you come to see me Smoking, and you will easily realize that it is your 'I-am-the-body' state of mind that is responsible for this 'I-see-you-smoking' idea.
Q: There is the body and there is myself. I know the body. Apart from it, what am l?
M: There is no 'I' apart from the body, nor the world. The three appear and disappear together. At the root is the sense 'I am'. Go beyond it. The idea: 'I-am-not-the-body' is merely an anti- dote to the idea 'I-am-the-body' which is false. What is that 'I IN THE SUPREME THE WITNESS APPEARS 295 aim Unless you know yourself, what else can you know?
Q: From what you say I conclude that without the body there can be no liberation. ,f the idea: 'I-am-not-the-body' leads to lib- eration, the presence of the body is essential.
M: Quite right.'Without the body, how can the idea: ~1- am-not-the-body' come into being? The idea II-am-free' is as false as the idea 'I-am-in-bondage'. Find out the 11 am' common to both and go beyond.
Q: All is a dream only.
M: All are mere words, of what use are they to you? You are en- tangled in the web of verbal definitions and formulations. Go beyond your concepts and ideas; in the silence of desire and thought the truth is found.
Q: One has to remember not to remember. What a task!
M: It cannot be done, of course. It must happen. But it does happen when you truly see the need of it. Again, earnestness is the golden key.
Q: At the back of my mind there is a hum going on all the time. Numerous weak thoughts swarm and buzz and this shape- less cloud is always with me. Is it the same with you? What is at the back of your mind?
M: Where there is no mind, where no back to it. I am all front, no back! The void spears, the void remains.
Q: Isthere no memory left?
M: No memory of past pleasure or pain is left. Each moment is newly born.
Q: Without memory you cannot be conscious.
M: Of course I am conscious, and fully aware of it. I am not a block of wool Compare consciousness and its content to a cloud. You are inside the cloud, while I look at. You are lost in it, hardly able to see the tips of your fingers, while I see the loud and many other clouds and the blue sky too and the sun, the mocnl the stars. Reality is one for Beth of USA but for you t is a prison and for me it is a home. .
Q: You spoke of the person (vacuityAl the witness (vyakta~ and the Supreme (avyakta). Which comes first? 296 1 AM THAT
M: In the Supreme the witness appears. The witness creates the person and thinks itself as separate from it. The witness sees that the person appears in consciousness which again appears in the witness. This realization of the basic unity is the working of the Supreme. It is the power behind the witness, the source from which all flows. It cannot be contacted, unless there is unity and love and mutual help between the person and the witness, unless the doing is in harmony with the being and the knowing. The Supreme is both the source and the fruit of such harmony. As I talk to you, I am in the state of detached but affec- tionate awareness (tarry). When this awareness turns upon it- self, you may call it the Supreme State, (turiyatita). But the fun- damental reality is beyond awareness, beyond the three states of becoming, being and not-being. 0: How is it that here my mind is engaged in high topics and finds dwelling on them easy and pleasant. When I return home I find myself forgetting all l have learnt here, worrying and fret- ting, unable to remember my real nature even for a moment. What may be the cause?
M: It is your childishness you are returning to. You are not fully grown up; there are levels left undeveloped because unat- tended. Just give full attention to what in you is crude and primi- tive, unreasonable and unkind, altogether childish, and you will ripen. It is the maturity of heart and mind that is essential. It comes effortlessly when the main obstacle is removed--inat- tention, unawareness. In awareness you grow. ..~ Notion of Doership is Bondage 63
Questioner: We have been staying at the Satya Sai Baba As- hram for some time. We have also spent two months at Sri Ramanashram at Tiruvannamalai. Now we are on our way back to the United States. Maharaja: Did India cause any change in you?
Q: We feel we have shed our burden. Sri Satya Sai Baba told us to leave everything to him and just live from day to day as right- eously as possible. 'Be good and leave the rest to me', he used to tell us.
M: What were you doing at the Sri Ramanashram?
Q: We were going on with the monetary given to us by the Guru. We also did some meditation. There was not much of thinking or study; we were just trying to keep quiet. We are on the bhakti path and rather poor in philosophy. We have not much to think about--just trust our Guru and live our lives. M Most of the bhaktas trust their Guru only as long as all is well with them. When troubles come, they feel let down and go out in search of another Guru.
Q: Yes, we were warned against this danger. We are trying to take the hard along with the soft. The feeling: 'All is Grace' must be very strong. A sadhu was walking eastwards, from where a strong wind started blowing. The sadhu just turned round and walked west. We hope to live just like that--adjusting ourselves to circumstances as sent us by our Guru.
M: There is only life. There is nobody who lives a life.
Q: That we understand, yet constantly we make atterrpts to live 298 1 AM THAT our lives instead of just living. Making plans for the future seems to be an inveterate habit with us.
M: Whether you plan or don't, life goes on. But in life itself a little whorl arises in the mind, which indulges in fantasies and im- agines itself dominating and controlling life. Live itself is desire less. But the false self wants to continue-- plerisantly. Therefore it is always engaged in ensuring one's con auntie. Life is unafraid and free. As long as you have the idea of influencing events, liberation is not for you: The very no- tion of doer ship, of being a cause, is bondage.
Q: How can we overcome the duality of the doer and the done?
M: Contemplate life as infinite, undivided, ever present, ever active, until you realize yourself as one with it. It is not even very difficult, for you will be returning only to your own natural condi- tion . Once you realize that all comes from within, that the world in which you live has not been projected onto you but by you, your fear comes to an end. Without this realization you identify your- self with the externals, like the body, mind, society, nation, hu- manity, even God or the Absolute. But these are all escapes frown fear. It is only when you fully accept your responsibility for the little world in which you live and watch the process of its creation, preservation and destruction, that you may be free from your imaginary bondage.
Q: Why should I imagine myself so wretched'?
M: You do it by habit only. Change your ways of feeling and thinking, take stock of them and examine them closely. You are in bondage by inadvertence. Attention liberates. You are taking so many things for granted. Begin to question. The most obvi- ous things are the most doubtful. Ask yourself such questions as: Was I really born?' 'Am I really so-and-so? 'How do I know that I exist? 'Who are my parents?/ 'Have they created me, or nave I created them?' 'Must I believe all I am told about myself?' Who am 1, anyhow?' You have put so much energy into building a prison for yourself. Now spend as much on demolishing it. In fact, demolition is easy, for the false dissolves when it is disco- vered. All hangs on the idea 'I am'. Examine it very thoroughly. It lies at the root of every trouble. It is a sort of skin that separates NOTION OF DOERSHIP IS BONDAGE 299 you from the reality. The real is both within and without the skin, but the skin itself is not real. This 'I am' idea was not born with you. You could have lived very well without it. It came later due to your self-identification with the body. It created an illusion of separation where there was none. It made you a stranger in your own world and made the world alien and inimical. Without the sense of 'I am' life goes on. There are moments when we are without the sense of 'I am'. at peace and happy. With the return of the 'I am' trouble starts.
Q: How is one to be free from the 'I'-sense?
M: You must deal with the 'I'-sense if you want to be free of it. Watch it in operation and at peace, how it starts and when it ceases, what it wants and how it gets it, till you see clearly and understand fully. After all, all the Yogas, whatever their source and character, have only one ai
M: to save you from the calamity of separate existence, of being a meaningless dot in a vast and beautiful picture. You suffer because you have alienated yourself from reality and now you seek an escape from this alienation. You cannot escape from your own obsessions. You can only cease nursing them. It is because the PI am' is false that it wants to continue. Reality need not continue--knowing itself indestructible, it is indiffer- ent to the destruction of forms and expressions. To strengthen, and stabilize the 'I am' we do all sorts of things--all in vain, for the 'I am' is being rebuilt from moment to moment. It is unceas- ing work and the only radical solution is to dissolve the separa- tive sense of 'I am such-and-such person' once and for good. Being remains, but not self-being.
Q: I have definite spiritual ambitions. Must I not work for their fulfillment?
M: No ambition is spiritual. All ambitions are for the sake of the 'I am'. If you want to make real progress you must give up all idea of personal attainment. The ambitions of the so-called Yogis are preposterous. A man's desire for a woman is inno- cence itself compared to the lusting for an everlasting personal bliss. The mind is a cheat. The more pious it seems, the worse the betrayal. 300 1 AM THAT
Q: People come to you very often with their worldly troubles and ask for help. How do you know what to tell them?
M: I just tell them what comes to my mind at the moment. I have no standardized procedure in dealing with people.
Q: You are sure of yourself. But when people come to me for advice, how am I to be sure that my advice is right?
M: Watch in what state you are, from what level you talk. If you talk from the mind, you may be wrong. If you talk from full insight Into the situation, with your own mental harts in abeyance your advice may be a true response. The main point is to be fully aware that neither you nor the man in front of you are mere boles; If your awareness is clear and full. a mistake it lo.c.c probable. 64 Whatever pleases you, Keeps you Back
Questioner: I am a retired chartered accountant and my wife is engaged in social work for poor women. Our son is leaving for the United States and we came to see him off. We are Panjabis but we live in Delhi. We have a Guru of the Radha-Soami faith and we value satsan~ highly. We feel very fortunate to be brought here. We have met many holy people and we are glad to gnat one more. Maharaja: You have met many uncourteous and ascetics, but a WHATFvFR PLEASES YOU. KEEPS YOU SACK 301 fully realized man conscious of his divinity (syrupy) is hard to find. The saints and Yogis, by immense efforts and sacrifices, acquire many miraculous pavers and can do much good in the way of helping people and inspiring faith, yet it does not make them perfect. It is not a way to reality, but merely an enrichment of the false. All effort leads to more effort; whatever was built up must be maintained, whatever was acquired must be protected against decay or loss. Whatever can be lost is not really one's own; and what is not your own of what use can it be to you? In my world nothing is pushed about, all happens by itself. All exis- tence is in space and time, limited and temporary. He who ex- periences existence is also limited and temporary. I am not concerned either with 'what exists' or with 'who exists'. I take my stand beyond, where I am both and neither. The persons who, after much effort and penance, have fulfil- led their ambitions and secured higher levels of experience and action, are usually acutely conscious of their standing; they grade people into hierarchies, ranging from the lowest none achiever to the highest achiever. To me all are equal. Differ- ences in appearance and expression are there, but they do not matter. Just as the shape of a gold ornament does not affect the gold, so does man's essence remain unaffected. Where this sense of equality is lacking it means that reality had not been touched. Mere knowledge is not enough; the knower must be known. The Pandits and the Yogis may know many things, but of what use is mere knowledge when the self is not known? It will be cer- tainly misused. Without the knowledge of the knower there can be no peace.
Q: How does one come to know the knower?
M: I can only ten, you what I know from my own experience. When I met my Guru, he told me: 'You are not what you take yourself to be. Find out what you are. Watch the sense 'I am', find your real self'. I obeyed him, because I trusted him. I did as he told me. All my spare time I would spend looking at myself in silence. And what a difference it made, end how soon! It took me only three years to realize my true nature. My Guru died soon after I met him, but it made no difference. I remembered whit he told me and l~ersevered. The fruit of it is here, with me.302 1 AM THAT
Q: What is it?
M: I know myself as I am in reality. I am neither the body, nor the mind, nor the mental faculties. I am beyond all these.
Q: Are you just nothing?
M: Come on, be reasonable. Of course I am, most tangibly. Only I am not what you may think me to be. This tells you all.
Q: It ten!s me nothing.
M: Because it cannot be told. You must gain your own experi- ence. You are accustomed to deal with things, physical and mental. I am not a thing, nor are you. We are neither matter nor energy, neither body nor mind. Once you have a glimpse of your own being, you will not find me difficult to understand. We believe in so many things on hearsay. We believe in dis- tant lands and people, in heavens and hells, in gods and god- desses, because we were told. Similarly, we were told about ourselves, our parents, name, position, duties and so on. We never cared to verify. The way to truth lies through the destruc- tion of the false. To destroy the false, you must question your most inveterate beliefs. Of these the idea that you are the body is the worst. With the body comes the world, with the world-- God, who is supposed to have created the world and thus it starts--fears, religions, prayers, sacrifices, all sorts of -systems --all to protect and support the child-man, frightened out of his wits by monsters of his own making. Realize that what you are cannot be born nor die and with the fear gone all suffering ends. What the mind invents, the mind destroys. But the rear is not invented and cannot be destroyed. Hold on to that over which the mind has no power. What I am telling you about is neither in the past nor in the future. Nor is it in the daily life as it flows in the now. It is timeless and the total timelessness of it is beyond the mind. My Guru and his words: 'You are myself' are timelessly with me. In the beginning I had to fix my mind on them, but now it has become natural and easy. The point when the mind ac- cepts the words of the Guru as true and lives by them spon- taneously and in every detail of daily life is the threshold of reali- zation. In a way it is salvation by faith, but the faith must be in- tense and lasting. However, you must not think that faith itself is enough. Faith WHATEVER PLEASES YOU, KEEPS YOU BACK 303 expressed in action is a sure means to realization. Of all the means it is the most effective. There are teachers who deny faith and trust reason only. Actually it is not faith they deny, but blind beliefs. Faith is not blind. It is the willingness to try.
Q: We were told that of all forms of spiritual practices the prac- tice of the attitude of a mere witness is the most efficacious. How does it compare with faith?
M: The witness attitude is also faith; it isfaith in oneself. You be- lieve that you are not what you experience and you look at everything as from a distance. There is no effort in witnessing . You understand that you are the witness only and the understanding acts. You need nothing more, just remember that you are the witness only. If in the state of witnessing you ask yourself: 'Who am 1?', the answer comes at once, though it is wordless and sil- ent. Cease to be the object and become the subject of all that happens; once having turned within, you will find yourself beyond the subject. When you have found yourself, you will find that you are also beyond the object, that both the subject and the object exist in you, but you are neither.
Q: You speak of the mind, of the witnessing consciousness beyond the mind and of the Supreme, which is beyond aware- ness. Do you mean to say that even awareness is not real?
M: As long as you deal in terms: real--unreal; awareness is the only reality that can be. But the Supreme is beyond all dis- tinctions and to it the term 'real' does not apply, for in it all is real and, therefore, need not be label led as such. It is the very source of reality, it imparts reality to whatever it touches. It just cannot be understood through words. Even a direct experience, however sublime, merely bears testimony, nothing more.
Q: But who creates the world?
M: The Universal Mind (chidakash) makes and unmakes every- thing. The Supreme (paramakash) imparts reality to whatever comes into being. To say that it is the universal love may be the nearest we can come to it in words. Just like love it makes every- thing real, beautiful, desirable.
Q: Why desirable?
M: Why not? Wherefrom come all the powerful attractions that ** No page found ** 304 1 AM THAT make all created things respond to each other, that bring peo- ple together, if not from the Supreme? Shun not desire; see only that it flows into the right channels. Without desire you are dead. But with low desires you are a ghost.
Q: What is the experience which comes nearest to the Sup- reme?
M: Immense peace and boundless love. Realize that whatever there is true, noble and beautiful in the universe, it all comes from you, that you yourself are at the source of it. The gods and gc dresses that supervise the world may be most wonderful and glorious beings; yet they are like the gorgeously dressed ser- vants who proclaim the power and the riches of their master.
Q: How does one reach the Supreme State?
M: By renouncing all lesser desires. As long as you are pleased with the lesser, you cannot have the highest. Whatever pleases you, keeps you back. Until you realize the unsatisfactoriness of everything, its transiency and limitation, and collect your ener- giesyin one great longing, even the first step is not made. On the other hand, the integrity of the desire for the Supreme is by itself a call from the Supreme. Nothing, physical or mental, can give you freedom. You are free once you understand that your bon- dage is of your own making and you cease forging the chains that bind you.
Q: How does one find the faith in a Guru?
M: To find the Guru and also the trust in him is rare luck. It does not happen often.
Q: Is it destiny that ordains?
M: Calling it destiny explains little. When it happens you can- not say why it happens and you merely cover up your ignorance by calling it karma or Grace, or the Will of (:~od.
Q: Krishnamurti says that Guru is not needed.
M: Somebody must tell you about the Supreme Reality and the way that leads to it. Krishnamurti is doing nothing else. In a way he is right--most of the so-called disciples do not trust their Gurus; they disobey them and finally abandon them. For such disciples it would have been infinitely better if they had no Guru at all and just looked within for guidance. to find a living Guru is ;~ V~Hal EVER PLEASES YOU, KEEPS YOU BACK 305 a rare opportunity and a great responsibility. One should not treat these matters lightly. You people are out to buy yourself the heaven and you imagine that the Guru will supply it for a price. You seek to strike a bargain by offering little but asking much. You cheat nobody except yourselves.
Q: You were told by your Gutu that you are the Supreme and you trusted him and acted on it. What gave you this trust?
M: Say, I was just reasonable. It would have been foolish to dis- trust him. V\lhat interest could he possibly have in misleading me?
Q: You told a questioner that we are tune same, that we are equals. I cannot believe it. Since I do not believe it, of what use is your statement to me?
M: Your disbelief does not matter. My words are true and they will do their work. This is the beauty of noble company (sat sang).
Q: Just sitting near you can it be considered spiritual practice?
M: Of course. The river of life is flowing. Some of its water is here, but so much of it has already reached its goal. You know only the present. I see much further into the past and future, into what you are and what you' can be. I cannot but see you as my- self. It is in the very nature of love to see no difference.
Q: How can I come to see myself as you see me?
M: It is enough if you do not imagine yourself to be the body. It is the 'I-am-the body' idea that is so calamitous. It blinds you completely to your real nature. Even for a moment do not think that you are the body. Give yourself no name, no shape. In the darkness and the silence reality is found.
Q: Must not I think with some conviction that I am not the body? Where am I to find such conviction?
M: Behave as if you were fully convinced and the confidence will come. What is the use of mere words? A formula, a mental pattern will not he!p you. But unselfish action, free from all con- cern with the body and its interests will carry you into the vie!y heart of Reality.
Q: Where am I to get the courage to act without con/lctlon? 306 1 AM THAT
M: Love will give you the courage. When you meet somebody wholly admirable, love-worthy, sublime, your love and admirat- ion will give you the urge to act nobly.
Q: Not everybody knows to admire the admirable. Most of the people are totally insensitive.
M: Life will make them appreciate. The very weight of accumu- lated experience will give them eyes to see. When you meet a worthy man, you wilMove and trust him and follow his advice. This is the role of the realized people--to set an example of perfection for others to admire and love. Beauty of life and character is a tremendous contribution to the common good.
Q: Must we not suffer to grow?
M: It is enough to know that there is suffering, that the world suf- fers. By themselves neither pleasure nor pain enlighten. Only understanding does. Once you have grasped the truth that the world is full of suffering, that to be born is a calamity, you will find the urge and the energy to go beyond it. Pleasure puts you to sleep and pain wakes you up. If you do not want to suffer, don't go to sleet. You cannot know yourself through bliss alone, for bliss is your very nature. You must face the opposite, what you are not, to find enlightenment. 65 A Quiet Mind is All You Need
Questioner: I am not well. I feel rather weak. What am I to do? Maharaja: Who is unwell, you or the body?
Q: My body, of course.
M: Yesterday you felt well. What felt well?
Q: The body.
M: You were glad when the body was well and you are sad when the body is unwell. Who is glad one day and sad the next?
Q: The mind.
M: And who knows the variable mind?
Q: The mind.
M: The mind is the knower. Who knows the knower?
Q: Does not the knower know itself?
M: The mind is discontinuous. Again and again it blanks out, like in sleep or swoon, or distraction. There must be something continuous to register discontinuity.
Q: The mind remembers. This stands for continuity.
M: Memory is always partial, unreliable and evanescent. It does not explain the strong sense of identity pervading con- sciousness, the sense 'I am'. Find out what is at the root of it.
Q: However deeply I look, I find only the mind. Your words 'beyond the mind' give me no clue.
M: While looking with the mind, you cannot go beyond it. To go beyond, you must look away from the mind and its contents.
Q: In what direction am I to look?
M: All directions are within the mind! I am not asking you to look in any particular direction. Just look away from ail that happens ** No page found ** 308 1 AM THAT in your mind and bring it to the feeling 'I am'. The 'I am' is not a direction. It is the negation of all direction. Ultimately even the 'I am' will have to go, for you need not keep on asserting what is obvious. Bringing the mind to the feeling 'I am' merely helps in turning the mind away from everything else.
Q: Where does it all lead me?
M: When the mind is kept away from its preoccupations, it be- comes quiet. If you do not disturb this quiet and stay in it, you find that it is permeated with a light and a love you have never known; and yet you recognize it at once as your own nature. Onceyou have passed through this experience, you will never be the same man again; the unruly mind may break its peace and obliterate its vision; but it is bound to return, provided the ef- fort is sustained; enable the day when all bonds are broken, Del ;lions and attachments end and life becomes supremely con- centrated in the present.
Q: What difference does it make?
M: The mind is r;lo more. There is only love in action.
Q: How shall I recognize this state when I reach it?
M: There will be no fear.
Q: Surrounded by a world full of mysteries and dangers, how can I remain unafraid?
M: Your own ! title body too is full ot mysteries and dangers, yet you are not afraid of it, fur you take it as your own. What you do not know is that the entire universe is your body and you need not be afraid of it. You may say you have two bodies; the per- sonal and the universal. The personal comes and goes, the uni- versal is always with you. The entire creation is your universal body. You are so blinded by what is personal, that you do not see the universal. This blindness will not end by itself--it must be undone skillfully and deliberately. When all illusions are un- derstood and abandoned, you reach the error-free and perfect state in which all distinctions between the personal and the uni- versal are no more. (;~: I am a person and therefore limited in space and time. I oc- cupy little space and last but a few moments; I cannot even ~onreive muse!f to be eternal and all-pervadinc~. A QUIET MIND IS ALL YOU NEED 309
M: Nevertheless you ore. As you dive deep into yourself In search of your true nature, you will discover that only your body is small and only your memory is short; while the vast ocean ct life is yours.
Q: The very words 'I' and 'us!versal' are contradictory. One ex- cludes the other.
M: They don't. The sense of identity pervades the universal. Search and you shall discover the Universal Person, who is yourself and infinitely more. Anyhow, begin by realizing that the world is in you, not you in the world.
Q: How can it be? I am only a part of the world. How can the whole world be contained in the part, except by reflection, mir- ror like?
M: What you say is true. Your personal body is a part in which the whole is wonderfully reflected. But you have also a universal body. You cannot even say that you do not know it, because you see and experience it all the time. Only you call it 'the world' and are afraid of it.
Q: I feel I know my little body, while the other I do not know, ex- cept through science.
M: Your little body is full of mysteries and wonders which you do not know. There also science is your only guide. Both anatomy and astronomy describe you.
Q: Even If I accept your doctrine of the universal body as a working theory, in what way can I test it and of what use is it to me?
M: Knowing yourself as the dwelleMn both the bodies you will disown nothing. All the universe will be your concern; every liv- ing thing you will love and help most tenderly and wisely. There will be no clash of interests between you and others. All exploi- tation will cease absolutely. Your every action will be beneficial, every movement will be a blessing.
Q: It is all very tempting, but how am I to proceed to realize my universal being?
M: You have two ways: you can give your heart and mind tG self-discovery, or you accept my words on trust and act accord- 310 1 AM THAT tingly. In other words, either you become totally self-concerned, or totally un-self-concerned. It is the word 'totally' that is impor- tant. You must be extreme to reach the Supreme.
Q: How can I aspire to such heights, small and limited as I am?
M: Realize yourself as the ocean of consciousness in which all happens. This is not difficult. A little of attentiveness, of close observation of oneself, and you will see that no event i5 outside your consciousness.
Q: The world is full of events which do not appear in my con- sciousness.
M: Even your body is furl of events which do not appear in your consciousness. This does not prevent you from claiming your body to be your own. You know the world exactly as you know your body--through your senses. It is your miend that has sepa- rated the world outside your skin from the world inside and put them in opposition. This created fear and hatred and all the miseries of living.
Q: What I do not follow is what you say about gayer,g beyond consciousness. I understand the words, but I cannot visualize he experience. After all, you yourself have said that all experi- ence is in consciousness.
M: You are right, there can be no experience beyond con- sciousness. Yet there is the experience of just being. There is a state beyond consciousness, which is not unconscious. Some call it super-consciousness, or pure consciousness, or supreme consciousness. It is pure awareness free from the subject- object nexus.
Q: I have studied Theosophy and I find nothing familiar in what you say. I admit Theosophy deals with manifestation only. It des- cribes the universe and its inhabitants in great details. It admits many levels of matter and corresponding levels of experience, but it does not seem to go beyond. What you say goes beyond all experience. If it is not experience able, why at all talk about it?
M: Consciousness is intermittent, full of gaps. Yet there is the continuity of identity. What is this sense of identity due to, if not to something beyond consciousness?
Q: If I am beyond the mind, how can I change myself? A QUIET MIND IS ALL YOU NEED 311
M: Where is the need of changing clnything? The mind is changing anyhow all the time. Look at your mind dispassion- ately; this is enough to calm it. When it is quiet, you can go beyond it. Do not keep it busy all the time. Stop it--and just be. If you give it rest, it will settle down and recover its purity and strength. Constant thinking makes it decay.
Q: If my true being is always with me, how is it that I am ignorant of it?
M: Because it is very subtle and your mind is gross, full of gross thoughts and feelings. Calm and clarify your mind and you will know yourself as you are.
Q: Do I need the mind to know myself?
M: You are beyond the mind, but you know with your mind. It is obvious that the extent, depth and character of knowledge de- pend on what instrument you use. Improve your instrument and your knowledge will improve.
Q: To know perfectly I need a perfect mint.
M: A quiet mind is all you need. All else will happen rightly, once your mind is quiet. As the sun on rising makes the world active, so does self-awareness affect changes in the mind. In the light of calm and steady self-awareness inner energies wake up and work miracles without any effort on your part.
Q: You mean to say that the greatest work is done by not work- ing?
M: Exactly. Do understand that you are destined for enlighten- ment. Co-operate with your destiny, don't go against it, Don thwart it. Allow it to fulfill itself. All you have to do is to give atten- tion to the obstacles created by the foolish mind. ~ All Search for Happiness is Misery 66
Questioner: I have come frown England and I am on my way to Madras. There I shall meet my father and we shall go by car overland to London. I am to study psychology, but I do not yet know what I shall do when I get my degree. I may try industrial psychology, or psychotherapy. My father is a general physician, I may follow the same line. But this does not exhaust my interests. There are certain questions which do not change with time. I understand you have some answers to such questions and this made me come to see you. Maharaja: I wonder whether I am the right man to answer your questions. I know little about things and people. I know only that I am, and that much you also know. We are equals.
Q: Of course I know that I am. But I do not know what it means.
M: What you take to be the 'I' in the 'I am' is not you. To know that you are is natural, to know what you are is the result of much investigation. You will have to explore the entire field of con- sciousness and go beyond it. For this you must find the right teacher and create the conditions needed for discovery. Gene- rally speaking, there are two ways: external and internal. Either you live with somebody who knows the Truth and submit your- self entirely to his gulping and mounding influence, or you seek the inner guide and follow the inner light wherever it takes you. In both cases your personal desires and fears must be dis- regarded. You learn either by proximity or by investigation, the passive or the active way. You either let yourself be carried by the river of life and love represented by your Guru, or you make Al I SEARCH FOR HAPPINESS IS MISERY 313 your own efforts, guided by your in net star. In both cases you must move on, you must be earnest. Rare are the people who are lucky to find somebody worthy of trust and love. Most of them must take the hard way, the way of intelligence and under- standing, of discrimination and detachment (viveka-vairagya). This is the way open to all.
Q: I am lucky to have come here: though I am leaving tomor- row, one talk with you may affect my entire life.
M: Yes, once you say 'I want to find Truth', all your life will be deeply affected by it. All your mental and physical habits, feel- ings and emotions, desires and fears, plans and decisions will undergo a most l-adlcal transformation.
Q: Once I have made up my mind to find The Reality, what do I do next?
M: It depends on your temperament. If you are earnest, what- ever way you choose will take you to your goal. It is the ear- nestness that is the decisive factor.
Q: What is the source of earnestness?
M: ll is the homing instinct, which makes the bird return to its nest and the fish to the mountain stream where it was born. The seed returns to the earth, when the fruit is ripe. Ripeness is all.
Q: And what will ripen me? Do I need experience?
M: You already have all the experience you need, otherwise ù you would not have come here. You need not gather any more, rather you must go beyond experience. Whatever effort you make, whatever method (sadhana) you follow, will merely gene- rate more experience, but will not take you beyond. Nor will reading books help you. They will enrich your mind, but the per- son you are will remain intact. If you expect any benefits from your search, material, mental or s~piritual, you have missed the point. Truth gives no advantage. It gives you no higher status, no power over others; all you get is truth and the freedom from the false.
Q: Surely truth gives you the power to help others.
M: This is mere imagination, however noble! In truth you do no' help others, because there are no others. You divide people into noble and ignoble and you ask the noble to help the ignoble. 314 1 AM THAT You separate, you evaluate, you judge and condemn--in the name of truth you destroy it. Your very desire to formulate truth denies it, because it cannot be contained in words. Truth can be expressed only by the denial of the false--in action. For this you must see the false as false (viveka) and reject it (verge). Renunciation of the false is liberating and energizing. It lays open the road to perfection.
Q: When do I know that I have discovered truth?
M: When the idea 'this is true', 'that is true' does not arise. Truth does not assert itself, it is in the seeing of the false as false and rejecting it. It is useless to search for truth, when the mind is blind to the false. It must be purged of the false completely be- fore truth can dawn on It.
Q: But what is false?
M: Surely, what has no being is false.
Q: What do you mean by having no being? The false is there, hard as a Nazi.
M: What contradicts itself, has no being. Or it has only momen- tary being, which comes to the same. For, what has a beginning and an end has no middle. It is hollow. It has only the name and shape given to it by the mind, but it has neither substance nor essence.
Q: If all that passes has no being, then the universe has no being either. Aisle: Who ever denies it? Of course the universe has no being.
Q: What has?
M: That which Ares not depend for its existence, which does not arise with the universe arising, nor set with the universe set- ting, which does not need any proof, but imparts reality to all it touches. It is the nature of the false that it appears real for a moment. One could say that the true becomes the father of the false. But the false is limited in time and space and is produced by circumstances.
Q: How am I to get rid of the false and secure the real?
M: To what purpose?
Q: In order to live pa better, a more satisfactory life, integrated ALL SEARCH FOR HAPPINESS lS MISERY 315 and- happy.
M: Whatever is conceived by the mind must be false, for it is bound to be relative and limited. The real is inconceivable and cannot be harnessed to a purpose. It must be wanted for its own sake.
Q: How can I want the inconceivable?
M: VVhat else is there worth wanting? Granted, the real cannot t: e wanted, as a thing is wanted. But you can see the unreal as unreal-and discard it. It is the discarding the false [hat opens the way to the true.
Q: I understand, but how does it look in actual daily life?
M: Self-interest and self-concern are the focal points of the false. Your daily life vibrates between desire and fear. Watch it intently and you will see how the mind assumes innumerable names and shapes, like a river foaming between the boulders. Trace every action to its selfish motive and look at the motive in- tently till it dissolves.
Q: To live, one must look after oneself, one must earn money for oneself .
M: You need not earn for yourself, but you may have to--for a woman and a child. You may have to keep on working for the sake of others. Even just to keep alive can be a sacrifice. There is no need whatsoever to be selfish. Discard every self-seeking motive as soon as it is seen and you need not search for truth; truth will find you.
Q: There is a minimum of needs. M,: Were they not supplied since you were conceived? Give up the bondage of self-concern and be what you are--intelli- gence and love in action.
Q: But one must survive!
M: You can't help surviving! The real you is timeless Ann beyond birth and death. And the body will survive as long as it is needed. It is not important that it should live long. A full life is better than a long life. .
Q: Who is to say what is a full life? It depends on my cultural background. 316 1 AM THAT
M: If you seek reality you must set yourself free of all back- grounds, of all cultures, of all patterns ot thinking and feeling. Even the idea of being man or woman, or even human, should be discarded. The ocean of life contains all, not only humans. So, first of all abandon all self-identification, stop thinking of yourself as such-and-such, so-and-so, this or that. Abandon all self-concern, worry not about your welfare, material or spiritual, abandon every desire, gross or subtle, stop thinking of achievement of any kind. You are complete here and now, you need absolutely nothing. It does not mean that you must be brainless and foolhardy, improvident or indifferent; only the basic anxiety for oneself must go. You need some food, clothing and shelter for you and yours, but this will not create problems as long as greed is not taken for a need. Live in tune with things as they are and not as they are imagined.
Q: What am I if not human?
M: That which makes you think that you are a human is not human. It is but a dimensionless point of consciousness, a con- scious nothing; all you can say about yourself is: 'I am.' You are pure being--awareness--bliss. To realize that is the end of all seeking. You come to it when you see all you think yourself to be as mere imagination and stand aloof in pure awareness of the transient as transient, imaginary as imaginary, unreal as unreal. It is not at a!l difficult, but detachment is needed. It is the cling- ing to the false that makes the true so difficult to see. Once you understand that the false needs time and what needs time is false, you are nearer the Reality, which is timeless, ever in the now. Eternity in time is mere repetitiveness, like the movement of a clock. It flows from the past into the future endlessly, an empty perpetuity. Reality is what makes the present so vital, so different from the past and future, which are merely mental. If you need time to achieve something, it must be false. The real is always with you; you need not wait to be what you are. Only you must not allow your mind to go out of yourself in search. When you want something, ask yourself: do I really need it? and if the answer is no, then just drop it. Q; Must I not be happy? I may not need a thing, yet if it can ALL SEARCH NOR HAPPINESS l~i Ml.SFRY .'117 make me nippy, should I not grasp it?
M: Nothing can make you happier than you are. All search for happiness is misery and leads to more misery. The only happi- ness worth the name is the natural happiness of conscious being .
Q: Don't I need a lot of experience before I can reach such high level of awareness?
M: Experierce leaves only memories behind and adds to the burden which is heavy enough. You need no more experiences. The past ones are sufficient. An-i if you feel you need more, look into the hearts of people around you. You will find a variety of experiences which you would not be able to go through in a thousand years. Learn from the sorrows of others and save yourself your own. It is not experience that you need, but the freedom from all experience. Don't be greedy for experience; you need none.
Q: Don't you pass through experiences yourself?
M: Things happen round me, but I take no part in them. An event becomes an experience only when I am emotionally in- volved. I am in a state which is complete, which seeks not to im- prove on itself. Of what use is experience to me?
Q: One needs knowledge, education.
M: To deal with things knowledge of things is needed. To deal with people, you need insight, sympathy. To deal with yourself you need nothing. Be what you are: conscious being and don't stray away from yourself.
Q: University education is most useful.
M: No doubt, It helps you to earn a living. But it does not teach you how to live. YOIJ are a student of psychology. It may help you in certain situations. But can you live by psychology? Life is worthy of the name only when it reflects Reality in action. No university will teach you how to live so that when the Tim of dying comes, you can say: I lived well I do not need to live again. Most of us die wisher,g we could live again. So many mis- takes committed, so much left undone. Most of the ,c people vege- tate, but do not live. They merely gather experience and enrich their memory But experience is the denial of Reality, which is 318 1 AM THAT neither sensory nor conceptual, neither of the body, nor of the mind, though it includes and transcends both.
Q: But experience is most useful. By experience you learn not to touch a flame.
M: I have told you already that knowledge is most useful in dea- ling with things. But it does not tell you how to deal with people and yourself, how to live a life. We are not talking. of driving a car, or earning money. For this you need experience. But for being a light unto yourself material knowledge will not help you. You need something much more intimate and deeper than mediate knowledge, to be your self in the true sense of the word. Your outer life is unimportant. You can become a night watchman and live happily. It is what you are inwardly that mat- ters. Your inner peace and joy you have to earn. It is much more difficult than earning money. No university can teach you to be yourself. The only way to learn is by practice. Right away begin to be yours!f. Discard all you are not and go ever deeper. Just as a man digging a well discards what is not water, until he reaches the water-bearing strata, so must you discard what is not your own, till nothing is left which you can disown. You will find that what is left is nothing which the mind can hook on to You are not even a human being. You just are--a point of awareness, co-extensive with time and space and beyond both, the ultimate cause, itself encased. If you ask me: 'Who are you?' My answer would be: 'Nothing in particular. Yet, I am.'
Q: If you are nothing in particular, then you must be the univer- sal.
M: What is to be universal--not as a concept, but as a way of life? Not to separate, not to oppose, but to understand and love whatever contacts you, is living universally. To be able to say truly: I am the world., the world is me, I am at home in the world, the world is my own. Every existence is my existence, every consciousness is my consciousness, every sorrow is my sorrow and every joy is my joy--this is universal life. Yet, my real being, and yours too, is beyond the universe and, therefore, beyond the categories of the particular and the universal. It is what it is, totally self-contained and independent.
Q: I find it hard to understand. ALL SEARCH FOR HAPPINESS IS MISERY 31~ Al: You must give yourself time to brood over these things. The old grooves must be erased in your brain, without forming new ones. You must realize yourself as the immovable, behind and beyond the movable, the silent witness of all that happens. 0: Does it mean that I must give up all idea of an active life?
M: Not at all. There will be marriage, there will be children, there will be earning money to maintain a family; all this will happen in the natural course of events, for destiny must fLIlfjl itself; you will go through it without Rexstance, facing tasks as they come, at- tentive and thorough, both in small things and big. But the ge- neral attitude will be of affectionate detachment, enormous goodwill, without expectation of return, constant giving without asking. In marriage you are neither the husband nor the wife; you are the love between the two. You are the clarity and kind- ness that makes everything orderly and happy. It may seem vague to you, but if you think a little, you will find that the mysti- cal is most practical, for it makes your life creatively happy. Your consciousness is raised to a higher dimension, from which you see everything much clearer and with greater intensity. You realize that the person you became at birth and will cease to be at death is temporary and false. You are not the sensual, emo- tional and intellectual person, gripped by desires and fears. Find out your real being. What am l? is the fundamental question of all philosophy and psychology. Go into it deeply. ...~ Experience is not the Real Thins 67
Maharaj: The seeker is he who is in search of himself. Soon he discovers that his own body he cannot be. Once the conviction: 'I am not the body' becomes so well grounded that he can no longer feel, think and act for and on behalf of the body, he will easily discover that he is the universal being, knowing, acting, that in him and through him the entire universe is real, conscious and active. This is the heart of the problem. Either you are body-conscious and a slave of circumstances, or you are the universal consciousness itself--and in full control of every event. Yet consciousness, individual or universal, is not my true abode; I am not in it, it is not mine, there is no 'me' in it. I am beyond, though it is not easy to explain how one can be neither conscious, nor unconscious, but just beyond. I cannot say that I am in God or I am God; God is the universal light and love, the universal witness: I am beyond the universal even.
Questioner: In that case you are without name and shape. What kind of being have you?
M: I am what I am, neither with form nor formless, neither con- scious nor unconscious. I am outside all these categories.
Q: You are thing the neh-neti (not this, not this) approach.
M: You cannot find me by mere denial. I am as well everything, as nothing. Nor both, nor either. These definitions apply to the Lord of the Universe, not to me. Q Do you intend to convey that you are just nothing.
M: Oh, no! I am complete and perfect. I am the being Ness of EXPERIENCE IS NOT THE REAL THING 321 being, the knowing Ness of knowing, the fullness of happiness. You cannot reduce me to emptiness!
Q: If you are beyond words, what shall we talk about? Metaphysically speaking, what you say holds together; there is no inner contradiction. But there Oceania food for me in what you say. It is so completely beyond my urgent needs. When I ask for bread, you are giving jewels. They are beautiful, no doubt, but I am hungry.
M: It is not so. I am offering you exactly what you need-- awakening. You are not hungry and you need no bread. You needcessation, relinquishing, disentanglement. What you be- lieve you need is not what you need. Your real need I know, not you. You need to return to the state in which I am--your natural state. Anything else you may think of is an illusion and an obsta- cle. Believe me, you need nothing except to be what you are. You imagine you will increase your value by acquisition. It is like gold imagining that an addition of copper will improve it. Elimi- nation and purification, renunciation of all that is foreign to your nature is enough. All else is vanity.
Q: It is easier said than done. A man comes to you with stomach-ache and you advise him to disgorge his stomach. Of course, without the mind there will be no problems. But the mind is there--most tangibly.
M: It is the mind that tells you that the mind is there. Don't be deceived. All the endless arguments about the mind are pro- duced by the mind itself, for its own protection, continuation and expansion. It is the blank refusal to consider the convolutions and convulsions of the mind that can take you beyond it.
Q: Sir I am an humble seeker, while you are the Supreme Rea- lity itself. Now the seeker approaches the Supreme in order to be enlightened. What does the Supreme do?
M: Listen to what I keep on telling you and do not move away from it. Think of it all the time and of nothing else. Having reached that far, abandon all thoughts, not only of the world, but of yourself also. Stay beyond all thoughts, in silent being- awareness. It is. not progress, for what you come to is already there in you, waiting for you.
Q: So you say I should try to stop thinking and stay steady in 322 1 AM THAT the idea: 'I am'.
M: Yes, and whatever thoughts come to you in connection with the 'I am', empty them of all meaning, pay them no attention. a I happen to meet many young people coming from the West and I find that there is a basic difference when I compare them to the Indians. It looks as if their psyche (antahkarana) is differ- ent. Concepts like Self, Reality, pure mind, universal conscious- ness the Indian mind grasps easily. They ring familiar, they taste sweet. The Western mind does not respond, or just rejects them. It concretizes and wants to utilize at once in the service of accepted values. These values are often personal: health well-being, prosperity; sometimes they are social--a better society, a happier life for all; all are connected with worldly prob- lems, personal or impersonal. Another difficulty one comes ac- ross quite often in talking with the Westerners IS that to them everything is experience--as they want to experience food drink and women, art and travels, so do they want to experience Yoga, realization and liberation. To them it is just another ex- perience, to be had for a price. They imagine such experience can be purchased and they bargain about the cost. When one Guru quotes too high, in terms of time and effort, they go to another, who offers installment terms, apparently very easy, but beset with unfulfillable conditions. It is the old story of not think- ing of the Greg monkey when taking the medicine! In this case it is not thinking of the world, 'abandoning all self-hood', 'extin- guishing every desire', 'becoming perfect celibates' etc. Natu- rally there is vast cheating going on all levels and the results are nil. Some Gurus in sheer desperation abandon all discipline, prescribe no conditions, advise effortlessness, naturalness, simply living in passive awareness, without any pattern of 'must' and 'must not' And there are many disciples whose past ex- periences brought them to dislike themselves so bad!y that they just do not want to look at themselves. If they are not disgusted, they are bored. They have surfeit of self-knowledge, they want something else.
M: Let them not think of themselves, if they do not like it. Let them stay with a Guru, watch him, think of him. Soon they will experience a kind nf bliss, quite new, never experienced be- F~PFRIFNl~F l.S Nat THF RFAL THING ~123 fore, except, maybe, in childhood. The experience is so unmis- takably new, that it wit! attract their attention Ann create interest; once the interest is roused, orderly application will follow.
Q: These people are very critical and suspicious. They cannot be otherwise, having passed through much I earning and much disappointment. On one hand they want experience, on the other they mistrust it. How to reach them, God alone knows!
M: True insight and love will reach them.
Q: When they have some spiritual experience, another difficulty arises. They complain that the experience does not last, that it comes and goes in-a haphazard way. Having got hold ot the lollipop, they want to suck it all the time.
M: Experience, however sublime, is not the real thing. By its very nature it comes and goes. Self-realization is not an acquisi- tion. It is more of the nature of understanding. Once arrived at, it cannot be lost. On the other hand, consciousness is changeful, flowing, undergoing transformation from moment to moment. Do not hold on to consciousness and its contents. Consciousness held, ceases. To try to perpetuate a flash of insight, or a burst of happiness is destructive of what it wants to preserve. What comes must go. The permanent is beyond all comings and go- ings. Go to the root of all experience, to the sense of being. Beyond being and not-being lies the amnesty of the real. Try and try again.
Q: To try one needs faith.
M: There must be the desire first. When the desire is strong, the willingness to try will come. You do not need assurance of suc- cess, when the desire is strong. You are ready to gamble.
Q: Strong desire, strong faith--it comes to the same. These people do not trust either their parents or the society, or even themselves. Allthey touched turned to ashes. Give them one experience absolutely genuine, indubitable, beyond the ar- gumentations of the mind and they will follow you to the world's end.
M: But I am doing nothing else! Tirelessly I draw their attention to the one incontrovertible factor--that of being. Being needs no proofs--it proves all else. If only they go deeply into the fact of being and discover the vastness and the glory to which the 'I I Gil 1 AM THAT am' is the door, and cross the door Ann go beyond, their life will be tulle of happiness Ann light. Believe me, the effort needed is as nothing when compared with the discoveries arrived at.
Q: W~iat you say is right. But these people have neither confi- dence nor patience. Even a short effort tires them. It is really pathetic to see them groping blindly and yet unable to hold on to the helping hand. They are such nice people fundamentally but totally bewildered. I tell the
M: you cannot have truth on your own terms. You must accept the conditions. To this they answer: Some will accept the conditions and some will not. Acceptance or non-acceptance are superficial and accidental; reality is in all; there must be a way for all to tread--with no conditions at- tached.
M: There is such a way, open to all, on every level, in every walk of life. Everybody is aware of himself. The deepening and broadening of self-awareness is the royal way. Call it mindful- ness, or witnessing, or just attention--it is for all. None is unripe for it and none can fail. But, of course, your must not be merely alert. Your mindfulness must include the mind also. Witnessing is primarily awareness of consciousness and its movements. ù-- Seek the Source of Consciousness 68
Questioner: We were talking the other day about the ways of the modern Western mind and the difficulty it finds in submitting to the moral and intellectual discipline of the Vedanta. Oneof the obstacles lies in the young European's or American's pre- occupation with the disastrous condition of the world and the urgent need of setting it right. They have no patience with people like you who preach per- sonal improvement as a precondition for the betterment of the world. They say it is neither possible nor necessary. Humanity is ready for a change of systems--social, economic, political. A world-government, world-police, world-planning and the aboli- tion of all physical and ideological barriers: this is enough, no personal transformation is needed. No doubt, people shape . society, but society shapes people too. In a humane society people will be humane; besides, science provides the answer to many questions which formerly were in the domain of religion. Maharaja: No doubt, striving for the improvement of the world is a most praiseworthy occupation. Done selflessly, it clarifies the mind and purifies the heart. But soon man will realize that he pursues a mirage. Local and temporary improvement is always possible and was achieved again and again under the influence of a great king or teacher; but it would soon come to an end, leaving humanity in a new cycle of misery. It is in the nature of all manifestation that the good and the bad follow each other and in equal measure. The true refuge is only in the unmanifested.
Q: Are you not advising escape?
M: On the contrary. The only way to renewal lies through de- 326 1 AM THAT struction. You must melt down the old jewelry into formless geld before you can mound a new one. Only the people who have gone beyond the world can change the world. It never happened otherwise. The few whose impact was long lasting were all knowers of reality. Reach their level and then only talk of helping the world.
Q: It is not the rivers and mountains that we want to help, but the people
M: There is nothing wrong with the world, but for the people who make it bad. Go and ask them to behave.
Q: Desire and fear make them behave as they do.
M: Exactly. As long as human behavior is dominated by de- sire and fear, there is not much hope. And to know how to ap- proach the people effectively, you must yourself be free of all desire and fear.
Q: Certain basic desires and fears are inevitable, such as are connected with food, sex and death.
M: These are needs and, as needs, they are easy to meet.
Q: Even death is a need?
M: Having lived a long and fruitful life you feel the need to die. Only when wrongly applied, desire and fear are destructive. By all means desire the right and fear the wrong. But when people desire what is wrong and fear what is right, they create chaos and despair.
(My humble salutations to Advaita Vedanta Library for the collection)
Note: This text may have spelling and grammatical mistakes.
(Continued .......)
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