From OrganicDesign Wiki
Questioner:
It is a matter of daily experience that on waking up the world suddenly
appears. Where does it come from?
Maharaj:
Before anything can come into being there must be somebody to whom it comes.
All appearance and disappearance presupposes a change against some changeless
background.
Q: Before waking up I was unconscious.
M: In what sense? Having forgotten, or not
having experienced? Don’t you experience even when unconscious? Can you exist
without knowing? A lapse in memory: is it a proof of non-existence? And can you
validly talk about your own non-existence as an actual experience? You cannot
even say that your mind did not exist. Did you not wake up on being called? And
on waking up, was it not the sense ‘I am’ that came first? Some seed
consciousness must be existing even during sleep, or swoon. On waking up the
experience runs: ‘I am -- the body -- in the world.’ It may appear to arise in
succession but in fact it is all simultaneous, a single idea of having a body
in a world. Can there be the sense of ‘I am’ without being somebody or other?
Q: I am always somebody with its memories and
habits. I know no other ‘I am’.
M: Maybe something prevents you from knowing?
When you do not know something which others know, what do you do?
Q: I seek the source of their knowledge under
their instruction.
M: Is it not important to you to know whether
you are a mere body, or something else? Or, maybe nothing at all? Don’t you see
that all your problems are your body’s problems -- food, clothing, shelter,
family, friends, name, fame, security, survival -- all these lose their meaning
the moment you realise that you may not be a mere body.
Q: What benefit is there in knowing that I am
not the body?
M: Even to say that you are not the body is not
quite true. In a way you are all the bodies, hearts and minds and much more. Go
deep into the sense of ‘I am’ and you will find. How do you find a thing you
have mislaid or forgotten? You keep it in your mind until you recall it. The
sense of being, of 'I am' is the first to emerge. Ask yourself whence it comes,
or just watch it quietly. When the mind stays in the 'I am' without moving, you
enter a state which cannot be verbalized but can be experienced. All you need
to do is try and try again. After all the sense ‘I am’ is always with you, only
you have attached all kinds of things to it -- body, feelings, thoughts, ideas,
possessions etc. All these self-identifications are misleading. Because of them
you take yourself to be what you are not.
Q: Then what am I?
M: It is enough to know what you are not. You
need not know what you are. For as long as knowledge means description in terms
of what is already known, perceptual, or conceptual, there can be no such thing
as self-knowledge, for what you are
cannot be described, except as except as total negation. All you can say is: ‘I
am not this, I am not that’. You cannot meaningfully say ‘this is what I am’.
It just makes no sense. What you can point out as 'this' or 'that' cannot be
yourself. Surely, you can not be 'something' else. You are nothing perceivable,
or imaginable. Yet, without you there can be neither perception nor
imagination. You observe the heart feeling, the mind thinking, the body acting;
the very act of perceiving shows that you are not what you perceive. Can there
be perception, experience without you? An experience must ‘belong'. Somebody
must come and declare it as his own. Without an experiencer the experience is
not real. It is the experiencer that imparts reality to experience. An
experience which you cannot have, of what value is it to you?
Q: The sense of being an experiencer, the sense
of ‘I am’, is it not also an experience?
M: Obviously, every thing experienced is an
experience. And in every experience there arises the experiencer of it. Memory
creates the illusion of continuity. In reality each experience has its own
experiencer and the sense of identity is due to the common factor at the root
of all experiencer-experience relations. Identity and continuity are not the
same. Just as each flower has its own colour, but all colours are caused by the
same light, so do many experiences appear in the undivided and indivisible
awareness, each separate in memory, identical in essence. This essence is the
root, the foundation, the timeless and spaceless 'possibility' of all
experience.
Q: How do I get at it?
M: You need not get at it, for you are it. It will get at you, if you give
it a chance. Let go your attachment to the unreal and the real will swiftly and
smoothly step into its own. Stop imagining yourself being or doing this or that
and the realization that you are the source and heart of all will dawn upon
you. With this will come great love which is not choice or predilection, nor attachment,
but a power which makes all things love-worthy and lovable.
