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Questioner:
Kindly tell us how you realised.
Maharaj:
I met my Guru when I was 34 and realised by 37.
Q: What happened? What was the change?
M: Pleasure and pain lost their sway over me. I
was free from desire and fear. I found myself full, needing nothing. I saw that
in the ocean of pure awareness, on the surface of the universal consciousness,
the numberless waves of the phenomenal worlds arise and subside beginninglessly
and endlessly. As consciousness, they are all me. As events they are all mine.
There is a mysterious power that looks after them. That power is awareness, Self,
Life, God, whatever name you give it. It is the foundation, the ultimate
support of all that is, just like gold is the basis for all gold jewellery. And
it is so intimately ours! Abstract the name and shape from the jewellery and
the gold becomes obvious. Be free of name and form and of the desires and fears
they create, then what remains?
Q: Nothingness.
M: Yes, the void remains. But the void is full
to the brim. It is the eternal potential as consciousness is the eternal
actual.
Q: By potential you mean the future?
M: Past, present and future -- they are all
there. And infinitely more.
Q: But since the void is void, it is of little
use to us.
M: How can you say so? Without breach in
continuity how can there be rebirth? Can there be renewal without death? Even
the darkness of sleep is refreshing and rejuvenating. Without death we would
have been bogged up for ever in eternal senility.
Q: Is there no such thing as immortality?
M: When life and death are seen as essential to
each other, as two aspects of one being, that is immortality. To see the end in
the beginning and beginning in the end is the intimation of eternity.
Definitely, immortality is not continuity. Only the process of change
continues. Nothing lasts.
Q: Awareness lasts?
M: Awareness is not of time. Time exists in
consciousness only. Beyond consciousness where are time and space?
Q: Within the field of your consciousness there
is your body also.
M: Of course. But the idea 'my body', as
different from other bodies, is not there. To me it is 'a body', not 'my body',
'a mind', not 'my mind'. The mind looks after the body all right, I need not
interfere. What needs be done is being done, in the normal and natural way.
You may not be quite conscious of your
physiological functions, but when it comes to thoughts and feelings, desires
and fears you become acutely self-conscious. To me these too are largely
unconscious. I find myself talking to people, or doing things quite correctly
and appropriately, without being very much conscious of them. It looks as if I
live my physical, waking life automatically, reacting spontaneously and
accurately.
Q: Does this spontaneous response come as a
result of realisation, or by training?
M: Both. Devotion to you goal makes you live a
clean and orderly life, given to search for truth and to helping people, and
realisation makes noble virtue easy and spontaneous, by removing for good the
obstacles in the shape of desires and fears and wrong ideas.
Q: Don’t you have desires and fears any more?
M: My destiny was to be born a simple man, a
commoner, a humble tradesman, with little of formal education. My life was the
common kind, with common desires and fears. When, through my faith in my
teacher and obedience to his words, I realized my true being, I left behind my
human nature to look after itself, until its destiny is exhausted. Occasionally
an old reaction, emotional or mental, happens in the mind, but it is at once
noticed and discarded. After all, as long as one is burdened with a person,
one is exposed to its idiosyncrasies and habits.
Q: Are you not afraid of death?
M: I am dead already.
Q: In what sense?
M: I am double dead. Not only am I dead to my
body, but to my mind too.
Q: Well, you do not look dead at all!
M: That’s what you say! You seem to know my
state better than I do!
Q: Sorry. But I just do not understand. You say
you are bodyless and mindless, while I see you very much alive and articulate.
M: A tremendously complex work is going on all
the time in your brain and body, are you conscious of it? Not at all. Yet for
an outsider all seems to be going on intelligently and purposefully. Why not
admit that one’s entire personal life may sink largely below the threshold of
consciousness and yet proceed sanely and smoothly?
Q: Is it normal?
M: What is normal? Is your life -- obsessed by
desires and fears, full of strife and struggle, meaningless and joyless --
normal? To be acutely conscious of your body id it normal? To be torn by
feelings, tortured by thoughts: is it normal? A healthy body, a healthy mind
live largely unperceived by their owner; only occasionally, through pain or
suffering they call for attention and insight. Why not extend the same to the
entire personal life? One can function rightly, responding well and fully to
whatever happens, without having to bring it into the focus of awareness. When
self-control becomes second nature, awareness shifts its focus to deeper levels
of existence and action.
Q: Don’t you become a robot?
M: What harm is there in making automatic, what
is habitual and repetitive? It is automatic anyhow. But when it is also
chaotic, it causes pain and suffering and calls for attention. The entire
purpose of a clean and well-ordered life is to liberate man from the thraldom
of chaos and the burden of sorrow.
Q: You seem to be in favour of a computerised
life.
M: What is wrong with a life which is free from
problems? Personality is merely a reflection of the real. Why should not the
reflection be true to the original as a matter of course, automatically? Need
the person have any designs of its own? The life of which it is an expression
will guide it. Once you realize that the person is merely a shadow of the
reality, but not reality itself, you cease to fret and worry. You agree to be
guided from within and life becomes a journey into the unknown.
