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Questioner:
You say, reality is one. Oneness, unity, is the attribute of the person. Is
then reality a person, with the universe as its body?
Maharaj:
Whatever you may say will be both true and false. Words do not reach beyond the
mind.
Q: I am just trying to understand. You are
telling us of the Person, the Self and the Supreme. (vyakti, vyakta,
avyakta). The light of Pure Awareness (pragna), focussed as 'I
am' in the Self (jivatma), as consciousness (chetana) illumines
the mind (antahkarana) and as life (prana) vitalizes the body (deha).
All this is fine as far as the words go. But when it comes to distinguishing in
myself the person from the Self and the Self from the Supreme, I get mixed up.
M: The person is never the subject. You can see
a person, but you are not the person. You are always the Supreme which appears
at a given point of time and space as the witness, a bridge between the pure
awareness of the Supreme and the manifold consciousness of the person.
Q: When I look at myself, I find I am several
persons fighting among themselves for the use of the body.
M: They correspond to the various tendencies (samskara)
of the mind.
Q: Can I make peace between
them?
M: How can you? They are so contradictory! See
them as they are -- mere habits of thoughts and feelings, bundles of memories
and urges.
Q: Yet they all say 'I am'.
M: It is only because you identify yourself with
them. Once you realize that whatever appears before you cannot be yourself, and
cannot say 'I am', you are free of all your 'persons' and their demands. The
sense 'I am' is your own. You cannot part with it, but you can impart it to
anything, as in saying: I am young. I am rich etc. But such
self-identifications are patently false and the cause of bondage.
Q: I can now understand that I am not the
person, but that which, when reflected in the person, gives it a sense of
being. Now, about the Supreme? In what way do I know myself as the Supreme?
M: The source of consciousness cannot be an
object in consciousness. To know the source is to be the source. When you
realize that you are not the person, but the pure and calm witness, and that
fearless awareness is your very being, you are the being. It is the
source, the Inexhaustible Possibility.
Q: Are there many sources or one for all?
M: It depends how you look at it, from which
end. The objects in the world are many, but the eye that sees them is one. The
higher always appears as one to the lower and the lower as many to the higher.
Q: Shapes and names are all of one and the same
God?
M: Again, it all depends on how you look at it.
On the verbal level everything is relative. Absolutes should be experienced,
not discussed.
Q: How is the Absolute experienced?
M: It is not an object to be recognized and
stored up in memory. It is in the present and in feeling rather. It has more to
do with the 'how' than with the 'what'. It is in the quality, in the value;
being the source of everything, it is in everything.
Q: If it is the source, why and how does it
manifest itself?
M: It gives birth to consciousness. All else is
in consciousness.
Q: Why are there so many centres of
consciousness?
M: The objective universe (mahadakash) is
in constant movement, projecting and dissolving innumerable forms. Whenever a
form is infused with life (prana), consciousness (chetana)
appears by reflection of awareness in matter.
Q: How is the Supreme affected?
M: What can affect it and how? The source is not
affected by the vagaries of the river nor is the metal -- by the shape of the
jewellery. Is the light affected by the picture on the screen? The Supreme
makes everything possible, that is all.
Q: How is it that some things do happen and
some don't?
M: Seeking out causes is a pastime of the mind.
There is no duality of cause and effect. Everything is its own cause.
Q: No purposeful action is then possible?
M: All I say is that consciousness contains all.
In consciousness all is possible. You can have causes if you want them, in your
world. Another may be content with a single cause -- God's will. The root cause
is one: the sense 'I am'.
Q: What is the link between the Self (Vyakta)
and the Supreme (Avyakta)?
M: From the self's point of
view the world is the known, the Supreme -- the Unknown. The Unknown gives birth
to the known, yet remains Unknown. The known is infinite, but the Unknown is an
infinitude of infinities. Just like a ray of light is never seen unless
intercepted by the specs of dust, so does the Supreme make everything known,
itself remaining unknown.
Q: Does it mean that the Unknown is
inaccessible?
M: Oh, no. The Supreme is the easiest to reach
for it is your very being. It is enough to stop thinking and desiring anything,
but the Supreme.
Q: And if I desire nothing, not even the
Supreme?
M: Then you are as good as dead, or you are the
Supreme.
Q: The world is full of desires: Everybody
wants something or other. Who is the desirer? The person or the self?
M: The self. All desires, holy and unholy, come
from the self; they all hang on the sense 'I am'.
Q: I can understand holy desires (satyakama)
emanating from the self. It may be the expression of the bliss aspect of the Sadchitananda
(Beingness -- Awareness --Happiness) of the Self. But why unholy desires?
M: All desires aim at happiness. Their shape and
quality depend on the psyche (antahkarana). Where inertia (tamas)
predominates, we find perversions. With energy (rajas), passions arise.
With lucidity (sattva) the motive behind the desire is goodwill,
compassion, the urge to make happy rather than be happy. But the Supreme is
beyond all, yet because of its infinite permeability all cogent desires can be
fulfilled.
Q: Which desires are cogent?
M: Desires that destroy their subjects, or
objects, or do not subside on satisfaction are self-contradictory and cannot be
fulfilled. Only desires motivated by love, goodwill and compassion are
beneficial to both the subject and object and can be fully satisfied.
Q: All desires are painful, the holy as well as
the unholy.
M: They are not the same and pain is not the
same. Passion is painful, compassion -- never. The entire universe strives to
fulfil a desire born of compassion.
Q: Does the Supreme know itself? Is the
Impersonal conscious?
M: The source of all has all. Whatever flows
from it must be there already in seed form. And as a seed is the last of
innumerable seeds, and contains the experience and the promise of numberless
forests, so does the Unknown contain all that was, or could have been and all
that shall or would be. The entire field of becoming is open and accessible;
past and future coexist in the eternal now.
Q: Are you living in the
Supreme Unknown?
M: Where else?
Q: What makes you say so?
M: No desire ever arises in my mind.
Q: Are you then unconscious?
M: Of course not! I am fully conscious, but
since no desire or fear enters my mind, there is perfect silence.
Q: Who knows the silence?
M: Silence knows itself. It is the silence of
the silent mind, when passions and desires are silenced.
Q: Do you experience desires occasionally?
M: Desires are just waves in the mind. You know
a wave when you see one. A desire is just a thing among many. I feel no urge to
satisfy it, no action needs be taken on it. Freedom from desire means this: the
compulsion to satisfy is absent.
Q: Why do desires arise at all?
M: Because you imagine that you were born, and
that you will die if you do not take care of your body. Desire for embodied
existence is the root-cause of trouble.
Q: Yet, so many jivas get into bodies.
Surely it cannot be some error of judgement. There must be a purpose. What
could it be?
M: To know itself the self must be faced with
its opposite -- the not-self. Desire leads to experience. Experience leads to
discrimination, detachment, self-knowledge -- liberation. And what is liberation
after all? To know that you are beyond birth and death. By forgetting who you
are and imagining yourself a mortal creature, you created so much trouble for
yourself that you have to wake up, like from a bad dream.
Enquiry also wakes you up. You need not
wait for suffering; enquiry into happiness is better, for the mind is in
harmony and peace.
Q: Who exactly is the ultimate experiencer --
the Self or the Unknown?
M: The Self, of course.
Q: Then why introduce the notion of the Supreme
Unknown?
M: To explain the Self.
Q: But is there anything beyond the Self?
M: Outside the Self there is nothing. All is one
and all is contained in 'I am'. In the waking and dream states it is the
person. In deep sleep and turiya it is the Self. Beyond the alert
intentness of turiya lies the great, silent peace of the Supreme. But in
fact all is one in essence and related in appearance. In ignorance the seer
becomes the seen and in wisdom he is the seeing.
But why be concerned with the Supreme?
Know the knowers and all will be known.
