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Questioner:
What does it mean to fail in Yoga? Who is a failure in Yoga (yoga
bhrashta)?
Maharaj:
It is only a question of incompletion. He who could not complete his Yoga
for some reason is called failed in Yoga. Such failure is only
temporary, for there can be no defeat in Yoga. This battle is always
won, for it is a battle between the true and the false. The false has no
chance.
Q: Who fails? The person (vyakti) or the
self (vyakta)?
M: The question is wrongly put. There is no
question of failure, neither in the short run nor in the long. It is like
travelling a long and arduous road in an unknown country. Of all the
innumerable steps there is only the last which brings you to your destination.
Yet you will not consider all previous steps as failures. Each brought you
nearer to your goal, even when you had to turn back to by-pass an obstacle. In
reality each step brings you to your goal, because to be always on the move,
learning, discovering, unfolding, is your eternal destiny. Living is life's only
purpose. The self does not identify itself with success or failure -- the very
idea of becoming this or that is unthinkable. The self understands that success
and failure are relative and related, that they are the very warp and weft of
life. Learn from both and go beyond. If you have not learnt, repeat.
Q: What am I to learn?
M: To live without self-concern. For this you
must know your own true being (swarupa) as indomitable, fearless, ever
victorious. Once you know with absolute certainty that nothing can trouble you
but your own imagination, you come to disregard your desires and fears,
concepts and ideas and live by truth alone.
Q: What may be the reason that some people
succeed and others fail in Yoga? Is it destiny or character, or just
accident?
M: Nobody ever fails in Yoga. It is all a
matter of the rate of progress. It is slow in the beginning and rapid in the
end. When one is fully matured, realization is explosive. It takes place
spontaneously, or at the slightest hint. The quick is not better than the slow.
Slow ripening and rapid flowering alternate. Both are natural and right.
Yet, all this is so in the mind only. As
I see it, there is really nothing of the kind. In the great mirror of
consciousness images arise and disappear and only memory gives them continuity.
And memory is material -- destructible, perishable, transient. On such flimsy
foundations we build a sense of personal existence -- vague, intermittent,
dreamlike. This vague persuasion: 'I-am-so-and-so' obscures the changeless
state of pure awareness and makes us believe that we are born to suffer and to
die.
Q: Just as a child cannot help growing, so does
a man, compelled by nature, make progress. Why exert oneself? Where is the need
of Yoga?
M: There is progress all the time. Everything
contributes to progress. But this is the progress of ignorance. The circles of
ignorance may be ever widening, yet it remains a bondage all the same. In due
course a Guru appears to teach and inspire us to practise Yoga and a
ripening takes place as a result of which the immemorial night of ignorance
dissolves before the rising sun of wisdom. But in reality nothing happened. The
sun is always there, there is no night to it; the mind blinded by the 'I am the
body' idea spins out endlessly its thread of illusion.
Q: If all is a part of a natural process, where
is the need of effort?
M: Even effort is a part of it. When ignorance
becomes obstinate and hard and the character gets perverted, effort and the
pain of it become inevitable. In complete obedience to nature there is no
effort. The seed of spiritual life grows in silence and in darkness until its
appointed hour.
Q: We come across some great people, who, in
their old age, become childish, petty, quarrelsome and spiteful. How could they
deteriorate so much?
M: They were not perfect Yogis, having
their bodies under complete control. Or, they might not have cared to protect
their bodies from the natural decay. One must not draw conclusions without
understanding all the factors. Above all, one must not make judgements of
inferiority or superiority. Youthfulness is more a matter of vitality (prana)
than of wisdom (jnana) .
Q: One may get old, but why
should one lose all alertness and discrimination?
M: Consciousness and unconsciousness, while
in the body depend on the condition of the brain. But the self is beyond both,
beyond the brain, beyond the mind. The fault of the instrument is no reflection
on its user.
Q: I was told that a realized man will never do
anything unseemly. He will always behave in an exemplary way.
M: Who sets the example? Why should a liberated
man necessarily follow conventions? The moment he becomes predictable, he
cannot be free. His freedom lies in his being free to fulfil the need of the
moment, to obey the necessity of the situation. Freedom to do what one likes is
really bondage, while being free to do what one must, what is right, is real
freedom.
Q: Still there must be some way of making out
who has realized and who has not. If one is indistinguishable from the other,
of what use is he?
M: He who knows himself has no doubts about it.
Nor does he care whether others recognize his state or not. Rare is the
realized man who discloses his realization and fortunate are those who have met
him, for he does it for their abiding welfare.
Q: When one looks round, one is appalled by the
volume of unnecessary suffering that is going on. People who should be helped
are not getting help. Imagine a big hospital ward full of incurables, tossing
and moaning. Were you given the authority to kill them all and end their
torture, would you not do so?
M: I would leave it to them to decide.
Q: But if their destiny is to suffer? How can
you interfere with destiny?
M: Their destiny is what happens. There is no
thwarting of destiny. You mean to say everybody's life is totally determined at
his birth? What a strange idea! Were it so, the power that determines would see
to it that nobody should suffer.
Q: What about cause and effect?
M: Each moment contains the whole of the past
and creates the whole of the future.
Q: But past and future exist?
M: In the mind only. Time is in the mind, space
is in the mind. The law of cause and effect is also a way of thinking. In
reality all is here and now and all is one. Multiplicity and diversity are in
the mind only.
Q: Still, you are in favour of relieving
suffering, even through destruction of the incurably diseased body.
M: Again, you look from outside while I look
from within. I do not see a sufferer, I am the sufferer. I know him from within
and do what is right spontaneously and effortlessly. I follow no rules nor lay
down rules. I flow with life -- faithfully and irresistibly.
Q: Still you seem to be a very practical man in
full control of your immediate surroundings.
M: What else do you expect me to be? A misfit?
Q: Yet you cannot help another much.
M: Surely, I can help. You too can help.
Everybody can help. But the suffering is all the time recreated. Man alone can
destroy in himself the roots of pain. Others can only help with the pain, but
not with its cause, which is the abysmal stupidity of mankind.
Q: Will this stupidity ever come to an end?
M: In man -- of course. Any moment. In humanity --
as we know it -- after very many years. In creation -- never, for creation itself
is rooted in ignorance; matter itself is ignorance. Not to know, and not to
know that one does not know, is the cause of endless suffering.
Q: We are told of the great avatars, the
saviours of the world.
M: Did they save? They have come and gone -- and
the world plods on. Of course, they did a lot and opened new dimensions in the
human mind. But to talk of saving the world is an exaggeration.
Q: Is there no salvation for the world?
M: Which world do you want to save? The world of
your own projection? Save it yourself. My world? Show me my world and I shall
deal with it. I am not aware of any world separate from myself, which I am free
to save or not to save. What business have you with saving the world, when all
the world needs is to be saved from you? Get out of the picture and see whether
there is anything left to save.
Q: You seem to stress the point that without
you your world would not have existed and therefore the only thing you can do
for it is to wind up the show. This is not a way out. Even if the world were of
my own creation, this knowledge does not save it. It only explains it. The
question remains: why did I create such a wretched world and what can I do to
change it? You seem to say: forget it all and admire your own glory. Surely,
you don't mean it. The description of a disease and its causes does not cure
it. What we need is the right medicine.
M: The description and causation are the remedy
for a disease caused by obtuseness and stupidity. Just like a deficiency
disease is cured through the supply of the missing factor, so are the diseases
of living cured by a good dose of intelligent detachment. (viveka-vairagya).
Q: You cannot save the world
by preaching counsels of perfection. People are as they are. Must they suffer?
M: As long as they are as they are, there is no
escape from suffering. Remove the sense of separateness and there will be no
conflict.
Q: A message in print may be paper and ink
only. It is the text that matters. By analysing the world into elements and
qualities we miss the most important -- its meaning. Your reduction of everything
to dream disregards the difference between the dream of an insect and the dream
of a poet. All is dream, granted. But not all are equal.
M: The dreams are not equal, but the dreamer is
one. I am the insect. I am the poet -- in dream. But in reality I am neither. I
am beyond all dreams. I am the light in which all dreams appear and disappear.
I am both inside and outside the dream. Just as a man having headache knows the
ache and also knows that he is not the ache, so do I know the dream, myself
dreaming and myself not dreaming -- all at the same time. I am what I am before,
during and after the dream. But what I see in dream, l am not.
Q: It is all a matter of imagination. One
imagines that one is dreaming, another imagines one is not dreaming. Are not both
the same?
M: The same and not the same. Not dreaming, as
an interval between two dreams, is of course, a Part of dreaming. Not dreaming
as a steady hold on, and timeless abidance in reality has nothing to do with
dreaming. In that sense I never dream, nor ever shall.
Q: If both dream and escape from dream are
imaginings, what is the way out?
M: There is no need of a way out! Don't you see
that a way out is also a part of the dream? All you have to do is to see the
dream as dream.
Q: If I start the practice of dismissing
everything as a dream where will it lead me?
M: Wherever it leads you, it will be a dream.
The very idea of going beyond the dream is illusory. Why go anywhere? Just
realize that you are dreaming a dream you call the world, and stop looking for
ways out. The dream is not your problem. Your problem is that you like one part
of your dream and not another. Love all, or none of it, and stop complaining.
When you have seen the dream as a dream, you have done all that needs be done.
Q: Is dreaming caused by thinking?
M: Everything is a play of ideas. In the state
free from ideation (nirvikalpa samadhi) nothing is perceived. The root
idea is: 'I am'. It shatters the state of pure consciousness and is followed by
the innumerable sensations and perceptions, feeling and ideas which in their
totality constitute God and His world. The 'I am' remains as the witness, but
it is by the will of God that everything happens.
Q: Why not by my will?
M: Again you have split yourself -- into God and
witness. Both are one.
