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Questioner:
I am a Swede by birth. Now I am teaching Hatha Yoga in Mexico and in the
States.
Maharaj:
Where did you learn it?
Q: I had a teacher in the States, an Indian Swami.
M: What did it give you?
Q: It gave me good health and a means of
livelihood.
M: Good enough. Is it all you want?
Q: I seek peace of mind. I got disgusted with
all the cruel things done by the so-called Christians in the name of Christ.
For some time I was without religion. Then I got attracted to Yoga.
M: What did you gain?
Q: I studied the philosophy of Yoga and
it did help me.
M: In what way did it help
you? By what signs did you conclude that you have been helped?
Q: Good health is something quite tangible.
M: No doubt it is very pleasant to feel fit. Is
pleasure all you expected from Yoga?
Q: The joy of well-being is the reward of Hatha
Yoga. But Yoga in general yields more than that. It answers many
questions.
M: What do you mean by Yoga?
Q: The whole teaching of India -- evolution,
re-incarnation, karma and so on.
M: All right, you got all the knowledge you
wanted. But in what way are you benefited by it?
Q: It gave me peace of mind.
M: Did it? Is your mind at peace? Is your search
over?
Q: No, not yet.
M: Naturally. There will be no end to it,
because there is no such thing as peace of mind. Mind means disturbance;
restlessness itself is mind. Yoga is not an attribute of the mind, nor
is it a state of mind.
Q: Some measure of peace I did derive from Yoga.
M: Examine closely and you will see that the
mind is seething with thoughts. It may go blank occasionally, but it does it
for a time and reverts to its usual restlessness. A becalmed mind is not a
peaceful mind. You say you want to pacify your mind. Is he, who wants to pacify
the mind, himself peaceful?
Q: No. I am not at peace, I take the help of Yoga.
M: Don't you see the contradiction? For many
years you sought your peace of mind. You could not find it, for a thing
essentially restless cannot be at peace.
Q: There is some improvement.
M: The peace you claim to have found is very
brittle any little thing can crack it. What you call peace is only absence of
disturbance. It is hardly worth the name. The real peace cannot be disturbed.
Can you claim a peace of mind that is unassailable?
Q: l am striving.
M: Striving too is a form of restlessness.
Q: So what remains?
M: The self does not need to be put to rest. It
is peace itself, not at peace. Only the mind is restless. All it knows is
restlessness, with its many modes and grades. The pleasant are considered
superior and the painful are discounted. What we call progress is merely a
change over from the unpleasant to the pleasant. But changes by themselves
cannot bring us to the changeless, for whatever has a beginning must have an
end. The real does not begin; it only reveals itself as beginningless and
endless, all-pervading, all-powerful, immovable prime mover, timelessly
changeless.
Q: So what has one to do?
M: Through Yoga you have accumulated knowledge
and experience. This cannot be denied. But of what use is it all to you? Yoga
means union, joining. What have you re-united, re-joined?
Q: I am trying to rejoin the personality back
to the real self.
M: The personality (vyakti) is but a
product of imagination. The self (vyakta) is the victim of this
imagination. It is the taking yourself to be what you are not that binds you.
The person cannot be said to exist on its own rights; it is the self that
believes there is a person and is conscious of being it. Beyond the self (vyakta)
lies the unmanifested (avyakta), the causeless cause of everything. Even
to talk of re-uniting the person with the self is not right, because there is
no person, only a mental picture given a false reality by conviction. Nothing
was divided and there is nothing to unite.
Q: Yoga helps in the search for and the
finding of the self.
M: You can find what you have lost. But you
cannot find what you have not lost.
Q: Had I never lost anything, I would have been
enlightened. But I am not. I am searching. Is not my very search a proof of my
having lost something?
M: It only shows that you believe you have lost.
But who believes it? And what is believed to be lost? Have you lost a person
like yourself? What is the self you are in search of? What exactly do you
expect to find?
Q: The true knowledge of the self.
M: The true knowledge of the self is not a
knowledge. It is not something that you find by searching, by looking
everywhere. It is not to be found in space or time. Knowledge is but a memory,
a pattern of thought, a mental habit. All these are motivated by pleasure and
pain. It is because you are goaded by pleasure and pain that you are in search
of knowledge. Being oneself is completely beyond all motivation. You cannot be
yourself for some reason. You are yourself, and no reason is needed.
Q: By doing Yoga I shall find peace.
M: Can there be peace apart
from yourself? Are you talking from your own experience or from books only?
Your book knowledge is useful to begin with, but soon it must be given up for
direct experience, which by its very nature is inexpressible. Words can be used
for destruction also; of words images are built, by words they are destroyed.
You got yourself into your present state through verbal thinking; you must get
out of it the same way.
Q: I did attain a degree of inner peace. Am I
to destroy it?
M: What has been attained may be lost again.
Only when you realize the true peace, the peace you have never lost, that peace
will remain with you, for it was never away. Instead of searching for what you
do not have, find out what is it that you have never lost? That which is there
before the beginning and after the ending of everything; that to which there is
no birth, nor death. That immovable state, which is not affected by the birth
and death of a body or a mind, that state you must perceive.
Q: What are the means to such perception?
M: In life nothing can be had without overcoming
obstacles. The obstacles to the clear perception of one's true being are desire
for pleasure and fear of pain. It is the pleasure-pain motivation that stands
in the way. The very freedom from all motivation, the state in which no desire
arises is the natural state.
Q: Such giving up of desires, does it need
time?
M: If you leave it to time, millions of years
will be needed. Giving up desire after desire is a lengthy process with the end
never in sight. Leave alone your desires and fears, give your entire attention
to the subject, to him who is behind the experience of desire and fear. Ask: 'who
desires?' Let each desire bring you back to yourself.
Q: The root of all desires and fears is the
same -- the longing for happiness.
M: The happiness you can think of and long for,
is mere physical or mental satisfaction. Such sensory or mental pleasure is not
the real, the absolute happiness.
Q: Even sensory and mental pleasures and the
general sense of well-being which arises with physical and mental health, must
have their roots in reality.
M: They have their roots in imagination. A man
who is given a stone and assured that it is a priceless diamond will be
mightily pleased until he realizes his mistake; in the same way pleasures lose
their tang and pains their barb when the self is known. Both are seen as they
are -- conditional responses, mere reactions, plain attractions and repulsions,
based on memories or pre-conceptions. Usually pleasure and pain are experienced
when expected. It is all a matter of acquired habits and convictions.
Q: Well, pleasure may be imaginary. But pain is
real.
M: Pain and pleasure go always together. Freedom
from one means freedom from both. If you do not care for pleasure, you will not
be afraid of pain. But there is happiness which is neither, which is completely
beyond. The happiness you know is describable and measurable. It is objective,
so to say. But the objective cannot be your own. It would be a grievous mistake
to identify yourself with something external. This churning up of levels leads
nowhere. Reality is beyond the subjective and objective, beyond all levels, beyond
every distinction. Most definitely it is not their origin, source or root.
These come from ignorance of reality, not from reality itself, which is
indescribable, beyond being and not-being.
Q: Many teachers have I followed and studied
many doctrines, yet none gave me what I wanted.
M: The desire to find the self will be surely
fulfilled, provided you want nothing else. But you must be honest with yourself
and really want nothing else. If in the meantime you want many other things and
are engaged in their pursuit, your main purpose may be delayed until you grow
wiser and cease being torn between contradictory urges. Go within, without
swerving, without ever looking outward.
Q: But my desires and fears are still there.
M: Where are they but in your memory? Realize
that their root is in expectation born of memory and they will cease to obsess
you.
Q: I have understood very well that social
service is an endless task, because improvement and decay, progress and
regress, go side by side. We can see it on all sides and on every level. What
remains?
M: Whatever work you have undertaken -- complete
it. Do not take up new tasks. unless it is called for by a concrete situation
of suffering and relief from suffering. Find yourself first, and endless
blessings will follow. Nothing profits the world as much as the abandoning of
profits. A man who no longer thinks in terms of loss and gain is the truly
non-violent man, for he is beyond all conflict.
Q: Yes, I was always attracted by the idea of ahimsa
(non-violence).
M: Primarily, ahimsa means what it says:
'don't hurt'. It is not doing good that comes first, but ceasing to hurt, not
adding to suffering. Pleasing others is not ahimsa.
Q: I am not talking of
pleasing, but I am all for helping others.
M: The only help worth giving is freeing from
the need for further help. Repeated help is no help at all. Do not talk of
helping another, unless you can put him beyond all need of help.
Q: How does one go beyond the need of help? And
can one help another to do so?
M: When you have understood that all existence,
in separation and limitation, is painful, and when you are willing and able to
live integrally, in oneness with all life, as pure being, you have gone beyond
all need of help. You can help another by precept and example and, above all,
by your being. You cannot give what you do not have and you don't have what you
are not. You can only give what you are -- and of that you can give limitlessly.
Q: But, is it true that all existence is
painful?
M: What else can be the cause of this universal
search for pleasure? Does a happy man seek happiness? How restless people are,
how constantly on the move! It is because they are in pain that they seek
relief in pleasure. All the happiness they can imagine is in the assurance of
repeated pleasure.
Q: If what I am, as I am, the person I take
myself to be, cannot be happy, then what am I to do?
M: You can only cease to be -- as you seem to be
now. There is nothing cruel in what I say. To wake up a man from a nightmare is
compassion. You came here because you are in pain, and all I say is: wake up,
know yourself, be yourself. The end of pain lies not in pleasure. When you
realize that you are beyond both pain and pleasure, aloof and unassailable,
then the pursuit of happiness ceases and the resultant sorrow too. For pain
aims at pleasure and pleasure ends in pain, relentlessly.
Q: In the ultimate state there can be no
happiness?
M: Nor sorrow. Only freedom. Happiness depends
on something or other and can be lost; freedom from everything depends on
nothing and cannot be lost. Freedom from sorrow has no cause and, therefore,
cannot be destroyed. Realize that freedom.
Q: Am I not born to suffer as a result of my
past? Is freedom possible at all? Was I born of my own will? Am I not just a
creature?
M: What is birth and death but the beginning and
the ending of a stream of events in consciousness? Because of the idea of
separation and limitation they are painful. Momentary relief from pain we call
pleasure -- and we build castles in the air hoping for endless pleasure which we
call happiness. It is all misunderstanding and misuse. Wake up, go beyond, live
really.
Q: My knowledge is limited, my power
negligible.
M: Being the source of both. the self is beyond
both knowledge and power. The observable is in the mind. The nature of the self
is pure awareness, pure witnessing, unaffected by the presence or absence of
knowledge or liking.
Have your being outside this body of
birth and death and all your problems will be solved. They exist because you
believe yourself born to die. Undeceive yourself and be free. You are not a
person.
