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Questioner:
From year to year your teaching remains the same. There seems to be no progress
in what you tell us.
Maharaj: In a hospital the sick are treated and get well. The treatment
is routine, with hardly any change, but there is nothing monotonous about
health. My teaching may be routine, but the fruit of it is new from man to man.
Q: What is realization? Who is a realized man?
By what is the jnani recognized?
M: There are no distinctive marks of jnana.
Only ignorance can be recognized, not jnana. Nor does a jnani claim to be something special. AII
those who proclaim their own greatness and uniqueness are not jnanis.
They are mistaking some unusual development for realization. The jnani shows no tendency to proclaim
himself to be a jnani. He considers
himself to be perfectly normal, true to his real nature. Proclaiming oneself to
be an omnipotent, omniscient and omnipotent deity is a clear sign of ignorance.
Q: Can the jnani
convey his experience to the ignorant? Can jnana be transmitted from one
man to another?
M: Yes, it can. The words of a jnani have
the power of dispelling ignorance and darkness in the mind. It is not the words
that matter, but the power behind them.
Q: What is that power?
M: The power of conviction, based on personal
realization, on one's own direct experience.
Q: Some realized people say that knowledge must
be won, not got. Another can only teach, but the learning is one's own.
M: It comes to the same.
Q: There are many who have practiced Yoga
for years and years without any result. What may be the cause of their failure?
M: Some are addicted to trances, with their
consciousness in abeyance. Without full consciousness what progress can there
be?
Q: Many are practicing samadhis (states
of rapturous absorption). In samadhis consciousness is quite intense,
yet they do not result in anything.
M: What results do you expect? And why should jnana
be the result of anything? One thing leads to another, but jnana is not
a thing to be bound by causes and results. It is beyond causality altogether.
It is abidance in the self. The Yogi comes to know many wonders, but of
the self he remains ignorant. The jnani
may look and feel quite ordinary, but the self he knows well.
Q: There are many who strive for self-knowledge
earnestly, but with scant results. What may be the cause of it?
M: They have not investigated the sources of
knowledge sufficiently, their sensations, feelings and thoughts they do not
know well enough. This may be one cause of delay. The other: some desires may
still be alive.
Q: Ups and downs in sadhana are
inevitable. Yet the earnest seeker plods on in spite of all. What can the jnani do for such a seeker?
M: If the seeker is earnest, the light can be
given. The light is for all and always there, but the seekers are few, and
among those few, those who are ready are very rare. Ripeness of heart and mind
is indispensable.
Q: Did you get your own realization through
effort or by the grace of your Guru?
M: His was the teaching and mine was the trust.
My confidence in him made me accept his words as true, go deep into them, live
them, and that is how I came to realize what I am. The Guru's person and words
made me trust him and my trust made them fruitful.
Q: But can a Guru give realization without
words, without trust, just like this, without any preparation?
M: Yes, one can, but where is the taker? You
see, I was so attuned to my Guru, so completely trusting him. there was so
little of resistance in me, that it all happened easily and quickly. But not
everybody is so fortunate. Laziness and restlessness often stand in the way and
until they are seen and removed, the progress is slow. All those who have
realized on the spot, by mere touch, look or thought, have been ripe for it.
But such are very few. The majority needs some time for ripening. Sadhana
is accelerated ripening.
Q: What makes one ripe? What is the ripening
factor?
M: Earnestness of course, one must be really
anxious. After all, the realized man is the most earnest man. Whatever he does,
he does it completely, without limitations and reservations. Integrity will
take you to reality.
Q: Do you love the world?
M: When you are hurt, you cry. Why? Because you
love yourself. Don't bottle up your love by limiting it to the body, keep it
open. It will be then the love for all. When all the false selfidentifications
are thrown away, what remains is all-embracing love. Get rid of all ideas about
yourself, even of the idea that you are God. No self-definition is valid.
Q: I am tired of promises. I am tired of sadhanas,
which take all my time and energy and bring nothing. I want reality here and
now. Can I have it?
M: Of course you can, provided you are really
fed up with everything, including your sadhanas. When you demand nothing
of the world, nor of God, when you want nothing, seek nothing, expect nothing
then the Supreme State will come to you uninvited and unexpected!
Q: If a man engrossed in family life and in the
affairs of the world does his sadhana strictly as prescribed by his
scriptures, will he get results?
M: Results he will get, but he will be wrapped
up in them like in a cocoon.
Q: So many saints say that when you are ripe
and ready, you will realize. Their words may be true, but they are of little
use. There must be a way out, independent of ripening which needs time, of sadhana
which needs effort.
M: Don't call it a way; it is
more a kind of skill. It is not even that. Stay open and quiet, that is all.
What you seek is so near you, that there is no place for a way.
Q: There are so many ignorant people in the
world and so few jnanis. What may be the cause of it?
M: Don't concern yourself with others, take care
of yourself. You know that you are. Don't burden yourself with names,
just be. Any name or shape you give yourself obscures your real nature.
Q: Why should seeking end
before one can realize?
M: The desire for truth is the highest of all
desires, yet, it is still a desire. All desires must be given up to the real to
be. Remember that you are. This is your working capital. Rotate it and
there will be much profit.
Q: Why should there be
seeking at all.
M: Life is seeking, one cannot help seeking.
When all search ceases, it is the Supreme State.
Q: Why does the Supreme State come and go?
M: It neither comes nor goes. It is.
Q: Do you speak from your
own experience?
M: Of course. It is a timeless state, ever
present.
Q: With me it comes and goes, with you it does
not. Why this difference?
M: Maybe because I have no desires. Or you do
not desire the Supreme strongly enough. You must feel desperate when your mind
is out of touch.
Q: All my life I was striving and achieved so
little. I was reading, I was listening -- all in vain.
M: Listening and reading became a habit with
you.
Q: I gave it up too. I do not read nowadays.
M: What you gave up is of no importance now.
What have you not given up?. Find that out and give up that. Sadhana is
a search for what to give up. Empty yourself completely.
Q: How can a fool desire wisdom? One needs to
know the object of desire, to desire it. When the Supreme is not known, how can
it be desired?
M: Man naturally ripens and becomes ready for
realization.
Q: But what is the ripening factor?
M: Self-remembrance, awareness of 'l am' ripens
him powerfully and speedily. Give up all ideas about yourself and simply be.
Q: I am tired of all the
ways and means and skills and tricks, of all these mental acrobatics. Is there
a way to perceive reality directly and immediately?
M: Stop making use of your mind and see what
happens. Do this one thing thoroughly. That is all.
Q: When I was younger, I had strange
experiences, short but memorable, of being nothing, just nothing, yet fully
conscious. But the danger is that one has the desire to recreate from memory
the moments that have passed.
M: This is all imagination. In the light of
consciousness all sorts of things happen and one need not give special
importance to any. The sight of a flower is as marvellous as the vision of God.
Let them be. Why remember them and then make memory into a problem? Be bland
about them; do not divide them into high and low, inner and outer, lasting and
transient. Go beyond, go back to the source, go to the self that is the same
whatever happens. Your weakness is due to your conviction that you were born
into the world. In reality the world is ever recreated in you and by you. See
everything as emanating from the light which is the source of your own being.
You will find that in that light there is love and infinite energy.
Q: If I am that light, why do I not know it?
M: To know, you need a knowing mind, a mind
capable of knowing. But your mind is ever on the run, never still, never fully
reflecting. How can you see the moon in all her glory when the eye is clouded
with disease?
Q: Can we say that while the sun is the cause
of the shadow one cannot see the sun in the shadow. One must turn round.
M: Again you have introduced the trinity of the
sun, the body and shadow. There is no such division in reality. What I am
talking about has nothing to do with dualities and trinities. Don't mentalise
and verbalize. Just see and be.
Q: Must I see, to be?
M: See what you are. Don't
ask others, don't let others tell you about yourself. Look within and see. All
the teacher can tell you is only this. There is no need of going from one to
another. The same water is in all the wells. You just draw from the nearest. In
my case the water is within me and I am the water.
