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Questioner:
By profession I am a physician. I began with surgery, continued with psychiatry
and also wrote some books on mental health and healing by faith. I came to you
to learn the laws of spiritual health.
Maharaj:
When you are trying to cure a patient, what exactly are you trying to cure?
What is cure? When can you say that a man is cured?
Q: I seek to cure the body
as well as improve the link between the body and the mind. I also seek to set
right the mind.
M: Did you investigate the connection between
the mind and the body? At what point are they connected?
Q: Between the body and the indwelling
consciousness lies the mind.
M: Is not the body made of food? And can there
be a mind without food?
Q: The body is built and maintained by food.
Without food the mind usually goes weak. But the mind is not mere food. There
is a transforming factor which creates a mind in the body. What is that
transforming factor?
M: Just like the wood produces fire which is not
wood, so does the body produce the mind which is not the body. But to whom does
the mind appear? Who is the perceiver of the thoughts and feelings which you
call the mind? There is wood, there is fire and there is the enjoyer of the
fire. Who enjoys the mind? Is the enjoyer also a result of food, or is it
independent?
Q: The perceiver is independent.
M: How do you know? Speak from your own
experience. You are not the body nor the mind. You say so. How do you know?
Q: I really do not know. I guess so.
M: Truth is permanent. The real is changeless.
What changes is not real, what is real does not change. Now, what is it in you
that does not change? As long as there is food, there is body and mind. When
the food is stopped, the body dies and the mind dissolves. But does the
observer perish?
Q: I guess it does not. But I have no proof.
M: You yourself are the proof. You have not, nor
can you have any other proof. You are yourself, you know yourself, you love
yourself. Whatever the mind does, it does for the love of its own self. The
very nature of the self is love. It is loved, loving and lovable. It is the
self that makes the body and the mind so interesting, so very dear. The very
attention given to them comes from the self.
Q: If the self is not the body nor the mind,
can it exist without the body and the mind?
M: Yes, it can. It is a matter of actual
experience that the self has being independent of mind and body. It is being --
awareness -- bliss. Awareness of being is bliss.
Q: It may be a matter of actual experience to
you, but it is not my case. How can I come to the same experience? What
practices to follow, what exercises to take up?
M: To know that you are neither body nor mind,
watch yourself steadily and live unaffected by your body and mind, completely
aloof, as if you were dead. It means you have no vested interests, either in
the body or in the mind.
Q: Dangerous!
M: I am not asking you to commit suicide. Nor
can you. You can only kill the body, you cannot stop the mental process, nor
can you put an end to the person you think you are. Just remain unaffected.
This complete aloofness, unconcern with mind and body is the best proof that at
the core of your being you are neither mind nor body. What happens to the body
and the mind may not be within your power to change, but you can always put an
end to your imagining yourself to be body and mind. Whatever happens, remind
yourself that only your body and mind are affected, not yourself. The more
earnest you are at remembering what needs to be remembered, the sooner will you
be aware of yourself as you are, for memory will become experience. Earnestness
reveals being. What is imagined and willed becomes actuality -- here lies the
danger as well as the way out.
Tell me, what steps have you taken to
separate your real self, that in you which is changeless, from your body and
mind?
Q: I am a medical man, I have studied a lot, I
imposed on myself a strict discipline in the way of exercises and periodical
fasts and I am a vegetarian.
M: But in the depth of your heart what is it
that you want?
Q: I want to find reality.
M: What price are you willing to pay for
reality? Any price?
Q: While in theory I am ready to pay any price,
in actual life again and again I am being prompted to behave in ways which come
in between me and reality. Desire carries me away.
M: Increase and widen your desires till nothing
but reality can fulfil them. It is not desire that is wrong, but its narrowness
and smallness. Desire is devotion. By all means be devoted to the real, the
infinite, the eternal heart of being. Transform desire into love. All you want
is to be happy. All your desires, whatever they may be, are expressions of your
longing for happiness. Basically, you wish yourself well.
Q: I know that I should not…
M: Wait! Who told you that you should not? What
is wrong with wanting to be happy?
Q: The self must go, l know.
M: But the self is there. Your desires are
there. Your longing to be happy is there. Why? Because you love yourself. By
all means love yourself -- wisely. What is wrong is to love yourself stupidly,
so as to make yourself suffer. Love yourself wisely. Both indulgence and
austerity have the same purpose in view -- to make you happy. Indulgence is the
stupid way, austerity is the wise way.
Q: What is austerity?
M: Once you have gone through an experience, not
to go through it again is austerity. To eschew the unnecessary is austerity.
Not to anticipate pleasure or pain Is austerity. Having things under control at
all times is austerity. Desire by itself is not wrong. It is life itself, the
urge to grow in knowledge and experience.
It is the choices you make that are
wrong. To imagine that some little thing -- food. sex, power, fame -- will make
you happy is to deceive yourself. Only something as vast and deep as your real
self can make you truly and lastingly happy.
Q: Since there is nothing
basically wrong in desire as an expression of love of self, how should desire
be managed?
M: Live your life intelligently, with the
interests of your deepest self always in mind. After all, what do you really
want? Not perfection; you are already perfect. What you seek is to express in
action what you are. For this you have a body and a mind. Take them in hand and
make them serve you.
Q: Who is the operator here? Who is to take the
body-mind in hand?
M: The purified mind is the faithful servant of
the self. It takes charge of the instruments, inner and outer, and makes them
serve their purpose.
Q: And what is their purpose?
M: The self is universal and its aims are
universal. There is nothing personal about the self. Live an orderly life, but
don't make it a goal by itself. It should be the starting point for high
adventure.
Q: Do you advise me to come to India
repeatedly?
M: If you are earnest, you don't need moving
about. You are yourself wherever you are and you create your own climate.
Locomotion and transportation will not give you salvation. You are not the body
and dragging the body from place to place will take you nowhere. Your mind is
free to roam the three worlds -- make full use of it.
Q: If I am free, why am I in a body?
M: you are not in the body, the body is in you!
The mind is in you. They happen to you. They are there because you find them
interesting. Your very nature has the infinite capacity to enjoy. It is full of
zest and affection. It sheds its radiance on all that comes within its focus of
awareness and nothing is excluded. It does not know evil nor ugliness, it
hopes, it trusts, it loves. You people do not know how much you miss by not
knowing your own true self. You are neither the body nor the mind, neither the
fuel nor the fire. They appear and disappear according to their own laws.
That which you are, your true self, you
love it, and whatever you do, you do for your own happiness. To find it, to
know it, to cherish it is your basic urge. Since time immemorial you loved
yourself, but never wisely. Use your body and mind wisely in the service of the
self, that is all. Be true to your own self, love your self absolutely. Do not
pretend that you love others as yourself. Unless you have realized them as one
with yourself, you cannot love them Don't pretend to be what you are not, don't
refuse to be what you are. Your love of others is the result of self-knowledge,
not its cause. Without self-realization, no virtue is genuine. When you know
beyond all doubting that the same life flows through all that is and you are
that life, you will love all naturally and spontaneously. When you realize the
depth and fullness of your love of yourself, you know that every living being
and the entire universe are included in your affection. But when you look at
anything as separate from you, you cannot love it for you are afraid of it.
Alienation causes fear and fear deepens alienation. It is a vicious circle.
Only self-realization can break it. Go for it resolutely.
