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Questioner:
I have just arrived from Sri Ramanashram. I have spent seven months there.
Maharaj:
What practice were you following at the Ashram?
Q: As far as I could, I concentrated on the
'Who am l'?
M: Which way were you doing it? Verbally?
Q: In my free moments during the course of the
day. Sometimes I was murmuring to myself 'Who am l?' 'I am, but who am l?' Or,
I did it mentally. Occasionally I would have some nice feeling, or get into
moods of quiet happiness. On the whole I was trying to be quiet and receptive,
rather than labouring for experiences.
M: What were you actually experiencing when you
were in the right mood?
Q: A sense of inner stillness, peace and
silence.
M: Did you notice yourself becoming unconscious?
Q: Yes, occasionally and for a very short time.
Otherwise I was just quiet, inwardly and outwardly.
M: What kind of quiet was it?
Something akin to deep sleep, yet conscious all the same. A sort of wakeful
sleep?
Q: Yes. Alertly asleep. (jagrit-sushupti).
M: The main thing is to be free of negative
emotions -- desire, fear etc., the 'six enemies' of the mind. Once the mind is
free of them, the rest will come easily. Just as cloth kept in soap water will
become clean, so will the mind get purified in the stream of pure feeling.
When you sit quiet and watch yourself,
all kinds of things may come to the surface. Do nothing about them, don't react
to them; as they have come so will they go, by themselves. All that matters is
mindfulness, total awareness of oneself or rather, of one's mind.
Q: By 'oneself' do you mean the daily self?
M: Yes, the person, which alone is objectively
observable. The observer is beyond observation. What is observable is not the
real self.
Q: I can always observe the observer, in
endless recession.
M: You can observe the observation, but not the
observer. You know you are the ultimate observer by direct insight, not by a
logical process based on observation. You are what you are, but you know what
you are not. The self is known as being, the not-self is known as transient.
But in reality all is in the mind. The observed, observation and observer are
mental constructs. The self alone is.
Q: Why does the mind create all these
divisions?
M: To divide and particularize is in the mind's
very nature. There is no harm in dividing. But separation goes against fact.
Things and people are different, but they are not separate. Nature is one,
reality is one. There are opposites, but no opposition.
Q: I find that by nature I am very active. Here
I am advised to avoid activity. The more I try to remain inactive, the greater
the urge to do something. This makes me not only active outwardly, but also
struggling inwardly to be what by nature I am not. Is there a remedy against
longing for work?
M: There is a difference between work and mere
activity. All nature works. Work is nature, nature is work. On the other hand,
activity is based on desire and fear, on longing to possess and enjoy, on fear
of pain and annihilation. Work is by the whole for the whole, activity is by
oneself for oneself.
Q: Is there a remedy against activity?
M: Watch it, and it shall cease. Use every
opportunity to remind yourself that you are in bondage, that whatever happens
to you is due to the fact of your bodily existence. Desire, fear, trouble, joy,
they cannot appear unless you are there to appear to. Yet, whatever happens,
points to your existence as a perceiving centre. Disregard the pointers and be
aware of what they are pointing to. It is quite simple, but it needs be done.
What matters is the persistence with which you keep on returning to yourself.
Q: I do get into peculiar states of deep
absorption into myself, but unpredictably and momentarily. I do not feel myself
to be in control of such states.
M: The body is a material thing and needs time
to change. The mind is but a set of mental habits, of ways of thinking and
feeling, and to change they must be brought to the surface and examined. This
also takes time. Just resolve and persevere, the rest will take care of itself.
Q: I seem to have a clear idea of what needs be
done, but I find myself getting tired and depressed and seeking human company
and thus wasting time that should be given to solitude and meditation.
M: Do what you feel like doing. Don't bully
yourself. Violence will make you hard and rigid. Do not fight with what you
take to be obstacles on your way. Just be interested in them, watch them,
observe, enquire. Let anything happen -- good or bad. But don't let yourself be
submerged by what happens.
Q: What is the purpose in reminding oneself all
the time that one is the watcher?
M: The mind must learn that beyond the moving
mind there is the background of awareness, which does not change. The mind must
come to know the true self and respect it and cease covering it up, like the
moon which obscures the sun during solar eclipse. Just realize that nothing
observable, or experienceable is you, or binds you. Take no notice of what is
not yourself.
Q: To do what you tell me I must be ceaselessly
aware.
M: To be aware is to be awake. Unaware means
asleep. You are aware anyhow, you need not try to be. What you need is to be
aware of being aware. Be aware deliberately and consciously, broaden and deepen
the field of awareness. You are always conscious of the mind, but you are not
aware of yourself as being conscious.
Q: As I can make out, you give distinct
meanings to the words 'mind', 'consciousness', and 'awareness'.
M: Look at it this way. The mind produces
thoughts ceaselessly, even when you do not look at them. When you know what is
going on in your mind, you call it consciousness. This is your waking state --
your consciousness shifts from sensation to sensation, from perception to
perception, from idea to idea, in endless succession. Then comes awareness, the
direct insight into the whole of consciousness, the totality of the mind. The
mind is like a river, flowing ceaselessly in the bed of the body; you identify
yourself for a moment with some particular ripple and call it: 'my thought'.
All you are conscious of is your mind; awareness is the cognisance of
consciousness as a whole.
Q: Everybody is conscious, but not everybody is
aware.
M: Don't say: 'everybody is conscious'. Say:
'there is consciousness', in which everything appears and disappears. Our minds
are just waves on the ocean of consciousness. As waves they come and go. As
ocean they are infinite and eternal. Know yourself as the ocean of being, the
womb of all existence. These are all metaphors of course; the reality is beyond
description. You can know it only by being it.
Q: Is the search for it worth the trouble?
M: Without it all is trouble. If you want to
live sanely, creatively and happily and have infinite riches to share, search
for what you are.
While the mind is centred in the body and
consciousness is centred in the mind, awareness is free. The body has its urges
and mind its pains and pleasures. Awareness is unattached and unshaken. It is
lucid, silent, peaceful, alert and unafraid, without desire and fear. Meditate
on it as your true being and try to be it in your daily life, and you shall
realize it in its fullness.
Mind is interested in what happens, while
awareness is interested in the mind itself. The child is after the toy, but the
mother watches the child, not the toy.
By looking tirelessly, I became quite
empty and with that emptiness all came back to me except the mind. I find I
have lost the mind irretrievably.
Q: As you talk to us just now, are you
unconscious?
M: I am neither conscious nor unconscious, I am
beyond the mind and its various states and conditions. Distinctions are created
by the mind and apply to the mind only. I am pure Consciousness itself,
unbroken awareness of all that is. I am in a more real state than yours. I am
undistracted by the distinctions and separations which constitute a person. As
long as the body lasts, it has its needs like any other, but my mental process
has come to an end.
Q: You behave like a person who thinks.
M: Why not? But my thinking, like my digestion,
is unconscious and purposeful.
Q: If your thinking is unconscious, how do you
know that it is right?
M: There is no desire, nor fear to thwart it.
What can make it wrong? Once I know myself and what I stand for, I do not need
to check on myself all the time. When you know that your watch shows correct
time, you do not hesitate each time you consult it.
Q: At this very moment who talks, if not the
mind?
M: That which hears the question, answers it.
Q: But who is it?
M: Not who, but what. I'm not a person in your
sense of the word, though I may appear a person to you. I am that infinite
ocean of consciousness in which all happens. I am also beyond all existence and
cognition, pure bliss of being. There is nothing I feel separate from, hence I
am all. No thing is me, so I am nothing.
The same power that makes the fire burn
and the water flow, the seeds sprout and the trees grow, makes me answer your
questions. There is nothing personal about me, though the language and the
style may appear personal. A person is a set pattern of desires and thoughts
and resulting actions; there is no such pattern in my case. There is nothing I
desire or fear -- how can there be a pattern?
Q: Surely, you will die.
M: Life will escape, the body will die, but it
will not affect me in the least. Beyond space and time I am, uncaused,
uncausing, yet the very matrix of existence.
Q: May I be permitted to ask how did you arrive
at your present condition?
M: My teacher told me to hold on to the sense 'I
am' tenaciously and not to swerve from it even for a moment. I did my best to
follow his advice and in a comparatively short time I realized within myself
the truth of his teaching. All I did was to remember his teaching, his face,
his words constantly. This brought an end to the mind; in the stillness of the
mind I saw myself as I am -- unbound.
Q: Was your realization sudden or gradual.
M: Neither. One is what one is timelessly. It is
the mind that realizes as and when it get cleared of desires and fears.
Q: Even the desire for realization?
M: The desire to put an end to all desires is a
most peculiar desire, just like the fear of being afraid is a most peculiar
fear. One stops you from grabbing and the other from running. You may use the
same words, but the states are not the same. The man who seeks realization is
not addicted to desires; he is a seeker who goes against desire, not with it. A
general longing for liberation is only the beginning; to find the proper means
and use them is the next step. The seeker has only one goal in view: to find
his own true being. Of all desires it is the most ambitious, for nothing and
nobody can satisfy it; the seeker and the sought are one and the search alone
matters.
Q: The search will come to an end. The seeker
will remain.
M: No, the seeker will dissolve, the search will
remain. The search is the ultimate and timeless reality.
Q: Search means lacking, wanting,
incompleteness and imperfection.
M: No, it means refusal and rejection of the
incomplete and the imperfect. The search for reality is itself the movement of
reality. In a way all search is for the real bliss, or the bliss of the real.
But here we mean by search the search for oneself as the root of being
conscious, as the light beyond the mind. This search will never end, while the
restless craving for all else must end, for real progress to take place.
One has to understand that the search for
reality, or God, or Guru and the search for the self are the same; when one is
found, all are found. When 'I am' and 'God is' become in your mind
indistinguishable, then something will happen and you will know without a trace
of doubt that God is because you are, you are because God is. The two are one.
Q: Since all is preordained,
is our self-realization also preordained? Or are we free there at least?
M: Destiny refers only to name and shape. Since
you are neither body nor mind, destiny has no control over you. You are
completely free. The cup is conditioned by its shape, material, use and so on.
But the space within the cup is free. It happens to be in the cup only when
viewed in connection with the cup. Otherwise it is just space. As long as there
is a body, you appear to be embodied. Without the body you are not disembodied
-- you Just are.
Even destiny is but an idea. Words can be
put together in so many ways! Statements can differ, but do they make any
change in the actual? There are so many theories devised for explaining things
-- all are plausible, none is true. When you drive a car, you are subjected to
the laws of mechanics and chemistry: step out of the car and you are under the
laws of physiology and biochemistry.
Q: What is meditation and what are its uses?
M: As long as you are a beginner certain
formalized meditations, or prayers may be good for you. But for a seeker for
reality there is only one meditation -- the rigorous refusal to harbour
thoughts. To be free from thoughts is itself meditation.
Q: How is it done?
M: You begin by letting thoughts flow and
watching them. The very observation slows down the mind till it stops
altogether. Once the mind is quiet, keep it quiet. Don't get bored with peace,
be in it, go deeper into it.
Q: I heard of holding on to one thought in
order to keep other thoughts away. But how to keep all thoughts away? The very
idea is also a thought.
M: Experiment anew, don't go by past experience.
Watch your thoughts and watch yourself watching the thoughts. The state of
freedom from all thoughts will happen suddenly and by the bliss of it you shall
recognize it.
[picture]
Q: Are you not at all concerned about the state
of the world? Look at the horrors in East Pakistan [1971, now Bangla Desh]. Do
they not touch you at all?
M: I am reading newspapers, I know what is going
on! But my reaction is not like yours. You are looking for a cure, while I am
concerned with prevention. As long as there are causes, there must also be
results. As long as people are bent on dividing and separating, as long as they
are selfish and aggressive, such things will happen. If you want peace and
harmony in the world, you must have peace and harmony in your hearts and minds.
Such change cannot be imposed; it must come from within. Those who abhor war
must get war out of their system. Without peaceful people how can you have
peace in the world? As long as people are as they are, the world must be as it
is. I am doing my part in trying to help people to know themselves as the only
cause of their own misery. In that sense I am a useful man. But what I am in
myself, what is my normal state cannot be expressed in terms of social
consciousness and usefulness.
I may talk about it, use metaphors or
parables, but I am acutely aware that it is just not so. Not that it cannot be
experienced. It is experiencing itself! But it cannot be described in the terms
of a mind that must separate and oppose in order to know.
The world is like a sheet of paper on
which something is typed. The reading and the meaning will vary with the
reader, but the paper is the common factor, always present, rarely perceived.
When the ribbon is removed, typing leaves no trace on the paper. So is my mind
-- the impressions keep on coming, but no trace is left.
Q: Why do you sit here talking to people? What
is your real motive?
M: No motive. You say I must have a motive. I am
not sitting here, nor talking: no need to search for motives. Don't confuse me
with the body. I have no work to do, no duties to perform. That part of me
which you may call God will look after the world. This world of yours, that so
much needs looking after, lives and moves in your mind. Delve into it, you will
find your answers there and there only. Where else do you expect them to come
from? Outside your consciousness does anything exist?
Q: It may exist without my ever knowing it.
M: What kind of existence would it be? Can being
be divorced from knowing? All being, like all knowing, relates to you. A thing
is because you know it to be either in your experience or in your being. Your
body and your mind exist as long as you believe so. Cease to think that they
are yours and they will just dissolve. By all means let your body and mind
function, but do not let them limit you. If you notice imperfections, just keep
on noticing: your very giving attention to them will set your heart and mind
and body right.
Q: Can I cure myself of a serious illness by
merely taking cognisance of it?
M: Take cognisance of the whole of it, not only
of the outer symptoms. All illness begins in the mind. Take care of the mind
first, by tracing and eliminating all wrong ideas and emotions. Then live and
work disregarding illness and think no more of it. With the removal of causes
the effect is bound to depart.
Man becomes what he believes himself to
be. Abandon all ideas about yourself and you will find yourself to be the pure
witness, beyond all that can happen to the body or the mind.
Q: If I become anything I think myself to be,
and I start thinking that I am the Supreme Reality, will not my Supreme Reality
remain a mere idea?
M: First reach that state and then ask the
question.
