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Questioner:
Is the witness-consciousness permanent or not?
Maharaj:
It is not permanent. The knower rises and sets with the known. That in which
both the knower and the known arise and set, is beyond time. The words
permanent or eternal do not apply.
Q: In sleep there is neither the known, nor the
knower. What keeps the body sensitive and receptive?
M: Surely you cannot say the knower was absent.
The experience of things and thoughts was not there, that is all. But the
absence of experience too is experience. It is like entering a dark room and
saying: 'I see nothing'. A man blind from birth knows not what darkness means.
Similarly, only the knower knows that he does not know. Sleep is merely a lapse
in memory. Life goes on.
Q: And what is death?
M: It is the change in the living process of a
particular body. Integration ends and disintegration sets in.
Q: But what about the knower. With the
disappearance of the body, does the knower disappear?
M: Just as the knower of the body appears at
birth, so he disappears at death.
Q: And nothing remains?
M: Life remains. Consciousness needs a vehicle
and an instrument for its manifestation. When life produces another body,
another knower comes into being,
Q: Is there a causal link between the
successive bodyknowers, or body-minds?
M: Yes, there is something that may be called the
memory body, or causal body, a record of all that was thought, wanted and done.
It is like a cloud of images held together
Q: What is this sense of a separate existence?
M: It is a reflection in a separate body of the
one reality. In this reflection the unlimited and the limited are confused and
taken to be the same. To undo this confusion is the purpose of Yoga.
Q: Does not death undo this confusion?
M: In death only the body dies. Life does not,
consciousness does not, reality does not. And the life is never so alive as
after death.
Q: But does one get reborn?
M: What was born must die. Only the unborn is
deathless. Find what is it that never sleeps and never wakes, and whose pale
reflection is our sense of 'I'.
Q: How am I to go about this finding out?
M: How do you go about finding anything? By
keeping your mind and heart in it. Interest there must be and steady
remembrance. To remember what needs to be remembered is the secret of success.
You come to it through earnestness.
Q: Do you mean to say that mere wanting to find
out is enough? Surely, both qualifications and opportunities are needed.
M: These will come with earnestness. What is
supremely important is to be free from contradictions: the goal and the way
must not be on different levels; life and light must not quarrel; behaviour
must not betray belief. Call it honesty, integrity, wholeness; you must not go
back, undo, uproot, abandon the conquered ground. Tenacity of purpose and
honesty in pursuit will bring you to your goal.
Q: Tenacity and honesty are endowments, surely!
Not a trace of them I have.
M: All will come as you go on. Take the first
step first. All blessings come from within. Turn within. 'l am' you know. Be
with it all the time you can spare, until you revert to it spontaneously. There
is no simpler and easier way.
