From OrganicDesign Wiki
Questioner:
I was lucky to have holy company all my life. Is it enough for
self-realization?
Maharaj:
It depends what you make of it.
Q: I was told that the liberating action of satsang
is automatic. Just like a river carries one to the estuary, so the subtle and
silent influence of good people will take me to reality.
M: It will take you to the river, but the
crossing is your own. Freedom cannot be gained nor kept without
will-to-freedom. You must strive for liberation; the least you can do is
uncover and remove the obstacles diligently. If you want peace you must strive
for it. You will not get peace just by keeping quiet.
Q: A child just grows. He does not make plans
for growth, nor has he a pattern; nor does he grow by fragments, a hand here a
leg there; he grows integrally and unconsciously.
M: Because he is free of imagination. You can
also grow like this, but you must not indulge in forecasts and plans, born of
memory and anticipation. It is one of the peculiarities of a jnani that he is not concerned with the
future. Your concern with future is due to fear of pain and desire for
pleasure, to the jnani all is bliss:
he is happy with whatever comes.
Q: Surely, there are many things that would
make even a jnani miserable
M: A jnani
may meet with difficulties, but they do not make him suffer. Bringing up a
child from birth to maturity may seem a hard task, but to a mother the memories
of hardships are a joy. There is nothing wrong with the world. What is wrong is
in the way you look at it. It is your own imagination that misleads you.
Without imagination there is no world. Your conviction that you are conscious
of a world is the world. The world you perceive is made of consciousness; what
you call matter is consciousness Itself. You are the space (akash) in
which it moves, the time in which it lasts, the love that gives it life. Cut
off imagination and attachment and what remains?
Q: The world remains. I remain.
M: Yes. But how different it is when you can see
it as it is, not through the screen of desire and fear.
Q: What for are all these distinctions --
reality and illusion, wisdom and ignorance, saint and sinner? Everyone is in
search of happiness, everyone strives desperately; everyone is a Yogi
and his life a school of wisdom. Each learns his own way the lessons he needs.
Society approves of some, disapproves of others; there are no rules that apply
everywhere and for all time.
M: In my world love is the only law. I do not
ask for love, I give it. Such is my nature.
Q: I see you living your life according to a
pattern. You run a meditation class in the morning, lecture and have
discussions regularly; twice daily there is worship (puja) and religious
singing (bhajan) in the evening. You seem to adhere to the routine
scrupulously.
M: The worship and the singing are as I found
them and I saw no reason to interfere. The general routine is according to the
wishes of the people with whom I happen to live or who come to listen. They are
working people, with many obligations and the timings are for their
convenience. Some repetitive routine is inevitable. Even animals and plants
have their time-tables.
Q: Yes, we see a regular sequence in all life.
Who maintains the order? Is there an inner ruler, who lays down laws and
enforces order?
M: Everything moves according to its nature.
Where is the need of a policeman? Every action creates a reaction, which
balances and neutralizes the action. Everything happens, but there is a
continuous cancelling out, and in the end it is as if nothing happened.
Q: Do not console me with final harmonies. The
accounts tally, but the loss is mine.
M: Wait and see. You may end up with a profit
good enough to justify the outlays.
Q: There is a long life behind me and I often
wonder whether its many events took place by accident, or there was a plan. Was
there a pattern laid down before I was born by which I had to live my life? If
yes, who made the plans and who enforced them? Could there be deviations and
mistakes? Some say destiny is immutable and every second of life is
predetermined; others say that pure accident decides everything.
M: You can have it as you like. You can
distinguish in your life a pattern or see merely a chain of accidents.
Explanations are meant to please the mind. They need not be true. Reality is
indefinable and indescribable.
Q: Sir, you are escaping my question! I want to
know how you look at it. Wherever we look we find structure of unbelievable
intelligence and beauty. How can I believe that the universe is formless and
chaotic? Your world, the world in which you live, may be formless, but it need
not be chaotic.
M: The objective universe has structure, is
orderly and beautiful. Nobody can deny it. But structure and pattern, imply
constraint and compulsion. My world is absolutely free; everything in it is
self-determined. Therefore I keep on saying that all happens by itself. There
is order in my world too, but it is not Imposed from outside. It comes
spontaneously and immediately, because of its timelessness. Perfection is not
in the future. It is now.
Q: Does your world affect
mine?
M: At one point only -- at the point of the now.
It gives it momentary being, a fleeting sense of reality. In full awareness the
contact is established. It needs effortless, un-self-conscious attention.
Q: Is not attention an attitude of mind?
M: Yes, when the mind is eager for reality, it
gives attention. There is nothing wrong with your world, it is your thinking
yourself to be separate from it that creates disorder. Selfishness is the
source of all evil.
Q: I am coming back to my question. Before I
was born, did my inner self decide the details of my life, or was it entirely
accidental and at the mercy of heredity and circumstances?
M: Those who claim to have selected their father
and mother and decided how they are going to live their next life may know for
themselves. I know for myself. I was never born.
Q: I see you sitting in front of me and
replying my questions.
M: You see the body only which, of course, was
born and will die.
Q: It is the life-story of thus body-mind that
I am interested in. Was it laid down by you or somebody else, or did it happen
accidentally?
M: There is a catch in your very question. I
make no distinction between the body and the universe. Each is the cause of the
other; each is the other, in truth. But I am out of it all. When I am telling
you that I was never born, why go on asking me what were my preparations for
the next birth? The moment you allow your imagination to spin, it at once spins
out a universe. It is not at all as you imagine and I am not bound by your
imaginings.
Q: It requires intelligence and energy to build
and maintain a living body. Where do they come from?
M: There is only imagination. The intelligence
and power are all used up in your imagination. It has absorbed you so
completely that you just cannot grasp how far from reality you have wandered.
No doubt imagination is richly creative. Universe within universe are built on
it. Yet they are all in space and time, past and future, which just do not
exist.
Q: I have read recently a report about a little
girl who was very cruelly handled in her early childhood. She was badly
mutilated and disfigured and grew up in an orphanage, completely estranged from
its surroundings. This little girl was quiet and obedient, but completely
indifferent. One of the nuns who were looking after the children, was convinced
that the girl was not mentally retarded, but merely withdrawn, irresponsive. A
psychoanalyst was asked to take up the case and for full two years he would see
the child once a week and try to break the wall of isolation. She was docile
and well-behaved, but would give no attention to her doctor. He brought her a
toy house, with rooms and movable furniture and dolls representing father,
mother and their children. It brought out a response, the girl got interested.
One day the old hurts revived and came to the surface. Gradually she recovered,
a number of operations brought back her face and body to normal and she grew
into an efficient and attractive young woman. It took the doctor more than five
years, but the work was done. He was a real Guru! He did not put down
conditions nor talk about readiness and eligibility. Without faith, without
hope, out of love only he tried and tried again.
M: Yes, that is the nature of a Guru. He will
never give up. But, to succeed, he must not be met with too much resistance.
Doubt and disobedience necessarily delay. Given confidence and pliability, he
can bring about a radical change in the disciple speedily. Deep insight in the
Guru and earnestness in the disciple, both are needed. Whatever was her
condition, the girl in your story suffered for lack of earnestness in people.
The most difficult are the intellectuals. They talk a lot, but are not serious.
What you call realization is a natural
thing. When you are ready, your Guru will be waiting. Sadhana is
effortless. When the relationship with your teacher is right you grow. Above
all, trust him. He cannot mislead you.
Q: Even when he asks me to do something patently
wrong?
M: Do it. A Sanyasi had been asked by his
Guru to marry. He obeyed and suffered bitterly. But his four children were all
saints and seers, the greatest in Maharashtra. Be happy with whatever comes
from your Guru and you will grow to perfection without striving.
Q: Sir, have you any wants or wishes. Can I do
anything for you?
M: What can you give me that I do not have?
Material things are needed for contentment. But I am contented with myself.
What else do I need?
Q: Surely, when you are hungry you need food
and when sick you need medicine.
M: Hunger brings the food and illness brings the
medicine. It is all nature's work.
Q: lf I bring something I believe you need,
will you accept it?
M: The love that made you offer will make me
accept.
Q: If somebody offers to build you a beautiful
Ashram?
M: Let him, by all means. Let him spend a
fortune, employ hundreds, feed thousands.
Q: Is it not a desire?
M: Not at all. I am only asking him to do it
properly, not stingily, half-heartedly. He is fulfilling his own desire, not
mine. Let him do it well and be famous among men and gods.
Q: But do you want it?
M: I do not want it.
Q: Will you accept it?
M: I don't need it.
Q: Will you stay in it?
M: If I am compelled.
Q: What can compel you?
M: Love of those who are in search of light.
Q: Yes, I see your point. Now, how am I to go
into samadhi?
M: If you are in the right state, whatever you
see will put you into samadhi. After all, samadhi is nothing
unusual. When the mind is intensely interested, it becomes one with the object
of interest -- the seer and the seen become one in seeing, the hearer and the
heard become one in hearing, the lover and the loved become one in loving.
Every experience can be the ground for samadhi.
Q: Are you always in a state of samadhi?
M: Of course not Samadhi is a state of
mind, after all. I am beyond all experience, even of samadhi. I am the
great devourer and destroyer: whatever I touch dissolves into void (akash).
Q: I need samadhis for self-realization.
M: You have all the
self-realization you need, but you do not trust it. Have courage, trust
yourself, go, talk, act; give it a chance to prove itself. With some,
realization comes imperceptibly, but somehow they need convincing. They have
changed, but they do not notice it. Such non-spectacular cases are often the
most reliable.
Q: Can one believe himself to be realized and
be mistaken?
M: Of course. The very idea 'I am self-realized'
is a mistake. There is no 'I am this'. 'I am that' in the Natural State.
