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Questioner:
We have been staying at the Satya Sai Baba Ashram for some time. We have also
spent two months at Sri Ramanashram at Tiruvannamalai. Now we are on our way
back to the United States.
Maharaj:
Did India cause any change in you?
Q: We feel we have shed our burden. Sri Satya
Sai Baba told us to leave everything to him and just live from day to day as
righteously as possible. 'Be good and leave the rest to me', he used to tell
us.
M: What were you doing at the Sri Ramanashram?
Q: We were going on with the mantra
given to us by the Guru. We also did some meditation. There was not much of
thinking or study; we were just trying to keep quiet. We are on the bhakti
path and rather poor in philosophy. We have not much to think about -- just
trust our Guru and live our lives.
M: Most of the bhaktas trust their Guru
only as long as all is well with them. When troubles come, they feel let down
and go out in search of another Guru.
Q: Yes, we were warned against this danger. We
are trying to take the hard along with the soft. The feeling: 'All is Grace'
must be very strong. A sadhu was walking eastwards, from where a strong
wind started blowing. The sadhu just turned round and walked west. We
hope to live just like that -- adjusting ourselves to circumstances as sent us
by our Guru.
M: There is only life. There is nobody who lives
a life.
Q: That we understand, yet constantly we make
attempts to live our lives instead of just living. Making plans for the future
seems to be an inveterate habit with us.
M: Whether you plan or don't, life goes on. But
in life itself a little whorl arises in the mind, which indulges in fantasies
and imagines itself dominating and controlling life. Life itself is desireless.
But the false self wants to continue -- pleasantly. Therefore it is always
engaged in ensuring one's continuity. Life is unafraid and free. As long as you
have the idea of influencing events, liberation is not for you: The very notion
of doership, of being a cause, is bondage.
Q: How can we overcome the duality of the doer
and the done?
M: Contemplate life as infinite, undivided,
ever present, ever active, until you realize yourself as one with it. It is not
even very difficult, for you will be returning only to your own natural
condition.
Once you realize that all comes from
within, that the world in which you live has not been projected onto you but by
you, your fear comes to an end. Without this realization you identify yourself
with the externals, like the body, mind, society, nation, humanity, even God or
the Absolute. But these are all escapes from fear. It is only when you fully
accept your responsibility for the little world in which you live and watch the
process of its creation, preservation and destruction, that you may be free
from your imaginary bondage.
Q: Why should I imagine myself so wretched?
M: You do it by habit only. Change your ways of
feeling and thinking, take stock of them and examine them closely. You are in
bondage by inadvertence. Attention liberates. You are taking so many things for
granted. Begin to question. The most obvious things are the most doubtful. Ask
yourself such questions as: ‘Was I really born?' 'Am I really so-and-so?’ 'How
do I know that I exist? 'Who are my parents?’ 'Have they created me, or have I
created them?' 'Must I believe all I am told about myself?' ‘Who am I,
anyhow?'. You have put so much energy into building a prison for yourself. Now
spend as much on demolishing it. In fact, demolition is easy, for the false
dissolves when it is discovered. All hangs on the idea 'I am'. Examine it very
thoroughly. It lies at the root of every trouble. It is a sort of skin that
separates you from the reality. The real is both within and without the skin,
but the skin itself is not real. This 'I am' idea was not born with you. You
could have lived very well without it. It came later due to your
self-identification with the body. It created an illusion of separation where
there was none. It made you a stranger in your own world and made the world
alien and inimical. Without the sense of 'I am' life goes on. There are moments
when we are without the sense of 'I am'. at peace and happy. With the return of
the 'I am' trouble starts.
Q: How is one to be free from the 'I'-sense?
M: You must deal with the 'I'-sense if you want
to be free of it. Watch it in operation and at peace, how it starts and when it
ceases, what it wants and how it gets it, till you see clearly and understand
fully. After all, all the Yogas, whatever their source and character,
have only one aim: to save you from the calamity of separate existence, of
being a meaningless dot in a vast and beautiful picture.
You suffer because you have alienated
yourself from reality and now you seek an escape from this alienation. You
cannot escape from your own obsessions. You can only cease nursing them.
It is because the ‘I am' is false that it
wants to continue. Reality need not continue -- knowing itself indestructible,
it is indifferent to the destruction of forms and expressions. To strengthen,
and stabilize the 'I am' we do all sorts of things -- all in vain, for the 'I
am' is being rebuilt from moment to moment. It is unceasing work and the only radical
solution is to dissolve the separative sense of 'I am such-and-such person'
once and for good. Being remains, but not self-being.
Q: I have definite spiritual ambitions. Must I
not work for their fulfilment?
M: No ambition is spiritual. All ambitions are
for the sake of the 'I am'. If you want to make real progress you must give up
all idea of personal attainment. The ambitions of the so-called Yogis
are preposterous. A man's desire for a woman is innocence itself compared to
the lusting for an everlasting personal bliss. The mind is a cheat. The more
pious it seems, the worse the betrayal.
Q: People come to you very often with their
worldly troubles and ask for help. How do you know what to tell them?
M: I just tell them what comes to my mind at the
moment. I have no standardized procedure in dealing with people.
Q: You are sure of yourself. But when people
come to me for advice, how am I to be sure that my advice is right?
M: Watch in what state you are, from what level
you talk. If you talk from the mind, you may be wrong. If you talk from full
insight into the situation, with your own mental habits in abeyance your advice
may be a true response. The main point is to be fully aware that neither you
nor the man in front of you are mere bodies; If your awareness is clear and
full. a mistake is less probable.
