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Questioner:
My friend is a German and I was born in England from French parents. I am in
India since over a year wandering from Ashram to Ashram.
Maharaj:
Any spiritual practices (sadhanas)?
Q: Studies and meditation.
M: What did you meditate on?
Q: On what I read.
M: Good.
Q: What are you doing, sir?
M: Sitting.
Q: And what else?
M: Talking.
Q: What are you talking about?
M: Do you want a lecture? Better ask something
that really touches you, so that you feel strongly about it. Unless you are
emotionally involved, you may argue with me, but there will be no real
understanding between us. If you say: 'nothing worries me, I have no problems',
it is all right with me, we can keep quiet. But if something really touches
you, then there is purpose in talking.
Shall I ask you? What is the purpose of
your moving from place to place?
Q: To meet people, to try to understand them.
M: What people are you trying to understand?
What exactly are you after?
Q: Integration.
M: If you want integration, you must know whom
you want to integrate.
Q: By meeting people and watching them, one
comes to know oneself also. It goes together.
M: It does not necessarily go together.
Q: One improves the other.
M: It does not work that way. The mirror
reflects the image, but the image does not improve the mirror. You are neither
the mirror nor the image in the mirror. Having perfected the mirror so that it
reflects correctly, truly, you can turn the mirror round and see in it a true
reflection of yourself -- true as far as the mirror can reflect. But the
reflection is not yourself -- you are the seer of the reflection. Do understand
it clearly -- whatever you may perceive you are not what you perceive.
Q: I am the mirror and the world is the image?
M: You can see both the image and the mirror.
You are neither. Who are you? Don't go by formulas. The answer is not in words.
The nearest you can say in words is: I am what makes perception possible, the
life beyond the experiencer and his experience.
Now, Can you separate yourself both from
the mirror and the image in the mirror and stand completely alone, all by
yourself?
Q: No, I cannot.
M: How do you know that you cannot? There are so
many things you are doing without knowing how to do it. You digest, you
circulate your blood and lymph, you move your muscles -- all without knowing
how. In the same way, you perceive, you feel, you think without knowing the why
and how of it. Similarly you are yourself without knowing it. There is nothing
wrong with you as the Self. It is what it is to perfection. It is the mirror
that is not clear and true and, therefore, gives you false images. You need not
correct yourself -- only set right your idea of yourself. Learn to separate
yourself from the image and the mirror, keep on remembering: I am neither the
mind nor its ideas: do it patiently and with convictions and you will surely
come to the direct vision of yourself as the source of being -- knowing --
loving, eternal, all-embracing all-pervading. You are the infinite focussed in
a body. Now you see the body only. Try earnestly and you will come to see the
infinite only.
Q: The experience of reality, when it Comes,
does it last?
M: All experience is necessarily transient. But
the ground of all experience is immovable. Nothing that may be called an event
will last. But some events purify the mind and some stain it. Moments of deep
insight and all-embracing love purify the mind, while desires and fears, envies
and anger, blind beliefs and intellectual arrogance pollute and dull the
psyche.
Q: Is self-realization so important?
M: Without it you will be consumed by desires
and fears, repeating themselves meaninglessly in endless suffering. Most of the
people do not know that there can be an end to pain. But once they have heard
the good news, obviously going beyond all strife and struggle is the most
urgent task that can be. You know that you can be free and now it is up to you.
Either you remain forever hungry and thirsty, longing, searching, grabbing,
holding, ever losing and sorrowing, or go out whole-heartedly in search of the
state of timeless perfection to which nothing can be added, from which nothing
-- taken away. In it all desires and fears are absent, not because they were
given up, but because they have lost their meaning.
Q: So far I have been following you. Now, what
am I expected to do?
M: There is nothing to do. Just be. Do
nothing. Be. No climbing mountains and sitting in caves. I do not even
say: 'be yourself', since you do not know yourself. Just be. Having seen
that you are neither the 'outer' world of perceivables, nor the 'inner' world
of thinkables, that you are neither body nor mind -- just be.
Q: Surely, there are degrees of realization.
M: There are no steps to self-realization. There
is nothing gradual about it. It happens suddenly and is irreversible. You
rotate into a new dimension, seen from which the previous ones are mere
abstractions. Just like on sunrise you see things as they are, so on self-realization
you see everything as it is. The world of illusions is left behind.
Q: In the state of realization do things
change? They become colourful and full of meaning?
M: The experience is quite right, but it is not
the experience of reality (sadanubhav), but of harmony (satvanubhav)
of the universe.
Q: Nevertheless, there is progress.
M: There can be progress only in the preparation
(sadhana). Realization is sudden. The fruit ripens slowly, but falls
suddenly and without return.
Q: I am physically and mentally at peace. What
more do I need?
M: Yours may not be the ultimate state. You will
recognize that you have returned to your natural state by a complete absence of
all desire and fear. After all, at the root of all desire and fear is the
feeling of not being what you are. Just as a dislocated joint pains only as
long as it is out of shape, and is forgotten as soon as it is set right, so is
all self-concern a symptom of mental distortion which disappears as soon as one
is in the normal state.
Q: Yes, but what is the sadhana for
achieving the natural state?
M: Hold on to the sense 'I
am' to the exclusion of everything else. When thus the mind becomes completely
silent, it shines with a new light and vibrates with new knowledge. It all
comes spontaneously, you need only hold on to the 'I am'. Just like emerging
from sleep or a state of rapture you feel rested and yet you cannot explain why
and how you come to feel so well, in the same way on realization you feel
complete, fulfilled, free from the pleasure-pain complex, and yet not always
able to explain what happened, why and how. You can put it only in negative
terms: 'Nothing is wrong with me any longer.' It is only by comparison with the
past that you know that you are out of it. Otherwise -- you are just yourself.
Don't try to convey it to others. If you can, it is not the real thing. Be
silent and watch it expressing itself in action.
Q: If you could tell me what I shall become, it
may help me to watch over my development.
M: How can anybody tell you what you shall
become when there is no becoming? You merely discover what you are. All
moulding oneself to a pattern is a grievous waste of time. Think neither of the
past nor of the future, just be.
Q: How can I just be? Changes are inevitable.
M: Changes are inevitable in the changeful, but
you are not subject to them. You are the changeless background, against which
changes are perceived.
Q: Everything changes, the background also
changes. There is no need of a changeless background to notice changes. The self
is momentary -- it is merely the point where the past meets the future.
M: Of course the self based on memory is
momentary. But such self demands unbroken continuity behind it. You know from
experience that there are gaps when your self is forgotten. What brings it back
to life? What wakes you up in the morning? There must be some constant factor
bridging the gaps in consciousness. If you watch carefully you will find that
even your daily consciousness is in flashes, with gaps intervening all the
time. What is in the gaps? What can there be but your real being, that is
timeless; mind and mindlessness are one to it.
Q: Is there any particular place you would
advise me to go to for spiritual attainment?
M: The only proper place is within. The outer
world neither can help nor hinder. No system, no pattern of action will take
you to your goal. Give up all working for a future, concentrate totally on the now,
be concerned only with your response to every movement of life as it happens.
Q: What is the cause of the urge to roam about?
M: There is no cause. You merely dream that you
roam about. In a few years your stay in India will appear as a dream to you.
You will dream some other dream at that time. Do realize that it is not you who
moves from dream to dream, but the dreams flow before you and you are the
immutable witness. No happening affects your real being -- this is the absolute
truth.
Q: Cannot I move about physically and keep
steady inwardly?
M: You can, but what purpose does it serve? If
you are earnest, you will find that in the end you will get fed up with roaming
and regret the waste of energy and time. To find your self you need not take a
single step.
Q: Is there any difference between the
experience of the Self (atman) and of the Absolute (brahman)?
M: There can be no experience
of the Absolute as it is beyond all experience. On the other hand, the self is
the experiencing factor in every experience and thus, in a way, validates the
multiplicity of experiences. The world may be full of things of great value,
but if there is nobody to buy them, they have no price. The Absolute contains
everything experienceable, but without the experience they are as nothing. That
which makes the experience possible is the Absolute. That which makes it actual
is the Self.
Q: Don't we reach the Absolute through a
gradation of experiences? Beginning with the grossest, we end with the most
sublime.
M: There can be no experience without desire for
it. There can be gradation between desires, but between the most sublime desire
and the freedom from all desire there is an abyss which must be crossed. The
unreal may look real, but it is transient. The real is not afraid of time.
Q: Is not the unreal the expression of the
real?
M: How can it be? It is like saying that truth
expresses itself in dreams. To the real the unreal is not. It appears to be
real only because you believe in it. Doubt it, and it ceases. When you are in
love with somebody, you give it reality -- you imagine your love to be
all-powerful and everlasting. When it comes to an end, you say: 'I thought it
was real, but it wasn't'. Transiency is the best proof of unreality. What is
limited in time and space, and applicable to one person only, is not real. The
real is for all and forever.
Above everything else you cherish
yourself. You would accept nothing in exchange for your existence. The desire
to be is the strongest of all desires and will go only on the
realization of your true nature.
Q: Even in the unreal there
is a touch of reality.
M: Yes, the reality you impart to it by taking
it to be real. Having convinced yourself, you are bound by your conviction.
When the sun shines, colours appear. When it sets, they disappear. Where are
the colours without the light?
Q: This is thinking in terms of duality.
M: All thinking is in duality. In identity no
thought survives.
