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Maharaj:
Where are you coming from? What have you come for?
Questioner:
I come from America and my friend is from the Republic of Ireland. I came about
six months ago and I was travelling from Ashram to Ashram. My friend came on
his own.
M: What have you seen?
Q: I have been at Sri Ramanashram and also I
have visited Rishikesh. Can I ask you what is your opinion of Sri Ramana
Maharshi?
M: We are both in the same ancient state. But
what do you know of Maharshi? You take yourself to be a name and a body, so all
you perceive are names and bodies.
Q: Were you to meet the Maharshi, what would
happen?
M: Probably we would feel quite happy. We may
even exchange a few words.
Q: But would he recognize you as a liberated
man?
M: Of course. As a man recognizes a man, so a jnani recognizes a
jnani. You cannot appreciate what you have not experienced. You are
what you think yourself to be, but you cannot think yourself to be what you
have not experienced.
Q: To become an engineer I must learn
engineering. To become God, what must I learn?
M: You must unlearn everything. God is the end
of all desire and knowledge.
Q: You mean to say that I become God merely by
giving up the desire to become God?
M: All desires must be given up, because by
desiring you take the shape of your desires. When no desires remain, you revert
to your natural state.
Q: How do I come to know that I have achieved
perfection?
M: You can not know perfection, you can know
only imperfection. For knowledge to be, there must be separation and
disharmony. You can know what you are not, but you can not know your real
being. You can be only what you are. The entire approach is through
understanding, which is in the seeing of the false as false. But to understand,
you must observe from outside.
Q: The Vedantic concept of Maya,
illusion, applies to the manifested. Therefore our knowledge of the manifested
is unreliable. But we should be able to trust our knowledge of the unmanifested.
M: There can be no knowledge of the
unmanifested. The potential is unknowable. Only the actual can be known.
Q: Why should the knower remain unknown?
M: The knower knows the known. Do you know the
knower? Who is the knower of the knower? You want to know the unmanifested. Can
you say you know the manifested?
Q: I know things and ideas and their relations.
It is the sum total of all my experiences.
M: All?
Q: Well, all actual experiences. I admit I
cannot know what did not happen.
M: If the manifested is the sum total of all
actual experiences, including their experiencers, how much of the total do you
know? A very small part indeed. And what is the little you know?
Q: Some sensory experiences as related to
myself.
M: Not even that. You only know that you react.
Who reacts and to what, you do not know. You know on contact that you exist --
'I am'. The 'I am this', 'I am that' are imaginary.
Q: I know the manifested because I participate
in it. I admit, my part in it is very small, yet it is as real as the totality
of it. And what is more important, I give it meaning. Without me the world is
dark and silent.
M: A firefly illumining the
world! You don't give meaning to the world, you find it. Dive deep into
yourself and find the source from where all meaning flows. Surely it is not the
superficial mind that can give meaning.
Q: What makes me limited and superficial?
M: The total is open and available, but you will
not take it. You are attached to the little person you think yourself to be.
Your desires are narrow, your ambitions -- petty. After all, without a centre of
perception where would be the manifested? Unperceived, the manifested is as
good as the unmanifested. And you are the perceiving point, the non-dimensional
source of all dimensions. Know yourself as the total.
Q: How can a point contain a universe?
M: There is enough space in a point for an
infinity of universes. There is no lack of capacity. Self-limitation is the
only problem. But you cannot run away from yourself. However far you go, you
come back to yourself and to the need of understanding this point, which is as
nothing and yet the source of everything.
Q: I came to India in search of a Yoga
teacher. I am still in search.
M: What kind of Yoga do you want to practice,
the Yoga of getting, or the Yoga of giving up?
Q: Don't they come to the
same in the end?
M: How can they? One enslaves, the other
liberates. The motive matters supremely. Freedom comes through renunciation.
All possession is bondage.
Q: What I have the strength and the courage to
hold on to, why should I give up? And if I have not the strength, how can I
give up? I do not understand this need of giving up. When I want something, why
should I not pursue it? Renunciation is for the weak.
M: If you do not have the wisdom and the
strength to give up, just look at your possessions. Your mere looking will burn
them up. If you can stand outside your mind, you will soon find that total
renunciation of possessions and desires is the most obviously reasonable thing
to do. You create the world and then worry about it. Becoming selfish makes you
weak. If you think you have the strength and courage to desire, it is because
you are young and inexperienced. Invariably the object of desire destroys the
means of acquiring it and then itself withers away. It is all for the best,
because it teaches you to shun desire like poison.
Q: How am I to practice desirelessness?
M: No need of practice. No need of any acts of
renunciation. Just turn your mind away, that is all. Desire is merely the
fixation of the mind on an idea. Get it out of its groove by denying it
attention.
Q: That is all?
M: Yes, that is all. Whatever may be the desire
or fear, don't dwell upon it. Try and see for yourself. Here and there you may
forget, it does not matter. Go back to your attempts till the brushing away of
every desire and fear, of every reaction becomes automatic.
Q: How can one live without emotions?
M: You can have all the emotions you want, but
beware of reactions, of induced emotions. Be entirely self-determined and ruled
from within, not from without. Merely giving up a thing to secure a better one
is not true relinquishment. Give it up because you see its valuelessness. As
you keep on giving up, you will find that you grow spontaneously in
intelligence and power and inexhaustible love and joy.
Q: Why so much insistence on relinquishing all
desires and fears? Are they not natural?
M: They are not. They are entirely mind-made.
You have to give up everything to know that you need nothing, not even your
body. Your needs are unreal and your efforts are meaningless. You imagine that
your possessions protect you. In reality they make you vulnerable. Realize
yourself as away from all that can be pointed at as 'this' or 'that'. You are
unreachable by any sensory experience or verbal construction. Turn away from
them. Refuse to impersonate.
Q: After I have heard you, what am I to do?
M: Only hearing will not help you much. You must
keep it in mind and ponder over it and try to understand the state of mind
which makes me say what I say. I speak from truth; stretch your hand and take
it. You are not what you think yourself to be, I assure you. The image you have
of yourself is made up from memories and is purely accidental.
Q: What I am is the result of my karma.
M: What you appear to be, you are not. Karma
is only a word you have learnt to repeat. You have never been, nor shall ever
be a person. Refuse to consider yourself as one. But as long as you do not even
doubt yourself to be a Mr. S0-and-so, there is little hope. When you refuse to
open your eyes, what can you be shown?
Q: I imagine karma to be a mysterious
power that urges me towards perfection.
M: That's what people told
you. You are already perfect, here and now. The perfectible is not you. You
imagine yourself to be what you are not -- stop it. It is the cessation that is
important, not what you are going to stop.
Q: Did not karma compel me to become
what I am?
M: Nothing compels. You are as you believe
yourself to be. Stop believing.
Q: Here you are sitting on your seat and
talking to me. What compels you is your karma.
M: Nothing compels me. I do what needs doing.
But you do so many unnecessary things. It is your refusal to examine that
creates karma. It is the indifference to your own suffering that
perpetuates it.
Q: Yes, it is true. What can
put an end to this indifference?
M: The urge must come from within as a wave of
detachment, or compassion.
Q: Could I meet this urge half way?
M: Of course. See your own condition, see the
condition of the world.
Q: We were told about karma and
reincarnation, evolution and Yoga, masters and disciples. What are we to
do with all this knowledge?
M: Leave it all behind you. Forget it. Go forth,
unburdened with ideas and beliefs. Abandon all verbal structures, all relative
truth, all tangible objectives. The Absolute can be reached by absolute
devotion only. Don't be half-hearted.
Q: I must begin with some absolute truth. Is
there any?
M: Yes, there is, the feeling: 'I am'. Begin
with that.
Q: Nothing else is true?
M: All else is neither true nor false. It seems
real when it appears, it disappears when it is denied. A transient thing is a
mystery.
Q: I thought the real is the mystery.
M: How can it be? The real is simple, open,
clear and kind, beautiful and joyous. It is completely free of contradictions.
It is ever new, ever fresh, endlessly creative. Being and non-being, life and
death, all distinctions merge in it.
Q: I can admit that all is false. But, does it
make my mind nonexistent?
M: The mind is what it thinks. To make it true,
think true.
Q: If the shape of things is mere appearance,
what are they in reality?
M: In reality there is only perception. The
perceiver and the perceived are conceptual, the fact of perceiving is actual.
Q: Where does the Absolute come in?
M: The Absolute is the birthplace of Perceiving.
It makes perception possible.
But too much analysis leads you nowhere.
There is in you the core of being which is beyond analysis, beyond the mind.
You can know it in action only. Express it in daily life and its light will
grow ever brighter.
The legitimate function of the mind is to
tell you what is not. But if you want positive knowledge, you must go beyond
the mind.
Q: In all the universe is there one single
thing of value?
M: Yes, the power of love.
