From OrganicDesign Wiki
Questioner:
I am very much attached to my family and possessions. How can I conquer this
attachment?
Maharaj:
This attachment is born along with the sense of 'me' and 'mine'. Find the true
meaning of these words and you will be free of all bondage. You have a mind which
is spread in time. One after another all things happen to you and the memory
remains. There is nothing wrong in it. The problem arises only when the memory
of past pains and pleasures -- which are essential to all organic life -- remains
as a reflex, dominating behaviour. This reflex takes the shape of 'I' and uses
the body and the mind for its purposes, which are invariably in search for
pleasure or flight from pain. When you recognize the 'I' as it is, a bundle of
desires and fears, and the sense of 'mine', as embracing all things and people
needed for the purpose of avoiding pain and securing pleasure, you will see
that the 'I' and the 'mine' are false ideas, having no foundation in reality.
Created by the mind, they rule their creator as long as it takes them to be
true; when questioned, they dissolve.
The 'I' and 'mine', having no existence
in themselves, need a support which they find in the body. The body becomes
their point of reference. When you talk of 'my' husband and 'my' children, you
mean the body's husband and the body's children. Give up the idea of being the
body and face the question: Who am l? At once a process will be set in motion
which will bring back reality, or, rather, will take the mind to reality. Only,
you must not be afraid.
Q: What am I to be afraid of?
M: For reality to be, the ideas of 'me' and
'mine' must go. They will go if you let them. Then your normal natural state
reappears, in which you are neither the body nor the mind, neither the 'me’ nor
the 'mine', but in a different state of being altogether. It is pure awareness
of being, without being this or that, without any self-identification with
anything in particular, or in general. In that pure light of consciousness
there is nothing, not even the idea of nothing. There is only light.
Q: There are people whom I love. Must I give
them up?
M: You only let go your hold on them. The rest
is up to them. They may lose interest in you, or may not.
Q: How could they? Are they not my own?
M: They are your body's, not your own. Or,
better, there is none who is not your own.
Q: And what about my possessions?
M: When the 'mine' is no more, where are your
possessions?
Q: Please tell me, must I lose all by losing
the 'I'?
M: You may or you may not. It will be all the
same to you. Your loss will be somebody's gain. You will not mind.
Q: If I do not mind, I shall lose all!
M: Once you have nothing you have no problems.
Q: I am left with the problem of survival.
M: It is the body's problem and it will solve it
by eating, drinking and sleeping. There is enough for all, provided all share.
Q: Our society is based on grabbing, not on
sharing.
M: By sharing you will change it.
Q: I do not feel like sharing. Anyhow, I am
being taxed out of my possessions.
M: This is not the same as voluntary sharing.
Society will not change by compulsion. It requires a change of heart.
Understand that nothing is your own, that all belongs to all. Then only society
will change.
Q: One man's understanding will not take the
world far.
M: The world in which you live will be affected
deeply. it will be a healthy and happy world, which will radiate and
communicate, increase and spread. The power of a true heart is immense.
Q: Please tell us more.
M: Talking is not my hobby. Sometimes I talk,
sometimes I do not. My talking, or not talking, is a part of a given situation
and does not depend on me. When there is a situation in which I have to talk, I
hear myself talking. In some other situation I may not hear myself talking. It
is all the same to me. Whether I talk or not, the light and love of being what
I am are not affected, nor are they under my control. They are, and I know they
are. There is a glad awareness, but nobody who is glad. Of course, there is a
sense of identity, but it is the identity of a memory track, like the identity
of a sequence of pictures on the ever-present screen. Without the light and the
screen there can be no picture. To know the picture as the play of light on the
screen, gives freedom from the idea that the picture is real. All you have to
do is to understand that you love the self and the self loves you and that the
sense 'I am' is the link between you both, a token of identity in spite of
apparent diversity. Look at the 'I am' as a sign of love between the inner and
the outer, the real and the appearance. Just like in a dream all is different,
except the sense of 'I', which enables you to say 'I dreamt', so does the sense
of 'I am' enable you to say 'I am my real Self again’. I do nothing, nor is
anything done to me. I am what I am and nothing can affect me. I appear to
depend on everything, but in fact all depends on me.
Q: How can you say you do nothing? Are you not
talking to me?
M: I do not have the feeling that I am talking.
There is talking going on, that is all.
Q: I talk.
M: Do you? You hear yourself talking and you
say: I talk.
Q: Everybody says: 'I work, I come, I go'.
M: I have no objection to the conventions of
your language, but they distort and destroy reality. A more accurate way of
saying would have been: 'There is talking, working, coming, going'. For
anything to happen, the entire universe must coincide. It is wrong to believe
that anything in particular can cause an event. Every cause is universal. Your
very body would not exist without the entire universe contributing to its creation
and survival. I am fully aware that things happen as they happen because the
world is as it is. To affect the course of events I must bring a new factor
into the world and such factor can only be myself, the power of love and
understanding focussed in me.
When the body is born, all kinds of
things happen to it and you take part in them, because you take yourself to be
the body. You are like the man in the cinema house, laughing and crying with
the picture, though knowing fully well that he is all the time in his seat and
the picture is but the play of light. It is enough to shift attention from the
screen to oneself to break the spell. When the body dies, the kind of life you
live now -- succession of physical and mental events -- comes to an end. It can
end even now -- without waiting for the death of the body -- it is enough to
shift attention to the Self and keep it there. All happens as if there is a
mysterious power that creates and moves everything. Realize that you are not
the mover, only the observer, and you will be at peace.
Q: Is that power separate from me?
M: Of course not. But you must begin by being
the dispassionate observer. Then only will you realize your full being as the
universal lover and actor. As long as you are enmeshed in the tribulations of a
particular personality, you can see nothing beyond it. But ultimately you will
come to see that you are neither the particular nor the universal, you are
beyond both. As the tiny point of a pencil can draw innumerable pictures, so
does the dimensionless point of awareness draw the contents of the vast
universe. Find that point and be free.
Q: Out of what do I create this world?
M: Out of your own memories. As long as you are
ignorant of yourself as the creator, your world is limited and repetitive. Once
you go beyond your self-identification with your past, you are free to create a
new world of harmony and beauty. Or you just remain -- beyond being and
non-being.
Q: What will remain with me if I let go my
memories?
M: Nothing will remain.
Q: I am afraid.
M: You will be afraid until you experience
freedom and its blessings. Of course, some memories are needed to identify and
guide the body and such memories do remain, but there is no attachment left to
the body as such; it is no longer the ground for desire or fear. All this is
not very difficult to understand and practice, but you must be interested.
Without interest nothing can be done.
Having seen that you are a bundle of
memories held together by attachment, step out and look from the outside. You
may perceive for the first time something which is not memory. You cease to be
a Mr-so-and-so, busy about his own affairs. You are at last at peace. You
realize that nothing was ever wrong with the world -- you alone were wrong and
now it is all over. Never again will you be caught in the meshes of desire born
of ignorance.
