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Questioner:
As a child fairly often I experienced states of complete happiness, verging on
ecstasy: later, they ceased, but since I came to India they reappeared,
particularly after I met you. Yet these states, however wonderful, are not
lasting. They come and go and there is no knowing when they will come back.
Maharaj:
How can anything be steady in a mind which itself is not steady?
Q: How can I make my mind steady?
M: How can an unsteady mind make itself steady?
Of course it cannot. It is the nature of the mind to roam about. All you can do
is to shift the focus of consciousness beyond the mind.
Q: How is it done?
M: Refuse all thoughts except one: the thought
'I am'. The mind will rebel in the beginning, but with patience and
perseverance it will yield and keep quiet. Once you are quiet, things will
begin to happen spontaneously and quite naturally without any interference on
your part.
Q: Can I avoid this protracted battle with my
mind?
M: Yes, you can. Just live your life as it
comes, but alertly, watchfully, allowing everything to happen as it happens,
doing the natural things the natural way, suffering, rejoicing -- as life
brings. This also is a way.
Q: Well, then I can as well marry, have
children, run a business… be happy.
M: Sure. You may or may not be happy, take it in
your stride.
Q: Yet I want happiness.
M: True happiness cannot be found in things that
change and pass away. Pleasure and pain alternate inexorably. Happiness comes
from the self and can be found in the self only. Find your real self (swarupa) and all else will come with it.
Q: If my real self is peace and love, why is it
so restless?
M: It is not your real being that is restless,
but its reflection in the mind appears restless because the mind is restless.
It is just like the reflection of the moon in the water stirred by the wind.
The wind of desire stirs the mind and the 'me', which is but a reflection of
the Self in the mind, appears changeful. But these ideas of movement, of
restlessness, of pleasure and pain are all in the mind. The Self stands beyond
the mind, aware, but unconcerned.
Q: How to reach it?
M: You are the Self, here and now Leave the mind
alone, stand aware and unconcerned and you will realize that to stand alert but
detached, watching events come and go, is an aspect of your real nature.
Q: What are the other aspects?
M: The aspects are infinite in number. Realise
one, and you will realise all.
Q: Tell me some thing that would help me.
M: You know best what you need!
Q: I am restless. How can I gain peace?
M: For what do you need peace?
Q: To be happy.
M: Are you not happy now?
Q: No, I am not.
M: What makes you unhappy?
Q: I have what I don’t want, and want what I
don’t have.
M: Why don’t you invert it: want what you have
and care not for what you don’t have?
Q: I want what is pleasant and don’t want what
is painful.
M: How do you know what is pleasant and what is
not?
Q: From past experience, of course.
M: Guided by memory you have been pursuing the
pleasant and shunning the unpleasant. Have you succeeded?
Q: No, I have not. The pleasant does not last.
Pain sets in again.
M: Which pain?
Q: The desire for pleasure, the fear of pain,
both are states of distress. Is there a state of unalloyed pleasure?
M: Every pleasure, physical or mental, needs an
instrument. Both the physical and mental instruments are material, they get
tired and worn out. The pleasure they yield is necessarily limited in intensity
and duration. Pain is the background of all your pleasures. You want them
because you suffer. On the other hand, the very search for pleasure is the
cause of pain. It is a vicious circle.
Q: I can see the mechanism of my confusion, but
I do not see my way out of it.
M: The very examination of the mechanism shows
the way. After all, your confusion is only in your mind, which never rebelled
so far against confusion and never got to grips with it. It rebelled only
against pain.
Q: So, all I can do is to stay confused?
M: Be alert. Question, observe, investigate,
learn all you can about confusion, how it operates, what it does to you and
others. By being clear about confusion you become clear of confusion.
Q: When I look into myself, I find my strongest
desire is to create a monument, to build something which will outlast me. Even
when I think of a home, wife and child, it is because it is a lasting, solid,
testimony to myself.
M: Right, build yourself a monument. How do you
propose to do it?
Q: It matters little what I build, as long as
it is permanent.
M: Surely, you can see for yourself that nothing
is permanent. All wears out, breaks down, dissolves. The very ground on which
you build gives way. What can you build that will outlast all?
Q: Intellectually, verbally, I am aware that
all is transient. Yet, somehow my heart wants permanency. I want to create
something that lasts.
M: Then you must build it of something lasting.
What have you that is lasting? Neither your body nor mind will last. You must
look elsewhere.
Q: I long for permanency, but I find it
nowhere.
M: Are you, yourself, not permanent?
Q: I was born, I shall die.
M: Can you truly say you were not before you
were born and can you possibly say when dead: ‘Now I am no more’? You cannot
say from your own experience that you are not. You can only say ‘I am’. Others
too cannot tell you ‘you are not’.
Q: There is no ‘I am’ in sleep.
M: Before you make such sweeping statements,
examine carefully your waking state. You will soon discover that it is full of
gaps, when the min blanks out. Notice how little you remember even when fully
awake. You just don’t remember. A gap in memory is not necessarily a gap in
consciousness.
Q: Can I make myself remember my state of deep
sleep?
M: Of course! By eliminating the intervals of
inadvertence during your waking hours you will gradually eliminate the long
interval of absent-mindedness, which you call sleep. You will be aware that you
are asleep.
Q: Yet, the problem of permanency, of
continuity of being, is not solved.
M: Permanency is a mere idea, born of the
action of time. Time again depends of memory. By permanency you mean unfailing
memory through endless time. You want to eternalise the mind, which is not
possible.
Q: Then what is eternal?
M: That which does not change with time. You
cannot eternalise a transient thing -- only the changeless is eternal.
Q: I am familiar with the general sense of what
you say. I do not crave for more knowledge. All I want is peace.
M: You can have for the asking all the peace you
want.
Q: I am asking.
M: You must ask with an undivided heart and live
an integrated life.
Q: How?
M: Detach yourself from all that makes your mind
restless. Renounce all that disturbs its peace. If you want peace, deserve it.
Q: Surely everybody deserves peace.
M: Those only deserve it, who don't disturb it.
Q: In what way do I disturb peace?
M: By being a slave to your desires and fears.
Q: Even when they are justified?
M: Emotional reactions, born of ignorance or
inadvertence, are never justified. Seek a clear mind and a clean heart. All you
need is to keep quietly alert, enquiring into the real nature of yourself. This
is the only way to peace.
