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Questioner:
Does it take time to realize the Self, or time cannot help to realize? Is
self-realization a matter of time only, or does it depend on factors other than
time?
Maharaj:
All waiting is futile. To depend on time to solve our problems is
self-delusion. The future, left to itself merely repeats the past. Change can
only happen now, never in the future.
Q: What brings about a change?
M: With crystal clarity see the need of change.
This is all.
Q: Does self-realization happen in matter, or
beyond? Is it not an experience depending on the body and the mind for its
occurrence?
M: All experience is illusory, limited and
temporal. Expect nothing from experience. Realization by itself is not an
experience, though it may lead to a new dimension of experiences. Yet the new
experiences, however interesting, are not more real than the old. Definitely
realization is not a new experience. It is the discovery of the timeless factor
in every experience. It is awareness, which makes experience possible. Just
like in all the colours light is the colourless factor, so in every experience
awareness is present, yet it is not an experience.
Q: If awareness is not an experience, how can
it be realized?
M: Awareness is ever there. It need not be
realized. Open the shutter of the mind, and it will be flooded with light.
Q: What is matter?
M: What you do not understand is matter.
Q: Science understands matter.
M: Science merely pushes back the frontiers of
our ignorance.
Q: And what is nature?
M: The totality of conscious experiences is
nature. As a conscious self you are a part of nature. As awareness, you are
beyond. Seeing nature as mere consciousness is awareness.
Q: Are there levels of awareness?
M: There are levels in consciousness, but not in
awareness. It is of one block, homogeneous. Its reflection in the mind is love
and understanding. There are levels of clarity in understanding and intensity
in love, but not in their source. The source is simple and single, but its
gifts are infinite. Only do not take the gifts for the source. Realize yourself
as the source and not as the river; that is all.
Q: I am the river too.
M: Of course, you are. As an 'I am' you are the
river, flowing between the banks of the body. But you are also the source and
the ocean and the clouds in the sky. Wherever there is life and consciousness,
you are. Smaller than the smallest, bigger than the biggest, you are,
while all else appears.
Q: The sense of being and
the sense of living -- are they one and the same, or different?
M: The identity in space creates one, the
continuity in time creates the other.
Q: You said once that the seer, seeing and the
seen are one single thing, not three. To me the three are separate. I do not
doubt your words, only I do not understand.
M: Look closely and you will see that the seer
and the seen appear only when there is seeing. They are attributes of seeing.
When you say 'I am seeing this'. 'I am' and 'this' come with seeing, not
before. You cannot have an unseen 'this' nor an unseeing 'I am'.
Q: I can say: 'I do not see'.
M: The 'I am seeing this' has become 'l am
seeing my not seeing', or 'I am seeing darkness'. The seeing remains. In the
triplicity: the known, knowing and the knower, only the knowing is a fact. The
'I am' and 'this' are doubtful. Who knows? What is known? There is no
certainty, except that there is knowing.
Q: Why am I sure of knowing, but not of the
knower?
M: Knowing is a reflection of your true nature
along with being and loving. The knower and the known are added by the mind. It
is in the nature of the mind to create a subject-object duality, where there is
none.
Q: What is the cause of desire and fear?
M: Obviously, the memory of past pains and
pleasures. There is no great mystery about it. Conflict arises only when desire
and fear refer to the same object.
Q: How to put an end to memory?
M: It is neither necessary, nor possible.
Realize that all happens in consciousness and you are the root, the source, the
foundation of consciousness. The world is but a succession of experiences and
you are what makes them conscious, and yet remain beyond all experience. It is
like the heat, the flame and the burning wood. The heat maintains the flame,
the flame consumes the wood. Without heat there would be neither flame nor
fuel. Similarly, without awareness there would be no consciousness, nor life,
which transforms matter into a vehicle of consciousness.
Q: You maintain that without me there would be
no world, and that the world and my knowledge of the world are identical.
Science has come to a quite different conclusion: the world exists as something
concrete and continuous, while I am a by-product of biological evolution of the
nervous system, which is primarily not so much a seat of consciousness, as a
mechanism of survival as individual and species. Yours is altogether a
subjective view, while science tries to describe everything in objective terms.
Is this contradiction inevitable?
M: The confusion is apparent and purely verbal.
What is, is. It is neither subjective nor objective. Matter and mind are
not separate, they are aspects of one energy. Look at the mind as a function of
matter and you have science; look at matter as the product of the mind and you
have religion.
Q: But what is true? What comes first, mind or
matter?
M: Neither comes first. for neither appears
alone. Matter is the shape, mind is the name. Together they make the world.
Pervading and transcending is Reality, pure being -- awareness -- bliss, your
very essence.
Q: All I know is the stream of consciousness,
an endless succession of events. The river of time flows, bringing and carrying
away relentlessly. Transformation of the future into past is going on all the
time.
M: Are you not the victim of your language? You
speak about the flow of time, as if you were stationary. But the events you
have witnessed yesterday somebody else may see tomorrow. It is you who are in
movement and not time. Stop moving and time will cease.
Q: What does it mean -- time will cease?
M: Past and future will merge in the eternal now.
Q: But what does it mean in
actual experience? How do you know that for you time has ceased?
M: It may mean that past and future do not
matter any more. It may also mean that all that happened and will happen
becomes an open book to be read at will.
Q: I can imagine a sort of cosmic memory, accessible
with some training. But how can the future be known? The unexpected is
inevitable.
M: What is unexpected on one level may be
certain to happen, when seen from a higher level After all, we are within the
limits of the mind. In reality nothing happens, there is no past nor future;
all appears and nothing is.
Q: What does it mean, nothing is? Do you turn
blank, or go to sleep? Or do you dissolve the world and keep us all in
abeyance, until we are brought back to life at the next flicker of your
thought?
M: Oh, no, it is not that bad. The world of mind
and matter, of names and shapes, continues, but it does not matter to me at
all. It is like having a shadow. It is there -- following me wherever I go, but
not hindering me in any way. It remains a world of experiences, but not of
names and forms related to me by desires and fears. The experiences are
qualityless, pure experiences, if I may say so. I call them experiences for the
lack of a better word. They are like the waves on the surface of the ocean, the
ever-present, but not affecting its peaceful power.
Q: You mean to say an experience can be
nameless, formless, undefined?
M: In the beginning all experience is such. It
is only desire and fear, born of memory, that give it name and form and
separate it from other experiences. It is not a conscious experience, for it is
not in opposition to other experiences, yet it is an experience all the same.
Q: If it is not conscious, why talk about it?
M: Most of your experiences are unconscious. The
conscious ones are very few. You are unaware of the fact because to you only
the conscious ones count. Become aware of the unconscious .
Q: Can one be aware of the unconscious? How is
it done?
M: Desire and fear are the obscuring and
distorting factors. When mind is free of them the unconscious becomes
accessible.
Q: Does it mean that the unconscious becomes
conscious?
M: It is rather the other way round. The
conscious becomes one with the unconscious. The distinction ceases, whichever
way you look at it.
Q: I am puzzled. How can one be aware and yet
unconscious?
M: Awareness is not limited to consciousness. It
is of all that is. Consciousness is of duality. There is no duality in
awareness. It is one single block of pure cognition. In the same way one can
talk of the pure being and pure creation -- nameless, formless, silent and yet
absolutely real, powerful, effective. Their being indescribable does not affect
them in the least. While they are unconscious, they are essential. The
conscious cannot change fundamentally, it can only modify. Any thing, to
change, must pass through death, through obscuration and dissolution. Gold
jewellery must be melted down before it is cast into another shape. What
refuses to die cannot be reborn.
Q: Barring the death of the body, how does one die?
M: Withdrawal, aloofness, letting go is death.
To live fully, death is essential; every ending makes a new beginning. On the
other hand, do understand, that only the dead can die, not the living. That
which is alive in you, is immortal.
Q: From where does desire draw its energy?
M: Its name and shape it draws from memory. The
energy flows from the source.
Q: Some desires are altogether wrong. How can
wrong desires flow from a sublime source?
M: The source is neither right nor wrong. Nor is
desire by itself right or wrong. It is nothing but striving for happiness.
Having identified yourself with a speck of a body you feel lost and search
desperately for the sense of fullness and completeness you call happiness.
Q: When did I lose it? I never had it.
M: You had it before you woke up this morning.
Go beyond your consciousness and you will find it.
Q: How am I to go beyond?
M: You know it already; do it.
Q: That's what you say. I know nothing about
it.
M: Yet I repeat -- you know it. Do it. Go beyond,
back to your normal, natural, supreme state.
Q: I'm puzzled.
M: A speck in the eye makes you think you are
blind. Wash it out and look.
Q: I do look! I see only darkness.
M: Remove the speck and your eyes will be
flooded with light. The light is there -- waiting. The eyes are there -- ready.
The darkness you see is but the shadow of the tiny speck. Get rid of it and
come back to your natural state.
