What matters is the idea you have of yourself, for it blocks you.

Give it up.

Q: From early childhood I was taught to think that I am limited to my name and shape.

A mere statement to the contrary will not erase the mental groove.

A regular brain-washing is needed -- if at all it can be done.

To me liberation is getting rid of this bomb.

I do not know much about the bomb.

I only know that it comes from early childhood.

I feel like the frightened child protesting passionately against not being loved.

The child is craving for love and because he does not get it, he is afraid and angry.

Universe within universe are built on it.

Yet they are all in space and time, past and future, which just do not exist.

Q: I have read recently a report about a little girl who was very cruelly handled in her early childhood.

She was badly mutilated and disfigured and grew up in an orphanage, completely estranged from its surroundings.

This little girl was quiet and obedient, but completely indifferent.

Liberation is never of the person, it is always from the person.

Q: And no trace remains of the person?

M: A vague memory remains, like the memory of a dream, or early childhood.

After all, what is there to remember?

A flow of events, mostly accidental and meaningless.

But it does not tell you how to deal with people and yourself, how to live a life.

We are not talking.

of driving a car, or earning money.

For this you need experience.

But for being a light unto yourself material knowledge will not help you.

It is what you are inwardly that matters.

Your inner peace and joy you have to earn.

It is much more difficult than earning money.

No university can teach you to be yourself.

The only way to learn is by practice.

Q: Does it mean that I must give up all idea of an active life?

M: Not at all.

There will be marriage, there will be children, there will be earning money to maintain a family; all this will happen in the natural course of events, for destiny must fulfil itself; you will go through it without resistance, facing tasks as they come, attentive and thorough, both in small things and big.

But the general attitude will be of affectionate detachment, enormous goodwill, without expectation of return, constant giving without asking.

In marriage you are neither the husband nor the wife; you are the love between the two.

The state of freedom from all thoughts will happen suddenly and by the bliss of it you shall recognise it.

Q: Are you not at all concerned about the state of the world?

Look at the horrors in East Pakistan [1971, now Bangla Desh].

Do they not touch you at all?

M: I am reading newspapers, I know what is going on!

The object changes all the time.

In consciousness there is movement; awareness by itself is motionless and timeless, here and now.

Q: There is suffering and bloodshed in East Pakistan at the present moment.

How do you look at it?

How does it appear to you, how do you react to it?

Of what use is it to a suffering man to be told that nobody is aware of his suffering but himself?

To relegate everything to illusion is insult added to injury.

The Bengali of East Pakistan is a fact and his suffering is a fact.

Please, do not analyse them out of existence!

You are reading newspapers, you hear people talking about it.

Don't bottle up your love by limiting it to the body, keep it open.

It will be then the love for all.

When all the false selfidentifications are thrown away, what remains is all-embracing love.

Get rid of all ideas about yourself, even of the idea that you are God.

No self-definition is valid.

I did not condition my mind by thinking: 'I am God, I am wonderful, I am beyond'.

I simply followed his instruction which was to focus the mind on pure being 'I am', and stay in it.

I used to sit for hours together, with, nothing but the 'I am' in my mind and soon peace and joy and a deep all-embracing love became my normal state.

In it all disappeared -- myself, my Guru, the life I lived, the world around me.

Only peace remained and unfathomable silence.

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-realisation so important?

M: Without it you will be consumed by desires and fears, repeating themselves meaninglessly in endless suffering.

Q: To be free from like and dislike is a state of indifference.

M: It may look and feel so in the beginning.

Persevere in such indifference and it will blossom into an all-pervading and all-embracing love.

Q: One has such moments when the mind becomes a flower and a flame, but they do not last and the life reverts to its daily greyness.

M: Discontinuity is the law, when you deal with the concrete: The continuous cannot be experienced, for it has no borders.

I have my duties to attend to.

M: By all means attend to your duties.

Action, in which you are not emotionally involved and which is beneficial and does not cause suffering will not bind you.

You may be engaged in several directions and work with enormous zest, yet remain inwardly free and quiet, with a mirror-like mind, which reflects all, without being affected.

Q: Is such a state realisable?

Q: Don't you pass through experiences yourself?

M: Things happen round me, but I take no part in them.

An event becomes an experience only when I am emotionally involved.

I am in a state which is complete, which seeks not to improve on itself.

Of what use is experience to me?

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.

Q: If it is not the natural, or normal state of mind, then how to stop it?

There must be a way to quieten the mind.

How often I tell myself: enough, please stop, enough of this endless chatter of sentences repeated round and round!

But my mind would not stop.

I feel that one can stop it for a while, but not for long.

There is no other way.

Q: How am I to think myself out when my thoughts come and go as they like.

Their endless chatter distracts and exhausts me.

M: Watch your thoughts as you watch the street traffic.

People come and go; you register without response.

Q: Will compete solitude be of any benefit?

M: It depends on your temperament.

You may work with others and for others, alert and friendly, and grow more fully than in solitude, which may make you dull or leave you at the mercy of your mind's endless chatter.

Do not imagine that you can change through effort.

Violence, even turned against yourself, as in austerities and penance, will remain fruitless.

Q: The picture is in the mind of the painter and the painter is in the picture, which is in the mind of the painter who is in the picture!

Is not this infinity of states and dimensions absurd?

The moment we talk of picture in the mind, which itself is in the picture, we come to an endless succession of witnesses, the higher witness witnessing the lower.

It is like standing between two mirrors and wondering at the crowd!

M: Quite right, you alone and the double mirror are there.

The purpose is good and the plan is most wise.

M: All this is temporary, while I am dealing with the eternal.

Gods and their universes come and go, avatars follow each other in endless succession, and in the end we are back at the source.

I talk only of the timeless source of all the gods with all their universes, past, present and future.

Q: Do you know them all?

The mind produces thoughts ceaselessly, even when you do not look at them.

When you know what is going on in your mind, you call it consciousness.

This is your waking state -- your consciousness shifts from sensation to sensation, from perception to perception, from idea to idea, in endless succession.

Then comes awareness, the direct insight into the whole of consciousness, the totality of the mind.

The mind is like a river, flowing ceaselessly in the bed of the body; you identify yourself for a moment with some particular ripple and call it: 'my thought'.

M: The person is merely the result of a misunderstanding.

In reality, there is no such thing.

Feelings, thoughts and actions race before the watcher in endless succession, leaving traces in the brain and creating an illusion of continuity.

A reflection of the watcher in the mind creates the sense of 'I' and the person acquires an apparently independent existence.

In reality there is no person, only the watcher identifying himself with the 'I' and the 'mine'.

Q: Is it not natural to be active?

M: Everybody wants to be active, but where do his actions originate?

There is no central point each action begets another, meaninglessly and painfully, in endless succession.

The alternation of work and pause is not there.

First find the immutable centre where all movement takes birth.

M: Fear of pain, desire for pleasure.

Pleasant is the ending of pain and painful the end of pleasure.

They just rotate in endless succession.

Investigate the vicious circle till you find yourself beyond it.

Q: Don't I need your grace to take me beyond?

M: There is no evil, there is no suffering; the joy of living is paramount.

Look, how everything clings to life, how dear the existence is.

Q: On the screen of my mind images follow each other in endless succession.

There is nothing permanent about me.

M: Have a better look at yourself.

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.

People tell me that property and quiet are not compatible, that I shall at once get into trouble with officials, neighbours and thieves.

Is it inevitable?

M: The least you can expect is an endless succession of visitors who will make your abode into a free and open guesthouse.

Better accept your life as it shapes, go home and look after your wife with love and care.

Nobody else needs you.

M: How can I be?

The person is what I appear to be to other persons.

To myself I am the infinite expanse of consciousness in which innumerable persons emerge and disappear in endless succession.

Q: How is it that the person, which to you is quite illusory, appears real to us?

M: You, the self, being the root of all being, consciousness and joy, impart your reality to whatever you perceive.

In humanity -- as we know it -- after very many years.

In creation -- never, for creation itself is rooted in ignorance; matter itself is ignorance.

Not to know, and not to know that one does not know, is the cause of endless suffering.

Q: We are told of the great avatars, the saviours of the world.

M: Did they save?

M: Events in time and space -- birth and death, cause and effect -- these may be taken as one; but the body and the embodied are not of the same order of reality.

The body exists in time and space, transient and limited, while the dweller is timeless and spaceless, eternal and all-pervading.

To identify the two is a grievous mistake and the cause of endless suffering.

You can speak of the mind and body as one, but the body-mind is not the underlying reality.

Q: Whoever he may be, the dweller is in control of the body and, therefore, responsible for 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-realisation 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.

Q: As long as the mind operates, causation is a valid law.

M: Like everything mental, the so-called law of causation contradicts itself.

No thing in existence has a particular cause; the entire universe contributes to the existence of even the smallest thing; nothing could be as it is without the universe being what it is.

When the source and ground of everything is the only cause of everything, to speak of causality as a universal law is wrong.

The universe is not bound by its content, because its potentialities are infinite; besides it is a manifestation, or expression of a principle fundamentally and totally free.

Yet, in actual life we invariably initiate action with a view to a result.

M: Yes, there is a lot of such activity going on, because of ignorance.

'Would people know that nothing can happen unless the entire universe makes it happen, they would achieve much more with less expenditure of energy.

Q: If everything is an expression of the totality of causes, how can we talk of a purposeful action towards an achievement?

M: The very urge to achieve is also an expression of the total universe.

One law supreme rules throughout: evolution of forms for the growth and enrichment of consciousness and manifestation of its infinite potentialities.

Maharaj: This may or may not be so.

Even if it is, it is only so from the mind's point of view, but In fact the entire universe (mahadakash) exists only in consciousness (chidakash), while I have my stand in the Absolute (paramakash).

In pure being consciousness arises; in consciousness the world appears and disappears.

All there is is me, all there is is mine.

M: Of course, everything is inter-linked.

And therefore everything has numberless causes.

The entire universe contributes to the least thing.

A thing is as it is, because the world is as it is.

You see, you deal in gold ornaments and I -- in gold.

M: They are not the same and pain is not the same.

Passion is painful, compassion -- never.

The entire universe strives to fulfil a desire born of compassion.

Q: Does the Supreme know itself?

Is the Impersonal conscious?

But the desire for bliss creates pain.

Thus bliss becomes the seed of pain.

The entire universe of pain is born of desire.

Give up the desire for pleasure and you will not even know what is pain.

Q: Why should pleasure be the seed of pain?

You speak of the living as dead and of the dead as living.

M: Why do you fret at one man dying and care little for the millions dying every day?

Entire universes are imploding and exploding every moment -- am I to cry over them?

One thing is quite clear to me: all that is, lives and moves and has its being in consciousness and I am in and beyond that consciousness.

I am in it as the witness.

Q: Should you not express your disapproval by refusing to sit on a skin?

M: What an idea!

I disapprove of the entire universe, why only a skin?

Q: What is wrong with the universe?

M: Forgetting your Self is the greatest injury; all the calamities flow from it.

Q: The faith you have in yourself, is not that too a shape of a desire?

M: When I say: 'I am', I do not mean a separate entity with a body as its nucleus.

I mean the totality of being, the ocean of consciousness, the entire universe of all that is and knows.

I have nothing to desire for I am complete forever.

Q: Can you touch the inner life of other people?

Then only his heart rejoices.

All else is of no concern.

The entire universe is his body, all life is his life.

The whole is an abstraction, the particular, the concrete, is real.

M: That is what you say.

Calamities, whether natural or man-made, happen, and there is no need to feel horrified.

Q: How can anything be without cause?

M: In every event the entire universe is reflected.

The ultimate cause is untraceable.

The very idea of causation is only a way of thinking and speaking.

M: That which does not exist cannot have a cause.

There is no such thing as a separate person.

Even taking the empirical point of view, it is obvious that everything is the cause of everything, that everything is as it is, because the entire universe is as it is.

Q: Yet personality must have a cause.

M: How does personality, come into being?

Without self-realisation, no virtue is genuine.

When you know beyond all doubting that the same life flows through all that is and you are that life, you will love all naturally and spontaneously.

When you realise the depth and fullness of your love of yourself, you know that every living being and the entire universe are included in your affection.

But when you look at anything as separate from you, you cannot love it for you are afraid of it.

Alienation causes fear and fear deepens alienation.

Have no nature to fight, or to submit to.

No experience will hurt you, provided you don't make it into a habit.

Of the entire universe you are the subtle cause.

All is because you are.

Grasp this point firmly and deeply and dwell on it repeatedly.

But here and now, as I talk to you, I am in my body -- obviously.

The body may not be me, but it is mine.

M: The entire universe contributes incessantly to your existence.

Hence the entire universe is your body.

In that sense -- I agree.

The body may not be me, but it is mine.

M: The entire universe contributes incessantly to your existence.

Hence the entire universe is your body.

In that sense -- I agree.

Q: My body influences me deeply.

Stop imagining, stop believing.

See the contradictions, the incongruities, the falsehood and the sorrow of the human state, the need to go beyond.

Within the immensity of space floats a tiny atom of consciousness and in it the entire universe is contained.

Q: There are affections in the dream which seem real and everlasting.

Do they disappear on waking up?

M: Man's fivefold body (physical etc.

) has potential powers beyond our wildest dreams.

Not only is the entire universe reflected in man, but also the power to control the universe is waiting to be used by him.

The wise man is not anxious to use such powers, except when the situation calls for them.

He finds the abilities and skills of the human personality quite adequate for the business of daily living.

The Guru never fails.

Q: Is my first Guru also my last, or do I have to pass from Guru to Guru?

M: The entire universe is your Guru.

You learn from everything, if you are alert and intelligent.

Were your mind clear and your heart clean, you would learn from every passer-by;.

This is the world's sole meaning and purpose.

It is the very essence of Yoga -- ever raising the level of consciousness, discovery of new dimensions, with their properties, qualities and powers.

In that sense the entire universe becomes a school of Yoga (yogakshetra).

Q: Is perfection the destiny of all human beings?

M: Of all living beings -- ultimately.

Q: Surrounded by a world full of mysteries and dangers, how can I remain unafraid?

M: Your own little body too is full of mysteries and dangers, yet you are not afraid of it, for you take it as your own.

What you do not know is that the entire universe is your body and you need not be afraid of it.

You may say you have two bodies; the personal and the universal.

The personal comes and goes, the universal is always with you.

Maharaj: The seeker is he who is in search of himself.

Soon he discovers that his own body he cannot be.

Once the conviction: 'I am not the body' becomes so well grounded that he can no longer feel, think and act for and on behalf of the body, he will easily discover that he is the universal being, knowing, acting, that in him and through him the entire universe is real, conscious and active.

This is the heart of the problem.

Either you are body-conscious and a slave of circumstances, or you are the universal consciousness itself -- and in full control of every event.

Inwardly he remains quiet and silent.

He has no sense of being a separate person.

The entire universe is his own, including his disciples with their petty plans.

Nothing in particular affects him, or, which comes to the same, the entire universe affects him in equal measure.

Q: Is there no such thing as the Guru's grace?

He has no sense of being a separate person.

The entire universe is his own, including his disciples with their petty plans.

Nothing in particular affects him, or, which comes to the same, the entire universe affects him in equal measure.

Q: Is there no such thing as the Guru's grace?

M: His grace is constant and universal.

To say: I am only the witness is both false and true: false because of the 'I am', true because of the witness.

It is better to say: 'there is witnessing'.

The moment you say: 'I am', the entire universe comes into being along with its creator.

Q: Another question: can we visualise the person and the self as two brothers small and big?

The little brother is mischievous and selfish, rude and restless, while the big brother is intelligent and kind, reasonable and considerate, free from body consciousness with its desires and fears.

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.

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.

Q: Can one know the mind of another person?

M: Know you own mind first.

It contains the entire universe and with space to spare!

Q: Your working theory seems to be that the waking state is not basically different from dream and the dreamless sleep.

The three states are essentially a case of mistaken self-identification with the body.

Freedom -- unites.

Ultimately nothing is mine or yours -- everything is ours.

Just be one with yourself and you will be one with all, at home in the entire universe.

Q: You mean to say that all these glories will come with the mere dwelling on the feeling 'I am'?

M: It is the simple that is certain, not the complicated.

For everything there are innumerable causes.

Q: I am told that the man who wants nothing for himself is all-powerful.

The entire universe is at his disposal.

M: If you believe so, act on it.

Abandon every personal desire and use the power thus saved for changing the world!

Or, is there some deeper 'me', or some god who is painting?

M: Consciousness itself is the greatest painter.

The entire world is a Picture.

Q: Who painted the picture of the world?

M: The painter is in the Picture.

I know it, but you don't.

That is all the difference -- and it cannot last.

Q: And how do you help the entire world?

M: Gandhi is dead, yet his mind pervades the earth.

The thought of a jnani pervades humanity and works ceaselessly for good.

Q: All perceivables, are they stains?

M: All are stains.

Q: The entire world is a stain.

M: Yes, it is.

Q: How awful!

The Guru gave him a mantra and instructions in meditation.

Early in his practice he started having visions and occasionally even fell into trances.

Something exploded within him, as it were, giving birth to a cosmic consciousness, a sense of eternal life.

The identity of Maruti, the petty shopkeeper, dissolved and the illuminating personality of Sri Nisargadatta emerged.

Most people live in the world of self-consciousness and do not have the desire or power to leave it.

After his illuminating experience Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj started living such a dual life.

He conducted his shop, but ceased to be a profit-minded merchant.

He walked barefooted on his way to the Himalayas where he planned to pass the rest of his years in quest of a eternal life.

But he soon retraced his steps and came back home comprehending the futility of such a quest.

Eternal life, he perceived, was not to be sought for; he already had it.

He walked barefooted on his way to the Himalayas where he planned to pass the rest of his years in quest of a eternal life.

But he soon retraced his steps and came back home comprehending the futility of such a quest.

Eternal life, he perceived, was not to be sought for; he already had it.

Having gone beyond the I-am-the-body idea, he had acquired a mental state so joyful, peaceful and glorious that everything appeared to be worthless compared to it.

He had attained self-realisation.

Discovery cannot come as long as you cling to the familiar.

It is only when you realise fully the immense sorrow of your life and revolt against it, that a way out can be found.

Q: I can now see that the secret of India's eternal life lies in these dimensions of existence, of which India was always the custodian.

M: It is an open secret and there were always people willing and ready to share it.

Teachers -- there are many, fearless disciples -- very few.

Don't brush me off saying that it is Buddhism!

Don't label me.

Your insistence on causelessness removes all hope of the world ever changing.

M: You are confused, because you believe that you are in the world, not the world in you.

Who came first -- you or your parents?

Life weaves eternally its many webs.

The weaving is in time, but life itself is timeless.

Whatever name and shape you give to its expressions, it is like the ocean -- never changing, ever changing.

Q: All you say sounds beautifully convincing.

yet my feeling of being just a person in a world strange and alien, often inimical and dangerous, does not cease.

You are contacting your sensory and mental states in consciousness, at the point of 'I am', while reality is not mediated, not contacted, not experienced.

You are taking duality so much for granted, that you do not even notice it, while to me variety and diversity do not create separation.

You imagine reality to stand apart from names and forms, while to me names and forms are the ever changing expressions of reality and not apart from it.

You ask for the proof of truth while to me all existence is the proof.

You separate existence from being and being from reality, while to me it is all one.

It may be some simple, periodical occurrence, like the striking of the clock.

In spite of our knowing that the successive strokes are identical, the present stroke is quite different from the previous one and the next -- as remembered, or expected.

A thing focussed in the now is with me, for I am ever present; it is my own reality that I impart to the present event.

Q: But we deal with things remembered as if they were real.

M: We consider memories, only when they come into the present The forgotten is not counted until one is reminded -- which implies, bringing into the now.

Q: Do you speak from your own experience?

M: Of course.

It is a timeless state, ever present.

Q: With me it comes and goes, with you it does not.

Why this difference?

As long as you have the idea of influencing events, liberation is not for you: The very notion of doership, of being a cause, is bondage.

Q: How can we overcome the duality of the doer and the done?

M: Contemplate life as infinite, undivided, ever present, ever active, until you realise yourself as one with it.

It is not even very difficult, for you will be returning only to your own natural condition.

Once you realise that all comes from within, that the world in which you live has not been projected onto you but by you, your fear comes to an end.

Where is the starting point?

M: There is a power in the universe working for enlightenment -- and liberation.

We call it Sadashiva, who is ever present in the hearts of men.

It is the unifying factor.

Unity -- liberates.

Q: The sense of being an experiencer, the sense of 'I am', is it not also an experience?

M: Obviously, every thing experienced is an experience.

And in every experience there arises the experiencer of it.

Memory creates the illusion of continuity.

In reality each experience has its own experiencer and the sense of identity is due to the common factor at the root of all experiencer- experience relations.

M: One of the many.

For everything there are innumerable causal factors.

But the source of all that is, is the Infinite Possibility, the Supreme Reality, which is in you and which throws its power and light and love on every experience.

But, this source is not a cause and no cause is a source.

Because of that, I say everything is uncaused.

Awareness is absolute, consciousness is relative to its content; consciousness is always of something.

Consciousness is partial and changeful, awareness is total, changeless, calm and silent.

And it is the common matrix of every experience.

Q: How does one go beyond consciousness into awareness?

M: Since it is awareness that makes consciousness possible, there is awareness in every state of consciousness.

My world is myself.

It is complete and perfect.

Every impression is erased, every experience -- rejected.

I need nothing, not even myself, for myself I cannot lose.

Q: Not even God?

The world seems to me a big enterprise for bringing the potential into actual, matter into life, the unconscious into full awareness.

To realise the supreme we need the experience of the opposites.

Just as for building a temple we need stone and mortar, wood and iron, glass and tiles, so for making a man into a divine sage, a master of life and death, one needs the material of every experience.

As a woman goes to the market, buys provisions of every sort, comes home, cooks, bakes and feeds her lord, so we bake ourselves nicely in the fire of life and feed our God.

M: Well, if you think so, act on it.

Q: Surely, you are aware of many things and behave according to their nature.

You treat a child as a child and an adult as an adult.

M: Just as the taste of salt pervades the great ocean and every single drop of sea-water carries the same flavour, so every experience gives me the touch of reality, the ever fresh realisation of my own being.

Q: Do I exist in your world, as you exist in mine?

M: Of course, you are and I am.

M: Both the subjective and the objective are changeful and transient.

There is nothing real about them.

Find the permanent in the fleeting, the one constant factor in every experience.

Q: What is this constant factor?

M: My giving it various names and pointing it out in many ways will not help you much, unless you have the capacity to see.

So is the pure light there whether you say 'I' or not.

Become aware of that pure light and you will never lose it.

The beingness in being, the awareness in consciousness, the interest in every experience -- that is not describable, yet perfectly accessible, for there is nothing else.

Q: You talk of reality directly -- as the all-pervading, ever-present, eternal, all-knowing, all- energizing first cause.

There are other teachers, who refuse to discuss reality at all.

No particular thought can be mind's natural state, only silence.

Not the idea of silence, but silence itself.

When the mind is in its natural state, it reverts to silence spontaneously after every experience or, rather, every experience happens against the background of silence.

Now, what you have learnt here becomes the seed.

You may forget it -- apparently.

In chit man knows God and God knows man.

In chit the man shapes the world and the world shapes man.

Chit is the link, the bridge between extremes, the balancing and uniting factor in every experience.

The totality of the perceived is what you call matter.

The totality of all perceivers is what you call the universal mind.

M: The enlightened (jnani) is neither.

But in his enlightenment (jnana) all is contained.

Awareness contains every experience.

But he who is aware is beyond every experience.

He is beyond awareness itself.

But in his enlightenment (jnana) all is contained.

Awareness contains every experience.

But he who is aware is beyond every experience.

He is beyond awareness itself.

Q: There is the background of experience, call it matter.

After all, samadhi is nothing unusual.

When the mind is intensely interested, it becomes one with the object of interest -- the seer and the seen become one in seeing, the hearer and the heard become one in hearing, the lover and the loved become one in loving.

Every experience can be the ground for samadhi.

Q: Are you always in a state of samadhi?

M: Of course not Samadhi is a state of mind, after all.

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.

The real takes no part in it, but makes it possible by giving it, the light.

Q: My difficulty is this.

As I can see, every experience is its own reality.

It is there -- experienced.

The moment I question it and ask to whom it happens, who is the observer and so on, the experience is over and all I can investigate is only the memory of it.

But while life lasts, we affect each other deeply.

Q: Yes, as the poet says: 'No man is an island'.

M: At the back of every experience is the Self and its interest in the experience.

Call it desire, call it love -- words do not matter.

Q: Can I desire suffering?

Yet the new experiences, however interesting, are not more real than the old.

Definitely realisation 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.

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 realised?

M: Awareness is ever there.

Awareness and matter are the active and the passive aspects of pure being, which is in both and beyond both.

Space and time are the body and the mind of the universal existence.

My feeling is that all that happens in space and time happens to me, that every experience is my experience every form is my form.

What I take myself to be, becomes my body and all that happens to that body becomes my mind.

But at the root of the universe there is pure awareness, beyond space and time, here and now.

You speak of the living as dead and of the dead as living.

M: Why do you fret at one man dying and care little for the millions dying every day?

Entire universes are imploding and exploding every moment -- am I to cry over them?

One thing is quite clear to me: all that is, lives and moves and has its being in consciousness and I am in and beyond that consciousness.

I am in it as the witness.

M: You are mistaken.

The world has no existence apart from you.

At every moment it is but a reflection of yourself.

You create it, you destroy it.

Q: And build it again, improved.

But when it comes to knowing others, knowing the world, my knowing that I do not know does not help much.

M: Once you are inwardly integrated, outer knowledge comes to you spontaneously.

At every moment of your life you know what you need to know.

In the ocean of the universal mind all knowledge is contained; it is yours on demand.

Most of it you may never need to know -- but it is yours all the same.

You will soon discover the timeless reality behind it.

Q: Why have I not done it before?

M: Just as every wave subsides into the ocean, so does every moment return to its source.

realisation consists in discovering the source and abiding there.

Q: Who discovers?

Q: How do I come to know that my experience is universal?

M: At the end of your meditation all is known directly, no proofs whatsoever are required.

Just as every drop of the ocean carries the taste of the ocean, so does every moment carry the taste of eternity.

Definitions and descriptions have their place as useful incentives for further search, but you must go beyond them into what is undefinable and indescribable, except in negative terms.

After all, even universality and eternity are mere concepts, the opposites of being place and time- bound.

It must be genuine.

Q: How does a genuine crisis happen?

M: It happens every moment, but you are not alert enough.

A shadow on your neighbour's face, the immense and all-pervading sorrow of existence is a constant factor in your life, but you refuse to take notice.

You suffer and see others suffer, but you don't respond.

I seek Reality.

M: For this you need a well-ordered and quiet life, peace of mind and immense earnestness.

At every moment whatever comes to you unasked, comes from God and will surely help you, if you make the fullest use of it.

It is only what you strive for, out of your own imagination and desire, that gives you trouble.

Q: Is destiny the same as grace?

M: With being arising in consciousness, the ideas of what you are arise in your mind as well as what you should be.

This brings forth desire and action and the process of becoming begins.

Becoming has, apparently, no beginning and no end, for it restarts every moment.

With the cessation of imagination and desire, becoming ceases and the being this or that merges into pure being, which is not describable, only experienceable.

The world appears to you so overwhelmingly real, because you think of it all the time; cease thinking of it and it will dissolve into thin mist.

What matters supremely is sincerity, earnestness; you must really have had surfeit of being the person you are, now see the urgent need of being free of this unnecessary self-identification with a bundle of memories and habits.

This steady resistance against the unnecessary is the secret of success.

After all, you are what you are every moment of your life, but you are never conscious of it, except, maybe, at the point of awakening from sleep.

All you need is to be aware of being, not as a verbal statement, but as an ever-present fact.

The a awareness that you are will open your eyes to what you are.

There are religions in which suffering is considered good and noble.

M: Karma, or destiny, is an expression of a beneficial law: the universal trend towards balance, harmony and unity.

At every moment, whatever happens now, is for the best.

It may appear painful and ugly, a suffering bitter and meaningless, yet considering the past and the future it is for the best, as the only way out of a disastrous situation.

Q: Does one suffer only for one's own sins?

M: Earnestness, the sign of maturity.

Q: And how does maturity come about?

M: By keeping your mind clear and clean, by living your life in full awareness of every moment as it happens, by examining and dissolving one's desires and fears as soon as they arise.

Q: Is such concentration at all possible?

M: Try.

To me consciousness is always focalised, centred, individualised, a person.

You seem to say that there can be perceiving without a perceiver, knowing without a knower, loving without a lover, acting without an actor.

I feel that the trinity of knowing, knower and known can be seen in every movement of life.

Consciousness implies a conscious being, an object of consciousness and the fact of being conscious.

That which is conscious I call a person.

There will be no clash of interests between you and others.

All exploitation will cease absolutely.

Your every action will be beneficial, every movement will be a blessing.

Q: It is all very tempting, but how am I to proceed to realise my universal being?

M: You have two ways: you can give your heart and mind to self-discovery, or you accept my words on trust and act accordingly.

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.

Q: And if I desire nothing, not even the Supreme?

M: Then you are as good as dead, or you are the Supreme.

Q: The world is full of desires: Everybody wants something or other.

Who is the desirer?

The person or the self?

This, when effortless and natural, is the highest state.

In it love itself is the lover and the beloved.

Q: Everybody wants to live, to exist.

Is it not self-love?

M: All desire has its source in the self.

His very presence is action.

Q: Is it not natural to be active?

M: Everybody wants to be active, but where do his actions originate?

There is no central point each action begets another, meaninglessly and painfully, in endless succession.

The alternation of work and pause is not there.

Q: And what is the knower's view?

M: There is only light and the light is all.

Everything else is but a picture made of light.

The picture is in the light and the light is in the picture.

Life and death, self and not-self --- abandon all these ideas.

Be content with what you are sure of.

And the only thing you can be sure of is 'I am'.

Stay with it, and reject everything else.

This is Yoga.

Q: I can reject only verbally.

M: You are moving into the future all the time whether you like it or not.

Q: I am moving from now into now -- I do not move at all.

Everything else moves -- not me.

M: Granted.

But your mind does move.

Q: Still, all this presupposes some faith.

M: Turn within and you will come to trust yourself.

In everything else confidence comes with experience.

Q: When a man tells me that he knows something I do not know, I have the right to ask: 'what is if that you know, that I do not know?

Q: Then I watch him closely and try to make out.

Q: The new just looks at the old.

It is neither friendly nor inimical.

It just accepts the old self along with everything else.

It does not deny its being, but does not accept its value and validity.

M: The new is the total denial of the old.

Any movement of life in me she resisted, any attempt to go beyond the narrow circle of her habitual existence she fought fiercely.

As a child I was both sensitive and affectionate.

I craved for love above everything else and love, the simple, instinctive love of a mother for her child was denied me.

The child's search for its mother became the leading motive of my life and I never grew out of it.

A happy child, a happy childhood became an obsession with me.

It is the negation of all direction.

Ultimately even the 'I am' will have to go, for you need not keep on asserting what is obvious.

Bringing the mind to the feeling 'I am' merely helps in turning the mind away from everything else.

Q: Where does it all lead me?

M: When the mind is kept away from its preoccupations, it becomes quiet.

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'.

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 realisation of your true nature.

Q: Does it imply avoidance of action?

M: You cannot avoid action.

It happens, like everything else.

Q: My actions, surely, I can control.

M: Try.

By no effort can you change the 'I am' into 'I am-not'.

Behold, the real experiencer is not the mind, but myself, the light in which everything appears.

Self is the common factor at the root of all experience, the awareness in which everything happens.

The entire field of consciousness is only as a film, or a speck, in 'I am'.

This 'I am-ness' is, being conscious of consciousness, being aware of itself.

M: I know nothing about miracles, and I wonder whether nature admits exceptions to her laws, unless we agree that everything is a miracle.

As to my mind, there is no such thing.

There is consciousness in which everything happens.

It is quite obvious and within the experience of everybody.

You just do not look carefully enough.

The root idea is: 'I am'.

It shatters the state of pure consciousness and is followed by the innumerable sensations and perceptions, feeling and ideas which in their totality constitute God and His world.

The 'I am' remains as the witness, but it is by the will of God that everything happens.

Q: Why not by my will?

M: Again you have split yourself -- into God and witness.

Physical proximity is least important.

Make your entire life an expression of your faith and love for your teacher -- this is real dwelling with the Guru.

33: Everything Happens by Itself.

Questioner: Does a jnani die?

Maharaj: He is beyond life and death.

A selfish man turns religious, controls himself, refines his thoughts and feelings, takes to spiritual practice, realises his true being.

Is such progress ruled by causality, or is it accidental?

M: From my point of view everything happens by itself, quite spontaneously.

But man imagines that he works for an incentive, towards a goal.

He has always a reward in mind and strives for it.

Q: Such things are not done.

They happen.

M: Everything happens all the time, but you must be ready for it.

Readiness is ripeness.

You do not see the real because your mind is not ready for it.

The wise man counts nothing as his own.

When at some time and place some miracle is attributed to some person, he will not establish any causal link between events and people, nor will he allow any conclusions to be drawn.

All happened as it happened because it had to happen everything happens as it does, because the universe is as it is.

Q: The universe does not seem a happy place to live in.

Why is there so much suffering?

Where is the need of a policeman?

Every action creates a reaction, which balances and neutralises the action.

Everything happens, but there is a continuous cancelling out, and in the end it is as if nothing happened.

Q: Do not console me with final harmonies.

The accounts tally, but the loss is mine.

The Guru is always ready to share, but there are no takers.

Q: Yes, Sri Ramana Maharshi used to say: Gurus there are many, but where are the disciples?

M: Well, in the course of time everything happens.

All will come through, not a single soul (jiva) shall be lost.

Q: I am very much afraid of taking intellectual understanding for realisation.

M: The world itself is a miracle.

I am beyond miracles -- I am absolutely normal.

With me everything happens as it must.

I do not interfere with creation.

Of what use are small miracles to me when the greatest of miracles is happening all the time?

Having forgotten, or not having experienced?

Don't you experience even when unconscious?

Can you exist without knowing?

A lapse in memory: is it a proof of non-existence?

And can you validly talk about your own non-existence as an actual experience?

Q: Incomplete memory entails incomplete personality.

Without memory I cannot exist as a person.

M: Surely you can exist without memory.

You do so -- in sleep.

Q: Only in the sense of remaining alive.

It is the self that makes the body and the mind so interesting, so very dear.

The very attention given to them comes from the self.

Q: If the self is not the body nor the mind, can it exist without the body and the mind?

M: Yes, it can.

It is a matter of actual experience that the self has being independent of mind and body.

Where else do you expect them to come from?

Outside your consciousness does anything exist?

Q: It may exist without my ever knowing it.

M: What kind of existence would it be?

Can being be divorced from knowing?

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.

To know what you are, is it not good enough?

Q: What are the uses of self-knowledge?

M: It helps you to understand what you are not and keeps you free from false ideas, desires and actions.

Q: If I am the witness only, what do right and wrong matter?

M: What helps you to know yourself is right.

The brighter the intelligence, the wider, deeper and truer the knowledge.

To know things, to know people and to know oneself are all functions of intelligence: the last is the most important and contains the former two.

Misunderstanding oneself and the world leads to false ideas and desires, which again lead to bondage.

Right understanding of oneself is necessary for freedom from the bondage of illusion.

I understand all this in theory, but when it comes to practice, I find that I fail hopelessly in my responses to situations and people and by my inappropriate reactions I merely add to my bondage.

Without the 'I am' there is nothing.

All knowledge is about the 'I am'.

False ideas about this 'I am' lead to bondage, right knowledge leads to freedom and happiness.

Q: Is 'I am' and 'there is' the same?

M: 'I am' denotes the inner, 'there is' -- the outer.

You can only be the real -- which you are, anyhow.

The problem is only mental.

Abandon false ideas, that is all.

There is no need of true ideas.

There aren't any.

Yet, taking nothing as their own, they are neither proud, nor do they crave for reputation.

They are just unable to desire anything for themselves, not even the joy of helping others knowing that God is good they are at peace.

77: 'I' and 'Mine' are False Ideas.

Questioner: I am very much attached to my family and possessions.

How can I conquer this attachment?

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 recognise 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.

Q: How does one attend to the unconscious?

M: Keep the 'I am' in the focus of awareness, remember that you are, watch yourself ceaselessly and the unconscious will flow into the conscious without any special effort on your part.

Wrong desires and fears, false ideas, social inhibitions are blocking and preventing its free interplay with the conscious.

Once free to mingle, the two become one and the one becomes all.

The person merges into the witness, the witness into awareness, awareness into pure being, yet identity is not lost, only its limitations are lost.

It is the essence of revolt and without revolt there can be no freedom.

There is no second, or higher self to search for.

You are the highest self, only give up the false ideas you have about your self.

Both faith and reason tell you that you are neither the body, nor its desires and fears, nor are you the mind with its fanciful ideas, nor the role society compels you to play, the person you are supposed to be.

Give up the false and the true will come into its own.

Both hang on the idea: 'there is a world'.

When this too is given up, you remain what you are -- the non-dual Self.

You are it here and now, but your vision is obstructed by your false ideas about your self.

Q: Well, I admit that I am, I was, I shall be; at least from birth to death.

I have no doubts of my being, here and now.

Q: Why so much stress on self-negation?

M: As much as on self-realisation.

The false self must be abandoned before the real self can be found.

Q: The self you choose to call false is to me most distressingly real.

It is the only self I know.

Don't bottle up your love by limiting it to the body, keep it open.

It will be then the love for all.

When all the false selfidentifications are thrown away, what remains is all-embracing love.

Get rid of all ideas about yourself, even of the idea that you are God.

No self-definition is valid.

My Guru told me: that child, which is you even now, is your real self (swarupa).

Go back to that state of pure being, where the 'I am' is still in its purity before it got contaminated with 'this I am' or 'that I am'.

Your burden is of false self-identifications -- abandon them all.

My Guru told me -- 'Trust me.

I tell you; you are divine.

But in life itself a little whorl arises in the mind, which indulges in fantasies and imagines itself dominating and controlling life.

Life itself is desireless.

But the false self wants to continue -- pleasantly.

Therefore it is always engaged in ensuring one's continuity.

Life is unafraid and free.

The Guru comes and tells the smaller one: 'You are not alone, you come from a very good family, your brother is a very remarkable man, wise and kind, and he loves you very much.

Remember him, think of him, find him, serve him, and you will become one with him'.

Now, the question is are there two in us, the personal and the individual, the false self and the true self, or is it only a simile?

M: It is both.

They appear to be two, but on investigation they are found to be one.

If you think that Buddha, Christ or Krishnamurti speak to the person, you are mistaken.

They know well that the vyakti, the outer self, is but a shadow of the vyakta, the inner self, and they address and admonish the vyakta only.

They tell him to give attention to the outer self, to guide and help it, to feel responsible for it; in short, to be fully aware of it.

Awareness comes from the Supreme and pervades the inner self; the so-called outer self is only that part of one's being of which one is not aware.

One may be conscious, for every being is conscious, but one is not aware.

M: There is a season for trusting and for distrusting.

Let the seasons do their work, why worry?

Q: Somehow I feel responsible for what happens around me.

M: You are responsible only for what you can change.

All you can change is only your attitude.

He accepts his punishment as just and proper and is at peace with the prison authorities and the State.

All religions do nothing else but preach acceptance and surrender.

We are being encouraged to plead guilty, to feel responsible for all the evils in the world and point at ourselves as their only cause.

My problem is: I cannot see much difference between brain-washing and sadhana, except that in the case of sadhana one is not physically constrained.

The element of compulsive suggestion is present in both.

Whence am I to come from and where to go?

Q: Of what use is your world to me?

M: You should consider more closely your own world, examine it critically and, suddenly, one day you will find yourself in mine.

Q: What do we gain by it?

M: You gain nothing.

Do not take up new tasks.

unless it is called for by a concrete situation of suffering and relief from suffering.

Find yourself first, and endless blessings will follow.

Nothing profits the world as much as the abandoning of profits.

A man who no longer thinks in terms of loss and gain is the truly non-violent man, for he is beyond all conflict.

Letting in the light makes everything easy.

So, let us wait with improving others until we have seen ourselves as we are -- and have changed.

There is no need to turn round and round in endless questioning; find yourself and everything will fall into its proper place.

Q: The urge to return to the source is very rare.

Is it at all natural?

Ignorance of yourself.

What is the root of desire?

The urge to find yourself.

All creation toils for its self and will not rest until it returns to it.

Q: When will it return?

So far you took yourself to be the movable and overlooked the immovable.

Turn your mind inside out.

Overlook the movable and you will find yourself to be the ever-present, changeless reality, inexpressible, but solid like a rock.

Q: If it is now, why am I not aware of it?

M: Because you hold on to the idea that you are not aware of it.

Go beyond.

As long as your focus is on the body, you will remain in the clutches of food and sex, fear and death.

Find yourself and be free.

48: Awareness is Free.

Questioner: I have just arrived from Sri Ramanashram.

With the removal of causes the effect is bound to depart.

Man becomes what he believes himself to be.

Abandon all ideas about yourself and you will find yourself to be the pure witness, beyond all that can happen to the body or the mind.

Q: If I become anything I think myself to be, and I start thinking that I am the Supreme Reality, will not my Supreme Reality remain a mere idea?

M: First reach that state and then ask the question.

Suicide would be the way out.

M: As long as you pay attention to ideas, your own or of others, you will be in trouble.

But if you disregard all teachings, all books, anything out into words and dive deeply within yourself and find yourself, this alone will solve all your problems and leave you in full mastery of every situation, because you will not be dominated by your ideas about the situation.

Take an example.

You are in the company of an attractive woman.

It is that Life you love, which is you, which is all.

realise it in its totality, beyond all divisions and limitations, and all your desires will merge in it, for the greater contains the smaller.

Therefore find yourself, for in finding that you find all.

Everybody is glad to be.

But few know the fullness of it.

If in the state of witnessing you ask yourself: 'Who am I?

', the answer comes at once, though it is wordless and silent.

Cease to be the object and become the subject of all that happens; once having turned within, you will find yourself beyond the subject.

When you have found yourself, you will find that you are also beyond the object, that both the subject and the object exist in you, but you are neither.

Q: You speak of the mind, of the witnessing consciousness beyond the mind and of the Supreme, which is beyond awareness.

Pleasant is the ending of pain and painful the end of pleasure.

They just rotate in endless succession.

Investigate the vicious circle till you find yourself beyond it.

Q: Don't I need your grace to take me beyond?

M: The grace of your Inner Reality is timelessly with you.

But of what use are names when reality is so near?

Q: Is there any progress in your condition?

When you compare yourself yesterday with yourself today, do you find yourself changing, making progress?

Does your vision of reality grow in width and depth?

M: Reality is immovable and yet in constant movement.

M: It is your understanding that will decide about the validity of proofs.

But what more tangible proof do you need than your own existence?

Wherever you go you find yourself.

However far you reach out in time, you are there.

Q: Obviously, I am not all-pervading and eternal.

Maharaj's interpretation of truth is not different from that of Jnana Yoga/Advaita Vedanta.

But, he has a way of his own.

The multifarious forms around us, says he, are constituted of the five elements.

They are transient, and in a state of perpetual flux.

Also they are governed by the law of causation.

It is not the Absolute.

The sense, or taste of 'I am-ness' is not absolutely beyond time.

Being the essence of the five elements, it, in a way, depends upon the world.

It arises from the body, which, in its turn, is built by food, consisting of the elements.

It disappears when the body dies, like the spark extinguishes when the incense stick burns out.

Deepen and broaden your awareness of yourself and all the blessings will flow.

You need not seek anything, all will come to you most naturally and effortlessly.

The five senses and the four functions of the mind -- memory, thought, understanding and selfhood; the five elements -- earth, water, fire, air and ether; the two aspects of creation -- matter and spirit, all are contained in awareness.

Q: Yet, you must believe in having lived before.

M: The scriptures say so, but I know nothing about it.

Does it tally with the other view?

M: Yes, when the vyakti realises its non-existence in separation from the vyakta, and the vyakta sees the vyakti as his own expression, then the peace and silence of the avyakta state come into being.

In reality, the three are one: the vyakta and the avyakta are inseparable, while the vyakti is the sensing-feeling-thinking process, based on the body made of and fed by the five elements.

Q: What is the relation between the vyakta and the avyakta?

M: How can there be relation when they are one?

Less so in dream.

Still less in sleep.

Homogeneous -- in the fourth state.

Beyond is the inexpressible monolithic reality, the abode of the jnani.

Q: I have cut my hand.

M: It does not depend on memories and expectations, desires and fears, likes and dislikes.

All is seen as it is.

Q: Is it what you call the fourth state (turiya)?

M: Call it as you like.

It is solid, steady, changeless, beginningless and endless, ever new, ever fresh.

M: At the root of all creation lies desire.

Desire and imagination foster and reinforce each other.

The fourth state (turiya) is a state of pure witnessing, detached awareness, passionless and wordless.

It is like space, unaffected by whatever it contains.

Bodily and mental troubles do not reach it -- they are outside, 'there', while the witness is always 'here'.

My inner is outside and my outer is inside.

I may get from you the knowledge needed at the moment, but you are not apart from me.

Q: What is turiya, the fourth state we hear about?

M: To be the point of light tracing the world is turiya.

To be the light itself is turiyatita.

The concrete need not be the real, the conceived need not be false.

Perceptions based on sensations and shaped by memory imply a perceiver, whose nature you never cared to examine.

Give it your full attention, examine it with loving care and you will discover heights and depths of being which you did not dream of, engrossed as you are in your puny image of yourself.

Q: I must be in the right mood to examine myself fruitfully.

M: You must be serious, intent, truly interested.

Good enough, for a start.

Go on pondering, wondering, being anxious to find a way.

Be conscious of yourself, watch your mind, give it your full attention.

Don't look for quick results; there may be none within your noticing.

Unknown to you, your psyche will undergo a change, there will be more clarity in your thinking, charity in your feeling, purity in your behaviour.

M: It is your childishness you are returning to.

You are not fully grown up; there are levels left undeveloped because unattended.

Just give full attention to what in you is crude and primitive, unreasonable and unkind, altogether childish, and you will ripen.

It is the maturity of heart and mind that is essential.

It comes effortlessly when the main obstacle is removed -- inattention, unawareness.

Before you ask about ignorance, why don't you enquire first, who is the ignorant?

When you say you are ignorant, you do not know that you have imposed the concept of ignorance over the actual state of your thoughts and feelings.

Examine them as they occur, give them your full attention and you will find that there is nothing like ignorance, only inattention.

Give attention to what worries you, that is all.

After all, worry is mental pain and pain is invariably a call for attention.

M: What is the use of truth, goodness, harmony, beauty?

They are their own goal.

They manifest spontaneously and effortlessly, when things are left to themselves, are not interfered with, not shunned, or wanted, or conceptualised, but just experienced in full awareness, such awareness itself is sattva.

It does not make use of things and people -- it fulfils them.

Q: Since I cannot improve sattva, am I to deal with tamas and rajas only?

I feel it cannot be so.

God is not such a fool.

The world seems to me a big enterprise for bringing the potential into actual, matter into life, the unconscious into full awareness.

To realise the supreme we need the experience of the opposites.

Just as for building a temple we need stone and mortar, wood and iron, glass and tiles, so for making a man into a divine sage, a master of life and death, one needs the material of every experience.

Q: The Yoga of living, of life itself, we may call the Natural Yoga (nisarga yoga).

It reminds me of the Primal Yoga (adhi yoga), mentioned in the Rig-Veda which was described as the marrying of life with mind.

M: A life lived thoughtfully, in full awareness, is by itself Nisarga Yoga.

Q: What does the marriage of life and mind mean?

M: Living in spontaneous awareness, consciousness of effortless living, being fully interested in one's life -- all this is implied.

M: At one point only -- at the point of the now.

It gives it momentary being, a fleeting sense of reality.

In full awareness the contact is established.

It needs effortless, un-self-conscious attention.

Q: Is not attention an attitude of mind?

M: Earnestness, the sign of maturity.

Q: And how does maturity come about?

M: By keeping your mind clear and clean, by living your life in full awareness of every moment as it happens, by examining and dissolving one's desires and fears as soon as they arise.

Q: Is such concentration at all possible?

M: Try.

That I am happy is not at all obvious.

Where has my happiness gone?

M: Be fully aware of your own being and you will be in bliss consciously.

Because you take your mind off yourself and make it dwell on what you are not, you lose your sense of well-being of being well.

Q: There are two paths before us -- the path of effort (yoga marga), and the path of ease (bhoga marga).

M: Weak-mindedness is due to lack of intelligence, of understanding, which again is the result of non-awareness.

By striving for awareness you bring your mind together and strengthen it.

Q: I may be fully aware of what is going on, and yet quite unable to influence it in any way.

M: You are mistaken.

What is going on is a projection of your mind.

M: His state is not so desolate.

It tastes of the pure, uncaused, undiluted bliss.

He is happy and fully aware that happiness is his very nature and that he need not do anything, nor strive for anything to secure it.

It follows him, more real than the body, nearer than the mind itself.

You imagine that without cause there can be no happiness.

Maharaj: The very fact of observation alters the observer and the observed.

After all, what prevents the insight into one's true nature is the weakness and obtuseness of the mind and its tendency to skip the subtle and focus on the gross only.

When you follow my advice and try to keep your mind on the notion of 'I am' only, you become fully aware of your mind and its vagaries.

Awareness, being lucid harmony (sattva) in action, dissolves dullness and quietens the restlessness of the mind and gently, but steadily changes its very substance.

This change need not be spectacular; it may be hardly noticeable; yet it is a deep and fundamental shift from darkness to light, from inadvertence to awareness.

If you think that Buddha, Christ or Krishnamurti speak to the person, you are mistaken.

They know well that the vyakti, the outer self, is but a shadow of the vyakta, the inner self, and they address and admonish the vyakta only.

They tell him to give attention to the outer self, to guide and help it, to feel responsible for it; in short, to be fully aware of it.

Awareness comes from the Supreme and pervades the inner self; the so-called outer self is only that part of one's being of which one is not aware.

One may be conscious, for every being is conscious, but one is not aware.

Each moment is newly born.

Q: Without memory you cannot be conscious.

M: Of course I am conscious, and fully aware of it.

I am not a block of wood!

Compare consciousness and its content to a cloud.

If you talk from the mind, you may be wrong.

If you talk from full insight into the situation, with your own mental habits in abeyance your advice may be a true response.

The main point is to be fully aware that neither you nor the man in front of you are mere bodies; If your awareness is clear and full.

a mistake is less probable.

64: Whatever pleases you, Keeps you Back .

If you are beyond consciousness, what are you witnessing to?

M: I am conscious and unconscious, both conscious and unconscious, neither conscious nor unconscious -- to all this I am witness -- but really there is no witness, because there is nothing to be a witness to.

I am perfectly empty of all mental formations, void of mind -- yet fully aware.

This I try to express my saying that I am beyond the mind.

Q: How can I reach you then?

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.

It may be beautiful and peaceful.

Once you know that death happens to the body and not to you, you just watch your body falling off like a discarded garment.

Q: I am fully aware that my fear of death is due to apprehension and not knowledge.

M: Human beings die every second, the fear and the agony of dying hangs over the world like a cloud.

No wonder you too are afraid.

Q: How can I make myself understand?

M: By meditating which means giving attention.

Become fully aware of your problem, look at it from all sides, watch how it affects your life.

Then leave it alone.

You can't do more than that.

Nor am I in one.

The world you think of is in your own mind.

I can see it through your eyes and mind, but I am fully aware that it is a projection of memories; it is touched by the real only at the point of awareness, which can be only now.

Q: The only difference between us seems to be that while I keep on saying that I do not know my real self, you maintain that you know it well; is there any other difference between us?

M: There is no difference between us; nor can I say that I know myself, I know that I am not describable nor definable.