During this period he got married and had a son and three daughters.

Childhood, youth, marriage, progeny -- Maruti lived the usual humdrum and eventless life of a common man till his middle age, with no inkling at all of the sainthood that was to follow.

Among his friends during this period was one Yashwantrao Baagkar, who was a devotee of Sri Siddharameshwar Maharaj, a spiritual teacher of the Navnath Sampradaya, a sect of Hinduism.

One evening Baagkar took Maruti to his Guru and that evening proved to be the turning point in his life.

The Guru gave him a mantra and instructions in meditation.

It is like a family name, but here the family is spiritual.

Q: Do you have to realise to join the Sampradaya?

M: The Navnath Sampradaya is only a tradition, a way of teaching and practice.

It does not denote a level of consciousness.

If you accept a Navnath Sampradaya teacher as your Guru, you join his Sampradaya.

M: The Navnath Sampradaya is only a tradition, a way of teaching and practice.

It does not denote a level of consciousness.

If you accept a Navnath Sampradaya teacher as your Guru, you join his Sampradaya.

Usually you receive a token of his grace -- a look, a touch, or a word, sometimes a vivid dream or a strong remembrance.

Sometimes the only sign of grace is a significant and rapid change in character and behaviour.

As Maharaj puts it: words are pointers, they show the direction but they will not come along with us.

Truth is the fruit of earnest action, words merely point the way.

The Nath Sampradaya, later known as the Navnath Sampradaya, is one of them.

Some scholars are of the view that this sect originated with the teachings of the mythical Rishi Dattatreya, who is believed to be a combined incarnation of the holy trinity of Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva.

The unique spiritual attainments of this legendary figure are mentioned in the Bhagavata Purana, the Mahabharata and also in some later Upanishads.

The unique spiritual attainments of this legendary figure are mentioned in the Bhagavata Purana, the Mahabharata and also in some later Upanishads.

Others hold that it is an offshoot of the Hatha Yoga.

Whatever be its origin, the teachings of the Nath Sampradaya have, over the centuries, become labyrinthine in complexity and have assumed different forms in different parts of India.

Some Gurus of the Sampradaya lay stress on bhakti, devotion; others on jnana, knowledge; still others on yoga, the union with the ultimate.

In the fourteenth century we find Svatmarama Svami, the great Hathayogin, bemoaning 'the darkness arising out of multiplicity of opinions' to displel which he lit the lamp of his famous work Hathayogapradipika.

In fact their approach is totally non- metaphysical, simple and direct.

While the chanting of sacred hyms and devotional songs as well as the worship of the idols is a traditional feature of the sect, its teaching emphasises that the Supreme Reality can be realised only within the heart.

The Nath Sampradaya came to be known as Navnath Sampradaya when sometime in the remote past, the followers of the sect chose nine of their early Gurus as examplars of their creed.

Bur there is no unanimity regarding the names of these nine Masters.

Matsyendranath 2.

Bhausahib Maharaj later established what came to be known as Inchegeri Sampradaya, a new movement within the traditional fold.

Among his disciples were Amburao Maharaj, Girimalleshwar Maharaj, Siddharameshwar Maharaj and the noted philosopher Dr. R. D. Renade.

It may be mentioned here that, though officially the current Guru of the Inchegeri branch of the Navnath Sampradaya, Sri Nisargadatta does not seem to attach much importance to sects, cults and creeds, including his own.

In answer to a questioner whi wished to join the Navnath Sampradaya he said: "The Navnath Sampradaya is only a tradition, a way of teaching and practice.

It does not denote a level of consciousness.

Among his disciples were Amburao Maharaj, Girimalleshwar Maharaj, Siddharameshwar Maharaj and the noted philosopher Dr. R. D. Renade.

It may be mentioned here that, though officially the current Guru of the Inchegeri branch of the Navnath Sampradaya, Sri Nisargadatta does not seem to attach much importance to sects, cults and creeds, including his own.

In answer to a questioner whi wished to join the Navnath Sampradaya he said: "The Navnath Sampradaya is only a tradition, a way of teaching and practice.

It does not denote a level of consciousness.

If you accept a Navnath Sampradaya teacher as your Guru, you join his Sampradaya...

In answer to a questioner whi wished to join the Navnath Sampradaya he said: "The Navnath Sampradaya is only a tradition, a way of teaching and practice.

It does not denote a level of consciousness.

If you accept a Navnath Sampradaya teacher as your Guru, you join his Sampradaya...

Your belonging is a matter of your own feeling and conviction.

After all it is all verbal and formal.

All you need is to get rid of the tendency to define your self.

All definitions apply to your body only and to its expressions.

Once this obsession with the body goes, you will revert to your natural state, spontaneously and effortlessly.

The only difference between us is that I am aware of my natural state, while you are bemused.

Just like gold made into ornaments has no advantage over gold dust, except when the mind makes it so, so are we one in being -- we differ only in appearance.

All definitions apply to your body only and to its expressions.

Once this obsession with the body goes, you will revert to your natural state, spontaneously and effortlessly.

The only difference between us is that I am aware of my natural state, while you are bemused.

Just like gold made into ornaments has no advantage over gold dust, except when the mind makes it so, so are we one in being -- we differ only in appearance.

We discover it by being earnest, by searching, enquiring, questioning daily and hourly, by giving one's life to this discovery.

Q: Then, how do you know you are in the supreme state?

M: Because I am in it.

It is the only natural state.

Q: Can you describe it?

M: Only by negation, as uncaused, independent, unrelated, undivided, uncomposed, unshakable, unquestionable, unreachable by effort.

Q: And not what I am?

M: What you are, you already are.

By knowing what you are not, you are free of it and remain in your own natural state.

It all happens quite spontaneously and effortlessly.

Q: And what do I discover?

But your attention is fixed on things, physical or mental.

When your attention is off a thing and not yet fixed on another, in the interval you are pure being.

When through the practice of discrimination and detachment (viveka-vairagya), you lose sight of sensory and mental states, pure being emerges as the natural state.

Q: How does one bring to an end this sense of separateness?

M: By focussing the mind on 'I am', on the sense of being, 'I am so-and-so' dissolves; "I am a witness only" remains and that too submerges in 'I am all'.

Q: Is it not a calamity to forget oneself?

M: As bad as to remember oneself continuously.

There is a state beyond forgetting and not- forgetting -- the natural state.

To remember, to forget -- these are all states of mind, thoughtbound, word-bound.

Take for example, the idea of being born.

The obstacles to the clear perception of one's true being are desire for pleasure and fear of pain.

It is the pleasure-pain motivation that stands in the way.

The very freedom from all motivation, the state in which no desire arises is the natural state.

Q: Such giving up of desires, does it need time?

M: If you leave it to time, millions of years will be needed.

If you seek the Immutable, go beyond experience.

When I say: remember 'I am' all the time, I mean: 'come back to it repeatedly'.

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.

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.

The very idea 'I am self-realised' is a mistake.

There is no 'I am this'.

'I am that' in the Natural State.

62: In the Supreme the Witness Appears.

Questioner: Some forty years ago J. Krishnamurti said that there is life only and all talk of personalities and individualities has no foundation in reality.

What you believe you need is not what you need.

Your real need I know, not you.

You need to return to the state in which I am -- your natural state.

Anything else you may think of is an illusion and an obstacle.

Believe me, you need nothing except to be what you are.

What more do I need?

M: Yours may not be the ultimate state.

You will recognise that you have returned to your natural state by a complete absence of all desire and fear.

After all, at the root of all desire and fear is the feeling of not being what you are.

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.

After all, at the root of all desire and fear is the feeling of not being what you are.

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.

Q: You mean to say that I become God merely by giving up the desire to become God?

M: All desires must be given up, because by desiring you take the shape of your desires.

When no desires remain, you revert to your natural state.

Q: How do I come to know that I have achieved perfection?

M: You can not know perfection, you can know only imperfection.

You are afraid of being impersonal, of impersonal being.

It is all quite simple.

Turn away from your desires and fears and from the thoughts they create and you are at once in your natural state.

Q: No question of reconditioning, changing, or eliminating the mind?

M: Absolutely none.

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.

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.

81: Root Cause of Fear.

Maharaj: Where do you come from?

Q: If being happy is the same as being free from fear and worry, cannot it be said that absence of trouble is the cause of happiness?

M: A state of absence, of non-existence cannot be a cause; the pre-existence of a cause is implied in the notion.

Your natural state, in which nothing exists, cannot be a cause of becoming; the causes are hidden in the great and mysterious power of memory.

But your true home is in nothingness, in emptiness of all content.

Q: Emptiness and nothingness -- how dreadful!

' And soon you will see your mistake.

And it is in the very nature of a mistake to cease to be, when seen.

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.

Live your life without hurting anybody.

Harmlessness is a most powerful form of Yoga and it will take you speedily to your goal.

This is what I call nisarga yoga, the Natural yoga.

It is the art of living in peace and harmony, in friendliness and love.

The fruit of it is happiness, uncaused and endless.

When it is clear and luminous, it becomes a faithful reflection of the source.

The source is always the same -- beyond darkness and light, beyond life and death, beyond the conscious and the unconscious.

This dwelling on the sense 'I am' is the simple, easy and natural Yoga, the Nisarga Yoga.

There is no secrecy in it and no dependence; no preparation is required and no initiation.

Whoever is puzzled by his very existence as a conscious being and earnestly wants to find his own source, can grasp the ever-present sense of 'I am' and dwell on it assiduously and patiently, till the clouds obscuring the mind dissolve and the heart of being is seen in all its glory.

M: And what was the net result of it all?

Q: Definitely there was an increase of energy.

But before I left for Rishikesh, I did some fasting and dieting at a Nature Cure Sanatorium at Pudukkotai in South India.

It has done me enormous good.

M: Maybe the access of energy was due to better health.

M: What are your plans?

Q: I have to return to the States because of visa difficulties.

I intend to complete my B.Sc., study Nature Cure and make it my profession.

M: A good profession, no doubt.

Q: Is there any danger in pursuing the path of Yoga at all cost?

Get your B.Sc.

degree first.

You can always return to India for your Nature Cure studies.

Q: I am quite aware of the opportunities in the States.

It is the loneliness that frightens me.

During this period he got married and had a son and three daughters.

Childhood, youth, marriage, progeny -- Maruti lived the usual humdrum and eventless life of a common man till his middle age, with no inkling at all of the sainthood that was to follow.

Among his friends during this period was one Yashwantrao Baagkar, who was a devotee of Sri Siddharameshwar Maharaj, a spiritual teacher of the Navnath Sampradaya, a sect of Hinduism.

One evening Baagkar took Maruti to his Guru and that evening proved to be the turning point in his life.

The Guru gave him a mantra and instructions in meditation.

It is like a family name, but here the family is spiritual.

Q: Do you have to realise to join the Sampradaya?

M: The Navnath Sampradaya is only a tradition, a way of teaching and practice.

It does not denote a level of consciousness.

If you accept a Navnath Sampradaya teacher as your Guru, you join his Sampradaya.

M: The Navnath Sampradaya is only a tradition, a way of teaching and practice.

It does not denote a level of consciousness.

If you accept a Navnath Sampradaya teacher as your Guru, you join his Sampradaya.

Usually you receive a token of his grace -- a look, a touch, or a word, sometimes a vivid dream or a strong remembrance.

Sometimes the only sign of grace is a significant and rapid change in character and behaviour.

As Maharaj puts it: words are pointers, they show the direction but they will not come along with us.

Truth is the fruit of earnest action, words merely point the way.

The Nath Sampradaya, later known as the Navnath Sampradaya, is one of them.

Some scholars are of the view that this sect originated with the teachings of the mythical Rishi Dattatreya, who is believed to be a combined incarnation of the holy trinity of Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva.

The unique spiritual attainments of this legendary figure are mentioned in the Bhagavata Purana, the Mahabharata and also in some later Upanishads.

In fact their approach is totally non- metaphysical, simple and direct.

While the chanting of sacred hyms and devotional songs as well as the worship of the idols is a traditional feature of the sect, its teaching emphasises that the Supreme Reality can be realised only within the heart.

The Nath Sampradaya came to be known as Navnath Sampradaya when sometime in the remote past, the followers of the sect chose nine of their early Gurus as examplars of their creed.

Bur there is no unanimity regarding the names of these nine Masters.

Matsyendranath 2.

Bhausahib Maharaj later established what came to be known as Inchegeri Sampradaya, a new movement within the traditional fold.

Among his disciples were Amburao Maharaj, Girimalleshwar Maharaj, Siddharameshwar Maharaj and the noted philosopher Dr. R. D. Renade.

It may be mentioned here that, though officially the current Guru of the Inchegeri branch of the Navnath Sampradaya, Sri Nisargadatta does not seem to attach much importance to sects, cults and creeds, including his own.

In answer to a questioner whi wished to join the Navnath Sampradaya he said: "The Navnath Sampradaya is only a tradition, a way of teaching and practice.

It does not denote a level of consciousness.

Among his disciples were Amburao Maharaj, Girimalleshwar Maharaj, Siddharameshwar Maharaj and the noted philosopher Dr. R. D. Renade.

It may be mentioned here that, though officially the current Guru of the Inchegeri branch of the Navnath Sampradaya, Sri Nisargadatta does not seem to attach much importance to sects, cults and creeds, including his own.

In answer to a questioner whi wished to join the Navnath Sampradaya he said: "The Navnath Sampradaya is only a tradition, a way of teaching and practice.

It does not denote a level of consciousness.

If you accept a Navnath Sampradaya teacher as your Guru, you join his Sampradaya...

In answer to a questioner whi wished to join the Navnath Sampradaya he said: "The Navnath Sampradaya is only a tradition, a way of teaching and practice.

It does not denote a level of consciousness.

If you accept a Navnath Sampradaya teacher as your Guru, you join his Sampradaya...

Your belonging is a matter of your own feeling and conviction.

After all it is all verbal and formal.

Q: But what gives you courage?

M: How perverted are your views!

Need courage be given?

Your question implies that anxiety is the normal state and courage is abnormal.

It is the other way round.

The preparation alone is gradual, the change itself is sudden and complete.

Gradual change does not take you to a new level of conscious being.

You need courage to let go.

Q: I admit it is courage that I lack.

M: It is because you are not fully convinced.

But do not forget the inevitable, unexpected.

Without rain your garden will not flourish.

You need courage for adventure.

Q: I need time to collect my courage, don't hustle me.

Let me ripen for action.

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?

M: All these ideas and distinctions exist in your world; in mine there is nothing of the kind.

It is the other way round.

Anxiety and hope are born of imagination -- I am free of both.

I am simple being and I need nothing to rest on.

Q: Unless you know yourself, of what use is your being to you?

To be happy with what you are, you must know what you are.

To help is your very nature.

Even when you eat and drink you help your body.

For yourself you need nothing.

You are pure giving, beginning-less, endless, inexhaustible.

When you see sorrow and suffering, be with it.

There is no effort in witnessing.

You understand that you are the witness only and the understanding acts.

You need nothing more, just remember that you are the witness only.

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

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

M: To deal with things knowledge of things is needed.

To deal with people, you need insight, sympathy.

To deal with yourself you need nothing.

Be what you are: conscious being and don't stray away from yourself.

Q: University education is most useful.

You need to return to the state in which I am -- your natural state.

Anything else you may think of is an illusion and an obstacle.

Believe me, you need nothing except to be what you are.

You imagine you will increase your value by acquisition.

It is like gold imagining that an addition of copper will improve it.

M: They are not.

They are entirely mind-made.

You have to give up everything to know that you need nothing, not even your body.

Your needs are unreal and your efforts are meaningless.

You imagine that your possessions protect you.

The true Guru will never humiliate you, nor will he estrange you from yourself.

He will constantly bring you back to the fact of your inherent perfection and encourage you to seek within.

He knows you need nothing, not even him, and is never tired of reminding you.

But the self appointed Guru is more concerned with himself than with his disciples.

Q: You said that reality is beyond the knowledge and the teaching of the real.

As long as you identify yourself with them you are bound to suffer; realise your independence and remain happy.

I tell you, this is the secret of happiness.

To believe that you depend on things and people for happiness is due to ignorance of your true nature; to know that you need nothing to be happy, except self-knowledge, is wisdom.

Q: What comes first, being or desire?

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

Alertly asleep.

(jagrit-sushupti).

M: The main thing is to be free of negative emotions -- desire, fear etc., the 'six enemies' of the mind.

Once the mind is free of them, the rest will come easily.

Just as cloth kept in soap water will become clean, so will the mind get purified in the stream of pure feeling.

M: You may have a chronic fever and shiver all the time.

It is desires and fears that make the mind restless.

Free from all negative emotions it is quiet.

Q: You cannot protect the child from negative emotions.

As soon as it is born it learns pain and fear.

It is desires and fears that make the mind restless.

Free from all negative emotions it is quiet.

Q: You cannot protect the child from negative emotions.

As soon as it is born it learns pain and fear.

Hunger is a cruel master and teaches dependence and hate.

Discover all that you are not -- body, feelings thoughts, time, space, this or that -- nothing, concrete or abstract, which you perceive can be you.

The very act of perceiving shows that you are not what you perceive.

The clearer you understand on the level of mind you can be described in negative terms only, the quicker will you come to the end of your search and realise that you are the limitless being.

Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj.

Foreword.

Separate consistently and perseveringly the 'I am' from 'this' or 'that', and try to feel what it means to be, just to be, without being 'this' or 'that'.

All our habits go against it and the task of fighting them is long and hard sometimes, but clear understanding helps a lot.

The clearer you understand that on the level of the mind you can be described in negative terms only, the quicker you will come to the end of your search and realise your limitless being.

19: Reality lies in Objectivity.

Questioner: I am a painter and I earn by painting pictures.

Drugs or no drugs, the body remains the primary fact and the mind is secondary.

Beyond the mind, they see nothing.

From Buddha onwards the state of self-realisation was described in negative terms, as 'not this, not that'.

Is it inevitable?

Is it not possible to illustrate it, if not describe.

It all comes spontaneously, you need only hold on to the 'I am'.

Just like emerging from sleep or a state of rapture you feel rested and yet you cannot explain why and how you come to feel so well, in the same way on realisation you feel complete, fulfilled, free from the pleasure-pain complex, and yet not always able to explain what happened, why and how.

You can put it only in negative terms: 'Nothing is wrong with me any longer.

' It is only by comparison with the past that you know that you are out of it.

Otherwise -- you are just yourself.

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.

Reality is not a concept, nor the manifestation of a concept.

Douwe TiemersmaPhilosophical Faculty.

Erasmus Universiteit.

When asked about the date of his birth the Master replied blandly that he was never born!

Writing a biographical note on Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj is a frustrating and unrewarding task.

For, not only the exact date of his birth is unknown, but no verified facts concerning the early years of his life are available.

M: There is no need of a bridge.

Your mistake lies in your belief that you are born.

You were never born nor will you ever die, but you believe that you were born at a certain date and place and that a particular body is your own.

Q: The world is, I am.

These are facts.

All I see is a very interesting old man.

M: You are the interesting old man, not me!

I was never born.

How can I grow old?

What I appear to be to you exists only in your mind.

The dream continues.

Q: And what about the jnani?

M: The jnani does not die because he was never born.

Q: He appears so to others.

M: But not to himself.

M: So what?

What does he gain by living on and what does he lose by dying?

What was born, must die; what was never born cannot die.

It all depends on what he takes himself to be.

Q: Imagine you fall mortally ill. Would you not regret and resent?

All I see is a very interesting old man.

M: You are the interesting old man, not me!

I was never born.

How can I grow old?

What I appear to be to you exists only in your mind.

Each is the cause of the other; each is the other, in truth.

But I am out of it all.

When I am telling you that I was never born, why go on asking me what were my preparations for the next birth?

The moment you allow your imagination to spin, it at once spins out a universe.

It is not at all as you imagine and I am not bound by your imaginings.

You may take it to be true.

It is not.

You were never born, nor will you ever die.

It is the idea that was born and shall die, not you.

By identifying yourself with it you became mortal.

Q: One more question.

You said that before I was born I was one with the pure being of reality; if so, who decided that I should be born?

M: In reality you were never born and never shall die.

But now you imagine that you are, or have a body and you ask what has brought about this state.

Within the limits of illusion the answer is: desire born from memory attracts you to a body and makes you think as one with it.

The only law he obeys is that of love.

94: You are Beyond Space and Time.

Questioner: You keep on saying that I was never born and will never die.

If so, how is it that I see the world as one which has been born and will surely die?

Maharaj: You believe so because you have never questioned your belief that you are the body which, obviously, is born and dies.

Q: What do we gain by it?

M: You gain nothing.

You leave behind what is not your own and find what you have never lost -- your own being.

Q: Who is the ruler of your world?

M: There are no ruler and ruled here.

Happiness is unshakable.

What you can seek and find is not the real thing.

Find what you have never lost, find the inalienable.

26: Personality, an Obstacle.

Questioner: As I can see, the world is a school of Yoga and life itself is Yoga practice.

M: You can find what you have lost.

But you cannot find what you have not lost.

Q: Had I never lost anything, I would have been enlightened.

But I am not.

I am searching.

Am I to destroy it?

M: What has been attained may be lost again.

Only when you realise the true peace, the peace you have never lost, that peace will remain with you, for it was never away.

Instead of searching for what you do not have, find out what is it that you have never lost?

That which is there before the beginning and after the ending of everything; that to which there is no birth, nor death.

M: What has been attained may be lost again.

Only when you realise the true peace, the peace you have never lost, that peace will remain with you, for it was never away.

Instead of searching for what you do not have, find out what is it that you have never lost?

That which is there before the beginning and after the ending of everything; that to which there is no birth, nor death.

That immovable state, which is not affected by the birth and death of a body or a mind, that state you must perceive.

So far I did not find it.

Can you help me?

M: What was never lost can never be found.

Your very search for safety and joy keeps you away from them.

Stop searching, cease losing.

Q: Then, why was I unhappy all my life?

M: Because you did not go down to the very roots of your being.

It is your complete ignorance of yourself, that covered up your love and happiness and made you seek for what you had never lost.

Love is will, the will to share your happiness with all.

Being happy -- making happy -- this is the rhythm of love.

the succession of transient moments creates the illusion of time, but the timeless reality of pure being is not in movement, for all movement requires a motionless background.

It is itself the background.

Once you have found it in yourself, you know that you had never lost that independent being, independent of all divisions and separations.

But don't look for it in consciousness, you will not find it there.

Don't look for it anywhere, for nothing contains it.

It is not you who desires, fears and suffers, it is the person built on the foundation of your body by circumstances and influences.

You are not that person.

This must be clearly established in your mind and never lost sight of.

Normally, it needs a prolonged sadhana, years of austerities and meditation.

Q: My mind is weak and vacillating.

M: Did they save?

They have come and gone -- and the world plods on.

Of course, they did a lot and opened new dimensions in the human mind.

But to talk of saving the world is an exaggeration.

Q: Is there no salvation for the world?

The very idea of a jnani is foreign to Western culture, something exotic and rather unbelievable.

Even when his existence is accepted, he is looked at with suspicion, as a case of self- induced euphoria caused by strange physical postures and mental attitudes.

The very idea of a new dimension in consciousness seems to them implausible and improbable.

What will help them is the opportunity of hearing a jnani relate his own experience of realisation, its causes and beginnings, its progress and attainments and its actual practice in daily life.

Much of what he says may remain strange, even meaningless, yet there will remain a feeling of reality, an atmosphere of actual experiencing, ineffable, yet very real, a centre from which an exemplary life can be lived.

I have nothing which you do not have.

Self-knowledge is not a piece of property to be offered and accepted.

It is a new dimension altogether, where there is nothing to give or take.

Q: Give us at least some insight into the content of your mind while you live your daily life.

To eat, to drink, to talk, to sleep -- how does it feel at your end?

All that lives, works for protecting, perpetuating and expanding consciousness.

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?

There is nothing gradual about it.

It happens suddenly and is irreversible.

You rotate into a new dimension, seen from which the previous ones are mere abstractions.

Just like on sunrise you see things as they are, so on self-realisation you see everything as it is.

The world of illusions is left behind.

You need not know what you are.

Enough to know what you are not.

What you are you will never know, for every discovery reveals new dimensions to conquer.

The unknown has no limits.

Q: Does it imply ignorance for ever?

M: All experience is illusory, limited and temporal.

Expect nothing from experience.

realisation 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 realisation is not a new experience.

M: Did they save?

They have come and gone -- and the world plods on.

Of course, they did a lot and opened new dimensions in the human mind.

But to talk of saving the world is an exaggeration.

Q: Is there no salvation for the world?

All that lives, works for protecting, perpetuating and expanding consciousness.

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?

You need not know what you are.

Enough to know what you are not.

What you are you will never know, for every discovery reveals new dimensions to conquer.

The unknown has no limits.

Q: Does it imply ignorance for ever?

M: You were aware of thinking, feeling, doing.

You were not aware of your being.

Q: What is the new factor you want me to bring in?

M: The attitude of pure witnessing, of watching the events without taking part in them.

Q: What will it do to me?

Because he is blind, you ask.

You have added nothing.

Q: But your help will be a new factor?

M: No, all is contained in the boy's blindness.

All is in it -- the mother, the boy, you and me and all else.

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.

As long as the mind is busy with its contortions, it does not perceive its own source.

The Guru comes and turns your attention to the spark within.

By its very nature the mind is outward turned; it always tends to seek for the source of things among the things themselves; to be told to look for the source within, is, in a way, the beginning of a new life.

Awareness takes the place of consciousness; in consciousness there is the 'I', who is conscious while awareness is undivided; awareness is aware of itself.

The 'I am' is a thought, while awareness is not a thought, there is no 'I am aware' in awareness.

In reality, the Guru's role is only to instruct and encourage; the disciple is totally responsible for himself.

Q: We are told that total surrender to the Guru is enough, that the Guru will do the rest.

M: Of course, when there is total surrender, complete relinquishment of all concern with one's past, presents and future, with one's physical and spiritual security and standing, a new life dawns, full of love and beauty; then the Guru is not important, for the disciple has broken the shell of self-defence.

Complete self-surrender by itself is liberation.

Q: When both the disciple and his teacher are inadequate, what will happen?

Until you are free of the drug, all your religions and sciences, prayers and Yogas are of no use to you, for based on a mistake, they strengthen it.

But if you stay with the idea that you are not the body nor the mind, not even their witness, but altogether beyond, your mind will grow in clarity, your desires -- in purity, your actions -- in charity and that inner distillation will take you to another world, a world of truth and fearless love.

Resist your old habits of feeling and thinking; keep on telling yourself: 'No, not so, it cannot be so; I am not like this, I do not need it, I do not want it', and a day will surely come when the entire structure of error and despair will collapse and the ground will be free for a new life.

After all, you must remember, that all your preoccupations with yourself are only in your waking hours and partly in your dreams; in sleep all is put aside and forgotten.

It shows how little important is your waking life, even to yourself, that merely lying down and closing the eyes can end it.

The state of witnessing is full of power, there is nothing passive about it.

42: Reality can not be Expressed.

Questioner: I have noticed a new self emerging in me, independent of the old self.

They somehow co-exist.

The old self goes on its habitual ways; the new lets the old be, but does not identify itself with it.

The new does not care for verbal explanations -- it accepts things as they are and does not seek to relate them to things remembered.

M: Are you fully and constantly aware of the difference between the habitual and the spiritual.

What is the attitude of the new self to the old?

Q: The new just looks at the old.

It is neither friendly nor inimical.

When the new emerges the old is no longer.

You cannot speak of the new and the conflict in the same breath.

Even the effort of striving for the new self is of the old.

Wherever there is conflict, effort, struggle, striving, longing for a change, the new is not.

To what extent are you free from the habitual tendency to create and perpetuate conflicts?

And as long as you cling to the idea that only what has name and shape exists, the Supreme will appear to you nonexisting.

When you understand that names and shapes are hollow shells without any content whatsoever, and what is real is nameless and formless, pure energy of life and light of consciousness, you will be at peace -- immersed in the deep silence of reality.

Q: If time and space are mere illusions and you are beyond, please tell me what is the weather in New York.

Is it hot or raining there?

M: How can I tell you?

M: How can I tell you?

Such things need special training.

Or, just travelling to New York.

I may be quite certain that I am beyond time and space, and yet unable to locate myself at will at some point of time and space.

I am not interested enough; I see no purpose in undergoing a special Yogic training.

I may be quite certain that I am beyond time and space, and yet unable to locate myself at will at some point of time and space.

I am not interested enough; I see no purpose in undergoing a special Yogic training.

I have just heard of New York.

To me it is a word.

Why should I know more than the word conveys?

Must I know them all?

I can -- if I train.

Q: In putting the question about the weather in New York, where did I make the mistake?

M: The world and the mind are states of being.

The supreme is not a state.

Questioner: I see here pictures of several saints and I am told that they are your spiritual ancestors.

Who are they and how did it all begin?

Maharaj: We are called collectively the 'Nine Masters'.

The legend says that our first teacher was Rishi Dattatreya, the great incarnation of the Trinity of Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva.

Even the 'Nine Masters' (Navnath) are mythological.

Maharaj: We are called collectively the 'Nine Masters'.

The legend says that our first teacher was Rishi Dattatreya, the great incarnation of the Trinity of Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva.

Even the 'Nine Masters' (Navnath) are mythological.

Q: What is the peculiarity of their teaching?

M: Its simplicity, both in theory and practice.

By initiation or by succession?

M: Neither.

The 'Nine Masters' tradition, Navnath Parampara, is like a river -- it flows into the ocean of reality and whoever enters it is carried along.

Q: Does it imply acceptance by a living master belonging to the same tradition?

M: Those who practise the sadhana of focussing their minds on 'I am' may feel related to others who have followed the same sadhana and succeeded.

While the chanting of sacred hyms and devotional songs as well as the worship of the idols is a traditional feature of the sect, its teaching emphasises that the Supreme Reality can be realised only within the heart.

The Nath Sampradaya came to be known as Navnath Sampradaya when sometime in the remote past, the followers of the sect chose nine of their early Gurus as examplars of their creed.

Bur there is no unanimity regarding the names of these nine Masters.

Matsyendranath 2.

Gorakhnath 3.

Editors Note.

Not only the matter has now been re-set in a more readable typeface and with chapter headings, but new pictures of Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj have been included and the appendices contain some hitherto unpublished valuable material.

I draw special attention to the reader to the contribution entitled 'Nisarga Yoga', in which my esteemed friend, the late Maurice Frydman, has succinctly presented the teaching of Maharaj.

Simplicity and humility are the keynotes of his teachings, as Maurice observes.

The Master does not propound any intellectual concept or doctrine.

' And soon you will see your mistake.

And it is in the very nature of a mistake to cease to be, when seen.

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: 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.

Live your life without hurting anybody.

Harmlessness is a most powerful form of Yoga and it will take you speedily to your goal.

This is what I call nisarga yoga, the Natural yoga.

It is the art of living in peace and harmony, in friendliness and love.

The fruit of it is happiness, uncaused and endless.

All he knows, he knows with his mind, stimulated with the senses.

That the mind is a sense in itself, he does not even suspect.

The Nisarga Yoga, the 'natural' Yoga of Maharaj, is disconcertingly simple -- the mind, which is all- becoming, must recognise and penetrate its own being, not as being this or that, here or there, then or now, but just as timeless being.

This timeless being is the source of both life and consciousness.

In terms of time, space and causation it is all-powerful, being the causeless cause; all-pervading, eternal, in the sense of being beginningless, endless and ever-present.

And to be of interest, a thing must be related to one's conscious existence, which is the focal point of every desire and fear.

For, the ultimate aim of every desire is to enhance and intensify this sense of existence, while all fear is, in its essence, the fear of self- extinction.

To delve into the sense of 'I' -- so real and vital -- in order to reach its source is the core of Nisarga Yoga.

Not being continuous, the sense of 'I' must have a source from which it flows and to which it returns.

This timeless source of conscious being is what Maharaj calls the self-nature, self-being, swarupa.

When it is clear and luminous, it becomes a faithful reflection of the source.

The source is always the same -- beyond darkness and light, beyond life and death, beyond the conscious and the unconscious.

This dwelling on the sense 'I am' is the simple, easy and natural Yoga, the Nisarga Yoga.

There is no secrecy in it and no dependence; no preparation is required and no initiation.

Whoever is puzzled by his very existence as a conscious being and earnestly wants to find his own source, can grasp the ever-present sense of 'I am' and dwell on it assiduously and patiently, till the clouds obscuring the mind dissolve and the heart of being is seen in all its glory.

There is no secrecy in it and no dependence; no preparation is required and no initiation.

Whoever is puzzled by his very existence as a conscious being and earnestly wants to find his own source, can grasp the ever-present sense of 'I am' and dwell on it assiduously and patiently, till the clouds obscuring the mind dissolve and the heart of being is seen in all its glory.

The Nisarga Yoga, when persevered in and brought to its fruition, results in one becoming conscious and active in what one always was unconsciously and passively.

There is no difference in kind -- only in manner -- the difference between a lump of gold and a glorious ornament shaped out of it.

Life goes on, but it is spontaneous and free, meaningful and happy.

The very act of perceiving shows that you are not what you perceive.

The clearer you understand on the level of mind you can be described in negative terms only, the quicker will you come to the end of your search and realise that you are the limitless being.

Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj.

Foreword.

That there should be yet another addition of I AM THAT is not surprising, for the sublimity of the words spoken by Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj, their directness and the lucidity with which they refer to the Highest have already made this book a literature of paramount importance.

Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj.

Foreword.

That there should be yet another addition of I AM THAT is not surprising, for the sublimity of the words spoken by Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj, their directness and the lucidity with which they refer to the Highest have already made this book a literature of paramount importance.

In fact, many regard it as the only book of spiritual teaching really worth studying.

There are various religions and systems of philosophy which claim to endow human life with meaning.

Sometimes, however, though rarely, scepticism gives rise to an intuition of a basic reality, more fundamental than that of words, religions or philosophic systems.

Strangely, it is a positive aspect of scepticism.

It was in such a state of scepticism, but also having an intuition of the basic reality, that I happened to read Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj's I AM THAT.

I was at once struck by the finality and unassailable certitude of his words.

Limited by their very nature though words are, I found the utterances of Maharaj transparent, polished windows, as it were.

Only the words spoken directly to you by the Guru shed their opacity completely.

In a Guru's presence the last boundaries drawn by the mind vanish.

Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj is indeed such a Guru.

He is not a preacher, but he provides precisely those indications which the seeker needs.

The reality which emanates from him is inalienable and Absolute.

It is for the seeker to regard them with the utmost seriousness, because they indicate the Highest Reality.

No better concepts are available to shed all concepts.

I am thankful to Sudhakar S. Dikshit, the editor, for inviting me to write the Foreword to this new edition of I AM THAT and thus giving me an opportunity to pay my homage to Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj, who has expounded highest knowledge in the simplest, clearest and the most convincing words.

Douwe TiemersmaPhilosophical Faculty.

Erasmus Universiteit.

Erasmus Universiteit.

When asked about the date of his birth the Master replied blandly that he was never born!

Writing a biographical note on Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj is a frustrating and unrewarding task.

For, not only the exact date of his birth is unknown, but no verified facts concerning the early years of his life are available.

However, some of his elderly relatives and friends say that he was born in the month of March 1897 on a full moon day, which coincided with the festival of Hanuman Jayanti, when Hindus pay their homage to Hanuman, also named Maruti, the monkey-god of Ramayana fame.

They exist only for themselves; all their effort is directed towards achievement of self-satisfaction and self-glorification.

There are, however, seers, teachers and revealers who, while apparently living in the same world, live simultaneously in another world also -- the world of cosmic consciousness, effulgent with infinite knowledge.

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.

He is the self that has become all things.

Translators Note.

I met Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj some years back and was impressed with the spontaneous simplicity of his appearance and behaviour and his deep and genuine earnestness in expounding his experience.

However humble and difficult to discover his little tenement in the back lanes of Bombay, many have found their way there.

Most of them are Indians, conversing freely in their native language, but there were also many foreigners who needed a translator.

It was not easy to translate verbatim and at the same time avoid tedious repetitions and reiterations.

It is hoped that the present translation of the tape-recordings will not reduce the impact of this clear- minded, generous and in many ways an unusual human being.

A Marathi version of these talks, verified by Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj himself, has been separately published.

Maurice FrydmanTranslatorBombayOctober 16, 1973.

Editors Note.

Maurice FrydmanTranslatorBombayOctober 16, 1973.

Editors Note.

Not only the matter has now been re-set in a more readable typeface and with chapter headings, but new pictures of Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj have been included and the appendices contain some hitherto unpublished valuable material.

I draw special attention to the reader to the contribution entitled 'Nisarga Yoga', in which my esteemed friend, the late Maurice Frydman, has succinctly presented the teaching of Maharaj.

Simplicity and humility are the keynotes of his teachings, as Maurice observes.

The Master does not propound any intellectual concept or doctrine.

He does not put forward any pre-conditions before the seekers and is happy with them as they are.

In fact Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj is peculiarly free from all disparagement and condemnation; the sinner and the saint are merely exchanging notes; the saint has sinned, the sinner can be sanctified.

It is time that divides them; it is time that will bring them together.

The teacher does not evaluate; his sole concern is with 'suffering and the ending of suffering'.

He knows from his personal and abiding experience that the roots of sorrow are in the mind and it is the mind that must be freed from its distorting and destructive habits.

Of these the identification of the self with its projections is most fatal.

By precept and example Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj shows a short-cut, a-logical but empirically sound.

It operates, when understood.

Revising and editing of I AM THAT has been for me a pilgrimage to my inner self -- at once ennobling and enlightening.

M: How perverted are your views!

Need courage be given?

Your question implies that anxiety is the normal state and courage is abnormal.

It is the other way round.

Anxiety and hope are born of imagination -- I am free of both.

I am doing my part in trying to help people to know themselves as the only cause of their own misery.

In that sense I am a useful man.

But what I am in myself, what is my normal state cannot be expressed in terms of social consciousness and usefulness.

I may talk about it, use metaphors or parables, but I am acutely aware that it is just not so.

Not that it cannot be experienced.

M: His reasoning capacity is so great, that he will reason himself out of all reason!

His self- assertiveness is due to his reliance on logic.

Q: But thinking, reasoning is the mind's normal state.

The mind just cannot stop working.

M: It may be the habitual state, but it need not be the normal state.

Q: But thinking, reasoning is the mind's normal state.

The mind just cannot stop working.

M: It may be the habitual state, but it need not be the normal state.

A normal state cannot be painful, while a habit often leads to chronic pain.

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

The mind just cannot stop working.

M: It may be the habitual state, but it need not be the normal state.

A normal state cannot be painful, while a habit often leads to chronic pain.

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.

M: It may be the habitual state, but it need not be the normal state.

A normal state cannot be painful, while a habit often leads to chronic pain.

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!

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.

You will recognise that you have returned to your natural state by a complete absence of all desire and fear.

After all, at the root of all desire and fear is the feeling of not being what you are.

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.

Just act according to circumstances, yet in close touch with the facts, with the reality in every situation.

Q: Is it not a very high state?

M: Oh no, it is the normal state.

You call it high because you are afraid of it.

First be free from fear.

The word 'bread': neither can you eat nor live by it; it merely conveys an idea.

It acquires meaning only with the actual eating.

In the same sense am I telling you that the Normal State is not verbal.

I may say it is wise love expressed in action, but these words convey little, unless you experience them in their fullness and beauty.

Words have their limited usefulness, but we put no limits to them and bring ourselves to the brink of disaster.

M: Putting words together will not take you far.

Go within and discover what you are not.

Nothing else matters.

11: Awareness and Consciousness.

Questioner: What do you do when asleep?

I want the freedom to fulfil my longings.

M: You are free to fulfil your longings.

As a matter of fact, you are doing nothing else.

Q: I try, but there are obstacles which leave me frustrated.

M: Overcome them.

Look within, and you will find him.

Q: When I look within, I find sensations and perceptions, thoughts and feelings, desires and fears, memories and expectations.

I am immersed in this cloud and see nothing else.

M: That which sees all this, and the nothing too, is the inner teacher.

He alone is, all else only appears to be.

The 'I am this' is not.

Struggle to find out what you are in reality.

Q: I am doing nothing else for the last 60 years.

M: What is wrong with striving?

Why look for results?

M: What do you love now?

The 'I am'.

Give your heart and mind to it, think of nothing else.

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

In it love itself is the lover and the beloved.

M: In your world I appear so.

In mine I have being only.

Nothing else.

You people are rich with your ideas of possession, of quantity and quality.

I am completely without ideas.

Just to know that there is such possibility, changes one's entire outlook.

It acts like a burning match in a heap of saw dust.

All the great teachers did nothing else.

A spark of truth can burn up a mountain of lies.

The opposite is also true; The sun of truth remains hidden behind the cloud of self-identification with the body.

These come from ignorance of reality, not from reality itself, which is indescribable, beyond being and not-being.

Q: Many teachers have I followed and studied many doctrines, yet none gave me what I wanted.

M: The desire to find the self will be surely fulfilled, provided you want nothing else.

But you must be honest with yourself and really want nothing else.

If in the meantime you want many other things and are engaged in their pursuit, your main purpose may be delayed until you grow wiser and cease being torn between contradictory urges.

Q: Many teachers have I followed and studied many doctrines, yet none gave me what I wanted.

M: The desire to find the self will be surely fulfilled, provided you want nothing else.

But you must be honest with yourself and really want nothing else.

If in the meantime you want many other things and are engaged in their pursuit, your main purpose may be delayed until you grow wiser and cease being torn between contradictory urges.

Go within, without swerving, without ever looking outward.

Give it all up and be ready for the real to assert itself.

This self- assertion is best expressed in words: 'I am'.

Nothing else has being.

And I know that I am so and so, the owner of the body, in manifold relations with other owners.

M: It is all memory carried over into the now.

There is no such thing as an expression of reality.

You are introducing a duality where there is none.

Only reality is, there is nothing else.

The three states of waking, dreaming and sleeping are not me and I am not in them.

When I die, the world will say -- 'Oh, Maharaj is dead!

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.

As the sun knows not darkness, so does the self know not the non-self.

It is the mind, which by knowing the other, becomes the other.

Yet the mind is nothing else but the self.

It is the self that becomes the other, the notself, and yet remains the self.

All else is an assumption.

All is here and now, but we do not see it.

Truly, all is in me and by me.

There is nothing else.

The very idea of 'else' is a disaster and a calamity.

Q: What is the cause of personification, of self-limitation in time and space?

M: A most worthy way of being selfish!

By all means be selfish by foregoing everything but the Self.

When you love the Self and nothing else, you go beyond the selfish and the unselfish.

All distinctions lose their meaning.

Love of one and love of all merge together in love, pure and simple, addressed to none, denied to none.

Make straight your hooks and nothing can hold you.

Give up your addictions.

There is nothing else to give up.

Stop your routine of acquisitiveness, your habit of looking for results and the freedom of the universe is yours.

Be effortless.

Just like a doctor, after giving the patient an injection, tells him: 'Now, keep quiet.

Do nothing more, just keep quiet,' I am telling you: you have got your 'injection', now keep quiet, just keep quiet.

You have nothing else to do.

My Guru did the same.

He would tell me something and then said: 'Now keep quiet.

Q: Krishnamurti says that Guru is not needed.

M: Somebody must tell you about the Supreme Reality and the way that leads to it.

Krishnamurti is doing nothing else.

In a way he is right -- most of the so-called disciples do not trust their Gurus; they disobey them and finally abandon them.

For such disciples it would have been infinitely better if they had no Guru at all and just looked within for guidance.

What does the Supreme do?

M: Listen to what I keep on telling you and do not move away from it.

Think of it all the time and of nothing else.

Having reached that far, abandon all thoughts, not only of the world, but of yourself also.

Stay beyond all thoughts, in silent being-awareness.

All they touched turned to ashes.

Give them one experience absolutely genuine, indubitable, beyond the argumentations of the mind and they will follow you to the world's end.

M: But I am doing nothing else!

Tirelessly I draw their attention to the one incontrovertible factor -- that of being.

Being needs no proofs -- it proves all else.

You are telling me about the superstructure while I am concerned with the foundations.

The superstructures rise and fall, but the foundations last.

I am not interested in the transient, while you talk of nothing else.

Q: Forgive me a strange question.

If somebody with a razor sharp sword would suddenly severe your head, what difference would it make to you?

M: Yes, there is, the feeling: 'I am'.

Begin with that.

Q: Nothing else is true?

M: All else is neither true nor false.

It seems real when it appears, it disappears when it is denied.

M: Truth can be experienced, but it is not mere experience.

I know it and I can convey it, but only if you are open to it.

To be open means to want nothing else.

Q: I am full of desires and fears.

Does it mean that I am not eligible for truth?

M: Trust the teacher.

Take my own case.

My Guru ordered me to attend to the sense 'I am' and to give attention to nothing else.

I just obeyed.

I did not follow any particular course of breathing, or meditation, or study of scriptures.

There must be the immense longing for truth, or absolute faith in the Guru.

Believe me, there is no goal, nor a way to reach it.

You are the way and the goal, there is nothing else to reach except yourself.

All you need is to understand and understanding is the flowering of the mind.

The tree is perennial, but the flowering and the fruit bearing come in season.

All things are governed by it.

Q: Is there no escape?

M: I am doing nothing else, but showing the escape.

Understand that the One includes the Three and that you are the One, and you shall be free of the world process.

Q: What happens then to my consciousness?

It requires training, of course.

Q: Why don't you take part in social work?

M: But I am doing nothing else all the time!

And what is the social work you want me to do?

Patchwork is not for me.

The very conditions of its arising make happiness impossible.

Peace, power, happiness, these are never personal states, nobody can say 'my peace', 'my power' -- because 'mine' implies exclusivity, which is fragile and insecure.

Q: I know only my conditioned existence; there is nothing else.

M: Surely, you cannot say so.

In deep sleep you are not conditioned.

M: You find it in the company of the wise?

Q: How do I know who is wise and who is merely clever?

M: If your motives are pure, if you seek truth and nothing else, you will find the right people.

Finding them is easy, what is difficult is to trust them and take full advantage of their advice and guidance.

Q: Is the waking state more important for spiritual practice than sleep?

M: Christianity is one way of putting words together and Hinduism is another.

The real is, behind and beyond words, incommunicable, directly experienced, explosive in its effect on the mind.

It is easily had when nothing else is wanted.

The innards created by imagination and perpetuated by desire.

Q: Can there be no suffering that is necessary and good?

This is what happens to a prisoner.

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.

He helps you in seeing the nature of the world and of the 'I am'.

He urges you to study the workings of the body and the mind with solemn and intense concentration, to recognise that you are neither of them and to cast them off.

He suggests that you return again and again to 'I am' until it is your only abode, outside of which nothing exists; until the ego as a limitation of 'I am', has disappeared.

It is then that the highest realisation will just happen effortlessly.

Mark the words of the jnani, which cut across all concepts and dogmas.

Desire is, of course, a state of mind.

But the realisation of unity is beyond mind.

To me, nothing exists by itself.

All is the Self, all is myself.

To see myself in everybody and everybody in myself most certainly is love.

By itself nothing moves, nothing rests.

It is a grievous mistake to attribute to mental constructs absolute existence.

Nothing exists by itself.

Q: You seem to identify rest with the Supreme State?

M: There is rest as a state of mind (chidaram) and there is rest as a state of being (atmaram).

Q: If being happy is the same as being free from fear and worry, cannot it be said that absence of trouble is the cause of happiness?

M: A state of absence, of non-existence cannot be a cause; the pre-existence of a cause is implied in the notion.

Your natural state, in which nothing exists, cannot be a cause of becoming; the causes are hidden in the great and mysterious power of memory.

But your true home is in nothingness, in emptiness of all content.

Q: Emptiness and nothingness -- how dreadful!

Q: All I know is that I do not know myself.

M: How do you know, that you do not know your self?

Your direct insight tells you that yourself you know first, for nothing exists to you without your being there to experience its existence.

You imagine you do not know your self, because you cannot describe your self.

You can always say: 'I know that I am' and you will refuse as untrue the statement: 'I am not'.

The circles of ignorance may be ever widening, yet it remains a bondage all the same.

In due course a Guru appears to teach and inspire us to practise Yoga and a ripening takes place as a result of which the immemorial night of ignorance dissolves before the rising sun of wisdom.

But in reality nothing happened.

The sun is always there, there is no night to it; the mind blinded by the 'I am the body' idea spins out endlessly its thread of illusion.

Q: If all is a part of a natural process, where is the need of effort?

M: I never talked of remaining aloof.

You could as well see me jumping into the fray to save somebody and getting killed.

Yet to me nothing happened.

Imagine a big building collapsing.

Some rooms are in ruins, some are intact.

But can you speak of the space as ruined or intact?

It is only the structure that suffered and the people who happened to live in it.

Nothing happened to space itself.

Similarly, nothing happens to life when forms break down and names are wiped out.

The goldsmith melts down old ornaments to make new.

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.

M: In reality I am neither hearing nor answering.

In the world of events the question happens and the answer happens.

Nothing happens to me.

Everything just happens.

Q: And you are the witness?

M: All these ideas and distinctions exist in your world; in mine there is nothing of the kind.

My world is single and very simple.

Q: Nothing happens there?

M: Whatever happens in your world, only there it has validity and evokes response.

In my world nothing happens.

Q: Nothing happens there?

M: Whatever happens in your world, only there it has validity and evokes response.

In my world nothing happens.

Q: The very fact of your experiencing your own world implies duality inherent in all experience.

M: Verbally -- yes.

Naming cannot go beyond the mind, while perceiving is consciousness itself.

Q: When somebody dies what exactly happens?

M: Nothing happens.

Something becomes nothing.

Nothing was, nothing remains.

All is attended to in minutest details and yet there is a sense of unreality about it all.

So is the case with me.

All happens as it needs, yet nothing happens.

I do what seems to be necessary, but at the same time I know that nothing is necessary, that life itself is only a make-belief.

Q: Why then live at all?

It is only the structure that suffered and the people who happened to live in it.

Nothing happened to space itself.

Similarly, nothing happens to life when forms break down and names are wiped out.

The goldsmith melts down old ornaments to make new.

Sometimes a good piece goes with the bad.

But first of all you must attend to the way you feel, think and live.

Unless there is order in yourself, there can be no order in the world.

In reality nothing happens.

Onto the screen of the mind destiny forever projects its pictures, memories of former projections and thus illusion constantly renews itself.

The pictures come and go -- light intercepted by ignorance.

The body will lose its head, certain lines of communication will be cut, that is all.

Two people talk to each other on the phone and the wire is cut.

Nothing happens to the people, only they must look for some other means of communication.

The Bhagavad Gita says: "the sword does not cut it".

It is literally so.

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?

But first of all you must attend to the way you feel, think and live.

Unless there is order in yourself, there can be no order in the world.

In reality nothing happens.

Onto the screen of the mind destiny forever projects its pictures, memories of former projections and thus illusion constantly renews itself.

The pictures come and go -- light intercepted by ignorance.

With the disappearance of the body, does the knower disappear?

M: Just as the knower of the body appears at birth, so he disappears at death.

Q: And nothing remains?

M: Life remains.

Consciousness needs a vehicle and an instrument for its manifestation.

M: Nothing happens.

Something becomes nothing.

Nothing was, nothing remains.

Q: Surely there is a difference between the living and the dead.

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

The personality is strictly temporary and valid for one birth only.

It begins with the birth of the body and ends with the birth of the next body.

Once over, it is over for good; nothing remains of it except a few sweet or bitter lessons.

The individuality begins with the animal-man and ends with the fully human.

The split between the personality and individuality is characteristic of our present-day humanity.

We discover it by being earnest, by searching, enquiring, questioning daily and hourly, by giving one's life to this discovery.

3: The Living Present.

Questioner: As I can see, there is nothing wrong with my body nor with my real being.

Both are not of my making and need not be improved upon.

What has gone wrong is the 'inner body', call it mind, consciousness, antahkarana, whatever the name.

Q: Can there be happiness in unity?

Does not all happiness imply necessarily contact, hence duality?

M: There is nothing wrong with duality as long as it does not create conflict.

Multiplicity and variety without strife is joy.

In pure consciousness there is light.

Even then, what is remembered, is but another dream.

The memory of the false cannot but give rise to the false.

There is nothing wrong with memory as such.

What is false is its content.

Remember facts, forget opinions.

Nothing is external.

Q: When the body idea becomes obsessive, is it not altogether wrong?

M: There is nothing wrong in the idea of a body, nor even in the idea 'I am the body'.

But limiting oneself to one body only is a mistake.

In reality all existence, every form, is my own, within my consciousness.

M: By all means help the world.

You will not help much, but the effort will make you grow.

There is nothing wrong in trying to help the world.

Q: Surely there were people, common people, who helped greatly.

M: When the time comes for the world to be helped, some people are given the will, the wisdom and the power to cause great changes.

Maharaj: After all, it is the mind that creates illusion and it is the mind that gets free of it.

Words may aggravate illusion, words may also help dispel it.

There is nothing wrong in repeating the same truth again and again until it becomes reality.

Mother's work is not over with the birth of the child.

She feeds it day after day, year after year until it needs her no longer.

Our world is real, but your view of it is not.

There is no wall between us, except the one built by you.

There is nothing wrong with the senses, it is your imagination that misleads you.

It covers up the world as it is, with what you imagine it to be -- something existing independently of you and yet closely following your inherited, or acquired patterns.

There is a deep contradiction in your attitude, which you do not see and which is the cause of sorrow.

Your concern with future is due to fear of pain and desire for pleasure, to the jnani all is bliss: he is happy with whatever comes.

Bringing up a child from birth to maturity may seem a hard task, but to a mother the memories of hardships are a joy.

There is nothing wrong with the world.

What is wrong is in the way you look at it.

It is your own imagination that misleads you.

Q: Is not attention an attitude of mind?

M: Yes, when the mind is eager for reality, it gives attention.

There is nothing wrong with your world, it is your thinking yourself to be separate from it that creates disorder.

Selfishness is the source of all evil.

Q: I am coming back to my question.

In the same way, you perceive, you feel, you think without knowing the why and how of it.

Similarly you are yourself without knowing it.

There is nothing wrong with you as the Self.

It is what it is to perfection.

It is the mirror that is not clear and true and, therefore, gives you false images.

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.

Q: It is because I have grown in intelligence that I would not tolerate my suffering again.

What is wrong with suicide?

M: Nothing wrong, if it solves the problem.

What, if it does not?

Suffering caused by extraneous factors -- some painful and incurable disease, or unbearable calamity -- may provide some justification, but where wisdom and compassion are lacking, suicide cannot help.

This happiness is mere excitement caused by relief from pain.

Real happiness is utterly unselfconscious.

It is best expressed negatively as: 'there is nothing wrong with me.

I have nothing to worry about'.

After all, the ultimate purpose of all sadhana is to reach a point, when this conviction, instead of being only verbal, is based on the actual and ever-present experience.

Ultimately, all you do is based on your conviction that the world is real and independent of yourself.

Were you convinced of the contrary, your behaviour would have been quite different.

Q: There is nothing wrong with my convictions; my actions are shaped by circumstances.

M: In other words, you are convinced of the reality of your circumstances, of the world in which you live.

Trace the world to its source and you will find that before the world was, you were and when the world is no longer, you remain.

M: Yes, but they are no longer of his own creation.

His suffering is not poisoned by a sense of guilt.

There is nothing wrong with suffering for the sins of others.

Your Christianity is based on this.

Q: Is not all suffering self-created?

All else is in consciousness.

Q: Why are there so many centres of consciousness?

M: The objective universe (mahadakash) is in constant movement, projecting and dissolving innumerable forms.

Whenever a form is infused with life (prana), consciousness (chetana) appears by reflection of awareness in matter.

Q: How is the Supreme affected?

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

Q: What is real, the subjective or the objective?

I am inclined to believe that the objective universe is the real one and my subjective psyche is changeful and transient.

You seem to claim reality for your inner, subjective states and deny all reality to the concrete, external world.

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

How can I believe that the universe is formless and chaotic?

Your world, the world in which you live, may be formless, but it need not be chaotic.

M: The objective universe has structure, is orderly and beautiful.

Nobody can deny it.

But structure and pattern, imply constraint and compulsion.

M: When the mind is quiet, we come to know ourselves as the pure witness.

We withdraw from the experience and its experiencer and stand apart in pure awareness, which is between and beyond the two.

The personality, based on self-identification, on imagining oneself to be something: 'I am this, I am that', continues, but only as a part of the objective world.

Its identification with the witness snaps.

Q: As I can make out, I live on many levels and life on each level requires energy.

In that sense each one of us lives in a world of his own projection.

These private worlds hardly touch each other and they arise from and merge into the 'I am' at their centre.

But surely behind these private worlds there must be a common objective world, of which the private worlds are mere shadows.

Do you deny the existence of such an objective world, common to all?

M: Reality is neither subjective nor objective, neither mind nor matter, neither time nor space.

These private worlds hardly touch each other and they arise from and merge into the 'I am' at their centre.

But surely behind these private worlds there must be a common objective world, of which the private worlds are mere shadows.

Do you deny the existence of such an objective world, common to all?

M: Reality is neither subjective nor objective, neither mind nor matter, neither time nor space.

These divisions need somebody to whom to happen, a conscious separate centre.

As to method, there is only one -- you must come to know yourself -- both what you appear to be and what you are.

Clarity and charity go together -- each needs and strengthens the other.

Q: Compassion implies the existence of an objective world, full of avoidable sorrow.

M: The world is not objective and the sorrow of it is not avoidable.

Compassion is but another word for the refusal to suffer for imaginary reasons.

I want to live a good life, a holy life.

What am I to do?

M: Go home, take charge of your father's business, look after your parents in their old age.

Marry the girl who is waiting for you, be loyal, be simple, be humble.

Hide your virtue, live silently.

In complete obedience to nature there is no effort.

The seed of spiritual life grows in silence and in darkness until its appointed hour.

Q: We come across some great people, who, in their old age, become childish, petty, quarrelsome and spiteful.

How could they deteriorate so much?

M: They were not perfect Yogis, having their bodies under complete control.

Once the illusion that the body-mind is oneself is abandoned, death loses its terror, it becomes a part of living.

31: Do not Undervalue Attention.

Questioner: As I look at you, you seem to be a poor man with very limited means, facing all the problems of poverty and old age, like everybody else.

Maharaj: Were I very rich, what difference would it make?

I am what I am.

You can extend its life considerably by appropriate practices, but for what ultimate good?

Q: It is better to live long and healthy.

It gives us a chance to avoid the mistakes of childhood and youth, the frustrations of adulthood, the miseries and imbecility of old age.

M: By all means live long.

But you are not the master.

I may perceive the world just like you, but you believe to be in it, while I see it as an iridescent drop in the vast expanse of consciousness.

Q: We are all getting old.

Old age is not pleasant -- all aches and pains, weakness and the approaching end.

How does a jnani feel as an old man?

How does his inner self look at his own senility.

Gore was for him the ideal man -- earnest, kind and wise.

When Maruti attained the age of eighteen his father died, leaving behind his widow, four sons and two daughters.

The meagre income from the small farm dwindled further after the old man's death and was not sufficient to feed so many mouths.

Maruti's elder brother left the village for Bombay in search of work and he followed shortly after.

It is said that in Bombay he worked for a few months as a low-paid junior clerk in an office, but resigned the job in disgust.

Q: We are all getting old.

Old age is not pleasant -- all aches and pains, weakness and the approaching end.

How does a jnani feel as an old man?

How does his inner self look at his own senility.

M: As he gets older he grows more and more happy and peaceful.

Q: There can be no evidence of your state.

All I know about it is what you say.

All I see is a very interesting old man.

M: You are the interesting old man, not me!

I was never born.

All I know about it is what you say.

All I see is a very interesting old man.

M: You are the interesting old man, not me!

I was never born.

How can I grow old?

I was invited by a friend to meet you and I am glad I came.

Maharaj: What did you learn from your Guru and what practice did you follow?

Q: He is a venerable old man of about eighty.

Philosophically he is a Vedantin and the practice he teaches has much to do with rousing the unconscious energies of the mind and bringing the hidden obstacles and blockages into the conscious.

My personal sadhana was related to my peculiar problem of early infancy and childhood.

Consciousness needs a vehicle and an instrument for its manifestation.

M: Yes, there is something that may be called the memory body, or causal body, a record of all that was thought, wanted and done.

M: It is a reflection in a separate body of the one reality.

In this reflection the unlimited and the limited are confused and taken to be the same.

To undo this confusion is the purpose of Yoga.

In life the personal merges in the impersonal.

Q: How does the personal emerge from the impersonal?

M: The two are but aspects of one Reality.

It is not correct to talk of one preceding the other.

All these ideas belong to the waking state.

It is all very simple; it is the presence of the person that complicates.

See that there is no such thing as a permanently separate person and all becomes clear.

Awareness -- mind -- matter -- they are one reality in its two aspects as immovable and movable, and the three attributes of inertia, energy and harmony.

Q: What comes first: consciousness or awareness?

M: Awareness becomes consciousness when it has an object.

M: As you are now, the personality is only an obstacle.

Selfidentification with the body may be good for an infant, but true growing up depends on getting the body out of the way.

Normally, one should outgrow body-based desires early in life.

Even the Bhogi, who does not refuse enjoyments, need not hanker after the ones he has tasted.

Habit, desire for repetition frustrates both the Yogi and the Bhogi.

realise that whatever you think yourself to be is just a stream of events; that while all happens, comes and goes, you alone are, the changeless among the changeful, the self- evident among the inferred.

Separate the observed from the observer and abandon false identifications.

Q: In order to find the reality, one should discard all that stands in the way.

On the other hand, the need to survive within a given society compels one to do and endure many things.

Does one need to abandon one's profession and one's social standing in order to find reality?

For such disciples it would have been infinitely better if they had no Guru at all and just looked within for guidance.

to find a living Guru is a rare opportunity and a great responsibility.

One should not treat these matters lightly.

You people are out to buy yourself the heaven and you imagine that the Guru will supply it for a price.

You seek to strike a bargain by offering little but asking much.

Just like a healthy body does not call for attention, so is the unconditioned free from experience.

Take the experience of death.

The ordinary man is afraid to die, because he is afraid of change.

The jnani is not afraid because his mind is dead already.

He does not think: 'I live'.

Just understand yourself -- that itself is eternity.

56: Consciousness Arising, World Arises.

Questioner: When an ordinary man dies, what happens to him?

Maharaj: According to his belief it happens, As life before death is but imagination, so is life after.

The dream continues.

The jnani's identity with all that is, is so complete, that as he responds to the universe, so does the universe respond to him.

He is supremely confident that once a situation has been cognised, events will move in adequate response.

The ordinary man is personally concerned, he counts his risks and chances, while the jnani remains aloof, sure that all will happen as it must; and it does not matter much what happens, for ultimately the return to balance and harmony is inevitable.

The heart of things is at peace.

Q: I have understood that personality is an illusion, and alert detachment, without loss of identity, is our point of contact with the reality.

Look round and you will see -- suffering is a man-made thing.

Q: Were a man to create his own sorrow only, I would agree with you.

But in his folly he makes others suffer.

A dreamer has his own private nightmare and none suffers but himself.

But what kind of dream is it that plays havoc in the lives of others?

M: Must one suffer only for one's own sins?

Are we really separate?

In this vast ocean of life we suffer for the sins of others, and make others suffer for our sins.

Of course, the law of balance rules Supreme and accounts are squared in the end.

But while life lasts, we affect each other deeply.

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.

Q: What you say is true, but what can I do about it?

Such indeed is the situation.

It takes care of itself anyhow.

M: Most of our karma is collective.

We suffer for the sins of others, as others suffer for ours.

Humanity is one.

Ignorance of this fact does not change it.

Everybody behaves according to his nature.

It cannot be helped, nor need it be regretted.

Q: Others suffer.

M: Life lives on life.

In nature the process is compulsory, in society it should be voluntary.

M: it is not the worship of a person that is crucial, but the steadiness and depth of your devotion to the task.

Life itself is the Supreme Guru; be attentive to its lessons and obedient to its commands.

When you personalise their source, you have an outer Guru; when you take them from life directly, the Guru is within.

Remember, wonder, ponder, live with it, love it, grow into it, grow with it, make it your own -- the word of your Guru, outer or inner.

Put in all and you will get all.

Truly, he is the supreme teacher.

He alone can take you to your goal and he alone meets you at the end of the road.

Confide in him and you need no outer Guru.

But again you must have the strong desire to find him and do nothing that will create obstacles and delays.

And do not waste energy and time on regrets.

Q: Is not the grace of the Guru responsible for the desire and its fulfilment?

Is not the Guru's radiant face the bait on which we are caught and pulled out of this mire of sorrow?

M: It is the Inner Guru (sadguru) who takes you to the Outer Guru, as a mother takes her child to a teacher.

Trust and obey your Guru, for he is the messenger of your Real Self.

Q: How do I find a Guru whom I can trust?

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;.

It is because you are indolent or restless, that your inner Self manifests as the outer Guru and makes you trust him and obey.

Q: Is a Guru inevitable?

M: It is like asking 'Is a mother inevitable?

M: Yes, it happens sometimes as a result of much suffering The Guru wants to save you the endless pain.

Such is his grace.

Even when there is no discoverable outer Guru, there is always the sadguru, the inner Guru, who directs and helps from within.

The words 'outer' and 'inner' are relative to the body only; in reality all is one, the outer being merely a projection of the inner.

Awareness comes as if from a higher dimension.

Q: For every kind of knowledge, or skill, do I need a separate Guru?

M: There can be no rule in these matters, except one 'the outer is transient, the innermost -- permanent and changeless', though ever new in appearance and action.

Q: What is the relation between the inner and the outer Gurus?

M: The outer represent the inner, the inner accepts the outer -- for a time.

Q: Whose is the effort?

Q: Whose is the effort?

M: The disciple's, of course.

The outer Guru gives the instructions, the inner sends the strength; the alert application is the disciple's.

Without will, intelligence and energy on the part of the disciple the outer Guru is helpless.

The inner Guru bids his chance.

M: The disciple's, of course.

The outer Guru gives the instructions, the inner sends the strength; the alert application is the disciple's.

Without will, intelligence and energy on the part of the disciple the outer Guru is helpless.

The inner Guru bids his chance.

Obtuseness and wrong pursuits bring about a crisis and the disciple wakes up to his own plight.

In India we call it adhikari.

It means both capable and entitled.

Q: Can the outer Guru grant initiation (diksha)?

M: He can give all kinds of initiations, but the initiation into Reality must come from within.

Q: Who gives the ultimate initiation?

All assertion calls for a denial, but this is the first step only.

The next is to go beyond both.

Q: I do understand that the outer Guru is needed to call my attention to myself and to the urgent need of doing something about myself.

I also understand how helpless he is when it comes to any deep change in me.

But here you bring in the sadguru, the inner Guru, beginningless, changeless, the root of being, the standing promise, the certain goal.

The causes of our behaviour are very subtle.

One must not be quick to condemn, not even to praise.

Remember that Yoga is the work of the inner self (vyakta) on the outer self (vyakti).

All that the outer does is merely in response to the inner.

Q: Still the outer helps.

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

All talk of separation and relation is due to the distorting and corrupting influence of 'I-am-the-body' idea.

The outer self (vyakti) is merely a projection on the body-mind of the inner self (vyakta), which again is only an expression of the Supreme Self (avyakta) which is all and none.

Q: There are teachers who will not talk of the higher self and lower self.

They address the man as if only the lower self existed.

The objects of observation are not what they appear to be and the attitudes they are met with are not what they need be.

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.

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.

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.

What is included in awareness becomes the inner and partakes of the inner.

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

What is included in awareness becomes the inner and partakes of the inner.

You may put it differently: the body defines the outer self, consciousness the inner, and in pure awareness the Supreme is contacted.

Q: You said the body defines the outer self.

Since you have a body, do you have also an outer self?

What is included in awareness becomes the inner and partakes of the inner.

You may put it differently: the body defines the outer self, consciousness the inner, and in pure awareness the Supreme is contacted.

Q: You said the body defines the outer self.

Since you have a body, do you have also an outer self?

M: I would, were I attached to the body and take it to be myself.

You may put it differently: the body defines the outer self, consciousness the inner, and in pure awareness the Supreme is contacted.

Q: You said the body defines the outer self.

Since you have a body, do you have also an outer self?

M: I would, were I attached to the body and take it to be myself.

Q: But you are aware of it and attend to its needs.

We talk of it as having independent existence.

It hasn't.

M: The outer self and the inner both are imagined.

The obsession of being an 'I' needs another obsession with a 'super-l' to get cured, as one needs another thorn to remove a thorn, or another poison to neutralise a poison.

All assertion calls for a denial, but this is the first step only.

Q: I have not understood well the role of the inner self in spiritual endeavour.

Who makes the effort?

Is it the outer self, or the inner?

M: You have invented words like effort, inner, outer, self, etc.

and seek to impose them on reality.

Questioner: All teachers advise to meditate.

What is the purpose of meditation?

Maharaj: We know the outer world of sensations and actions, but of our inner world of thoughts and feelings we know very little.

The primary purpose of meditation is to become conscious of, and familiar with, our inner life.

The ultimate purpose is to reach the source of life and consciousness.

Q: Is there any particular place you would advise me to go to for spiritual attainment?

M: The only proper place is within.

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: Perception is primary, the witness -- secondary.

M: This is the heart of the matter.

As long as you believe that only the outer world is real, you remain its slave.

To become free, your attention must be drawn to the 'I am', the witness.

Of course, the knower and the known are one not two, but to break the spell of the known the knower must be brought to the forefront.

The world is not, you alone are.

You create the world in your imagination like a dream.

As you cannot separate the dream from yourself, so you cannot have an outer world independent of yourself.

You are independent, not the world.

Don't be afraid of a world you yourself have created.