Life goes on.

Q: And what is death?

M: It is the change in the living process of a particular body.

Integration ends and disintegration sets in.

Q: But what about the knower.

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.

Q: If I am eliminated, what will remain?

M: Nothing will remain, all will remain.

The sense of identity will remain, but no longer identification with a particular body.

Being -- awareness -- love will shine in full splendour.

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

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

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

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

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

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

When the past and the future are seen in the timeless now, as parts of a common pattern, the idea of cause-effect loses its validity and creative freedom takes its place.

Q: Yet, I cannot see how can anything come to be without a cause.

M: When I say a thing is without a cause, I mean it can be without a particular cause.

Your own mother was needed to give you birth; But you could not have been born without the sun and the earth.

Even these could not have caused your birth without your own desire to be born.

The pure mind sees things as they are -- bubbles in consciousness.

These bubbles are appearing, disappearing and reappearing -- without having real being.

No particular cause can be ascribed to them, for each is caused by all and affects all.

Each bubble is a body and all these bodies are mine.

Q: Do you mean to say, that you have the power to do everything rightly?

But you cannot say gold is the cause.

It cannot be called a cause, for it causes nothing by itself.

It is reflected in the mind as 'I am', as the ornament's particular name and shape.

Yet all is only gold.

In the same way reality makes everything possible and yet nothing that makes a thing what it is, its name and form, comes from reality.

Can there be no existence without strife?

I need not fight others to be myself.

M: You fight others all the time for your survival as a separate body-mind, a particular name and form.

To live you must destroy.

From the moment you were conceived you started a war with your environment -- a merciless war of mutual extermination, until death sets you free.

Q: Do they get hold thereby of a source of power and grace from which they would have been barred otherwise?

M: Power and grace are for all and for the asking.

Giving oneself a particular name does not help.

Call yourself by any name -- as long as you are intensely mindful of yourself, the accumulated obstacles to self-knowledge are bound to be swept away.

Q: If I like your teaching and accept your guidance, can I call myself a Navnath?

Q: I am, but not as a person.

Since I am not conscious of myself in the intervals, I can only say that I exist, but not as a person.

M: Shall we call it impersonal existence?

Q: I would call it rather unconscious existence; I am, but I do not know that I am.

M: You have said just now: 'I am, but I do not know that I am'.

In the great mirror of consciousness images arise and disappear and only memory gives them continuity.

And memory is material -- destructible, perishable, transient.

On such flimsy foundations we build a sense of personal existence -- vague, intermittent, dreamlike.

This vague persuasion: 'I-am-so-and-so' obscures the changeless state of pure awareness and makes us believe that we are born to suffer and to die.

Q: Just as a child cannot help growing, so does a man, compelled by nature, make progress.

M: Who has not suffered is not afraid.

Q: We are condemned to fear?

M: Until we can look at fear and accept it as the shadow of personal existence, as persons we are bound to be afraid.

Abandon all personal equations and you shall be free from fear.

It is not difficult.

You resent being treated as a mere instrument of some god, or Guru, and insist on being treated as a person, because you are not sure of your own existence and do not want to give up the comfort and assurance of a personality.

You may not be what you believe yourself to be, but it gives you continuity, your future flows into the present and becomes the past without jolts.

To be denied personal existence is frightening, but you must face it and find your identity with the totality of life.

Then the problem of who is used by whom is no more.

Q: All the attention I got was an attempt to convert me to their faith.

Both God and the jnani know themselves to be the immovable centre of the movable, the eternal witness of the transient.

The centre is a point of void and the witness a point of pure awareness; they know themselves to be as nothing, therefore nothing can resist them.

Q: How does this look and feel in your personal experience?

M: Being nothing, I am all.

Everything is me, everything is mine.

M: I am the people.

Q: I do not mean identity of essence or substance, nor similarity of form.

I mean the actual entering into the minds and hearts of others and participating in their personal experiences.

Can you suffer and rejoice with me, or you only infer what I feel from observation and analogy?

M: All beings are in me.

All he needs is the rousing of interest'.

To rouse his interest in self-knowledge he needs to be convinced about its advantages.

M: You believe it is possible to transmit a personal experience?

Q: I do not know.

You speak of unity, identity of the seer with the seen.

This is called the Great Death (mahamrityu), the death of time.

Q: Does it mean that the universe and its contents will come to an end?

M: The universe is your personal experience.

How can it be affected?

You might have been delivering a lecture for two hours; where has it gone when it is over?

Not at all.

Yet for an outsider all seems to be going on intelligently and purposefully.

Why not admit that one's entire personal life may sink largely below the threshold of consciousness and yet proceed sanely and smoothly?

Q: Is it normal?

M: What is normal?

To be torn by feelings, tortured by thoughts: is it normal?

A healthy body, a healthy mind live largely unperceived by their owner; only occasionally, through pain or suffering they call for attention and insight.

Why not extend the same to the entire personal life?

One can function rightly, responding well and fully to whatever happens, without having to bring it into the focus of awareness.

When self- control becomes second nature, awareness shifts its focus to deeper levels of existence and action.

Now you are in the waking state, a person with name and shape, joys and sorrows.

The person was not there before you were born, nor will be there after you die.

Instead of struggling with the person to make it become what it is not, why not go beyond the waking state and leave the personal life altogether?

It does not mean the extinction of the person; it means only seeing it in right perspective.

Q: One more question.

There is no rebirth, except through death.

Q: Your universe may be perfect.

My personal universe is improving.

M: Your personal universe does not exist by itself.

It is merely a limited and distorted view of the real.

Q: Your universe may be perfect.

My personal universe is improving.

M: Your personal universe does not exist by itself.

It is merely a limited and distorted view of the real.

It is not the universe that needs improving, but your way of looking.

M: What else?

Give your undivided attention to the most important in your life -- yourself.

Of your personal universe you are the centre -- without knowing the centre what else can you know?

Q: But how can I know myself?

To know myself I must be away from myself.

It is desire that gives birth, that gives name and form.

The desirable is imagined and wanted and manifests itself as something tangible or conceivable.

Thus is created the world in which we live, our personal world.

The real world is beyond the mind's ken; we see it through the net of our desires, divided into pleasure and pain, right and wrong, inner and outer.

To see the universe as it is, you must step beyond the net.

M: How long will your own world last?

Q: After all, my little world is but a part of the total.

M: Is not the idea of a total world a part of your personal world?

The universe does not come to tell you that you are a part of it.

It is you who have invented a totality to contain you as a part.

The individual traces a line through it and experiences pleasant and unpleasant states.

This gives rise to questioning and seeking, which broaden the outlook and enable the individual to go beyond his narrow and self-created world limited and self-centred.

This personal world can be changed -- in time.

The universe is timeless and perfect.

M: To take appearance for reality is a grievous sin and the cause of all calamities.

Similarly, we have divorced ourselves in our imagination from the real world of common experience and enclosed ourselves in a cloud of personal desire and fears, images and thoughts, ideas and concepts.

Q: This I can understand.

But what could be the cause of the tremendous variety of the personal worlds?

M: The variety is not so great.

All the dreams are superimposed over a common world.

Q: Still, the question 'Who am I' must be of some use.

M: It has no answer in consciousness and, therefore, helps to go beyond consciousness.

Q: Here I am -- in the present moment.

What is real in it, and what is not?

Now, please don't tell me that my question is wrong.

When effortlessness becomes essential, it will assert itself.

You need not push life about.

Just flow with it and give yourself completely to the task of the present moment, which is the dying now to the now.

For living is dying.

Without death life cannot be.

Questioner: You told me that I can be considered under three aspects: the personal (vyakti), the super-personal (vyakta) and the impersonal (avyakta).

The Avyakta is the universal and real pure 'I'; the Vyakta is its reflection in consciousness as 'I am'; the Vyakti is the totality of physical and vital processes.

Within the narrow confines of the present moment, the super-personal is aware of the person, both in space and time; not only one person, but the long series of persons strung together on the thread of karma.

It is essentially the witness as well as the residue of the accumulated experiences, the seat of memory, the connecting link (sutratma).

It is man's character which life builds and shapes from birth to birth.

The object changes all the time.

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

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

How do you look at it?

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

The person (vyakti) flickers, awareness (vyakta) contains all space and time, the absolute (avyakta) is.

55: Give up All and You Gain All.

Questioner: What is your state at the present moment?

Maharaj: A state of non-experiencing.

M: No.

Q: Nobody has suffered more than saints.

M: Did they tell you, or do you say so on your own?

The essence of saintliness is total acceptance of the present moment, harmony with things as they happen.

A saint does not want things to be different from what they are; he knows that, considering all factors, they are unavoidable.

He is friendly with the inevitable and,.

The main hindrance lies in our idea of, and addiction to, time, in our habit of anticipating a future in the light of the past.

The sum total of the past becomes the 'I was', the hoped for future becomes the 'I shall be' and life is a constant effort of crossing over from what 'I was' to what 'I shall be'.

The present moment, the.

'now' is lost sight of.

Maharaj speaks of 'I am'.

Why should my future be different from my past?

M: In your fevered state, you project a past and a future and take them to be real.

In fact, you know only your present moment.

Why not investigate what is now, instead of questioning the imaginary past and future?

Your present state is neither beginningless nor endless.

Apply yourself diligently to pulling apart the structure you have built in your mind.

What the mind has done the mind must undo.

Q: You cannot deny the present moment, mind or no mind.

What is now, is.

You may question the appearance, but not the fact.

M: The entire approach is wrong.

Action delayed is action abandoned.

There may be other chances for other actions, but the present moment is lost -- irretrievably lost.

All preparation is for the future -- you cannot prepare for the present.

Q: What is wrong with preparing for the future?

Q: I may come across a beggar, naked and hungry and ask him 'Who are you?

' He may answer: 'I am the Supreme Self'.

'Well', I say, 'suffice you are the Supreme, change your present state'.

What will he do?

M: He will ask you: 'Which state?

Q: They may need me and it is their destinies that made me take up this work.

It is one life, after all.

M: How did you come to your present state?

Q: Sri Ramana Maharshi's teachings have put me on my way.

Then I met one Douglas Harding who helped me by showing me how to work on the 'Who am I ?

But, why forget the self through excess of attachment?

Wisdom lies in never forgetting the self as the ever-present source of both the experiencer and his experience.

Q: In my present state the 'I am the body' idea comes spontaneously, while the 'I am pure being' idea must be imposed on the mind as something true but not experienced.

M: Yes, sadhana (practice) consists in reminding oneself forcibly of one's pure 'being-ness', of not being anything in particular, nor a sum of particulars, not even the totality of all particulars, which make up a universe.

All exists in the mind, even the body is an integration in the mind of a vast number of sensory perceptions, each perception also a mental state.

Your book knowledge is useful to begin with, but soon it must be given up for direct experience, which by its very nature is inexpressible.

Words can be used for destruction also; of words images are built, by words they are destroyed.

You got yourself into your present state through verbal thinking; you must get out of it the same way.

Q: I did attain a degree of inner peace.

Am I to destroy it?

Or, if it did, it could not last.

Our very deplorable state after all these untold millions of years carries, at best, the promise of ultimate extinction, or, which is worse, the threat of an endless and meaningless repetition.

M: What proof have you that your present state is beginningless and endless?

How were you before you were born?

How will you be after death?

How were you before you were born?

How will you be after death?

And of your present state -- how much do you know?

You do not know even what was your condition before you woke up this morning?

You only know a little of your present state and from it you draw conclusions for all times and places.

And of your present state -- how much do you know?

You do not know even what was your condition before you woke up this morning?

You only know a little of your present state and from it you draw conclusions for all times and places.

You may be just dreaming and imagining your dream to be eternal.

Q: Calling it a dream does not change the situation.

In fact, you know only your present moment.

Why not investigate what is now, instead of questioning the imaginary past and future?

Your present state is neither beginningless nor endless.

If is over in a flash.

Watch carefully from where it comes and where it goes.

Does it exist, or is it a concept only, a verbal opposite to the changeable?

M: It is, it alone is.

But in your present state it is of no use to you.

Just like the glass of water near your bed if of no use to you, when you dream that you are dying of thirst in a desert.

I am trying to wake you up, whatever your dream.

I was groping and came across some books on Yoga.

From book to book, from clue to clue -- I came to Ramanashram.

M: Were the same tragedy to happen to you again, would you suffer as much, considering your present state of mind?

Q: Oh no, I would not let myself suffer again.

I would kill myself.

M: It is because you have not really understood that you are dreaming.

This is the essence of bondage -- the mixing of the real with unreal.

In your present state only the sense 'I am' refers to reality; the 'what' and the 'how I am' are illusions imposed by destiny, or accident.

Q: When did the dream begin?

M: It appears to be beginningless, but in fact it is only now.

Q: One may be rich with many possessions, by inheritance, or marriage, or just good luck.

M: If you do not hold on to, it will be taken away from you.

Q: In your present state can you love another person as a person?

M: I am the other person, the other person is myself; in name and shape we are different, but there is no separation.

At the root of our being we are one.

But the very perception of change -- does it not necessitate a changeless background?

Q: Not at all.

The memory of the last state -- compared to the actuality of the present state gives the experience of change.

M: Between the remembered and the actual there is a basic difference which can be observed from moment to moment.

At no point of time is the actual the remembered.

The existence and form of all things depend upon the mind.

Cognition is a mental product.

And the world as seen from the mind is a subjective and private world, which changes continuously in accordance with the restlessness of the mind itself.

In opposition to the restless mind, with its limited categories -- intentionality, subjectivity, duality etc.

-- stands supreme the limitless sense of 'I am'.

The universe does not come to tell you that you are a part of it.

It is you who have invented a totality to contain you as a part.

In fact all you know is your own private world, however well you have furnished it with your imaginations and expectations.

Q: Surely, perception is not imagination!

M: What else?

After all, all hangs on your faith in yourself, on the conviction that what you see and hear, think and feel is real.

Why not question your faith?

No doubt, this world is painted by you on the screen of consciousness and is entirely your own private world.

Only your sense 'I am', though in the world, is not of the world.

By no effort of logic or imagination can you change the 'I am' into 'I am not'.

You admit that you mean your personal, subjective world, the world given you through your senses and your mind.

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?

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.

Q: Still the main point seems to escape me.

l can admit that the world in which I live and move and have my being is of my own creation, a projection of myself, of my imagination, on the unknown world, the world as it is, the world of 'absolute matter', whatever this matter may be.

The world of my own creation may be quite unlike the ultimate, the real world, just like the cinema screen is quite unlike the pictures projected onto it.

Nevertheless, this absolute world exists, quite independent of myself.

M: Quite so, the world of Absolute Reality, onto which your mind has projected a world of relative unreality is independent of yourself, for the very simple reason that it is yourself.

Q: Like in a tri-dimensional picture, the light forms its own screen.

M: Any comparison will do.

The main point to grasp is that you have projected onto yourself a world of your own imagination, based on memories, on desires and fears, and that you have imprisoned yourself in it.

Break the spell and be free.

Q: How does one break the spell?

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

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

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

Without this realisation you identify yourself with the externals, like the body, mind, society, nation, humanity, even God or the Absolute.

But these are all escapes from fear.

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

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

When pure awareness is attained, no need exists any more, not even for 'I am', which is but a useful pointer, a direction-indicator towards the Absolute.

The awareness 'I am' then easily ceases.

What prevails is that which cannot be described, that which is beyond words.

Q: What is the use of a quiet mind?

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.

M: It is your fixed idea that you must be something or other, that blinds you.

Q: How can I get rid of this idea?

M: If you trust me, believe when I tell you that you are the pure awareness that illuminates consciousness and its infinite content.

Realise this and live accordingly.

If you do not believe me, then go within, enquiring 'What an I'?

I was free from desire and fear.

I found myself full, needing nothing.

I saw that in the ocean of pure awareness, on the surface of the universal consciousness, the numberless waves of the phenomenal worlds arise and subside beginninglessly and endlessly.

As consciousness, they are all me.

As events they are all mine.

M: Quite so.

From the mind's point of view, it is but an opening for the light of awareness to enter the mental space.

By itself the light can only be compared to a solid, dense, rocklike, homogeneous and changeless mass of pure awareness, free from the mental patterns of name and shape.

Q: Is there any connection between the mental space and the supreme abode?

M: The supreme gives existence to the mind.

You are telling us of the Person, the Self and the Supreme.

(vyakti, vyakta, avyakta).

The light of Pure Awareness (pragna), focussed as 'I am' in the Self (jivatma), as consciousness (chetana) illumines the mind (antahkarana) and as life (prana) vitalises the body (deha).

All this is fine as far as the words go.

But when it comes to distinguishing in myself the person from the Self and the Self from the Supreme, I get mixed up.

M: The person is never the subject.

You can see a person, but you are not the person.

You are always the Supreme which appears at a given point of time and space as the witness, a bridge between the pure awareness of the Supreme and the manifold consciousness of the person.

Q: When I look at myself, I find I am several persons fighting among themselves for the use of the body.

M: They correspond to the various tendencies (samskara) of the mind.

M: Sin and virtue refer to a person only.

Without a sinful or virtuous person what is sin or virtue?

At the level of the absolute there are no persons; the ocean of pure awareness is neither virtuous nor sinful.

Sin and virtue are invariably relative.

Q: Can I do away with such unnecessary notions?

The idea -- 'I am the witness only' will purify the body and the mind and open the eye of wisdom.

Then man goes beyond illusion and his heart is free of all desires.

Just like ice turns to water and water to vapour, and vapour dissolves in air and disappears in space, so does the body dissolve into pure awareness (chidakash), then into pure being (paramakash), which is beyond all existence and non-existence.

Q: The realised man eats, drinks and sleeps.

What makes him do so?

Q: Then, what is the link between the two?

How can a passage be found between two states which have nothing in common?

Is not pure awareness the link between the two?

M: Even pure awareness is a form of consciousness.

Q: Then what is beyond?

How can a passage be found between two states which have nothing in common?

Is not pure awareness the link between the two?

M: Even pure awareness is a form of consciousness.

Q: Then what is beyond?

Emptiness?

He sees no difference between God and nature.

Both God and the jnani know themselves to be the immovable centre of the movable, the eternal witness of the transient.

The centre is a point of void and the witness a point of pure awareness; they know themselves to be as nothing, therefore nothing can resist them.

Q: How does this look and feel in your personal experience?

M: Being nothing, I am all.

Remember facts, forget opinions.

Q: What is a fact?

M: What is perceived in pure awareness, unaffected by desire.

27: The Beginningless Begins Forever.

Questioner: The other day I was asking you about the two ways of growth -- renunciation and enjoyment (yoga and bhoga).

And memory is material -- destructible, perishable, transient.

On such flimsy foundations we build a sense of personal existence -- vague, intermittent, dreamlike.

This vague persuasion: 'I-am-so-and-so' obscures the changeless state of pure awareness and makes us believe that we are born to suffer and to die.

Q: Just as a child cannot help growing, so does a man, compelled by nature, make progress.

Why exert oneself?

But such readiness to die flows from the same source as the will to live, a source deeper even than life itself.

To be a living being is not the ultimate state; there is something beyond, much more wonderful, which is neither being nor non- being, neither living nor notliving.

It is a state of pure awareness, beyond the limitations of space and time.

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.

So, it looks that I cannot know myself, only what I take to be myself.

M: Quite right.

As you cannot see your face, but only its reflection in the mirror, so you can know only your image reflected in the stainless mirror of pure awareness.

Q: How am I to get such stainless mirror?

M: Obviously, by removing stains.

the self is beyond both knowledge and power.

The observable is in the mind.

The nature of the self is pure awareness, pure witnessing, unaffected by the presence or absence of knowledge or liking.

Have your being outside this body of birth and death and all your problems will be solved.

They exist because you believe yourself born to die.

It is just not so.

Whatever happens, I remain.

At the root of my being is pure awareness, a speck of intense light.

This speck, by its very nature, radiates and creates pictures in space and events in time -- effortlessly and spontaneously.

As long as it is merely aware there are no problems.

Q: How is it that in spite of so much instruction and assistance we make no progress?

M: As long as we imagine ourselves to be separate personalities, one quite apart from another, we cannot grasp reality which is essentially impersonal.

First we must know ourselves as witnesses only, dimensionless and timeless centres of observation, and then realise that immense ocean of pure awareness, which is both mind and matter and beyond both.

Q: Whatever I may be in reality, yet I feel myself to be a small and separate person, one amongst many.

M: Your being a person is due to the illusion of space and time; you imagine yourself to be at a certain point occupying a certain volume; your personality is due to your self-identification with the body.

The person comes into being when there is a basis for it, an organism, a body.

In it the absolute is reflected as awareness.

Pure awareness becomes self-awareness.

When there is a self, self-awareness is the witness.

When there is no self to witness, there is no witnessing either.

To understand, I need a mind.

M: The body and the mind are only symptoms of ignorance, of misapprehension.

Behave as if you were pure awareness, bodiless and mindless, spaceless and timeless, beyond 'where' and 'when' and 'how'.

Dwell on it, think of it, learn to accept its reality.

Don't oppose it and deny it all the time.

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?

There is a state beyond consciousness, which is not unconscious.

Some call it super- consciousness, or pure consciousness, or supreme consciousness.

It is pure awareness free from the subject object nexus.

Q: I have studied Theosophy and I find nothing familiar in what you say.

I admit Theosophy deals with manifestation only.

' You are pure being -- awareness -- bliss.

To realise that is the end of all seeking.

You come to it when you see all you think yourself to be as mere imagination and stand aloof in pure awareness of the transient as transient, imaginary as imaginary, unreal as unreal.

It is not at all difficult, but detachment is needed.

It is the clinging to the false that makes the true so difficult to see.

They will go if you let them.

Then your normal natural state reappears, in which you are neither the body nor the mind, neither the 'me' nor the 'mine', but in a different state of being altogether.

It is pure awareness of being, without being this or that, without any self-identification with anything in particular, or in general.

In that pure light of consciousness there is nothing, not even the idea of nothing.

There is only light.

Beyond is the light which on contact with the flower creates the colour.

realise that your true nature is that of pure light only, and both the perceived and the perceiver come and go together.

That which makes both possible, and yet is neither, is your real being, which means not being a 'this' or 'that', but pure awareness of being and not-being.

When awareness is turned on itself, the feeling is of not knowing.

When it is turned outward, the knowables come into being.

M: It is like washing printed cloth.

First the design fades, then the background and in the end the cloth is plain white.

The personality gives place to the witness, then the witness goes and pure awareness remains.

The cloth was white in the beginning and is white in the end; the patterns and colours just happened -- for a time.

Q: Can there be awareness without an object of awareness?

Awareness is itself and does not change with the event.

The event may be pleasant or unpleasant, minor or important, awareness is the same.

Take note of the peculiar nature of pure awareness, its natural self-identity, without the least trace of self-consciousness, and go to the root of it and you will soon realise that awareness is your true nature and nothing you may be aware of, you can call your own.

Q: Is not consciousness and its content one and the same?

M: Consciousness is like a cloud in the sky and the water drops are the content.

Q: Is not awareness a form of consciousness?

M: When the content is viewed without likes and dislikes, the consciousness of it is awareness.

But still there is a difference between awareness as reflected in consciousness and pure awareness beyond consciousness.

Reflected awareness, the sense 'I am aware' is the witness, while pure awareness is the essence of reality.

Reflection of the sun in a drop of water is the reflection of the sun, no doubt, but not the sun itself.

M: When the content is viewed without likes and dislikes, the consciousness of it is awareness.

But still there is a difference between awareness as reflected in consciousness and pure awareness beyond consciousness.

Reflected awareness, the sense 'I am aware' is the witness, while pure awareness is the essence of reality.

Reflection of the sun in a drop of water is the reflection of the sun, no doubt, but not the sun itself.

Between awareness reflected in consciousness as the witness and pure awareness there is a gap, which the mind cannot cross.

Reflected awareness, the sense 'I am aware' is the witness, while pure awareness is the essence of reality.

Reflection of the sun in a drop of water is the reflection of the sun, no doubt, but not the sun itself.

Between awareness reflected in consciousness as the witness and pure awareness there is a gap, which the mind cannot cross.

Q: Does it not depend on the way you look at it?

The mind says there is a difference.

Questioner: Who is the Guru and who is the supreme Guru?

Maharaj: All that happens in your consciousness is your Guru.

And pure awareness beyond consciousness is the supreme Guru.

Q: My Guru is Sri Babaji.

What is your opinion of him?

In your case it is distorted by desire and fear, by memories and hopes; in mine it is as it is -- normal.

To be a person is to be asleep.

Q: Between the body and pure awareness stands the 'inner organ', antahkarana, the 'subtle body', the 'mental body', whatever the name.

Just as a whirling mirror converts sunlight into a manifold pattern of streaks and colours, so does the subtle body convert the simple light of the shining Self into a diversified world.

Thus I have understood your teaching.

And the heart, which does not know what it wants?

M: They cannot work in darkness.

They need the light of pure awareness to function rightly.

All effort at control will merely subject them to the dictates of memory.

Memory is a good servant, but a bad master.

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

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

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

Know it to be your real being and act accordingly.

Q: What difference will it make in action what I take myself to be.

Dissolve it in awareness.

It is merely a bundle of memories and habits.

From the awareness of the unreal to the awareness of your real nature there is a chasm which you will easily cross, once you have mastered the art of pure awareness.

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

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

Q: An accident would destroy your equanimity.

M: The strange fact is that it does not.

To my own surprise, I remain as I am -- pure awareness, alert to all that happens.

Q: Even at the Moment of death?

M: What is it to me that the body dies?

Maharaj: This may or may not be so.

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

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

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

Before all beginnings, after all endings -- I am.

He is both being and awareness.

In relation to consciousness he is awareness.

In relation to the universe he is pure being.

Q: And what about the person?

What comes first, the person or the knower.

Unperceived, it is just not there.

It is but the shadow of the mind, the sum total of memories.

Pure being is reflected in the mirror of the mind, as knowing.

What is known takes the shape of a person, based on memory and habit.

It is but a shadow, or a projection of the knower onto the screen of the mind.

No world, no God.

Q: What remains?

M: You remain as pure being.

Q: And what becomes of the world and of God?

M: Pure being (avyakta).

M: You remain as pure being.

Q: And what becomes of the world and of God?

M: Pure being (avyakta).

Q: Is it the same as the Great Expanse (paramakash)?

M: You may call it so.

'I am' is the impersonal Being.

'I am this' is the person.

The person is relative and the pure Being -- fundamental.

Q: Surely pure Being is not unconscious, nor is it devoid of discrimination.

How can it be beyond sin and virtue?

'I am this' is the person.

The person is relative and the pure Being -- fundamental.

Q: Surely pure Being is not unconscious, nor is it devoid of discrimination.

How can it be beyond sin and virtue?

Just tell us, please, has it intelligence or not?

The idea -- 'I am the witness only' will purify the body and the mind and open the eye of wisdom.

Then man goes beyond illusion and his heart is free of all desires.

Just like ice turns to water and water to vapour, and vapour dissolves in air and disappears in space, so does the body dissolve into pure awareness (chidakash), then into pure being (paramakash), which is beyond all existence and non-existence.

Q: The realised man eats, drinks and sleeps.

What makes him do so?

M: Yes, you are always the Supreme.

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?

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'.

You imagine separations and trouble yourself with questions.

Don't concern yourself overmuch with formulations.

Pure being cannot be described.

Q: Unless a thing is knowable and enjoyable, it is of no use to me.

It must become a part of my experience, first of all.

Q: When does this witnessing begin?

M: To a jnani nothing has beginning or ending.

As salt dissolves in water, so does everything dissolve into pure being.

Wisdom is eternally negating the unreal.

To see the unreal is wisdom.

But, why forget the self through excess of attachment?

Wisdom lies in never forgetting the self as the ever-present source of both the experiencer and his experience.

Q: In my present state the 'I am the body' idea comes spontaneously, while the 'I am pure being' idea must be imposed on the mind as something true but not experienced.

M: Yes, sadhana (practice) consists in reminding oneself forcibly of one's pure 'being-ness', of not being anything in particular, nor a sum of particulars, not even the totality of all particulars, which make up a universe.

All exists in the mind, even the body is an integration in the mind of a vast number of sensory perceptions, each perception also a mental state.

Q: How does one go beyond the need of help?

And can one help another to do so?

M: When you have understood that all existence, in separation and limitation, is painful, and when you are willing and able to live integrally, in oneness with all life, as pure being, you have gone beyond all need of help.

You can help another by precept and example and, above all, by your being.

You cannot give what you do not have and you don't have what you are not.

Being pervades and transcends consciousness.

Objective consciousness is a part of pure consciousness, not beyond it.

Q: How do you come to know a state of pure being which is neither conscious nor unconscious?

All knowledge is in consciousness only.

There may be such a state as the abeyance of the mind.

They just happen.

To me nothing ever happens.

There is something changeless, motionless, immovable, rocklike, unassailable; a solid mass of pure being-consciousness-bliss.

I am never out of it.

Nothing can take me out of it, no torture, no calamity.

At present your being is mixed up with experiencing.

All you need is to unravel being from the tangle of experiences.

Once you have known pure being, without being this or that, you will discern it among experiences and you will no longer be misled by names and forms.

Self-limitation is the very essence of personality.

Q: How can I become universal?

I feel clearly that in spite of all the changes I am a child.

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

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

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

My Guru told me -- 'Trust me.

I did believe him and soon realised how wonderfully true and accurate were his words.

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.

M: Until I met my Guru I knew so many things.

Now I know nothing, for all knowledge is in dream only and not valid.

I know myself and I find no life nor death in me, only pure being -- not being this or that, but just being.

But the moment the mind, drawing on its stock of memories, begins to imagine, it fills the space with objects and time with events.

As I do not know even this birth, how can I know past births?

M: Let us not proceed by verbal logic.

The bliss of reality does not exclude suffering.

Besides, you know only pleasure, not the bliss of pure being.

So let us examine pleasure at its own level.

If you look at yourself in your moments of pleasure or pain, you will invariably find that it is not the thing in itself that is pleasant or painful, but the situation of which it is a part.

M: That which makes you think that you are a human is not human.

It is but a dimensionless point of consciousness, a conscious nothing; all you can say about yourself is: 'I am.

' You are pure being -- awareness -- bliss.

To realise that is the end of all seeking.

You come to it when you see all you think yourself to be as mere imagination and stand aloof in pure awareness of the transient as transient, imaginary as imaginary, unreal as unreal.

M: All changes in consciousness are due to the 'I-am-the-body' idea.

Divested of this idea the mind becomes steady.

There is pure being, free of experiencing anything in particular.

But to realise it you must do what your teacher tells you.

Mere listening, even memorizing, is not enough.

All existence is imaginary.

Q: Is being too imaginary?

M: Pure being, filling all and beyond all, is not existence which is limited.

All limitation is imaginary, only the unlimited is real.

Q: When you look at me, what do you see?

Matter is the shape, mind is the name.

Together they make the world.

Pervading and transcending is Reality, pure being -- awareness -- bliss, your very essence.

Q: All I know is the stream of consciousness, an endless succession of events.

The river of time flows, bringing and carrying away relentlessly.

There is no duality in awareness.

It is one single block of pure cognition.

In the same way one can talk of the pure being and pure creation -- nameless, formless, silent and yet absolutely real, powerful, effective.

Their being indescribable does not affect them in the least.

While they are unconscious, they are essential.

I cannot express it otherwise.

M: When you follow it up carefully from brain through consciousness to awareness, you find that the sense of duality persists.

When you go beyond awareness, there is a state of non-duality, in which there is no cognition, only pure being, which may be as well called non-being, if by being you mean being something in particular.

Q: What you call pure being is it universal being, being everything?

M: Everything implies a collection of particulars.

M: When you follow it up carefully from brain through consciousness to awareness, you find that the sense of duality persists.

When you go beyond awareness, there is a state of non-duality, in which there is no cognition, only pure being, which may be as well called non-being, if by being you mean being something in particular.

Q: What you call pure being is it universal being, being everything?

M: Everything implies a collection of particulars.

In pure being the very idea of the particular is absent.

Q: What you call pure being is it universal being, being everything?

M: Everything implies a collection of particulars.

In pure being the very idea of the particular is absent.

Q: Is there any relationship between pure being and particular being?

M: What relationship can there be between what is and what merely appears to be?

M: Everything implies a collection of particulars.

In pure being the very idea of the particular is absent.

Q: Is there any relationship between pure being and particular being?

M: What relationship can there be between what is and what merely appears to be?

Is there any relationship between the ocean and its waves?

Is there any relationship between the ocean and its waves?

The real enables the unreal to appear and causes it to disappear.

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.

In a way it is like having death under control.

One begins with the lowest levels: social circumstances, customs and habits; physical surroundings, the posture and the breathing of the body, the senses, their sensations and perceptions; the mind, its thoughts and feelings; until the entire mechanism of personality is grasped and firmly held.

The final stage of meditation is reached when the sense of identity goes beyond the 'I-am-so-and-so', beyond 'so-l-am', beyond 'I-am-the-witness-only', beyond 'there-is', beyond all ideas into the impersonally personal pure being.

But you must be energetic when you take to meditation.

It is definitely not a part-time occupation.

We love variety, the play of pain and pleasure, we are fascinated by contrasts.

For this we need the opposites and their apparent separation.

We enjoy them for a time and then get tired and crave for the peace and silence of pure being.

The cosmic heart beats ceaselessly.

I am the witness and the heart too.

It does not mean the extinction of the person; it means only seeing it in right perspective.

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.

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

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

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

It is transfigured, and becomes the real Self, the sadguru, the eternal friend and guide.

You cannot approach it in worship.

M: When you are bound by the illusion: 'I am this body', you are merely a point in space and a moment in time.

When the self-identification with the body is no more, all space and time are in your mind, which is a mere ripple in consciousness, which is awareness reflected in nature.

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

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

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

M: How can there be nothing without something?

Nothing is only an idea, it depends on the memory of something.

Pure being is quite independent of existence, which is definable and describable.

Q: Please tell us; beyond the mind does consciousness continue, or does it end with the mind?

M: Consciousness comes and goes, awareness shines immutably.

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

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

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

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

You need not forget; when desire and fear end, bondage also ends.

This is easy because the sense 'I am' is always with you.

Then meet yourself as the knower, apart from the known.

Once you know yourself as pure being, the ecstasy of freedom is your own.

Q: Which Yoga is this?

M: Why worry?

Higher knowledge, knowledge of Reality, is inherent in man's true nature.

Q: Can I say that I am not what I am conscious of, nor am I consciousness itself?

M: As long as you are a seeker, better cling to the idea that you are pure consciousness, free from all content.

To go beyond consciousness is the supreme state.

Q: The desire for realisation, does it originate in consciousness or beyond?

Q: But you agree that living a life -- just living the humdrum life of the world, being born to die and dying to be born -- advances man by its sheer volume, just like the river finds its way to the sea by the sheer mass of the water it gathers.

M: Before the world was, consciousness was.

In consciousness it comes into being, in consciousness it lasts and into pure consciousness it dissolves.

At the root of everything, is the feeling 'I am'.

The state of mind: 'there is a world' is secondary, for to be, I do not need the world, the world needs me.

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.

For warmth, contact is needed.

Above the unity of being is the union of love.

In the state free from ideation (nirvikalpa samadhi) nothing is perceived.

The root idea is: 'I am'.

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

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

Q: Why not by my will?

M: Why elaborate?

Being pervades and transcends consciousness.

Objective consciousness is a part of pure consciousness, not beyond it.

Q: How do you come to know a state of pure being which is neither conscious nor unconscious?

All knowledge is in consciousness only.

Sensations, desires, thoughts -- these are all burdens.

All consciousness is of conflict.

Q: Reality is described as true being, pure consciousness, infinite bliss.

What has pain to do with it?

M: Pain and pleasure happen, but pain is the price of pleasure, pleasure is the reward of pain.

M: I am neither conscious nor unconscious, I am beyond the mind and its various states and conditions.

Distinctions are created by the mind and apply to the mind only.

I am pure Consciousness itself, unbroken awareness of all that is.

I am in a more real state than yours.

I am undistracted by the distinctions and separations which constitute a person.

How do you look at it?

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

M: In pure consciousness nothing ever happens.

Q: Please come down from these metaphysical heights!

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

Yet there is the experience of just being.

There is a state beyond consciousness, which is not unconscious.

Some call it super- consciousness, or pure consciousness, or supreme consciousness.

It is pure awareness free from the subject object nexus.

Q: I have studied Theosophy and I find nothing familiar in what you say.

M: The state of identity is inherent in reality and never fades.

But identity is neither the transient personality (vyakti), nor the karma-bound individuality (vyakta).

It is what remains when all self- identification is given up as false -- pure consciousness, the sense of being all there is, or could be.

Consciousness is pure in the beginning and pure in the end; in between it gets contaminated by imagination which is at the root of creation.

At all times consciousness remains the same.

M: By determination.

Understand that it must go and wish it to go -- it shall go if you are earnest about it.

Somebody, anybody, will tell you that you are pure consciousness, not a body-mind.

Accept it as a possibility and investigate earnestly.

You may discover that it is not so, that you are not a person bound in space and time.

Learn to look without imagination, to listen without distortion: that is all.

Stop attributing names and shapes to the essentially nameless and formless, realise that every mode of perception is subjective, that what is seen or heard, touched or smelt, felt or thought, expected or imagined, is in the mind and not in reality, and you will experience peace and freedom from fear.

Even the sense of 'I am' is composed of the pure light and the sense of being.

The 'I' is there even without the 'am'.

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

Even the sense of 'I am' is composed of the pure light and the sense of being.

The 'I' is there even without the 'am'.

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.

The 'I' is there even without the 'am'.

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.

It is an infinite series, an endless opening of boxes, is the last one the ultimate soul?

M: If you have a body, you must have a soul; here your simile of a nest of boxes applies.

But here and now, through all your bodies and souls shines awareness, the pure light of chit.

Hold on to it unswervingly.

Without awareness, the body would not last a second.

Then your normal natural state reappears, in which you are neither the body nor the mind, neither the 'me' nor the 'mine', but in a different state of being altogether.

It is pure awareness of being, without being this or that, without any self-identification with anything in particular, or in general.

In that pure light of consciousness there is nothing, not even the idea of nothing.

There is only light.

Q: There are people whom I love.

Without flower -- no colours; without colour -- the flower remains unseen.

Beyond is the light which on contact with the flower creates the colour.

realise that your true nature is that of pure light only, and both the perceived and the perceiver come and go together.

That which makes both possible, and yet is neither, is your real being, which means not being a 'this' or 'that', but pure awareness of being and not-being.

When awareness is turned on itself, the feeling is of not knowing.

Give up the idea that you have not found it and just let it come into the focus of direct perception, here and now, by removing all that is of the mind.

Q: When all that can go, goes, what remains?

M: Emptiness remains, awareness remains, pure light of the conscious being remains.

It is like asking what remains of a room when all the furniture is removed?

A most serviceable room remains.

It is in the picture on the screen that you forget and then remember.

You never cease to be a man because you dream to be a tiger.

Similarly you are pure light appearing as a picture on the screen and also becoming one with it.

Q: Since all happens, why should I worry?

M: Exactly.

Beyond this lies the inexpressible.

Q: There is in me the conviction: 'I am the body' Granted, I am talking from unwisdom.

But the state of feeling oneself the body, the body-mind, the mind-body, or even pure mind -- when did it begin?

M: You cannot speak of a beginning of consciousness.

The very ideas of beginning and time are within consciousness.

The name does not matter, but the fact does.

M: This is the stand the body-mind takes.

The pure mind sees things as they are -- bubbles in consciousness.

These bubbles are appearing, disappearing and reappearing -- without having real being.

No particular cause can be ascribed to them, for each is caused by all and affects all.

Q: I happen to meet many young people coming from the West and I find that there is a basic difference when I compare them to the Indians.

It looks as if their psyche (antahkarana) is different.

Concepts like Self, Reality, pure mind, universal consciousness the Indian mind grasps easily.

They ring familiar, they taste sweet.

The Western mind does not respond, or just rejects them.

But most of them are very liberal and adapt their advice to the needs of the enquirer.

All the paths take you to the purification of the mind.

The impure mind is opaque to truth; the pure mind is transparent.

Truth can be seen through it easily and clearly.

Q: I am sorry, but I seem unable to convey my difficulty.

The dissolution of the unconscious releases energy; the mind feels adequate and become quiet.

Q: What is the use of a quiet mind?

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.

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?

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

M: At the root of all creation lies desire.

Desire and imagination foster and reinforce each other.

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

It is like space, unaffected by whatever it contains.

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

the self is beyond both knowledge and power.

The observable is in the mind.

The nature of the self is pure awareness, pure witnessing, unaffected by the presence or absence of knowledge or liking.

Have your being outside this body of birth and death and all your problems will be solved.

They exist because you believe yourself born to die.

M: One must also know that a rope exists and looks like a snake.

Similarly, one must know that the real exists and is of the nature of witness-consciousness.

Of course it is beyond the witness, but to enter it one must first realise the state of pure witnessing.

The awareness of conditions brings one to the unconditioned.

Q: Can the unconditioned be experienced?

In one you desire and fear, in the other you are unaffected by pleasure and pain and are not ruffled by events.

You let them come and go.

Q: How does one get established in the higher state, the state of pure witnessing?

M: Consciousness does not shine by itself.

It shines by a light beyond it.

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

Man becomes what he believes himself to be.

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

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

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

He sees what happens, but feels no urge to interfere.

He makes no choices, takes no decisions.

As pure witness, he watches what is going on and remains unaffected.

Q: But his work suffers.

M: Victory is always his -- in the end.

Can there really be an awareness of the present?

M: What you are describing is not awareness at all, but only thinking about the experience.

True awareness (samvid) is a state of pure witnessing, without the least attempt to do anything about the event witnessed.

Your thoughts and feelings, words and actions may also be a part of the event; you watch all unconcerned in the full light of clarity and understanding.

You understand precisely what is going on, because it does not affect you.

The stars affect us deeply and we affect the stars.

Step back from action to consciousness, leave action to the body and the mind; it is their domain.

Remain as pure witness, till even witnessing dissolves in the Supreme.

Imagine a thick jungle full of heavy timber.

A plank is shaped out of the timber and a small pencil to write on it.

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?

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

M: At the root of all creation lies desire.

Desire and imagination foster and reinforce each other.

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

It is like space, unaffected by whatever it contains.

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

the self is beyond both knowledge and power.

The observable is in the mind.

The nature of the self is pure awareness, pure witnessing, unaffected by the presence or absence of knowledge or liking.

Have your being outside this body of birth and death and all your problems will be solved.

They exist because you believe yourself born to die.

M: One must also know that a rope exists and looks like a snake.

Similarly, one must know that the real exists and is of the nature of witness-consciousness.

Of course it is beyond the witness, but to enter it one must first realise the state of pure witnessing.

The awareness of conditions brings one to the unconditioned.

Q: Can the unconditioned be experienced?

In one you desire and fear, in the other you are unaffected by pleasure and pain and are not ruffled by events.

You let them come and go.

Q: How does one get established in the higher state, the state of pure witnessing?

M: Consciousness does not shine by itself.

It shines by a light beyond it.

Can there really be an awareness of the present?

M: What you are describing is not awareness at all, but only thinking about the experience.

True awareness (samvid) is a state of pure witnessing, without the least attempt to do anything about the event witnessed.

Your thoughts and feelings, words and actions may also be a part of the event; you watch all unconcerned in the full light of clarity and understanding.

You understand precisely what is going on, because it does not affect you.

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

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

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

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

It merely shows that the energy potential has risen at a particular point.

I hate those irresponsible generalizations!

And you are so prone to personalise them.

Without causality there will be no order; nor purposeful action will be possible.

M: Do you want to know all the causes of each event?

Is it possible?

There is no duality of cause and effect.

Everything is its own cause.

Q: No purposeful action is then possible?

M: All I say is that consciousness contains all.

In consciousness all is possible.

Q: I know all this, but have no power over it.

M: This is another illusion of yours, born from craving for results.

Q: What is wrong with purposeful action?

M: It does not apply.

In these matters there is no question of purpose, nor of action.

Whatever vice or weakness in ourselves we discover and understand its causes and its workings, we overcome it by the very knowing; the unconscious dissolves when brought into the conscious.

The dissolution of the unconscious releases energy; the mind feels adequate and become quiet.

Q: What is the use of a quiet mind?

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.

You cannot know yourself through bliss alone, for bliss is your very nature.

You must face the opposite, what you are not, to find enlightenment.

65: A Quiet Mind is All You Need.

Questioner: I am not well.

I feel rather weak.

Improve your instrument and your knowledge will improve.

Q: To know perfectly I need a perfect mind.

M: A quiet mind is all you need.

All else will happen rightly, once your mind is quiet.

As the sun on rising makes the world active, so does self-awareness affect changes in the mind.

To see reality is as simple as to see one's face in a mirror.

Only the mirror must be clear and true.

A quiet mind, undistorted by desires and fears, free from ideas and opinions, clear on all the levels, is needed to reflect the reality.

Be clear and quiet -- alert and detached, all else will happen by itself.

Q: You had to make your mind clear and quiet before you could realise the truth.

Q: It is truth I seek, not peace.

M: You cannot see the true unless you are at peace.

A quiet mind is essential for right perception, which again is required for self-realisation.

Q: I have so much to do.

I just cannot afford to keep my mind quiet.

When you reach the deep layers of your true being, you will find that the mind's surface-play affects you very little.

Q: There will be play all the same?

M: A quiet mind is not a dead mind.

Q: Consciousness is always in movement -- it is an observable fact.

Immovable consciousness is a contradiction.

Q: Consciousness is always in movement -- it is an observable fact.

Immovable consciousness is a contradiction.

When you talk of a quiet mind, what is it?

Is not mind the same as consciousness?

M: We must remember that words are used in many ways, according to the context.

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?

M: You discover that there is nothing to discover.

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

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

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

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

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

M: Inertia and restlessness (tamas and rajas) work together and keep clarity and harmony (sattva) down.

Tamas and Rajas must be conquered before Sattva can appear.

It will all come in due course, quite spontaneously.

Q: Is there no need of effort then?

M: When effort is needed, effort will appear.

Only a fully ripened jnani can allow himself complete spontaneity.

Q: It seems there are schools of Yoga where the student, after illumination, is obliged to keep silent for 7 or 12 or 15 or even 25 years.

Even Bhagavan Sri Ramana Maharshi imposed on himself 20 years of silence before he began to teach.

M: Yes, the inner fruit must ripen.

Until then the discipline, the living in awareness, must go on.

It is one life, after all.

M: How did you come to your present state?

Q: Sri Ramana Maharshi's teachings have put me on my way.

Then I met one Douglas Harding who helped me by showing me how to work on the 'Who am I ?

Q: It was quite sudden.

M: The Creator is a person whose body is the world.

The Nameless one is beyond all gods.

Q: Sri Ramana Maharshi died.

What difference did it make to him?

M: None.

M: What have you seen?

Q: I have been at Sri Ramanashram and also I have visited Rishikesh.

Can I ask you what is your opinion of Sri Ramana Maharshi?

M: We are both in the same ancient state.

But what do you know of Maharshi?

Everything comes in time.

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

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

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

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

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.

Find your real self (swarupa) and all else will come with it.

Q: If my real self is peace and love, why is it so restless?

M: It is not your real being that is restless, but its reflection in the mind appears restless because the mind is restless.

It is just like the reflection of the moon in the water stirred by the wind.

The wind of desire stirs the mind and the 'me', which is but a reflection of the Self in the mind, appears changeful.

Q: How is the crossing done?

M: See your world as it is, not as you imagine it to be.

Discrimination will lead to detachment; detachment will ensure right action; right action will build the inner bridge to your real being.

Action is a proof of earnestness.

Do what you are told diligently and faithfully and all obstacles will dissolve.

Because it is made for itself, it does not interfere.

You are using things and people for purposes alien to them and you play havoc with the world and yourself.

Q: Our real being is all the time with us, you say.

How is it that we do not notice it?

M: Yes, you are always the Supreme.

We must realise how poor and powerless we are.

As long as we delude ourselves by what we imagine ourselves to be, to know, to have, to do, we are in a sad plight indeed.

Only in complete self-negation there is a chance to discover our real being.

Q: Why so much stress on self-negation?

M: As much as on self-realisation.

Q: Yet, you are experiencing pleasure and pain.

M: I am experiencing these in consciousness, but I am neither consciousness, nor its content.

Q: You say that in our real being we are all equal.

How is it that your experience is so different from ours.

M: My actual experience is not different.

M: This is the stand the body-mind takes.

The pure mind sees things as they are -- bubbles in consciousness.

These bubbles are appearing, disappearing and reappearing -- without having real being.

No particular cause can be ascribed to them, for each is caused by all and affects all.

Each bubble is a body and all these bodies are mine.

People are afraid to die, because they do not know what is death.

The jnani has died before his death, he saw that there was nothing to be afraid of.

The moment you know your real being, you are afraid of nothing.

Death gives freedom and power.

To be free in the world, you must die to the world.

Trust and try.

Experiment honestly.

Give your real being a chance to shape your life.

You will not regret.

34: Mind is restlessness Itself.

I am dead to the world, I want nothing, not even to live.

Be as I am, do as I do.

You are judging me by my clothes and food; while I only look at your motives; if you believe to be the body and the mind and act on it you are guilty of the greatest cruelty -- cruelty to your own real being.

Compared to it all other cruelties do not count.

Q: You are taking refuge in the claim that you are not the body.

It was so -- always.

There was discovery and it was sudden.

Just as at birth you discover the world suddenly, as suddenly I discovered my real being.

Q: Was it clouded over and your sadhana dissolved the mist?

When your true state became clear to you, did it remain clear, or did it get obscured again?

All scriptures say that before the world was, the Creator was.

Who knows the Creator?

He alone who was before the Creator, your own real being, the source of all the worlds with their creators.

Q: All you say is held together by your assumption that the world is your own projection.

You admit that you mean your personal, subjective world, the world given you through your senses and your mind.

To be able to say truly: I am the world., the world is me, I am at home in the world, the world is my own.

Every existence is my existence, every consciousness is my consciousness, every sorrow is my sorrow and every joy is my joy -- this is universal life.

Yet, my real being, and yours too, is beyond the universe and, therefore, beyond the categories of the particular and the universal.

It is what it is, totally self- contained and independent.

Q: I find it hard to understand.

You realise that the person you became at birth and will cease to be at death is temporary and false.

You are not the sensual, emotional and intellectual person, gripped by desires and fears.

Find out your real being.

What am l?

is the fundamental question of all philosophy and psychology.

If you watch carefully you will find that even your daily consciousness is in flashes, with gaps intervening all the time.

What is in the gaps?

What can there be but your real being, that is timeless; mind and mindlessness are one to it.

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

M: The only proper place is within.

You will dream some other dream at that time.

Do realise that it is not you who moves from dream to dream, but the dreams flow before you and you are the immutable witness.

No happening affects your real being -- this is the absolute truth.

Q: Cannot I move about physically and keep steady inwardly?

M: You can, but what purpose does it serve?

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

For knowledge to be, there must be separation and disharmony.

You can know what you are not, but you can not know your real being.

You can be only what you are.

The entire approach is through understanding, which is in the seeing of the false as false.

You are looking for the causes of being what you are not!

It is a futile search.

There are no causes, but your ignorance of your real being, which is perfect and beyond all causation.

For whatever happens, all the universe is responsible and you are the source of the universe.

Q: I know nothing about being the cause of the universe.

Tamas obscures, rajas distorts, sattva harmonises.

With the maturing of the sattva all desires and fears come to an end.

The real being is reflected in the mind undistorted.

Matter is redeemed, spirit -- revealed.

The two are seen as one.

Beyond is the light which on contact with the flower creates the colour.

realise that your true nature is that of pure light only, and both the perceived and the perceiver come and go together.

That which makes both possible, and yet is neither, is your real being, which means not being a 'this' or 'that', but pure awareness of being and not-being.

When awareness is turned on itself, the feeling is of not knowing.

When it is turned outward, the knowables come into being.

M: Were it so, it would be splendid!

Love your self wisely and you will reach the summit of perfection.

Everybody loves his body, but few love their real being.

Q: Does my real being need my love?

M: Your real being is love itself and your many loves are its reflections according to the situation at the moment.

Love your self wisely and you will reach the summit of perfection.

Everybody loves his body, but few love their real being.

Q: Does my real being need my love?

M: Your real being is love itself and your many loves are its reflections according to the situation at the moment.

Q: We are selfish, we know only self-love.

Everybody loves his body, but few love their real being.

Q: Does my real being need my love?

M: Your real being is love itself and your many loves are its reflections according to the situation at the moment.

Q: We are selfish, we know only self-love.

M: Good enough for a start.

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

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

Know it to be your real being and act accordingly.

Q: What difference will it make in action what I take myself to be.

Actions just happen according to circumstances.

But rarely we know where to seek it.

Once you have understood that the world is but a mistaken view of reality, and is not what it appears to be, you are free of its obsessions.

Only what is compatible with your real being can make you happy and the world, as you perceive it, is its outright denial.

Keep very quiet and watch what comes to the surface of the mind.

Reject the known, welcome the so far unknown and reject it in its turn.

You cannot start nor prevent them, as you cannot start or stop a river.

Too many factors are involved in the creation of a successful Ashram and your inner maturity is only one of them.

Of course, if you are ignorant of your real being, whatever you do must turn to ashes.

You cannot imitate a Guru and get away with it.

All hypocrisy will end in disaster.

M: You are.

as a person.

In your real being vow are the whole.

Q: Are you a part of the world which I have in consciousness, or are you independent?

M: What you see is yours and what I see is mine.

He cannot and shall not come to terms with the mind and its delusions.

He comes to take you to the real; don't expect him to do anything else.

The Guru you have in mind, one who gives you information and instructions, is not the real Guru.

The real Guru is he who knows the real, beyond the glamour of appearances.

To him your questions about obedience and discipline do not make sense, for in his eyes the person you take yourself to be does not exist, your questions are about a non-existing person.

He comes to take you to the real; don't expect him to do anything else.

The Guru you have in mind, one who gives you information and instructions, is not the real Guru.

The real Guru is he who knows the real, beyond the glamour of appearances.

To him your questions about obedience and discipline do not make sense, for in his eyes the person you take yourself to be does not exist, your questions are about a non-existing person.

What exists for you does not exist for him.

Gradually she recovered, a number of operations brought back her face and body to normal and she grew into an efficient and attractive young woman.

It took the doctor more than five years, but the work was done.

He was a real Guru!

He did not put down conditions nor talk about readiness and eligibility.

Without faith, without hope, out of love only he tried and tried again.

Is his role also limited, and if so, to what?

Or is he indispensable generally, even absolutely?

Maharaj: The innermost light, shining peacefully and timelessly in the heart, is the real Guru.

All others merely show the way.

Q: I am not concerned with the inner Guru.

But the word of a Guru is a seed that cannot perish.

Of course, the Guru must be a real one, who is beyond the body and the mind, beyond consciousness itself, beyond space and time, beyond duality and unity, beyond understanding and description.

The good people who have read a lot and have a lot to say, may teach you many useful things, but they are not the real Gurus whose words invariably come true.

They also may tell you that you are the ultimate reality itself, but what of it?

Q: Nevertheless, if for some reason I happen to trust them and obey, shall I be the loser?

They also may tell you that you are the ultimate reality itself, but what of it?

Q: Nevertheless, if for some reason I happen to trust them and obey, shall I be the loser?

M: If you are able to trust and obey, you will soon find your real Guru, or rather, he will find you.

Q: Does every knower of the Self become a Guru, or can one be a knower of Reality without being able to take others to it?

M: If you know what you teach, you can teach what you know, Here seership and teachership are one.

These are questions born of fear.

84: Your Goal is Your Guru.

Questioner: You were telling us that there are many self-styled Gurus, but a real Guru is very rare.

There are many jnani who imagine themselves realised, but all they have is book knowledge and a high opinion of themselves.

Sometimes they impress, even fascinate, attract disciples and make them waste their time in useless practices.

In a way the Guru is its messenger.

There will be many messengers, but the message is one: be what you are.

Or, you can put it differently: Until you realise yourself, you cannot know who is your real Guru.

When you realise, you find that all the Gurus you had have contributed to your awakening.

Your realisation is the proof that your Guru was real.

M: No, this is but an introduction.

You will meet a man who will help you find your own way.

Q: I feel that the Guru of my own choice can not be my real Guru.

To be real he must come unexpected and be irresistible.

M: Not to anticipate is best.

All happiness comes from awareness.

The more we are conscious, the deeper the joy.

Acceptance of pain, non-resistance, courage and endurance -- these open deep and perennial sources of real happiness, true bliss.

Q: Why should pain be more effective than pleasure?

M: Pleasure is readily accepted, while all the powers of the self reject pain.

M: And what are you after now?

Q: Well, what are we all after?

Some truth, some inner certainty, some real happiness.

In the various schools of self-realisation there is so much talk of awareness, that one ends with the impression that awareness itself is the supreme reality.

Is it so?

Even your own happiness is so vulnerable and short-lived, at the mercy of a bank-crash, or a stomach ulcer.

It is just a moment of respite, a mere gap between two sorrows.

Real happiness is not vulnerable, because it does not depend on circumstances.

Q: Are you talking from your own experience?

Are you too unhappy?

Are you really happy, or are you merely trying to convince yourself.

Look at yourself fearlessly and you will at once realise that your happiness depends on conditions and circumstances, hence it is momentary, not real.

Real happiness flows from within.

Q: Of what use is your happiness to me?

It does not make me happy.

Pleasures are like the fishes, few and swift, rarely come, quickly gone.

A man of low intelligence believes, against all evidence, that he is an exception and that the world owes him happiness.

But the world cannot give what it does not have; unreal to the core, it is of no use for real happiness.

It cannot be otherwise.

We seek the real because we are unhappy with the unreal.

A man who says: 'Now I am happy', is between two sorrows -- past and future.

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'.

M: If you ask for the impossible, who can help you?

The limited is bound to be painful and pleasant in turns.

If you seek real happiness, unassailable and unchangeable, you must leave the world with its pains and pleasures behind you.

Q: How is it done?

M: Mere physical renunciation is only a token of earnestness, but earnestness alone does not liberate.

The Self stands beyond the mind, aware, but unconcerned.

Q: How to reach it?

M: You are the Self, here and now Leave the mind alone, stand aware and unconcerned and you will realise that to stand alert but detached, watching events come and go, is an aspect of your real nature.

Q: What are the other aspects?

M: The aspects are infinite in number.

M: Emotional reactions, born of ignorance or inadvertence, are never justified.

Seek a clear mind and a clean heart.

All you need is to keep quietly alert, enquiring into the real nature of yourself.

This is the only way to peace.

9: Responses of Memory.

You must watch yourself continuously -- particularly your mind -- moment by moment, missing nothing.

This witnessing is essential for the separation of the self from the not-self.

Q: The witnessing -- is it not my real nature?

M: For witnessing, there must be something else to witness.

We are still in duality!

M: What is wrong with striving?

Why look for results?

Striving itself is your real nature.

Q: Striving is painful.

M: You make it so by seeking results.

Readiness is ripeness.

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

Q: If reality is my real nature, how can I ever be unready?

M: Unready means afraid.

You are afraid of what you are.

M: You mean, can he make others into jnanis?

Yes and no.

No, since jnanis are not made, they realise themselves as such, when they return to their source, their real nature.

I cannot make you into what you already are.

All I can tell you is the way I travelled and invite you to take it.

They are mistaking some unusual development for realisation.

The jnani shows no tendency to proclaim himself to be a jnani.

He considers himself to be perfectly normal, true to his real nature.

Proclaiming oneself to be an omnipotent, omniscient and omnipotent deity is a clear sign of ignorance.

Q: Can the jnani convey his experience to the ignorant?

You know that you are.

Don't burden yourself with names, just be.

Any name or shape you give yourself obscures your real nature.

Q: Why should seeking end before one can realise?

M: The desire for truth is the highest of all desires, yet, it is still a desire.

The personal self by its very nature is constantly pursuing pleasure and avoiding pain.

The ending of this pattern is the ending of the self.

The ending of the self with its desires and fears enables you to return to your real nature, the source of all happiness and peace.

The perennial desire for pleasure is the reflection of the timeless harmony within.

It is an observable fact that one becomes self- conscious only when caught in the conflict between pleasure and pain, which demands choice and decision.

War is hatred in action, organised and equipped with all the instruments of death.

Q: Is there a way to end these horrors?

M: When more people come to know their real nature, their influence, however subtle, will prevail and the world's emotional atmosphere will sweeten up.

People follow their leaders and when among the leaders appear some, great in heart and mind, and absolutely free from self-seeking, their impact will be enough to make the crudities and crimes of the present age impossible.

A new golden age may come and last for a time and succumb to its own perfection.

But the fundamental reality is beyond awareness, beyond the three states of becoming, being and not-being.

Q: How is it that here my mind is engaged in high topics and finds dwelling on them easy and pleasant.

When I return home I find myself forgetting all l have learnt here, worrying and fretting, unable to remember my real nature even for a moment.

What may be the cause?

M: It is your childishness you are returning to.

M: It is enough if you do not imagine yourself to be the body.

It is the 'I-am-the-body' idea that is so calamitous.

It blinds you completely to your real nature.

Even for a moment do not think that you are the body.

Give yourself no name, no shape.

Be aware of what needs be done and it will be done.

Only keep alert -- and quiet.

Once you reach your destination and Know your real nature, your existence becomes a blessing to all.

You may not know, nor will the world know, yet the help radiates.

There are people in the world who do more good than all the statesmen and philanthropists put together.

Q: Must I always go dull with tamas and desperate with rajas?

What about sattva?

M: Sattva is the radiance of your real nature.

You can always find it beyond the mind and its many worlds.

But if you want a world, you must accept the three gunas as inseparable -- matter -- energy -- life -- one in essence, distinct in appearance.

When dry it is again the normal cloth.

Water has left it and who can make out that it was wet?

Your real nature is not like what you appear to be.

Give up the idea of being a person, that is all.

You need not become what you are anyhow.

Life and death do not create problems; pains and pleasures come and go, experienced and forgotten.

It is memory and anticipation that create problems of attainment or avoidance, coloured by like and dislike.

Truth and love are man's real nature and mind and heart are the means of its expression.

Q: How to bring the mind under control?

And the heart, which does not know what it wants?

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.

While alive, it attracts attention and fascinates so completely that rarely does one perceive one's real nature.

It is like seeing the surface of the ocean and completely forgetting the immensity beneath.

The world is but the surface of the mind and the mind is infinite.

It cannot be otherwise.

We seek the real because we are unhappy with the unreal.

Happiness is our real nature and we shall never rest until we find it.

But rarely we know where to seek it.

Once you have understood that the world is but a mistaken view of reality, and is not what it appears to be, you are free of its obsessions.

Q: Emptiness and nothingness -- how dreadful!

M: You face it most cheerfully, when you go to sleep!

Find out for yourself the state of wakeful sleep and you will find it quite in harmony with your real nature.

Words can only give you the idea and the idea is not the experience.

All I can say is that true happiness has no cause and what has no cause is immovable.

Dissolve it in awareness.

It is merely a bundle of memories and habits.

From the awareness of the unreal to the awareness of your real nature there is a chasm which you will easily cross, once you have mastered the art of pure awareness.

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

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

He admits that while he is aware of it, others are not yet, but this difference is temporary and of little importance, except to the mind and its ever-changing content.

When asked about his Yoga, he says he has none to offer, no system t propound, no theology, cosmology, psychology or philosophy.

He knows the real nature -- his own and his listeners' -- and he points it out.

The listener cannot see it because he cannot see the obvious, simply and directly.

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

In a way all search is for the real bliss, or the bliss of the real.

But here we mean by search the search for oneself as the root of being conscious, as the light beyond the mind.

This search will never end, while the restless craving for all else must end, for real progress to take place.

One has to understand that the search for reality, or God, or Guru and the search for the self are the same; when one is found, all are found.

When 'I am' and 'God is' become in your mind indistinguishable, then something will happen and you will know without a trace of doubt that God is because you are, you are because God is.

M: No ambition is spiritual.

All ambitions are for the sake of the 'I am'.

If you want to make real progress you must give up all idea of personal attainment.

The ambitions of the so-called Yogis are preposterous.

A man's desire for a woman is innocence itself compared to the lusting for an everlasting personal bliss.

Mere listening, even memorizing, is not enough.

If you do not struggle hard to apply every word of it in your daily life, don't complain that you made no progress.

All real progress is irreversible.

Ups and downs merely show that the teaching has not been taken to heart and translated into action fully.

Q: The other day you told us that there is no such thing as karma.

Pleasure and pain alternate inexorably.

Happiness comes from the self and can be found in the self only.

Find your real self (swarupa) and all else will come with it.

Q: If my real self is peace and love, why is it so restless?

M: It is not your real being that is restless, but its reflection in the mind appears restless because the mind is restless.

Happiness comes from the self and can be found in the self only.

Find your real self (swarupa) and all else will come with it.

Q: If my real self is peace and love, why is it so restless?

M: It is not your real being that is restless, but its reflection in the mind appears restless because the mind is restless.

It is just like the reflection of the moon in the water stirred by the wind.

M: What helps you to know yourself is right.

What prevents, is wrong.

To know one's real self is bliss, to forget -- is sorrow.

Q: Is the witness-consciousness the real Self?

M: It is the reflection of the real in the mind (buddhi).

What prevents, is wrong.

To know one's real self is bliss, to forget -- is sorrow.

Q: Is the witness-consciousness the real Self?

M: It is the reflection of the real in the mind (buddhi).

The real is beyond.

Q: Why so much stress on self-negation?

M: As much as on self-realisation.

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

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

It is the only self I know.

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

It is the only self I know.

What you call the real self is a mere concept, a way of speaking, a creature of the mind, an attractive ghost.

My daily self is not a beauty, I admit, but it is my own and only self.

You say I am, or have, another self.

Yoga means union, joining.

What have you re-united, re-joined?

Q: I am trying to rejoin the personality back to the real self.

M: The personality (vyakti) is but a product of imagination.

The self (vyakta) is the victim of this imagination.

M: I never meant to say that lawlessness follows self-realisation.

A liberated man is extremely law- abiding.

But his laws are the laws of his real self, not of his society.

These he observes, or breaks according to circumstances and necessity.

But he will never be fanciful and disorderly.

M: Why not?

It is the urge, the hidden motive that matters, not the shape it takes.

Whatever he does, if he does it for the sake of finding his own real self, will surely bring him to himself.

Q: No need of faith in the efficacy of the means?

M: No need of faith which is but expectation of results.

Earnestness reveals being.

What is imagined and willed becomes actuality -- here lies the danger as well as the way out.

Tell me, what steps have you taken to separate your real self, that in you which is changeless, from your body and mind?

Q: I am a medical man, I have studied a lot, I imposed on myself a strict discipline in the way of exercises and periodical fasts and I am a vegetarian.

M: But in the depth of your heart what is it that you want?

To imagine that some little thing -- food.

sex, power, fame -- will make you happy is to deceive yourself.

Only something as vast and deep as your real self can make you truly and lastingly happy.

Q: Since there is nothing basically wrong in desire as an expression of love of self, how should desire be managed?

M: Live your life intelligently, with the interests of your deepest self always in mind.

M: Yes, the person, which alone is objectively observable.

The observer is beyond observation.

What is observable is not the real self.

Q: I can always observe the observer, in endless recession.

M: You can observe the observation, but not the observer.

And yet I feel that I am an infant.

I feel clearly that in spite of all the changes I am a child.

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

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

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

Until the drug wears off I become another man.

M: All this happens because you think yourself to be the body.

realise your real self and even drugs will have no power over you.

Q: You smoke?

M: My body kept a few habits which may as well continue till it dies.

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?

M: Your own heart will tell you.

Q: I should at least expect him to be a man of self-control who lives a righteous life.

M: Such you will find many -- and of no use to you.

A Guru can show the way back home, to your real self.

What has this to do with the character, or temperament of the person he appears to be?

Does he not clearly tell you that he is not the person?

When I met my Guru, he told me: 'You are not what you take yourself to be.

Find out what you are.

Watch the sense 'I am', find your real self'.

I obeyed him, because I trusted him.

I did as he told me.

All you have to do is to understand that you love the self and the self loves you and that the sense 'I am' is the link between you both, a token of identity in spite of apparent diversity.

Look at the 'I am' as a sign of love between the inner and the outer, the real and the appearance.

Just like in a dream all is different, except the sense of 'I', which enables you to say 'I dreamt', so does the sense of 'I am' enable you to say 'I am my real Self again'.

I do nothing, nor is anything done to me.

I am what I am and nothing can affect me.

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

M: In the long run all will be well.

After all, the real Self of both is not affected by the comedy they play for a time.

They will sober up and ripen and shift to a higher level of relationship.

Q: Or, they may separate.

You get a letter that makes you laugh or cry.

It is not the postman who does it.

The Guru only tells you the good news about your real Self and shows you the way back to it.

In a way the Guru is its messenger.

There will be many messengers, but the message is one: be what you are.

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

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

It is transfigured, and becomes the real Self, the sadguru, the eternal friend and guide.

You cannot approach it in worship.

No external activity can reach the inner self; worship and prayers remain on the surface only; to go deeper meditation is essential, the striving to go beyond the states of sleep, dream and waking.

' is the movement of self-enquiry.

There are no other means to liberation, all means delay.

Resolutely reject what you are not, till the real Self emerges in its glorious nothingness, its 'not-a-thingness.

We can see them with great clarity in the United States, though they happen in other countries.

There is an increase in crime on one hand and more genuine holiness on the other.

Will you, please, tell me -- at this moment are you a person or a self-aware identity?

M: I am both.

But the real self cannot be described except in terms supplied by the person, in terms of what I am not.

All you can tell about the person is not the self, and you can tell nothing about the self, which would not refer to the person; as it is, as it could be, as it should be.

All attributes are personal.

The world you think of is in your own mind.

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

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

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

There is a vastness beyond the farthest reaches of the mind.

M: What else?

Mind creates the abyss, the heart crosses it.

4: Real World is Beyond the Mind.

Questioner: On several occasions the question was raised as to whether the universe is subject to the law of causation, or does it exist and function outside the law.

You seem to hold the view that it is uncaused, that everything, however small, is uncaused, arising and disappearing for no known reason whatsoever.

The desirable is imagined and wanted and manifests itself as something tangible or conceivable.

Thus is created the world in which we live, our personal world.

The real world is beyond the mind's ken; we see it through the net of our desires, divided into pleasure and pain, right and wrong, inner and outer.

To see the universe as it is, you must step beyond the net.

It is not hard to do so, for the net is full of holes.

M: There is no need of a bridge.

Q: There must be some link between your world and mine.

M: There is no need of a link between a real world and an imaginary world, for there cannot be any.

Q: So what are we to do?

M: Investigate your world, apply your mind to it, examine it critically, scrutinise every idea about it; that will do.

M: Take dream for an example.

In a hospital there may be many patients, all sleeping, all dreaming, each dreaming his own private, personal dreams unrelated, unaffected, having one single factor in common -- illness.

Similarly, we have divorced ourselves in our imagination from the real world of common experience and enclosed ourselves in a cloud of personal desire and fears, images and thoughts, ideas and concepts.

Q: This I can understand.

But what could be the cause of the tremendous variety of the personal worlds?

Q: Still the main point seems to escape me.

l can admit that the world in which I live and move and have my being is of my own creation, a projection of myself, of my imagination, on the unknown world, the world as it is, the world of 'absolute matter', whatever this matter may be.

The world of my own creation may be quite unlike the ultimate, the real world, just like the cinema screen is quite unlike the pictures projected onto it.

Nevertheless, this absolute world exists, quite independent of myself.

M: Quite so, the world of Absolute Reality, onto which your mind has projected a world of relative unreality is independent of yourself, for the very simple reason that it is yourself.

Reality cannot be momentary.

It is timeless, but timelessness is not duration.

Q: I admit that the world in which I live is not the real world.

But there is a real world, of which I see a distorted picture.

The distortion may be due to some blemish in my body or mind.

It is timeless, but timelessness is not duration.

Q: I admit that the world in which I live is not the real world.

But there is a real world, of which I see a distorted picture.

The distortion may be due to some blemish in my body or mind.

But when you say there is no real world, only a dream world in my mind, I just cannot take it.

But there is a real world, of which I see a distorted picture.

The distortion may be due to some blemish in my body or mind.

But when you say there is no real world, only a dream world in my mind, I just cannot take it.

I wish I could believe that all horrors of existence are due to my having a body.

Suicide would be the way out.

All the three states -- of waking, dreaming and sleeping -- are subjective, personal, intimate.

They all happen to and are contained within the little bubble in consciousness, called 'I'.

The real world lies beyond the self.

Q: Self or no self, facts are real.

M: Of course facts are real!

M: Man is also wise, affectionate and kind.

Q: Why does not goodness prevail?

M: It does -- in my real world.

In my world even what you call evil is the servant of the good and therefore necessary.

It is like boils and fevers that clear the body of impurities.

So, the universe is of no value?

M: It is of tremendous value.

By going beyond it you realise yourself.

Q: But why did it come into being in the first instance?

M: You will know it when it ends.

When the mind merges in the Self, the body presents no problems.

It remains what it is, an instrument of cognition and action, the tool and the expression of the creative fire within: The ultimate value of the body is that it serves to discover the cosmic body, which is the universe in its entirety.

As you realise yourself in manifestation, you keep on discovering that you are ever more than what you have imagined.

Q: Is there no end to self-discovery?

M: As there is no beginning, there is no end.

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

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

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

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

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

You must be extreme to reach the Supreme.

Q: How can I aspire to such heights, small and limited as I am?

M: realise yourself as the ocean of consciousness in which all happens.

This is not difficult.

A little of attentiveness, of close observation of oneself, and you will see that no event is outside your consciousness.

M: You must give yourself time to brood over these things.

The old grooves must be erased in your brain, without forming new ones.

You must realise yourself as the immovable, behind and beyond the movable, the silent witness of all that happens.

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

M: Not at all.

You imagine that your possessions protect you.

In reality they make you vulnerable.

realise yourself as away from all that can be pointed at as 'this' or 'that'.

You are unreachable by any sensory experience or verbal construction.

Turn away from them.

The source is simple and single, but its gifts are infinite.

Only do not take the gifts for the source.

realise yourself as the source and not as the river; that is all.

Q: I am the river too.

M: Of course, you are.

In a way the Guru is its messenger.

There will be many messengers, but the message is one: be what you are.

Or, you can put it differently: Until you realise yourself, you cannot know who is your real Guru.

When you realise, you find that all the Gurus you had have contributed to your awakening.

Your realisation is the proof that your Guru was real.

M: Well, as long as you believe so, you must go on with your sadhana, to disperse the false idea of not being complete.

Sadhana removes the super-impositions.

When you realise yourself as less than a point in space and time, something too small to be cut and too short-lived to be killed, then, and then only, all fear goes.

When you are smaller than the point of a needle, then the needle cannot pierce you -- you pierce the needle!

Q: Yes, that is how I feel sometimes -- indomitable.

I know it rained, but I am not affected.

I just witnessed the rain.

Q: The fully realised man, spontaneously abiding in the supreme state, appears to eat, drink and so on.

Is he aware of it, or not?

M: That in which consciousness happens, the universal consciousness or mind, we call the ether of consciousness.

Then man goes beyond illusion and his heart is free of all desires.

Just like ice turns to water and water to vapour, and vapour dissolves in air and disappears in space, so does the body dissolve into pure awareness (chidakash), then into pure being (paramakash), which is beyond all existence and non-existence.

Q: The realised man eats, drinks and sleeps.

What makes him do so?

M: The same power that moves the universe, moves him too.

M: The same power that moves the universe, moves him too.

Q: All are moved by the same power: what is the difference?

M: This only: The realised man knows what others merely hear; but don't experience.

Intellectually they may seem convinced, but in action they betray their bondage, while the realised man is always right.

Q: Everybody says 'I am'.

Q: All are moved by the same power: what is the difference?

M: This only: The realised man knows what others merely hear; but don't experience.

Intellectually they may seem convinced, but in action they betray their bondage, while the realised man is always right.

Q: Everybody says 'I am'.

The realised man too says 'I am'.

Intellectually they may seem convinced, but in action they betray their bondage, while the realised man is always right.

Q: Everybody says 'I am'.

The realised man too says 'I am'.

Where is the difference?

M: The difference is in the meaning attached to the words 'I am'.

Where is the difference?

M: The difference is in the meaning attached to the words 'I am'.

With the realised man the experience: 'I am the world, the world is mine' is supremely valid -- he thinks, feels and acts integrally and in unity with all that lives.

He may not even know the theory and practice of self- realisation, and be born and bred free of religious and metaphysical notions.

But there will not be the least flaw in his understanding and compassion.

The very meeting a Guru is the assurance of liberation.

Perfection is life-giving and creative.

Q: Does a realised man ever think: 'I am realised?

' Is he not astonished when people make much of him?

Does he not take himself to be an ordinary human being?

He is not rich, for he has nothing; he is not poor, for he gives abundantly.

He is just propertyless.

Similarly, the realised man is egoless; he has lost the capacity of identifying himself with anything.

He is without location, placeless, beyond space and time, beyond the world.

Beyond words and thoughts is he.

But the self is beyond both, beyond the brain, beyond the mind.

The fault of the instrument is no reflection on its user.

Q: I was told that a realised man will never do anything unseemly.

He will always behave in an exemplary way.

M: Who sets the example?

M: He who knows himself has no doubts about it.

Nor does he care whether others recognise his state or not.

Rare is the realised man who discloses his realisation and fortunate are those who have met him, for he does it for their abiding welfare.

Q: When one looks round, one is appalled by the volume of unnecessary suffering that is going on.

People who should be helped are not getting help.

38: Spiritual Practice is Will Asserted and Re-asserted.

Questioner: The Westerners who occasionally come to see you are faced with a peculiar difficulty.

The very notion of a liberated man, a realised man, a self-knower, a God-knower, a man beyond the world, is unknown to them.

All they have in their Christian culture is the idea of a saint: a pious man, law-abiding, God-fearing, fellow-loving, prayerful, sometimes prone to ecstasies and confirmed by a few miracles.

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

Like a seed left in the ground, it will wait for the right season and sprout and grow into a mighty tree.

41: Develop the Witness Attitude.

Questioner: What is the daily and hourly state of mind of a realised man?

How does he see, hear, eat, drink, wake and sleep, work and rest?

What proof is there of his state as different from ours?

My teaching may be routine, but the fruit of it is new from man to man.

Q: What is realisation?

Who is a realised man?

By what is the jnani recognised?

M: There are no distinctive marks of jnana.

What is the ripening factor?

M: Earnestness of course, one must be really anxious.

After all, the realised man is the most earnest man.

Whatever he does, he does it completely, without limitations and reservations.

Integrity will take you to reality.

We feel very fortunate to be brought here.

We have met many holy people and we are glad to meet one more.

Maharaj: You have met many anchorites and ascetics, but a fully realised man conscious of his divinity (swarupa) is hard to find.

The saints and Yogis, by immense efforts and sacrifices, acquire many miraculous powers and can do much good in the way of helping people and inspiring faith, yet it does not make them perfect.

It is not a way to reality, but merely an enrichment of the false.

The fact is always non-verbal.

Q: I still do not understand; can the Guru's word remain unfulfilled or will it invariably prove true?

M: Words of a realised man never miss their purpose.

They wait for the right conditions to arise which may take some time, and.

this is natural, for there is a season for sowing and a season for harvesting.

His is an inner path, he is moved by an inner urge and guided by an inner light.

Invite him to rebel and he will respond.

Do not try to impress on him that so-and-so is a realised man and can be accepted as a Guru.

As long as he does not trust himself, he cannot trust another.

And confidence will come with experience.

You cannot see yourself as independent of everything unless you drop everything and remain unsupported and undefined.

Once you know yourself, it is immaterial what you do, but to realise your independence, you must test it by letting go all you were dependent on.

The realised man lives on the level of the absolutes; his wisdom, love and courage are complete, there is nothing relative about him.

Therefore he must prove himself by tests more stringent, undergo trials more demanding.

The tester, the tested and the set up for testing are all within; it is an inner drama to which none can be a party.

M: The unexpected and unpredictable is real.

16: Desirelessness, the Highest Bliss.

Questioner: I have met many realised people, but never a liberated man.

Have you come across a liberated man, or does liberation mean, among other things, also abandoning the body?

Maharaj: What do you mean by realisation and liberation?

How does he see, hear, eat, drink, wake and sleep, work and rest?

What proof is there of his state as different from ours?

Apart from the verbal testimony of the so-called realised people, is there no way of verifying their state objectively.

Are there not some observable differences in their physiological and nervous responses, in their metabolism, or brain waves, or in their psychosomatic structure?

Maharaj: You may find differences, or you may not.

Q: What is that power?

M: The power of conviction, based on personal realisation, on one's own direct experience.

Q: Some realised people say that knowledge must be won, not got.

Another can only teach, but the learning is one's own.

M: It comes to the same.

The very weight of accumulated experience will give them eyes to see.

When you meet a worthy man, you will love and trust him and follow his advice.

This is the role of the realised people -- to set an example of perfection for others to admire and love.

Beauty of life and character is a tremendous contribution to the common good.

Q: Must we not suffer to grow?

It may profit others, but not you.

Your hope lies in keeping silent in your mind and quiet in your heart.

realised people are very quiet.

80: Awareness.

Questioner: Does it take time to realise the Self, or time cannot help to realise?

What is at the root of the fact?

M: The 'I am' is at the root of all appearance and the permanent link in the succession of events that we call life; but I am beyond the 'I am'.

Q: I have found that the realised people usually describe their state in terms borrowed from their religion.

You happen to be a Hindu, so you talk of Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva and use Hindu approaches and imagery.

Kindly tell us, what is the experience behind your words?

The clearness and smoothness of the drop is a necessary condition but not sufficient by itself.

Similarly clarity and silence of the mind are necessary for the reflection of reality to appear in the mind, but by themselves they are not sufficient.

There must be reality beyond it.

Because reality is timelessly present, the stress is on the necessary conditions.

Q: Can it happen that the mind is clear and quiet and yet no reflection appears?

My home is beyond all notions, however sublime.

Q: But God is not a notion!

It is the reality beyond existence.

M: You may use any word you like.

Whatever you may think of am beyond it.

M: How misleading is your language!

You assume, unconsciously, that reality also is approachable through knowledge.

And then you will bring in a knower of reality beyond reality!

Do understand that to be, reality need not be known.

Ignorance and knowledge are in the mind, not in the real.

Just trust me and live by trusting me.

I shall not mislead you.

You are the Supreme Reality beyond the world and its creator, beyond consciousness and its witness, beyond all assertions and denials.

Remember it, think of it, act on it.

Abandon all sense of separation, see yourself in all and act accordingly.

How can I break through the barrier and know personally, intimately, what it means to be immutable?

M: The word itself is the bridge.

Remember it, think of it, explore it, go round it, look at it from all directions, dive into it with earnest perseverance: endure all delays and disappointments till suddenly the mind turns round, away from the word, towards the reality beyond the word.

It is like trying to find a person knowing his name only.

A day comes when your enquiries bring you to him and the name becomes reality.

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.

Has it any value from the spiritual point of view?

Does it make it also illusory?

M: It is illusory as long as it is subjective and to that extent only.

Reality lies in objectivity.

Q: What does objectivity mean?

You said the world is subjective and now you talk of objectivity.

The knower is the unmanifested, the known is the manifested.

The known is always on the move, it changes, it has no shape of its own, no dwelling place.

The knower is the immutable support of all knowledge; Each needs the other, but reality lies beyond.

The jnani cannot be known, because there is nobody to be known.

When there is a person, you can tell something about it, but when there is no self-identification with the particular, what can be said?

You can question the description and the meaning, but not the event itself.

Being and non-being alternate and their reality is momentary.

The Immutable Reality lies beyond space and time.

Realise the momentariness of being and non-being and be free from both.

Q: Things may be transient, yet they are very much with us, in endless repetition.

Let them be as they are.

I am as I am, for no merit of mine and they are as they are, for no fault of theirs.

The Supreme Reality manifests itself in innumerable ways.

Infinite in number are its names and shapes.

All arise, all merge in the same ocean, the source of all is one.

There must be love in the relation between the person who says 'I am' and the observer of that 'I am'.

As long as the observer, the inner self, the 'higher' self, considers himself apart from the observed, the 'lower' self, despises it and condemns it, the situation is hopeless.

It is only when the observer (vyakta) accepts the person (vyakti) as a projection or manifestation of himself, and, so to say, takes the self into the Self, the duality of 'I' and 'this' goes and in the identity of the outer and the inner the Supreme Reality manifests itself.

This union of the seer and the seen happens when the seer becomes conscious of himself as the seer, he is not merely interested in the seen, which he is anyhow, but also interested in being interested, giving attention to attention, aware of being aware.

Affectionate awareness is the crucial factor that brings Reality into focus.

It enables me to become a person when required.

Love creates its own necessities, even of becoming a person.

Q: It is said that Reality manifests itself as existence -- consciousness -- bliss.

Are they absolute or relative?

M: They are relative to each other and depend on each other.

Everything must be scrutinised and the unnecessary ruthlessly destroyed.

Believe me, there cannot be too much destruction.

For in reality nothing is of value.

Be passionately dispassionate -- that is all.

24: God is the All-doer, the Jnani a Non-doer.

There is no sense of purpose in my doing anything.

Things happens as they happen -- not because I make them happen, but it is because I am that they happen.

In reality nothing ever happens.

When the mind is restless, it makes Shiva dance, like the restless waters of the lake make the moon dance.

It is all appearance, due to wrong ideas.

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?

Fundamentally, all happens in the mind only.

When you work for something whole-heartedly and steadily, it happens, for it is the function of the mind to make things happen.

In reality nothing is lacking and nothing is needed, all work is on the surface only.

In the depths there is perfect peace.

All your problems arise because you have defined and therefore limited yourself.

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 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.

M: Good enough.

First verbally, then mentally and emotionally, then in action.

Give attention to the reality within you and it will come to light.

It is like churning the cream for butter.

Do it correctly and assiduously and the result is sure to come.

But the main factor, the most crucial, was the fact of being born the son of a king.

Similarly, the Guru may help.

But the main thing that helps is to have reality within.

It will assert itself.

Your coming here definitely helped you.

Estranged from it even in India you will feel lonely.

All happiness comes from pleasing the self.

Please it, after return to the States, do nothing that may be unworthy of the glorious reality within your heart and you shall be happy and remain happy.

But you must seek the self and, having found it, stay with it.

Q: Will compete solitude be of any benefit?

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

All else is an assumption.

Just as a cloud obscures the sun without in any way affecting it, so does assumption obscure reality without destroying it.

The very idea of destruction of reality is ridiculous; the destroyer is always more real than the destroyed.

Reality is the ultimate destroyer.

We call it atma-bhakti, the love of the Supreme: or moksha-sankalpa, the determination to be free from the false.

Without love, and will inspired by love, nothing can be done.

Merely talking about Reality without doing anything about it is self-defeating.

There must be love in the relation between the person who says 'I am' and the observer of that 'I am'.

As long as the observer, the inner self, the 'higher' self, considers himself apart from the observed, the 'lower' self, despises it and condemns it, the situation is hopeless.

Q: Nevertheless, if for some reason I happen to trust them and obey, shall I be the loser?

M: If you are able to trust and obey, you will soon find your real Guru, or rather, he will find you.

Q: Does every knower of the Self become a Guru, or can one be a knower of Reality without being able to take others to it?

M: If you know what you teach, you can teach what you know, Here seership and teachership are one.

But the Absolute Reality is beyond both.

The problem is not yours -- it is your mind's only.

Begin by disassociating yourself from your mind.

Resolutely remind yourself that you are not the mind and that its problems are not yours.

Q: I may go on telling myself: 'I am not the mind, I am not concerned with its problems,' but the mind remains and its problems remain just as they were.

Now, please do not tell me that it is because I am not earnest enough and I should be more earnest!

This complete aloofness, unconcern with mind and body is the best proof that at the core of your being you are neither mind nor body.

What happens to the body and the mind may not be within your power to change, but you can always put an end to your imagining yourself to be body and mind.

Whatever happens, remind yourself that only your body and mind are affected, not yourself.

The more earnest you are at remembering what needs to be remembered, the sooner will you be aware of yourself as you are, for memory will become experience.

Earnestness reveals being.

Q: Is there a remedy against activity?

M: Watch it, and it shall cease.

Use every opportunity to remind yourself that you are in bondage, that whatever happens to you is due to the fact of your bodily existence.

Desire, fear, trouble, joy, they cannot appear unless you are there to appear to.

Yet, whatever happens, points to your existence as a perceiving centre.

only with the one that shows the way.

There are people who believe that without a Guru Yoga is inaccessible.

They are ever in search of the right Guru, changing one for another.

Of what value are such Gurus?

M: They are temporary, time-bound Gurus.

You have no need, nor time for finding who is a jnani and who is not?

Q: I must select my guru rightly.

M: Be the right man and the right Guru will surely find you.

Q: You are not answering my question: how to find the right Guru?

M: But I did answer your question.

Q: I must select my guru rightly.

M: Be the right man and the right Guru will surely find you.

Q: You are not answering my question: how to find the right Guru?

M: But I did answer your question.

Do not look for a Guru, do not even think of one.

Q: Yes, I see your point.

Now, how am I to go into samadhi?

M: If you are in the right state, whatever you see will put you into samadhi.

After all, samadhi is nothing unusual.

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

The urge to be happy is right, but the means of securing it are misleading, unreliable and destructive of true happiness.

Q: Is pleasure always wrong?

M: The right state and use of the body and the mind are intensely pleasant.

It is the search for pleasure that is wrong.

Do not try to make yourself happy, rather question your very search for happiness.

When you Are not in a hurry and the mind is free from anxieties, it becomes quiet and in the silence something may be heard which is ordinarily too fine and subtle for perception.

The mind must be open and quiet to see.

What we are trying to do here is to bring our minds into the right state for understanding what is real.

Questioner: How do we learn to cut out worries?

M: You need not worry about your worries.

To know that you are is natural, to know what you are is the result of much investigation.

You will have to explore the entire field of consciousness and go beyond it.

For this you must find the right teacher and create the conditions needed for discovery.

Generally speaking, there are two ways: external and internal.

Either you live with somebody who knows the Truth and submit yourself entirely to his guiding and moulding influence, or you seek the inner guide and follow the inner light wherever it takes you.

It does not matter much who is the teacher -- they all wish you well.

It is the disciple that matters -- his honesty and earnestness.

The right disciple will always find the right teacher.

Q: I can see the beauty and feel the blessedness of a life devoted to search for truth under a competent and loving teacher.

Unfortunately, we have to return to England.

Then all schools are given up, all effort ceases; in solitude and darkness the vast step is made which ends ignorance and fear forever.

The true teacher, however, will not imprison his disciple in a prescribed set of ideas, feelings and actions; on the contrary, he will show him patiently the need to be free from all ideas and set patterns of behaviour, to be vigilant and earnest and go with life wherever it takes him, not to enjoy or suffer, but to understand and learn.

Under the right teacher the disciple learns to learn, not to remember and obey.

Satsang, the company of the noble, does not mould, it liberates.

Beware of all that makes you dependent.

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.

Q: What is the peculiarity of their teaching?

Do not be afraid of freedom from desire and fear.

It enables you to live a life so different from all you know, so much more intense and interesting, that, truly, by losing all you gain all.

Q: Since you count your spiritual ancestry from Rishi Dattatreya, are we right in believing that you and all your predecessors are reincarnations of the Rishi?

M: You may believe in whatever you like and if you act on your belief, you will get the fruits of it; but to me it has no importance.

I am what I am and this is enough for me.

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.

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

You can have causes if you want them, in your world.

Another may be content with a single cause -- God's will.

The root cause is one: the sense 'I am'.

Q: What is the link between the Self (Vyakta) and the Supreme (Avyakta)?

M: From the self's point of view the world is the known, the Supreme -- the Unknown.

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?

Questioner: I am from the United States, but I live mostly in Europe.

The store is being constantly replenished by new desires and fears.

It need not be so for ever.

Understand the root cause of your fears -- estrangement from yourself: and of desires -- the longing for the self, and your karma will dissolve like a dream.

Between earth and heaven life goes on.

Nothing is affected, only bodies grow and decay.