You want them because you suffer.

On the other hand, the very search for pleasure is the cause of pain.

It is a vicious circle.

Q: I can see the mechanism of my confusion, but I do not see my way out of it.

M: The very examination of the mechanism shows the way.

But I find the condition impossible of fulfilment.

Ignorance of oneself causes desires and desires perpetuate ignorance.

A truly vicious circle!

Maharaj: There are no conditions to fulfil.

There is nothing to be done, nothing to be given up.

You want them because you suffer.

On the other hand, the very search for pleasure is the cause of pain.

It is a vicious circle.

Q: I can see the mechanism of my confusion, but I do not see my way out of it.

M: The very examination of the mechanism shows the way.

You want them because you suffer.

On the other hand, the very search for pleasure is the cause of pain.

It is a vicious circle.

Q: I can see the mechanism of my confusion, but I do not see my way out of it.

M: The very examination of the mechanism shows the way.

Take Christianity that says: Jesus is your Saviour, believe and be saved from sin.

When I ask a sinning Christian how is it that he has not been saved from sin in spite of his faith in Christ, he answers: My faith is not perfect.

Again we are in the vicious circle -- without perfect faith -- no salvation, without salvation -- no perfect faith, hence no salvation.

Conditions are imposed which are unfulfillable and then we are blamed for not fulfilling them.

M: You do not realise that your present waking state is one of ignorance.

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

They just rotate in endless succession.

Investigate the vicious circle till you find yourself beyond it.

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

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

Q: Can I make myself remember my state of deep sleep?

M: Of course!

By eliminating the intervals of inadvertence during your waking hours you will gradually eliminate the long interval of absent-mindedness, which you call sleep.

You will be aware that you are asleep.

Q: Yet, the problem of permanency, of continuity of being, is not solved.

Are you so always?

Q: Not when I sleep, of course, nor when I am in a swoon, or drugged.

M: During your waking hours are you continually self-conscious?

Q: No, Sometimes I am absent-minded, or just absorbed.

M: Are you a person during the gaps in self-consciousness?

Your only proof is your own memory.

A very uncertain proof it is!

Q: Yes, I admit that on my own terms I am a person only during my waking hours.

What I am in between, I do not know.

M: At least you know that you do not know!

What I am in between, I do not know.

M: At least you know that you do not know!

Since you pretend not to be conscious in the intervals between the waking hours, leave the intervals alone.

Let us consider the waking hours only.

Q: I am the same person in my dreams.

M: At least you know that you do not know!

Since you pretend not to be conscious in the intervals between the waking hours, leave the intervals alone.

Let us consider the waking hours only.

Q: I am the same person in my dreams.

M: Agreed.

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

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

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

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

Each time you go to sleep you do so without the least certainty of waking up and yet you accept the risk.

In deep sleep you are not a self-conscious person, yet you are alive.

When you are alive and conscious, but no longer self-conscious, you are not a person anymore.

During the waking hours you are, as if, on the stage, playing a role, but what are you when the play is over?

You are what you are; what you were before the play began you remain when it is over.

Look at yourself as performing on the stage of life.

Others too cannot tell you 'you are not'.

Q: There is no 'I am' in sleep.

M: Before you make such sweeping statements, examine carefully your waking state.

You will soon discover that it is full of gaps, when the min blanks out.

Notice how little you remember even when fully awake.

M: Of course.

Q: What are your dreams?

M: Echoes of the waking state.

Q: And your deep sleep?

M: The brain consciousness is suspended.

M: Energy comes first.

For everything is a form of energy.

Consciousness is most differentiated in the waking state.

Less so in dream.

Still less in sleep.

From the absolute -- there is no thing at all.

M: From which state are you asking?

Q: From the daily waking state, in which alone all these discussions take place.

M: In the waking state all these problems arise, for such is its nature.

But, you are not always in that state.

M: From which state are you asking?

Q: From the daily waking state, in which alone all these discussions take place.

M: In the waking state all these problems arise, for such is its nature.

But, you are not always in that state.

What good can you do in a state into which you fall and from which you emerge, helplessly.

But, you are not always in that state.

What good can you do in a state into which you fall and from which you emerge, helplessly.

In what way does it help you to know that things are causally related -- as they may appear to be in your waking state?

Q: The world and the waking state emerge and subside together.

M: When the mind is still, absolutely silent, the waking state is no more.

What good can you do in a state into which you fall and from which you emerge, helplessly.

In what way does it help you to know that things are causally related -- as they may appear to be in your waking state?

Q: The world and the waking state emerge and subside together.

M: When the mind is still, absolutely silent, the waking state is no more.

Q: Words like God, universe, the total, absolute, supreme are just noises in the air, because no action can be taken on them.

In what way does it help you to know that things are causally related -- as they may appear to be in your waking state?

Q: The world and the waking state emerge and subside together.

M: When the mind is still, absolutely silent, the waking state is no more.

Q: Words like God, universe, the total, absolute, supreme are just noises in the air, because no action can be taken on them.

M: You are bringing up questions which you alone can answer.

The difference is merely in continuity.

Were your dreams consistently continuous, bringing back night after night the same surroundings and the same people, you would be at a loss to know which is the waking and which is the dream.

Henceforward, when we talk of the waking state, we shall include the dream state too.

Q: Agreed.

I am a person in a conscious relation with a world.

M: The two are but aspects of one Reality.

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

All these ideas belong to the waking state.

Q: What brings in the waking state?

M: At the root of all creation lies desire.

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

All these ideas belong to the waking state.

Q: What brings in the waking state?

M: At the root of all creation lies desire.

Desire and imagination foster and reinforce each other.

They talk in their dream.

Q: If all is dreaming, what is waking?

M: How to describe the waking state in dreamland language?

Words do not describe, they are only symbols.

Q: Again the same excuse that words cannot convey reality.

Now, do I go to sleep or does inadvertence -- characteristic of the sleeping state -- come to me?

In other words -- we are awake because we are asleep.

We do not wake up into a really waking state.

In the waking state the world emerges due to ignorance and takes one into a waking-dream state.

Both sleep and waking are misnomers.

In other words -- we are awake because we are asleep.

We do not wake up into a really waking state.

In the waking state the world emerges due to ignorance and takes one into a waking-dream state.

Both sleep and waking are misnomers.

We are only dreaming.

Everyone creates a world for himself and lives in it, imprisoned by one's ignorance.

All we have to do is to deny reality to our prison.

Q: Just as the waking state exists in seed form during sleep, so does the world the child creates on being born exist before its birth.

With whom does the seed lie?

M: With him who is the witness of birth and death, but is neither born nor dies.

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

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

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

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

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

M: What else?

Q: A dream cannot be shared.

M: Nor can the waking state.

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'.

Again we are in the vicious circle -- without perfect faith -- no salvation, without salvation -- no perfect faith, hence no salvation.

Conditions are imposed which are unfulfillable and then we are blamed for not fulfilling them.

M: You do not realise that your present waking state is one of ignorance.

Your question about the proof of truth is born from ignorance of reality.

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

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

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

However much you are convinced of the truth of your waking state, you do not claim it to be permanent and changeless, as I do when I talk of mine.

Yet I see no difference between us, except that you are imagining things, while I do not.

Q: First you disqualify me from asking about truth, then you accuse me of imagination!

To know the truth, you must pass through your own experience.

Q: I am mortally afraid of samadhis and other trances, whatever their cause.

A drink, a smoke, a fever, a drug, breathing, singing, shaking, dancing, whirling, praying, sex or fasting, mantras or some vertiginous abstraction can dislodge me from my waking state and give me some experience, extraordinary because unfamiliar.

But when the cause ceases, the effect dissolves and only a memory remains, haunting but fading.

Let us give up all means and their results, for the results are bound by the means; let us put the question anew; can truth be found?

Self-awareness tells you at every step what needs be done.

When all is done, the mind remains quiet.

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?

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.

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

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

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

M: On the whole we attach too much importance, to the waking state.

Without sleep the waking state would be impossible; without sleep one goes mad or dies; why attach so much importance to waking consciousness, which is obviously dependent on the unconscious?

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

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

M: On the whole we attach too much importance, to the waking state.

Without sleep the waking state would be impossible; without sleep one goes mad or dies; why attach so much importance to waking consciousness, which is obviously dependent on the unconscious?

Not only the conscious but the unconscious as well should be taken care of in our spiritual practice.

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

M: On the whole we attach too much importance, to the waking state.

Without sleep the waking state would be impossible; without sleep one goes mad or dies; why attach so much importance to waking consciousness, which is obviously dependent on the unconscious?

Not only the conscious but the unconscious as well should be taken care of in our spiritual practice.

Q: How does one attend to the unconscious?

Questioner: Do you experience the three states of waking, dreaming and sleeping just as we do, or otherwise?

Maharaj: All the three states are sleep to me.

My waking state is beyond them.

As I look at you, you all seem asleep, dreaming up words of your own.

I am aware, for I imagine nothing.

M: Know you own mind first.

It contains the entire universe and with space to spare!

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

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

Maybe it is true, but, I feel, it is not the whole truth.

Is there a way out?

Maharaj: Many ways will be offered to you which will but take you round and bring you back to your starting point.

First realise that your problem exists in your waking state only, that however painful it is, you are able to forget it altogether when you go to sleep.

When you are awake you are conscious; when you are asleep, you are only alive.

Consciousness and life -- both you may call God; but you are beyond both, beyond God, beyond being and not-being.

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

The fact is that there is little difference between the conscious and the unconscious --- they are essentially the same.

The waking state differs from deep sleep in the presence of the witness.

A ray of awareness illumines a part of our mind and that part becomes our dream or waking consciousness, while awareness appears as the witness.

The witness usually knows only consciousness.

M: Not making use of one's consciousness is samadhi.

You just leave your mind alone.

You want nothing, neither-from your body nor from your mind.

14: Appearances and the Reality.

Questioner: Repeatedly you have been saying that events are causeless, a thing just happens and no cause can be assigned to it.

Even you would not be sitting here and talking to us without Him.

Maharaj: All is His doing, no doubt.

What is it to me, since I want nothing?

What can God give me, or take away from me?

What is mine is mine and was mine even when God was not.

He wants nothing -- neither from others nor from himself.

He dies to all and becomes the All.

To want nothing and do nothing -- that is true creation!

To watch the universe emerging and subsiding in one's heart is a wonder.

Q: The great obstacle to inner effort is boredom.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Go within, without swerving, without ever looking outward.

Q: A man like you should set an example.

M: Are you ready to follow my example?

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.

Can I have it?

M: Of course you can, provided you are really fed up with everything, including your sadhanas.

When you demand nothing of the world, nor of God, when you want nothing, seek nothing, expect nothing then the Supreme State will come to you uninvited and unexpected!

Q: If a man engrossed in family life and in the affairs of the world does his sadhana strictly as prescribed by his scriptures, will he get results?

M: Results he will get, but he will be wrapped up in them like in a cocoon.

No effort is needed.

Have faith and act on it.

Please see that I want nothing from you.

It is in your own interest that l speak, because above all you love yourself, you want yourself secure and happy.

Don't be ashamed of it, don't deny it.

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

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

To be open means to want nothing else.

Q: I am full of desires and fears.

Does it mean that I am not eligible for truth?

In fact, it was only in the beginning when I was making efforts, that I was passing through some strange experiences; seeing lights, hearing voices, meeting gods and goddesses and conversing with them.

Once the Guru told me: 'You are the Supreme Reality', I ceased having visions and trances and became very quiet and simple.

I found myself desiring and knowing less and less, until I could say in utter astonishment: 'I know nothing, I want nothing.

M: I was not given any image, nor did I have one.

My Guru never told me what to expect.

'\very few are those who have the courage to trust the innocent and the simple.

To know that you are a prisoner of your mind, that you live in an imaginary world of your own creation is the dawn of wisdom.

To want nothing of it, to be ready to abandon it entirely, is earnestness.

Only such earnestness, born of true despair, will make you trust me.

Q: Have l not suffered enough?

M: Look at the net and its many contradictions.

You do and undo at every step.

You want peace, love, happiness and work hard to create pain, hatred and war.

You want longevity and overeat, you want friendship and exploit.

See your net as made of such contradictions and remove them -- your very seeing them will make them go.

M: Detach yourself from all that makes your mind restless.

Renounce all that disturbs its peace.

If you want peace, deserve it.

Q: Surely everybody deserves peace.

M: Those only deserve it, who don't disturb it.

As long as there are causes, there must also be results.

As long as people are bent on dividing and separating, as long as they are selfish and aggressive, such things will happen.

If you want peace and harmony in the world, you must have peace and harmony in your hearts and minds.

Such change cannot be imposed; it must come from within.

Those who abhor war must get war out of their system.

We do not dispense magic here.

Everybody does the same mistake: refusing the means, but wanting the ends.

You want peace and harmony in the world, but refuse to have them in yourself.

Follow my advice implicitly and you will not be disappointed.

I cannot solve your problem by mere words.

Freedom cannot be gained nor kept without will-to-freedom.

You must strive for liberation; the least you can do is uncover and remove the obstacles diligently.

If you want peace you must strive for it.

You will not get peace just by keeping quiet.

Q: A child just grows.

M: Your aims are small and low.

They do not call for more.

Only God's energy is infinite -- because He wants nothing for Himself.

Be like Him and all your desires will be fulfilled.

The higher your aims and vaster your desires, the more energy you will have for their fulfilment.

He will progress from motive to motive and will chase Gurus for the fulfilment of his desires.

When by the laws of his being he finds the way of return (nivritti) he abandons all motives, for his interest in the world is over.

He wants nothing -- neither from others nor from himself.

He dies to all and becomes the All.

To want nothing and do nothing -- that is true creation!

M: You may as well say that it is the mother's heart that saved the child.

For everything there are innumerable causes.

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

The entire universe is at his disposal.

M: If you believe so, act on it.

Body, feelings, thoughts, ideas, time, space, being and not-being, this or that -- nothing concrete or abstract you can point out to is you.

A mere verbal statement will not do -- you may repeat a formula endlessly without any result whatsoever.

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?

A bereavement, the loss of a job, an insult, and your image of yourself, which you call your person, changes deeply.

To know what you are you must first investigate and know what you are not.

And to know what you are not you must watch yourself carefully, rejecting all that does not necessarily go with the basic fact: 'I am'.

The ideas: I am born at a given place, at a given time, from my parents and now I am so-and-so, living at, married to, father of, employed by, and so on, are not inherent in the sense 'I am'.

Our usual attitude is of 'I am this'.

How can I come to the same experience?

What practices to follow, what exercises to take up?

M: To know that you are neither body nor mind, watch yourself steadily and live unaffected by your body and mind, completely aloof, as if you were dead.

It means you have no vested interests, either in the body or in the mind.

Q: Dangerous!

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

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

When you sit quiet and watch yourself, all kinds of things may come to the surface.

Do nothing about them, don't react to them; as they have come so will they go, by themselves.

All that matters is mindfulness, total awareness of oneself or rather, of one's mind.

The very idea is also a thought.

M: Experiment anew, don't go by past experience.

Watch your thoughts and watch yourself watching the thoughts.

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

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

Q: I have a Guru and I love him very much.

But whether he is my true Guru I do not know.

M: Watch yourself.

If you see yourself changing, growing, it means you have found the right man.

He may be beautiful or ugly, pleasant or unpleasant, flattering you or scolding; nothing matters except the one crucial fact of inward growth.

Whatever may be the experience, true or false, the fact of an experience taking place cannot be denied.

It is its own proof.

Watch yourself closely and you will see that whatever be the content of consciousness, the witnessing of it does not depend on the content.

Awareness is itself and does not change with the event.

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

Not only the conscious but the unconscious as well should be taken care of in our spiritual practice.

Q: How does one attend to the unconscious?

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

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

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

All has its being in me, in the 'I am', that shines in every living being.

Even not- being is unthinkable without me.

Whatever happens, I must be there to witness it.

Q: Why do you deny being to the world?

M: I do not negate the world.

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.

Q: Don't you become a robot?

Dive deep within and find what is real in you.

Q: How to look for myself?

M: Whatever happens, it happens to you.

What you do, the doer is in you.

Find the subject of all that you are as a person.

My world is single and very simple.

Q: Nothing happens there?

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

In my world nothing happens.

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

But I take my stand where no difference exists, where things are not, nor the minds that create them.

There I am at home.

Whatever happens, does not affect me -- things act on things, that is all.

Free from memory and expectation, I am fresh, innocent and wholehearted.

Mind is the great worker (mahakarta) and it needs rest.

Similarly, in whatever role I may appear and whatever function I may perform -- I remain what I am: the 'I am' immovable, unshakable, independent.

What you call the universe, nature, is my spontaneous creativity.

Whatever happens -- happens.

But such is my nature that all ends in joy.

Q: I have a case of a boy gone blind because his stupid mother fed him methyl alcohol.

It is there in the field of consciousness, but you are not the field and its contents, nor even the knower of the field.

It is your idea that you have to do things that entangle you in the results of your efforts -- the motive, the desire, the failure to achieve, the sense of frustration -- all this holds you back.

Simply look at whatever happens and know that you are beyond it.

Q: Does it mean I should abstain from doing anything?

M: You cannot!

Call him Self or Atma.

To the Self the world is but a colourful show, which he enjoys as long as it lasts and forgets when it is over.

Whatever happens on the stage makes him shudder in terror or roll with laughter, yet all the time he is aware that it is but a show.

Without desire or fear he enjoys it, as it happens.

Questioner: The person immersed in the world has a life of many flavours.

You keep on insisting that my inner state is moulded by outer events.

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.

It is not to be prepared for and anticipated.

But the very longing and search for reality is the movement, operation, action of reality.

All you can do is to grasp the central point, that reality is not an event and does not happen and whatever happens, whatever comes and goes, is not reality.

See the event as event only, the transient as transient, experience as mere experience and you have done all you can.

Then you are vulnerable to reality, no longer armoured against it, as you were when you gave reality to events and experiences.

Why remember them and then make memory into a problem?

Be bland about them; do not divide them into high and low, inner and outer, lasting and transient.

Go beyond, go back to the source, go to the self that is the same whatever happens.

Your weakness is due to your conviction that you were born into the world.

In reality the world is ever recreated in you and by you.

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.

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.

Disregard the pointers and be aware of what they are pointing to.

It is quite simple, but it needs be done.

Just disregard.

Look through.

Remember to remember: 'whatever happens -- happens because I am'.

All reminds you that you are.

Take full advantage of the fact that to experience you must be.

The physical events will go on happening, but by themselves they have no importance.

It is the mind alone that matters.

Whatever happens, you cannot kick and scream in an airline office or in a Bank.

Society does not allow it.

If you do not like their ways, or are not prepared to endure them, don't fly or carry money.

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.

M: Because you do not investigate.

I could not trust.

M: Trusting Bhagavan is trusting yourself.

Be aware that whatever happens, happens to you, by you, through you, that you are the creator, enjoyer and destroyer of all you perceive and you will not be afraid.

Unafraid, you will not be unhappy, nor will you seek happiness.

In the mirror of your mind all kinds of pictures appear and disappear.

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

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

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

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

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

There are no others to help.

A rich man, when he hands over his entire fortune to his family, has not a coin left to give a beggar.

So is the wise man (jnani) stripped of all his powers and possessions.

Nothing, literally nothing, can be said about him.

He cannot help anybody for he is everybody.

) has potential powers beyond our wildest dreams.

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

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

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

Some of the powers can be developed by specialised training, but the man who flaunts such powers is still in bondage.

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

Some of the powers can be developed by specialised training, but the man who flaunts such powers is still in bondage.

The wise man counts nothing as his own.

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

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

M: Awareness is primordial; it is the original state, beginningless, endless, uncaused, unsupported, without parts, without change.

Consciousness is on contact, a reflection against a surface, a state of duality.

There can be no consciousness without awareness, but there can be awareness without consciousness, as in deep sleep.

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

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

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.

There is in the body a current of energy, affection and intelligence, which guides, maintains and energises the body.

Discover that current and stay with it.

The heat maintains the flame, the flame consumes the wood.

Without heat there would be neither flame nor fuel.

Similarly, without awareness there would be no consciousness, nor life, which transforms matter into a vehicle of consciousness.

Q: You maintain that without me there would be no world, and that the world and my knowledge of the world are identical.

Science has come to a quite different conclusion: the world exists as something concrete and continuous, while I am a by-product of biological evolution of the nervous system, which is primarily not so much a seat of consciousness, as a mechanism of survival as individual and species.

On waking up the experience runs: 'I am -- the body -- in the world.

' It may appear to arise in succession but in fact it is all simultaneous, a single idea of having a body in a world.

Can there be the sense of 'I am' without being somebody or other?

Q: I am always somebody with its memories and habits.

I know no other 'I am'.

You may not be quite conscious of your physiological functions, but when it comes to thoughts and feelings, desires and fears you become acutely self-conscious.

To me these too are largely unconscious.

I find myself talking to people, or doing things quite correctly and appropriately, without being very much conscious of them.

It looks as if I live my physical, waking life automatically, reacting spontaneously and accurately.

Q: Does this spontaneous response come as a result of realisation, or by training?

The universe works by itself -- that I know.

What else do I need to know?

Q: So a jnani knows what he is doing only when he turns his mind to it; otherwise he just acts, without being concerned.

M: The average man is not conscious of his body as such.

He is conscious of his sensations, feelings and thoughts.

M: By all means attend to your duties.

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

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

Q: Is such a state realisable?

M: I would not talk about it, if it were not.

The ideas: I am born at a given place, at a given time, from my parents and now I am so-and-so, living at, married to, father of, employed by, and so on, are not inherent in the sense 'I am'.

Our usual attitude is of 'I am this'.

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

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

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

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?

Are you acting ever?

Some unknown power acts and you imagine that you are acting.

You are merely watching what happens, without being able to influence it in any way.

Q: Why is there such a tremendous resistance in me against accepting that I just can do nothing?

M: But what can you do?

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.

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.

M: It is.

It is also all-pervading, all-conquering, intense beyond words.

No ordinary brain can stand it without being shattered; hence the absolute need for sadhana.

Purity of body and clarity of mind, non-violence and selflessness in life are essential for survival as an intelligent and spiritual entity.

Q: Are there entities in reality?

M: Who can say?

It happened so.

Things happen without cause and reason and, after all, what does it matter, who is who?

Your high opinion of me is your opinion only.

Any moment you may change it.

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

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

You imagine that without cause there can be no happiness.

To me dependence on anything for happiness is utter misery.

Pleasure and pain have causes, while my state is my own, totally uncaused, independent, unassailable.

M: All happens as it happens.

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

Q: How can anything be without cause?

M: In every event the entire universe is reflected.

The ultimate cause is untraceable.

But I did discover new things about myself, states so unlike what I knew before that I feel justified in calling them new.

M: The old self is your own self.

The state which sprouts suddenly and without cause, carries no stain of self; you may call it 'god'.

What is seedless and rootless, what does not sprout and grow, flower and fruit, what comes into being suddenly and in full glory, mysteriously and marvellously, you may call that 'god'.

It is entirely unexpected yet inevitable, infinitely familiar yet most surprising, beyond all hope yet absolutely certain.

What is seedless and rootless, what does not sprout and grow, flower and fruit, what comes into being suddenly and in full glory, mysteriously and marvellously, you may call that 'god'.

It is entirely unexpected yet inevitable, infinitely familiar yet most surprising, beyond all hope yet absolutely certain.

Because it is without cause, it is without hindrance.

It obeys one law only; the law of freedom.

Anything that implies a continuity, a sequence, a passing from stage to stage cannot be the real.

M: You can spend an eternity looking elsewhere for truth and love, intelligence and goodwill, imploring God and man -- all in vain.

You must begin in yourself, with yourself -- this is the inexorable law.

You cannot change the image without changing the face.

First realise that your world is only a reflection of yourself and stop finding fault with the reflection.

Attend to yourself, set yourself right -- mentally and emotionally.

Q: Are you not afraid to die?

M: I shall tell you how my Guru's Guru died.

After announcing that his end was nearing, he stopped eating, without changing the routine of his daily life.

On the eleventh day, at prayer time he was singing and clapping vigorously and suddenly died!

Just like that, between two movements, like a blown out candle.

The body mediates between me and the world.

Without the body there would be neither me nor the world.

M: The body appears in your mind, your mind is the content of your consciousness; you are the motionless witness of the river of consciousness which changes eternally without changing you in any way.

Your own changelessness is so obvious that you do not notice it.

Have a good look at yourself and all these misapprehensions and misconceptions will dissolve.

But mine is a silent language.

Learn to listen and understand.

Q: I do not see how one can begin without conviction.

M: Stay with me for some time, or give your mind to what I say and do and conviction will dawn.

Q: Not everybody has the chance of meeting you.

A formula, a mental pattern will not help you.

But unselfish action, free from all concern with the body and its interests will carry you into the very heart of Reality.

Q: Where am I to get the courage to act without conviction?

M: Love will give you the courage.

When you meet somebody wholly admirable, love-worthy, sublime, your love and admiration will give you the urge to act nobly.

Thinking of being ready impedes action.

And action is the touchstone of reality.

Q: Even when we act without conviction?

M: You cannot live without action, and behind each action there is some fear or desire.

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

M: How can you say so?

Without breach in continuity how can there be rebirth?

Can there be renewal without death?

Even the darkness of sleep is refreshing and rejuvenating.

Without death we would have been bogged up for ever in eternal senility.

Can there be renewal without death?

Even the darkness of sleep is refreshing and rejuvenating.

Without death we would have been bogged up for ever in eternal senility.

Q: Is there no such thing as immortality?

M: When life and death are seen as essential to each other, as two aspects of one being, that is immortality.

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.

Get hold of the main thing that the world and the self are one and perfect.

Only your attitude is faulty and needs readjustment.

But merely to trust is not enough.

You must also desire.

Without desire for freedom of what use is the confidence that you can acquire freedom?

Desire and confidence must go together.

The stronger your desire, the easier comes the help.

Just realise the One Mover behind all that moves and leave all to Him.

If you do not hesitate, or cheat, this is the shortest way to reality.

Stand without desire and fear, relinquishing all control and all responsibility.

Q: What madness!

M: Yes, divine madness.

M: All consciousness is limited and therefore painful.

At the root of consciousness lies desire, the urge to experience.

Q: Do you mean to say that without desire there can be no consciousness?

And what is the advantage of being unconscious?

If I have to forego pleasure for the freedom from pain, I better keep both.

To the Self the world is but a colourful show, which he enjoys as long as it lasts and forgets when it is over.

Whatever happens on the stage makes him shudder in terror or roll with laughter, yet all the time he is aware that it is but a show.

Without desire or fear he enjoys it, as it happens.

Questioner: The person immersed in the world has a life of many flavours.

He weeps, he laughs, loves and hates, desires and fears, suffers and rejoices.

The body has its urges and mind its pains and pleasures.

Awareness is unattached and unshaken.

It is lucid, silent, peaceful, alert and unafraid, without desire and fear.

Meditate on it as your true being and try to be it in your daily life, and you shall realise it in its fullness.

Mind is interested in what happens, while awareness is interested in the mind itself.

Wherefrom come all the powerful attractions that make all created things respond to each other, that bring people together, if not from the Supreme?

Shun not desire; see only that it flows into the right channels.

Without desire you are dead.

But with low desires you are a ghost.

Q: What is the experience which comes nearest to the Supreme?

Q: Don't we reach the Absolute through a gradation of experiences?

Beginning with the grossest, we end with the most sublime.

M: There can be no experience without desire for it.

There can be gradation between desires, but between the most sublime desire and the freedom from all desire there is an abyss which must be crossed.

The unreal may look real, but it is transient.

Maharaj: Yes, it does happen.

Q: Who compels the Guru to submit to these indignities?

M: The Guru is basically without desire.

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

He makes no choices, takes no decisions.

Stop accepting them and they will dissolve.

Whatever you think about with desire or fear appears before you as real.

Look at it without desire or fear and it does lose substance.

Pleasure and pain are momentary.

It is simpler and easier to disregard them than to act on them.

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

It is the emotional involvement, the pattern of likes and dislikes which we call character and temperament, that create the bondage.

Q: Without desire and fear what motive is there for action?

M: None, unless you consider love of life, of righteousness, of beauty, motive enough.

Do not be afraid of freedom from desire and fear.

Having forgotten, or not having experienced?

Don't you experience even when unconscious?

Can you exist without knowing?

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

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

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.

Q: Oh, no.

I know by comparison.

If I am blind from birth and you tell me that you know things without touching them, while I must touch to know, I am aware that I am blind without knowing what does it mean to see.

Similarly, I know that I am lacking something when you assert things which I cannot grasp.

You are telling me such wonderful things about myself; according to you I am eternal, omnipresent, omniscient, supremely happy, creator, preserver and destroyer of all there is, the source of all life, the heart of being, the lord and the beloved of every creature.

Q: No, I cannot.

M: How do you know that you cannot?

There are so many things you are doing without knowing how to do it.

You digest, you circulate your blood and lymph, you move your muscles -- all without knowing how.

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

M: How do you know that you cannot?

There are so many things you are doing without knowing how to do it.

You digest, you circulate your blood and lymph, you move your muscles -- all without knowing how.

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

Similarly you are yourself without knowing it.

There are so many things you are doing without knowing how to do it.

You digest, you circulate your blood and lymph, you move your muscles -- all without knowing how.

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

Similarly you are yourself without knowing it.

There is nothing wrong with you as the Self.

You digest, you circulate your blood and lymph, you move your muscles -- all without knowing how.

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

Similarly you are yourself without knowing it.

There is nothing wrong with you as the Self.

It is what it is to perfection.

Reality is beyond consciousness.

Q: While we are conscious of appearances, how is it that we are not conscious that these are mere appearances?

M: The mind covers up reality, without knowing it.

To know the nature of the mind, you need intelligence, the capacity to look at the mind in silent and dispassionate awareness.

Q: If I am of the nature of all-pervading consciousness, how could ignorance and illusion happen to me?

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

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

I may talk of truth without knowing it, and may know it without a single word said.

I understand these conversations are going to be published.

What will be their effect on the reader?

Q: I find that I am always restless, longing, hoping, seeking, finding, enjoying, abandoning, searching again.

What is it that keeps me on the boil?

M: You are really in search of yourself, without knowing it.

You are love-longing for the love-worthy, the perfectly lovable.

Due to ignorance you are looking for it in the world of opposites and contradictions.

Q: So, the innocent suffers for the guilty?

M: In our ignorance we are innocent; in our actions we are guilty.

We sin without knowing and suffer without understanding.

Our only hope: to stop, to look, to understand and to get out of the traps of memory.

For memory feeds imagination and imagination generates desire and fear.

Accept no guidance but from within, and even then sift out all memories for they will mislead you.

Even if you are quite ignorant of the ways and the means, keep quiet and look within; guidance is sure to come.

You are never left without knowing what your next step should be.

The trouble is that you may shirk it.

The Guru is there for giving you courage because of his experience and success.

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

Consciousness implies alterations, change followings change, when one thing or state comes to an end and another begins; that which has no borderline cannot be experienced in the common meaning of the word.

One can only be it, without knowing, but one can know what it is not.

It is definitely not the entire content of consciousness which is always on the move.

Q: If the immovable cannot be known, what is the meaning and purpose of its realisation?

Love is wise, sex is blind.

Once the true nature of love and sex is understood there will be no conflict or confusion.

Q: There is so much sex without love.

M: Without love all is evil.

Life itself without love is evil.

Once the true nature of love and sex is understood there will be no conflict or confusion.

Q: There is so much sex without love.

M: Without love all is evil.

Life itself without love is evil.

Q: What can make me love?

Q: There is so much sex without love.

M: Without love all is evil.

Life itself without love is evil.

Q: What can make me love?

M: You are love itself -- when you are not afraid.

All you need is a sincere longing for reality.

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'.

The master, the disciple, the love and trust between them, these are one fact, not so many independent facts.

Each is a part of the other.

Without love and trust there would have been no Guru nor disciple, and no relationship between them.

It is like pressing a switch to light an electric lamp.

It is because the lamp, the wiring, the switch, the transformer, the transmission lines and the power house form a single whole, that you get the light.

After all, it is earnestness that is indispensable, the crucial factor.

Sadhana is only a vessel and it must be filled to the brim with earnestness, which is but love in action.

For nothing can be done without love.

Q: We love only ourselves.

M: Were it so, it would be splendid!

M: So, to be a person, you need memory?

Q: Of course.

M: And without memory, what are you?

Q: Incomplete memory entails incomplete personality.

Without memory I cannot exist as a person.

M: And without memory, what are you?

Q: Incomplete memory entails incomplete personality.

Without memory I cannot exist as a person.

M: Surely you can exist without memory.

You do so -- in sleep.

Q: Incomplete memory entails incomplete personality.

Without memory I cannot exist as a person.

M: Surely you can exist without memory.

You do so -- in sleep.

Q: Only in the sense of remaining alive.

What is identity, after all?

Continuity in memory?

Can you talk of identity without memory?

Q: Yes, I can.

The child may not know its parents, yet the hereditary characteristics will be there.

M: No memory of past pleasure or pain is left.

Each moment is newly born.

Q: Without memory you cannot be conscious.

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

I am not a block of wood!

It does not change -- it is always the same -- it appears to be there on its own -- something strange and alien.

Of course it is in the chit, consciousness, but appears to be outside because of its apparent changelessness.

The foundation of things is in memory -- without memory there would be no recognition.

Creation -- reflection -- rejection: Brahma -- Vishnu -- Shiva: this is the eternal process.

All things are governed by it.

Withdraw your belief in its reality and it will dissolve like a dream.

Time can bring down mountains; much more you, who are the timeless source of time.

For without memory and expectation there can be no time.

Q: Is the 'I am' the Ultimate?

M: Before you can say: 'I am', you must be there to say it.

If you have not learnt, repeat.

Q: What am I to learn?

M: To live without self-concern.

For this you must know your own true being (swarupa) as indomitable, fearless, ever victorious.

Once you know with absolute certainty that nothing can trouble you but your own imagination, you come to disregard your desires and fears, concepts and ideas and live by truth alone.

Unless you have realised them as one with yourself, you cannot love them Don't pretend to be what you are not, don't refuse to be what you are.

Your love of others is the result of self-knowledge, not its cause.

Without self-realisation, no virtue is genuine.

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

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

To be what you are, you must go beyond the mind, into your own being.

It is immaterial what is the mind that you leave behind, provided you leave it behind for good.

This again is not possible without self-realisation.

Q: What comes first -- the abandoning of the mind or self-realisation?

M: Self-realisation definitely comes first.

The gospel of self-realisation, once heard, will never be forgotten.

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?

Q: If nature is in the mind and the mind is my own, I should be able to control nature, which is not really the case.

Forces beyond my control determine my behaviour.

M: Develop the witness attitude and you will find in your own experience that detachment brings control.

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

42: Reality can not be Expressed.

Q: We were told that of all forms of spiritual practices the practice of the attitude of a mere witness is the most efficacious.

How does it compare with faith?

M: The witness attitude is also faith; it is faith in oneself.

You believe that you are not what you experience and you look at everything as from a distance.

There is no effort in witnessing.

M: You live, you feel, you think.

By giving attention to your living, feeling and thinking, you free yourself from them and go beyond them.

Your personality dissolves and only the witness remains.

Then you go beyond the witness.

Do not ask how it happens.

Or, you may keep your body and die only in the mind.

The death of the mind is the birth of wisdom.

Q: The person goes and only the witness remains.

M: Who remains to say: 'I am the witness'.

When there is no 'I am', where is the witness?

M: Exactly as a shadow appears when light is intercepted by the body, so does the person arise when pure self-awareness is obstructed by the 'I-am-the-body' idea.

And as the shadow changes shape and position according to the lay of the land, so does the person appear to rejoice and suffer, rest and toil, find and lose according to the pattern of destiny.

When the body is no more, the person disappears completely without return, only the witness remains and the Great Unknown.

The witness is that which says 'I know'.

The person says 'I do'.

You can know the false only.

The true you must yourself be.

Q: There is the witnessed consciousness and there is the witnessing consciousness.

Is the second the supreme?

M: There are the two -- the person and the witness, the observer.

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

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

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

Do you mean to say that even awareness is not real?

M: As long as you deal in terms: real -- unreal; awareness is the only reality that can be.

Maharaj: The person is of little use.

It is deeply involved in its own affairs and is completely ignorant of its true being.

Unless the witnessing consciousness begins to play on the person and it becomes the object of observation rather than the subject, realisation is not feasible.

It is the witness that makes realisation desirable and attainable.

Q: There comes a point in a person's life when it becomes the witness.

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.

Q: I see.

Completely, but -- hopelessly?

M: Within the prison of your world appears a man who tells you that the world of painful contradictions, which you have created, is neither continuous nor permanent and is based on a misapprehension.

He pleads with you to get out of it, by the same way by which you got into it.

You got into it by forgetting what you are and you will get out of it by knowing yourself as you are.

Give up all and you gain all.

Then life becomes what it was meant to be: pure radiation from an inexhaustible source.

In that light the world appears dimly like a dream.

Q: If my world is merely a dream and you are a part of it, what can you do for me?

If the dream is not real, having no being, how can reality affect it?

Only I see it as it is, while you don't.

You see yourself in the world, while I see the world in myself.

To you, you get born and die, while to me, the world appears and disappears.

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

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

When I know the horrors the world is full of, the wars, the concentration camps, the inhuman exploitations, how can I own it as my own creation?

However limited I am, I could not have created so cruel a world.

M: Find to whom this cruel world appears and you will know why it appears so cruel.

Your questions are perfectly legitimate, but just cannot be answered unless you know whose is the world.

To find out the meaning of a thing you must ask its maker.

M: There is nothing in the world that you cannot know, when you know yourself.

Thinking yourself to be the body you know the world as a collection of material things.

When you know yourself as a centre of consciousness, the world appears as the ocean of the mind.

When you know yourself as you are in reality, you know the world as yourself.

Q: It all sounds very beautiful, but does not answer my question.

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.

It is the emotional involvement, the pattern of likes and dislikes which we call character and temperament, that create the bondage.

Q: Does this spontaneous response come as a result of realisation, or by training?

M: Both.

Devotion to you goal makes you live a clean and orderly life, given to search for truth and to helping people, and realisation makes noble virtue easy and spontaneous, by removing for good the obstacles in the shape of desires and fears and wrong ideas.

Q: Don't you have desires and fears any more?

M: My destiny was to be born a simple man, a commoner, a humble tradesman, with little of formal education.

M: Discard all traditional standards.

Leave them to the hypocrites.

Only what liberates you from desire and fear and wrong ideas is good.

As long as you worry about sin and virtue you will have no peace.

Q: I grant that sin and virtue are social norms.

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.

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

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

M: Self-identification with the limited (vyaktitva).

Sensations as such, however strong, do not cause suffering.

It is the mind bewildered by wrong ideas, addicted to thinking: 'I am this' 'I am that', that fears loss and craves gain and suffers when frustrated.

Q: A friend of mine used to have horrible dreams night after night.

Going to sleep would terrorise him.

Ours is a world of feelings and ideas, of attractions and repulsions, of scales of values, of motives and incentives, a mental world altogether.

Biologically we need very little, our problems are of a different order.

Problems created by desires and fears and wrong ideas can be solved only on the level of the mind.

You must conquer your own mind and for this you must go beyond it.

Q: What does it mean to go beyond the mind.

But how has one to make it into a way of living?

M: Having never left the house you are asking for the way home.

Get rid of wrong ideas, that is all.

Collecting right ideas also will take you nowhere.

Just cease imagining.

M: Take cognisance of the whole of it, not only of the outer symptoms.

All illness begins in the mind.

Take care of the mind first, by tracing and eliminating all wrong ideas and emotions.

Then live and work disregarding illness and think no more of it.

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

But the obstacles to wisdom are deeply affected by practice.

Q: What are the obstacles?

M: Wrong ideas and desires leading to wrong actions, causing dissipation and weakness of mind and body.

The discovery and abandonment of the false remove what prevents the real entering the mind.

Q: I can distinguish two states of mind: 'I am' and 'the world is'; they arise and subside together.

Surely, there is only one self and you are that self.

The self you are is the only self there is.

Remove and abandon your wrong ideas about yourself and there it is, in all its glory.

It is only your mind that prevents self-knowledge.

Q: How am I to be rid of the mind?

M: There is no such thing as mind.

There are ideas and some of them are wrong.

Abandon the wrong ideas, for they are false and obstruct your vision of yourself.

Q: Which ideas are wrong and which are true?

M: Assertions are usually wrong and denials -- right.

Also apply it in your daily life.

Have patience with me and, above all have patience with yourself, for you are your only obstacle.

The way leads through yourself beyond yourself.

As long as you believe only the particular to be real, conscious and happy and reject the non-dual reality as something imagined, an abstract concept, you will find me doling out concepts and abstractions.

But once you have touched the real within your own being, you will find me describing what for you is the nearest and the dearest.

You are asking because you are not sure of yourself.

And you are not sure of yourself because you never paid attention to yourself, only to your experiences.

Be interested in yourself beyond all experience, be with yourself, love yourself; the ultimate security is found only in self-knowledge.

The main thing is earnestness.

Be honest with yourself and nothing will betray you.

The true and effective motive is love.

You see people suffer and you seek the best way of helping them.

The answer is obvious -- first put yourself beyond the need of help.

Be sure your attitude is of pure goodwill, free of expectation of any kind.

Those who seek mere happiness may end up in sublime indifference, while love will never rest.

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

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

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

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

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

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

They just rotate in endless succession.

Investigate the vicious circle till you find yourself beyond it.

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

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