Maharaj: The experience may be incommunicable. Can one communicate an experience?
Q: Yes, if one is an artist. The essence of art is communication of feeling, of experience.
M: To receive communication, you must be receptive.
Q: Of course. There must be a receiver. But if the transmitter does not transmit, of what use is the receiver?
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M: The gnani belongs to all. He gives himself tirelessly and completely to whoever comes to him. If he is not a giver, he is not a gnani. Whatever he has, he shares.
Q: But can he share what he is?
M: You mean, can he make others into gnanis? Yes and no. No, since gnanis are not made; they realize 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.
Q: This does not answer my question. I have in mind the critical and sceptical Westerner who denies the very possibility of higher states of consciousness. Recently drugs have made a breach in his disbelief, without affecting his materialistic outlook. Drugs or no drugs, the body remains the primary fact and the mind is secondary. Beyond the mind, they see nothing.
From Buddha onwards the state of self-realization was described in negative terms, as ‘not this, not that’. Is it inevitable?
Is it not possible to illustrate it, if not describe. I admit, no verbal description will do, when the state described is beyond words.
Yet it is also within words. Poetry is the art of putting into words the inexpressible.
M: There is no lack of religious poets. Turn to them for what you want. As far as I am concerned, my teaching is simple: trust me for a while and do what I tell you. If you persevere, you will find that your trust was justified.
Q: And what to do with people who are interested, but cannot trust?
M: If they could stay with me, they would come to trust me.
Once they trust me, they will follow my advice and discover for themselves.
Q: It is not for the training that I am asking just now, but for its results. You had both. You are willing to tell us all about the training, but when it comes to results, you refuse to share. Either you tell us that your state is beyond words, or that there is no difference; that where we see a difference, you see none. In both cases we are left without any insight into your state.
M: How can you have insight into my state when you are with-SPIRITUAL PRACTICE IS WILL ASSERTED AND RE-ASSERTED 169
out insight into your own? When the very instrument of insight is lacking, is it not important to find it first? It is like a blind man wanting to learn painting before he regains his eyesight. You want to know my state — but do you know the state of your wife or servant?
Q: I am asking for some hints only.
M: Well, I gave you a very significant clue — where you see differences, I don’t. To me it is enough. If you think it is not enough, I can only repeat; it is enough. Think it out deeply and you will come to see what I see.
You seem to want instant insight, forgetting that the instant is always preceded by a long preparation. The fruit falls suddenly, but the ripening takes time.
After all, when I talk of trusting me, it is only for a short time, just enough time to start you moving. The more earnest you are, the less belief you need, for soon you will find your faith in me justified. You want me to prove to you that I am trustworthy! How can I and why should I? After all, what I am offering you is the operational approach, so current in Western science. When a scientist describes an experiment and its results, usually you accept his statements on trust and repeat his experiment as he describes it. Once you get the same or similar results, you need not trust him any more; you trust your own experience. Encouraged, you proceed and arrive in the end at substantially identical results.
Q: The Indian mind was made ready for metaphysical experiments by culture and nurture. To the Indian words like ‘direct perception of the Supreme Reality’ make sense and bring out responses from the very depths of his being. They mean little to a Westerner; even when brought up in his own variety of Christianity, he does not think beyond conformity with God’s commandments and Christ’s injunctions. First-hand knowledge of reality is not only beyond ambition, but also beyond conceiving.
Some Indians tell me: ‘Hopeless. The Westerner will not, for he cannot. Tell him nothing about self-realization; let him live a useful life and earn a rebirth in India. Then only will he have a chance’. Some say: ‘Reality is for all equally, but not all are equally endowed with the capacity to grasp it. The capacity 170
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come with desire, which will grow into devotion and ultimately into total self-dedication. With integrity and earnestness and iron determination to overcome all obstacles, the Westerner has the same chance as the Oriental man. 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. When all is one, communication should be feasible.
M: To have the direct experience of a country one must go and live there. Don’t ask for the impossible. A man’s spiritual victory no doubt benefits mankind, but to benefit another individual, a close personal relation is required. Such relation is not accidental and not everybody can claim it. On the other hand, the scientific approach is for all. ‘Trust-test-taste’. What more do you need? Why push the Truth down unwilling throats? It cannot be done, anyhow. Without a receiver what can the giver do?
Q: The essence of art is to use the outer form to convey an inner experience. Of course, one must be sensitive to the inner, before the outer can be meaningful. How does one grow in sensitivity?
M: Whichever way you put it, it comes to the same. Givers there are many; where are the takers?
Q: Can you not share your own sensitivity?
M: Yes, I can, but sharing is a two-way street. Two are needed in sharing. Who is willing to take what I am willing to give?
Q: You say we are one. Is this not enough?
M: I am one with you. Are you one with me? If you are, you will not ask questions. If you are not, if you do not see what I see, what can I do beyond showing you the way to improve your vision?
Q: What you cannot give is not your own.
M: I claim nothing as my own. When the ‘I’ is not, where is the
‘mine’?. Two people look at a tree. One sees the fruit hidden among the leaves and the other does not. Otherwise there is no difference between the two. The one that sees knows that with a little attention the other will also see, but the question of sharing SPIRITUAL PRACTICE IS WILL ASSERTED AND RE-ASSERTED 171
does not arise. Believe me, I am not close-fisted, holding back your share of reality. On the contrary, I am all yours, eat me and drink me. But while you repeat verbally: ‘give, give’, you do nothing to take what is offered. I am showing you a short and easy way to being able to see what I see, but you cling to your old habits of thought, feeling and action and put all the blame on me. I have nothing which you do not have. Self-knowledge is not a piece of property to be offered and accepted. It is a new dimension altogether, where there is nothing to give or take.
Q: Give us at least some insight into the content of your mind while you live your daily life. To eat, to drink, to talk, to sleep —
how does it feel at your end?
M: The common things of life: I experience them just as you do.
The difference lies in what I do not experience. I do not experience fear or greed, hate or anger. I ask nothing, refuse nothing, keep nothing. In these matters I do not compromise. Maybe this is the outstanding difference between us. I will not compromise, I am true to myself, while you are afraid of reality.
Q: From the Westerner’s point of view there is something disturbing in your ways. To sit in a corner all by oneself and keep on repeating: ‘I am God, God I am’, appears to be plain madness. How to convince a Westerner that such practices lead to supreme sanity?
M: The man who claims to be God and the man who doubts it
— both are deluded. 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.
M: If you want words, I shall give you some of the ancient words of power. Repeat any of them ceaselessly; they can work wonders.
Q: Are you serious? Would you tell a Westerner to repeat ‘Om’
or ‘Ram’ or ‘Hare Krishna’ ceaselessly, though he lacks completely the faith and conviction born of the right cultural and religious background. Without confidence and fervour; repeating mechanically the same sounds, will he ever achieve anything?
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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. Here the action only counts. Whatever you do for the sake of truth, will take you to truth. Only be earnest and honest. The shape it takes hardly matters.
Q: Then where is the need of giving expression to one’s longing?
M: No need. Doing nothing is as good. Mere longing, undiluted by thought and action, pure, concentrated longing, will take you speedily to your goal. It is the true motive that matters, not the manner.
Q: Unbelievable! How can dull repetition in boredom verging on despair, be effective?
M: The very facts of repetition, of struggling on and on and of endurance and perseverance, in spite of boredom and despair and complete lack of conviction are really crucial. They are not important by themselves, but the sincerity behind them is all-important. There must be a push from within and pull from without.
Q: My questions are typical of the West. There people think in terms of cause and effect, means and goals. They do not see what causal connection can there be between a particular word and the Absolute Reality.
M: None whatsoever. But there is a connection between the word and its meaning, between the action and its motive.
Spiritual practice is will asserted and re-asserted. Who has not the daring will not accept the real even when offered. Unwillingness born out of fear is the only obstacle.
Q: What is there to be afraid of?
M: The unknown. The not-being, not-knowing, not-doing. The beyond.
Q: You mean to say that while you can share the manner of your achievement, you cannot share the fruits?
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time. 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.
M: Meet your own self. Be with your own self, listen to it, obey it, cherish it, keep it in mind ceaselessly. You need no other guide.
As long as your urge for truth affects your daily life, all is well with you. Live your life without hurting anybody. Harmlessness is a most powerful form of Yoga and it will take you speedily to your goal. This is what I call nisarga yoga, the Natural yoga. It is the art of living in peace and harmony, in friendliness and love.
The fruit of it is happiness, uncaused and endless.
Q: Still, all this presupposes some faith.
M: Turn within and you will come to trust yourself. In everything else confidence comes with experience.
Q: When a man tells me that he knows something I do not know, I have the right to ask: ‘what is it that you know, that I do not know?’
M: And if he tells you that it cannot be conveyed in words?
Q: Then I watch him closely and try to make out.
M: And this is exactly what I want you to do! Be interested, give attention, until a current of mutual understanding is established.
Then the sharing will be easy. As a matter of fact, all realization is only sharing. You enter a wider consciousness and share in it.
Unwillingness to enter and to share is the only hindrance. I never talk of differences, for to me there are none. You do, so it is up to you to show them to me. By all means, show me the differences. For this you will have to understand me, but then you will no longer talk of differences. Understand one thing well, and you have arrived. What prevents you from knowing is not the lack of opportunity, but the lack of ability to focus in your mind what you want to understand. If you could but keep in mind what you do not know, it would reveal to you its secrets. But if you are shallow and impatient, not earnest enough to look and wait, you are like a child crying for the moon.
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By Itself Nothing has
Existence
Questioner: As I listen to you I find that it is useless to ask you questions. Whatever the question, you invariably turn it upon itself and bring me to the basic fact that I am living in an illusion of my own making and that reality is inexpressible in words. Words merely add to the confusion and the only wise course is the silent search within.
Maharaj: After all, it is the mind that creates illusion and it is the mind that gets free of it. Words may aggravate illusion, words may also help dispel it. There is nothing wrong in repeating the same truth again and again until it becomes reality. Mother’s work is not over with the birth of the child. She feeds it day after day, year after year until it needs her no longer. People need hearing words, until facts speak to them louder than words.
Q: So we are children to be fed on words?
M: As long as you give importance to words, you are children.
Q: All right, then be our mother.
M: Where was the child before it was born? Was it not with the mother? Because it was already with the mother it could be born.
Q: Surely, the mother did not carry the child when she was a child herself.
M: Potentially, she was the mother. Go beyond the illusion of time.
Q: Your answer is always the same. A kind of clockwork which strikes the same hours again and again.
M: It cannot be helped. Just like the one sun is reflected in a BY ITSELF NOTHING HAS EXISTENCE
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billion dew drops, so is the timeless endlessly repeated. When I repeat: ‘I am, I am’, I merely assert and re-assert an ever-present fact. You get tired of my words because you do not see the living truth behind them. Contact it and you will find the full meaning of words and of silence — both.
Q: You say that the little girl is already the mother of her future child. Potentially — yes. Actually — no.
M: The potential becomes actual by thinking. The body and its affairs exist in the mind.
Q: And the mind is consciousness in motion and consciousness is the conditioned (saguna) aspect of the Self. The unconditioned (nirguna) is another aspect and beyond lies the abyss of the absolute (paramartha).
M: Quite right — you have put it beautifully.
Q: But these are mere words to me. Hearing and repeating them is not enough, they must be experienced.
M: Nothing stops you but preoccupation with the outer which prevents you from focussing the inner. It cannot be helped, you cannot skip your sadhana. You have to turn away from the world and go within, until the inner and the outer merge and you can go beyond the conditioned, whether inner or outer.
Q: Surely, the unconditioned is merely an idea in the conditioned mind. By itself it has no existence.
M: By itself nothing has existence. Everything needs its own absence. To be, is to be distinguishable, to be here and not there, to be now and not then, to be thus and not otherwise. Like water is shaped by the container, so is everything determined by conditions (gunas). As water remains water regardless of the vessels, as light remains itself regardless of the colours it brings out, so does the real remain real, regardless of conditions in which it is reflected. Why keep the reflection only in the focus of consciousness? Why not the real itself?
Q: Consciousness itself is a reflection. How can it hold the real?
M: To know that consciousness and its content are but reflections, changeful and transient, is the focussing of the real. The refusal to see the snake in the rope is the necessary condition for seeing the rope.
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Q: Only necessary, or also sufficient?
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 realize the state of pure witnessing. The awareness of conditions brings one to the unconditioned.
Q: Can the unconditioned be experienced?
M: To know the conditioned as conditioned is all that can be said about the unconditioned. Positive terms are mere hints and misleading.
Q: Can we talk of witnessing the real?
M: How can we? We can talk only of the unreal, the illusory, the transient, the conditioned. To go beyond, we must pass through total negation of everything as having independent existence.
All things depend.
Q: On what do they depend?
M: On consciousness. And consciousness depends on the witness.
Q: And the witness defends on the real?
M: The witness is the reflection of the real in all its purity. It depends on the condition of the mind. Where clarity and detachment predominate, the witness-consciousness comes into being. It is just like saying that where the water is clear and quiet, the image of the moon appears. Or like daylight that appears as sparkle in the diamond.
Q: Can there be consciousness without the witness?
M: Without the witness it becomes unconsciousness, just living.
The witness is latent in every state of consciousness, just like light in every colour. There can be no knowledge without the knower and no knower without his witness. Not only you know, but you know that you know.
Q: If the unconditioned cannot be experienced, for all experience is conditioned, then why talk of it at all?
M: How can there be knowledge of the conditioned without the unconditioned? There must be a source from which all this BY ITSELF NOTHING HAS EXISTENCE
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flows, a foundation on which all stands. Self-realization is primarily the knowledge of one’s conditioning and the awareness that the infinite variety of conditions depends on our infinite ability to be conditioned and to give rise to variety. To the conditioned mind the unconditioned appears as the totality as well as the absence of everything. Neither can be directly experienced, but this does not make it non-existent.
Q: Is it not a feeling?
M: A feeling too is a state of mind. Just like a healthy body does not call for attention, so is the unconditioned free from experience. Take the experience of death. The ordinary man is afraid to die, because he is afraid of change. The gnani is not afraid because his mind is dead already. He does not think: ‘I live’. He knows: ‘There is life’. There is no change in it and no death.
Death appears to be a change in time and space. Where there is neither time nor space, how can there be death? The gnani is already dead to name and shape. How can their loss affect him? The man in the train travels from place to place, but the man off the train goes nowhere, for he is not bound for a destination. He has nowhere to go, nothing to do, nothing to become.
Those who make plans will be born to carry them out. Those who make no plans need not be born.
Q: What is the purpose of pain and pleasure?
M: Do they exist by themselves, or only in the mind?
Q: Still, they exist. Never mind the mind.
M: Pain and pleasure are merely symptoms, the results of wrong knowledge and wrong feeling. A result cannot have a purpose of its own.
Q: In God’s economy everything must have a purpose.
M: Do you know God that you talk of him so freely? What is God to you? A sound, a word on paper, an idea in the mind?
Q: By his power I am born and kept alive.
M: And suffer, and die. Are you glad?
Q: It may be my own fault that I suffer and die. I was created unto life eternal.
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ginning must have an end. Only the beginningless is endless.
Q: God may be a mere concept, a working theory. A very useful concept all the same!
M: For this it must be free of inner contradictions, which is not the case. Why not work on the theory that you are your own creation and creator. At least there will be no external God to battle with.
Q: The world is so rich and complex — how could I create it?
M: Do you know yourself enough to know what you can do and what you cannot? You do not know your own powers. You never investigated. Begin with yourself now.
Q: Everybody believes in God.
M: To me you are your own God. But if you think otherwise, think to the end. If there be God, then all is God’s and all is for the best. Welcome all that comes with a glad and thankful heart.
And love all creatures. This too will take you to your Self.
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Only the Self is Real
Maharaj: The world is but a show, glittering and empty. It is, and yet is not. It is there as long as I want to see it and take part in it. When I cease caring, it dissolves. It has no cause and serves no purpose. It just happens when we are absent-minded. It appears exactly as it looks, but there is no depth in it, nor meaning. Only the onlooker is real, call him Self or Atma. To ONLY THE SELF IS REAL
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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 desireless and fearless gnani, what life has he? Is he not left high and dry in his aloofness?
M: His state is not so desolate. It tastes of the pure, uncaused, undiluted bliss. He is happy and fully aware that happiness is his very nature and that he need not do anything, nor strive for anything to secure it. It follows him, more real than the body, nearer than the mind itself. You imagine that without cause there can be no happiness. 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.
Q: Like a play on the stage?
M: The play was written, planned and rehearsed. The world just spouts into being out of nothing and returns to nothing.
Q: Is there no creator? Was not the world in the mind of Brahma, before it was created?
M: As long as you are outside my state, you will have Creators, Preservers and Destroyers, but once with me you will know the Self only and see yourself in all.
Q: You function nevertheless.
M: When you are giddy, you see the world running circles round you. Obsessed with the idea of means and end, of work and purpose, you see me apparently functioning. In realty I only look. Whatever is done, is done on the stage. Joy and sorrow, life and death, they all are real to the man in bondage; to me they are all in the show, as unreal as the show itself.
I may perceive the world just like you, but you believe to be in it, while I see it as an iridescent drop in the vast expanse of consciousness.
Q: We are all getting old. Old age is not pleasant — all aches 180
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and pains, weakness and the approaching end. How does a gnani feel as an old man? How does his inner self look at his own senility.
M: As he gets older he grows more and more happy and peaceful. After all, he is going home. Like a traveller nearing his destination and collecting his luggage, he leaves the train without regret.
Q: Surely there is a contradiction. We are told the gnani is beyond all change. His happiness neither grows nor wanes.
How can he grow happier because older, and that in spite of physical weakness and so on?
M: There is no contradiction. The reel of destiny is coming to its end — the mind is happy. The mist of bodily existence is lifting
— the burden of the body is growing less from day to day.
Q: Let us say, the gnani is ill. He has caught some flu and every joint aches and burns. What is his state of mind?
M: Every sensation is contemplated in perfect equanimity.
There is no desire for it, nor refusal. It is as it is and the he looks at it with a smile of affectionate detachment.
Q: He may be detached from his own suffering, but still it is there.
M: It is there, but it does not matter. Whatever state I am in, I see it as a state of mind to be accepted as it is.
Q: Pain is pain. You experience it all the same.
M: He who experiences the body, experiences its pains and pleasures. I am neither the body, nor the experiencer of the body.
Q: Let us say you are twenty-five years old. Your marriage is arranged and performed, and the household duties crowd upon you. How would you feel?
M: Just as I feel now. 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. As long as it is merely aware there are no problems. But when the discriminative mind comes into being and ONLY THE SELF IS REAL
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creates distinctions, pleasure and pain arise. During sleep the m