Oneness - Clarity and Joy of Life through Advaita by Madhukar - HTML preview

DELIGHTING IN FREE WILL

Is it true, as Heraclitus said, that “Everything flows?” Or should we instead say:

“Everything is?” Or is everything new in every moment?

MADHUKAR: Who is seeing the new?

I am the fixed point observing the flow, but I am also a part of the whole.

MADHUKAR: These are philosophies that have existed for thousands of years, but only a very few people have ever put them into action. Words of wisdom like this can now be bought at the corner kiosk for a handful of small change: “I am a part of the whole.” Excellent! I have no problem with this. But is this statement of any use to you? It is better to find out: Who is it who is having this idea about the part, the whole and the flowing? Where is this all taking place? Who am I? This is elementary because this question will lead you directly out of your dream. In Being, you will have problems neither with what is flowing nor what is fixed.

And who recognizes the “I?”

MADHUKAR: If you approach this philosophically, you are setting up an additional barrier. Even Heraclitus, the physicist of antiquity, investigated the course of time, sought out the basis of things and probed the logos of physics. Plumb the depths of the logos of Being, enquire into it. If you ask your question exis-73

tentially, a deeper dimension will immediately reveal itself. What is on the surface, that which is variable, will prove in the end not to be reality. Even the “I” is imaginary. You will realize that there is a witness observing the ostensible “I.”

The Self, the consciousness that is seeing your “I.”

Is this someone else?

MADHUKAR: Look for yourself! I would be happy if you would take a look. If someone is sitting there in front of you telling you how things really are, this might seem convincing for a short while. I could tell you something that makes sense to you, but the light of this illumination will soon fade. Many people find it comfortable to allow someone else to dazzle them with a philosophy.

If someone maps out the lay of the land for you in catchy spiritual language and poetic terms, this might be edifying for a brief while, but not truly nourish-ing. If you were to avail yourself of my help, by applying it yourself—and feel free to do so critically—you will experience something that is truly helpful. And effective as well. The taste of eternal Being.

I would like to expand on my question: If I have acted in some form or other as

“I,” could I have acted any differently?

MADHUKAR: Obviously not. You could not have acted differently. There is no free will. Our notion of the freedom of the will is quite simply untenable. But because of our programming, our so-called model of the Self, we believe we have free will. Brain researchers like Gerhard Roth and Wolf Singer would say that the act of volition results from neurological processes and not the other way around. The neurophilosopher Metzinger brings ancient knowledge to modern science: Every individual thought you will ever think in your entire life will be determined by the foregoing state of the universe in each case. Although I know that there can be no free will, I can still act as if it exists. After all, this too must be predetermined. It can be a lot of fun and relaxing as well. If I were to go mad—because of this realization, for example—this too would be predetermined. So what’s all the fuss about? It’s best not to make such a problem out of this.

Go ahead and live according to your inclinations. When you go out your door and think you need to turn to the right, turn to the right. Your thought dictates that you should turn to the right in order to get somewhere or other. Nonetheless sometimes at the doorway you will suddenly turn to the left. You yourself

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won’t know why. It simply happens, and then you will see that something important or banal is waiting for you there.

Coincidences are the things that coincide with us. The fact is that all of us here have turned to the left, to the right, above and below and—we are all here now. Free will or not, we are here! If your mind is frightened by this truth that there is no free will, then go ahead and convince yourself that you have free will, will that is completely free, and live according to this belief. The mind possesses enormous creative powers. The entire universe was created by mind.

Therefore it is also possible that with your will you will create appealing conditions in which to live your life, at least for a certain time. For this reason, the principle frequently propagated by American spiritual leaders—the one that says that you can create your own reality—is sometimes surprisingly effective for a certain time. But you have no control over whether this will lead to happiness. How does it usually end up? In misery!

My advice to you is to find out who you are. Then you will be at peace with whatever happens. This doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t say what’s going on.

You will be able to live according to your own personal preferences—the person and its program is allowed to persist. When things aren’t the way you want them to be, you will be able to accept that as well. Otherwise: goodbye!

Enjoy it! It’s always best to enjoy. Enjoyment is attractive!

When an impulse arrives prompting me to act or to create something, can I accept that it is merely an impulse of Being, even if it comes from the mind?

MADHUKAR: Everything is rooted in Being. Truly everything. Whether it appears to us bad or good. Find out who is.

As for what constitutes mind: In Indian philosophy a distinction is made between the five inner organs, the antahkaranas. Knowledge ( jnana), mind ( manas), intellect ( buddhi), memory ( chitta) und ego ( ahamkara). Sri Ramana has said that all of them come from the heart. Hridayam, the heart, is the original of the thought of I.

But apparently you are more interested in creation. For what could come into being, for what your mind wants. This interests you more than finding out who you are. In what or in whom does mind take place? If you find that out, you can let your mind’s potential do its creative work while you dwell in your Self and feast on the fruits of the mind. This would be better than rigidly being stuck in activity, working with difficulty and labor and worrying over whether your work will bear fruit.

 

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If it is your nature to create things, remain true to this, since anything else would be artificial. Act according to your natural inclinations, and remain conscious of what it is you want. What do you want to achieve with your free will?

Are you using your free will to attain freedom or to create something else to which you are attaching your happiness?

When I claim as my own the freedom to create just as my impulse at that moment directs me, I feel a subliminal fear that I might be putting myself in danger of falling back into a deep sleep.

MADHUKAR: No, it’s too late for that, you can never again fall into a deep sleep!

But unfortunately a half-sleep is still possible.

It shook me to the core when Ramesh Balsekar said to me that in principle everything is predetermined, even the thoughts that I will think in the course of my life. If this is true, then I don’t have any freedom left at all.

MADHUKAR: Why don’t you have any freedom left? He has no freedom left.

Possibly this is true for him, but who is to say it is true for you? “There is no free will”—this is a central pillar of Ramesh Balsekar’s teachings.

But you yourself have now in a way confirmed that there is no free will.

MADHUKAR: Correct. But I don’t have any problem with this will if you use it to find out who you are. All that matters to me is to relieve you of your stress, your fear. A teacher should not be disseminating fear.

Yes, it’s quite true that the teachings of Ramesh sometimes give me consider-able stress and fear.

MADHUKAR: Aha, sometimes this can be very useful. I stress certain people too, but in your case I grant you utter freedom. Use your mind if you truly have an interest in freedom and peace. Whether this is true is something only you can know. Gain clarity as to whether it was truly your Self that was shaken or whether it was just your mind that was engaged with its desire to create. Who was shaken? Let your mind be shaken. You are deeper, purer and truer than this mind. What you truly are is not subject to being shaken.

 

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And then I think: And now? What should I do with this now? Where do things go from here?

MADHUKAR: It used to be that pictures and sentences arose in your mind when you asked this question. But since these are ephemeral, we can assume beyond all doubt that they do not represent the final truth. Therefore you will continue to ask yourself this question until you are satisfied with the answer. The answer will not show up in the form of thought. The mystical cannot be uttered, as the philosopher Wittgenstein has pointed out. At the beginning, self-enquiry with its “Who am I?” might perhaps look like a rhetorical question, but sooner or later this question will be asked properly, not in the past or the future! Everything your brain presents to you is the past.

I’ve understood this intellectually, but ...

MADHUKAR: Good! Intellectual understanding is sometimes useful, you can feel satisfied with this. But you must not overlook the foundation of Being in which this intellectual activity is taking place. Until now you have directed your attention to your thoughts, not to your true Being. You are what you prefer to see, what you are seeking. You are looking for images in your mind, or for an event that would be acceptable to you. If you were to experience an illumination, if heavenly choruses were to start singing, that might possibly count for you as proof that you have arrived. Things could get even more complicated, because you might really hear these heavenly choruses singing and yet you might still be nothing more than a spiritual madman. Of course it is to be welcomed if after years of spiritual practice with more or less frustrating results one suddenly sees a few bright lights when one is meditating and hears the voices of singing angels.

But if you are really in search of truth, you cannot be satisfied with this, because these appearances are part of the body-mind. Here we are orienting ourselves toward truth, and if this desire for truth burns in you as well, then you’ve come to the right place.

I’m not completely sure.

MADHUKAR: Okay, it doesn’t actually matter whether you know for sure. Apparently there is some desire there. You can question it: Do I really want to be

 

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free? Or do I only want to experience a certain event, one of the sort I’ve heard about or read about in the books about yoga, Zen and mastery?

It has also been my experience that these things do not lead to truth.

MADHUKAR: But nonetheless they are giving you the impetus to search for genuine truth, for more permanent bliss. Otherwise you would be satisfied with what your life has given you and what you have been able to create. But in the end this hasn’t brought you true contentment. Millions of people are satisfied with the mess they’re living in. A few of them are perhaps even happy. It’s just that I haven’t met them. We cannot exclude the possibility that such people exist, happy people. But what matters for you—and it was just the same with me—is that you are not content. Even after a phenomenal event that we call enlightenment, Samadhi or Kundalini awakening, events whose description could fill an entire book, I did not in the end experience contentment. I was unable to be satisfied even with this experience. Because it was not absolute truth. Many of the teachers who speak about their enlightenment have not seen the final truth. They would do better to look more closely at what is now.

The mind always goes somewhere or other.

MADHUKAR: So let your mind go where it wants to. You observe it. This doesn’t mean you have to go running after it. Let it run. Mind is a monkey hopping around the universe in search of bananas and pretty sunsets, happy to be caressed and to have the lice removed from its fur. You are truth, peace, freedom.

Love. If you let the monkey be your queen, it’s you who are the ape! Realize what you really are, this goes far deeper than the leaps and jumps of the mind that desires something here, makes a comparison there, and is so often dissatisfied. Realization can take place only now, not tomorrow, not in one year or ten. No, it is always only now.

I advise you to return again and again to your true Self and, without having a plan, look and see what happens. Perhaps you will catch sight of a few fireworks, a few lights, but do not allow them to deter or mislead you. Only then will I be able to confirm what I said at the beginning: “There is nothing to do.”

One orientation is extraordinarily important—namely the orientation that truth exists and is immanent now.

This is of crucial importance, otherwise you’ll start making plans like this: One year of meditation practice, three years of studying the mystery, followed

 

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by seven years in Tibet and finally finding your soul mate, and in the end, when the children are grown, when I have bought my little house in the woods, then, then, then… Don’t waste any belief on your mind!

 

If my mind were to offer me this sort of mental goulash, I would simply reply: No thanks, I’m a vegetarian.

 

A true master wants you to be free. Now.

 

How can one live in joy and with a constant smile on one’s face? I’ve been feeling this smile uninterruptedly this entire time. But now I’m wondering how other people will respond to this smile. Sometimes people just don’t like to see such a thing.

MADHUKAR: Really?

People are probably asking themselves what’s wrong with me. This doesn’t mean that I want to give up the smile. Is it always with you, every single day, or are there also phases where it comes and goes or only appears during Satsang?

MADHUKAR: Ask the people around me, they must see it. I myself don’t see it.

Doesn’t one feel the smile on the inside? I can feel the whole time how the corners of my mouth keep creeping upward.

MADHUKAR: A pleasant feeling?

Yes. Whether it is pleasant or tiring if it lasts a long time is something I don’t yet know. But I’m not so used to it yet either. Maybe the muscles get stronger over time.

 

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MADHUKAR: But this reflection on your part, this thought that other people might have a problem with your smile, doesn’t originate in the smile itself, does it?

No, it comes because the other people aren’t smiling. Most people are having a rough time of things and therefore I think it must be unpleasant for them that I am smiling.

MADHUKAR: That might be true for some people, but others will find your smile infectious. It’s quite possible that this peace will spread.

That’s a lovely thought.

MADHUKAR: But in my case, let me reassure you—I can feel resentment too.

Is resentment something you are confronted with, or something you feel within yourself?

MADHUKAR: It is something I give off. The existence of resentment only increases the power of grace for humankind.

Stop worrying about what other people think. What a waste! Do you want to squander your life with such reflections?

No, most certainly not.

MADHUKAR: How many years have we spent on this? If we multiply the years by the number of people sitting here, we will arrive at thousands of years—and just because of an uncertain mind.

It isn’t about the expression on your face, whether there’s a smile there; it’s about your peace, your Self. It’s so very lovely to be here in Satsang. The love of other people and the peace here are so delightful, that’s why I am smiling.

Thank you. Now I can’t help smiling too.

MADHUKAR: I’m quite certain that a smile can only be welcome where you live.

Thank you for allowing me to experience this here so intensively.

 

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(Sitting in a wheelchair) Should I come to the front? I’ll step on the gas.

MADHUKAR: Welcome.

Why do I have these physical limitations?

MADHUKAR: What limitations?

Sometimes I have trouble walking and speaking. Are there things that lie at the bottom of this, things that have to be solved? Can a master provide support in this?

MADHUKAR: Walking and speaking are not the most important things. What is most important is the peace to find out who you are. Peace is here. Silence is higher than speaking. And the dance of the heart is more precious than walking.

 

NO ONE, EMPTINESS, NOTHINGNESS

A master empties the mind. He fills the heart.

 

One thing that is certain is that essence is, and so it is also certain that your essence knows who you are. But because you follow the inclinations of your mind and identify with them, you cling to states of mind and assume that you are what you are feeling. It’s incredible that a divine being can feel like a slave, dependent on the judgments of others and crippled by childhood experiences! If you have the courage to enquire into your true identity, all these things will fall away from you.

 

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I experience states of silence. But then very different sensations come to replace them. I find this confusing.

MADHUKAR: Confusion is appearing because you have not yet clarified beyond all doubt who you are. Both peace and fear are showing themselves to you, and you don’t know what the truth is. The mind creates a reality that isn’t actually real. This makes us suffer. Feelings are so stubbornly persistent that we let them condition us. For this reason it is crucial to enquire into your own true identity, to establish it beyond all doubt!

I am not selling exercises here or a philosophy. I’m not offering you anything.

A new philosophy, new belief—sooner or later they must fade away if you want to know who you are. Just like the love in a relationship must fade away.

Papaji didn’t try to change me. Nor did he misuse me in the name of some idea or world-view.

For most people, freedom isn’t the main thing. When I visited ashrams, I found that even those people I experienced as more or less present would admit when asked that they weren’t really looking for freedom. Their priorities were obvious. I’m sure you’re familiar with the palette of self-deceptions. If you deceive yourself and only claim to be interested in becoming free, it’s highly unlikely that That will reveal itself. Religious people think that having a certain attitude and following commandments and rules will force the hand of the Divine. This isn’t true. Self will come find you when you devote yourself to truth with a pure heart. Truth desires the authenticity of your person—nothing about your person is not as it should be. It’s not your person per se that is at stake here. And yet you have been devoted to nothing else. Truth despises all false-hood and hypocrisy. Without authenticity there can be no awakening! Maintaining a spiritual image can be like a drug, but it is not enough for freedom.

 

Sometimes I have the feeling that in all this emptiness the motivation to go on living is lacking.

MADHUKAR: No, this is a misunderstanding. It isn’t emptiness itself you mean but rather your inclination to be lazy. Emptiness is very powerful. Enquiry via the mind always results in thousands of contradictions. Beyond this, the mind possesses the dangerous tendency to pander to the will. You haven’t been

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using this capacity of your mind to achieve happiness. Mind moves in dualities.

Make use of it for everyday tasks. It can be of use to you there.

Use it as a friend and helper. If you are kind to it, it will serve you willingly.

But if you are constantly at odds with your own mind, it will turn into a war.

Instead—better go for inquiry. Ask yourself: “Who am I?”

Ask yourself this question right now. Apply this question right now, and then tell me what happens.

There is a presence there that is perceiving.

MADHUKAR: And who is perceiving this perception? You’ll have to get things clearly in focus, otherwise you’re wasting your time. All your life you’ve been looking at appearances—constantly, endlessly, for years and years, for decades. Therefore, look right now, look directly! Who is perceiving?

No one.

MADHUKAR: Is there a problem with this no man’s land?

No.

MADHUKAR: Maintain this focus, this is true presence! You would have to be quite foolish not to find it attractive.

 

Put an end to the cycle of suffering, end it right now and stick to this!

 

What can I do to keep from forgetting the peacefulness I am in right now?

MADHUKAR: Since a troubled mind will keep coming back to visit you, you’ll have to withdraw deep into your heart. Your heart is filled with an ancient trust that is deeper than all influences, deeper than everything you have experienced in your life. Satsang can touch this in you. This ancient trust is deeper than anything else. It existed even before your body. This is why in Satsang we do not concern ourselves with mental influences but instead arrive here—in a

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place that predates all influence. Don’t waste time on the stirrings of your mind.

Remember that deep within your inner life there is Love.

 

An elderly lady wrote to me from Hamburg: “Dear Madhukar, thank you for the love I had the privilege of experiencing through you, thank you for your loving care. Waves of love and warmth keep flooding through me. Things that used to excite or anger me now don’t trouble me in the least. Thank you for this peace, it has made my life simpler and more beautiful. I wanted to say this to you in person during the retreat, but I missed my chance, and often I find myself speechless and don’t wish to speak. I feel so drawn to you, and am very much looking forward to our next meeting. All love, Christa.”

 

I allow fear to get the better of me and then lose control.

MADHUKAR: At any moment someone might attack you. This sort of fear?

Yes, it just keeps building.

MADHUKAR: I’d call it fearfulness instead.

One thought leads to the next. It just goes on and on.

MADHUKAR: Where are you while these thoughts are going on and on?

When this happens, I think I am the thought. It’s very painful. I feel as though I have no strength left. Even just asking myself who I am seems absurd to me. I don’t have the strength.

MADHUKAR: Do not allow your thoughts to gain the upper hand! When one thought starts leading to another, then it’s time to wake up. Your first thought is:

“I.” First there is silence, then comes that first thought: “I.” The first corruption.

Every morning you wake up and suddenly you are here. The world comes into being.

 

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It’s not so easy to see this.

MADHUKAR: There is a natural reaction on the part of the body-mind organism: terror. It’s the natural function of fear, which is good and can save your life in certain situations. If for example a car is about to run you over or if someone is about to mug you, your fear can help you react quickly enough. This is a reaction left over from the steppes and forests—there’s nothing wrong with it. But the fear you’re talking about is unnatural. It is something that originates in so-called civilization. It appears absurd to you to ask who you are, but experiencing this anxiety doesn’t strike you as absurd?

It’s just an automatic reaction.

MADHUKAR: Yes, I understand. It is also a result of an aggressive sort of energy we find in society. Fortunately fear isn’t the only thing that is found between human beings—there is also friendship and togetherness. To be sure, sometimes everything feels dominated by a leaden fear—a very unhealthy atmosphere. But at every moment you are able to check whether this is really the truth. What is freedom to you?

No longer feeling I am a slave to my thoughts.

MADHUKAR: Then you must examine the chains that are holding you fast and keeping you down. Show me your chains.

They are thought patterns. I’ve nurtured them well.

MADHUKAR: Idle notions, nothing but ideas. Polished to a sheen.

I am only now able to recognize them. Now I can see that there are chains there.

 

Thousands of years ago already Epicurus saw overcoming pain and fear as a necessary condition for happiness. For him, the purpose of life is pleasure.

Epicurus isn’t interested in pure Hedonism but rather in a more profound idea of pleasure, joy that comes from within, what is called Eudaimonia. Epicurus’s

 

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own personal ethics called for “serenity in a circle of friends.” In the tantra too, one discovers that all sensual experience is inherently pure and blissful.

 

Does it make sense to believe in rebirth?

MADHUKAR: Believing in rebirth is superfluous—it’s only partially true, an invention of the mind. When you know who

are, the ego’s franticness at the

you

thought of ceasing to exist will vanish.

Is it true that it is only memory and its recollections that are reborn and that’s why it’s sometimes possible to remember other lives?

MADHUKAR: It is possible to remember previous lives just as you remember a dream. Does this mean that the dream is real? If you dreamed last night that you lived in another country, does this make this true today? No. Only in the reality of the dream. Rebirth might exist within a reality of this sort, but within absolute reality it does not exist. And for someone who lives in pursuit of truth, there is no need whatever to concern oneself with this.

Does this mean that basically there is no progress?

MADHUKAR: Basically, no, but there is definitely progress in the judgment of our mind. It all depends on how you define progress. If you used to live in student digs without a shower, it’s progress when you move into an apartment with a bathtub and shower. But do these things touch your Self? No, the Self never takes a shower, the Self is the source of all things.

 

Que sera sera.

 

In popular journals I keep running into more and more articles about the crisis in our image of mankind. I was especially shocked by the remark that the world contains six billion nobodies.

 

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MADHUKAR: The main thesis of contemporary scientists who study consciousness is: “There is no I-core within human beings.” One of the prominent defenders of this theory is Professor Thomas Metzinger, a philosopher specializ-ing in the study of consciousness. He postulates: “No one ever was or ever had a self.”

I agree with this, but I would like to refine this quote to say: no one ever had a personal self. And with this we can put to an end “the human race’s almost three-century-long search for the self.” Metzinger says: “Everything we think we are is based on the exchange of signals between the 100 billion neurons in the brain, the nodes connecting the nerve fibers.” What does this mean? “The brain works only with models of reality and the body. These are nothing more than patterns of excitement for nerve bundles that we are unable to recognize as such. These models do not correspond to any material substance, any thing, any single neuron—nothing you can point to with a finger. They are merely an intelligent way to organize the flow of information. Since we are constantly mistaking ourselves for these models, in other words the images that the brain produces in its waking state, this thesis proposes that we consider our I real.”

Thinkers, above all Vedic and Buddhist philosophers and mystics like Shankara and Nagarjuna reached similar conclusions even earlier on. Meister Eckhart and Teresa of Àvila, Medieval Christian mystics, lived the Unio Mystica, mystical unity. Meister Eckhart gained insight into an unrealized divine reality that he called “Isness.”

 

I feel guilty. I think I’ve fallen in love with you.

MADHUKAR: It is perfectly natural to feel love for a master, to fall in love. Pure consciousness is highly erotic. It’s the same with Krishna. All “Krish” means is

“attraction.” Krishna, the attractive one. So feeling attraction is perfectly normal.

I love my master too. He was 84 years old, and all of us in the Sangha were weak-kneed in his presence. One could even speak of a certain erotic attraction, even though this wasn’t the main thing.

Krishna, too, used erotic attraction to dance with the Gopis. He played his flute. And at night women would secretly slip away from their husbands and dance with him. And along with the dance wonderful things occurred. The transfer of realization.

 

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If the dualistic mind keeps wandering back and forth between attraction and guilt, you miss the quintessence. Sitting there stiff as a poker and babbling away about love don’t go together. In front of Papaji , women would be rolling on the floor, fighting and hissing at one another with fingers like claws, fur would fly; and when someone wanted to get between them to separate them, he would hear the vehement order “Let them be! Let them fight!”

What could be wrong with this if there is love blossoming inside you?

 

Always, whenever someone with a pure heart cries out for help, the master appears. This is cosmic law. The form of this appearance cannot be predetermined—it might be in a dream or in the form of a vision, in the formless heart or in flesh and blood. His appearance is law.

 

When I am here, everything is perfectly clear to me. I can feel the state of Being and the essence, but in my everyday life all of this slips away from me.

MADHUKAR: I don’t believe you.

I know that the essence is there, but I cannot feel it, I am following my thoughts into the future or the past.

MADHUKAR: So this must be better for you.

It isn’t better. My mind would rather have a method to help me be conscious of the essence in my everyday life.

MADHUKAR: Your mind, this constant stream of thoughts, is constantly producing an eloquent philosophy that isn’t always so loud. It demands a method because it wants to stay in charge and therefore has to trick you. It wants to both propose and dispose—that’s what the mind likes. Your very intention of simply being here and being happy without it is a significant threat for the mind.

Here and now you have the opportunity to make Satsang your everyday life.

In this way, you can always be happy, and now and then you might return to

 

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your “old” everyday life, basically to get some relief from all this blissfulness, and lose yourself in it.

After thousands of years of spiritual, religious paths, we are forced to recognize that having methods is quite interesting and in fact necessary to maintain the variety of the world’s cultures, but in fact methods are no use at all if what you want is to be absolutely free. A religious spiritual person will never awake.

Methods are a form of procrastination, a way of delaying your awakening.

This may be hard to hear, but methods are completely superfluous, because you are already free. You are just imagining your prison. Part of your mind has become “spiritual” and now is planning: “I will now do such and such for such and such a length of time in order to achieve this or that state.” In your case, it is a mishmash of all the books you’ve read and your spiritual experiences; it is an amalgam of Buddha , Christ and Shiva, with a few sticks of incense thrown in. What exactly you are imagining depends on where you are coming from. I don’t know what you imagine that being free is supposed to feel like.

The best thing is to awaken in the present moment. Now, at this moment, I am not imagining the taste of this grape (Madhukar takes a grape and eats it). I am surprised by its taste. It is very sweet.

 

I am afraid of Nothingness.

MADHUKAR: Shunyata, which in Sanskrit means “emptiness,” is positive for most people. But to be sure, this is only the case for people who live in the Eastern hemisphere. In our culture, emptiness has a negative connotation.

Nothingness, darkness, emptiness, fear. And for this reason we are constantly running after material things and other people, running away from this apparent emptiness that we only vaguely sense. Something or other needs to make us happy. It’s just that we don’t know what. We don’t understand why we aren’t completely satisfied with the things we own, or the partner we’re with. Constantly we are occupied with running away from our own inner emptiness.

Let’s have a look at this emptiness. Is it really emptiness or is it just some other concept? Is it really as terrifying as we imagine? Do we have to run away immediately out of terror, or can we fall deeper instead, and arrive? Or even stop? Here and Now. For this reason I advise you to practice self-enquiry even in your everyday life, not as an exercise but as awakening in consciousness.

 

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Some people claim here that what was negative in their lives gave them the impetus to awaken. Most people, though, are striving for a happiness that proves to be nothing more than an illusion.

Here we have a room filled with loving, kind people. Why have you come here? In order to be happy for these two hours, or to awaken? Most spiritual methods—for example breathing techniques or physical exercises—set processes in motion in your body that will give you a feeling of happiness, but the problem is that this is only a temporary phenomenon that soon vanishes again.

Once you stop applying the method in question, the happiness disappears.

So you have to keep doing something in order to be happy, and to me this is unacceptable. For true Self you don’t have to do anything at all.

I used to be a yoga teacher, and in keeping with what I knew at the time, I taught yoga in good faith. I wanted to give people something, and it was fun.

I love physical activity. Practicing and teaching yoga did me and my students good, I felt better, they learned something and felt better, but in fact I was betraying them the whole time out of ignorance of the Absolute, because it is not necessary to practice yoga in order to awaken.

Millions of people waste their time on “spirituality,” even though what they really want is to be free. If what you are after is a sense of community, if you want to sing or practice together with other people in order to feel good, if you have an interest in having visions of angels, summoning UFOs, redirecting energies by means of crystals, then that’s your business, but it has nothing to do with freedom.

 

Philosophy is an empty shell, the living master is nourishment that refreshes.

 

Go ahead and live your life quite normally, do whatever you like, and pay no attention to what your neighbors think of you. Don’t live your neighbors’ life.

Just simply be, and play whatever does you good, whatever you enjoy. Avoid earnestly spiritual, hypocritical people.

 

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Why has the true Self allowed these veils, these misunderstandings of perception to come into being in the first place? Obviously these things must have had a beginning at some point.

MADHUKAR: Perhaps billions of years ago.

But why?

MADHUKAR: The Self was such a unity that it was bored. It was so content with itself that it said to itself: “Let me give some thought to life.” And bam!—that’s how the universe came to be. For the past 13.7 billion years it has been continuing to grow.

But how is it possible that the Self could be bored? I don’t understand.

MADHUKAR: Nor do I. I don’t want to talk you into accepting some speculative explanation. In my case it was more concrete. I suffered. I was lonely even though I lived in a city filled with beautiful canals and got to know a large number of hip people. I was frustrated, dissatisfied with my happiness, with the beauty of life. I had been searching for the meaning of life all my life, and had often felt cut off from other people. And so I had a quite concrete problem.

So then I set off on a spiritual path. Years later I began to search for truth through self-enquiry: What is freedom? Who am I? When I arrived in the Now, this sort of questioning vanished, because there is abundance here. For me it is utterly uninteresting why everything is supposed to have come into being billions of years ago. What’s it to me? The beginning is Now! Now is peace!

You, though, are interested in this because you don’t want to look to see who you really are. Clever minds—and you are certainly clever—have tried to explain the world, the universe. And since time immemorial they have tried to do so using the question “Why?” This question leads away from you yourself.

Only “Who am I?” leads to you.

This is the best responsibility you can find: “I am.” All the other questions about God and the universe will take care of themselves, without your lifting a finger. Questions arise from the Self and then dissolve back into it. I am very grateful. I find life wonderful and also feel respect for the lunacy I myself have lived through. I too once rode the rollercoaster of suffering and happiness.

Both were present: pain and ecstasy, the greatest disappointment and the most sublime pleasure.

 

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Being realization is easy. Proofs of nothingness are unnecessary. Once Being has been recognized, life can be lived pragmatically. Nonetheless, scientific discoveries are fascinating. Do you know that the volume of common matter is 99.999999999999 percent empty space? You could squeeze all of mankind into a cube with the surface area of six thumbnails, all you’d have to do is suck all the empty space from between the atoms.

 

Are sports part of your lineage as a master?

MADHUKAR: An affinity to sports is something shared by Papaji and myself, not so much by Ramana, although he was quite sporty as a child. With me, things have now gotten to the point where this morning the entire Frankfurter Eintracht soccer team showed up at my hotel to ask for my blessing.

You’re joking, right?

MADHUKAR: Not at all! They’re about to play a game here at the Waldstadion.

It seems to me they could use the help.

MADHUKAR: Yes, but they’ve been doing better lately.

The beginning of the season was rough.

MADHUKAR: They’ll do fine. Nowadays they don’t call it blessing, they call it coaching.

That’s right.

(It later turned out that this visitor was a professional business coach. And the Frankfurt team won an unprecedented victory against the Gelsenkirchen team Schalke—a stunning 6:0!)

 

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In early Buddhism, the label “empty” still refers exclusively to a person, an entity without a lasting Self. The notion of the Self, which human beings assume to be constant and separate, is rather an interpretation based on attachment that can be seen through if one is vigilant, with the help of meditative insights.

The Indian mystic Nagarjun a, who loved to debate, worked out the concept of emptiness eight hundred years later in detail. In his Prajnaparamita writings, for example the Heart-Sutra of Mahayana, the concept of emptiness, Shunyata, is slightly changed. It is not only the center of the human being—conceived of as a “person”—that is empty, but also all the factors that determine the entire world of that person’s experience. All creatures, whether blind or enlightened, are therefore inextricably bound together and cannot be differentiated. At the pinnacle of realization ( Prajna) there is no longer any difference between Samsara and Nirvana. Realization and knowledge ( Jnana): All beings are already free in their emptiness. The truth in the highest sense can now be seen only in nonverbal realization, as emptiness.

 

THE DREAM OF EVERYDAY LIFE IS A CROSS

I can’t get away from my addictions. I was able to give up my alcohol addiction twenty years ago, but I am addicted to smoking. I only have half my lung capacity left and am constantly gasping for breath; and even so I find it impossible to stop smoking. Once I managed to stop for four weeks, but then I became so agitated and confused that I had to start taking cortisone. This addiction is preventing me from coming into my own. I am never truly at peace. The only times I feel peaceful is when I am praying, but the rest of the time it’s as if I’m in prison and I don’t know how to get out again.

MADHUKAR: In your case, prayer is advisable. Prayer is very important in this case—or do you also pray with a cigarette in your mouth?

 

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No. Smoking takes all my energy away.

MADHUKAR: It’s true, you are breathing with difficulty and speak with a scratchy voice. It is a poison, a nerve poison. Though admittedly there was at least one wise man who was a chain smoker. He was addicted to Bidis, hand-rolled Indian cigarettes. They look cute, but they are extremely toxic. To be sure this wise man, whose name was Nisargadatta Maharaj, did have the advantage of knowing that he was not his body. And for this reason he was able to remain free from making a drama out of suffering. He died of larynx cancer. In other words, he had the same habit you do. But he didn’t pray, instead he tended the holy pictures of his guru every day, keeping them clean and adorning them with beautiful flowers—which in India requires true devotion, considering all the dust flying about. Every day he received visitors and answered questions.

After praying I once suddenly had the feeling that I should stop fighting the smoking and that it would be better just to accept my addiction and the state of my health, and that this would make it easier for me to give it up.

MADHUKAR: Yes, that is quite right. When the addiction is ready to leave you, it will leave you, effortlessly.

That would be nice.

MADHUKAR: You don’t have so much lung left. Lungs are like wings, and if you only have one of them, it’s hard to flap. If you want to pray, then pray for forgiveness for those people who out of a despicable addiction to money enslave others in addictions. Pray for realization on the part of those politicians who prostitute themselves at lobbyist conventions. In Berlin, by the way, there are more lobbyist bureaus than members of parliament. So does it surprise you that Germany is still the most hospitable country in the world for smokers and the tobacco business?

Besides this ask yourself who is praying and to whom. Who is? This will lead you directly into an oxygen tent filled with the purest radiation: the Self.

 

What is the meaning of resistance? What is it protecting us from?

 

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MADHUKAR: Are you a specialist? Why does this interest you?

Because I know the resistance within myself.

MADHUKAR: So you are a specialist in matters of resistance. And you don’t know what you are trying to protect yourself from with your resistance?

Only vaguely.

MADHUKAR: Then I’ll tell you what it’s protecting you from. It’s something very frightening: love.

 

The sun can only smile about our infatuation with the play of shadows that makes us overlook the presence of the sun. Without sun, there would be no shadows.

 

For me, God is love, and love cannot do anything without love. Even when I was a child I found it horrible that Christ was crucified, and I wonder whether this means symbolically that each one of us is forced to bear his own cross.

MADHUKAR: Each of us has the privilege of carrying it!

I cannot find my way to Christ any more the way I once was able to. And I cannot imagine that God would condemn a soul to eternal damnation, as the church tells us. God would never do that.

MADHUKAR: No, surely not. I don’t trust she would do that either.

Why would the church teach such a thing?

MADHUKAR: You’ll have to ask the guys who run the church. I’m not a big church man or a Bible specialist. For this, you’ll have to turn to the people in Rome. Maybe there’s even a Christian help line you can call.

 

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For a while I used to feel guilty because I keep distancing myself more and more from the church and have been making contact with God in my own way.

MADHUKAR: It’s your business whether you want to get closer to the church or distance yourself from it. I don’t have anything to say about that. But it’s most certainly the case that you don't have anything to feel guilty about. You might owe your bank something, but you don’t owe the church anything at all, you don’t have debts in the divine sector. In fact, let me just check (Madhukar clos-es his eyes). Done! All your debts have been erased. So you can go home now in the best of spirits. Deep within you a flame is burning: your true Self. Attend to it. This flame will ignite any cross you might be bearing—crosses, as you know are made of wood—and burn it to ash. Hallelujah! That’s how easy it is.

 

As long as there are sheep there will be shepherds. How many times have you seen lions being herded?

 

Even Jesus himself gave up taking away people’s physical suffering. At first he performed miracles, healed the sick, cured leprosy and other ills, but later he stopped doing this when he discovered that this didn’t make people any better.

Even Lazarus was cranky when he was brought back from the dead. There’s a story that astonished me when I read it in a Buddhist journal in Hawaii, because I hadn’t known it from the Bible. We know that already in the year 325 at the Council of Nicaea the most inconceivable gospels were banned and removed from the Holy Scripture.

Here’s the story: Jesus had given a blind man eyesight. When later on his wanderings he passed through the man’s village, he realized that the man had strayed from the path of righteousness. Jesus confronted him, and the man replied: “It’s not my fault, it’s yours. You took my blindness from me. Now I can see all there is, and I want it.”

This is how mankind repaid Jesus for his kindness. This is also the reason why the master will give his student advice only once or twice—if at all—when asked to do so. If he sees that his advice is being ignored, he stops giving it.

Why should he provide advice if it’s only a burden?

 

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In my life...

MADHUKAR: … “Your” life does not belong to you. How can you say “in my life?” What an arrogant appropriation of something that is beyond your control!

For the sake of comprehensibility, let’s agree to say “in life,” even though this too is an illusion. Go on.

In life I was overcome by depression, and my question is: Can depressive states prevent me from realizing who I truly am?

MADHUKAR: Less than living everyday life as a dream. The dream of everyday life is far more soporific. Depression is an illness of the brain and should be medically treated. But at the same time there is also a hidden potential there: It might still be discovered that these abnormalities of the mind are untrue. Never forget that! Remain aware of this. The illusion of “my” mind is more deceptive.

My body, my wife, my life, my child—this is how fools speak.

Much sediment, collected over millions of years, much garbage that was hidden deep down in the mud of the subconscious sometimes floats to the top in life. Even if you are orienting towards the search for truth, for your true Self, this can still happen. There’s nothing wrong with it. It even has its good side.

Things get stirred up and washed away by the eternal source of consciousness.

Look at these processes as storms that purify. Just as in the middle of summer when dark cumulonimbus clouds give rise to thunder and lightning and rain themselves out, a catharsis often comes about when we turn to the Self. You are freeing yourself from conflicts of the soul. Focus exclusively on the source of consciousness until it has been recognized as absolute reality, as truth. Then even the sharp-edged side of the illusion has no power to cut.

Jesus was tempted by melancholy, as was Buddha when he was still Prince Gautama. Both of them strode through this phase by maintaining a consistent attitude and cultivating great honesty—without lifting a finger. True consciousness is motionless.

I can feel that.

 

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MADHUKAR: What other option do we have than to trust in grace? Grace is what led you here. Between us there was never a distance. Neither here nor ever before.

 

Once I heard you say that someone who cannot forgive and love his mother is incapable of awakening.

MADHUKAR: What conclusions do you draw from this?

I have a hard time loving my mother unconditionally. I still hold certain grudges.

MADHUKAR: Under what circumstances would you be able to love her?

Under the condition that she realizes ...

MADHUKAR: What about your own realization? Here in Satsang we speak of realization. Making reference to a philosophy, we speak of Jnana-Yoga, the yoga of realization, the yoga of Oneness.

You require realization from your mother? Don’t forget that your awakening influences sixty-four generations. It’s certainly likely that your reali zation will

help your mother as well. And with this you will be giving back only a tiny fraction of what you have received, namely: this body. Without it you would not be here and would have no chance of awakening. Once you were very close to your mother. You drank and ate from her body, for nine whole months and even after. Don't go on carrying around unnecessary sacks of bitter gall. Put an end to this nonsense. I’ll give you one night. Don’t shut your eyes until you’ve cleared this up!

Okay.

MADHUKAR: Your mother gave what was possible for her in her situation. Your mother did what was best for you—I can say this even without knowing any details of your history, even though I assume that it was painful for you.

In the world there are countless conflicts between civilizations. How can we expect these peoples to be able to make peace with one another after all this

 

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hate, murder and manslaughter, after rapes and plundering, if they cannot even make peace with their own mothers?

 

Without love in your heart, you will drift endlessly across this planet and will never find fulfillment.

 

I just read an article about heart transplants in a popular science magazine.

The result of the studies described there was that white blood cells in isolation will still react emotionally in just the same way as the person they were taken from.The scientists keep moving away from a purely materialist view of the world because of their own studies.They recognize the existence of fields of information, perhaps this is a first step into the plane of spirituality.

MADHUKAR: For this reason it is quite dangerous to spend time near me, in the informational fields that surround me. Quite possible this can make you happy.

Who wants that?

Meanwhile it’s generally well known that water can transmit information. The human body contains a very high percentage of water, on average almost 68

percent, and in the brain as much as 80 percent—the brain is almost all water.

So now do you understand why in the presence of a master one needn’t do anything at all? Everything just occurs!

On the other hand, if you do have a program that consists of resistances and repeated, limiting dogmas, then you are nothing more than this limited person.

Certain figures are astonishingly successful in this field.

Yes, a calculated world view of one’s “own” can be nicely sealed off hermetical-ly within the mind. But in reality, is this all just an illusion?

MADHUKAR: In reality it’s an illusion. Some find it fun, others suffer beneath it.

But does it make no difference whether you are feeling happiness or suffering?

MADHUKAR: Biochemically, from the point of view of neural impulses, it makes

 

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no difference. As you perhaps know, pain and orgasm come from the same electrical impulse. One person prefers the orgiastic, another the painful.

Now you yourself have noted that knowledge of philosophy is no guarantee of freedom, no guarantee for what you desire: Enlightenment. I would claim, however, that self-enquiry does guarantee true Being. Or to put it more simply: Let’s take a look!

 

Self-love is a cornerstone of Christianity. Accepting yourself. Recognizing yourself. Jesus said: “Love your neighbor like yourself.” If no one loves himself, it isn’t surprising that no one takes this to heart. The first thing of all is to find out who I am. People try loving their neighbor, but they don’t love themselves.

Therefore it’s all but impossible for them to love themselves. I am not speaking of the self-love of egotism but rather of the self-love of the Self. If I am true love, then love of my neighbor—in whatever form—will just occur.

 

The day before yesterday a seriously ill woman asked me for help. I don’t see the meaning of my life in being a healer. Nonetheless, healing occurred. The next day, the woman return, healed. Ecstatic, filled with gratitude, free from pain. But now her insurance company is complaining.

 

Do anger and violence have to be expressed when they arise?

MADHUKAR: Violence never just arises. Anger may arise, but not violence.

But you can feel violence.

MADHUKAR: You can feel aggression, and sometimes aggression gives rise to violence. Does this occur with you?

Yes. When it does, I could just explode.

MADHUKAR: I don’t believe you can.

 

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No, really, I can.

MADHUKAR: As a little boy, I had a fish in an aquarium. One day my fish ate so much live food that its belly exploded. So I know that for Gesi, my harlequin rasbora, it really was possible to explode. Go ahead, be angry. This is the fero-cious side of femininity.

There’s a great deal of force behind it.

MADHUKAR: Precisely. You have a right to this power.

Does your story about the fish that ate until it burst mean that I have built up too much aggression?

MADHUKAR: It means that you shouldn’t take into your body anything that doesn’t do you good.

What about what’s already stored up inside?

MADHUKAR: It’ll get digested eventually if you don’t keep adding more. So dwell in the Now, in which everything appears, both love and anger.

Recognize this presence, and immediately or successively even anger and violence will vanish from your life. In presence, everything vanishes.

 

You are looking from the perspective of an expectation, and for this reason you see nothing—there isn’t even anything there! I, who am empty, see universes arrive and depart, strands of DNA form and dissolve, millions, billions of years, all of it here now, an abundance of gigantic proportions. What you should do is to enjoy this nothingness. For millions of years you had experiences, learning, illusions, and now you can simply enjoy this nothingness. Do not get caught up in the fascination of nothingness and abundance. Instead, dwell within yourself, the source in which even this phenomenon of nothingness comes into being and vanishes again. You are deeper than all of this, utterly inviolate.

 

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ALGAE, FISH & MONKEY

Bhagavan loved monkeys very much. He loved clambering about with them in the jungle on his Arunachala . Sitting with visitors and devotees on his pallet in the ashram, on the other hand, he would jestingly say he was “in prison.”

I, too, sat high up on the mountain yesterday, in the silence of my favorite spot beneath the white blossoms of an acacia on a rock high up above the mighty pyramid temple of Tiruvannamalai. All around me a horde of macaques was playing, when suddenly I heard somebody throwing rocks at them, which made them very excited and alarmed—and all of them ran to me! The mothers with their babies crouched against me, monkeys large and small sought my protection, all of them clustered around me, asking for help. They said to me: “All we want to do is take our share of the fruits of the earth that belong to everyone. For thousands of years we have lived here on the mountain and now more and more stupid tourists come here and throw stones at us.” And so I waved my arms wildly in the direction of the Indian troublemakers and shouted: “Stop this nonsense, don’t throw stones!” When later I descended the mountain path, dusk was already falling. Behind a bend in the road, a gigantic male monkey was sitting in the middle of the path. I said in surprise: “Hanuman, what are you doing here?” “Good work, Madhukar!” he replied as I respectfully made my way past him.

If I can be of help even to monkeys, why should I not be able to help you?

 

How does it work that all your answers to the questions you are asked fit so perfectly and are so appropriate to the person asking them?

MADHUKAR: Because there is no separation of any sort between you and me and I do not think. Before people used to say: “God knows everything.” Today I say: “The Self knows everything.” For God and the Self are one and the same.

It is a minor miracle that the questions are answered excellently and that often something is added that astonishes the one who asked the question because he assumed I couldn’t know this. I don’t give it any thought—it occurs. Our blessed lineage has existed for tens of thousands of years now, there is much experience there. I am merely here to be of service. My own person is irrele-vant. So do not judge my person positively or negatively. There are the most

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various opinions about me, of the sort: “If he were a true master, he would not have licked his coffee spoon clean.” People have bizarre notions of how I should be, but this does not burden me in any way.

 

I have not yet discovered through self-enquiry who I am. Could it be that surrender is my path?

MADHUKAR: What is stopping you from surrendering?

I don't know whether surrender or self-enquiry is right for me. Therefore I am asking you: Can you tell me which is the right path for me?

MADHUKAR: Yes.

Then please tell me.

MADHUKAR: Stop right where you are, do not take one more step! Do not budge even an inch from this spot. Discard the idea of a path. You have already been on the road for so long. Millions of years ago you were algae, and from algae to this splendid human body-mind entity is a very long path. Enough of being on the road! Now it is time to be here. Do not allow any more chime-ras, any more concepts attach themselves to you! Here is only peace, happiness and love. Everything is here, it has always been waiting for you. Do not betray it any longer with hopes, desires and the past. This life is precious. We met at just the right moment.

 

I am surprised by what is occurring.

MADHUKAR: What is occurring?

I can’t put it into words.

MADHUKAR: But you can put your surprise into words.

 

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I am very much at peace with myself, and when moments come when I am not at peace ...

MADHUKAR: Stop! I am very much at peace with myself—period!

Then I don’t have any more questions.

MADHUKAR: Wonderful.

 

Love is always new. If love is not new, then we cannot speak of love, then what we are talking about is arrangements, compromises, contracts and prison. Love is always virginal. Love is fresh.

 

I often don’t know what to do with all my feelings. They are states that come and go and that I don’t really have to take seriously. But sometimes it is important to me to take my feelings seriously.

MADHUKAR: Where does this lead to? To seriousness, perhaps?

Yes, I don't know whether that is just some program again to leave them out. Is this only a program?

MADHUKAR: Yes. But this doesn’t mean you should suppress your feelings. Let your feelings out. But also bear the consequences.

That’s exactly where the problem lies.

MADHUKAR: It’s still better to take the consequences of feelings than to contract gall-bladder cancer! And how exactly do you come to say “My feelings?”

All of us are so quick to claim possession and speak about “mine:” “My body, my thoughts, my feelings, my opinion.” But the I that this “mine” is referring to has not yet been recognized.

Will the feelings still be there after I have recognized who the I is?

 

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MADHUKAR: No doubt you will have fewer feelings. Which can still be more.

Yes, I understand.

MADHUKAR: One thing is certain, you will not suffer nearly as much as is currently the case. Grief can still arise because of a misfortune or some other occurrence. So can joy and all the rest of the emotions. All these things can appear, but you can no longer forget who you are. All ignorance will have vanished. Lack of knowledge will be flooded with Being.

Do you want to be rid of your feelings?

Not really. Only in part.

MADHUKAR: Then enjoy them.

Sometimes this works, but sometimes when I am overcome with aggression, for example, well, then ...

MADHUKAR: … aggression towards me, for example?

For example.

MADHUKAR: Out with it! This should be interesting!

Do I have to take this aggression seriously, or is it only ego and unreal? When I am furious and don’t respond to my own aggression, it eats me up inside.

MADHUKAR: Rage also arises out of ignorance and frustration. You have the option of living this rage, which can be very liberating. Rage has great power, and that can be very nice. On the other hand, there’s a serious danger that this rage will give rise to suffering. Suffering both for you and for others. Particularly if you hold on to this rage. Rage is impulsive and comes from the character of your mind. Let the rage show up when it needs to, but do not hold on to it. Do not allow a chronological continuity of rage to develop.

I too suffered greatly from rage. This was rage against others, social injustice, blind politics and the destruction of my beloved mother: the earth. My rage was justified and of course it was acted out superbly and there were absolutely reasons for it. The thing that baffled me was noticing that it was always bound

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up with frustration. And so I looked deep within to see where this rage came from. Of course, each one of us has the option to blame our rage on someone else: father, mother, teachers, childhood dramas are always likely suspects…

But if you are honest and delve deeper, you will see that this frustration goes back farther. Even farther than your family tree, farther than the history of your country with all its suffering, injustice and rage. Further back to the very roots of our culture, the proud knights and wild Teutons, Artus and Siegfried, all the way back to the cradle of humanity, back to a far distant dawn: primeval frustration.

Did it arise from that first separation? From being driven out of the paradise of unity? From being cast out of the nurturing bosom of Oneness? From the division of the Self and the first “I?” Or from the apparent breakdown of a fundamental human right: happiness. Even if you go back to the roots I’ve mentioned here, the roots of your absolute existence, you will not find the beginning of your rage. For this reason, in cultures that are older than Christianity it is accepted that the gods are, on the one hand, very wise and loving, but on the other filled with rage.The Hindu god Shiva has—like his pendant Wotan—no problem with being enraged. And just look at the goddess Freya, look at the goddess Kali: neither of them hesitates to bite off men’s heads and dance on their torsos. Kali wears a necklace made of heads and sings: “I have freed them all!” A culture in which there are goddesses like this has a greater understanding for the human psyche, for its duality, its ambivalent nature, both the loving and the terrible aspects of humankind that we find evidence of everywhere in both our daily lives and in world events—people can turn into beasts, and these beasts can then become lambs again. But if you have the courage to enquire into who you really are, you can put an end once and for all to the endless cycle of fulfillment, separation, frustration and rage.

All I want to change is my own person.

MADHUKAR: Almost everyone wants to change his person, and even religions are based on this desire to improve.

But this never seems to go anywhere.

MADHUKAR: If it went nowhere, that would be great! But it’s not that it leads to nothingness—instead it leads us to confusion. Into the interweaving of occurrences. It leads to the intricately woven tapestry of illusions.

 

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Go directly to the eternal root, the source of Being. This is only possible through surrender or self-enquiry. A venture that will be rewarded with peace.

What needs to happen for this to occur may be different for each individual. In my case, what occurred was one last violent explosion of rage.

So it could happen that everything just busts out of there?

MADHUKAR: That’s just what might happen. And then the realization of who is will be coupled with the unequivocal realization that only peace is. And then everything—if something occurs in the manner of the goddess Kali—will be in the service of mankind: You embrace this one, and bite another one’s head off.

Both are a form of blessing for the one on the receiving end. And that’s all there is to it.

 

A THEORY OF EVERYTHING FOR PEACE

The Daoist Zhuangzi wrote 2300 years ago in his True Classic of the Southern Flower Country: “Forget the interpretations, leap into the boundless and make it your home.” Thoughts, he writes, are afflictions that “bewilder the heart.” This mystic who practiced a light-hearted self-forgetfulness and whose writings emphasize silence, Oneness and freedom from thought, is no doubt best known for his parable about the transformation of all things, the Butterfly Dream. In its briefest form: Am I a human being dreaming of being a butterfly, or a butterfly dreaming of being a human?

 

Since I first encountered you, I have been seeing “M” everywhere I look. Now I have also been reading about the M-Theory. What is it exactly?

MADHUKAR: The M-Theory is a theory of everything. At the moment it is the hottest set of ideas in the universe of our brightest minds, a metaphysical attempt to explain the world. Mathematically, it is already working. According to

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particle physicists, everything is different from what the defenders of divine order on the one hand and the defenders of magnificent chance on the other believe or are trying to prove.

It combines Einstein’s Theory of Relativity with the eleven-dimensional world of strings, these oscillating bits of energy—in other words it offers an interpretation of both the greatest hidden connections in the cosmos and the tiniest elementary particles, and of course it unites these separate theories. In other words, its subject is the One: both Everything and Nothing.

 

You are right in your suppositions: If I were to fool you, to deceive you by saying: “You are not free! You must do such-and-such, for three years,” there would be thousands of people sitting here. Man loves deception, because he himself is a deceiver. Deceivers love deception, since self-deception is all they know. But it would become clear sooner or later that your true Self is immune from deception.

 

Who and what is it inside me that wants to be free if it is already free?

MADHUKAR: Just as love feels drawn to love and beauty to beauty, Self also feels drawn to Self. The ostensible prisoner who thinks himself surrounded by suffering and limitations—this person wishes to be liberated.

I want to understand the key.

MADHUKAR: You will never understand the key. The key is freedom! What is there to understand? The key will never be understood, and the desire to understand it vanishes as soon as that which truly is reveals itself.

 

There are many people who are in search of freedom, but there are many others who find this utterly uninteresting. Sometimes I have encounters with people who wonder, “Why are you so determined to continue this searching?” The-108

se people are simply living their lives. Will I be living exactly the same life as these other people are living now when my searching comes to an end?

MADHUKAR: No, when your search is over, you will certainly not be living the life of these other people. There is this classic dialogue between an Unsui, a Zen novice, and his master: “What is the difference between before and after awakening?—Before the awakening there is water to carry and wood to chop, and afterward there is water to carry and wood to chop.” Nonetheless there is an enormous difference between carrying water and cloud water. Before it was a burden, and afterward it is a joy. Which do you prefer?

Joy.

MADHUKAR: Joy! Precisely! So don’t compare yourself to people whom we could say enjoy the grace not to think about anything and to be satisfied with what is considered normal. The grace you have received is to be dissatisfied with what is considered normal, and you are enquiring into who you are.

In relationships, I have found that things don’t work if my partner has no interest in self-enquiry.

MADHUKAR: That makes sense to me. If your partner doesn’t take an interest in this, that can be quite a challenge. Things can work out even so—unless your partner is intolerant and actively limits you. That would certainly be unpromising.

But usually people surround themselves with others who have similar interests.

Something a lively spirit is able to do is achieve solutions by making changes to problematic circumstances. Many people try to find an optimal partner in order to be happy. This can only work temporarily. Every bond comes to an end sooner or later. Just as the body ends with death, the partnership too will end, even if one lives to be 75 or 100. Even then, being separated from one’s partner by death will be painful. In the mourning process, a partner tends to be furious with the person who has died, because by dying this person abandoned his partner.

Do not allow things to get this far! Find out who is, now. One handy side effect is that this will make you independent of life circumstances. But it will not make you free if you act out of the motivation: Since things aren’t going so well in my life, let me become spiritual. Or even more crudely: I am turning my back on life, therefore I am spiritual. Since you will have to clear up sooner or later

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who you are, why not do so right away? It isn’t very wise to put off self-enquiry, since the body becomes weaker as we age, and often enough unpleasant illnesses develop. Now is the best time. Contrary to the myth that says that people grow wiser in old age, it’s generally the case that most people just get more crotchety, cranky, narrow-minded and thickheaded. Fortunately there are also wonderful people of every age.

 

The mind is like a dog that chases after every stick you throw for it. Thoughts, explanations, theories, concepts, even entire branches of science are nothing more than bones for the mind.

If you insist on throwing the dog a bone, why not the question “Who am I?”

 

Must I change my life? What do you advise?

MADHUKAR: You are in luck, because most teachers are going to load you up with things that you must do, practice and believe. Not here! Here, all I’m going to do is point you in the direction of That.

And I’ll keep doing so until this is clear to you beyond all doubt—what Jesus Christ described as follows: “I am who I am.”

This will then not be a naked idea or some blather-like spiritual knowledge; it will radiate from your deepest Being and be a blessing for you, your family, your city and the entire world. For this reason, seek only this. Whatever else makes up your life—I don’t know your life—you can go on living it just as before if this serves you. If it does not serve you, it’s best that you stop at once.

 

The master opens the door, but stepping inside is up to you.

 

Should I give up my job and concentrate my energies entirely on self-enquiry?

 

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MADHUKAR: I don’t encourage the people who come to me to give up their jobs. In most cases, this would just lead to unnecessary agitation and confusion. Only a master can shine in idleness. I will not come and say to you, as did Jesus: “Sell all that you have and follow me.” This was tried out 2000 years ago, and it didn’t work. We are learning! The Self that you are has nothing to learn. Realize this, and you will flourish in this fundamental trust: trust in love and silence. Everything else is mere illusion.

Thank you.

 

I’m just so happy I met you. It’s so incredible what is happening, so beautiful.

I have realized that it is worthwhile to trust you. Everything is changing. What I am bringing to you here either dissolves or is fulfilled. Not long ago I said that peace appears to be dependent on your presence. Ever since, it has always been there. It is not touched by everyday life, not touched by any person.

MADHUKAR: And not touched by the psyche.

My self-enquiry is changing too. Not long ago I still did not know what the point of it was, and now it has become a means to bring myself back to silence.

Sometimes an “I”-thought appears automatically, of its own accord. And then when an identification takes place, I need only ask, “Who am I?” in order to remind myself that this thought is only an appearance, that it is not real.

Although I know that this person is not real, I have been conscious recently of a strength, an authority, a power that I am happy to put to use.

MADHUKAR: This is what I have always promised. This orientation multiplies the strength one brings to life’s tasks. Why? Because you are moving away from the ostensibly important role of always being the subject carrying out actions.

I do still catch myself thinking that I am the one acting. I notice this when I try to attribute a meaning to things or interpret situations. This disturbs the peace as well. I wish I could be even a bit more radical.Simply to know that it is meaning-less and nonetheless to let it occur here in the Now.

 

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MADHUKAR: Do the words “a bit” and “radical” even fit together?—Radical sounds very radical, and for this reason it is often associated with hardness, severity. Shouldn’t we replace this word with clarity or presence?

Often I only notice the silence because my breath has gotten so slow. Otherwise there is no difference from before.

MADHUKAR: Wonderful.

 

What sort of attitude do you recommend that visitors to your Satsang cultivate?

Is it enough merely to let oneself be touched by the tangible silence?

MADHUKAR: This is surely the best thing. Silence is the primal ground. In silence there is the greatest agency, ultimate power. In silence, everything occurs.

For some people words are important, a clarifying conversation, while for others it is a heated philosophical dispute, and for someone else merely a glance, a touch. Silence underlies all of these things, and this is why it is the most powerful of all.

Once the silence of the master has touched you, you will never again allow yourself to lose your composure because of other sounds. You have realized:

“I am the silence that is my master.”

 

Can you explain what happens when someone asks a question during Satsang? I have the impression that it is not your answer that is decisive but rather that the mere fact that you have directed your attention to the one asking the question causes something to happen.

MADHUKAR: May it be so! Where there are questions, there should be answers as well. The True takes place utterly independent of words.

 

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I cannot explain this beauty. It gleams from within. Just as a diamond does not speak about its brilliance but simply sparkles, I cannot speak about That.

 

I feel lacking in courage and cannot be creative—and without creativity I become destructive.

MADHUKAR: What form does this take? Do you destroy works of art or phone booths?

No, it takes the form of my not daring to do anything and really live.

MADHUKAR: You don’t dare to be active? Is this what you despair of?

This really discombobulates me. I fall incredibly deeply into myself and forget everything I have ever experienced. This is why the song you just played spoke to me. The song puts into words what I have been yearning for so longingly: “That I found the way to live in the presence of the Lord.”

MADHUKAR: Anugito, I saw you dancing in the exuberant joy of Being. I’ve seen this more than once.

Yes, I know this too, but I keep losing it. Sometimes I really do descend into the depths of hell.

MADHUKAR: What is still here in the depths of hell?

At the moment I can say that there is still space there, but when I am inside ...

MADHUKAR: … there is presence.

Yes.

MADHUKAR: And this presence can perceive itself also as space, or as hell. But when you are in this hell, you’ve forgotten about it and have begun to identify with the hellish experiences, with despair and pain.

 

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Yes.

MADHUKAR: You identify with suffering, with lack of courage and the like, and for this reason you are welcome there. The spirits of hell welcome every new visitor, especially old acquaintances. But if you remember your presence, then you will no longer be welcome in hell, then you will be—boom!—kicked right out: “Beat it! You are no longer welcome here. You are not suffering enough.”

How do I handle this?

MADHUKAR: With loving kindness, just as in Satsang. Satsang is a synonym for

“loving kindness.” You should remember your Self every day, as soon as you wake up. Not because you wish for pleasant experiences or love, but because you are remembering what is real. For what is truly innermost, for presence, for Being, for peace and for love you do not need any courage. These things are the basis for everything. And they inspire the courage you need to be able to handle all the appearances life throws at you.

Eat a fig with me, let it represent courage. It is as delectable as truth itself.

 

So this is about the promise that the guru will never abandon his students.

MADHUKAR: Yes, I can confirm this.

Does this apply to all students?

MADHUKAR: It applies to the guru. The guru never leaves his students. I have said: “I will be with you always.”

Is this true for every student? Or just for certain selected students?

MADHUKAR: Grace flows without pause. Grace does not pick and choose.

Grace is always here.

In accordance with your realization, in accordance with your humility, you will come to take water from this well. You will scoop up a handful of water to drink.

Take as much as you can carry. The one who is truly thirsty will absolutely become what is being offered him. He soaks it up.

 

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Washerwomen wash at the well. They do not drink.

Does this promise have an endpoint?

MADHUKAR: No, it will never end. Never!

It won’t end—I wasn’t sure. But it can happen that a person is sent away. Does that mean this person is being abandoned?

MADHUKAR: What guru abandoned you? I don’t know who you’re talking about and whether the one in question is really a guru. There are so few: Thousands, tens of thousands of teachers, but just a handful of gurus.

I just realized that I confused these two concepts.

MADHUKAR: Guru means: One who drives out the darkness. With a guru you find inner peace. Guru also comes from guri, the Sanskrit word for concentra-tion. Concentrating on the guru is what makes everything happen. But if you concentrate on a teacher, the result will be bondage.

 

I’d like to know whether there are differences between the higher Self, the Soul and the Mind—or are these one and the same thing? Sometimes I think there is only the body and the soul. But I don’t know whether the higher Self, the Mind is part of the soul?

MADHUKAR: The higher Self is an invention of people who believe their minds.

“Split personality” is what psychologists call it. There is only one thing, which is Self—and within this Self the body appears and then vanishes again. But since physical limitations have caused you to fall in love with this body, which is happy and suffers, you wish for the Self too to be individual. Since you are afraid of vanishing, you talk about a soul. The body vanishes. Mind comes and goes.

Once you have awakened, you are eternal.

Whether we call this Self or Soul or Buddha or Shiva or Manitou’s spirit—

what does it matter?

 

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The name you gave me means “Servant of Bliss.”

MADHUKAR: Wonderful. If your senses are pure, you can now smell the scent of the guavas. Most people don’t have pure senses any more and cannot smell the olf very well. What about the taste of blissfulness?

It’s delicious.

MADHUKAR: Great! Listen—I am contented, absolutely happy and at peace and owe nothing to anyone. At the same time, I feel within me the desire to pass on to you the present, the grace that my master gave to me. It is nothing that I did not have at the time. Nothing that I wasn’t at the time—the present is merely realization, trust and the clear orientation toward what really is. In this orientation, I do not squander my life on trifles and spiritual illusions.

Although this transference is now available in the West as well, although it is communicated to thousands of people in Satsang , it is only accepted by the noblest among them. The masses have other interests. Slaves of the brain, the mind, the past.

This present of truth is something I will not allow to slip from my grasp again.

MADHUKAR: Papaji always emphasized that people from the West take themselves too seriously. The ego is too strong, this selfishness: “I, I, I.” Even when they bow it is usually with selfish intent. Someone who truly orients himself toward freedom will melt away of his own accord as he approaches truth. All the others are too much occupied with themselves and take themselves too seriously.

 

Ramana Maharshi loved above all the mountain Arunachala in Southern India, which is considered holy, and he spent most of his life at its foot. Can you say something about the phenomenon of this mountain? Can a mountain be enlightened?

MADHUKAR: Yes. This mountain is Shiva himself. If a human being can be enlightened, why not also a mountain? Everyone who has ever been there finds that although he is looking at a red geological formation amid a plain filled with

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rice paddies, what he is really encountering is a mysterious place. Bhagavan is always there! This phenomenon of silent presence is described as a soundless sound. I would say: a vibrationless vibration.

Very silent and very conducive to awakening. Although silence is already silent, this place is dominated by a much more profound silence, the most precious presence.

But I do ask myself whether one should really tell everyone about this, because it seems as though there are already too many travelers who make this their destination, unfortunately including some who do not know how one should behave in a holy place. One thing is certain: Arunachala is my home.

The source of joy.

 

Come home to the Self. Namelessly formless. Pure beauty. Melt into That who you truly are. Peaceful silent beauty.

 

To turn away from the dream of everyday life is a major challenge for most people. To turn away from pain, from the robot brain that is constantly producing more thoughts. Returning home to consciousness.

Even though this isn’t such a great task, really just a letting go, most of us find it quite difficult.

Even just arriving at the consciousness “I am” is still quite far from awakening. For this reason, many people who practice self-enquiry experience a great emptiness that they don’t know how to deal with, and they immediately plunge right into the next available thought, attach themselves willingly to the next feeling to come along.

Absolute consciousness has nothing to do with the body. It is transcendental.

Behind the mind, behind the intelligence. Absolute consciousness is natural Being, the ground and basis of Being. Here always.

In both the waking state and dream, this consciousness is covered up by thoughts and feelings, by mind. The wise man seeks to find the origin of the first thought, the source of the I-thought.

This I say to the precious few among you who are truly ripe for freedom. The ones who are no longer fixated on changing life circumstances, changing feelings, wanting to have things. Some people just want to exchange pain for some

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other concept, a concept of happiness. They just want to change certain states into other states.

Most people don’t even want to exchange pain for happiness. A master sometimes can’t help also attracting people who have no interest in awakening.

And so, just as every day I wish peace to every human and every living creature, including the mouse and the mosquito, I also take joy in seeing your human happiness.

Awakening, however, is something fundamentally different. It has nothing to do with life circumstances and states. Your natural Being—in a word, you—has nothing to do with your person, your body. A personal I does not exist.

Neurobiology and Philosophy, the study of consciousness and quantum physics—all these fields concern, do research into and speak of Oneness. Only the Self, the heart, is. Oneness is essential realization.

Self-enquiry brings relief and relaxation. The joy of life reveals itself. Quite naturally. Of its own accord.

This is Satsang. The radiance of the Self. Silence transfigured as light. In true Being, it is obvious, it is clear. Otherwise it is hidden my dear.

Realizing Oneness opens up chances for a new culture of consciousness: Right in the middle of the crisis of our image of man: a new ethics of freedom.

Consciousness as a Theory of Everything for Peace.

And you are playing a decisive role in it.