Q: How do you look at the world?

M: I see a painter painting a picture.

The picture I call the world, the painter I call God.

I am neither.

I do not create, nor am I created.

Don't confuse me with the body.

I have no work to do, no duties to perform.

That part of me which you may call God will look after the world.

This world of yours, that so much needs looking after, lives and moves in your mind.

Delve into it, you will find your answers there and there only.

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

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

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

What prevents you from knowing yourself as all and beyond all, is the mind based on memory.

It has power over you as long as you trust it; don't struggle with it; just disregard it.

The mirror remains.

Learn to distinguish the immovable in the movable, the unchanging in the changing, till you realise that all differences are in appearance only and oneness is a fact.

This basic identity -- you may call God, or Brahman, or the matrix (Prakriti), the words matters little -- is only the realisation that all is one.

Once you can say with confidence born from direct experience: 'I am the world, the world is myself', you are free from desire and fear on one hand and become totally responsible for the world on the other.

The senseless sorrow of mankind becomes your sole concern.

They just happen.

So it is with you -- the roll of destiny unfolds itself and actualises the inevitable.

You cannot change the course of events, but you can change your attitude and what really matters is the attitude and not the bare event.

The world is the abode of desires and fears.

You cannot find peace in it.

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

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

You cannot change the image without changing the face.

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

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

What useless truism!

M: I did not say it.

I only said: You cannot change the world before changing yourself.

I did not say -- before changing everybody.

It is neither necessary, nor possible to change others.

Their being indescribable does not affect them in the least.

While they are unconscious, they are essential.

The conscious cannot change fundamentally, it can only modify.

Any thing, to change, must pass through death, through obscuration and dissolution.

Gold jewellery must be melted down before it is cast into another shape.

They should be seen as they are -- then only they dissolve.

Q: And what remains?

M: That which cannot change, remains.

The great peace, the deep silence, the hidden beauty of reality remain.

While it can not be conveyed through words, it is waiting for you to experience for yourself.

The more you discover, the more there remains to discover.

Q: For this we must have different parents and schools, live in a different society.

M: You; cannot change your circumstances, but your attitudes you can change.

You need not be attached to the non-essentials.

Only the necessary is good.

Then the universe is your own, it becomes your body, an expression and a tool.

The happiness of being absolutely free is beyond description.

On the other hand, he who is afraid of freedom cannot die.

Q: You mean that one who cannot die, cannot live?

M: Put it as you like; attachment is bondage, detachment is freedom.

The happiness of being absolutely free is beyond description.

On the other hand, he who is afraid of freedom cannot die.

Q: You mean that one who cannot die, cannot live?

M: Put it as you like; attachment is bondage, detachment is freedom.

To crave is to slave.

Q: Buddha said that the idea of enlightenment is extremely important.

Most people go through their lives not even knowing that there is such a thing as enlightenment, leave alone the striving for it.

Once they have heard of it, a seed was sown which cannot die.

Therefore, he would send his bhikhus to preach ceaselessly for eight months every year.

M: 'One can give food, clothes, shelter, knowledge, affection, but the highest gift is the gospel of enlightenment', my Guru used to say.

M: So what?

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

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

It all depends on what he takes himself to be.

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

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

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

Q: Since my seeing the contradiction makes it go, is there no causal link between my seeing and its going?

M: Causality, even as a concept, does not apply to chaos.

Q: To what extent is desire a causal factor?

All the time you look for origins and causes.

Causality is in the mind, only; memory gives the illusion of continuity and repetitiveness creates the idea of causality.

When things repeatedly happen together, we tend to see a causal link between them.

It creates a mental habit, but a habit is not a necessity.

Q: You have just said that the world is made by God.

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

The wise man counts nothing as his own.

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

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

Q: The universe does not seem a happy place to live in.

For this keep steadily in the focus of consciousness the only clue you have: your certainty of being.

Be with it, play with it, ponder over it, delve deeply into it, till the shell of ignorance breaks open and you emerge into the realm of reality.

Q: Is there any causal link between my focussing the 'I am' and the breaking of the shell?

M: The urge to find oneself is a sign that you are getting ready.

The impulse always comes from within.

I have my duties to attend to.

M: By all means attend to your duties.

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

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

Q: Is such a state realisable?

Q: What is the real cause of suffering?

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

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

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

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

M: Everything has a beginning and an end and so does pleasure.

Don't anticipate and don't regret, and there will be no pain.

it is memory and imagination that cause suffering.

Of course pain after pleasure may be due to the misuse of the body or the mind.

The body knows its measure, but the mind does not.

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

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

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

Go within, without swerving, without ever looking outward.

Q: But my desires and fears are still there.

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

You need not stop thinking.

Just cease being interested.

It is disinterestedness that liberates.

Don't hold on, that is all.

M: Moods are in the mind and do not matter.

Go within, go beyond.

Cease being fascinated by the content of your consciousness.

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

Q: There will be play all the same?

Where does it come from?

Maharaj: Before anything can come into being there must be somebody to whom it comes.

All appearance and disappearance presupposes a change against some changeless background.

Q: Before waking up I was unconscious.

M: In what sense?

Changes are inevitable.

M: Changes are inevitable in the changeful, but you are not subject to them.

You are the changeless background, against which changes are perceived.

Q: Everything changes, the background also changes.

There is no need of a changeless background to notice changes.

You are the changeless background, against which changes are perceived.

Q: Everything changes, the background also changes.

There is no need of a changeless background to notice changes.

The self is momentary -- it is merely the point where the past meets the future.

M: Of course the self based on memory is momentary.

You cannot be conscious of what does not change.

All consciousness is consciousness of change.

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

Q: Not at all.

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

So far you took yourself to be the movable and overlooked the immovable.

Turn your mind inside out.

Overlook the movable and you will find yourself to be the ever-present, changeless reality, inexpressible, but solid like a rock.

Q: If it is now, why am I not aware of it?

M: Because you hold on to the idea that you are not aware of it.

M: That is what you say.

To me it may be the other way -- the whole is real, the part comes and goes.

The particular is born and reborn, changing name and shape, the jnani is the Changeless Reality, which makes the changeful possible.

But he cannot give you the conviction.

It must come with your own experience.

You are accusing me of having been born -- I plead not guilty!

All exists in awareness and awareness neither dies nor is reborn.

It is the changeless reality itself.

All the universe of experience is born with the body and dies with the body; it has its beginning and end in awareness, but awareness knows no beginning, nor end.

If you think it out carefully and brood over it for a long time, you will come to see the light of awareness in all its clarity and the world will fade out of your vision.

This is what I cannot grasp.

Once you accept the existence of things, why reject their causes?

M: I see only consciousness, and know everything to be but consciousness, as you know the picture on the cinema screen to be but light.

Q: Still, the movements of light have a cause.

M: The light does not move at all.

It is neither necessary, nor possible to change others.

But if you can change yourself you will find that no other change is needed.

To change the picture you merely change the film, you do not attack the cinema screen!

Q: How can you be so sure of yourself?

How do you know that what you say is true?

Q: Still the main point seems to escape me.

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

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

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

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

Even not aloof and detached.

There is aloofness and detachment as there is thirst and hunger; there is also the awareness of it all and a sense of Immense distance, as if the body and the mind and all that happens to them were somewhere far out on the horizon.

I am like a cinema screen -- clear and empty -- the pictures pass over it and disappear, leaving it as clear and empty as before.

In no way is the screen affected by the pictures, nor are the pictures affected by the screen.

The screen intercepts and reflects the pictures, it does not shape them.

It is a mistake to take the conscious to be the whole of man.

Man is the unconscious, conscious and the super-conscious, but you are not the man.

Yours is the cinema screen, the light as well as the seeing power, but the picture is not you.

Q: Must I search for the Guru, or shall I stay with whomever I have found?

M: The very question shows that you have not yet found one.

Again, it all merely happens, including the fruits of the work.

Nothing is by you and for you.

All is in the picture exposed on the cinema screen, nothing in the light, including what you take yourself to be, the person.

You are the light only.

Q: If I am light only, how did I come to forget it?

But, why forget the self through excess of attachment?

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

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

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

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

Therefore I keep on saying that all happens by itself.

There is order in my world too, but it is not Imposed from outside.

It comes spontaneously and immediately, because of its timelessness.

Perfection is not in the future.

It is now.

M: Hold on to the sense 'I am' to the exclusion of everything else.

When thus the mind becomes completely silent, it shines with a new light and vibrates with new knowledge.

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

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

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

By no effort can you change the 'I am' into 'I am-not'.

Behold, the real experiencer is not the mind, but myself, the light in which everything appears.

Self is the common factor at the root of all experience, the awareness in which everything happens.

The entire field of consciousness is only as a film, or a speck, in 'I am'.

This 'I am-ness' is, being conscious of consciousness, being aware of itself.

And in every experience there arises the experiencer of it.

Memory creates the illusion of continuity.

In reality each experience has its own experiencer and the sense of identity is due to the common factor at the root of all experiencer- experience relations.

Identity and continuity are not the same.

Just as each flower has its own colour, but all colours are caused by the same light, so do many experiences appear in the undivided and indivisible awareness, each separate in memory, identical in essence.

Between the different ornaments there is no causal relation.

When you re-melt an ornament to make another, there is no causal relation between the two.

The common factor is the gold.

But you cannot say gold is the cause.

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

But it cannot be described in the terms of a mind that must separate and oppose in order to know.

The world is like a sheet of paper on which something is typed.

The reading and the meaning will vary with the reader, but the paper is the common factor, always present, rarely perceived.

When the ribbon is removed, typing leaves no trace on the paper.

So is my mind -- the impressions keep on coming, but no trace is left.

Your desire to know other people's minds is due to your not knowing your own mind.

First know your own mind and you will find that the question of other minds does not arise at all, for there are no other people.

You are the common factor, the only link between the minds.

Being is consciousness; 'I am' applies to all.

Q: The Supreme Reality (Parabrahman) may be present in all of us.

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

The two have little in common.

Q: There must be some common factor which unites us.

M: To find the common factor you must abandon all distinctions.

Only the universal is in common.

The two have little in common.

Q: There must be some common factor which unites us.

M: To find the common factor you must abandon all distinctions.

Only the universal is in common.

Q: What strikes me as exceedingly strange is that while you say that I am merely a product of my memories and woefully limited, I create a vast and rich world in which.

This business is said to have flourished in course of time, giving him some sort of financial security.

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

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

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

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

Maharaj: In what way are your common people -- Yogis?

Q: Their ultimate goal is the same.

What the Yogi secures by renunciation (tyaga) the common man realises through experience (bhoga).

The way of Bhoga is unconscious and, therefore, repetitive and protracted, while the way of Yoga is deliberate and intense and, therefore, can be more rapid.

M: Maybe the periods of Yoga and Bhoga alternate.

M: None.

What he was, he is -- the Absolute Reality.

Q: But to the common man death makes a difference.

M: What he thinks himself to be before death he continues to be after death.

His self-image survives.

Janaka said: Yes, I am neither king nor beggar, I am the dispassionate witness.

The Guru said.

This is your last illusion that you are a jnani, that you are different from, and superior to, the common man.

Again you identify yourself with your mind, in this case a well-behaved and in every way an exemplary mind.

As long as you see the least difference, you are a stranger to reality.

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

M: The variety is not so great.

All the dreams are superimposed over a common world.

To some extent they shape and influence each other.

The basic unity operates in spite of all.

Q: Surely there is a factual world common to all.

M: The world of things, of energy and matter?

Even if there were such a common world of things and forces, it is not the world in which we live.

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

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

Since the world is yourself, how can you explain such misbehaviour?

Maharaj: Which world do you have in mind?

Q: Our common world, in which we live.

M: Are you sure we live in the same world?

I do not mean nature, the sea and the land, plants and animals.

You will not be distracted.

Q: Still they will be there.

Will one never be completely free?

M: You are completely free even now.

What you call destiny (karma) is but the result of your own will to live.

Q: Still they will be there.

Will one never be completely free?

M: You are completely free even now.

What you call destiny (karma) is but the result of your own will to live.

How strong is this will you can judge by the universal horror of death.

M: Destiny refers only to name and shape.

Since you are neither body nor mind, destiny has no control over you.

You are completely free.

The cup is conditioned by its shape, material, use and so on.

But the space within the cup is free.

M: How can it be?

The real is simple, open, clear and kind, beautiful and joyous.

It is completely free of contradictions.

It is ever new, ever fresh, endlessly creative.

Being and non-being, life and death, all distinctions merge in it.

Go beyond.

Neither consciousness, nor the 'I am' at the centre of it are you.

Your true being is entirely un-self-conscious, completely free from all self-identification with whatever it may be, gross, subtle or transcendental.

Q: I can imagine myself to be beyond.

But what proof have l?

You seem to say that there can be perceiving without a perceiver, knowing without a knower, loving without a lover, acting without an actor.

I feel that the trinity of knowing, knower and known can be seen in every movement of life.

Consciousness implies a conscious being, an object of consciousness and the fact of being conscious.

That which is conscious I call a person.

A person lives in the world, is a part of it, affects it and is affected by it.

Hold on to it.

There are states when you are not conscious.

Call it unconscious being.

Q: Being unconscious?

M: Consciousness and unconsciousness do not apply here.

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

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

The universal is beyond all name and shape, beyond consciousness and character, pure unselfconscious being.

Did I put down your views rightly?

Maharaj: On the level of the mind -- yes.

M: Nothing can make you happier than you are.

All search for happiness is misery and leads to more misery.

The only happiness worth the name is the natural happiness of conscious being.

Q: Don't I need a lot of experience before I can reach such a high level of awareness?

M: Experience leaves only memories behind and adds to the burden which is heavy enough.

To deal with people, you need insight, sympathy.

To deal with yourself you need nothing.

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

Q: University education is most useful.

M: No doubt, It helps you to earn a living.

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

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

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

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

A most serviceable room remains.

M: Oh, no.

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

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

You need courage to let go.

Q: I admit it is courage that I lack.

There is an atmosphere of timelessness about his tiny room; the subjects discussed are timeless -- valid for all times; the way they are expounded and examined is also timeless; the centuries, millennia and yugas fall off and one deals with matters immensely ancient and eternally new.

The discussions held and teachings given would have been the same ten thousand years ago and will be the same ten thousand years hence.

There will always be conscious beings wondering about the fact of their being conscious and enquiring into its cause and aim.

Whence am I?

Who am I?

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

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

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

As to the methods of realising one's supreme identity with self-being, Maharaj is peculiarly non- committal.

He says that each has his own way to reality, and that there can be no general rule.

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

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

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

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

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

You are not bound.

Just understand yourself -- that itself is eternity.

56: Consciousness Arising, World Arises.

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

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

That, which at one end looks like matter and at the other as mind, is in itself the bridge.

Don't separate reality into mind and body and there will be no need of bridges.

Consciousness arising, the world arises.

When you consider the wisdom and the beauty of the world, you call it God.

Know the source of it all, which is in yourself, and you will find all your questions answered.

Q: And nothing remains?

M: Life remains.

Consciousness needs a vehicle and an instrument for its manifestation.

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

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

For bliss to arise there must be meeting, contact, the assertion of unity in duality.

Q: Buddha too has said that for the attainment of nirvana one must go to living beings.

Consciousness needs life to grow.

M: The world itself is contact -- the totality of all contacts actualised in consciousness.

The spirit touches matter and consciousness results.

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

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

The cloud needs the sun to become visible, and consciousness needs being focussed in awareness.

Q: Is not awareness a form of consciousness?

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

Q: We shall repeat the question we began with: between life's source and life's expression (which is the body), there is the mind and its ever-changeful states.

The stream of mental states is endless, meaningless and painful.

Pain is the constant factor.

What we call pleasure is but a gap, an interval between two painful states.

Desire and fear are the weft and warp of living, and both are made of pain.

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

There is nothing real about them.

Find the permanent in the fleeting, the one constant factor in every experience.

Q: What is this constant factor?

M: My giving it various names and pointing it out in many ways will not help you much, unless you have the capacity to see.

There is nothing real about them.

Find the permanent in the fleeting, the one constant factor in every experience.

Q: What is this constant factor?

M: My giving it various names and pointing it out in many ways will not help you much, unless you have the capacity to see.

A dim-sighted man will not see the parrot on the branch of a tree, however much you may prompt him to look.

What brings it back to life?

What wakes you up in the morning?

There must be some constant factor bridging the gaps in consciousness.

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

What is in the gaps?

Q: How does a genuine crisis happen?

M: It happens every moment, but you are not alert enough.

A shadow on your neighbour's face, the immense and all-pervading sorrow of existence is a constant factor in your life, but you refuse to take notice.

You suffer and see others suffer, but you don't respond.

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

The 'I am' and the 'What am I' are of no importance, because once the building is ready, the 'I' will go as a matter of course, leaving no questions about itself to answer.

Maharaj: Are you not aware of all this?

Is not the fact of awareness the constant factor?

Q: My sense of permanency and identity is due to memory, which is so evanescent and unreliable.

How little I remember, even of the recent past!

Once the candle is lighted, the flame will consume the candle.

Q: Why is the mantra so effective?

M: Constant repetition of the mantra is something the person does not do for one's own sake.

The beneficiary is not the person.

Just like the candle which does not increase by burning.

It is the witness that works on the person, on the totality of its illusions, past, present and future.

Q: How can we know that what you say is true?

While it is self contained and free from inner contradictions, how can we know that it is not a product of fertile imagination, nurtured and enriched by constant repetition?

M: The proof of the truth lies in its effect on the listener.

Q: Words can have a most powerful effect.

God's name is all the food you need.

Live on it.

Q: This constant repetition of a few words, is it not a kind of madness?

M: It is madness, but it is a deliberate madness.

All repetitiveness is tamas, but repeating the name of God is sattva-tamas due to its high purpose.

Q: I am being told that to think 'I am the body' is a blemish in the mind.

M: Why talk like this?

Such expressions create problems.

The self is the source of all, and of all -- the final destination.

Nothing is external.

Do see that the image you have of me may be altogether wrong.

Your image of yourself is wrong too, but that is your problem.

But you need not create problems for me and then ask me to solve them.

I am neither creating problems nor solving them.

58: Perfection, Destiny of All.

You are complete here and now, you need absolutely nothing.

It does not mean that you must be brainless and foolhardy, improvident or indifferent; only the basic anxiety for oneself must go.

You need some food, clothing and shelter for you and yours, but this will not create problems as long as greed is not taken for a need.

Live in tune with things as they are and not as they are imagined.

Q: What am I if not human?

There are real problems.

M: What problems can there be which the mind did not create?

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

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

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

M: What problems can there be which the mind did not create?

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

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

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

Q: How to bring the mind under control?

After all, as long as one is burdened with a person, one is exposed to its idiosyncrasies and habits.

Q: Are you not afraid of death?

M: I am dead already.

Q: In what sense?

M: I am double dead.

Take the experience of death.

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

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

He does not think: 'I live'.

He knows: 'There is life'.

He is himself the answer to your prayers.

Q: How does the jnani fare after death?

M: The jnani is dead already.

Do you expect him to die again?

Q: Surely, the dissolution of the body is an important event even to a jnani.

After all, as long as one is burdened with a person, one is exposed to its idiosyncrasies and habits.

Q: Are you not afraid of death?

M: I am dead already.

Q: In what sense?

M: I am double dead.

It all depends on what he takes himself to be.

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

M: But I am dead already, or, rather, neither alive nor dead.

You see my body behaving the habitual way and draw your own conclusions.

You will not admit that your conclusions bind nobody but you.

As a living being you are caught in an untenable and painful situation and you are seeking a way out.

You are being offered several plans of your prison, none quite true.

But they all are of some value, only if you are in dead earnest.

It is the earnestness that liberates and not the theory.

Q: Theory may be misleading and earnestness -- blind.

The mere fact of willing attracts its object.

M: Whatever name you give it: will, or steady purpose, or onepointedness of the mind, you come back to earnestness, sincerity, honesty.

When you are in dead earnest, you bend every incident, every second of your life to your purpose.

You do not waste time and energy on other things.

You are totally dedicated, call it will, or love, or plain honesty.

Q: How long will it take me to get free of the mind?

M: It may take a thousand years, but really no time is required.

All you need is to be in dead earnest.

Here the will is the deed.

If you are sincere, you have it.

The rest is a matter of name and form.

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

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

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

Is it hot or raining there?

Be like an infant with nothing standing between the body and the self.

The constant noise of the psychic life is absent.

In deep silence the self contemplates the body.

It is like the white paper on which nothing is written yet.

Be like that infant, instead of trying to be this or that, be happy to be.

Q: And what remains?

M: That which cannot change, remains.

The great peace, the deep silence, the hidden beauty of reality remain.

While it can not be conveyed through words, it is waiting for you to experience for yourself.

Q: Must not one be fit and eligible for realisation?

What happens, happens spontaneously, without intentions -- like digestion, or the growth of the hair.

Realise this, and be free from the limitations of the mind.

Behold, the deep sleep in which there is no notion of being this or that.

Yet 'I am' remains.

And behold the eternal now.

Things and thoughts have been changing all the time.

But the feeling that what is now is real has never changed, even in dream.

Q: In deep sleep there is no experience of the present reality.

M: The blankness of deep sleep is due entirely to the lack of specific memories.

But a general memory of well-being is there.

But the feeling that what is now is real has never changed, even in dream.

Q: In deep sleep there is no experience of the present reality.

M: The blankness of deep sleep is due entirely to the lack of specific memories.

But a general memory of well-being is there.

There is a difference in feeling when we say 'I was deeply asleep' from 'I was absent'.

You just don't remember.

A gap in memory is not necessarily a gap in consciousness.

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

M: Of course!

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

Q: What are your dreams?

M: Echoes of the waking state.

Q: And your deep sleep?

M: The brain consciousness is suspended.

Q: Are you then unconscious?

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

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

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

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

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

All is one and all is contained in 'I am'.

In the waking and dream states it is the person.

In deep sleep and turiya it is the Self.

Beyond the alert intentness of turiya lies the great, silent peace of the Supreme.

But in fact all is one in essence and related in appearance.

Otherwise I was just quiet, inwardly and outwardly.

M: What kind of quiet was it?

Something akin to deep sleep, yet conscious all the same.

A sort of wakeful sleep?

Q: Yes.

The giving up is the first step.

But the real giving up is in realising that there is nothing to give up, for nothing is your own.

It is like deep sleep -- you do not give up your bed when you fall sleep -- you just forget it.

74: Truth is Here and Now.

Questioner: My question is: What is the proof of truth?

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

M: Surely, you cannot say so.

In deep sleep you are not conditioned.

How ready and willing you are to go to sleep, how peaceful, free and happy you are when asleep!

Q: I know nothing of it.

The person should be carefully examined and its falseness seen; then its power over you will end.

After all, it subsides each time you go to sleep.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The witness usually knows only consciousness.

M: Distrust your mind, and go beyond.

Q: What shall I find beyond the mind?

M: The direct experience of being, knowing and loving.

Q: How does one go beyond the mind?

M: There are many starting points -- they all lead to the same goal.

M: Can there be peace apart from yourself?

Are you talking from your own experience or from books only?

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

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

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

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.

It is not the words that matter, but the power behind them.

Q: What is that power?

M: The power of conviction, based on personal realisation, on one's own direct experience.

Q: Some realised people say that knowledge must be won, not got.

Another can only teach, but the learning is one's own.

He alone is the seed of creation as well as its residue.

Don't ask the mind to confirm what is beyond the mind.

Direct experience is the only valid confirmation.

46: Awareness of Being is Bliss.

Questioner: By profession I am a physician.

It is the very source of reality, it imparts reality to whatever it touches.

It just cannot be understood through words.

Even a direct experience, however sublime, merely bears testimony, nothing more.

Q: But who creates the world?

M: The Universal Mind (chidakash) makes and unmakes everything.

M: Still, finally you come to the need of a direct witness.

Witnessing, if not personal and actual, must at least be possible and feasible.

Direct experience is the final proof.

Q: Experience may be faulty and misleading.

M: Quite, but not the fact of an experience.

Learn to distinguish the immovable in the movable, the unchanging in the changing, till you realise that all differences are in appearance only and oneness is a fact.

This basic identity -- you may call God, or Brahman, or the matrix (Prakriti), the words matters little -- is only the realisation that all is one.

Once you can say with confidence born from direct experience: 'I am the world, the world is myself', you are free from desire and fear on one hand and become totally responsible for the world on the other.

The senseless sorrow of mankind becomes your sole concern.

Q: So even a jnani has his problems!

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

Our noble ideas are finely balanced by ignoble actions.

We talk of God, Truth and Love, but instead of direct experience we have definitions.

Instead of enlarging and deepening action we chisel our definitions.

And we imagine that we know what we can define!

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

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

You know you are the ultimate observer by direct insight, not by a logical process based on observation.

You are what you are, but you know what you are not.

The self is known as being, the not-self is known as transient.

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

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

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

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

All you are conscious of is your mind; awareness is the cognisance of consciousness as a whole.

So many words you have learnt, so many you have spoken.

You know everything, but you do not know yourself.

For the self is not known through words -- only direct insight will reveal it.

Look within, search within.

Q: It is very difficult to abandon words.

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

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

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

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

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

Maharaj: There is not much difference on the surface, but very much of it in depth.

You know yourself only through the senses and the mind.

You take yourself to be what they suggest; having no direct knowledge of yourself, you have mere ideas; all mediocre, second-hand, by hearsay.

Whatever you think you are you take it to be true; the habit of imagining yourself perceivable and describable is very strong with you.

I see as you see, hear as you hear, taste as you taste, eat as you eat.

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

Thus you come to a state in which there is no knowledge, only being, in which being itself is knowledge.

To know by being is direct knowledge.

It is based on the identity of the seer and the seen.

Indirect knowledge is based on sensation and memory, on proximity of the perceiver and his percept, confined with the contrast between the two.

To know by being is direct knowledge.

It is based on the identity of the seer and the seen.

Indirect knowledge is based on sensation and memory, on proximity of the perceiver and his percept, confined with the contrast between the two.

The same with happiness.

Usually you have to be sad to know gladness and glad to know sadness.

On the other hand, whatever is done, is done by you, the universal and inexhaustible energy.

Q: It is, no doubt, very gratifying to hear that one is the silent witness as well as the universal energy.

But how is one to cross over from a verbal statement to direct knowledge?

Hearing is not knowing.

M: Before you can know anything directly, non-verbally, you must know the knower.

Q: If you are the world, how can you be conscious of it?

Is not the subject of consciousness different from its object?

M: Consciousness and the world appear and disappear together, hence they are two aspects of the same state.

Q: In sleep I am not, and the world continues.

M: How do you know?

Apart from it, what am l?

M: There is no 'I' apart from the body, nor the world.

The three appear and disappear together.

At the root is the sense 'I am'.

Go beyond it.

Maharaj: There is the body.

Inside the body appears to be an observer and outside -- a world under observation.

The observer and his observation as well as the world observed all appear and disappear together.

Beyond it all, there is void.

This void is one for all.

Q: Does the witness remain?

M: As long as there is consciousness, its witness is also there.

The two appear and disappear together.

Q: If the witness too is transient, why is he given so much importance?

M: Just to break the spell of the known, the illusion that only the perceivable is real.

Q: What is permanent?

M: Look to yourself for the permanent.

Dive deep within and find what is real in you.

Q: How to look for myself?

M: Whatever happens, it happens to you.

But we are not.

On a deeper level my experience is your experience.

Dive deep within yourself and you will find it easily and simply.

Go in the direction of 'I am'.

25: Hold on to 'I am'.

Suicide would be the way out.

M: As long as you pay attention to ideas, your own or of others, you will be in trouble.

But if you disregard all teachings, all books, anything out into words and dive deeply within yourself and find yourself, this alone will solve all your problems and leave you in full mastery of every situation, because you will not be dominated by your ideas about the situation.

Take an example.

You are in the company of an attractive woman.

I occupy little space and last but a few moments; I cannot even conceive myself to be eternal and all-pervading.

M: Nevertheless you are.

As you dive deep into yourself in search of your true nature, you will discover that only your body is small and only your memory is short; while the vast ocean of life is yours.

Q: The very words 'I' and 'universal' are contradictory.

One excludes the other.

M: A firefly illumining the world!

You don't give meaning to the world, you find it.

Dive deep into yourself and find the source from where all meaning flows.

Surely it is not the superficial mind that can give meaning.

Q: What makes me limited and superficial?

Q: God will help.

M: To help you God must know your existence.

But you and your world are dream states.

In dream you may suffer agonies.

None knows them, and none can help you.

The difference is merely in continuity.

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

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

Q: Agreed.

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

M: Outside the Self there is nothing.

All is one and all is contained in 'I am'.

In the waking and dream states it is the person.

In deep sleep and turiya it is the Self.

Beyond the alert intentness of turiya lies the great, silent peace of the Supreme.

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

We do not wake up into a really waking state.

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

Both sleep and waking are misnomers.

We are only dreaming.

True waking and true sleeping only the jnani knows.

We dream that we are awake, we dream that we are asleep.

The three states are only varieties of the dream state.

Treating everything as a dream liberates.

As long as you give reality to dreams, you are their slave.

The trinity: mind, self and spirit (vyakti, vyakta, avyakta), when looked into, becomes unity.

These are only modes of experiencing: of attachment, of detachment, of transcendence.

Q: Your assumption that we are in a dream state makes your position unassailable.

Whatever objection we raise, you just deny its validity.

One cannot discuss with you!