Q: To what purpose?

M: You live, you feel, you think.

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

Your personality dissolves and only the witness remains.

Then you go beyond the witness.

Cease to think that they are yours and they will just dissolve.

By all means let your body and mind function, but do not let them limit you.

If you notice imperfections, just keep on noticing: your very giving attention to them will set your heart and mind and body right.

Q: Can I cure myself of a serious illness by merely taking cognisance of it?

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

As long as the observer, the inner self, the 'higher' self, considers himself apart from the observed, the 'lower' self, despises it and condemns it, the situation is hopeless.

It is only when the observer (vyakta) accepts the person (vyakti) as a projection or manifestation of himself, and, so to say, takes the self into the Self, the duality of 'I' and 'this' goes and in the identity of the outer and the inner the Supreme Reality manifests itself.

This union of the seer and the seen happens when the seer becomes conscious of himself as the seer, he is not merely interested in the seen, which he is anyhow, but also interested in being interested, giving attention to attention, aware of being aware.

Affectionate awareness is the crucial factor that brings Reality into focus.

Q: According to the Theosophists and allied occultists, man consists of three aspects: personality, individuality and spirituality.

An understanding mind is free of desires and fears.

Q: How can I make myself understand?

M: By meditating which means giving attention.

Become fully aware of your problem, look at it from all sides, watch how it affects your life.

Then leave it alone.

M: Even to say that you are not the body is not quite true.

In a way you are all the bodies, hearts and minds and much more.

Go deep into the sense of 'I am' and you will find.

How do you find a thing you have mislaid or forgotten?

You keep it in your mind until you recall it.

Q: Both.

Sometimes I feel myself to be neither mind nor body, but one single all-seeing eye.

When I go deeper into it, I find myself to be all I see and the world and myself become one.

M: Very well.

What about desires?

Q: Did you get your own realisation through effort or by the grace of your Guru?

M: His was the teaching and mine was the trust.

My confidence in him made me accept his words as true, go deep into them, live them, and that is how I came to realise what I am.

The Guru's person and words made me trust him and my trust made them fruitful.

Q: But can a Guru give realisation without words, without trust, just like this, without any preparation?

All distinctions lose their meaning.

Love of one and love of all merge together in love, pure and simple, addressed to none, denied to none.

Stay in that love, go deeper and deeper into it, investigate yourself and love the investigation and you will solve not only your own problems but also the problems of humanity.

You will know what to do.

Do not ask superficial questions; apply yourself to fundamentals, to the very roots of your being.

The very observation slows down the mind till it stops altogether.

Once the mind is quiet, keep it quiet.

Don't get bored with peace, be in it, go deeper into it.

Q: I heard of holding on to one thought in order to keep other thoughts away.

But how to keep all thoughts away?

Tirelessly I draw their attention to the one incontrovertible factor -- that of being.

Being needs no proofs -- it proves all else.

If only they go deeply into the fact of being and discover the vastness and the glory to which the 'I am' is the door, and cross the door and go beyond, their life will be full of happiness and light.

Believe me, the effort needed is as nothing when compared with the discoveries arrived at.

Q: What you say is right.

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

You cannot approach it in worship.

No external activity can reach the inner self; worship and prayers remain on the surface only; to go deeper meditation is essential, the striving to go beyond the states of sleep, dream and waking.

In the beginning the attempts are irregular, then they recur more often, become regular, then continuous and intense, until all obstacles are conquered.

Q: Obstacles to what?

M: Your question contains the answer: a conscious living being is a conscious living being.

The words are most appropriate, but you do not grasp their full import.

Go deep into the meaning of the words: being, living, conscious, and you will stop running in circles, asking questions, but missing answers.

Do understand that you cannot ask a valid question about yourself, because you do not know whom you are asking about.

In the question 'Who am I?

Use it.

Investigate what you know to its very end and you will reach the unknown layers of your being.

Go further and the unexpected will explode in you and shatter all.

Q: Does it mean death?

M: It means life -- at last.

It made you believe yourself to be what you are not.

What is it, and can you be free of it?

Before you go further you must accept, at least as a working theory, that you are not what you appear to be, that you are under the influence of a drug.

Then only will you have the urge and the patience to examine the symptoms and search for their common cause.

All that a Guru can tell you is: 'My dear Sir, you are quite mistaken about yourself.

M: Before you can accept God, you must accept yourself, which is even more frightening.

The first steps in self acceptance are not at all pleasant, for what one sees is not a happy sight.

One needs all the courage to go further.

What helps is silence.

Look at yourself in total silence, do not describe yourself.

When God considers the fruit to be ripe, He will pluck it and eat it.

Whichever fruit seems green to Him will remain on the world's tree for another day.

M: You think God knows you?

Even the world He does not know.

Q: Yours is a different God.

When reality explodes in you, you may call it experience of God.

Or, rather, it is God experiencing you.

God knows you when you know yourself.

Reality is not the result of a process; it is an explosion.

It is definitely beyond the mind, but all you can do is to know your mind well.

They are not.

They are the same consciousness at rest and in movement, each state conscious of the other.

In chit man knows God and God knows man.

In chit the man shapes the world and the world shapes man.

Chit is the link, the bridge between extremes, the balancing and uniting factor in every experience.

Maharaj: It depends what you make of it.

Q: I was told that the liberating action of satsang is automatic.

Just like a river carries one to the estuary, so the subtle and silent influence of good people will take me to reality.

M: It will take you to the river, but the crossing is your own.

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

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

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

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

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

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

You must mature to recognise greatness and purify your heart for holiness.

Or you will spend your time and money in vain and also miss what life offers you.

There are good people among your friends -- you can learn much from them.

Running after saints is merely another game to play.

Remember yourself instead and watch your daily life relentlessly.

M: Accept what comes.

Q: I feel I am too weak to stand on my own legs.

I need the holy company of a Guru and of good people.

Equanimity is beyond me.

To accept what comes as it comes, frightens me.

Some say there are three aspects of reality -- Truth-Wisdom-Bliss; He who seeks Truth becomes a Yogi, he who seeks wisdom becomes a jnani; he who seeks happiness becomes the man of action.

Q: We are told of the bliss of non-duality.

M: Such bliss is more of the nature of a great peace.

Pleasure and pain are the fruits of actions -- righteous and unrighteous.

Q: What makes the difference?

In practice, and at a given moment, you proceed by one road only.

Sooner or later you are bound to discover that if you really want to find, you must dig at one place only -- within.

Neither your body nor mind can give you what you seek -- the being and knowing your self and the great peace that comes with it.

Q: Surely there is something valid and valuable in every approach.

M: In each case the value lies in bringing you to the need of seeking within.

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?

Undeceive yourself and be free.

You are not a person.

35: Greatest Guru is Your Inner Self.

Questioner: On all sides I hear that freedom from desires and inclinations is the first condition of self-realisation.

But I find the condition impossible of fulfilment.

Desire and confidence must go together.

The stronger your desire, the easier comes the help.

The greatest Guru is helpless as long as the disciple is not eager to learn.

Eagerness and earnestness are all-important.

Confidence will come with experience.

Be devoted to your goal -- and devotion to him who can guide you will follow.

If your desire and confidence are strong, they will operate and take you to your goal, for you will not cause delay by hesitation and compromise.

The greatest Guru is your inner self.

Truly, he is the supreme teacher.

He alone can take you to your goal and he alone meets you at the end of the road.

Movement and rest are states of mind and cannot be without their opposites.

By itself nothing moves, nothing rests.

It is a grievous mistake to attribute to mental constructs absolute existence.

Nothing exists by itself.

Q: You seem to identify rest with the Supreme State?

It is objective, so to say.

But the objective cannot be your own.

It would be a grievous mistake to identify yourself with something external.

This churning up of levels leads nowhere.

Reality is beyond the subjective and objective, beyond all levels, beyond every distinction.

M: Events in time and space -- birth and death, cause and effect -- these may be taken as one; but the body and the embodied are not of the same order of reality.

The body exists in time and space, transient and limited, while the dweller is timeless and spaceless, eternal and all-pervading.

To identify the two is a grievous mistake and the cause of endless suffering.

You can speak of the mind and body as one, but the body-mind is not the underlying reality.

Q: Whoever he may be, the dweller is in control of the body and, therefore, responsible for it.

He is what he is, the ground from which all grows.

Q: Are you not afraid to die?

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

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

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

And what a difference it made, and how soon!

It took me only three years to realise my true nature.

My Guru died soon after I met him, but it made no difference.

I remembered what he told me and persevered.

The fruit of it is here, with me.

Why search for causes?

In the very beginning I was giving some attention and time to the sense 'I am', but only in the beginning.

Soon after my Guru died, I lived on.

His words proved to be true.

That is all.

There were so many others; all contributed.

But the main factor, the most crucial, was the fact of being born the son of a king.

Similarly, the Guru may help.

But the main thing that helps is to have reality within.

It will assert itself.

Just as a man gripped by pain puts himself completely in the hands of a surgeon, so does the disciple entrust himself without reservation to his Guru.

It is quite natural to seek help when its need is felt acutely.

But, however powerful the Guru may be, he should not impose his will on the disciple.

On the other hand, a disciple that distrusts and hesitates is bound to remain unfulfilled for no fault of his Guru.

Q: What happens then?

Don't ask others.

Their man may not be your Guru.

A Guru may be universal in his essence, but not in his expressions.

He may appear to be angry or greedy or over-anxious about his Ashram or his family, and you may be misled by appearances, while others are not.

Q: Have I not the right to expect all-round perfection, both inner and outer?

And yet I feel that I am an infant.

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

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

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

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

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

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

My Guru told me -- 'Trust me.

I tell you; you are divine.

Take it as the absolute truth.

I did not follow any particular course of breathing, or meditation, or study of scriptures.

Whatever happened, I would turn away my attention from it and remain with the sense 'I am', it may look too simple, even crude.

My only reason for doing it was that my Guru told me so.

Yet it worked!

Obedience is a powerful solvent of all desires and fears.

Nor was I told so inwardly.

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

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

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

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

M: It is the Inner Guru (sadguru) who takes you to the Outer Guru, as a mother takes her child to a teacher.

Trust and obey your Guru, for he is the messenger of your Real Self.

Q: How do I find a Guru whom I can trust?

M: Your own heart will tell you.

There is no difficulty in finding a Guru, because the Guru is in search of you.

Q: Does creation come before investigation?

M: First you create a world, then the 'I am' becomes a person, who is not happy for various reasons.

He goes out in search of happiness, meets a Guru who tells him: 'You are not a person, find who you are'.

He does it and goes beyond.

Q: Why did he not do it at the very start?

If it is not, there will be suffering and death.

Q: Do you mean to say that if I do not take to Yoga, I am doomed to extinction?

M: There is the Guru who will come to your rescue.

In the meantime be satisfied with watching the flow of your life; if your watchfulness is deep and steady, ever turned towards the source, it will gradually move upstream till suddenly it becomes the source.

Put your awareness to work, not your mind.

Centuries roll on, but the human problem does not change -- the problem of suffering and the ending of suffering.

Q: The other day seven young foreigners have turned up asking for a place to sleep for a few nights.

They came to see their Guru who was lecturing in Bombay.

I met him -- a very pleasant looking young man is he -- apparently very matter-of-fact and efficient, but with an atmosphere of peace and silence about him.

His teaching is traditional with stress on karma Yoga, selfless work, service of the Guru etc.

M: True happiness cannot be found in things that change and pass away.

Pleasure and pain alternate inexorably.

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

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

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

And so does Mental.

The bliss is in the awareness of it, in not shrinking, or in any way turning away from it.

All happiness comes from awareness.

The more we are conscious, the deeper the joy.

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

M: You have always the company of your own self -- you need not feel alone.

Estranged from it even in India you will feel lonely.

All happiness comes from pleasing the self.

Please it, after return to the States, do nothing that may be unworthy of the glorious reality within your heart and you shall be happy and remain happy.

But you must seek the self and, having found it, stay with it.

34: Mind is restlessness Itself.

Questioner: I am a Swede by birth.

Now I am teaching Hatha Yoga in Mexico and in the States.

Maharaj: Where did you learn it?

Q: I had a teacher in the States, an Indian Swami.

M: No doubt it is very pleasant to feel fit.

Is pleasure all you expected from Yoga?

Q: The joy of well-being is the reward of Hatha Yoga.

But Yoga in general yields more than that.

It answers many questions.

Some scholars are of the view that this sect originated with the teachings of the mythical Rishi Dattatreya, who is believed to be a combined incarnation of the holy trinity of Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva.

The unique spiritual attainments of this legendary figure are mentioned in the Bhagavata Purana, the Mahabharata and also in some later Upanishads.

Others hold that it is an offshoot of the Hatha Yoga.

Whatever be its origin, the teachings of the Nath Sampradaya have, over the centuries, become labyrinthine in complexity and have assumed different forms in different parts of India.

Some Gurus of the Sampradaya lay stress on bhakti, devotion; others on jnana, knowledge; still others on yoga, the union with the ultimate.

Q: Fair enough.

But what is the purpose?

M: To help others, one must be beyond the need of help.

Q: All I want is to be happy.

M: Be happy to make happy.

Truth gives no advantage.

It gives you no higher status, no power over others; all you get is truth and the freedom from the false.

Q: Surely truth gives you the power to help others.

M: This is mere imagination, however noble!

In truth you do not help others, because there are no others.

Q: Surely truth gives you the power to help others.

M: This is mere imagination, however noble!

In truth you do not help others, because there are no others.

You divide people into noble and ignoble and you ask the noble to help the ignoble.

You separate, you evaluate, you judge and condemn -- in the name of truth you destroy it.

It is not doing good that comes first, but ceasing to hurt, not adding to suffering.

Pleasing others is not ahimsa.

Q: I am not talking of pleasing, but I am all for helping others.

M: The only help worth giving is freeing from the need for further help.

Repeated help is no help at all.

There are others.

M: When you go to them with your desires and fears, you merely add to their sorrows.

First be free of suffering yourself and then only hope of helping others.

You do not even need to hope -- your very existence will be the greatest help a man can give his fellowmen.

60: Live Facts, not Fancies.

Q: I may remove my causes of sorrow, but others will be left to suffer.

M: To understand suffering, you must go beyond pain and pleasure.

Your own desires and fears prevent you from understanding and thereby helping others.

In reality there are no others, and by helping yourself you help everybody else.

If you are serious about the sufferings of mankind, you must perfect the only means of help you have -- Yourself.

When others tell them about the miracles they worked, they also are wonder struck.

Yet, taking nothing as their own, they are neither proud, nor do they crave for reputation.

They are just unable to desire anything for themselves, not even the joy of helping others knowing that God is good they are at peace.

77: 'I' and 'Mine' are False Ideas.

Questioner: I am very much attached to my family and possessions.

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

M: Both.

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

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

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

Q: I see you sitting on an antelope skin.

How does it tally with non-violence?

M: All my working life I was a cigarette-maker, helping people to spoil their health.

And in front of my door the municipality has put up a public lavatory, spoiling my health.

In this violent world how can one keep away from violence of some kind or other?

We have met many holy people and we are glad to meet one more.

Maharaj: You have met many anchorites and ascetics, but a fully realised man conscious of his divinity (swarupa) is hard to find.

The saints and Yogis, by immense efforts and sacrifices, acquire many miraculous powers and can do much good in the way of helping people and inspiring faith, yet it does not make them perfect.

It is not a way to reality, but merely an enrichment of the false.

All effort leads to more effort; whatever was built up must be maintained, whatever was acquired must be protected against decay or loss.

Q: As I can make out, I live on many levels and life on each level requires energy.

The self by its very nature delights in everything and its energies flow outwards.

Is it not the purpose of meditation to dam up the energies on the higher levels, or to push them back and up, so as to enable the higher levels to prosper also?

M: It is not so much the matter of levels as of gunas (qualities).

Meditation is a sattvic activity and aims at complete elimination of tamas (inertia) and rajas (motivity).

I am not concerned either with 'what exists' or with 'who exists'.

I take my stand beyond, where I am both and neither.

The persons who, after much effort and penance, have fulfilled their ambitions and secured higher levels of experience and action, are usually acutely conscious of their standing; they grade people into hierarchies, ranging from the lowest non-achiever to the highest achiever.

To me all are equal.

Differences in appearance and expression are there, but they do not matter.

But how can the future be known?

The unexpected is inevitable.

M: What is unexpected on one level may be certain to happen, when seen from a higher level After all, we are within the limits of the mind.

In reality nothing happens, there is no past nor future; all appears and nothing is.

Q: What does it mean, nothing is?

M: In the long run all will be well.

After all, the real Self of both is not affected by the comedy they play for a time.

They will sober up and ripen and shift to a higher level of relationship.

Q: Or, they may separate.

M: Yes, they may separate.

You are waiting at the non-existent painted doors, which will never open.

Q: Many of us were taking drugs at some time, and to some extent.

People told us to take drugs in order to break through into higher levels of consciousness.

Others advised us to have abundant sex for the same purpose.

What is your opinion in the matter?

To rectify this misunderstanding of one's reality, the only way is to take full cognisance of the ways of one's mind and to turn it into an instrument of self-discovery.

The mind was originally a tool in the struggle for biological survival.

It had to learn the laws and ways of Nature working hand-in-hand can raise life to a higher level.

But, in the process the mind acquired the art of symbolic thinking and communication, the art and skill of language.

Words became important.

Q: As I can make out, I live on many levels and life on each level requires energy.

The self by its very nature delights in everything and its energies flow outwards.

Is it not the purpose of meditation to dam up the energies on the higher levels, or to push them back and up, so as to enable the higher levels to prosper also?

M: It is not so much the matter of levels as of gunas (qualities).

Meditation is a sattvic activity and aims at complete elimination of tamas (inertia) and rajas (motivity).

I am not concerned either with 'what exists' or with 'who exists'.

I take my stand beyond, where I am both and neither.

The persons who, after much effort and penance, have fulfilled their ambitions and secured higher levels of experience and action, are usually acutely conscious of their standing; they grade people into hierarchies, ranging from the lowest non-achiever to the highest achiever.

To me all are equal.

Differences in appearance and expression are there, but they do not matter.

You are waiting at the non-existent painted doors, which will never open.

Q: Many of us were taking drugs at some time, and to some extent.

People told us to take drugs in order to break through into higher levels of consciousness.

Others advised us to have abundant sex for the same purpose.

What is your opinion in the matter?

All talk of separation and relation is due to the distorting and corrupting influence of 'I-am-the-body' idea.

The outer self (vyakti) is merely a projection on the body-mind of the inner self (vyakta), which again is only an expression of the Supreme Self (avyakta) which is all and none.

Q: There are teachers who will not talk of the higher self and lower self.

They address the man as if only the lower self existed.

Neither Buddha nor Christ ever mentioned a higher self.

Q: There are teachers who will not talk of the higher self and lower self.

They address the man as if only the lower self existed.

Neither Buddha nor Christ ever mentioned a higher self.

J. Krishnamurti too fights shy of any mention of the higher self.

Why is it so?

They address the man as if only the lower self existed.

Neither Buddha nor Christ ever mentioned a higher self.

J. Krishnamurti too fights shy of any mention of the higher self.

Why is it so?

M: How can there be two selves in one body?

Q: I feel we are running in circles.

After all, I know one self only, the present, empirical self.

The inner or higher self is but an idea conceived to explain and encourage.

We talk of it as having independent existence.

It hasn't.

To question and deny is necessary.

It is the essence of revolt and without revolt there can be no freedom.

There is no second, or higher self to search for.

You are the highest self, only give up the false ideas you have about your self.

Both faith and reason tell you that you are neither the body, nor its desires and fears, nor are you the mind with its fanciful ideas, nor the role society compels you to play, the person you are supposed to be.

It will just happen.

Q: My very coming here has proved it.

Is this speeding up due to holy company?

When I left last time, I hoped to come back.

And I did!

M: This is our stupidity, verging on insanity.

61: Matter is Consciousness Itself.

Questioner: I was lucky to have holy company all my life.

Is it enough for self-realisation?

Maharaj: It depends what you make of it.

Q: How is it that the question 'Who am I' attracts me little?

I prefer to spend my time in the sweet company of saints.

M: Abiding in your own being is also holy company.

If you have no problem of suffering and release from suffering, you will not find the energy and persistence needed for self-enquiry.

You cannot manufacture a crisis.

M: Accept what comes.

Q: I feel I am too weak to stand on my own legs.

I need the holy company of a Guru and of good people.

Equanimity is beyond me.

To accept what comes as it comes, frightens me.

In this violent world how can one keep away from violence of some kind or other?

Q: Surely all avoidable violence should be avoided.

And yet in India every holy man has his tiger, lion, leopard or antelope skin to sit on.

M: Maybe because no plastics were available in ancient times and a skin was best to keep the damp away.

Rheumatism has no charm, even for a saint!

And you cannot fight with your interests.

You must go with them, see through them and watch them reveal themselves as mere errors of judgement and appreciation.

Q: Will it not help me if I go and stay with some great and holy man?

M: Great and holy people are always within your reach, but you do not recognise them.

How will you know who is great and holy?

Can you trust others in these matters, or even yourself?

To convince you beyond the shadow of doubt you need more than a commendation, more even than a momentary rapture.

You may come across a great and holy man or women and not even know for a long time your good fortune.

The infant son of a great man for many years will not know the greatness of his father.

You must mature to recognise greatness and purify your heart for holiness.

Later, each tape was deciphered and translated into English.

It was not easy to translate verbatim and at the same time avoid tedious repetitions and reiterations.

It is hoped that the present translation of the tape-recordings will not reduce the impact of this clear- minded, generous and in many ways an unusual human being.

A Marathi version of these talks, verified by Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj himself, has been separately published.

Maurice FrydmanTranslatorBombayOctober 16, 1973.

That is how the world improves -- the inner aiding and blessing the outer.

When a jnani dies, he is no more, in the same sense in which a river is no more when it merges in the sea, the name, the shape, are no more, but the water remains and becomes one with the ocean.

When a jnani joins the universal mind, all his goodness and wisdom become the heritage of humanity and uplift every human being.

Q: We are attached to our personality.

Our individuality, our being unlike others, we value very much.

Q: Does a realised man ever think: 'I am realised?

' Is he not astonished when people make much of him?

Does he not take himself to be an ordinary human being?

M: Neither ordinary, nor extra-ordinary.

Just being aware and affectionate -- intensely.

It is the very essence of Yoga -- ever raising the level of consciousness, discovery of new dimensions, with their properties, qualities and powers.

In that sense the entire universe becomes a school of Yoga (yogakshetra).

Q: Is perfection the destiny of all human beings?

M: Of all living beings -- ultimately.

The possibility becomes a certainty when the notion of enlightenment appears in the mind.

Just as a man digging a well discards what is not water, until he reaches the water-bearing strata, so must you discard what is not your own, till nothing is left which you can disown.

You will find that what is left is nothing which the mind can hook on to.

You are not even a human being.

You just are -- a point of awareness, co-extensive with time and space and beyond both, the ultimate cause, itself uncaused.

If you ask me: 'Who are you?

Once you know that death happens to the body and not to you, you just watch your body falling off like a discarded garment.

Q: I am fully aware that my fear of death is due to apprehension and not knowledge.

M: Human beings die every second, the fear and the agony of dying hangs over the world like a cloud.

No wonder you too are afraid.

But once you know that the body alone dies and not the continuity of memory and the sense of 'I am' reflected in it, you are afraid no longer.

Existence implies violence.

Q: As a body -- yes.

As a human being -- definitely no.

For humanity non-violence is the law of life and violence of death.

M: There is little of non-violence in nature.

See them as they are -- mere habits of thoughts and feelings, bundles of memories and urges.

Q: Yet they all say 'I am'.

M: It is only because you identify yourself with them.

Once you realise that whatever appears before you cannot be yourself, and cannot say 'I am', you are free of all your 'persons' and their demands.

The sense 'I am' is your own.

You made up your mind about what help means and needs and got your self into a conflict between what you should and what you can, between necessity and ability.

Q: But why do we do so?

M: Your mind projects a structure and you identify yourself with it.

It is in the nature of desire to prompt the mind to create a world for its fulfilment.

Even a small desire can start a long line of action; what about a strong desire?

It is objective, so to say.

But the objective cannot be your own.

It would be a grievous mistake to identify yourself with something external.

This churning up of levels leads nowhere.

Reality is beyond the subjective and objective, beyond all levels, beyond every distinction.

Q: Nobody suffers in a play.

M: Unless one identifies himself with it.

Don't identify yourself with the world and you will not suffer.

Q: Others will.

M: Then make your world perfect, by all means.

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.

Q: Everybody is conscious, but not everybody is aware.

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.

You are on the level of the mind.

You come to know by dwelling in your mind on 'I am', 'I know', 'I love' -- with the will of reaching the deepest meaning of these words.

Q: Can I think 'I am God'?

M: Don't identify yourself with an idea.

If you mean by God the Unknown, then you merely say: 'I do not know what I am'.

If you know God as you know your self, you need not say it.

M: I mean free of all contents.

To myself I am neither perceivable nor conceivable; there is nothing I can point out and say: 'this I am'.

You identify yourself with everything so easily, I find it impossible.

The feeling: 'I am not this or that, nor is anything mine' is so strong in me that as soon as a thing or a thought appears, there comes at once the sense 'this I am not'.

Q: Do you mean to say that you spend your time repeating 'this I am not, that I am not'?

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

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

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

But these are all escapes from fear.

It is only when you fully accept your responsibility for the little world in which you live and watch the process of its creation, preservation and destruction, that you may be free from your imaginary bondage.

In a way, time itself is the poison.

In time all things come to an end and new are born, to be devoured in their turn.

Do not identify yourself with time, do not ask anxiously: 'what next, what next?

' Step out of time and see it devour the world.

Say: 'Well, it is in the nature of time to put an end to everything.

Is this not a proof?

Q: Myself, full of desires and you, full of desires; what difference would there be?

M: You identify yourself with your desires and become their slave.

To me desires are things among other things, mere clouds in the mental sky, and I do not feel compelled to act on them.

Q: The knower and his knowledge, are they one or two?

M: Generally, what causes suffering is wrong and what removes it, is right.

The body and the mind are limited and therefore vulnerable; they need protection which gives rise to fear.

As long as you identify yourself with them you are bound to suffer; realise your independence and remain happy.

I tell you, this is the secret of happiness.

To believe that you depend on things and people for happiness is due to ignorance of your true nature; to know that you need nothing to be happy, except self-knowledge, is wisdom.

If I alone am and the world is merely a protection, then why is there disharmony?

M: You create disharmony and then complain!

When you desire and fear, and identify yourself with your feelings, you create sorrow and bondage.

When you create, with love and wisdom, and remain unattached to your creations, the result is harmony and peace.

But whatever be the condition of your mind, in what way does it reflect on you?

Everybody sees the world through the idea he has of himself.

As you think yourself to be, so you think the world to be.

If you imagine yourself as separate from the world, the world will appear as separate from you and you will experience desire and fear.

I do not see the world as separate from me and so there is nothing for me to desire, or fear.

Q: You are a point of light in the world.

What is wrong in letting go the illusion of personal control and personal responsibility?

Both are in the mind only.

Of course, as long as you imagine yourself to be in control, you should also imagine yourself to be responsible.

One implies the other.

Q: How can the universal be responsible for the particular?

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

By imagining that you are born as so-and-so, you become a slave to the so-and- so.

The essence of slavery is to imagine yourself to be a process, to have past and future, to have history.

In fact, we have no history, we are not a process, we do not develop, nor decay; also see all as a dream and stay out of it.

Q: What benefit do I derive from listening to you?

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

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

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

Your thoughts and feelings exist in succession, they have their span in time and make you imagine yourself, because of memory, as having duration.

In reality time and space exist in you; you do not exist in them.

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

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

Your thoughts and feelings exist in succession, they have their span in time and make you imagine yourself, because of memory, as having duration.

In reality time and space exist in you; you do not exist in them.

They are modes of perception, but they are not the only ones.

It is in the very nature of love to see no difference.

Q: How can I come to see myself as you see me?

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

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

It blinds you completely to your real nature.

You are already perfect, here and now.

The perfectible is not you.

You imagine yourself to be what you are not -- stop it.

It is the cessation that is important, not what you are going to stop.

Q: Did not karma compel me to become what I am?

M: Maybe.

We need not run off with terminology.

Just see the person you imagine yourself to be as a part of the world you perceive within your mind and look at the mind from the outside, for you are not the mind.

After all, your only problem is the eager self-identification with whatever you perceive.

Give up this habit, remember that you are not what you perceive, use your power of alert aloofness.

See yourself in all that lives and your behaviour will express your vision.

Once you realise that there is nothing in this world, which you can call your own, you look at it from the outside as you look at a play on the stage, or a picture on the screen, admiring and enjoying, but really unmoved.

As long as you imagine yourself to be something tangible and solid, a thing among things, actually existing in time and space, short-lived and vulnerable, naturally you will be anxious to survive and increase.

But when you know yourself as beyond space and time -- in contact with them only at the point of here and now, otherwise all-pervading and all-containing, unapproachable, unassailable, invulnerable -- you will be afraid no longer.

Know yourself as you are -- against fear there is no other remedy.

Just see the need of being abandoned.

Don't resist, don't hold on to the person you take yourself to be.

Because you imagine yourself to be a person you take the jnani to be a person too, only somewhat different, better informed and more powerful.

You may say that he is eternally conscious and happy, but it is far from expressing the whole truth.

Don't trust definitions and descriptions -- they are grossly misleading.

Q: I find being alive a painful state.

M: You cannot be alive for you are life itself.

It is the person you imagine yourself to be that suffers, not you.

Dissolve it in awareness.

It is merely a bundle of memories and habits.

M: The mind cannot understand, for the mind is trained for grasping and holding while the jnani is not-grasping and not holding.

Q: What am I holding on to, which you do not?

M: You are a creature of memories; at least you imagine yourself to be so.

I am entirely unimagined.

I am what I am, not identifiable with any physical or mental state.

It will get at you, if you give it a chance.

Let go your attachment to the unreal and the real will swiftly and smoothly step into its own.

Stop imagining yourself being or doing this or that and the realisation that you are the source and heart of all will dawn upon you.

With this will come great love which is not choice or predilection, nor attachment, but a power which makes all things love-worthy and lovable.

2: Obsession with the body.

And what is liberation after all?

To know that you are beyond birth and death.

By forgetting who you are and imagining yourself a mortal creature, you created so much trouble for yourself that you have to wake up, like from a bad dream.

Enquiry also wakes you up.

You need not wait for suffering; enquiry into happiness is better, for the mind is in harmony and peace.

How to close the gap?

M: Give up the idea of being what you think yourself to be and there will be no gap.

By imagining yourself as separate you have created the gap.

You need not cross it.

Just don't create it.

M: But you are universal.

You need not and you cannot become what you are already.

Only cease imagining yourself to be the particular.

What comes and goes has no being.

It owes its very appearance to reality.

Just remain unaffected.

This complete aloofness, unconcern with mind and body is the best proof that at the core of your being you are neither mind nor body.

What happens to the body and the mind may not be within your power to change, but you can always put an end to your imagining yourself to be body and mind.

Whatever happens, remind yourself that only your body and mind are affected, not yourself.

The more earnest you are at remembering what needs to be remembered, the sooner will you be aware of yourself as you are, for memory will become experience.

M: There is nothing to practise.

To know yourself, be yourself.

To be yourself, stop imagining yourself to be this or that.

Just be.

Let your true nature emerge.

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.

I also feel thirst and hunger and expect my food to be served on time.

All limitation is imaginary, only the unlimited is real.

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

M: I see you imagining yourself to be.

Q: There are many like me.

Yet each is different.

Somebody must come and declare it as his own.

Without an experiencer the experience is not real.

It is the experiencer that imparts reality to experience.

An experience which you cannot have, of what value is it to you?

Q: The sense of being an experiencer, the sense of 'I am', is it not also an experience?

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

But the Supreme is beyond all distinctions and to it the term 'real' does not apply, for in it all is real and, therefore, need not be labelled as such.

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.

The Supreme (paramakash) imparts reality to whatever comes into being.

To say that it is the universal love may be the nearest we can come to it in words.

Just like love it makes everything real, beautiful, desirable.

Of course the universe has no being.

Q: What has?

M: That which does not depend for its existence, which does not arise with the universe arising, nor set with the universe setting, which does not need any proof, but imparts reality to all it touches.

It is the nature of the false that it appears real for a moment.

One could say that the true becomes the father of the false.

Who is to break the shell?

M: Break the bonds of memory and self-identification and the shell will break by itself.

There is a centre that imparts reality to whatever it perceives.

All you need is to understand that you are the source of reality, that you give reality instead of getting it, that you need no support and no confirmation.

Things are as they are, because you accept them as they are.

Being the essence of the five elements, it, in a way, depends upon the world.

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

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

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

The awareness 'I am' then easily ceases.

What would be your first reaction?

M: No reaction.

As it is natural for the incense stick to burn out, so it is natural for the body to die.

Really, it is a matter of very little importance.

What matters is that I am neither the body nor the mind.

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.

It is like looking at a burning incense stick, you see the stick and the smoke first; when you notice the fiery point, you realise that it has the power to consume mountains of sticks and fill the universe with smoke.

Timelessly the self actualises itself, without exhausting its infinite possibilities.

In the incense stick simile the stick is the body and the smoke is the mind.

It is like looking at a burning incense stick, you see the stick and the smoke first; when you notice the fiery point, you realise that it has the power to consume mountains of sticks and fill the universe with smoke.

Timelessly the self actualises itself, without exhausting its infinite possibilities.

In the incense stick simile the stick is the body and the smoke is the mind.

As long as the mind is busy with its contortions, it does not perceive its own source.

The Guru comes and turns your attention to the spark within.

M: How can we?

We can talk only of the unreal, the illusory, the transient, the conditioned.

To go beyond, we must pass through total negation of everything as having independent existence.

All things depend.

Q: On what do they depend?

In reality, there is no such thing.

Feelings, thoughts and actions race before the watcher in endless succession, leaving traces in the brain and creating an illusion of continuity.

A reflection of the watcher in the mind creates the sense of 'I' and the person acquires an apparently independent existence.

In reality there is no person, only the watcher identifying himself with the 'I' and the 'mine'.

The teacher tells the watcher: you are not this, there is nothing of yours in this, except the little point of 'I am', which is the bridge between the watcher and his dream.

After all, I know one self only, the present, empirical self.

The inner or higher self is but an idea conceived to explain and encourage.

We talk of it as having independent existence.

It hasn't.

M: The outer self and the inner both are imagined.

Q: God may be a mere concept, a working theory.

A very useful concept all the same!

M: For this it must be free of inner contradictions, which is not the case.

Why not work on the theory that you are your own creation and creator.

At least there will be no external God to battle with.

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.

Followers of every religion, metaphysical or political, philosophical or ethical, are convinced that theirs is the only truth, that all else is false and they take their own unshakable conviction for the proof of truth.

'I am convinced, so it must be true', they say.

It seems to me, that no philosophy or religion, no doctrine or ideology, however complete, free from inner contradictions and emotionally appealing, can be the proof of its own truth.

They are like clothes men put on, which vary with times and circumstances and follow the fashion trends.

Now, can there be a religion or philosophy which is true and which does not depend on somebody's conviction?

Q: Is not the grace of the Guru responsible for the desire and its fulfilment?

Is not the Guru's radiant face the bait on which we are caught and pulled out of this mire of sorrow?

M: It is the Inner Guru (sadguru) who takes you to the Outer Guru, as a mother takes her child to a teacher.

Trust and obey your Guru, for he is the messenger of your Real Self.

Q: How do I find a Guru whom I can trust?

M: Yes, it happens sometimes as a result of much suffering The Guru wants to save you the endless pain.

Such is his grace.

Even when there is no discoverable outer Guru, there is always the sadguru, the inner Guru, who directs and helps from within.

The words 'outer' and 'inner' are relative to the body only; in reality all is one, the outer being merely a projection of the inner.

Awareness comes as if from a higher dimension.

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

All others merely show the way.

Q: I am not concerned with the inner Guru.

only with the one that shows the way.

There are people who believe that without a Guru Yoga is inaccessible.

The outer Guru gives the instructions, the inner sends the strength; the alert application is the disciple's.

Without will, intelligence and energy on the part of the disciple the outer Guru is helpless.

The inner Guru bids his chance.

Obtuseness and wrong pursuits bring about a crisis and the disciple wakes up to his own plight.

Wise is he who does not wait for a shock, which can be quite rude.

Q: Is it a threat?

M: Not a threat, a warning.

The inner Guru is not committed to non-violence.

He can be quite violent at times, to the point of destroying the obtuse or perverted personality.

Suffering and death, as life and happiness, are his tools of work.

Q: I do understand that the outer Guru is needed to call my attention to myself and to the urgent need of doing something about myself.

I also understand how helpless he is when it comes to any deep change in me.

But here you bring in the sadguru, the inner Guru, beginningless, changeless, the root of being, the standing promise, the certain goal.

Is he a concept or a reality?

M: He is the only reality.

When the shadow is seen to be a shadow only, you stop following it.

You turn round and discover the sun which was there all the time -- behind your back!

Q: Does the inner Guru also teach?

M: He grants the conviction that you are the eternal, changeless, reality-consciousness-love, within and beyond all appearances.

Q: A conviction is not enough.

Just turn away from all that occupies the mind; do whatever work you have to complete, but avoid new obligations; keep empty, keep available, resist not what comes uninvited.

In the end you reach a state of non-grasping, of joyful non-attachment, of inner ease and freedom indescribable, yet wonderfully real.

Q: When a truth-seeker earnestly practices his Yogas, does his inner Guru guide and help him or does he leave him to his own resources, just waiting for the outcome?

M: All happens by itself.

Neither the seeker.

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

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

Q: I did attain a degree of inner peace.

Am I to destroy it?

M: What has been attained may be lost again.

Will it help me if I give my leisure hours to painting?

M: Whatever you may have to do, watch your mind.

Also you must have moments of complete inner peace and quiet, when your mind is absolutely still.

If you miss it, you miss the entire thing.

If you do not, the silence of the mind will dissolve and absorb all else.

You can become a night watchman and live happily.

It is what you are inwardly that matters.

Your inner peace and joy you have to earn.

It is much more difficult than earning money.

No university can teach you to be yourself.

Q: When I do not separate, I am happily at peace.

But somehow I lose my bearings again and again and begin to seek happiness in outer things.

Why is my inner peace not steady, I cannot understand.

M: Peace, after all, is also a condition of the mind.

Q: Beyond the mind is silence.

Q: Is morality so important?

M: Don't cheat, don't hurt -- is it not important?

Above all you need inner peace -- which demands harmony between the inner and the outer.

Do what you believe in and believe in what you do.

All else is a waste of energy and time.

By precept and example Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj shows a short-cut, a-logical but empirically sound.

It operates, when understood.

Revising and editing of I AM THAT has been for me a pilgrimage to my inner self -- at once ennobling and enlightening.

I have done my work in a spirit of dedication, with great earnestness.

I have treated the questions of every questioner as mine own questions and have imbibed the answers of the Master with a mind emptied of all it knew.

He alone is, all else only appears to be.

He is your own self (swarupa), your hope and assurance of freedom; find him and cling to him and you will be saved and safe.

Q: I do believe you, but when it comes to the actual finding of this inner self, I find it escapes me.

M: The idea 'it escapes me', where does it arise?

Q: In the mind.

The causes of our behaviour are very subtle.

One must not be quick to condemn, not even to praise.

Remember that Yoga is the work of the inner self (vyakta) on the outer self (vyakti).

All that the outer does is merely in response to the inner.

Q: Still the outer helps.

You would have noticed that all advice to the outer is in the form of negations: don't, stop, refrain, forego, give up, sacrifice, surrender, see the false as false.

Even the little description of reality that is given is through denials -- 'not this, not this', (neti, neti).

All positives belong to the inner self, as all absolutes -- to Reality.

Q: How are we to distinguish the inner from the outer in actual experience?

M: The inner is the source of inspiration, the outer is moved by memory.

Undeceive yourself and be free.

You are not a person.

35: Greatest Guru is Your Inner Self.

Questioner: On all sides I hear that freedom from desires and inclinations is the first condition of self-realisation.

But I find the condition impossible of fulfilment.

Be devoted to your goal -- and devotion to him who can guide you will follow.

If your desire and confidence are strong, they will operate and take you to your goal, for you will not cause delay by hesitation and compromise.

The greatest Guru is your inner self.

Truly, he is the supreme teacher.

He alone can take you to your goal and he alone meets you at the end of the road.

Old age is not pleasant -- all aches and pains, weakness and the approaching end.

How does a jnani feel as an old man?

How does his inner self look at his own senility.

M: As he gets older he grows more and more happy and peaceful.

After all, he is going home.

You learn from everything, if you are alert and intelligent.

Were your mind clear and your heart clean, you would learn from every passer-by;.

It is because you are indolent or restless, that your inner Self manifests as the outer Guru and makes you trust him and obey.

Q: Is a Guru inevitable?

M: It is like asking 'Is a mother inevitable?

' To rise in consciousness from one dimension to another, you need help.

The help may not always be in the shape of a human person, it may be a subtle presence, or a spark of intuition, but help must come.

The inner Self is watching and waiting for the son to return to his father.

At the right time he arranges everything affectionately and effectively.

Where a messenger is needed, or a guide, he sends the Guru to do the needful.

Where a messenger is needed, or a guide, he sends the Guru to do the needful.

Q: There is one thing I cannot grasp.

You speak of the inner self as wise and good and beautiful and in every way perfect, and of the person as mere reflection without a being of its own.

On the other hand you take so much trouble in helping the person to realise itself.

If the person is so unimportant, why be so concerned with its welfare?

Selfishness is the source of all evil.

Q: I am coming back to my question.

Before I was born, did my inner self decide the details of my life, or was it entirely accidental and at the mercy of heredity and circumstances?

M: Those who claim to have selected their father and mother and decided how they are going to live their next life may know for themselves.

I know for myself.

Merely talking about Reality without doing anything about it is self-defeating.

There must be love in the relation between the person who says 'I am' and the observer of that 'I am'.

As long as the observer, the inner self, the 'higher' self, considers himself apart from the observed, the 'lower' self, despises it and condemns it, the situation is hopeless.

It is only when the observer (vyakta) accepts the person (vyakti) as a projection or manifestation of himself, and, so to say, takes the self into the Self, the duality of 'I' and 'this' goes and in the identity of the outer and the inner the Supreme Reality manifests itself.

This union of the seer and the seen happens when the seer becomes conscious of himself as the seer, he is not merely interested in the seen, which he is anyhow, but also interested in being interested, giving attention to attention, aware of being aware.

M: How can there be relation when they are one?

All talk of separation and relation is due to the distorting and corrupting influence of 'I-am-the-body' idea.

The outer self (vyakti) is merely a projection on the body-mind of the inner self (vyakta), which again is only an expression of the Supreme Self (avyakta) which is all and none.

Q: There are teachers who will not talk of the higher self and lower self.

They address the man as if only the lower self existed.

The objects of observation are not what they appear to be and the attitudes they are met with are not what they need be.

If you think that Buddha, Christ or Krishnamurti speak to the person, you are mistaken.

They know well that the vyakti, the outer self, is but a shadow of the vyakta, the inner self, and they address and admonish the vyakta only.

They tell him to give attention to the outer self, to guide and help it, to feel responsible for it; in short, to be fully aware of it.

Awareness comes from the Supreme and pervades the inner self; the so-called outer self is only that part of one's being of which one is not aware.

They know well that the vyakti, the outer self, is but a shadow of the vyakta, the inner self, and they address and admonish the vyakta only.

They tell him to give attention to the outer self, to guide and help it, to feel responsible for it; in short, to be fully aware of it.

Awareness comes from the Supreme and pervades the inner self; the so-called outer self is only that part of one's being of which one is not aware.

One may be conscious, for every being is conscious, but one is not aware.

What is included in awareness becomes the inner and partakes of the inner.

Such questions show anxiety.

Relationship is a living thing.

Be at peace with your inner self and you will be at peace with everybody.

Realise that you are not the master of what happens, you cannot control the future except in purely technical matters.

Human relationship cannot be planned, it is too rich and varied.

Q: What is real in it?

M: Find out, by discerning and rejecting all that is unreal.

Q: I have not understood well the role of the inner self in spiritual endeavour.

Who makes the effort?

Is it the outer self, or the inner?

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

You cannot approach it in worship.

No external activity can reach the inner self; worship and prayers remain on the surface only; to go deeper meditation is essential, the striving to go beyond the states of sleep, dream and waking.

In the beginning the attempts are irregular, then they recur more often, become regular, then continuous and intense, until all obstacles are conquered.

Q: Obstacles to what?

M: Your own self is your ultimate teacher (sadguru).

The outer teacher (Guru) is merely a milestone.

It is only your inner teacher, that will walk with you to the goal, for he is the goal.

Q: The inner teacher is not easily reached.

M: Since he is in you and with you, the difficulty cannot be serious.

The outer teacher (Guru) is merely a milestone.

It is only your inner teacher, that will walk with you to the goal, for he is the goal.

Q: The inner teacher is not easily reached.

M: Since he is in you and with you, the difficulty cannot be serious.

Look within, and you will find him.

Q: When I look within, I find sensations and perceptions, thoughts and feelings, desires and fears, memories and expectations.

I am immersed in this cloud and see nothing else.

M: That which sees all this, and the nothing too, is the inner teacher.

He alone is, all else only appears to be.

He is your own self (swarupa), your hope and assurance of freedom; find him and cling to him and you will be saved and safe.

For lack of experience whatever it perceives it takes to be itself.

Battered, it learns to look out (viveka) and to live alone (vairagya).

When right behaviour (uparati), becomes normal, a powerful inner urge (mukmukshutva) makes it seek its source.

The candle of the body is lighted and all becomes clear and bright.

Q: What is the real cause of suffering?

Then tell him, there is a way out within his easy reach, not a conversion to another set of ideas, but a liberation from all ideas and patterns of living.

Don't tell him about Gurus and disciples -- this way of thinking is not for him.

His is an inner path, he is moved by an inner urge and guided by an inner light.

Invite him to rebel and he will respond.

Do not try to impress on him that so-and-so is a realised man and can be accepted as a Guru.

In each case what is the right thing to do?

M: You are never without a Guru, for he is timelessly present in your heart.

Sometimes he externalises himself and comes to you as an uplifting and reforming factor in your life, a mother, a wife, a teacher; or he remains as an inner urge toward righteousness and perfection.

All you have to do is obey him and do what he tells you.

What he wants you to do is simple, learn self-awareness, self-control, self-surrender.