Beyond space and time I am, uncaused, uncausing, yet the very matrix of existence.

Q: May I be permitted to ask how did you arrive at your present condition?

M: My teacher told me to hold on to the sense 'I am' tenaciously and not to swerve from it even for a moment.

I did my best to follow his advice and in a comparatively short time I realised within myself the truth of his teaching.

All I did was to remember his teaching, his face, his words constantly.

Take my own case.

I did nothing for my realisation.

My teacher told me that the reality is within me; I looked within and found it there, exactly as my teacher told me.

To see reality is as simple as to see one's face in a mirror.

Only the mirror must be clear and true.

Be earnest about it and all will be well with you.

36: Killing Hurts the Killer, not the Killed.

Questioner: A thousand years ago a man lived and died.

His identity (antahkarana) re-appeared in a new body.

Why does he not remember his previous life?

The past ones are sufficient.

And if you feel you need more, look into the hearts of people around you.

You will find a variety of experiences which you would not be able to go through in a thousand years.

Learn from the sorrows of others and save yourself your own.

It is not experience that you need, but the freedom from all experience.

When you refuse to play the game, you are out of it.

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.

Q: As I am here, looking at you, I cannot locate the event in space and time.

There is something eternal and universal about the transmission of wisdom that is taking place.

Ten thousand years earlier, or later, make no difference -- the event itself is timeless.

M: Man does not change much over the ages.

Human problems remain the same and call for the same answers.

There is nothing new you will find here.

The work we are doing is timeless.

It was the same ten thousand years ago.

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.

M: All that binds you.

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?

The totality of all perceivers is what you call the universal mind.

The identity of the two, manifesting itself as perceptibility and perceiving, harmony and intelligence, loveliness and loving, reasserts itself eternally.

Q: The three gunas, sattva--rajas--tamas, are they only in matter, or also in the mind?

M: In both, of course, because the two are not separate.

It is only the absolute that is beyond gunas.

What flows is not the river with its bed and banks, but its water, so does the sattva guna, the universal harmony, play its games against tamas and rajas, the forces of darkness and despair.

In sattva there is always change and progress, in rajas there is change and regress, while tamas stands for chaos.

The three Gunas play eternally against each other -- it is a fact and there can be no quarrel with a fact.

Q: Must I always go dull with tamas and desperate with rajas?

What about sattva?

M: Sattva is the radiance of your real nature.

You can always find it beyond the mind and its many worlds.

But if you want a world, you must accept the three gunas as inseparable -- matter -- energy -- life -- one in essence, distinct in appearance.

They mix and flow -- in consciousness.

In time and space there is eternal flow, birth and death again, advance, retreat, another advance, again retreat -- apparently without a beginning and without end; reality being timeless, changeless, bodyless, mindless awareness is bliss.

We all know that sometimes we are conscious and sometimes not.

When we are not conscious, it appears to us as a darkness or a blank.

But a jnani is aware of himself as neither conscious nor unconscious, but purely aware, a witness to the three states of the mind and their contents.

Q: When does this witnessing begin?

M: To a jnani nothing has beginning or ending.

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.

You are introducing a duality where there is none.

Only reality is, there is nothing else.

The three states of waking, dreaming and sleeping are not me and I am not in them.

When I die, the world will say -- 'Oh, Maharaj is dead!

' But to me these are words without content; they have no meaning.

M: Nothing is done by me, everything just happens I do not expect, I do not plan, I just watch events happening, knowing them to be unreal.

Q: Were you always like this from the first moment of enlightenment?

M: The three states rotate as usual -- there is waking and sleeping and waking again, but they do not happen to me.

They just happen.

To me nothing ever happens.

Q: A dream cannot be shared.

M: Nor can the waking state.

All the three states -- of waking, dreaming and sleeping -- are subjective, personal, intimate.

They all happen to and are contained within the little bubble in consciousness, called 'I'.

The real world lies beyond the self.

As I talk to you, I am in the state of detached but affectionate awareness (turiya).

When this awareness turns upon itself, you may call it the Supreme State, (turiyatita).

But the fundamental reality is beyond awareness, beyond the three states of becoming, being and not-being.

Q: How is it that here my mind is engaged in high topics and finds dwelling on them easy and pleasant.

When I return home I find myself forgetting all l have learnt here, worrying and fretting, unable to remember my real nature even for a moment.

Q: What am I to wait for?

M: For the centre of your being to emerge into consciousness.

The three states -- sleeping, dreaming and waking are all in consciousness, the manifested; what you call unconsciousness will also be manifested -- in time; beyond consciousness altogether lies the unmanifested.

And beyond all, and pervading all, is the heart of being which beats steadily -- manifested-unmanifested; manifested-unmanifested (saguna-nirguna).

Q: On the verbal level it sounds all right.

Abandon all desires, keep your mind silent and you shall discover.

88: Knowledge by the Mind, is not True Knowledge.

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

Maharaj: All the three states are sleep to me.

My waking state is beyond them.

88: Knowledge by the Mind, is not True Knowledge.

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

Maharaj: All the three states are sleep to me.

My waking state is beyond them.

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

It contains the entire universe and with space to spare!

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

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

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

M: Do not try to know the truth, for knowledge by the mind is not true knowledge.

Remember, you are entirely on your own.

You do not come from somewhere, you do not go anywhere.

You are timeless being and awareness.

Questioner: There is a basic difference between us.

You know the real while I know only the workings of my mind.

M: I am dead already.

Physical death will make no difference in my case.

I am timeless being.

I am free of desire or fear, because I do not remember the past, or imagine the future.

Where there are no names and shapes, how can there be desire and fear?

If it does not, you call it eternal.

In my view there is no such thing as beginning or end -- these are all related to time.

Timeless being is entirely in the now.

Q: The antahkarana, or the 'subtle body', is it real or unreal?

M: It is momentary.

M: In other words, you are convinced of the reality of your circumstances, of the world in which you live.

Trace the world to its source and you will find that before the world was, you were and when the world is no longer, you remain.

Find your timeless being and your action will bear it testimony.

Did you find it?

Q: No, I did not.

All he knows, he knows with his mind, stimulated with the senses.

That the mind is a sense in itself, he does not even suspect.

The Nisarga Yoga, the 'natural' Yoga of Maharaj, is disconcertingly simple -- the mind, which is all- becoming, must recognise and penetrate its own being, not as being this or that, here or there, then or now, but just as timeless being.

This timeless being is the source of both life and consciousness.

In terms of time, space and causation it is all-powerful, being the causeless cause; all-pervading, eternal, in the sense of being beginningless, endless and ever-present.

That the mind is a sense in itself, he does not even suspect.

The Nisarga Yoga, the 'natural' Yoga of Maharaj, is disconcertingly simple -- the mind, which is all- becoming, must recognise and penetrate its own being, not as being this or that, here or there, then or now, but just as timeless being.

This timeless being is the source of both life and consciousness.

In terms of time, space and causation it is all-powerful, being the causeless cause; all-pervading, eternal, in the sense of being beginningless, endless and ever-present.

Uncaused, it is free; all-pervading, it knows; undivided, it is happy.

It is beyond being and not being.

It is neither the mirror nor the image in the mirror.

It is what is -- the timeless reality, unbelievably hard and solid.

Q: The jnani -- is he the witness or the Supreme?

M: He is the Supreme, of course, but he can also be viewed as the universal witness.

The seeker will remain.

M: No, the seeker will dissolve, the search will remain.

The search is the ultimate and timeless reality.

Q: Search means lacking, wanting, incompleteness and imperfection.

M: No, it means refusal and rejection of the incomplete and the imperfect.

Is there any relationship between the ocean and its waves?

The real enables the unreal to appear and causes it to disappear.

the succession of transient moments creates the illusion of time, but the timeless reality of pure being is not in movement, for all movement requires a motionless background.

It is itself the background.

Once you have found it in yourself, you know that you had never lost that independent being, independent of all divisions and separations.

If is over in a flash.

Watch carefully from where it comes and where it goes.

You will soon discover the timeless reality behind it.

Q: Why have I not done it before?

M: Just as every wave subsides into the ocean, so does every moment return to its source.

M: All this is temporary, while I am dealing with the eternal.

Gods and their universes come and go, avatars follow each other in endless succession, and in the end we are back at the source.

I talk only of the timeless source of all the gods with all their universes, past, present and future.

Q: Do you know them all?

Do you remember them?

It is by your consent that the world exists.

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

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

For without memory and expectation there can be no time.

Q: Is the 'I am' the Ultimate?

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.

Q: Do you speak from your own experience?

M: Of course.

It is a timeless state, ever present.

Q: With me it comes and goes, with you it does not.

Why this difference?

In loving one you love all, in loving all, you love each.

One and all are not exclusive.

Q: You say you are in a timeless state.

Does it mean that past and future are open to you?

Did you meet Vashishta Muni, Rama's Guru?

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

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

In the timeless state there is no self to take refuge in.

The man who carries a parcel is anxious not to lose it -- he is parcel-conscious.

The man who cherishes the feeling 'I am' is self-conscious.

Just be aware that you are and remain aware -- don't say: 'yes, I am; what next?

' There is no 'next' in 'I am'.

It is a timeless state.

Q: If it is a timeless state, it will assert itself anyhow.

M: You are what you are, timelessly, but of what use is it to you unless you know it and act on it?

' There is no 'next' in 'I am'.

It is a timeless state.

Q: If it is a timeless state, it will assert itself anyhow.

M: You are what you are, timelessly, but of what use is it to you unless you know it and act on it?

Your begging bowl may be of pure gold, but as long as you do not know it, you are a pauper.

You are always seeking pleasure, avoiding pain, always after happiness and peace.

Don't you see that it is your very search for happiness that makes you feel miserable?

Try the other way: indifferent to pain and pleasure, neither asking, nor refusing, give all your attention to the level on which 'I am' is timelessly present.

Soon you will realise that peace and happiness are in your very nature and it is only seeking them through some particular channels, that disturbs.

Avoid the disturbance, that is all.

Similarly clarity and silence of the mind are necessary for the reflection of reality to appear in the mind, but by themselves they are not sufficient.

There must be reality beyond it.

Because reality is timelessly present, the stress is on the necessary conditions.

Q: Can it happen that the mind is clear and quiet and yet no reflection appears?

M: There is destiny to consider.

Either I have found a Guru, or I have not.

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.

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

My life was the common kind, with common desires and fears.

When, through my faith in my teacher and obedience to his words, I realised my true being, I left behind my human nature to look after itself, until its destiny is exhausted.

Occasionally an old reaction, emotional or mental, happens in the mind, but it is at once noticed and discarded.

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

Without the absolute denial of everything the tyranny of things would be absolute.

The Supreme is the great harmoniser, the guarantee of the ultimate and perfect balance -- of life in freedom.

It dissolves you and thus re- asserts your true being.

Q: It is all well on its own level.

But how does it work in daily life?

Q: What am I to learn?

M: To live without self-concern.

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

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

Q: What may be the reason that some people succeed and others fail in Yoga?

Such is his nature.

Q: We can observe what may be called spiritual progress.

A selfish man turns religious, controls himself, refines his thoughts and feelings, takes to spiritual practice, realises his true being.

Is such progress ruled by causality, or is it accidental?

M: From my point of view everything happens by itself, quite spontaneously.

Q: What are the means to such perception?

M: In life nothing can be had without overcoming obstacles.

The obstacles to the clear perception of one's true being are desire for pleasure and fear of pain.

It is the pleasure-pain motivation that stands in the way.

The very freedom from all motivation, the state in which no desire arises is the natural state.

Sensations, desires, thoughts -- these are all burdens.

All consciousness is of conflict.

Q: Reality is described as true being, pure consciousness, infinite bliss.

What has pain to do with it?

M: Pain and pleasure happen, but pain is the price of pleasure, pleasure is the reward of pain.

Awareness is unattached and unshaken.

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

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

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

The child is after the toy, but the mother watches the child, not the toy.

The man who seeks realisation is not addicted to desires; he is a seeker who goes against desire, not with it.

A general longing for liberation is only the beginning; to find the proper means and use them is the next step.

The seeker has only one goal in view: to find his own true being.

Of all desires it is the most ambitious, for nothing and nobody can satisfy it; the seeker and the sought are one and the search alone matters.

Q: The search will come to an end.

All attachment implies fear, for all things are transient.

And fear makes one a slave.

This freedom from attachment does not come with practice; it is natural, when one knows one's true being.

Love does not cling; clinging is not love.

Q: So there is no way to gain detachment?

Spontaneity became a way of life, the real became natural and the natural became real.

And above all, infinite affection, love, dark and quiet, radiating in all directions, embracing all, making all interesting and beautiful, significant and auspicious.

Q: We are told that various Yogic powers arise spontaneously in a man who has realised his own true being.

What is your experience in these matters?

M: Man's fivefold body (physical etc.

If you give it rest, it will settle down and recover its purity and strength.

Constant thinking makes it decay.

Q: If my true being is always with me, how is it that I am ignorant of it?

M: Because it is very subtle and your mind is gross, full of gross thoughts and feelings.

Calm and clarify your mind and you will know yourself as you are.

Have you ever helped, really helped, a single man?

Have you ever put one soul beyond the need of further help?

Can you give a man character, based on full realisation of his duties and opportunities at least, if not on the insight into his true being?

When you do not know what is good for yourself, how can you know what is good for others?

Q: The adequate supply of means of livelihood is good for all.

Q: There may be clashes at home.

Parents rarely understand.

M: When you know your true being, you have no problems.

You may please your parents or not, marry or not, make a lot of money or not; it is all the same to you.

Just act according to circumstances, yet in close touch with the facts, with the reality in every situation.

Between what had happened and what must happen you are caught.

Call it destiny or karma, but never -- freedom.

First return to your true being and then act from the heart of love.

Q: Within the manifested what is the stamp of the unmanifested?

M: There is none.

Does not the ego have its value?

Maharaj: The person is of little use.

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

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

It is the witness that makes realisation desirable and attainable.

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?

M: I do not ask you to trust me.

Trust my words and remember them, I want your happiness, not mine.

Distrust those who put a distance between you and your true being and offer themselves as a go-between.

I do nothing of the kind.

I do not even make any promises.

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?

M: A quiet mind is not a dead mind.

Whenever love is withheld and suffering allowed to spread, war becomes inevitable.

Our indifference to our neighbour's sorrow brings suffering to our door.

83: The True Guru.

Questioner: You were saying the other day that at the root of your realisation was the trust in your Guru.

He assured you that you were already the Absolute Reality and there was nothing more to be done.

Q: How can I make out whom to follow and whom to mistrust?

M: Mistrust all, until you are convinced.

The true Guru will never humiliate you, nor will he estrange you from yourself.

He will constantly bring you back to the fact of your inherent perfection and encourage you to seek within.

He knows you need nothing, not even him, and is never tired of reminding you.

Q: I do not grasp you fully.

On one hand you say a Guru is needed; on the other -- the Guru can only give advice, bit the effort is mine.

Please state clearly -- can one realise the Self without a Guru, or is the finding of a true Guru essential?

M: More essential is the finding of a true disciple.

Believe me, a true disciple is very rare, for in no time he goes beyond the need for a Guru, by finding his own self.

Cling to what is doubtless and leave the doubtful alone.

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

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

M: Watch yourself.

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

You may or may not be happy, take it in your stride.

Q: Yet I want happiness.

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.

Often the Bhogi strives harder than the Yogi.

M: What is your happiness worth when you have to strive and labour for it?

True happiness is spontaneous and effortless.

Q: All beings seek happiness.

The means only differ.

Q: Why should pain be more effective than pleasure?

M: Pleasure is readily accepted, while all the powers of the self reject pain.

As the acceptance of pain is the denial of the self, and the self stands in the way of true happiness, the wholehearted acceptance of pain releases the springs of happiness.

Q: Does the acceptance of suffering act the same way?

M: The fact of pain is easily brought within the focus of awareness.

M: When the mind is engaged in serving the body, happiness is lost.

To regain it, it seeks pleasure.

The urge to be happy is right, but the means of securing it are misleading, unreliable and destructive of true happiness.

Q: Is pleasure always wrong?

M: The right state and use of the body and the mind are intensely pleasant.

The same with happiness.

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

True happiness is uncaused and this cannot disappear for lack of stimulation.

It is not the opposite of sorrow, it includes all sorrow and suffering.

Q: How can one remain happy among so much suffering?

Find out for yourself the state of wakeful sleep and you will find it quite in harmony with your real nature.

Words can only give you the idea and the idea is not the experience.

All I can say is that true happiness has no cause and what has no cause is immovable.

Which does not mean it is perceivable, as pleasure.

What is perceivable is pain and pleasure; the state of freedom from sorrow can be described only negatively.

What is the self you are in search of?

What exactly do you expect to find?

Q: The true knowledge of the self.

M: The true knowledge of the self is not a knowledge.

It is not something that you find by searching, by looking everywhere.

What exactly do you expect to find?

Q: The true knowledge of the self.

M: The true knowledge of the self is not a knowledge.

It is not something that you find by searching, by looking everywhere.

It is not to be found in space or time.

'I am, and I know I am'.

You cannot ask for further proofs.

Q: Can there be true knowledge of things?

M: Relatively -- yes.

Absolutely -- there are no things.

M: Relatively -- yes.

Absolutely -- there are no things.

To know that nothing is is true knowledge.

Q: What is the link between the relative and the absolute?

M: They are identical.

M: In the attentive and thoughtful reader they will ripen and bring out flowers and fruits.

Words based on truth, if fully tested, have their own power.

76: To Know that You do not Know, is True Knowledge.

Maharaj: There is the body.

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

Therefore, you may call it unconsciousness or blindness.

All you see around and within you is what you do not know and do not understand, without even knowing that you do not know and do not understand.

To know that you do not know and do not understand is true knowledge, the knowledge of an humble heart.

You know that you do not know.

Q: Will ignorance ever end?

You need not know 'why' and 'how', there is no end to questions.

Abandon all desires, keep your mind silent and you shall discover.

88: Knowledge by the Mind, is not True Knowledge.

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

Maharaj: All the three states are sleep to me.

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

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

M: Do not try to know the truth, for knowledge by the mind is not true knowledge.

But you can know what is not true -- which is enough to liberate you from the false.

The idea that you know what is true is dangerous, for it keeps you imprisoned in the mind.

The mind clogs you up with images and ideas, which leave scars in memory.

You take remembering to be knowledge.

True knowledge is ever fresh, new, unexpected.

It wells up from within.

When you know what you are, you also are what you know.

Q: Is not all knowledge based on memory?

M: Lower knowledge -- yes.

Higher knowledge, knowledge of Reality, is inherent in man's true nature.

Q: Can I say that I am not what I am conscious of, nor am I consciousness itself?

M: As long as you are a seeker, better cling to the idea that you are pure consciousness, free from all content.

Sex is energy.

Love is wise, sex is blind.

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

Q: There is so much sex without love.

M: Without love all is evil.

Q: Why should mere attention make all the difference?

M: So far your life was dark and restless (tamas and rajas).

Attention, alertness, awareness, clarity, liveliness, vitality, are all manifestations of integrity, oneness with your true nature (sattva).

It is in the nature of sattva to reconcile and neutralise tamas and rajas and rebuild the personality in accordance with the true nature of the self.

Sattva is the faithful servant of the self; ever attentive and obedient.

M: So far your life was dark and restless (tamas and rajas).

Attention, alertness, awareness, clarity, liveliness, vitality, are all manifestations of integrity, oneness with your true nature (sattva).

It is in the nature of sattva to reconcile and neutralise tamas and rajas and rebuild the personality in accordance with the true nature of the self.

Sattva is the faithful servant of the self; ever attentive and obedient.

Q: And I shall come to it through mere attention?

Why should I mislead you?

Commonsense too will tell you that to fulfil a desire you must keep your mind on it.

If you want to know your true nature, you must have yourself in mind all the time, until the secret of your being stands revealed.

Q: Why should self-remembrance bring one to self-realisation?

M: Because they are but two aspects of the same state.

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

Just be.

Let your true nature emerge.

Don't disturb your mind with seeking.

Q: It will take much time if I Just wait for self-realisation.

It is all very simple.

Only you must trust me that I mean what I say, that I am quite serious.

As I told you already, my Guru showed me my true nature -- and the true nature of the world.

Having realised that I am one with, and yet beyond the world, I became free from all desire and fear.

I did not reason out that I should be free -- I found myself free -- unexpectedly, without the least effort.

How does the contemplation of 'I am' affect me?

Maharaj: The very fact of observation alters the observer and the observed.

After all, what prevents the insight into one's true nature is the weakness and obtuseness of the mind and its tendency to skip the subtle and focus on the gross only.

When you follow my advice and try to keep your mind on the notion of 'I am' only, you become fully aware of your mind and its vagaries.

Awareness, being lucid harmony (sattva) in action, dissolves dullness and quietens the restlessness of the mind and gently, but steadily changes its very substance.

All my spare time I would spend looking at myself in silence.

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.

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.

Above everything else you cherish yourself.

You would accept nothing in exchange for your existence.

The desire to be is the strongest of all desires and will go only on the realisation of your true nature.

Q: Even in the unreal there is a touch of reality.

M: Yes, the reality you impart to it by taking it to be real.

M: From the unmanifested.

73: Death of the Mind is Birth of Wisdom.

Questioner: Before one can realise one's true nature need not one be a person?

Does not the ego have its value?

Maharaj: The person is of little use.

Q: Ignorance of what?

M: Ignorance of yourself primarily.

Also, ignorance of the true nature of things, of their causes and effects.

You look round without understanding and take appearances for reality.

You believe you know the world and yourself -- but it is only your ignorance that makes you say: I know.

Without flower -- no colours; without colour -- the flower remains unseen.

Beyond is the light which on contact with the flower creates the colour.

realise that your true nature is that of pure light only, and both the perceived and the perceiver come and go together.

That which makes both possible, and yet is neither, is your real being, which means not being a 'this' or 'that', but pure awareness of being and not-being.

When awareness is turned on itself, the feeling is of not knowing.

There is no certainty, except that there is knowing.

Q: Why am I sure of knowing, but not of the knower?

M: Knowing is a reflection of your true nature along with being and loving.

The knower and the known are added by the mind.

It is in the nature of the mind to create a subject-object duality, where there is none.

Awareness is itself and does not change with the event.

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

Take note of the peculiar nature of pure awareness, its natural self-identity, without the least trace of self-consciousness, and go to the root of it and you will soon realise that awareness is your true nature and nothing you may be aware of, you can call your own.

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.

Q: Surely, self-surrender has its value.

M: Self-surrender is the surrender of all self-concern.

It cannot be done, it happens when you realise your true nature.

Verbal self-surrender, even when accompanied by feeling, is of little value and breaks down under stress.

At the best it shows an aspiration, not an actual fact.

Q: In the Rigveda there is the mention of the adhi yoga, the Primordial Yoga, consisting of the marriage of pragna with Prana, which, as I understand, means the bringing together of wisdom and life.

Would you say it means also the union of Dharma and Karma, righteousness and action?

M: Yes, provided by righteousness you mean harmony with one's true nature and by action -- only unselfish and desireless action.

In adhi yoga life itself is the Guru and the mind -- the disciple.

The mind attends to life, it does not dictate.

Disregard them.

Since immemorial time the dust of events was covering the clear mirror of your mind, so that only memories you could see.

Brush off the dust before it has time to settle; this will lay bare the old layers until the true nature of your mind is discovered.

It is all very simple and comparatively easy; be earnest and patient, that is all.

Dispassion, detachment, freedom from desire and fear, from all self-concern, mere awareness -- free from memory and expectation -- this is the state of mind to which discovery can happen.

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.

Q: What comes first, being or desire?

M: With being arising in consciousness, the ideas of what you are arise in your mind as well as what you should be.

You may change your mind or your body, but it is always something external to you that has changed, not yourself.

Why bother at all to change?

realise once for all that neither your body nor your mind, nor even your consciousness is yourself and stand alone in your true nature beyond consciousness and unconsciousness.

No effort can take you there, only the clarity of understanding.

Trace your misunderstandings and abandon them, that is all.

The Yogi is narrow as the sharp edge of the knife.

He has to be -- to cut deep and smoothly, to penetrate unerringly the many layers of the false.

The Bhogi worships at many altars; the Yogi serves none but his own true Self.

There is no purpose in opposing the Yogi to the Bhogi.

The way of outgoing (pravritti) necessarily precedes the way of returning (nivritti).

It sheds its radiance on all that comes within its focus of awareness and nothing is excluded.

It does not know evil nor ugliness, it hopes, it trusts, it loves.

You people do not know how much you miss by not knowing your own true self.

You are neither the body nor the mind, neither the fuel nor the fire.

They appear and disappear according to their own laws.

You are neither the body nor the mind, neither the fuel nor the fire.

They appear and disappear according to their own laws.

That which you are, your true self, you love it, and whatever you do, you do for your own happiness.

To find it, to know it, to cherish it is your basic urge.

Since time immemorial you loved yourself, but never wisely.

Q: What is the purpose in reminding oneself all the time that one is the watcher?

M: The mind must learn that beyond the moving mind there is the background of awareness, which does not change.

The mind must come to know the true self and respect it and cease covering it up, like the moon which obscures the sun during solar eclipse.

Just realise that nothing observable, or experienceable is you, or binds you.

Take no notice of what is not yourself.

Q: If you are beyond the world, then you are of no use to the world.

M: Pity the self that is, not the world that is not!

Engrossed in a dream you have forgotten your true self.

Q: Without the world there is no place for love.

M: Quite so.

The Guru comes and tells the smaller one: 'You are not alone, you come from a very good family, your brother is a very remarkable man, wise and kind, and he loves you very much.

Remember him, think of him, find him, serve him, and you will become one with him'.

Now, the question is are there two in us, the personal and the individual, the false self and the true self, or is it only a simile?

M: It is both.

They appear to be two, but on investigation they are found to be one.

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?

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

Q: Is there no such thing as immortality?

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

To see the end in the beginning and beginning in the end is the intimation of eternity.

Definitely, immortality is not continuity.

M: Of course.

Self-forgetting is inherent in self-knowing.

Consciousness and unconsciousness are two aspects of one life.

They co-exist.

To know the world you forget the self -- to know the self you forget the world.

If you want to know your true nature, you must have yourself in mind all the time, until the secret of your being stands revealed.

Q: Why should self-remembrance bring one to self-realisation?

M: Because they are but two aspects of the same state.

Selfremembrance is in the mind, self- realisation is beyond the mind.

The image in the mirror is of the face beyond the mirror.

'I am all there is' too is an experience equally valid.

The particular and the universal are inseparable.

They are the two aspects of the nameless, as seen from without and from within.

Unfortunately, words only mention, but don't convey.

Try to go beyond the words.

The harmonised people may be called natural, ruled by law, while the disintegrated are chaotic and subject to accidents.

M: The very idea of chaos presupposes the sense of the orderly, the organic, the inter-related.

Chaos and cosmos: are they not two aspects of the same state?

Q: But you seem to say that all is chaos, accidental, unpredictable.

M: Yes, in the sense that not all the laws of being are known and not all events are predictable.

It is all very simple; it is the presence of the person that complicates.

See that there is no such thing as a permanently separate person and all becomes clear.

Awareness -- mind -- matter -- they are one reality in its two aspects as immovable and movable, and the three attributes of inertia, energy and harmony.

Q: What comes first: consciousness or awareness?

M: Awareness becomes consciousness when it has an object.

Deepen and broaden your awareness of yourself and all the blessings will flow.

You need not seek anything, all will come to you most naturally and effortlessly.

The five senses and the four functions of the mind -- memory, thought, understanding and selfhood; the five elements -- earth, water, fire, air and ether; the two aspects of creation -- matter and spirit, all are contained in awareness.

Q: Yet, you must believe in having lived before.

M: The scriptures say so, but I know nothing about it.

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

M: Remember that language is an instrument of the mind; It is made by the mind, for the mind.

Once you admit a cause, then God is the ultimate cause and the world the effect.

They are different, but not separate.

Q: People talk of seeing God.

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

M: All life on earth depends on the sun.

Yet you cannot blame the sun for all that happens, though it is the ultimate cause.

Light causes the colour of the flower, but it neither controls, nor is responsible for it directly.

It makes it possible, that is all.

Q: How can anything be without cause?

M: In every event the entire universe is reflected.

The ultimate cause is untraceable.

The very idea of causation is only a way of thinking and speaking.

We cannot imagine, uncaused emergence.

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?

' My answer would be: 'Nothing in particular.

Maharaj: We know the outer world of sensations and actions, but of our inner world of thoughts and feelings we know very little.

The primary purpose of meditation is to become conscious of, and familiar with, our inner life.

The ultimate purpose is to reach the source of life and consciousness.

Incidentally practice of meditation affects deeply our character.

We are slaves to what we do not know; of what we know we are masters.

Q: If there be no difference in the goal, why discriminate between various approaches?

M: Let each act according to his nature.

The ultimate purpose will be served in any case.

All your discriminations and classifications are quite all right, but they do not exist in my case.

As the description of a dream may be detailed and accurate, though without having any foundation, so does your pattern fit nothing but your own assumptions.

It is best expressed negatively as: 'there is nothing wrong with me.

I have nothing to worry about'.

After all, the ultimate purpose of all sadhana is to reach a point, when this conviction, instead of being only verbal, is based on the actual and ever-present experience.

Q: Which experience?

M: The experience of being empty, uncluttered by memories and expectations; it is like the happiness of open spaces, of being young, of having all the time and energy for doing things, for discovery, for adventure.

M: Only when the alternative is worse than death.

But such readiness to die flows from the same source as the will to live, a source deeper even than life itself.

To be a living being is not the ultimate state; there is something beyond, much more wonderful, which is neither being nor non- being, neither living nor notliving.

It is a state of pure awareness, beyond the limitations of space and time.

Once the illusion that the body-mind is oneself is abandoned, death loses its terror, it becomes a part of living.

When you realise that you are beyond both pain and pleasure, aloof and unassailable, then the pursuit of happiness ceases and the resultant sorrow too.

For pain aims at pleasure and pleasure ends in pain, relentlessly.

Q: In the ultimate state there can be no happiness?

M: Nor sorrow.

Only freedom.

Q: I am physically and mentally at peace.

What more do I need?

M: Yours may not be the ultimate state.

You will recognise that you have returned to your natural state by a complete absence of all desire and fear.

After all, at the root of all desire and fear is the feeling of not being what you are.

Time and space are in the mind only.

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?

Does he not clearly tell you that he is not the person?

The only way you can judge is by the change in yourself when you are in his company.

If you feel more at peace and happy, if you understand yourself with more than usual clarity and depth, it means you have met the right man.

Take your time, but once you have made up your mind to trust him, trust him absolutely and follow every instruction fully and faithfully.

It does not matter much if you do not accept him as your Guru and are satisfied with his company only.

realise that no ideas are your own, they all come to you from outside.

You must think it all out for yourself, become yourself the object of your meditation.

The effort to understand yourself is Yoga.

Be a Yogi, give your life to it, brood, wonder, search, till you come to the root of error and to the truth beyond the error.

Q: In meditation, who meditates, the person or the witness?

It is a state of pure awareness, beyond the limitations of space and time.

Once the illusion that the body-mind is oneself is abandoned, death loses its terror, it becomes a part of living.

31: Do not Undervalue Attention.

Questioner: As I look at you, you seem to be a poor man with very limited means, facing all the problems of poverty and old age, like everybody else.

Maharaj: Were I very rich, what difference would it make?

Sattva is the faithful servant of the self; ever attentive and obedient.

Q: And I shall come to it through mere attention?

M: Do not undervalue attention.

It means interest and also love.

To know, to do, to discover, or to create you must give your heart to it -- which means attention.

Questioner: We have been staying at the Satya Sai Baba Ashram for some time.

We have also spent two months at Sri Ramanashram at Tiruvannamalai.

Now we are on our way back to the United States.

Maharaj: Did India cause any change in you?

Q: We feel we have shed our burden.

64: Whatever pleases you, Keeps you Back .

Questioner: I am a retired chartered accountant and my wife is engaged in social work for poor women.

Our son is leaving for the United States and we came to see him off.

We are Panjabis but we live in Delhi.

We have a Guru of the Radha-Soami faith and we value satsang highly.

81: Root Cause of Fear.

Maharaj: Where do you come from?

Questioner: I am from the United States, but I live mostly in Europe.

To India I came recently.

I was in Rishikesh, in two Ashrams.

M: The motive matters supremely.

90: Surrender to Your Own Self.

Questioner: I was born in the United States, and the last fourteen months I have spent in Sri Ramanashram; now I am on my way back to the States where my mother is expecting me.

Maharaj: What are your plans?

Q: I may qualify as a nurse, or just marry and have babies.

M: Because there was no communion between us.

Do not consider yourself as separate from me and we shall at once share in the common state.

Q: I have some property in the United States which I intend to sell and buy some land in the Himalayas.

I shall build a house, lay out a garden, get two or three cows and live quietly.

People tell me that property and quiet are not compatible, that I shall at once get into trouble with officials, neighbours and thieves.

There are no other means to liberation, all means delay.

Resolutely reject what you are not, till the real Self emerges in its glorious nothingness, its 'not-a-thingness.

We can see them with great clarity in the United States, though they happen in other countries.

There is an increase in crime on one hand and more genuine holiness on the other.

Communities are being formed and some of them are on a very high level of integrity and austerity.

All exploitation will cease absolutely.

Your every action will be beneficial, every movement will be a blessing.

Q: It is all very tempting, but how am I to proceed to realise my universal being?

M: You have two ways: you can give your heart and mind to self-discovery, or you accept my words on trust and act accordingly.

In other words, either you become totally self-concerned, or totally un-self-concerned.

Maharaj: The seeker is he who is in search of himself.

Soon he discovers that his own body he cannot be.

Once the conviction: 'I am not the body' becomes so well grounded that he can no longer feel, think and act for and on behalf of the body, he will easily discover that he is the universal being, knowing, acting, that in him and through him the entire universe is real, conscious and active.

This is the heart of the problem.

Either you are body-conscious and a slave of circumstances, or you are the universal consciousness itself -- and in full control of every event.

M: When you follow it up carefully from brain through consciousness to awareness, you find that the sense of duality persists.

When you go beyond awareness, there is a state of non-duality, in which there is no cognition, only pure being, which may be as well called non-being, if by being you mean being something in particular.

Q: What you call pure being is it universal being, being everything?

M: Everything implies a collection of particulars.

In pure being the very idea of the particular is absent.

You may say you have two bodies; the personal and the universal.

The personal comes and goes, the universal is always with you.

The entire creation is your universal body.

You are so blinded by what is personal, that you do not see the universal.

This blindness will not end by itself -- it must be undone skilfully and deliberately.

M: What you say is true.

Your personal body is a part in which the whole is wonderfully reflected.

But you have also a universal body.

You cannot even say that you do not know it, because you see and experience it all the time.

Only you call it 'the world' and are afraid of it.

There also science is your only guide.

Both anatomy and astronomy describe you.

Q: Even If I accept your doctrine of the universal body as a working theory, in what way can I test it and of what use is it to me?

M: Knowing yourself as the dweller in both the bodies you will disown nothing.

All the universe will be your concern; every living thing you will love and help most tenderly and wisely.

I was free from desire and fear.

I found myself full, needing nothing.

I saw that in the ocean of pure awareness, on the surface of the universal consciousness, the numberless waves of the phenomenal worlds arise and subside beginninglessly and endlessly.

As consciousness, they are all me.

As events they are all mine.

Q: The fully realised man, spontaneously abiding in the supreme state, appears to eat, drink and so on.

Is he aware of it, or not?

M: That in which consciousness happens, the universal consciousness or mind, we call the ether of consciousness.

All the objects of consciousness form the universe.

What is beyond both, supporting both, is the supreme state, a state of utter stillness and silence.

Once the conviction: 'I am not the body' becomes so well grounded that he can no longer feel, think and act for and on behalf of the body, he will easily discover that he is the universal being, knowing, acting, that in him and through him the entire universe is real, conscious and active.

This is the heart of the problem.

Either you are body-conscious and a slave of circumstances, or you are the universal consciousness itself -- and in full control of every event.

Yet consciousness, individual or universal, is not my true abode; I am not in it, it is not mine, there is no 'me' in it.

I am beyond, though it is not easy to explain how one can be neither conscious, nor unconscious, but just beyond.

Q: I happen to meet many young people coming from the West and I find that there is a basic difference when I compare them to the Indians.

It looks as if their psyche (antahkarana) is different.

Concepts like Self, Reality, pure mind, universal consciousness the Indian mind grasps easily.

They ring familiar, they taste sweet.

The Western mind does not respond, or just rejects them.

Give me the final answer.

M: The final answer is this: nothing is.

All is a momentary appearance in the field of the universal consciousness; continuity as name and form is a mental formation only, easy to dispel.

Q: I am asking about the immediate, the transitory, the appearance.

Here is a picture of a child killed by soldiers.

As it grows in breadth and sensitivity, it becomes a perfect link between pure matter and pure spirit and gives meaning to matter and expression to spirit.

There is the material world (mahadakash) and the spiritual (paramakash).

Between lies the universal mind (chidakash) which is also the universal heart (premakash).

It is wise love that makes the two one.

Q: Some people are stupid, some are intelligent.

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.

Nobody comes for help, nobody offers help, nobody gets help.

It is all but a display in consciousness.

Q: Yet the power to help is there and there is somebody or something that displays that power, call it God or Self or the Universal Mind.

The name does not matter, but the fact does.

M: This is the stand the body-mind takes.

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

The totality of the perceived is what you call matter.

The totality of all perceivers is what you call the universal mind.

The identity of the two, manifesting itself as perceptibility and perceiving, harmony and intelligence, loveliness and loving, reasserts itself eternally.

Q: The three gunas, sattva--rajas--tamas, are they only in matter, or also in the mind?

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.

M: Once you are inwardly integrated, outer knowledge comes to you spontaneously.

At every moment of your life you know what you need to know.

In the ocean of the universal mind all knowledge is contained; it is yours on demand.

Most of it you may never need to know -- but it is yours all the same.

As with knowledge, so it is with power.

I am prior to the world, body and mind.

I am the sphere in which they appear and disappear.

I am the source of them all, the universal power by which the world with its bewildering diversity becomes manifest.

In spite of its primevality, however, the sense of 'I am' is not the Highest.

It is not the Absolute.

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.

M: There is a universal power which is in control and is responsible.

Q: And so, I can do as I like and put the blame on some universal power?

How easy!

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

M: There is a universal power which is in control and is responsible.

Q: And so, I can do as I like and put the blame on some universal power?

How easy!

M: Yes, very easy.

Light causes the colour of the flower, but it neither controls, nor is responsible for it directly.

It makes it possible, that is all.

Q: What I do not like in all this is taking refuge in some universal power.

M: You cannot quarrel with facts.

Q: Whose facts?

It is what is -- the timeless reality, unbelievably hard and solid.

Q: The jnani -- is he the witness or the Supreme?

M: He is the Supreme, of course, but he can also be viewed as the universal witness.

Q: But he remains a person?

M: When you believe yourself to be a person, you see persons everywhere.

Q: A day must come when the show is wound up; a man must die, a universe come to an end.

M: Just as a sleeping man forgets all and wakes up for another day, or he dies and emerges into another life, so do the worlds of desire and fear dissolve and disappear.

But the universal witness, the Supreme Self never sleeps and never dies.

Eternally the Great Heart beats and at each beat a new universe comes into being.

Q: Is he conscious?

Yet consciousness, individual or universal, is not my true abode; I am not in it, it is not mine, there is no 'me' in it.

I am beyond, though it is not easy to explain how one can be neither conscious, nor unconscious, but just beyond.

I cannot say that I am in God or I am God; God is the universal light and love, the universal witness: I am beyond the universal even.

Questioner: In that case you are without name and shape.

What kind of being have you?

Is God omniscient?

Are you omniscient?

We hear the expression -- universal witness.

What does it mean?

Does self-realisation imply omniscience?

Q: But you seem to say that all is chaos, accidental, unpredictable.

M: Yes, in the sense that not all the laws of being are known and not all events are predictable.

The more you are able to understand, the more the universe becomes satisfactory, emotionally and mentally.

Reality is good and beautiful; we create the chaos.

Q: If you mean to say that it is the free will of man that causes accidents, I would agree.

This is the world's sole meaning and purpose.

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.

A man who took himself in hand, a Yogi, will draw a spiral, yet the centre will remain, however vast the spiral.

A day comes when the entire enterprise is seen as false and given up.

The central point is no more and the universe becomes the centre.

Q: Yes, maybe.

But what am I to do now?