abandon_every

Abandon all self-concern, worry not about your welfare, material or spiritual, abandon every desire, gross or subtle, stop thinking of achievement of any kind.

Abandon every attempt, just be; don't strive, don't struggle, let go every support, hold on to the blind sense of being, brushing off all else.

Abandon every personal desire and use the power thus saved for changing the world!


absolute_perfection

82: Absolute Perfection is Here and Now.

Q: Is there not a state of absolute perfection which does not decay?

Absolute perfection is here and now, not in some future, near or far.


absolute_reality

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

They do not see what causal connection can there be between a particular word and the Absolute Reality.

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

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

But the Absolute Reality is beyond both.


absolute_truth

Take it as the absolute truth.

No happening affects your real being -- this is the absolute truth.

Q: I must begin with some absolute truth.

The absolute proof of the absolute truth -- what is it, where is it?

It is the absolute in you that takes you to the absolute beyond you -- absolute truth, love selflessness are the decisive factors in self-realisation.


absolutely_certain

It is entirely unexpected yet inevitable, infinitely familiar yet most surprising, beyond all hope yet absolutely certain.

He must be absolutely certain of the standing and competence of his Guru, otherwise his faith will not be absolute nor his action complete.


absolutely_free

The happiness of being absolutely free is beyond description.

People follow their leaders and when among the leaders appear some, great in heart and mind, and absolutely free from self-seeking, their impact will be enough to make the crudities and crimes of the present age impossible.

My world is absolutely free; everything in it is self- determined.

When you realise that you are absolutely free to be what you consent to be, that you are what you appear to be because of ignorance or indifference, you are free to revolt and change.


absolutely_true

He is warm-hearted and tender, shrewdly humorous, absolutely fearless and absolutely true -- inspiring, guiding and supporting all who come to him.

I was merely puzzling over it, until I realised that it is absolutely true.

To realise this as absolutely true, is liberation.

I merely say: if you trust my words and put them to test, you will for yourself discover how absolutely true they are.


act_accordingly

The fact is that I do not feel free to desire what I think I should, and when I seem to desire rightly, I do not act accordingly.

When you know that the world is one, that humanity is one, you will act accordingly.

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.

Q: I remember my desires, the choices made, the decisions taken and act accordingly.

Abandon all sense of separation, see yourself in all and act accordingly.

Know it to be your real being and act accordingly.


actual_experience

And can you validly talk about your own non-existence as an actual experience?

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

M: My actual experience is not different.

It is a matter of actual experience that the self has being independent of mind and body.

Q: It may be a matter of actual experience to you, but it is not my case.

Behave accordingly: think, feel and act in harmony with the whole and the actual experience of what I say will dawn upon you in no time.

Q: Well, all actual experiences.

M: If the manifested is the sum total of all actual experiences, including their experiencers, how much of the total do you know?

Q: But what does it mean in actual experience?

You may know the theory, but without the actual experience of yourself as the impersonal and unqualified centre of being, love and bliss, mere verbal knowledge is sterile.


adhi_yoga

It reminds me of the Primal Yoga (adhi yoga), mentioned in the Rig-Veda which was described as the marrying of life with mind.

Yes, ultimately all Yogas end in your adhi yoga, the marriage of consciousness (the bride) to life (the bridegroom).

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.

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

Q: Seen as the service of life by the mind, the adhi yoga is a perfect democracy.


affectionate_awareness

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

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

For establishing and maintaining relationship affectionate awareness expressed in direct action is required.


affectionate_detachment

It is as it is and then he looks at it with a smile of affectionate detachment.

But the general attitude will be of affectionate detachment, enormous goodwill, without expectation of return, constant giving without asking.

Expressions like dispassionate happiness, affectionate detachment, timelessness and causelessness of things and being -- they all sound strange and cause no response.


after_death

And the life is never so alive as after death.

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

Of being before birth and after death I know nothing.

Q: How does the jnani fare after death?

Q: What happens to that spark of life after death?

Q: I had started with the question about the condition of a man after death.

Q: Is there no transition to awareness after death?

Consciousness can only become more subtle and refined and that is what happens after death.

What will be their condition after death -- not physically, but psychologically?

How will you be after death?

The state before you were born was also the state after death, if you remember.


altogether_wrong

Q: Yes, one can see that ultimately to speak of one thing being the only cause of another thing is altogether wrong.

Q: When the body idea becomes obsessive, is it not altogether wrong?

Just as a man who hears sounds, but does not understand the language, may accuse the speaker of meaningless jabbering, and be altogether wrong.

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

Q: Some desires are altogether wrong.

M: Nothing is wrong with you, but the ideas you have of yourself are altogether wrong.

To say that what I am not conscious of does not exist, is altogether wrong.


always_present

Find him who is always present and your problem of spontaneous and perfect response will be solved.

Being and consciousness are always present together, but bliss flashes only occasionally.

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


antelope_skin

Q: I see you sitting on an antelope skin.

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

Just like the drum-hide in a temple, so is the antelope skin of a Yogi.


asking_questions

Stop asking questions.

Q: Once I give up asking questions, what am I to do?

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


avoiding_pain

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

The personal self by its very nature is constantly pursuing pleasure and avoiding pain.

When you recognise the 'I' as it is, a bundle of desires and fears, and the sense of 'mine', as embracing all things and people needed for the purpose of avoiding pain and securing pleasure, you will see that the 'I' and the 'mine' are false ideas, having no foundation in reality.


awareness_beyond

Q: Is not awareness beyond the mind?

But still there is a difference between awareness as reflected in consciousness and pure awareness beyond consciousness.

And pure awareness beyond consciousness is the supreme Guru.


awareness_remains

Only awareness remains.

The personality gives place to the witness, then the witness goes and pure awareness remains.

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


basic_difference

What is the basic difference between us?

Maharaj: There is no basic difference.

Questioner: There is a basic difference between us.

Q: Here lies the basic difference!

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.

Q: Between chance and destiny there is a basic difference.

M: Between the remembered and the actual there is a basic difference which can be observed from moment to moment.


become_aware

Bring your self into focus, become aware of your own existence.

Become aware of that pure light and you will never lose it.

By all means become aware -- this will bring you to the self and you will realise that there is neither ignorance nor delusion in it.

Q: Can the person become aware of itself by itself?

Become aware of the unconscious .


become_god

To become God, what must I learn?

Q: You mean to say that I become God merely by giving up the desire to become God?


beginningless_begins

27: The Beginningless Begins Forever.

The beginningless begins forever.


being_alive

This is a fact, but it does not make you feel guilty of being alive.

As if she never forgave me my crime of having been born, she made me feel guilty of being alive.

Q: I find being alive a painful state.


being_aware

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

Just being aware and affectionate -- intensely.

What you need is to be aware of being aware.

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.

If you say 'I am aware', it only means: 'I am conscious of thinking about being aware'.


being_born

Take for example, the idea of being born.

Q: But you agree that living a life -- just living the humdrum life of the world, being born to die and dying to be born -- advances man by its sheer volume, just like the river finds its way to the sea by the sheer mass of the water it gathers.

Q: Just as the waking state exists in seed form during sleep, so does the world the child creates on being born exist before its birth.

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

Q: Being born is a fact.

But what are all the drugs compared to the drug that gave you this most unusual experience of being born and living in sorrow and fear, in search of happiness, which does not come, or does not last.


being_conscious

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

In pure being consciousness arises; in consciousness the world appears and disappears.

Therefore the very consciousness of being conscious is already a movement in awareness.

We also know that we perceive -- we are conscious and also aware of being conscious.

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

You are always conscious of the mind, but you are not aware of yourself as being conscious.

But here we mean by search the search for oneself as the root of being conscious, as the light beyond the mind.

But we take no advantage of this joy of being conscious, we do not go into it and purify it of all that is foreign to it.

Consciousness is an attribute while awareness is not; one can be aware of being conscious, but not conscious of awareness.

M: Be aware of being conscious and seek the source of consciousness.

The person may be conscious, but is not aware of being conscious.

They depend on my being conscious.

M: And your being conscious depends on what?

Your being conscious of what you call transmission of wisdom shows that wisdom has not yet been transmitted.

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


being_free

M: By being free from all desire and fear, from the very idea of being a person.

His freedom lies in his being free to fulfil the need of the moment, to obey the necessity of the situation.

Freedom to do what one likes is really bondage, while being free to do what one must, what is right, is real freedom.

In matters of daily life the knower of the real has no advantage: he may be at a disadvantage rather: being free from greed and fear, he does not protect himself.

Being free from the false is good in itself, it wants no reward.

Q: If being happy is the same as being free from fear and worry, cannot it be said that absence of trouble is the cause of happiness?

What matters supremely is sincerity, earnestness; you must really have had surfeit of being the person you are, now see the urgent need of being free of this unnecessary self-identification with a bundle of memories and habits.


being_happy

52: Being Happy, Making Happy is the Rhythm of Life.

Being happy -- making happy -- this is the rhythm of love.

Q: If being happy is the same as being free from fear and worry, cannot it be said that absence of trouble is the cause of happiness?

Don't be restless about 'being quiet', miserable about 'being happy'.

When the centre of selfishness is no longer, all desires for pleasure and fear of pain cease; one is no longer interested in being happy; beyond happiness there is pure intensity, inexhaustible energy, the ecstasy of giving from a perennial source.


being_remains

Whatever you think, say, or do, this sense of immutable and affectionate being remains as the ever-present background of the mind.

'I am' as the sense of being remains.

Unidentified being remains.

Being remains, but not self-being.

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


being_unconscious

M: Yes, I am aware of being unconscious.

Q: Being unconscious?

And what is the advantage of being unconscious?


believe_yourself

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

They exist because you believe yourself born to die.

See that you are not what you believe yourself to be.

You are as you believe yourself to be.

M: As long as you believe yourself to be a body, you will ascribe causes to everything.

M: Understand first that you are not the person you believe yourself to be.

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

I can see, beyond the least shadow of doubt, that you are not what you believe yourself to be.

You may not be what you believe yourself to be, but it gives you continuity, your future flows into the present and becomes the past without jolts.

The value of regular meditation is that it takes you away from the humdrum of daily routine and reminds you that you are not what you believe yourself to be.


beyond_awareness

He is beyond awareness itself.

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

Q: You speak of the mind, of the witnessing consciousness beyond the mind and of the Supreme, which is beyond awareness.

The body is looked after by the brain, the brain is illumined by consciousness; awareness watches over consciousness; is there anything beyond awareness?

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.


beyond_being

It is the nameless, contentless, effortless and spontaneous state, beyond being and not being.

It is beyond being and not being.

Awareness is my nature; ultimately I am beyond being and non-being.

He is beyond being and not being.

These come from ignorance of reality, not from reality itself, which is indescribable, beyond being and not-being.

Beyond being and not-being lies the immensity of the real.

Or you just remain -- beyond being and non-being.

M: In the void beyond being and non-being, beyond consciousness.

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


beyond_consciousness

Q: How does one go beyond consciousness into awareness?

Beyond consciousness where are time and space?

M: That which cannot be given name and form, for it is without quality and beyond consciousness.

You may say it is a point in consciousness, which is beyond consciousness.

Like a hole in the paper is both in the paper and yet not of paper, so is the supreme state in the very centre of consciousness, and yet beyond consciousness.

To go beyond consciousness is the supreme state.

The very desire to go beyond consciousness is still in consciousness.

But I am beyond consciousness and, therefore, in consciousness I cannot say what I am.

M: It has no answer in consciousness and, therefore, helps to go beyond consciousness.

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

Q: What I do not follow is what you say about going beyond consciousness.

M: You are right, there can be no experience beyond consciousness.

There is a state beyond consciousness, which is not unconscious.

What is this sense of identity due to, if not to something beyond consciousness?

Once you realise that bodily existence is but a state of mind, a movement in consciousness, that the ocean of consciousness is infinite and eternal, and that, when in touch with consciousness, you are the witness only, you will be able to withdraw beyond consciousness altogether.

Q: You say you are the silent witness and also you are beyond consciousness.

If you are beyond consciousness, what are you witnessing to?

Reality is beyond consciousness.

To go beyond them you must go beyond consciousness, which is possible only when you look at consciousness as something that happens to you and not in you, as something external, alien, superimposed.

M: In the void beyond being and non-being, beyond consciousness.

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.

You are the Supreme Reality beyond the world and its creator, beyond consciousness and its witness, beyond all assertions and denials.

But still there is a difference between awareness as reflected in consciousness and pure awareness beyond consciousness.

And pure awareness beyond consciousness is the supreme Guru.

How to go beyond 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.

A man deprived of outer or inner sensations blanks out, or goes beyond consciousness and unconsciousness into the birthless and deathless state.

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.


beyond_experience

No experience can answer it, for the self is beyond experience.

If you seek the Immutable, go beyond experience.

You need not gather any more, rather you must go beyond experience.

M: Samadhi is beyond experience.

The real is beyond experience.


beyond_space

He is without location, placeless, beyond space and time, beyond the world.

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

What do you mean by saying that you are beyond space and time?

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.

Beyond space and time is the here and the now of reality.

The Immutable Reality lies beyond space and time.

But at the root of the universe there is pure awareness, beyond space and time, here and now.

94: You are Beyond Space and Time.

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.


beyond_time

The sense, or taste of 'I am-ness' is not absolutely beyond time.

That in which both the knower and the known arise and set, is beyond time.

I am beyond time.

I may be quite certain that I am beyond time and space, and yet unable to locate myself at will at some point of time and space.

It is entirely uncaused, independent, complete in itself, beyond time and space, mind and matter.

M: It is beyond time.

M: When you are love itself, you are beyond time and numbers.

M: He who is beyond time -- the Un-nameable.

And since time and space are in the mind, I am beyond time and space, eternal and omnipresent.


beyond_words

What prevails is that which cannot be described, that which is beyond words.

Beyond words and thoughts is he.

It is useless to struggle with words to express what is beyond words.

Hence the absolute need to go beyond words and move over to my side.

I admit, no verbal description will do, when the state described is beyond words.

Either you tell us that your state is beyond words, or that there is no difference; that where we see a difference, you see none.

Q: If you are beyond words, what shall we talk about?

It is also all-pervading, all-conquering, intense beyond words.

Q: If the real is beyond words and mind, why do we talk so much about it?

The real is, behind and beyond words, incommunicable, directly experienced, explosive in its effect on the mind.


bodily_existence

The mist of bodily existence is lifting -- the burden of the body is growing less from day to day.

Use every opportunity to remind yourself that you are in bondage, that whatever happens to you is due to the fact of your bodily existence.

Once you realise that bodily existence is but a state of mind, a movement in consciousness, that the ocean of consciousness is infinite and eternal, and that, when in touch with consciousness, you are the witness only, you will be able to withdraw beyond consciousness altogether.


body_appears

M: Just as the knower of the body appears at birth, so he disappears at death.

M: The body appears in your mind, your mind is the content of your consciousness; you are the motionless witness of the river of consciousness which changes eternally without changing you in any way.

This body appears in your mind; in my mind nothing is.

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


body_dies

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

M: In death only the body dies.

Q: When somebody dies what exactly happens?

Everybody dies as he lives.

In my world nobody is born and nobody dies.

When the food is stopped, the body dies and the mind dissolves.

Q: When your body dies, you remain.

When the body dies, the kind of life you live now -- succession of physical and mental events -- comes to an end.

M: What is it to me that the body dies?


body_idea

Having gone beyond the I-am-the-body idea, he had acquired a mental state so joyful, peaceful and glorious that everything appeared to be worthless compared to it.

Q: When the body idea becomes obsessive, is it not altogether wrong?

M: I am glad you have abandoned the l-am-the-body idea, the main source of error and suffering.

92: Go Beyond the l-am-the-body Idea.


call_god

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

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

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

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


cannot_change

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

You cannot change the image without changing the face.

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

The conscious cannot change fundamentally, it can only modify.

M: That which cannot change, remains.

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


cannot_die

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

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

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

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


causal_link

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

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

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

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


cause_suffering

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

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

it is memory and imagination that cause suffering.


cease_being

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

Just cease being interested.

Cease being fascinated by the content of your consciousness.


changeless_background

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

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

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

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


changeless_reality

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

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

It is the changeless reality itself.


cinema_screen

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

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

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

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

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

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


comes_spontaneously

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

It comes spontaneously and immediately, because of its timelessness.

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


common_factor

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

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

The common factor is the gold.

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

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

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

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


common_man

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

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

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

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


common_world

All the dreams are superimposed over a common world.

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

Q: Our common world, in which we live.


completely_free

Will one never be completely free?

M: You are completely free even now.

You are completely free.

It is completely free of contradictions.

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


conscious_being

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

Call it unconscious being.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


consciousness_arising

56: Consciousness Arising, World Arises.

Consciousness arising, the world arises.


consciousness_needs

Consciousness needs a vehicle and an instrument for its manifestation.

Consciousness needs life to grow.

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


constant_factor

Pain is the constant factor.

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

Q: What is this constant factor?

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

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

Is not the fact of awareness the constant factor?


constant_repetition

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

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?

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


create_problems

Such expressions create problems.

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

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

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

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


dead_already

M: I am dead already.

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

M: The jnani is dead already.

M: I am dead already.

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


dead_earnest

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

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

All you need is to be in dead earnest.


deep_silence

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

In deep silence the self contemplates the body.

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


deep_sleep

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

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

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

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

Q: And your deep sleep?

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

In deep sleep and turiya it is the Self.

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

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

In deep sleep you are not conditioned.

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

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


direct_experience

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

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

M: To have the direct experience of a country one must go and live there.

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

Direct experience is the only valid confirmation.

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

Direct experience is the final proof.

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

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


direct_insight

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

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

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

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


direct_knowledge

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

To know by being is direct knowledge.

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

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


disappear_together

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

The three appear and disappear together.

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

The two appear and disappear together.


dive_deep

Dive deep within and find what is real in you.

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

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

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.

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


dream_state

But you and your world are dream states.

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

In the waking and dream states it is the person.

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

The three states are only varieties of the dream state.

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


early_childhood

Q: From early childhood I was taught to think that I am limited to my name and shape.

I only know that it comes from early childhood.

Q: I have read recently a report about a little girl who was very cruelly handled in her early childhood.

M: A vague memory remains, like the memory of a dream, or early childhood.


earning_money

of driving a car, or earning money.

It is much more difficult than earning money.

There will be marriage, there will be children, there will be earning money to maintain a family; all this will happen in the natural course of events, for destiny must fulfil itself; you will go through it without resistance, facing tasks as they come, attentive and thorough, both in small things and big.


east_pakistan

Look at the horrors in East Pakistan [1971, now Bangla Desh].

Q: There is suffering and bloodshed in East Pakistan at the present moment.

The Bengali of East Pakistan is a fact and his suffering is a fact.


embracing_love

When all the false selfidentifications are thrown away, what remains is all-embracing love.

I used to sit for hours together, with, nothing but the 'I am' in my mind and soon peace and joy and a deep all-embracing love became my normal state.

Moments of deep insight and all-embracing love purify the mind, while desires and fears, envies and anger, blind beliefs and intellectual arrogance pollute and dull the psyche.

Persevere in such indifference and it will blossom into an all-pervading and all-embracing love.


emotionally_involved

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

An event becomes an experience only when I am emotionally involved.

Unless you are emotionally involved, you may argue with me, but there will be no real understanding between us.


endless_chatter

How often I tell myself: enough, please stop, enough of this endless chatter of sentences repeated round and round!

Their endless chatter distracts and exhausts me.

You may work with others and for others, alert and friendly, and grow more fully than in solitude, which may make you dull or leave you at the mercy of your mind's endless chatter.


endless_succession

The moment we talk of picture in the mind, which itself is in the picture, we come to an endless succession of witnesses, the higher witness witnessing the lower.

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

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

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

There is no central point each action begets another, meaninglessly and painfully, in endless succession.

They just rotate in endless succession.

Q: On the screen of my mind images follow each other in endless succession.

Q: All I know is the stream of consciousness, an endless succession of events.

M: The least you can expect is an endless succession of visitors who will make your abode into a free and open guesthouse.

To myself I am the infinite expanse of consciousness in which innumerable persons emerge and disappear in endless succession.


endless_suffering

Not to know, and not to know that one does not know, is the cause of endless suffering.

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

M: Without it you will be consumed by desires and fears, repeating themselves meaninglessly in endless suffering.


entire_universe

No thing in existence has a particular cause; the entire universe contributes to the existence of even the smallest thing; nothing could be as it is without the universe being what it is.

'Would people know that nothing can happen unless the entire universe makes it happen, they would achieve much more with less expenditure of energy.

Even if it is, it is only so from the mind's point of view, but In fact the entire universe (mahadakash) exists only in consciousness (chidakash), while I have my stand in the Absolute (paramakash).

The entire universe contributes to the least thing.

The entire universe strives to fulfil a desire born of compassion.

The entire universe of pain is born of desire.

Entire universes are imploding and exploding every moment -- am I to cry over them?

I disapprove of the entire universe, why only a skin?

I mean the totality of being, the ocean of consciousness, the entire universe of all that is and knows.

The entire universe is his body, all life is his life.

M: In every event the entire universe is reflected.

Even taking the empirical point of view, it is obvious that everything is the cause of everything, that everything is as it is, because the entire universe is as it is.

When you realise the depth and fullness of your love of yourself, you know that every living being and the entire universe are included in your affection.

Of the entire universe you are the subtle cause.

M: The entire universe contributes incessantly to your existence.

Hence the entire universe is your body.

Within the immensity of space floats a tiny atom of consciousness and in it the entire universe is contained.

Not only is the entire universe reflected in man, but also the power to control the universe is waiting to be used by him.

M: The entire universe is your Guru.

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

What you do not know is that the entire universe is your body and you need not be afraid of it.

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.

The entire universe is his own, including his disciples with their petty plans.

Nothing in particular affects him, or, which comes to the same, the entire universe affects him in equal measure.

The moment you say: 'I am', the entire universe comes into being along with its creator.

For anything to happen, the entire universe must coincide.

Your very body would not exist without the entire universe contributing to its creation and survival.

It contains the entire universe and with space to spare!

Just be one with yourself and you will be one with all, at home in the entire universe.

The entire universe is at his disposal.


entire_world

The entire world is a Picture.

Q: And how do you help the entire world?

Q: The entire world is a stain.


eternal_life

Something exploded within him, as it were, giving birth to a cosmic consciousness, a sense of eternal life.

He walked barefooted on his way to the Himalayas where he planned to pass the rest of his years in quest of a eternal life.

Eternal life, he perceived, was not to be sought for; he already had it.

Q: I can now see that the secret of India's eternal life lies in these dimensions of existence, of which India was always the custodian.


ever_changing

Your insistence on causelessness removes all hope of the world ever changing.

Whatever name and shape you give to its expressions, it is like the ocean -- never changing, ever changing.

You imagine reality to stand apart from names and forms, while to me names and forms are the ever changing expressions of reality and not apart from it.


ever_present

A thing focussed in the now is with me, for I am ever present; it is my own reality that I impart to the present event.

It is a timeless state, ever present.

M: Contemplate life as infinite, undivided, ever present, ever active, until you realise yourself as one with it.

We call it Sadashiva, who is ever present in the hearts of men.


every_experience

And in every experience there arises the experiencer of it.

But the source of all that is, is the Infinite Possibility, the Supreme Reality, which is in you and which throws its power and light and love on every experience.

And it is the common matrix of every experience.

Every impression is erased, every experience -- rejected.

Just as for building a temple we need stone and mortar, wood and iron, glass and tiles, so for making a man into a divine sage, a master of life and death, one needs the material of every experience.

M: Just as the taste of salt pervades the great ocean and every single drop of sea-water carries the same flavour, so every experience gives me the touch of reality, the ever fresh realisation of my own being.

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

The beingness in being, the awareness in consciousness, the interest in every experience -- that is not describable, yet perfectly accessible, for there is nothing else.

When the mind is in its natural state, it reverts to silence spontaneously after every experience or, rather, every experience happens against the background of silence.

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

Awareness contains every experience.

But he who is aware is beyond every experience.

Every experience can be the ground for samadhi.

On the other hand, the self is the experiencing factor in every experience and thus, in a way, validates the multiplicity of experiences.

As I can see, every experience is its own reality.

M: At the back of every experience is the Self and its interest in the experience.

It is the discovery of the timeless factor in every experience.

Just like in all the colours light is the colourless factor, so in every experience awareness is present, yet it is not an experience.

My feeling is that all that happens in space and time happens to me, that every experience is my experience every form is my form.


every_moment

Entire universes are imploding and exploding every moment -- am I to cry over them?

At every moment it is but a reflection of yourself.

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

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

Just as every drop of the ocean carries the taste of the ocean, so does every moment carry the taste of eternity.

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

At every moment whatever comes to you unasked, comes from God and will surely help you, if you make the fullest use of it.

Becoming has, apparently, no beginning and no end, for it restarts every moment.

After all, you are what you are every moment of your life, but you are never conscious of it, except, maybe, at the point of awakening from sleep.

At every moment, whatever happens now, is for the best.

M: By keeping your mind clear and clean, by living your life in full awareness of every moment as it happens, by examining and dissolving one's desires and fears as soon as they arise.


every_movement

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

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

Give up all working for a future, concentrate totally on the now, be concerned only with your response to every movement of life as it happens.


everybody_wants

Q: The world is full of desires: Everybody wants something or other.

Q: Everybody wants to live, to exist.

M: Everybody wants to be active, but where do his actions originate?


everything_else

Everything else is but a picture made of light.

Stay with it, and reject everything else.

Everything else moves -- not me.

In everything else confidence comes with experience.

It just accepts the old self along with everything else.

I craved for love above everything else and love, the simple, instinctive love of a mother for her child was denied me.

Bringing the mind to the feeling 'I am' merely helps in turning the mind away from everything else.

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

Above everything else you cherish yourself.

It happens, like everything else.


everything_happens

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

There is consciousness in which everything happens.

The 'I am' remains as the witness, but it is by the will of God that everything happens.

33: Everything Happens by Itself.

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

M: Everything happens all the time, but you must be ready for it.

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

Everything happens, but there is a continuous cancelling out, and in the end it is as if nothing happened.

M: Well, in the course of time everything happens.

With me everything happens as it must.


exist_without

Can you exist without knowing?

M: Surely you can exist without memory.

Q: If the self is not the body nor the mind, can it exist without the body and the mind?

Q: It may exist without my ever knowing it.

Your very body would not exist without the entire universe contributing to its creation and survival.


false_ideas

M: It helps you to understand what you are not and keeps you free from false ideas, desires and actions.

Misunderstanding oneself and the world leads to false ideas and desires, which again lead to bondage.

False ideas about this 'I am' lead to bondage, right knowledge leads to freedom and happiness.

Abandon false ideas, that is all.

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

When you recognise the 'I' as it is, a bundle of desires and fears, and the sense of 'mine', as embracing all things and people needed for the purpose of avoiding pain and securing pleasure, you will see that the 'I' and the 'mine' are false ideas, having no foundation in reality.

Wrong desires and fears, false ideas, social inhibitions are blocking and preventing its free interplay with the conscious.

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

You are it here and now, but your vision is obstructed by your false ideas about your self.


false_self

The false self must be abandoned before the real self can be found.

When all the false selfidentifications are thrown away, what remains is all-embracing love.

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

But the false self wants to continue -- pleasantly.

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?


feel_responsible

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.

Q: Somehow I feel responsible for what happens around me.

We are being encouraged to plead guilty, to feel responsible for all the evils in the world and point at ourselves as their only cause.


find_yourself

M: You should consider more closely your own world, examine it critically and, suddenly, one day you will find yourself in mine.

Find yourself first, and endless blessings will follow.

There is no need to turn round and round in endless questioning; find yourself and everything will fall into its proper place.

The urge to find yourself.

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

Find yourself and be free.

Abandon all ideas about yourself and you will find yourself to be the pure witness, beyond all that can happen to the body or the mind.

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

Therefore find yourself, for in finding that you find all.

Cease to be the object and become the subject of all that happens; once having turned within, you will find yourself beyond the subject.

Investigate the vicious circle till you find yourself beyond it.

When you compare yourself yesterday with yourself today, do you find yourself changing, making progress?

Wherever you go you find yourself.


five_elements

The multifarious forms around us, says he, are constituted of the five elements.

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

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.

In reality, the three are one: the vyakta and the avyakta are inseparable, while the vyakti is the sensing-feeling-thinking process, based on the body made of and fed by the five elements.


fourth_state

Homogeneous -- in the fourth state.

Q: Is it what you call the fourth state (turiya)?

The fourth state (turiya) is a state of pure witnessing, detached awareness, passionless and wordless.

Q: What is turiya, the fourth state we hear about?


full_attention

Give it your full attention, examine it with loving care and you will discover heights and depths of being which you did not dream of, engrossed as you are in your puny image of yourself.

Be conscious of yourself, watch your mind, give it your full attention.

Just give full attention to what in you is crude and primitive, unreasonable and unkind, altogether childish, and you will ripen.

Examine them as they occur, give them your full attention and you will find that there is nothing like ignorance, only inattention.


full_awareness

They manifest spontaneously and effortlessly, when things are left to themselves, are not interfered with, not shunned, or wanted, or conceptualised, but just experienced in full awareness, such awareness itself is sattva.

The world seems to me a big enterprise for bringing the potential into actual, matter into life, the unconscious into full awareness.

M: A life lived thoughtfully, in full awareness, is by itself Nisarga Yoga.

In full awareness the contact is established.

M: By keeping your mind clear and clean, by living your life in full awareness of every moment as it happens, by examining and dissolving one's desires and fears as soon as they arise.


fully_aware

M: Be fully aware of your own being and you will be in bliss consciously.

Q: I may be fully aware of what is going on, and yet quite unable to influence it in any way.

He is happy and fully aware that happiness is his very nature and that he need not do anything, nor strive for anything to secure it.

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.

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.

M: Of course I am conscious, and fully aware of it.

The main point is to be fully aware that neither you nor the man in front of you are mere bodies; If your awareness is clear and full.

I am perfectly empty of all mental formations, void of mind -- yet fully aware.

I am fully aware that things happen as they happen because the world is as it is.

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

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

I can see it through your eyes and mind, but I am fully aware that it is a projection of memories; it is touched by the real only at the point of awareness, which can be only now.


giving_attention

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

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

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: By meditating which means giving attention.


go_deep

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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


go_further

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

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.

One needs all the courage to go further.


god_knows

M: You think God knows you?

God knows you when you know yourself.

In chit man knows God and God knows man.


good_people

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

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.

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

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


great_peace

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

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.

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


greatest_guru

35: Greatest Guru is Your Inner Self.

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

The greatest Guru is your inner self.


grievous_mistake

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

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

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


guru_died

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

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

Soon after my Guru died, I lived on.


guru_may

Similarly, the Guru may help.

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

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


guru_told

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

My Guru told me -- 'Trust me.

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

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


guru_who

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

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

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

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


happiness_comes

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

All happiness comes from awareness.

All happiness comes from pleasing the self.


hatha_yoga

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

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

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


help_others

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

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

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


helping_others

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

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

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

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.


helping_people

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.

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

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.


higher_level

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?

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.

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.

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

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

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


higher_levels

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?

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.

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


higher_self

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

Neither Buddha nor Christ ever mentioned a higher self.

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

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

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


holy_company

Is this speeding up due to holy company?

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

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

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


holy_man

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

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

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


human_being

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.

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

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

Q: Is perfection the destiny of all human beings?

You are not even a human being.

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

As a human being -- definitely no.


identify_yourself

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

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

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

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

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'.

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

M: Don't identify yourself with an idea.

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

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

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

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

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

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


imagine_yourself

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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


imagining_yourself

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.

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.

By imagining yourself as separate you have created the gap.

Only cease imagining yourself to be the particular.

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.

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

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

M: I see you imagining yourself to be.


imparts_reality

It is the experiencer that imparts reality to experience.

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

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

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.

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


incense_stick

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

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

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.

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


independent_existence

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

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

We talk of it as having independent existence.


inner_contradictions

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

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?

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.


inner_guru

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

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

Q: I am not concerned with the inner Guru.

The inner Guru bids his chance.

The inner Guru is not committed to non-violence.

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

Q: Does the inner Guru also teach?

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?


inner_peace

Q: I did attain a degree of inner peace.

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

Your inner peace and joy you have to earn.

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

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


inner_self

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

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

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

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

35: Greatest Guru is Your Inner Self.

The greatest Guru is your inner self.

How does his inner self look at his own senility.

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

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

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.

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?

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.


inner_teacher

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


inner_urge

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

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

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.


jnana_yoga

Maharaj's interpretation of truth is not different from that of Jnana Yoga/Advaita Vedanta.

Q: Yes, some English people were teaching me and also an Indian follower of jnana yoga, residing there permanently, was giving me lessons.

Q: Shall I call the way of control and discipline raja yoga and the way of detachment -- jnana yoga?


jnani_knows

Q: So a jnani knows what he is doing only when he turns his mind to it; otherwise he just acts, without being concerned.

True waking and true sleeping only the jnani knows.

The jnani knows neither birth nor death; existence and non-existence are the same to him.

The jnani knows himself as he is.


keep_quiet

The mind will rebel in the beginning, but with patience and perseverance it will yield and keep quiet.

All you need is to keep quietly alert, enquiring into the real nature of yourself.

M: If you could only keep quiet, clear of memories and expectations, you would be able to discern the beautiful pattern of events.

Just like a doctor, after giving the patient an injection, tells him: 'Now, keep quiet.

Do nothing more, just keep quiet,' I am telling you: you have got your 'injection', now keep quiet, just keep quiet.

He would tell me something and then said: 'Now keep quiet.

Q: I can keep quiet for an hour in the morning.

M: If you just try to keep quiet, all will come -- the work, the strength for work, the right motive.

There was not much of thinking or study; we were just trying to keep quiet.

If you say: 'nothing worries me, I have no problems', it is all right with me, we can keep quiet.

M: Keep quiet.

Do your work in the world, but inwardly keep quiet.

Q: We, Europeans, find it very difficult to keep quiet.

M: Keep quiet, undisturbed, and the wisdom and the power will come on their own.

Even if you are quite ignorant of the ways and the means, keep quiet and look within; guidance is sure to come.

Keep quiet, keep silent; it will emerge, or, rather, it will take you in.


know_everything

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

Must you know everything beforehand?

You know everything, but you do not know yourself.


know_god

M: Do you know God that you talk of him so freely?

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

Q: Yes, to know God I must accept God -- how frightening!


know_nothing

M: I know nothing about it all and see no difference between you and me.

M: I know nothing about miracles, and I wonder whether nature admits exceptions to her laws, unless we agree that everything is a miracle.

You know all about the world, but about yourself you know nothing.

M: Those who know only scriptures know nothing.

Of being before birth and after death I know nothing.

To them reality is objective, outside the observable and describable, directly or by inference; about the subjective aspect of reality they know nothing.

Now I know nothing, for all knowledge is in dream only and not valid.

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

Q: I know nothing about being the cause of the universe.

You will find you know nothing for sure -- you trust on hearsay.

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

I know nothing about it.

Q: I know nothing of it.

M: Be nothing, know nothing, have nothing.


know_oneself

To know things, to know people and to know oneself are all functions of intelligence: the last is the most important and contains the former two.

Q: It takes time to know oneself.

Q: By meeting people and watching them, one comes to know oneself also.

What needs changing shall change anyhow; enough to know oneself as one is, here and now.


know_yourself

To go beyond yourself, you must know yourself.

First thing first -- know yourself, all else will come with it.

Do you ever know yourself non-existing, or unconscious?

M: What helps you to know yourself is right.

Q: Unless you know yourself, of what use is your being to you?

Do you know yourself?

To control yourself -- know yourself.

You came here because you are in pain, and all I say is: wake up, know yourself, be yourself.

M: If you know yourself to be stupid, you are not stupid at all!

M: Do you know yourself enough to know what you can do and what you cannot?

God knows you when you know yourself.

You think you know yourself when you know what you are.

You are yourself, you know yourself, you love yourself.

Know yourself as the ocean of being, the womb of all existence.

As to method, there is only one -- you must come to know yourself -- both what you appear to be and what you are.

Unless you admit the reality of chit, you will never know yourself.

Abandon all imaginings and know yourself as you are.

To know yourself, be yourself.

You know yourself only through the senses and the mind.

You are not interested in tables, you want to know yourself.

Unless you know yourself, what else can you know?

You cannot know yourself through bliss alone, for bliss is your very nature.

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

I do not even say: 'be yourself', since you do not know yourself.

Know yourself as the total.

As you know yourself to be a man by being one.

M: There is nothing in the world that you cannot know, when you know yourself.

When you know yourself as a centre of consciousness, the world appears as the ocean of the mind.

When you know yourself as you are in reality, you know the world as yourself.

Learn to know yourself and you will discover wonders.

Unless you know yourself well, how can you know another?

And when you know yourself -- you are the other.

Know yourself as you are -- a mere point in consciousness, dimensionless and timeless.

What is, can cease to be; what is not, can come to be; but what neither is nor is not, but on which being and non-being depend, is unassailable; know yourself to be the cause of desire and fear, itself free from both.

The more you know yourself the less you are afraid.

A long as you are engrossed in the world, you are unable to know yourself: to know yourself, turn away your attention from the world and turn it within.

Only when you know yourself as entirely alien to and different from the body, will you find respite from the mixture of fear and craving inseparable from the 'I-am-the-body' idea.

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.

Know yourself as independent and you will be free from fear and its shadows.

Once you know yourself, it is immaterial what you do, but to realise your independence, you must test it by letting go all you were dependent on.

Know yourself correctly.

Know yourself to be the changeless witness of the changeful mind.

As long as you have all sorts of ideas about yourself, you know yourself through the mist of these ideas; to know yourself as you are, give up all ideas.

You know everything, but you do not know yourself.

Once you know yourself as pure being, the ecstasy of freedom is your own.

Know yourself correctly.


knowing_yourself

You got into it by forgetting what you are and you will get out of it by knowing yourself as you are.

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

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


lack_nothing

My silence sings, my emptiness is full, I lack nothing.

Keep in mind what I tell you: desire nothing, for you lack nothing.

When you know that you lack nothing, that all there is, is you and yours, desire ceases.


liberated_man

Questioner: I have met many realised people, but never a liberated man.

Have you come across a liberated man, or does liberation mean, among other things, also abandoning the body?

Why should a liberated man necessarily follow conventions?

Of all the people the knower of the self, the liberated man, is the most trust-worthy.

A liberated man is extremely law- abiding.

The very notion of a liberated man, a realised man, a self-knower, a God-knower, a man beyond the world, is unknown to them.

Q: But would he recognise you as a liberated man?


life_becomes

You agree to be guided from within and life becomes a journey into the unknown.

Then life becomes what it was meant to be: pure radiation from an inexhaustible source.

Once you have passed through this experience, you will never be the same man again; the unruly mind may break its peace and obliterate its vision; but it is bound to return, provided the effort is sustained; until the day when all bonds are broken, delusions and attachments end and life becomes supremely concentrated in the present.

But once it is fulfilled, the concern ceases and physical life becomes effortless and below the level of attention.


life_flows

Between the banks of pain and pleasure the river of life flows.

When you know beyond all doubting that the same life flows through all that is and you are that life, you will love all naturally and spontaneously.

Wisdom says: 'I am nothing' Between the two my life flows.

Life flows naturally and effortlessly and the mind removes the obstacles to its even flow.


life_without

Q: Can there be life without consciousness?

Live your life without hurting anybody.

I cannot imagine life without a Guru.

There can be no life without sacrifice.

And is life without mind at all possible on the human level?


limitless_being

That in whom reside all beings and who resides in all beings, who is the giver of grace to all, the Supreme Soul of the universe, the limitless being - I am that.

The clearer you understand on the level of mind you can be described in negative terms only, the quicker will you come to the end of your search and realise that you are the limitless being.

The clearer you understand that on the level of the mind you can be described in negative terms only, the quicker you will come to the end of your search and realise your limitless being.


little_importance

The event itself is of little importance, but he is full of compassion for the suffering being, whether alive or dead, in the body or out of it.

Really, it is a matter of very little importance.

He admits that while he is aware of it, others are not yet, but this difference is temporary and of little importance, except to the mind and its ever-changing content.


live_without

M: To live without self-concern.

Q: How can one live without emotions?

M: You cannot live without action, and behind each action there is some fear or desire.


living_being

All has its being in me, in the 'I am', that shines in every living being.

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

I like it, because it puts me in touch with living beings.

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

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.

When you realise the depth and fullness of your love of yourself, you know that every living being and the entire universe are included in your affection.

M: Of all living beings -- ultimately.

Once a living being has heard and understood that deliverance is within his reach, he will never forget, for it is the first message from within.

Who is the conscious living being?

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

But the world is full of living beings whose lives are squeezed between fear and craving.

I see no saints nor sinners, only living beings.

Relinquish your habits and addictions, live a simple and sober life, don't hurt a living being; this is the foundation of Yoga.

No other living being so delights in killing.


living_beings

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

I like it, because it puts me in touch with living beings.

M: Of all living beings -- ultimately.

But the world is full of living beings whose lives are squeezed between fear and craving.

I see no saints nor sinners, only living beings.


look_after

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.

M: Go home, take charge of your father's business, look after your parents in their old age.

Let consciousness look after its creations!

As long as I believe: 'I am the body', I must not say: 'God will look after my body'.

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

Q: To live, one must look after oneself, one must earn money for oneself.

The rest can look after itself, without your knowing how it does it.

Q: God has created me, he will look after me.

Q: Well, God will look after me.

Better accept your life as it shapes, go home and look after your wife with love and care.

You need not worry about action, look after your mind and heart.


look_within

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.

Look within and see.

When you have a moment free, look within.

Look within and you will find that the point of light is the reflection of the immensity of light in the body, as the sense 'I am'.

Look within.

Even if you are quite ignorant of the ways and the means, keep quiet and look within; guidance is sure to come.

Look within, search within.

Look within diligently, remember to remember that the perceived cannot be the perceiver.


love_yourself

Because you love yourself.

You are yourself, you know yourself, you love yourself.

Because you love yourself.

By all means love yourself -- wisely.

What is wrong is to love yourself stupidly, so as to make yourself suffer.

Love yourself wisely.

Be interested in yourself beyond all experience, be with yourself, love yourself; the ultimate security is found only in self-knowledge.

It is in your own interest that l speak, because above all you love yourself, you want yourself secure and happy.


making_happy

52: Being Happy, Making Happy is the Rhythm of Life.

Being happy -- making happy -- this is the rhythm of love.


man_becomes

Man becomes what he believes himself to be.

But even on his play man becomes destructive of nature, others and himself.

Q: My question is more specific; when a blind man becomes a jnani will his eyesight be restored to him or not?


matters_supremely

The motive matters supremely.

M: The motive matters supremely.

What matters supremely is sincerity, earnestness; you must really have had surfeit of being the person you are, now see the urgent need of being free of this unnecessary self-identification with a bundle of memories and habits.


memory_remains

M: A vague memory remains, like the memory of a dream, or early childhood.

But when the cause ceases, the effect dissolves and only a memory remains, haunting but fading.

One after another all things happen to you and the memory remains.


mental_habits

The mind is but a set of mental habits, of ways of thinking and feeling, and to change they must be brought to the surface and examined.

A bundle of memories and mental habits attracts attention, awareness gets focalised and a person suddenly appears.

If you talk from full insight into the situation, with your own mental habits in abeyance your advice may be a true response.

M: For some time the mental habits may linger in spite of the new vision, the habit of longing for the known past and fearing the unknown future.


mental_life

Don't you see that memory is the warp of your mental life.

To focus suffering is not enough, for mental life, as we know it, is one continuous stream of suffering.

Our mental life is one continuous stream of words.


mental_picture

I do not need them and have no desire to lock up the world in a mental picture.

Even to talk of re-uniting the person with the self is not right, because there is no person, only a mental picture given a false reality by conviction.

I can have only a mental picture of it.


mental_process

In ending the mental process as we know it.

You can only kill the body, you cannot stop the mental process, nor can you put an end to the person you think you are.

As long as the body lasts, it has its needs like any other, but my mental process has come to an end.


mental_space

From the mind's point of view, it is but an opening for the light of awareness to enter the mental space.

Q: Is there any connection between the mental space and the supreme abode?

Chidakash is the expanse of awareness, the mental space of time, perception and cognition.


mental_state

Having gone beyond the I-am-the-body idea, he had acquired a mental state so joyful, peaceful and glorious that everything appeared to be worthless compared to it.

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

In each state you forget the other two, while to me, there is but one state of being, including and transcending the three mental states of waking, dreaming and sleeping.

When through the practice of discrimination and detachment (viveka-vairagya), you lose sight of sensory and mental states, pure being emerges as the natural state.

Mental states succeed one another, and each obliterates the previous one.

Self-remembering is a mental state and self-forgetting is another.

Conviction is a mental state.

M: You are neither honest nor dishonest -- giving names to mental states is good only for expressing your approval or disapproval.

But even this is a mental state and does not last.

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

Past and future, memory and imagination, these are mental states, but they are all I know and they are now.

You are contacting your sensory and mental states in consciousness, at the point of 'I am', while reality is not mediated, not contacted, not experienced.

M: It is a mental state caused by the 'I-am-the-body' idea.

In memory and anticipation there is a clear feeling that it is a mental state under observation, while in the actual the feeling is primarily of being present and aware.

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


mental_states

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

In each state you forget the other two, while to me, there is but one state of being, including and transcending the three mental states of waking, dreaming and sleeping.

When through the practice of discrimination and detachment (viveka-vairagya), you lose sight of sensory and mental states, pure being emerges as the natural state.

Mental states succeed one another, and each obliterates the previous one.

M: You are neither honest nor dishonest -- giving names to mental states is good only for expressing your approval or disapproval.

Past and future, memory and imagination, these are mental states, but they are all I know and they are now.

You are contacting your sensory and mental states in consciousness, at the point of 'I am', while reality is not mediated, not contacted, not experienced.


mere_concept

What you call the real self is a mere concept, a way of speaking, a creature of the mind, an attractive ghost.

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

M: It is the other way round; the deed is a fact, the doer a mere concept.

After all, even universality and eternity are mere concepts, the opposites of being place and time- bound.


mere_knowledge

Mere knowledge.

Mere knowledge is not enough; the knower must be known.

The Pandits and the Yogis may know many things, but of what use is mere knowledge when the self is not known?


mighty_tree

Like a seed left in the ground, it will wait for the right season and sprout and grow into a mighty tree.

It may look very small and insignificant, but it is like a seed that grows into a mighty tree.

'I am' is a tiny seed which will grow into a mighty tree -- quite naturally, without a trace of effort.


mind_becomes

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

Divested of this idea the mind becomes steady.

And since time is in the mind, the mind becomes the arbiter and searches within itself for the proof of truth -- a task altogether impossible and hopeless!

', until your mind becomes the question itself and cannot think of anything else.

Q: One has such moments when the mind becomes a flower and a flame, but they do not last and the life reverts to its daily greyness.


mind_clear

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

Q: You had to make your mind clear and quiet before you could realise the truth.

M: By keeping your mind clear and clean, by living your life in full awareness of every moment as it happens, by examining and dissolving one's desires and fears as soon as they arise.


mind_craves

The mind craves for experience, the memory of which it takes for knowledge.

But the mind craves for formulations and definitions, always eager to squeeze reality into a verbal shape.

For the mind craves for content and variety, while reality is, to the mind, contentless and invariable.


mind_creates

Mind creates the abyss, the heart crosses it.

M: There is no chaos in the world, except the chaos which your mind creates.

The mind creates the world and all the wonderful variety of it.

The mind creates time and space and takes its own creations for reality.

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


mind_remains

Q: I may go on telling myself: 'I am not the mind, I am not concerned with its problems,' but the mind remains and its problems remain just as they were.

When all is done, the mind remains quiet.

It may or may not imply intense outward activity, but the mind remains deep and quiet.


mind_restless

Both make the mind restless.

M: Detach yourself from all that makes your mind restless.

It is desires and fears that make the mind restless.


miraculous_powers

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.

Once you know your mind and its miraculous powers, and remove what poisoned it -- the idea of a separate and isolated person -- you just leave it alone to do its work among things to which it is well suited.

There is a Yogi living not far from Bombay who possesses some miraculous powers.


must_realise

We must realise how poor and powerless we are.

Maharaj: You must realise first of all that you are the proof of everything, including yourself.

You must realise yourself as the immovable, behind and beyond the movable, the silent witness of all that happens.


must_remember

To forget I must remember What did I forget to remember?

After all, you must remember, that all your preoccupations with yourself are only in your waking hours and partly in your dreams; in sleep all is put aside and forgotten.

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


mysterious_power

There is a mysterious power that looks after them.

Q: I imagine karma to be a mysterious power that urges me towards perfection.

All happens as if there is a mysterious power that creates and moves everything.

Your natural state, in which nothing exists, cannot be a cause of becoming; the causes are hidden in the great and mysterious power of memory.


nath_sampradaya

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

M: The Navnath Sampradaya is only a tradition, a way of teaching and practice.

If you accept a Navnath Sampradaya teacher as your Guru, you join his Sampradaya.

The Nath Sampradaya, later known as the Navnath Sampradaya, is one of them.

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.

The Nath Sampradaya came to be known as Navnath Sampradaya when sometime in the remote past, the followers of the sect chose nine of their early Gurus as examplars of their creed.

It may be mentioned here that, though officially the current Guru of the Inchegeri branch of the Navnath Sampradaya, Sri Nisargadatta does not seem to attach much importance to sects, cults and creeds, including his own.

In answer to a questioner whi wished to join the Navnath Sampradaya he said: "The Navnath Sampradaya is only a tradition, a way of teaching and practice.

If you accept a Navnath Sampradaya teacher as your Guru, you join his Sampradaya...


natural_state

Once this obsession with the body goes, you will revert to your natural state, spontaneously and effortlessly.

The only difference between us is that I am aware of my natural state, while you are bemused.

It is the only natural state.

By knowing what you are not, you are free of it and remain in your own natural state.

When through the practice of discrimination and detachment (viveka-vairagya), you lose sight of sensory and mental states, pure being emerges as the natural state.

There is a state beyond forgetting and not- forgetting -- the natural state.

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

No particular thought can be mind's natural state, only silence.

When the mind is in its natural state, it reverts to silence spontaneously after every experience or, rather, every experience happens against the background of silence.

'I am that' in the Natural State.

You need to return to the state in which I am -- your natural state.

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

Q: Yes, but what is the sadhana for achieving the natural state?

When no desires remain, you revert to your natural state.

Turn away from your desires and fears and from the thoughts they create and you are at once in your natural state.

Then your normal natural state reappears, in which you are neither the body nor the mind, neither the 'me' nor the 'mine', but in a different state of being altogether.

Get rid of it and come back to your natural state.

Your natural state, in which nothing exists, cannot be a cause of becoming; the causes are hidden in the great and mysterious power of memory.


natural_yoga

Q: The Yoga of living, of life itself, we may call the Natural Yoga (nisarga yoga).

This is what I call nisarga yoga, the Natural yoga.

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


nature_cure

But before I left for Rishikesh, I did some fasting and dieting at a Nature Cure Sanatorium at Pudukkotai in South India.

I intend to complete my B.Sc., study Nature Cure and make it my profession.

You can always return to India for your Nature Cure studies.


navnath_sampradaya

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

M: The Navnath Sampradaya is only a tradition, a way of teaching and practice.

If you accept a Navnath Sampradaya teacher as your Guru, you join his Sampradaya.

The Nath Sampradaya, later known as the Navnath Sampradaya, is one of them.

The Nath Sampradaya came to be known as Navnath Sampradaya when sometime in the remote past, the followers of the sect chose nine of their early Gurus as examplars of their creed.

It may be mentioned here that, though officially the current Guru of the Inchegeri branch of the Navnath Sampradaya, Sri Nisargadatta does not seem to attach much importance to sects, cults and creeds, including his own.

In answer to a questioner whi wished to join the Navnath Sampradaya he said: "The Navnath Sampradaya is only a tradition, a way of teaching and practice.

If you accept a Navnath Sampradaya teacher as your Guru, you join his Sampradaya...


need_courage

Need courage be given?

You need courage to let go.

You need courage for adventure.


need_nothing

I need nothing, not even myself, for myself I cannot lose.

I am simple being and I need nothing to rest on.

For yourself you need nothing.

You need nothing more, just remember that you are the witness only.

To deal with yourself you need nothing.

Believe me, you need nothing except to be what you are.

You have to give up everything to know that you need nothing, not even your body.

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

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.


negative_emotions

M: The main thing is to be free of negative emotions -- desire, fear etc., the 'six enemies' of the mind.

Free from all negative emotions it is quiet.

Q: You cannot protect the child from negative emotions.


negative_terms

The clearer you understand on the level of mind you can be described in negative terms only, the quicker will you come to the end of your search and realise that you are the limitless being.

The clearer you understand that on the level of the mind you can be described in negative terms only, the quicker you will come to the end of your search and realise your limitless being.

From Buddha onwards the state of self-realisation was described in negative terms, as 'not this, not that'.

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

Definitions and descriptions have their place as useful incentives for further search, but you must go beyond them into what is undefinable and indescribable, except in negative terms.


never_born

When asked about the date of his birth the Master replied blandly that he was never born!

You were never born nor will you ever die, but you believe that you were born at a certain date and place and that a particular body is your own.

I was never born.

M: The jnani does not die because he was never born.

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

I was never born.

When I am telling you that I was never born, why go on asking me what were my preparations for the next birth?

You were never born, nor will you ever die.

M: In reality you were never born and never shall die.

Questioner: You keep on saying that I was never born and will never die.


never_lost

You leave behind what is not your own and find what you have never lost -- your own being.

Find what you have never lost, find the inalienable.

Q: Had I never lost anything, I would have been enlightened.

Only when you realise the true peace, the peace you have never lost, that peace will remain with you, for it was never away.

Instead of searching for what you do not have, find out what is it that you have never lost?

M: What was never lost can never be found.

It is your complete ignorance of yourself, that covered up your love and happiness and made you seek for what you had never lost.

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

This must be clearly established in your mind and never lost sight of.


new_dimension

Of course, they did a lot and opened new dimensions in the human mind.

The very idea of a new dimension in consciousness seems to them implausible and improbable.

It is a new dimension altogether, where there is nothing to give or take.

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

You rotate into a new dimension, seen from which the previous ones are mere abstractions.

What you are you will never know, for every discovery reveals new dimensions to conquer.

realisation by itself is not an experience, though it may lead to a new dimension of experiences.


new_dimensions

Of course, they did a lot and opened new dimensions in the human mind.

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

What you are you will never know, for every discovery reveals new dimensions to conquer.


new_factor

Q: What is the new factor you want me to bring in?

Q: But your help will be a new factor?

To affect the course of events I must bring a new factor into the world and such factor can only be myself, the power of love and understanding focussed in me.


new_life

By its very nature the mind is outward turned; it always tends to seek for the source of things among the things themselves; to be told to look for the source within, is, in a way, the beginning of a new life.

M: Of course, when there is total surrender, complete relinquishment of all concern with one's past, presents and future, with one's physical and spiritual security and standing, a new life dawns, full of love and beauty; then the Guru is not important, for the disciple has broken the shell of self-defence.

Resist your old habits of feeling and thinking; keep on telling yourself: 'No, not so, it cannot be so; I am not like this, I do not need it, I do not want it', and a day will surely come when the entire structure of error and despair will collapse and the ground will be free for a new life.


new_self

Questioner: I have noticed a new self emerging in me, independent of the old self.

What is the attitude of the new self to the old?

Even the effort of striving for the new self is of the old.


new_york

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

Or, just travelling to New York.

I have just heard of New York.

Q: In putting the question about the weather in New York, where did I make the mistake?


nine_masters

Maharaj: We are called collectively the 'Nine Masters'.

Even the 'Nine Masters' (Navnath) are mythological.

The 'Nine Masters' tradition, Navnath Parampara, is like a river -- it flows into the ocean of reality and whoever enters it is carried along.

Bur there is no unanimity regarding the names of these nine Masters.


nisarga_yoga

I draw special attention to the reader to the contribution entitled 'Nisarga Yoga', in which my esteemed friend, the late Maurice Frydman, has succinctly presented the teaching of Maharaj.

Q: The Yoga of living, of life itself, we may call the Natural Yoga (nisarga yoga).

M: A life lived thoughtfully, in full awareness, is by itself Nisarga Yoga.

This is what I call nisarga yoga, the Natural yoga.

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.

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

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

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


nisargadatta_maharaj

Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj.

That there should be yet another addition of I AM THAT is not surprising, for the sublimity of the words spoken by Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj, their directness and the lucidity with which they refer to the Highest have already made this book a literature of paramount importance.

It was in such a state of scepticism, but also having an intuition of the basic reality, that I happened to read Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj's I AM THAT.

Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj is indeed such a Guru.

I am thankful to Sudhakar S. Dikshit, the editor, for inviting me to write the Foreword to this new edition of I AM THAT and thus giving me an opportunity to pay my homage to Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj, who has expounded highest knowledge in the simplest, clearest and the most convincing words.

Writing a biographical note on Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj is a frustrating and unrewarding task.

After his illuminating experience Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj started living such a dual life.

I met Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj some years back and was impressed with the spontaneous simplicity of his appearance and behaviour and his deep and genuine earnestness in expounding his experience.

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

Not only the matter has now been re-set in a more readable typeface and with chapter headings, but new pictures of Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj have been included and the appendices contain some hitherto unpublished valuable material.

In fact Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj is peculiarly free from all disparagement and condemnation; the sinner and the saint are merely exchanging notes; the saint has sinned, the sinner can be sanctified.

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


normal_state

Your question implies that anxiety is the normal state and courage is abnormal.

But what I am in myself, what is my normal state cannot be expressed in terms of social consciousness and usefulness.

Q: But thinking, reasoning is the mind's normal state.

M: It may be the habitual state, but it need not be the normal state.

A normal state cannot be painful, while a habit often leads to chronic pain.

Q: If it is not the natural, or normal state of mind, then how to stop it?

I used to sit for hours together, with, nothing but the 'I am' in my mind and soon peace and joy and a deep all-embracing love became my normal state.

Just as a dislocated joint pains only as long as it is out of shape, and is forgotten as soon as it is set right, so is all self-concern a symptom of mental distortion which disappears as soon as one is in the normal state.

M: Oh no, it is the normal state.

In the same sense am I telling you that the Normal State is not verbal.


nothing_else

Nothing else matters.

As a matter of fact, you are doing nothing else.

I am immersed in this cloud and see nothing else.

Q: I am doing nothing else for the last 60 years.

Give your heart and mind to it, think of nothing else.

Nothing else.

All the great teachers did nothing else.

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

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

Nothing else has being.

Only reality is, there is nothing else.

The beingness in being, the awareness in consciousness, the interest in every experience -- that is not describable, yet perfectly accessible, for there is nothing else.

Yet the mind is nothing else but the self.

There is nothing else.

When you love the Self and nothing else, you go beyond the selfish and the unselfish.

There is nothing else to give up.

You have nothing else to do.

Krishnamurti is doing nothing else.

Think of it all the time and of nothing else.

M: But I am doing nothing else!

I am not interested in the transient, while you talk of nothing else.

Q: Nothing else is true?

To be open means to want nothing else.

My Guru ordered me to attend to the sense 'I am' and to give attention to nothing else.

You are the way and the goal, there is nothing else to reach except yourself.

M: I am doing nothing else, but showing the escape.

M: But I am doing nothing else all the time!

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

M: If your motives are pure, if you seek truth and nothing else, you will find the right people.

It is easily had when nothing else is wanted.

All religions do nothing else but preach acceptance and surrender.


nothing_exists

He suggests that you return again and again to 'I am' until it is your only abode, outside of which nothing exists; until the ego as a limitation of 'I am', has disappeared.

To me, nothing exists by itself.

Nothing exists by itself.

Your natural state, in which nothing exists, cannot be a cause of becoming; the causes are hidden in the great and mysterious power of memory.

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


nothing_happened

But in reality nothing happened.

Yet to me nothing happened.

Nothing happened to space itself.

Everything happens, but there is a continuous cancelling out, and in the end it is as if nothing happened.


nothing_happens

Nothing happens to me.

Q: Nothing happens there?

In my world nothing happens.

M: Nothing happens.

All happens as it needs, yet nothing happens.

Similarly, nothing happens to life when forms break down and names are wiped out.

In reality nothing happens.

Nothing happens to the people, only they must look for some other means of communication.

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

In reality nothing happens.


nothing_remains

Q: And nothing remains?

Nothing was, nothing remains.

Once over, it is over for good; nothing remains of it except a few sweet or bitter lessons.


nothing_wrong

Questioner: As I can see, there is nothing wrong with my body nor with my real being.

M: There is nothing wrong with duality as long as it does not create conflict.

There is nothing wrong with memory as such.

M: There is nothing wrong in the idea of a body, nor even in the idea 'I am the body'.

There is nothing wrong in trying to help the world.

There is nothing wrong in repeating the same truth again and again until it becomes reality.

There is nothing wrong with the senses, it is your imagination that misleads you.

There is nothing wrong with the world.

There is nothing wrong with your world, it is your thinking yourself to be separate from it that creates disorder.

There is nothing wrong with you as the Self.

There is nothing wrong in it.

M: Nothing wrong, if it solves the problem.

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

Q: There is nothing wrong with my convictions; my actions are shaped by circumstances.

There is nothing wrong with suffering for the sins of others.


objective_universe

M: The objective universe (mahadakash) is in constant movement, projecting and dissolving innumerable forms.

I am inclined to believe that the objective universe is the real one and my subjective psyche is changeful and transient.

M: The objective universe has structure, is orderly and beautiful.


objective_world

The personality, based on self-identification, on imagining oneself to be something: 'I am this, I am that', continues, but only as a part of the objective world.

But surely behind these private worlds there must be a common objective world, of which the private worlds are mere shadows.

Do you deny the existence of such an objective world, common to all?

Q: Compassion implies the existence of an objective world, full of avoidable sorrow.


old_age

M: Go home, take charge of your father's business, look after your parents in their old age.

Q: We come across some great people, who, in their old age, become childish, petty, quarrelsome and spiteful.

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.

It gives us a chance to avoid the mistakes of childhood and youth, the frustrations of adulthood, the miseries and imbecility of old age.

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


old_man

The meagre income from the small farm dwindled further after the old man's death and was not sufficient to feed so many mouths.

How does a jnani feel as an old man?

All I see is a very interesting old man.

M: You are the interesting old man, not me!

Q: He is a venerable old man of about eighty.


one_reality

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

M: The two are but aspects of one Reality.

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


one_should

Normally, one should outgrow body-based desires early in life.

Q: In order to find the reality, one should discard all that stands in the way.

One should not treat these matters lightly.


ordinary_man

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

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

The ordinary man is personally concerned, he counts his risks and chances, while the jnani remains aloof, sure that all will happen as it must; and it does not matter much what happens, for ultimately the return to balance and harmony is inevitable.


others_suffer

But in his folly he makes others suffer.

In this vast ocean of life we suffer for the sins of others, and make others suffer for our sins.

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

We suffer for the sins of others, as others suffer for ours.

Q: Others suffer.


outer_guru

When you personalise their source, you have an outer Guru; when you take them from life directly, the Guru is within.

Confide in him and you need no outer Guru.

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

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

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

Q: What is the relation between the inner and the outer Gurus?

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.

Q: Can the outer Guru grant initiation (diksha)?

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.


outer_self

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

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.

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.

You may put it differently: the body defines the outer self, consciousness the inner, and in pure awareness the Supreme is contacted.

Q: You said the body defines the outer self.

Since you have a body, do you have also an outer self?

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

Is it the outer self, or the inner?


outer_world

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

The outer world neither can help nor hinder.

As long as you believe that only the outer world is real, you remain its slave.

As you cannot separate the dream from yourself, so you cannot have an outer world independent of yourself.


particular_body

M: It is the change in the living process of a particular body.

You were never born nor will you ever die, but you believe that you were born at a certain date and place and that a particular body is your own.

The sense of identity will remain, but no longer identification with a particular body.


particular_cause

No thing in existence has a particular cause; the entire universe contributes to the existence of even the smallest thing; nothing could be as it is without the universe being what it is.

M: When I say a thing is without a cause, I mean it can be without a particular cause.

No particular cause can be ascribed to them, for each is caused by all and affects all.


particular_name

It is reflected in the mind as 'I am', as the ornament's particular name and shape.

M: You fight others all the time for your survival as a separate body-mind, a particular name and form.

Giving oneself a particular name does not help.


personal_existence

M: Shall we call it impersonal existence?

On such flimsy foundations we build a sense of personal existence -- vague, intermittent, dreamlike.

M: Until we can look at fear and accept it as the shadow of personal existence, as persons we are bound to be afraid.

To be denied personal existence is frightening, but you must face it and find your identity with the totality of life.


personal_experience

Q: How does this look and feel in your personal experience?

I mean the actual entering into the minds and hearts of others and participating in their personal experiences.

M: You believe it is possible to transmit a personal experience?

M: The universe is your personal experience.


personal_life

Why not admit that one's entire personal life may sink largely below the threshold of consciousness and yet proceed sanely and smoothly?

Why not extend the same to the entire personal life?

Instead of struggling with the person to make it become what it is not, why not go beyond the waking state and leave the personal life altogether?


personal_universe

My personal universe is improving.

M: Your personal universe does not exist by itself.

Of your personal universe you are the centre -- without knowing the centre what else can you know?


personal_world

Thus is created the world in which we live, our personal world.

M: Is not the idea of a total world a part of your personal world?

This personal world can be changed -- in time.

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


present_moment

Q: Here I am -- in the present moment.

Just flow with it and give yourself completely to the task of the present moment, which is the dying now to the now.

Within the narrow confines of the present moment, the super-personal is aware of the person, both in space and time; not only one person, but the long series of persons strung together on the thread of karma.

Q: There is suffering and bloodshed in East Pakistan at the present moment.

Questioner: What is your state at the present moment?

The essence of saintliness is total acceptance of the present moment, harmony with things as they happen.

The present moment, the.

In fact, you know only your present moment.

Q: You cannot deny the present moment, mind or no mind.

There may be other chances for other actions, but the present moment is lost -- irretrievably lost.


present_state

'Well', I say, 'suffice you are the Supreme, change your present state'.

M: How did you come to your present state?

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

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

M: What proof have you that your present state is beginningless and endless?

And of your present state -- how much do you know?

You only know a little of your present state and from it you draw conclusions for all times and places.

Your present state is neither beginningless nor endless.

But in your present state it is of no use to you.

M: Were the same tragedy to happen to you again, would you suffer as much, considering your present state of mind?

In your present state only the sense 'I am' refers to reality; the 'what' and the 'how I am' are illusions imposed by destiny, or accident.

Q: In your present state can you love another person as a person?

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


private_world

And the world as seen from the mind is a subjective and private world, which changes continuously in accordance with the restlessness of the mind itself.

In fact all you know is your own private world, however well you have furnished it with your imaginations and expectations.

No doubt, this world is painted by you on the screen of consciousness and is entirely your own private world.

These private worlds hardly touch each other and they arise from and merge into the 'I am' at their centre.

But surely behind these private worlds there must be a common objective world, of which the private worlds are mere shadows.


projected_onto

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

The main point to grasp is that you have projected onto yourself a world of your own imagination, based on memories, on desires and fears, and that you have imprisoned yourself in it.

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.


pure_awareness

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.

We withdraw from the experience and its experiencer and stand apart in pure awareness, which is between and beyond the two.

M: If you trust me, believe when I tell you that you are the pure awareness that illuminates consciousness and its infinite content.

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.

By itself the light can only be compared to a solid, dense, rocklike, homogeneous and changeless mass of pure awareness, free from the mental patterns of name and shape.

The light of Pure Awareness (pragna), focussed as 'I am' in the Self (jivatma), as consciousness (chetana) illumines the mind (antahkarana) and as life (prana) vitalises the body (deha).

You are always the Supreme which appears at a given point of time and space as the witness, a bridge between the pure awareness of the Supreme and the manifold consciousness of the person.

At the level of the absolute there are no persons; the ocean of pure awareness is neither virtuous nor sinful.

Just like ice turns to water and water to vapour, and vapour dissolves in air and disappears in space, so does the body dissolve into pure awareness (chidakash), then into pure being (paramakash), which is beyond all existence and non-existence.

Is not pure awareness the link between the two?

M: Even pure awareness is a form of consciousness.

The centre is a point of void and the witness a point of pure awareness; they know themselves to be as nothing, therefore nothing can resist them.

M: What is perceived in pure awareness, unaffected by desire.

This vague persuasion: 'I-am-so-and-so' obscures the changeless state of pure awareness and makes us believe that we are born to suffer and to die.

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

As you cannot see your face, but only its reflection in the mirror, so you can know only your image reflected in the stainless mirror of pure awareness.

The nature of the self is pure awareness, pure witnessing, unaffected by the presence or absence of knowledge or liking.

At the root of my being is pure awareness, a speck of intense light.

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.

Pure awareness becomes self-awareness.

Behave as if you were pure awareness, bodiless and mindless, spaceless and timeless, beyond 'where' and 'when' and 'how'.

You may put it differently: the body defines the outer self, consciousness the inner, and in pure awareness the Supreme is contacted.

It is pure awareness free from the subject object nexus.

You come to it when you see all you think yourself to be as mere imagination and stand aloof in pure awareness of the transient as transient, imaginary as imaginary, unreal as unreal.

It is pure awareness of being, without being this or that, without any self-identification with anything in particular, or in general.

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.

The personality gives place to the witness, then the witness goes and pure awareness remains.

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.

But still there is a difference between awareness as reflected in consciousness and pure awareness beyond consciousness.

Reflected awareness, the sense 'I am aware' is the witness, while pure awareness is the essence of reality.

Between awareness reflected in consciousness as the witness and pure awareness there is a gap, which the mind cannot cross.

And pure awareness beyond consciousness is the supreme Guru.

Q: Between the body and pure awareness stands the 'inner organ', antahkarana, the 'subtle body', the 'mental body', whatever the name.

They need the light of pure awareness to function rightly.

But at the root of the universe there is pure awareness, beyond space and time, here and now.

From the awareness of the unreal to the awareness of your real nature there is a chasm which you will easily cross, once you have mastered the art of pure awareness.

To my own surprise, I remain as I am -- pure awareness, alert to all that happens.


pure_being

In pure being consciousness arises; in consciousness the world appears and disappears.

In relation to the universe he is pure being.

Pure being is reflected in the mirror of the mind, as knowing.

M: You remain as pure being.

M: Pure being (avyakta).

The person is relative and the pure Being -- fundamental.

Q: Surely pure Being is not unconscious, nor is it devoid of discrimination.

Just like ice turns to water and water to vapour, and vapour dissolves in air and disappears in space, so does the body dissolve into pure awareness (chidakash), then into pure being (paramakash), which is beyond all existence and non-existence.

When your attention is off a thing and not yet fixed on another, in the interval you are pure being.

When through the practice of discrimination and detachment (viveka-vairagya), you lose sight of sensory and mental states, pure being emerges as the natural state.

Pure being cannot be described.

As salt dissolves in water, so does everything dissolve into pure being.

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

M: When you have understood that all existence, in separation and limitation, is painful, and when you are willing and able to live integrally, in oneness with all life, as pure being, you have gone beyond all need of help.

Q: How do you come to know a state of pure being which is neither conscious nor unconscious?

There is something changeless, motionless, immovable, rocklike, unassailable; a solid mass of pure being-consciousness-bliss.

Once you have known pure being, without being this or that, you will discern it among experiences and you will no longer be misled by names and forms.

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'.

I simply followed his instruction which was to focus the mind on pure being 'I am', and stay in it.

I know myself and I find no life nor death in me, only pure being -- not being this or that, but just being.

Besides, you know only pleasure, not the bliss of pure being.

' You are pure being -- awareness -- bliss.

There is pure being, free of experiencing anything in particular.

M: Pure being, filling all and beyond all, is not existence which is limited.

Pervading and transcending is Reality, pure being -- awareness -- bliss, your very essence.

In the same way one can talk of the pure being and pure creation -- nameless, formless, silent and yet absolutely real, powerful, effective.

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?

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

Q: Is there any relationship between pure being and particular being?

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.

The final stage of meditation is reached when the sense of identity goes beyond the 'I-am-so-and-so', beyond 'so-l-am', beyond 'I-am-the-witness-only', beyond 'there-is', beyond all ideas into the impersonally personal pure being.

We enjoy them for a time and then get tired and crave for the peace and silence of pure being.

You said that before I was born I was one with the pure being of reality; if so, who decided that I should be born?

The person merges into the witness, the witness into awareness, awareness into pure being, yet identity is not lost, only its limitations are lost.

Awareness and matter are the active and the passive aspects of pure being, which is in both and beyond both.

Pure being is quite independent of existence, which is definable and describable.

With the cessation of imagination and desire, becoming ceases and the being this or that merges into pure being, which is not describable, only experienceable.

Once you know yourself as pure being, the ecstasy of freedom is your own.


pure_consciousness

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

In consciousness it comes into being, in consciousness it lasts and into pure consciousness it dissolves.

In pure consciousness there is light.

It shatters the state of pure consciousness and is followed by the innumerable sensations and perceptions, feeling and ideas which in their totality constitute God and His world.

Objective consciousness is a part of pure consciousness, not beyond it.

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

I am pure Consciousness itself, unbroken awareness of all that is.

M: In pure consciousness nothing ever happens.

Some call it super- consciousness, or pure consciousness, or supreme consciousness.

It is what remains when all self- identification is given up as false -- pure consciousness, the sense of being all there is, or could be.

Somebody, anybody, will tell you that you are pure consciousness, not a body-mind.


pure_light

Even the sense of 'I am' is composed of the pure light and the sense of being.

So is the pure light there whether you say 'I' or not.

Become aware of that pure light and you will never lose it.

But here and now, through all your bodies and souls shines awareness, the pure light of chit.

In that pure light of consciousness there is nothing, not even the idea of nothing.

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

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

Similarly you are pure light appearing as a picture on the screen and also becoming one with it.


pure_mind

But the state of feeling oneself the body, the body-mind, the mind-body, or even pure mind -- when did it begin?

The pure mind sees things as they are -- bubbles in consciousness.

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

The impure mind is opaque to truth; the pure mind is transparent.


pure_witness

M: When the mind is quiet, we come to know ourselves as the pure witness.

M: The attitude of pure witnessing, of watching the events without taking part in them.

The fourth state (turiya) is a state of pure witnessing, detached awareness, passionless and wordless.

The nature of the self is pure awareness, pure witnessing, unaffected by the presence or absence of knowledge or liking.

Of course it is beyond the witness, but to enter it one must first realise the state of pure witnessing.

Q: How does one get established in the higher state, the state of pure witnessing?

Abandon all ideas about yourself and you will find yourself to be the pure witness, beyond all that can happen to the body or the mind.

As pure witness, he watches what is going on and remains unaffected.

True awareness (samvid) is a state of pure witnessing, without the least attempt to do anything about the event witnessed.

Remain as pure witness, till even witnessing dissolves in the Supreme.


pure_witnessing

M: The attitude of pure witnessing, of watching the events without taking part in them.

The fourth state (turiya) is a state of pure witnessing, detached awareness, passionless and wordless.

The nature of the self is pure awareness, pure witnessing, unaffected by the presence or absence of knowledge or liking.

Of course it is beyond the witness, but to enter it one must first realise the state of pure witnessing.

Q: How does one get established in the higher state, the state of pure witnessing?

True awareness (samvid) is a state of pure witnessing, without the least attempt to do anything about the event witnessed.


purposeful_action

Q: If everything is an expression of the totality of causes, how can we talk of a purposeful action towards an achievement?

Without causality there will be no order; nor purposeful action will be possible.

Q: No purposeful action is then possible?

Q: What is wrong with purposeful action?


quiet_mind

Q: What is the use of a quiet mind?

65: A Quiet Mind is All You Need.

M: A quiet mind is all you need.

A quiet mind, undistorted by desires and fears, free from ideas and opinions, clear on all the levels, is needed to reflect the reality.

A quiet mind is essential for right perception, which again is required for self-realisation.

M: A quiet mind is not a dead mind.

When you talk of a quiet mind, what is it?


quite_spontaneously

It all happens quite spontaneously and effortlessly.

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

It will all come in due course, quite spontaneously.


ramana_maharshi

Even Bhagavan Sri Ramana Maharshi imposed on himself 20 years of silence before he began to teach.

Q: Sri Ramana Maharshi's teachings have put me on my way.

Q: Sri Ramana Maharshi died.

Can I ask you what is your opinion of Sri Ramana Maharshi?

Q: Yes, Sri Ramana Maharshi used to say: Gurus there are many, but where are the disciples?


real_being

Questioner: As I can see, there is nothing wrong with my body nor with my real being.

M: It is not your real being that is restless, but its reflection in the mind appears restless because the mind is restless.

Discrimination will lead to detachment; detachment will ensure right action; right action will build the inner bridge to your real being.

Q: Our real being is all the time with us, you say.

Only in complete self-negation there is a chance to discover our real being.

Q: You say that in our real being we are all equal.

These bubbles are appearing, disappearing and reappearing -- without having real being.

The moment you know your real being, you are afraid of nothing.

Give your real being a chance to shape your life.

You are judging me by my clothes and food; while I only look at your motives; if you believe to be the body and the mind and act on it you are guilty of the greatest cruelty -- cruelty to your own real being.

Just as at birth you discover the world suddenly, as suddenly I discovered my real being.

He alone who was before the Creator, your own real being, the source of all the worlds with their creators.

Yet, my real being, and yours too, is beyond the universe and, therefore, beyond the categories of the particular and the universal.

Find out your real being.

What can there be but your real being, that is timeless; mind and mindlessness are one to it.

No happening affects your real being -- this is the absolute truth.

You can know what you are not, but you can not know your real being.

There are no causes, but your ignorance of your real being, which is perfect and beyond all causation.

The real being is reflected in the mind undistorted.

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.

Everybody loves his body, but few love their real being.

Q: Does my real being need my love?

M: Your real being is love itself and your many loves are its reflections according to the situation at the moment.

Know it to be your real being and act accordingly.

Only what is compatible with your real being can make you happy and the world, as you perceive it, is its outright denial.

Of course, if you are ignorant of your real being, whatever you do must turn to ashes.

In your real being vow are the whole.


real_guru

The Guru you have in mind, one who gives you information and instructions, is not the real Guru.

The real Guru is he who knows the real, beyond the glamour of appearances.

He was a real Guru!

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

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.

M: If you are able to trust and obey, you will soon find your real Guru, or rather, he will find you.

Questioner: You were telling us that there are many self-styled Gurus, but a real Guru is very rare.

Or, you can put it differently: Until you realise yourself, you cannot know who is your real Guru.

Q: I feel that the Guru of my own choice can not be my real Guru.


real_happiness

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

Some truth, some inner certainty, some real happiness.

Real happiness is not vulnerable, because it does not depend on circumstances.

Real happiness flows from within.

But the world cannot give what it does not have; unreal to the core, it is of no use for real happiness.

Real happiness is utterly unselfconscious.

If you seek real happiness, unassailable and unchangeable, you must leave the world with its pains and pleasures behind you.


real_nature

M: You are the Self, here and now Leave the mind alone, stand aware and unconcerned and you will realise that to stand alert but detached, watching events come and go, is an aspect of your real nature.

All you need is to keep quietly alert, enquiring into the real nature of yourself.

Q: The witnessing -- is it not my real nature?

Striving itself is your real nature.

Q: If reality is my real nature, how can I ever be unready?

No, since jnanis are not made, they realise themselves as such, when they return to their source, their real nature.

He considers himself to be perfectly normal, true to his real nature.

Any name or shape you give yourself obscures your real nature.

The ending of the self with its desires and fears enables you to return to your real nature, the source of all happiness and peace.

M: When more people come to know their real nature, their influence, however subtle, will prevail and the world's emotional atmosphere will sweeten up.

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.

It blinds you completely to your real nature.

Once you reach your destination and Know your real nature, your existence becomes a blessing to all.

M: Sattva is the radiance of your real nature.

Your real nature is not like what you appear to be.

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

While alive, it attracts attention and fascinates so completely that rarely does one perceive one's real nature.

Happiness is our real nature and we shall never rest until we find it.

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

From the awareness of the unreal to the awareness of your real nature there is a chasm which you will easily cross, once you have mastered the art of pure awareness.

He knows the real nature -- his own and his listeners' -- and he points it out.


real_progress

This search will never end, while the restless craving for all else must end, for real progress to take place.

If you want to make real progress you must give up all idea of personal attainment.

All real progress is irreversible.


real_self

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?

To know one's real self is bliss, to forget -- is sorrow.

Q: Is the witness-consciousness the real Self?

The false self must be abandoned before the real self can be found.

What you call the real self is a mere concept, a way of speaking, a creature of the mind, an attractive ghost.

Q: I am trying to rejoin the personality back to the real self.

But his laws are the laws of his real self, not of his society.

Whatever he does, if he does it for the sake of finding his own real self, will surely bring him to himself.

Tell me, what steps have you taken to separate your real self, that in you which is changeless, from your body and mind?

Only something as vast and deep as your real self can make you truly and lastingly happy.

What is observable is not the real self.

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

realise your real self and even drugs will have no power over you.

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

A Guru can show the way back home, to your real self.

Watch the sense 'I am', find your real self'.

Just like in a dream all is different, except the sense of 'I', which enables you to say 'I dreamt', so does the sense of 'I am' enable you to say 'I am my real Self again'.

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

The Guru only tells you the good news about your real Self and shows you the way back to it.

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

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

But the real self cannot be described except in terms supplied by the person, in terms of what I am not.

Q: The only difference between us seems to be that while I keep on saying that I do not know my real self, you maintain that you know it well; is there any other difference between us?


real_world

4: Real World is Beyond the Mind.

The real world is beyond the mind's ken; we see it through the net of our desires, divided into pleasure and pain, right and wrong, inner and outer.

M: There is no need of a link between a real world and an imaginary world, for there cannot be any.

Similarly, we have divorced ourselves in our imagination from the real world of common experience and enclosed ourselves in a cloud of personal desire and fears, images and thoughts, ideas and concepts.

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

Q: I admit that the world in which I live is not the real world.

But there is a real world, of which I see a distorted picture.

But when you say there is no real world, only a dream world in my mind, I just cannot take it.

The real world lies beyond the self.

M: It does -- in my real world.


realise_yourself

By going beyond it you realise yourself.

As you realise yourself in manifestation, you keep on discovering that you are ever more than what you have imagined.

M: Contemplate life as infinite, undivided, ever present, ever active, until you realise yourself as one with it.

M: realise yourself as the ocean of consciousness in which all happens.

You must realise yourself as the immovable, behind and beyond the movable, the silent witness of all that happens.

realise yourself as away from all that can be pointed at as 'this' or 'that'.

realise yourself as the source and not as the river; that is all.

Or, you can put it differently: Until you realise yourself, you cannot know who is your real Guru.

When you realise yourself as less than a point in space and time, something too small to be cut and too short-lived to be killed, then, and then only, all fear goes.


realised_man

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

Q: The realised man eats, drinks and sleeps.

M: This only: The realised man knows what others merely hear; but don't experience.

Intellectually they may seem convinced, but in action they betray their bondage, while the realised man is always right.

The realised man too says 'I am'.

With the realised man the experience: 'I am the world, the world is mine' is supremely valid -- he thinks, feels and acts integrally and in unity with all that lives.

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

Similarly, the realised man is egoless; he has lost the capacity of identifying himself with anything.

Q: I was told that a realised man will never do anything unseemly.

Rare is the realised man who discloses his realisation and fortunate are those who have met him, for he does it for their abiding welfare.

The very notion of a liberated man, a realised man, a self-knower, a God-knower, a man beyond the world, is unknown to them.

Questioner: What is the daily and hourly state of mind of a realised man?

Who is a realised man?

After all, the realised man is the most earnest man.

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

M: Words of a realised man never miss their purpose.

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

The realised man lives on the level of the absolutes; his wisdom, love and courage are complete, there is nothing relative about him.


realised_people

Questioner: I have met many realised people, but never a liberated man.

Apart from the verbal testimony of the so-called realised people, is there no way of verifying their state objectively.

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

This is the role of the realised people -- to set an example of perfection for others to admire and love.

realised people are very quiet.

Q: I have found that the realised people usually describe their state in terms borrowed from their religion.


reality_beyond

There must be reality beyond it.

It is the reality beyond existence.

And then you will bring in a knower of reality beyond reality!

You are the Supreme Reality beyond the world and its creator, beyond consciousness and its witness, beyond all assertions and denials.

Remember it, think of it, explore it, go round it, look at it from all directions, dive into it with earnest perseverance: endure all delays and disappointments till suddenly the mind turns round, away from the word, towards the reality beyond the word.


reality_lies

19: Reality lies in Objectivity.

Reality lies in objectivity.

The knower is the immutable support of all knowledge; Each needs the other, but reality lies beyond.

The Immutable Reality lies beyond space and time.


reality_manifests

The Supreme Reality manifests itself in innumerable ways.

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.

Q: It is said that Reality manifests itself as existence -- consciousness -- bliss.


reality_nothing

For in reality nothing is of value.

In reality nothing ever happens.

But in reality nothing happened.

In reality nothing is lacking and nothing is needed, all work is on the surface only.

In reality nothing happens.

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

In reality nothing happens.


reality_within

Give attention to the reality within you and it will come to light.

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

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.


reality_without

Just as a cloud obscures the sun without in any way affecting it, so does assumption obscure reality without destroying it.

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

Q: Does every knower of the Self become a Guru, or can one be a knower of Reality without being able to take others to it?


remind_yourself

Resolutely remind yourself that you are not the mind and that its problems are not yours.

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

Use every opportunity to remind yourself that you are in bondage, that whatever happens to you is due to the fact of your bodily existence.


right_guru

They are ever in search of the right Guru, changing one for another.

M: Be the right man and the right Guru will surely find you.

Q: You are not answering my question: how to find the right Guru?


right_state

M: If you are in the right state, whatever you see will put you into samadhi.

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

What we are trying to do here is to bring our minds into the right state for understanding what is real.


right_teacher

For this you must find the right teacher and create the conditions needed for discovery.

The right disciple will always find the right teacher.

Under the right teacher the disciple learns to learn, not to remember and obey.


rishi_dattatreya

The legend says that our first teacher was Rishi Dattatreya, the great incarnation of the Trinity of Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva.

Q: Since you count your spiritual ancestry from Rishi Dattatreya, are we right in believing that you and all your predecessors are reincarnations of the Rishi?

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.


root_cause

The root cause is one: the sense 'I am'.

81: Root Cause of Fear.

Understand the root cause of your fears -- estrangement from yourself: and of desires -- the longing for the self, and your karma will dissolve like a dream.


search_within

Words merely add to the confusion and the only wise course is the silent search within.

Just search within yourself.

To find order you must search within.

Enquire, search within and you will know.

You can skip all the preparation and go directly for the ultimate search within.

Look within, search within.


see_god

M: When you see the world you see God.

Beyond the world to see God is to be God.

Q: Must I see the world to see God?


seek_happiness

Q: All beings seek happiness.

Q: I seek happiness, not comfort.

Does a happy man seek happiness?

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

Because you are not happy you seek happiness in pleasure; pleasure brings in pain and therefore you call it worldly; you then long for some other pleasure, without pain, which you call divine.

Unafraid, you will not be unhappy, nor will you seek happiness.


seek_reality

M: If you seek reality you must set yourself free of all backgrounds, of all cultures, of all patterns of thinking and feeling.

Q: Why then all these exhortations to practice Yoga and seek reality?

I seek Reality.


seek_within

M: Seek within.

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

Go ever deeper into yourself, seek within, there is neither violence nor non- violence in self-discovery.


selfless_work

You may begin with selfless work, abandoning the fruits of action; you may then give up thinking and end in giving up all desires.

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

Like the Gita, he says that selfless work will result in salvation.


separate_existence

After all, all the Yogas, whatever their source and character, have only one aim: to save you from the calamity of separate existence, of being a meaningless dot in a vast and beautiful picture.

You separate existence from being and being from reality, while to me it is all one.


separate_person

M: As long as we imagine ourselves to be separate personalities, one quite apart from another, we cannot grasp reality which is essentially impersonal.

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

There is no such thing as a separate person.

It is useless to fight the sense of being a limited and separate person unless the roots of it are laid bare.

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

He has no sense of being a separate person.


shall_become

I shall become a nobody, a nothing !

Q: If you could tell me what I shall become, it may help me to watch over my development.

M: How can anybody tell you what you shall become when there is no becoming?


shall_die

Q: I was born, I shall die.

I am told I shall die I do not expect it.

I live a happy life and shall die a happy death.

Q: I was born, I have grown, I shall die.

Q: But I was born as a body, in a body and shall die with the body, as a body.

It is the idea that was born and shall die, not you.

I cried when I was born and I shall die laughing.

M: In reality you were never born and never shall die.


shall_discover

Search and you shall discover the Universal Person, who is yourself and infinitely more.

87: Keep the Mind Silent and You shall Discover.

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


siddharameshwar_maharaj

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

Among his disciples were Amburao Maharaj, Girimalleshwar Maharaj, Siddharameshwar Maharaj and the noted philosopher Dr. R. D. Renade.


silent_witness

You must realise yourself as the immovable, behind and beyond the movable, the silent witness of all that happens.

Q: You say you are the silent witness and also you are beyond consciousness.

Remain as the silent witness only.

All that happens in the universe happens to you, the silent witness.

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


since_immemorial

Q: Since immemorial time, during innumerable births, I build and improve and beautify my world.

Since immemorial times people were breaking into reality.

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


special_training

Such things need special training.

But bringing down into the brain the content of another brain requires special training.

Such things require special training.


spiritual_life

The seed of spiritual life grows in silence and in darkness until its appointed hour.

Q: In India spiritual life is easy.

89: Progress in Spiritual Life.

Q: What are the signs of progress in spiritual life?


spiritual_practice

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

38: Spiritual Practice is Will Asserted and Re-asserted.

Spiritual practice is will asserted and re-asserted.

Q: We were told that of all forms of spiritual practices the practice of the attitude of a mere witness is the most efficacious.

Q: Just sitting near you can it be considered spiritual practice?

Maharaj: Any spiritual practices (sadhanas)?

Q: I have understood that all spiritual practice consists in the elimination of the personal self.

Q: Is the waking state more important for spiritual practice than sleep?

Not only the conscious but the unconscious as well should be taken care of in our spiritual practice.


sri_nisargadatta

Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj.

That there should be yet another addition of I AM THAT is not surprising, for the sublimity of the words spoken by Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj, their directness and the lucidity with which they refer to the Highest have already made this book a literature of paramount importance.

It was in such a state of scepticism, but also having an intuition of the basic reality, that I happened to read Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj's I AM THAT.

Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj is indeed such a Guru.

The best that you can do is listen attentively to the jnani -- of whom Sri Nisargadatta is a living example -- and to trust and believe him.

I am thankful to Sudhakar S. Dikshit, the editor, for inviting me to write the Foreword to this new edition of I AM THAT and thus giving me an opportunity to pay my homage to Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj, who has expounded highest knowledge in the simplest, clearest and the most convincing words.

Writing a biographical note on Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj is a frustrating and unrewarding task.

The identity of Maruti, the petty shopkeeper, dissolved and the illuminating personality of Sri Nisargadatta emerged.

After his illuminating experience Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj started living such a dual life.

I met Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj some years back and was impressed with the spontaneous simplicity of his appearance and behaviour and his deep and genuine earnestness in expounding his experience.

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

Not only the matter has now been re-set in a more readable typeface and with chapter headings, but new pictures of Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj have been included and the appendices contain some hitherto unpublished valuable material.

In fact Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj is peculiarly free from all disparagement and condemnation; the sinner and the saint are merely exchanging notes; the saint has sinned, the sinner can be sanctified.

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

It may be mentioned here that, though officially the current Guru of the Inchegeri branch of the Navnath Sampradaya, Sri Nisargadatta does not seem to attach much importance to sects, cults and creeds, including his own.


sri_ramana

Even Bhagavan Sri Ramana Maharshi imposed on himself 20 years of silence before he began to teach.

Q: Sri Ramana Maharshi's teachings have put me on my way.

Q: Sri Ramana Maharshi died.

Q: When I was at Sri Ramanashram, I felt Bhagwan all over the place, all-pervading, all-perceiving.

Questioner: I have just arrived from Sri Ramanashram.

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

M: What were you doing at the Sri Ramanashram?

Q: I have been at Sri Ramanashram and also I have visited Rishikesh.

Can I ask you what is your opinion of Sri Ramana Maharshi?

Q: Yes, Sri Ramana Maharshi used to say: Gurus there are many, but where are the disciples?

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.

M: These fourteen months at Sri Ramanashram, what did they give you?

At Sri Ramanashram did you get some instructions?


sri_ramanashram

Q: When I was at Sri Ramanashram, I felt Bhagwan all over the place, all-pervading, all-perceiving.

Questioner: I have just arrived from Sri Ramanashram.

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

M: What were you doing at the Sri Ramanashram?

Q: I have been at Sri Ramanashram and also I have visited Rishikesh.

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.

M: These fourteen months at Sri Ramanashram, what did they give you?

At Sri Ramanashram did you get some instructions?


stand_aloof

You come to it when you see all you think yourself to be as mere imagination and stand aloof in pure awareness of the transient as transient, imaginary as imaginary, unreal as unreal.

Stand aloof.

M: If you stand aloof as observer only, you will not suffer.


stand_apart

We withdraw from the experience and its experiencer and stand apart in pure awareness, which is between and beyond the two.

When I stand apart, I am their master.

You imagine reality to stand apart from names and forms, while to me names and forms are the ever changing expressions of reality and not apart from it.


stands_beyond

8: The Self Stands Beyond Mind.

The Self stands beyond the mind, aware, but unconcerned.


stop_dreaming

Who is to stop dreaming?

It is your private dream world and my only reaction to it is to ask you to stop dreaming.

M: Again it is like asking: 'What shall I do, if I stop dreaming?


stop_imagining

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.

I ask you only to stop imagining that you were born, have parents, are a body, will die and so on.

Stop imagining that the dream is yours.

Stop imagining, stop believing.

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


stop_searching

All you need is to stop searching outside what can be found only within.

Stop searching, and see -- it is here and now -- it is that 'I am' you know so well.

Stop searching, cease losing.


stop_thinking

It is enough to stop thinking and desiring anything, but the Supreme.

Just stop thinking you are the bodies and the problems of love and sex will lose their meaning.

You need not stop thinking.

So, first of all abandon all self-identification, stop thinking of yourself as such-and-such, so-and-so, this or that.

Abandon all self-concern, worry not about your welfare, material or spiritual, abandon every desire, gross or subtle, stop thinking of achievement of any kind.

Q: So you say I should try to stop thinking and stay steady in the idea: 'I am'.


strange_experiences

Q: When I was younger, I had strange experiences, short but memorable, of being nothing, just nothing, yet fully conscious.

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.

M: No doubt, a drug that can affect your brain can also affect your mind, and give you all the strange experiences promised.


subtle_body

Q: Even if I dismiss this body of bones, flesh and blood as not-me, still I remain with the subtle body made up of thoughts and feelings, memories and imaginations.

Q: Between the body and pure awareness stands the 'inner organ', antahkarana, the 'subtle body', the 'mental body', whatever the name.

Just as a whirling mirror converts sunlight into a manifold pattern of streaks and colours, so does the subtle body convert the simple light of the shining Self into a diversified world.

What I cannot grasp is how did this subtle body arise in the first instance?

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


sun_shines

It is like the moon in daylight -- when the sun shines, the moon is hardly visible.

As soon as the mind is ready, the sun shines in it.

The window may be closed, or open, the sun shines all the time.

When the sun shines, colours appear.


supreme_guru

32: Life is the Supreme Guru.

Life itself is the Supreme Guru; be attentive to its lessons and obedient to its commands.

Questioner: Who is the Guru and who is the supreme Guru?

And pure awareness beyond consciousness is the supreme Guru.


supreme_reality

But the source of all that is, is the Infinite Possibility, the Supreme Reality, which is in you and which throws its power and light and love on every experience.

Q: But you already told me that I am the Supreme Reality.

M: Of course you are the Supreme Reality!

Q: Well, you told me that I am the Supreme Reality.

You may call it God, or Parabrahman, or Supreme Reality, but these are names given by the mind.

There is only one Self, the Supreme Reality, in which the personal and the impersonal are one.

M: He told me I am the Supreme Reality.

To the Indian words like 'direct perception of the Supreme Reality' make sense and bring out responses from the very depths of his being.

The Supreme Reality manifests itself in innumerable ways.

Q: If I become anything I think myself to be, and I start thinking that I am the Supreme Reality, will not my Supreme Reality remain a mere idea?

You yourself are God, the Supreme Reality.

But, in a way it is the same old search for mother's love, call it God or Atma or Supreme Reality.

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

Don't you see that the Supreme Reality is what makes everything possible?

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.

M: Somebody must tell you about the Supreme Reality and the way that leads to it.

Q: Sir, I am an humble seeker, while you are the Supreme Reality itself.

My Guru, before he died, told me: Believe me, you are the Supreme Reality.

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

Q: What was the Supreme Reality you were supposed to reach?

In the various schools of self-realisation there is so much talk of awareness, that one ends with the impression that awareness itself is the supreme reality.

You are the Supreme Reality beyond the world and its creator, beyond consciousness and its witness, beyond all assertions and denials.

According to some learned commentators, the Nath Gurus propound that the entire creation is born out of nada (sound), the divine principle, and bindu (light), the physical principle and the Supreme Reality from which these two principles emanate is Shiva.

While the chanting of sacred hyms and devotional songs as well as the worship of the idols is a traditional feature of the sect, its teaching emphasises that the Supreme Reality can be realised only within the heart.


supreme_self

' He may answer: 'I am the Supreme Self'.

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

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.


supreme_state

Q: Then, how do you know you are in the supreme state?

Like a hole in the paper is both in the paper and yet not of paper, so is the supreme state in the very centre of consciousness, and yet beyond consciousness.

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

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

In the supreme state, no.

When you see them as one, and go beyond, you are in the supreme state.

To go beyond consciousness is the supreme state.

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

When you demand nothing of the world, nor of God, when you want nothing, seek nothing, expect nothing then the Supreme State will come to you uninvited and unexpected!

When all search ceases, it is the Supreme State.

Q: Why does the Supreme State come and go?

Q: Once the Supreme State is reached, can it be shared with others?

M: The Supreme State is universal, here and now; everybody already shares in it.

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

Q: How does one reach the Supreme State?

Go beyond, back to your normal, natural, supreme state.

It is through grasping the full import of the 'I am', and going beyond it to its source, that one can realise the supreme state, which is also the primordial and the ultimate.


teacher_told

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

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


thousand_years

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

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

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

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

It was the same ten thousand years ago.

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


three_gunas

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

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

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


three_states

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.

The three states are only varieties of the dream state.

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

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

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

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

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.

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.


timeless_being

You are timeless being and awareness.

I am timeless being.

Timeless being is entirely in the now.

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

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.


timeless_reality

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

The search is the ultimate and timeless reality.

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.

You will soon discover the timeless reality behind it.


timeless_source

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

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

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


timeless_state

It is a timeless state, ever present.

Q: You say you are in a timeless state.

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

It is a timeless state.

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


timelessly_present

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.

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

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


true_being

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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?

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

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

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

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

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

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


true_guru

83: The True Guru.

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

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

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


true_happiness

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

True happiness is spontaneous and effortless.

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.

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

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

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


true_knowledge

Q: The true knowledge of the self.

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

Q: Can there be true knowledge of things?

To know that nothing is is true knowledge.

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

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

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

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

True knowledge is ever fresh, new, unexpected.


true_nature

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

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

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.

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.

Let your true nature emerge.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.


true_self

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

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

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

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.

Engrossed in a dream you have forgotten your true self.

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?


two_aspects

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

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

Consciousness and unconsciousness are two aspects of one life.

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

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

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

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

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.


ultimate_cause

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

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

The ultimate cause is untraceable.

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


ultimate_purpose

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

The ultimate purpose will be served in any case.

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.


ultimate_state

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.

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

M: Yours may not be the ultimate state.


understand_yourself

Just understand yourself -- that itself is eternity.

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.

The effort to understand yourself is Yoga.


undervalue_attention

31: Do not Undervalue Attention.

M: Do not undervalue attention.


united_states

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

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

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

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.

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

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


universal_being

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

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.

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


universal_body

The entire creation is your universal body.

But you have also a universal body.

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?


universal_consciousness

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.

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

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

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

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.


universal_mind

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

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

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

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

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


universal_power

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

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?

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


universal_witness

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

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

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.

We hear the expression -- universal witness.


universe_becomes

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

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

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


vicious_circle

It is a vicious circle.

A truly vicious circle!

It is a vicious circle.

It is a vicious circle.

Again we are in the vicious circle -- without perfect faith -- no salvation, without salvation -- no perfect faith, hence no salvation.

Investigate the vicious circle till you find yourself beyond it.


waking_hours

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

M: During your waking hours are you continually self-conscious?

Q: Yes, I admit that on my own terms I am a person only during my waking hours.

Since you pretend not to be conscious in the intervals between the waking hours, leave the intervals alone.

Let us consider the waking hours only.

After all, you must remember, that all your preoccupations with yourself are only in your waking hours and partly in your dreams; in sleep all is put aside and forgotten.

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


waking_state

M: Before you make such sweeping statements, examine carefully your waking state.

M: Echoes of the waking state.

Consciousness is most differentiated in the waking state.

Q: From the daily waking state, in which alone all these discussions take place.

M: In the waking state all these problems arise, for such is its nature.

In what way does it help you to know that things are causally related -- as they may appear to be in your waking state?

Q: The world and the waking state emerge and subside together.

M: When the mind is still, absolutely silent, the waking state is no more.

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

All these ideas belong to the waking state.

Q: What brings in the waking state?

M: How to describe the waking state in dreamland language?

We do not wake up into a really waking state.

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

Q: Just as the waking state exists in seed form during sleep, so does the world the child creates on being born exist before its birth.

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

M: Nor can the waking state.

M: You do not realise that your present waking state is one of ignorance.

However much you are convinced of the truth of your waking state, you do not claim it to be permanent and changeless, as I do when I talk of mine.

A drink, a smoke, a fever, a drug, breathing, singing, shaking, dancing, whirling, praying, sex or fasting, mantras or some vertiginous abstraction can dislodge me from my waking state and give me some experience, extraordinary because unfamiliar.

Now you are in the waking state, a person with name and shape, joys and sorrows.

Instead of struggling with the person to make it become what it is not, why not go beyond the waking state and leave the personal life altogether?

Q: Is the waking state more important for spiritual practice than sleep?

M: On the whole we attach too much importance, to the waking state.

Without sleep the waking state would be impossible; without sleep one goes mad or dies; why attach so much importance to waking consciousness, which is obviously dependent on the unconscious?

My waking state is beyond them.

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

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

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


want_nothing

You want nothing, neither-from your body nor from your mind.

What is it to me, since I want nothing?

To want nothing and do nothing -- that is true creation!

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

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

I am dead to the world, I want nothing, not even to live.

When you demand nothing of the world, nor of God, when you want nothing, seek nothing, expect nothing then the Supreme State will come to you uninvited and unexpected!

Please see that I want nothing from you.

To be open means to want nothing else.

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

To want nothing of it, to be ready to abandon it entirely, is earnestness.


want_peace

You want peace, love, happiness and work hard to create pain, hatred and war.

If you want peace, deserve it.

If you want peace and harmony in the world, you must have peace and harmony in your hearts and minds.

You want peace and harmony in the world, but refuse to have them in yourself.

If you want peace you must strive for it.


wants_nothing

Only God's energy is infinite -- because He wants nothing for Himself.

He wants nothing -- neither from others nor from himself.

Q: I am told that the man who wants nothing for himself is all-powerful.


watch_yourself

You must watch yourself continuously -- particularly your mind -- moment by moment, missing nothing.

And to know what you are not you must watch yourself carefully, rejecting all that does not necessarily go with the basic fact: 'I am'.

M: To know that you are neither body nor mind, watch yourself steadily and live unaffected by your body and mind, completely aloof, as if you were dead.

When you sit quiet and watch yourself, all kinds of things may come to the surface.

Watch your thoughts and watch yourself watching the thoughts.

M: Watch yourself.

Watch yourself closely and you will see that whatever be the content of consciousness, the witnessing of it does not depend on the content.

M: Keep the 'I am' in the focus of awareness, remember that you are, watch yourself ceaselessly and the unconscious will flow into the conscious without any special effort on your part.


whatever_happens

Whatever happens, I must be there to witness it.

One can function rightly, responding well and fully to whatever happens, without having to bring it into the focus of awareness.

M: Whatever happens, it happens to you.

M: Whatever happens in your world, only there it has validity and evokes response.

Whatever happens, does not affect me -- things act on things, that is all.

Whatever happens -- happens.

Simply look at whatever happens and know that you are beyond it.

Whatever happens on the stage makes him shudder in terror or roll with laughter, yet all the time he is aware that it is but a show.

Whatever happens, I remain.

All you can do is to grasp the central point, that reality is not an event and does not happen and whatever happens, whatever comes and goes, is not reality.

Go beyond, go back to the source, go to the self that is the same whatever happens.

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

Use every opportunity to remind yourself that you are in bondage, that whatever happens to you is due to the fact of your bodily existence.

Yet, whatever happens, points to your existence as a perceiving centre.

Remember to remember: 'whatever happens -- happens because I am'.

Whatever happens, you cannot kick and scream in an airline office or in a Bank.

For whatever happens, all the universe is responsible and you are the source of the universe.

Be aware that whatever happens, happens to you, by you, through you, that you are the creator, enjoyer and destroyer of all you perceive and you will not be afraid.

At every moment, whatever happens now, is for the best.


wise_man

So is the wise man (jnani) stripped of all his powers and possessions.

The wise man is not anxious to use such powers, except when the situation calls for them.

The wise man counts nothing as his own.


without_awareness

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

Without awareness, the body would not last a second.

Similarly, without awareness there would be no consciousness, nor life, which transforms matter into a vehicle of consciousness.


without_being

Can there be the sense of 'I am' without being somebody or other?

I find myself talking to people, or doing things quite correctly and appropriately, without being very much conscious of them.

Q: So a jnani knows what he is doing only when he turns his mind to it; otherwise he just acts, without being concerned.

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

Separate consistently and perseveringly the 'I am' from 'this' or 'that', and try to feel what it means to be, just to be, without being 'this' or 'that'.

Once you have known pure being, without being this or that, you will discern it among experiences and you will no longer be misled by names and forms.

You are merely watching what happens, without being able to influence it in any way.

It is pure awareness of being, without being this or that, without any self-identification with anything in particular, or in general.

Q: Does every knower of the Self become a Guru, or can one be a knower of Reality without being able to take others to it?

No ordinary brain can stand it without being shattered; hence the absolute need for sadhana.


without_cause

Things happen without cause and reason and, after all, what does it matter, who is who?

You imagine that without cause there can be no happiness.

Q: How can anything be without cause?

The state which sprouts suddenly and without cause, carries no stain of self; you may call it 'god'.

Because it is without cause, it is without hindrance.


without_changing

You cannot change the image without changing the face.

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

M: The body appears in your mind, your mind is the content of your consciousness; you are the motionless witness of the river of consciousness which changes eternally without changing you in any way.


without_conviction

Q: I do not see how one can begin without conviction.

Q: Where am I to get the courage to act without conviction?

Q: Even when we act without conviction?


without_death

Can there be renewal without death?

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

Without death life cannot be.


without_desire

Without desire for freedom of what use is the confidence that you can acquire freedom?

Stand without desire and fear, relinquishing all control and all responsibility.

Q: Do you mean to say that without desire there can be no consciousness?

Without desire or fear he enjoys it, as it happens.

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

Without desire you are dead.

M: There can be no experience without desire for it.

M: The Guru is basically without desire.

Look at it without desire or fear and it does lose substance.

Q: Without desire and fear what motive is there for action?


without_knowing

Can you exist without knowing?

Of your personal universe you are the centre -- without knowing the centre what else can you know?

If I am blind from birth and you tell me that you know things without touching them, while I must touch to know, I am aware that I am blind without knowing what does it mean to see.

There are so many things you are doing without knowing how to do it.

You digest, you circulate your blood and lymph, you move your muscles -- all without knowing how.

In the same way, you perceive, you feel, you think without knowing the why and how of it.

Similarly you are yourself without knowing it.

M: The mind covers up reality, without knowing it.

I may talk of truth without knowing it, and may know it without a single word said.

M: You are really in search of yourself, without knowing it.

We sin without knowing and suffer without understanding.

You are never left without knowing what your next step should be.

One can only be it, without knowing, but one can know what it is not.


without_love

Q: There is so much sex without love.

M: Without love all is evil.

Life itself without love is evil.

Without love, and will inspired by love, nothing can be done.

Without love and trust there would have been no Guru nor disciple, and no relationship between them.

For nothing can be done without love.


without_memory

M: And without memory, what are you?

Without memory I cannot exist as a person.

M: Surely you can exist without memory.

Can you talk of identity without memory?

Q: Without memory you cannot be conscious.

The foundation of things is in memory -- without memory there would be no recognition.

For without memory and expectation there can be no time.


without_self

M: To live without self-concern.

Without self-realisation, no virtue is genuine.

This again is not possible without self-realisation.


witness_attitude

41: Develop the Witness Attitude.

M: Develop the witness attitude and you will find in your own experience that detachment brings control.

M: The witness attitude is also faith; it is faith in oneself.


witness_remains

Your personality dissolves and only the witness remains.

Q: The person goes and only the witness remains.

When the body is no more, the person disappears completely without return, only the witness remains and the Great Unknown.


witnessing_consciousness

Q: There is the witnessed consciousness and there is the witnessing consciousness.

Q: You speak of the mind, of the witnessing consciousness beyond the mind and of the Supreme, which is beyond awareness.

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.


world_appears

In pure being consciousness arises; in consciousness the world appears and disappears.

M: Within the prison of your world appears a man who tells you that the world of painful contradictions, which you have created, is neither continuous nor permanent and is based on a misapprehension.

In that light the world appears dimly like a dream.

To you, you get born and die, while to me, the world appears and disappears.

M: Find to whom this cruel world appears and you will know why it appears so cruel.

When you know yourself as a centre of consciousness, the world appears as the ocean of the mind.

The world appears to you so overwhelmingly real, because you think of it all the time; cease thinking of it and it will dissolve into thin mist.


wrong_ideas

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.

Only what liberates you from desire and fear and wrong ideas is good.

It is all appearance, due to wrong ideas.

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

Problems created by desires and fears and wrong ideas can be solved only on the level of the mind.

Get rid of wrong ideas, that is all.

Take care of the mind first, by tracing and eliminating all wrong ideas and emotions.

M: Wrong ideas and desires leading to wrong actions, causing dissipation and weakness of mind and body.

Remove and abandon your wrong ideas about yourself and there it is, in all its glory.

Abandon the wrong ideas, for they are false and obstruct your vision of yourself.


yourself_beyond

The way leads through yourself beyond yourself.

Be interested in yourself beyond all experience, be with yourself, love yourself; the ultimate security is found only in self-knowledge.

The answer is obvious -- first put yourself beyond the need of help.

Cease to be the object and become the subject of all that happens; once having turned within, you will find yourself beyond the subject.

Investigate the vicious circle till you find yourself beyond it.









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