Immortality is freedom from the
feeling: 'I am'.
*
Or, you may not bother about any thing
you want, or think, or do and just stay put in the thought and
feeling 'I am', focussing 'I am' firmly in your mind. All kinds of
experience may come to you -- remain unmoved in the knowledge that
all perceivable is transient, and only the 'I am' endures.
*
All knowledge is about the 'I am'.
False ideas about this 'I am' lead to bondage, right knowledge leads
to freedom and happiness.
Q: Is 'I am' and 'there is' the same?
M: 'I am' denotes the inner, 'there is'
-- the outer. Both are based on the sense of being.
*
NM: After all, the only fact you are
sure of is that you are. The 'I am' is certain. The 'I am this' is
not. Struggle to find out what you are in reality.
Q: I am doing nothing else for the last
60 years.
M: What is wrong with striving? Why
look for results? Striving itself is your real nature.
Q: Striving is painful.
M: You make it so by seeking results.
Strive without seeking, struggle without greed.
*
M: Not as long as you think yourself to
be a person.
Q: By what sign shall l know that I am
beyond sin and virtue?
M: By being free from all desire and
fear, from the very idea of being a person. To nourish the ideas: 'I am a sinner' 'I am not a
sinner', is sin. To identify oneself with the particular is all the
sin there is. The impersonal is real, the
personal appears and disappears. 'I am' is the impersonal Being. 'I am this' is the person. The
person is relative and the pure Being -- fundamental.
*
Q: You speak from your own experience.
How can I make it mine?
M: You speak of my experience as
different from your experience, because you believe we are separate.
But we are not. On a deeper level my experience is your experience.
Dive deep within yourself and you will find it easily and simply. Go
in the direction of 'I am'.
*
Q: Again a counsel of perfection! To
integrate and strengthen the mind is not an easy task! How does one
begin?
M: You can start only from where you
are. You are here and now, you cannot get out of here and now.
Q: But what can I do here and now?
M: You can be aware of your being --
here and now.
Q: That is all?
M: That is all. There is nothing more
to it.
Q: All my waking and dreaming I am
conscious of myself. It does not help me much.
M: You were aware of thinking, feeling,
doing. You were not aware of your being.
*
M: See what you are. Don't ask others,
don't let others tell you about yourself. Look within and see. All
the teacher can tell you is only this. There is no need of going from
one to another. The same water is in all the wells. You just draw
from the nearest.
*
By no effort of logic or imagination
can you change the 'I am' into 'I am not'. In the very denial of your
being you assert it.
*
M: Watch it, and it shall cease. 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.
Desire, fear, trouble, joy, they cannot appear unless you are there
to appear to. Yet, whatever happens, points to your existence as a
perceiving centre.
*
M: The Supreme State is universal, here
and now; everybody already shares in it. It is the state of being --
knowing and liking. Who does not like to be, or does not know his own
existence? 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. This
work of mental self-purification, the cleansing of the psyche, is
essential. Just as a speck in the eye, by causing inflammation, may
wipe out the world, so the mistaken idea: 'I am the body-mind' causes
the self-concern, which obscures the universe. It is useless to fight
the sense of being a limited and separate person unless the roots of
it are laid bare. Selfishness is rooted in the mistaken ideas of
oneself. Clarification of the mind is Yoga.
*
I am now 74 years old. And yet I feel
that I am an infant. I feel clearly that in spite of all the changes
I am a child. My Guru told me: that child, which is you even now, is
your real self (swarupa). Go back to that state of pure being, where
the 'I am' is still in its purity before it got contaminated with
'this I am' or 'that I am'. Your burden is of false
self-identifications -- abandon them all. My Guru told me -- 'Trust
me. I tell you; you are divine. Take it as the absolute truth. Your
joy is divine, your suffering is divine too. All comes from God.
Remember it always. You are God, your will alone is done'. I did
believe him and soon realised how wonderfully true and accurate were
his words. I did not condition my mind by thinking: 'I am God, I am
wonderful, I am beyond'. I simply followed his instruction which was
to focus the mind on pure being 'I am', and stay in 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.
In it all disappeared -- myself, my Guru, the life I lived, the world
around me. Only peace remained and unfathomable silence .
*
When you follow my advice and try to
keep your mind on the notion of 'I am' only, you become fully aware
of your mind and its vagaries. Awareness, being lucid harmony
(sattva) in action, dissolves dullness and quietens the restlessness
of the mind and gently, but steadily changes its very substance.
This change need not be spectacular; it may be hardly noticeable;
yet it is a deep and fundamental shift from darkness to light, from
inadvertence to awareness.
Q: Must it be the 'I am' formula? Will
not any other sentence do? If I concentrate on 'there is a table',
will it not serve the same purpose?
M: As an exercise in concentration --
yes. But it will not take you beyond the idea of a table. You are not
interested in tables, you want to know yourself. For this keep
steadily in the focus of consciousness the only clue you have: your
certainty of being. Be with it, play with it, ponder over it, delve
deeply into it, till the shell of ignorance breaks open and you
emerge into the realm of reality.
Q: Is there any causal link between my
focussing the 'I am' and the breaking of the shell?
M: The urge to find oneself is a sign
that you are getting ready. The impulse always comes from within.
Unless your time has come, you will have neither the desire nor the
strength to go for self- enquiry whole-heartedly.
*
Questioner: Some forty years ago J.
Krishnamurti said that there is life only and all talk of
personalities and individualities has no foundation in reality. He
did not attempt to describe life – he merely said that while life
need not and cannot be described, it can be fully experienced, if the
obstacles to its being experienced are removed. The main hindrance
lies in our idea of, and addiction to, time, in our habit of
anticipating a future in the light of the past. The sum total of the
past becomes the 'I was', the hoped for future becomes the 'I shall
be' and life is a constant effort of crossing over from what 'I was'
to what ‘I shall be'. The present moment, the. 'now' is lost sight
of. Maharaj speaks of 'I am'. Is it an illusion, like 'I was' and 'I
shall be', or is there something real about it? And if the ‘I am'
too is an illusion, how does one free oneself from it? The very
notion of I am free of 'I am' is an absurdity. Is there something
real, something lasting about the 'I am' in distinction from the 'I
was', or ‘I shall be', which change with time, as added memories
create new expectations?
Maharaj: The present 'I am' is as false
as the 'I was' and 'I shall be'. It is merely an idea in the mind, an
impression left by memory, and the separate identity it creates is
false. this habit of referring to a false centre must be done away
with, the notion 'I see', 'I feel', 'I think', 'I do', must disappear
from the field of consciousness; what remains when the false is no
more, is real.
*
Q: Why should I imagine myself so
wretched?
M: You do it by habit only. Change your
ways of feeling and thinking, take stock of them and examine them
closely. You are in bondage by inadvertence. Attention liberates. You
are taking so many things for granted. Begin to question. The most
obvious things are the most doubtful. Ask yourself such questions as:
‘Was I really born?' 'Am I really so-and-so?’ 'How do I know that
I exist? 'Who are my parents?’ 'Have they created me, or have I
created them?' 'Must I believe all I am told about myself?' ‘Who am
I, anyhow?'. You have put so much energy into building a prison for
yourself. Now spend as much on demolishing it. In fact, demolition is
easy, for the false dissolves when it is discovered. All hangs on the
idea 'I am'. Examine it very thoroughly. It lies at the root of every
trouble. It is a sort of skin that separates you from the reality.
The real is both within and without the skin, but the skin itself is
not real. This 'I am' idea was not born with you. You could have
lived very well without it. It came later due to your
self-identification with the body. It created an illusion of
separation where there was none. It made you a stranger in your own
world and made the world alien and inimical. Without the sense of 'I
am' life goes on.
*
Q: In what direction am I to look?
M: All directions are within the mind!
I am not asking you to look in any particular direction. Just look
away from all that happens in your mind and bring it to the feeling
'I am'. The 'I am' is not a direction. It is the negation of all
direction. Ultimately even the 'I am' will have to go, for you need
not keep on asserting what is obvious. Bringing the mind to the
feeling 'I am' merely helps in turning the mind away from everything
else.
Q: Where does it all lead me?
M: When the mind is kept away from its
preoccupations, it becomes quiet. If you do not disturb this quiet
and stay in it, you find that it is permeated with a light and a love
you have never known; and yet you recognise it at once as your own
nature. 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.
*
Being needs no proofs -- it proves all
else. If only they go deeply into the fact of being and discover the
vastness and the glory to which the 'I am' is the door, and cross the
door and go beyond, their life will be full of happiness and light.
Believe me, the effort needed is as nothing when compared with the
discoveries arrived at.
*
Q: What made you decide to become a
teacher?
M: I was made into one by being called
so. Who am I to teach and whom? What I am, you are, and what you are
-- I am. The ‘I am’ is common to us all; beyond the ‘I am’
there is the immensity of light and love. We do not see it because we
look elsewhere; I can only point at the sky; seeing of the star is
your own work. Some take more time before they see the star, some
take less; it depends on the clarity of their vision and their
earnestness in search. These two must be their own -- I can only
encourage.
*
Q: Then, what am I to do?
M: Try to be, only to be. The
all-important word is 'try'. Allot enough time daily for sitting
quietly and trying, just trying, to go beyond the personality, with
its addictions and obsessions. Don't ask how, it cannot be explained.
You just keep on trying until you succeed. If you persevere, there
can be no failure. 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. This steady resistance against
the unnecessary is the secret of success.
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. All you need is to be
aware of being, not as a verbal statement, but as an ever-present
fact. The a awareness that you are will open your eyes to what you
are. It is all very simple. First of all, establish a constant
contact with your self, be with yourself all the time. Into
self-awareness all blessings flow. Begin as a centre of observation,
deliberate cognisance, and grow into a centre of love in action. 'I
am' is a tiny seed which will grow into a mighty tree -- quite
naturally, without a trace of effort.
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