M: The common things of life: I
experience them just as you do. The difference lies in what I do not experience. I do not experience fear or
greed, hate or anger. I ask nothing, refuse nothing, keep nothing.
*
Questioner: I see you sitting in your
son's house waiting for lunch to be served. And I wonder whether the
content of your consciousness is similar to mine, or partly
different, or totally different. Are you hungry and thirsty as I am,
waiting rather impatiently for the meals to be served, or are you in
an altogether different state of mind?
Maharaj: There is not much difference
on the surface, but very much of it in depth. You know yourself only
through the senses and the mind. You take yourself to be what they
suggest; having no direct knowledge of yourself, you have mere ideas;
all mediocre, second-hand, by hearsay. Whatever you think you are you
take it to be true; the habit of imagining yourself perceivable and
describable is very strong with you. I see as you see, hear as you
hear, taste as you taste, eat as you eat. I also feel thirst and
hunger and expect my food to be served on time. When starved or sick,
my body and mind go weak. All this I perceive quite clearly, but
somehow I am not in it, I feel myself as if floating over it, aloof
and detached. Even not aloof and detached. There is aloofness and
detachment as there is thirst and hunger; there is also the awareness
of it all and a sense of immense distance, as if the body and the
mind and all that happens to them were somewhere far out on the
horizon. I am like a cinema screen -- clear and empty -- the pictures
pass over it and disappear, leaving it as clear and empty as before.
In no way is the screen affected by the pictures, nor are the
pictures affected by the screen. The screen intercepts and reflects
the pictures, it does not shape them. It has nothing to do with the
rolls of films. These are as they are, lumps of destiny (prarabdha),
but not my destiny; the destinies of the people on the screen.
*
Q: When I ask a question and you
answer, what exactly happens?
M: The question and the answer -- both
appear on the screen. The lips move, the body speaks -- and again the
screen is clear and empty.
Q: When you say: clear and empty, what
do you mean?
M: I mean free of all contents. To
myself I am neither perceivable nor conceivable; there is nothing I
can point out and say: 'this I am'. You identify yourself with
everything so easily, I find it impossible. The feeling: 'I am not
this or that, nor is anything mine' is so strong in me that as soon
as a thing or a thought appears, there comes at once the sense 'this
I am not'.
Q: Do you mean to say that you spend
your time repeating 'this I am not, that I am not'?
M: Of course not. I am merely
verbalizing for your sake.
*
Q: You make all these extraordinary
statements about yourself. What makes you say those things? What do
you mean by saying that you are beyond space and time?
M: You ask and the answer comes. I
watch myself -- I watch the answer and see no contradiction. It is
clear to me that I am telling you the truth. It is all very simple.
Only you must trust me that I mean what I say, that I am quite
serious. As I told you already, my Guru showed me my true nature --
and the true nature of the world. Having realised that I am one with,
and yet beyond the world, I became free from all desire and fear. I
did not reason out that I should be free -- I found myself free --
unexpectedly, without the least effort. This freedom from desire and
fear remained with me since then.
*
Q: Is there no such thing as permanent
perfection?
M: Yes, there is, but it includes all
imperfection. It is the perfection of our self-nature which makes
everything possible, perceivable, interesting. It knows no suffering,
for it neither likes nor dislikes; neither accepts nor rejects.
Creation and destruction are the two poles between which it weaves
its ever-changing pattern. Be free from predilections and preferences
and the mind with its burden of sorrow will be no more.
*
Q: Can one believe himself to be
realised and be mistaken?
M: Of course. The very idea 'I am
self-realised' is a mistake. There is no 'I am this'. 'I am that' in
the Natural State.
*
M: I am nowhere to be found! I am not a
thing to be given a place among other things. All things are in me,
but I am not among things. You are telling me about the
superstructure while I am concerned with the foundations. The
superstructures rise and fall, but the foundations last. I am not
interested in the transient, while you talk of nothing else.
*
Q: The person goes and only the witness
remains.
M: Who remains to say: 'I am the
witness'. When there is no 'I am', where is the witness? In the
timeless state there is no self to take refuge in.
The man who carries a parcel is anxious
not to lose it -- he is parcel-conscious. The man who cherishes the
feeling 'I am' is self-conscious. The jnani holds on to nothing and
cannot be said to be conscious. And yet he is not unconscious. He is
the very heart of awareness. We call him digambara clothed in space,
the Naked One, beyond all appearance. There is no name and shape
under which he may be said to exist, yet he is the only one that
truly is.
Q: I cannot grasp it.
M: Who can? The mind has its limits. It
is enough to bring you to the very frontiers of knowledge and make
you face the immensity of the unknown. To dive in it is up to you.
Q: What about the witness? Is it real
or unreal?
M: It is both. The last remnant of
illusion, the first touch of the real. To say: I am only the witness
is both false and true: false because of
the 'I am', true because of the witness. It is better to say: 'there
is witnessing'. The moment you say: 'I am', the entire universe comes
into being along with its creator.
*
Q: You are giving a certain date to
your realisation. It means something did happen to you at that date.
What happened?
M: The mind ceased producing events.
The ancient and ceaseless search stopped -- l wanted nothing,
expected nothing -- accepted nothing as my own. There was no 'me'
left to strive for. Even the bare 'I am' faded away.
*
Q: Which experience?
M: The experience of being empty,
uncluttered by memories and expectations; it is like the happiness of
open spaces, of being young, of having all the time and energy for
doing things, for discovery, for adventure.
*
M: Be nothing, know nothing, have
nothing. This is the only life worth living, the only happiness worth
having.
*
M: My home is in the unchangeable,
which appears to be a state of constant reconciliation and
integration of opposites.
People come here to learn about the
actual existence of such a state, the obstacles to its emergence, and, once perceived, the art
of stabilising it in consciousness, so that there is no clash between understanding and living. The
state itself is beyond the mind and need not be learnt. The mind can only focus the obstacles;
seeing an obstacle as an obstacle is effective, because it is the
mind acting on the mind. Begin from the
beginning: give attention to the fact that you are. At no time can you say 'I was not' all you can
say: 'I do not remember'. You know how unreliable is memory. Accept that, engrossed in petty
personal affairs you have forgotten what you are; try to bring back the lost memory through the elimination
of the known. You cannot be told what will happen, nor is it desirable; anticipation will create
illusions.
*
M: 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. The heart of things is at peace.
*
Q: I do not understand you.
M: The mind cannot understand, for the
mind is trained for grasping and holding while the jnani is
not-grasping and not holding.
Q: What am I holding on to, which you
do not?
M: You are a creature of memories; at
least you imagine yourself to be so. I am entirely unimagined. I am
what I am, not identifiable with any physical or mental state.
Q: An accident would destroy your
equanimity.
M: The strange fact is that it does
not. To my own surprise, I remain as I am -- pure awareness, alert to
all that happens.
