Quotes of Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

[Jewell]

Maharaj: Consciousness is subtle like light, it does no action, all activity is through mind and vital
breath.

Visitor: How to reach?

M: Don't try, just be. When you are in an experiencing state, did you do anything? How did you enter
in consciousness?

V: I don't understand.

M: Go into quietude, do Meditation.

V: Should we take the name of God?

M: No doubt you have to recite in your mind. Through mind, another principle is observing this
recitation in mind, you are prior to mind. By recitation the mind, body, five senses through the vital
breath become purified.

V: Any particular mantra?

M: You may recite whatever sacred name you like, something I may also give. By its recitation the
purification process starts.

V: World creation is mysterious, so many souls of people, is it really so? Or we only see it so?

M: You have reached this stage because 'you are', your world is you, but you are beyond name and
form, 'you are' is the manifest would.

V: Because of 'Shuddha Chaitanya' (pure consciousness) everything is.

M: They are created from your 'I am'.
 
V: Is it from mind.

M: When sun rises, the world is perceived with its light, similarly when the 'I am' (you are) rises, the
world is created.

V: What happens when we sleep?

M: When you wake up, because of the 'I am' your world is.

V: When is one desireless?

M: Don't try to suppress and be without desires, like people coming and going, just observe or don't
get involved. The Self is the observer and whatever seen is the world.

V: Are Self and God identical?

M: Primarily because of your identification with your body, you have polluted God. Because of your
association with body, you have fear of death. There is no death only the vital breath departs and 'I am'
disappears. Body is the sustenance of 'I amness' or Atman.

V: Because of what I did in past births?

M: You dare talk of past birth! Have you knowledge of the present one?

V: Why birth then?

M: It never happened

V: Is it an illusion?

M: To say 'I am the body' is an illusion. You are saying a child is born, but what about you? Until you
get to know your source, take it that you have no knowledge. When in the womb nature took care of
you, you did nothing. Even today nature takes care, you arrogate all by associating with the body.

V: No special effort is require?

M: Talking of efforts, up to the age of three did you make any effort? The record of birth is ten month
after conception; you were carefree for ten months. What is your idea of knowledge? It's whatever
ideas you start collecting as a child.

V: How to give it up?

M: Where is the need to throw? Whatever you feel is appropriate because you have entered into this
sickly state of identifying with the body.

V: How to get rid of it?

M: Understand that body-mind is food and water but you are not matter.

[Jewell]

Q: We are told that total surrender to the Guru is enough, that the Guru will do the rest.

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.
Complete self-surrender by itself is liberation.

Q: When both the disciple and his teacher are inadequate, what will happen?

M: In the long run all will be well. After all, the real Self of both is not affected by the comedy they play for a time.
They will sober up and ripen and shift to a higher level of relationship.

Q: Or, they may separate.

M: Yes, they may separate. After all, no relationship is forever. Duality is a temporary state.

Q: Is it by accident that I met you and by another accident shall we separate never to meet again?
Or is my meeting you a part of some cosmic pattern, a fragment in the great drama of our lives?

M: The real is meaningful and the meaningful relates to reality. If our relationship is meaningful to
you and me, it cannot be accidental. The future affects the present as much, as the past.

Q: How can I make out who is a real saint and who is not?

M: You cannot, unless you have a clear insight into the heart of man. Appearances are deceptive.
To see clearly, your mind must be pure and unattached. Unless you know yourself well, how can
you know another? And when you know yourself -- you are the other.
Leave others alone for some time and examine yourself. There are so many things you do not know
about yourself -- what are you, who are you, how did you come to be born, what are you doing now
and why, where are you going, what is the meaning and purpose of your life, your death, your
future? Have you a past, have you a future? How did you come to live in turmoil and sorrow, while
your entire being strives for happiness and peace? These are weighty matters and have to be
attended to first. You have no need, nor time for finding who is a jnani and who is not?

Q: I must select my guru rightly.

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?

M: But I did answer your question. Do not look for a Guru, do not even think of one. Make your goal
your Guru. After all, the Guru is but a means to an end, not the end in itself. He is not important, it is
what you expect of him that matters to you. Now, what do you expect?

Q: By his grace I shall be made happy, powerful and peaceful.

M: What ambitions! How can a person limited in time and space, a mere body-mind, a gasp of pain
between birth and death, be happy? The very conditions of its arising make happiness impossible.
Peace, power, happiness, these are never personal states, nobody can say 'my peace', 'my power'
-- because 'mine' implies exclusivity, which is fragile and insecure.

Q: I know only my conditioned existence; there is nothing else.

M: Surely, you cannot say so. In deep sleep you are not conditioned. How ready and willing you
are to go to sleep, how peaceful, free and happy you are when asleep!

Q: I know nothing of it.

M: Put it negatively. When you sleep, you are not in pain, nor bound, nor restless.

Q: I see your point. While awake, I know that I am, but am not happy; in sleep I am, I am happy,
but I don?t know it. All I need is to know that I am free and happy.

M: Quite so. Now, go within, into a state which you may compare to a state of waking sleep, in
which you are aware of yourself, but not of the world. In that state you will know, without the least
trace of doubt, that at the root of your being you are free and happy. The only trouble is that you are
addicted to experience and you cherish your memories. In reality it is the other way round; what is
remembered is never real; the real is now.

Q: All this I grasp verbally, but it does not become a part of myself. It remains as a picture in my
mind to be looked at. Is it not the task of the Guru to give life to the picture?

M: Again, it is the other way round. The picture is alive; dead is the mind. As the mind is made of
words and images, so is every reflection in the mind. It covers up reality with verbalisation and then
complains. You say a Guru is needed, to do miracles with you. You are playing with words only.
The Guru and the disciple are one single thing, like the candle and its flame. Unless the disciple is
earnest, he cannot be called a disciple. Unless a Guru is all love and self-giving, he cannot be
called a Guru. Only reality begets reality, not the false.

[Jewell]

M:Each seeker accepts, or invents, a method which suits him, applies it to himself with some
earnestness and effort, obtains results according to his temperament and expectations, casts them
into the mound of words, builds them into a system, establishes a tradition and begins to admit
others into his 'school of Yoga'. It is all built on memory and imagination. No such school is
valueless, nor indispensable; in each one can progress up to the point, when all desire for progress
must be abandoned to make further progress possible. Then all schools are given up, all effort
ceases; in solitude and darkness the vast step is made which ends ignorance and fear forever.
The true teacher, however, will not imprison his disciple in a prescribed set of ideas, feelings and
actions; on the contrary, he will show him patiently the need to be free from all ideas and set
patterns of behaviour, to be vigilant and earnest and go with life wherever it takes him, not to enjoy
or suffer, but to understand and learn.
Under the right teacher the disciple learns to learn, not to remember and obey. Satsang, the
company of the noble, does not mould, it liberates. Beware of all that makes you dependent. Most
of the so-called 'surrenders to the Guru' end in disappointment, if not in tragedy. Fortunately, an
earnest seeker will disentangle himself in time, the wiser for the experience.

Q: Surely, self-surrender has its value.

M: Self-surrender is the surrender of all self-concern. It cannot be done, it happens when you
realise your true nature. Verbal self-surrender, even when accompanied by feeling, is of little value
and breaks down under stress. At the best it shows an aspiration, not an actual fact.

Q: In the Rigveda there is the mention of the adhi yoga, the Primordial Yoga, consisting of the
marriage of pragna with Prana, which, as I understand, means the bringing together of wisdom and life.
Would you say it means also the union of Dharma and Karma, righteousness and action?

M: Yes, provided by righteousness you mean harmony with one's true nature and by action -- only
unselfish and desireless action.
In adhi yoga life itself is the Guru and the mind -- the disciple. The mind attends to life, it does not
dictate. Life flows naturally and effortlessly and the mind removes the obstacles to its even flow.

Q: Is not life by its very nature repetitive? Will not following life lead to stagnation?

M: By itself life is immensely creative. A seed, in course of time, becomes a forest. The mind is like
a forester -- protecting and regulating the immense vital urge of existence.

Q: Seen as the service of life by the mind, the adhi yoga is a perfect democracy. Everyone is
engaged in living a life to his best capacity and knowledge, everyone is a disciple of the same Guru.

M: You may say so. It may be so -- potentially. But unless life is loved and trusted, followed with
eagerness and zest, it would be fanciful to talk of Yoga, which is a movement in consciousness,
awareness in action.

Q: Once I watched a mountain-stream flowing between the boulders. At each boulder the
commotion was different, according to the shape and size of the boulder. Is not every person a
mere commotion over a body, while life is one and eternal?

M: The commotion and the water are not separate. It is the disturbance that makes you aware of
water. Consciousness is always of movement, of change. There can be no such thing as
changeless consciousness. Changelessness wipes out consciousness immediately. A man
deprived of outer or inner sensations blanks out, or goes beyond consciousness and
unconsciousness into the birthless and deathless state. Only when spirit and matter come together
consciousness is born.

Q: Are they one or two?

M: It depends on the words you use: they are one, or two, or three. On investigation three become
two and two become one. Take the simile of face -- mirror -- image. Any two of them presuppose
the third which unites the two. In sadhana you see the three as two, until you realise the two as one.
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.

Q: I cannot destroy the world.

M: There is no need. Just understand that what you see is not what is. Appearances will dissolve
on investigation and the underlying reality will come to the surface. You need not burn the house to
get out of it. You just walk out. It is only when you cannot come and go freely that the house
becomes a jail. I move in and out of consciousness easily and naturally and therefore to me the
world is a home, not a prison.

[Jewell]

Q: So far I have been following you. Now, what am I expected to do?

M: There is nothing to do. Just be. Do nothing. Be. No climbing mountains and sitting in caves. I do
not even say: 'be yourself', since you do not know yourself. Just be. Having seen that you are
neither the 'outer' world of perceivables, nor the 'inner' world of thinkables, that you are neither body
nor mind -- just be.

Q: Surely, there are degrees of realisation.

M: There are no steps to self-realisation. There is nothing gradual about it. It happens suddenly
and is irreversible. You rotate into a new dimension, seen from which the previous ones are mere
abstractions. Just like on sunrise you see things as they are, so on self-realisation you see
everything as it is. The world of illusions is left behind.

Q: In the state of realisation do things change? They become colourful and full of meaning?

M: The experience is quite right, but it is not the experience of reality (sadanubhav), but of harmony
(satvanubhav) of the universe.

Q: Nevertheless, there is progress.

M: There can be progress only in the preparation (sadhana). realisation is sudden. The fruit ripens
slowly, but falls suddenly and without return.

Q: I am physically and mentally at peace. What more do I need?

M: Yours may not be the ultimate state. You will recognise that you have returned to your natural
state by a complete absence of all desire and fear. After all, at the root of all desire and fear is the
feeling of not being what you are. 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.

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

M: Hold on to the sense 'I am' to the exclusion of everything else. When thus the mind becomes
completely silent, it shines with a new light and vibrates with new knowledge. It all comes
spontaneously, you need only hold on to the 'I am'. Just like emerging from sleep or a state of
rapture you feel rested and yet you cannot explain why and how you come to feel so well, in the
same way on realisation you feel complete, fulfilled, free from the pleasure-pain complex, and yet
not always able to explain what happened, why and how. You can put it only in negative terms:
'Nothing is wrong with me any longer.' It is only by comparison with the past that you know that you
are out of it. Otherwise -- you are just yourself. Don't try to convey it to others. If you can, it is not
the real thing. Be silent and watch it expressing itself in action.

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? You merely
discover what you are. All moulding oneself to a pattern is a grievous waste of time. Think neither of
the past nor of the future, just be.

Q: How can I just be? Changes are inevitable.

Changes are inevitable in the changeful, but you are not subject to them. You are the
changeless background, against which changes are perceived.

Q: Everything changes, the background also changes. There is no need of a changeless
background to notice changes. The self is momentary -- it is merely the point where the past meets
the future.

M: Of course the self based on memory is momentary. But such self demands unbroken continuity
behind it. You know from experience that there are gaps when your self is forgotten. What brings it back to life?
What wakes you up in the morning? There must be some constant factor bridging the
gaps in consciousness. If you watch carefully you will find that even your daily consciousness is in
flashes, with gaps intervening all the time. What is in the gaps? What can there be but your real
being, that is timeless; mind and mindlessness are one to it.

[Jewell]

Maharaj: Just try to be in that 'I amness' don?t try to put effort and concentration.

Visitor: Just be, or just be in 'I amness'?

M: When 'you are' it is 'I amness', when ?you are? the beingness is automatically there. You are trying
to be, what is that?

V: I am just being, what is is, and with loss of time there is no sense of 'I am'.

M: Whatever you are without doing any effort, be there. Don't try to interpret 'I amness'. You are
without the body sense, when you identify with body-mind, then the trouble begins

V: There is identification with the body.

M: Yes, now you have listened that 'you are? is apart from the body. Who told you of this space? The
one who can recognize space must be prior to space, one who talks of it.

V: I meant place.
 
M: Still who says place?

V: Me, I have experience of being the witness, but it comes by itself?

M: Who knows the sprouting of witnessing?
 
V: It is just there I have never been able to see that state arise.

M: After disappearance, you felt you are doing witnessing, doing or deliberately doing?
 
V: Automatically.

M: Why did you say you were witnessing?

V: But there is identification with witness.

M: When do you get involved with witness, before or afterwards?

V: During

M: Whatever that principle is, that principle is even before witnessing begins.

V: I don't know

M: It's very subtle, prior to waking that principle was there witnessing, the waking state happens to that
principle which was already there and subsequently there is witnessing of manifestation.

V: The witnessing principle can't be known.

M: Yes, the witnessing principle cannot witness or know itself. It ever prevails; it is not awake or
asleep, it is something apart, it watches.

[Jewell]

Q: You had to make your mind clear and quiet before you could realise the
truth. How did you do it?

M: I did nothing. It just happened. I lived my life, attending to my family's
needs. Nor did my Guru do it. It just happened, as he said it will.

Q: Things do not just happen. There must be a cause for everything.

M: All that happens is the cause of all that happens. Causes are numberless;
the idea of a sole cause is an illusion.
 
Q: How does one gain self-control? I am so weak-minded!

M: Understand first that you are not the person you believe yourself to be.
What you think yourself to be is mere suggestion or imagination. You have no
parents, you were not born, nor will you die.
Either trust me when I tell you so, or arrive to it by study and investigation.
The way of total faith is quick, the other is slow but steady. Both must be tested in
action. Act on what you think is true -- this is the way to truth.

Q: Will the understanding that I am not the body give me the strength of
character needed for self-control?

M: When you know that you are neither body nor mind, you will not be
swayed by them. You will follow truth, wherever it takes you, and do what needs be
done, whatever the price to pay.

Q: Is action essential for self-realisation?

M: For realisation, understanding is essential. Action is only incidental. A
man of steady understanding will not refrain from action. Action is the test of truth.

[Jewell]

M: Knowledge being ignorance is also (ultimately) not required. Your womb being not clean, you
entertain fear, when in the womb for nine months, only the knowledge that 'you are' is there ' nothing
beyond it. In the womb knowledge is there but it is dormant. In this lighter (Maharaj holds up the
lighter), the flame is dormant, does the lighter know the flame? What do you consider yourself to be? If
you take yourself to be the body you are involved. If you take yourself to be knowledge there is no
involvement. Somebody provoked the Guru in you, it is that Guru that receives knowledge and is the
one that speaks.

V: Isn't it possible to pretend that one is the Absolute?

M: More important is to get rid of the body-mind sense instead of trying to be the Absolute, the rest
will happen. After the realization of Self, everything happens. Then there is no question of getting
involved or not.

V: But can one experience qualitative changes before and after?

M: Whatever you presume to be will be buried, whatever I am talking too will abandon the body and
disappear. To start with you are that principle which abandons the body and runs away. Second step,
identify with that principle which quits the body. Third step, Jnana, recognizes this Godly state and
transcend. I Repeat, the principle abandoning the body is Godly, full of knowledge, highest is the one
who recognizes this Godly principle and transcends it. This principle, which quits the body, because of
involvement with the body presumes that it is going to die. Actually, the body also has no death; it has
life in association with beingness without beingness it is a dead rat. You are that principle which
abandons the body, thereafter who are you? The body or that principle? So where is the question of
nursing that principle?
Is the manifest world real? You make a mountain of a molehill, is it real? Here is the world and you are
told to behave accordingly and time passes by. Get to know your true identity and everything will be
clear. All the scriptures are addressed to the mind, while I am talking of finding out what you truly are.
The root of the world is absolute ignorance, only ignorance. Nevertheless, you follow codes to happily
pass your time, miseries come with attachment, become entire, total, and then there is no misery.
Inquiring about the illusion is to go in search of a child born of a barren woman. So your whole life will
not be enough to find it. People go to the moon; they search for the end of the cosmos. Life of Brahman
too is an illusion; there is the end of the cosmos. This illusion (Maya) sends you to find the cosmic
boundary, see its mischief; it does not send you to the centre!
In deep sleep, you awaken and cry out, who creates the illusion? Its consciousness, 'I woke up' you are
the basic illusion, you are married to beingness. Whatever the outcome, you will know that beingness
itself is an illusion. Honestly, the knowledge 'you are' is the most dishonest principle, you are married
to Brahman. I plant you in the beingness that 'you are', then you may go. Understand yourself and all
the riddles will be solved. I am giving you a capital, invest it, investigate and find the truth, investigate
the Self.
Is the dreamworld real or unreal? The incident 'I awoke' is itself unreal. Similarly, is your beingness
real or unreal? Even when you think 'you are', is that too not a concept?

[Jewell]

Question: Then who am I?

Maharaj: The prominent and firm reply is only you are. You throw the hooks with bait into the
water to catch the fish. In that way you, with the concept that you are, throw in the bait and haul in
lots of concepts for yourself. So when the question followed by the answer is there, then anything
which is refused (what remains) is that rejection.
Prior to any other recognition, you already are. If you are not, other people are not. You are
supporting yourself on the intellect of the body and having stabilized in the body or the intellect,
you are creating or inviting a lot of concepts, and in the concepts you are bogged down. You are
talking about others, let me know what you are. I am asking about you. What are you? You the
observer.

Q: Maharaj knows I do not know what I am. Why is he asking me?

M: I am not talking to you. Consciousness is talking to consciousness about consciousness. Who
told you that Maharaj is talking to you? Your basis itself is wrong. One appearance noticed another
appearance of a fly. That is why this automatic gesture. If I understand what I am, that is, merely an
appearance, then I will know the others are appearances also. Therefore, I will have no questions,
arguments or quarrels with them. But if I don't understand myself, and if I ride on the wings of a
concept, then I prefer my appearance.

Q: Since Maharaj is only talking to consciousness, he will not talk to my ignorance.

M: Ignorance will remain there for all time just as knowledge also will remain for all time. There
cannot be knowledge without ignorance and there cannot be ignorance without the correlated
knowledge. Both are the opposites in manifestation, one cannot remain without the other. Even this
concept about knowledge is merely a concept. With a jnani, there is no concept of either ignorance
or knowledge. The total absence of all knowledge or ignorance is that state prior to the arising of
consciousness. But you try to interpret whatever I say with various concepts and you condition
yourself with all these concepts.

Q: Maharaj is taking everything away from me. I have nothing to hold onto -I will fall.

M: You will be broken into how many pieces with that fall? With all that, do what you like!
Another person is searching for himself, but you are hiding.

Q: What is reality?

M: Whatever is permanently there, immortal, unchanging. The eternal ever is, a non-experiential
state. Subsequent to that is the consciousness, "I Amness", the body experience and life. Your
experiences are in the realm of consciousness. In the realm of consciousness you cannot have the
experience of truth. As a matter of fact, there can be no experience of the truth because you are That
in the ultimate analysis. How can there be the experience of the truth? It is prior to the beingness.

Q: What can one do for the continuance of that experience?

M: No experiences are permanent. You are the permanent. Experiences are there in the realm of
consciousness, which is bound by time.

Q: How does one go beyond time?

M: How did you come? Experiencing things happens unconsciously or spontaneously. Knowingly
you cannot go into that.

[Jewell]

Questioner: I think there should be beauty in the whole manifestation.

Maharaj: You should not get involved in what has appeared. Take a tree - the bark, the leaves, the
blossoms, the fruit, all have a different nature. If you get involved in the appearance of these, you
will lose sight of the source, the tree.
Intellectually, you have understood, but you have to be one with it, you have to identify with
what you have understood. Understand that the seed of this body is the sperm of the father mixed
with the ovum of the mother. That is the seed for the manifestation of the phenomena, but I am not
the seed, I am not the phenomena, nor am I the consciousness which is time-bound.
The names and forms which you see are consciousness only. Your consciousness is very pure
and that's why you are able to judge. The Atman is colorless, but it is able to judge colors, etc.
Your sadhana is over; you have reached this place.
This knowledge is for those who have no desires. The Self-knowledge is the most precious
knowledge.
To you who search for the Self I explain this type of knowledge. I lead you to a state where
there is no hunger, no desire, therefore I am not inclined to invite those who are worried about their
possessions and their relations to listen to my talks.
When you have knowledge you see that the consciousness 'I' is all-pervasive, as long as the
consciousness is there; but the witness of the consciousness has no 'I Am' and that is your true,
eternal nature.
'I love' gives rise to great joy, and at the same time there is nothing so miserable as 'I love'.
Giving up the body is a great festival for me.
What is the worth of all the activities of human beings? It is all entertainment, just to pass time.
You get pleasure only when you forget yourself; in deep sleep you have forgotten yourself, that
itself is joy.
It is the Atman, not the personality, that is drawn to spirituality.
I will not expound knowledge in the future; a few words here and there will be all.

Beingness has the quality to become whatever you think of. Whatever concept you feed
to the consciousness, the consciousness will provide you with that. Whatever you hold on to
intensely, you are bound to be that, that is the quality of your consciousness. You should never
think that you are the body.
Consciousness is not the body. As a result of the body the beingness is felt, but beingness is
all-pervasive.
Consciousness alone feels the expanse of consciousness, but I, the Absolute, am not that.
Whatever is known is known by consciousness, is in the field of consciousness. The
consciousness and the knowledge will subside when the food body dies. The Absolute always
remains. The seed of knowledge is planted in you by these talks; now you have to follow it up. You
must nurse it, ruminate over it, so that the tree of knowledge will grow.

[Jewell]

Questioner: It is very difficult to give up this attraction to the bodily identity.

Maharaj: You have to find out what this body is, then the job is done. Initially, the body is very
minute. The consciousness appears in the body, and then the tiny body changes into a large one.
That causal body, which is very minute, needs to be known. By meditation you can know it.
The quality of that causal body takes on the appearance of the consciousness and the form. In this
world there are many species, in all sizes; initially what was the size of each variety?
At the point where you first feel knowingness, consciousness is not static; it is a continuous
state, just like a wheel moving. The center of the wheel, the axle, is not moving. As you proceed
from the center of the axle outwardly, the movement increases, does it not? Similarly, the beginning
of consciousness is like the center of a wheel; that point is steady, constant. In a human being that is
the most constant principle. Since the day I was born until I am dead, that consciousness principle is
there at that center. As you merge into the world, the movement increases. Watch that center point,
watch that movement of consciousness. Chaitanya and Chetana, that central, stationary point of the
wheel watches the movement of consciousness. The one that observes the movement is almost
stationary.
To bring about the actions of the world ? the movement ? consciousness must descend. If
there is no consciousness, there is no worldly movement.
Similarly, you must become stabilized in a more stationary position, near the center. When you
leave that center point, the movement takes over.

Questioner: I am becoming more aware of my 'I Amness' as a product of the food body.

Maharaj: You must be that principle prior to the emanation of the word 'I'. Suppose I get a prick
here - that principle prior to the emanation of words knows there was a prick. Prior to words and
feelings, you are.

Q: How is it possible to know and feel that Absolute?

M: This knowingness, or understanding, is in the realm of consciousness. Whatever you say that
you know and feel is consciousness only. The Absolute is beyond this.

Q: In practice, how can we go further?

M: Deal with the consciousness only, get to know it thoroughly. That is all that can be done. Later
on, everything happens spontaneously, doership goes.
Know the inside-out of consciousness and recognize it as useless; it is a fraud. When you
transcend it, you will say, 'I can manage without this. This is imperfect! Therefore, meditate in
order to know the consciousness.

Q: I have never been able to meditate.

M: When you were unaware of this message of 'I Am', how did you function? The questions I put,
nobody can answer. All of you great scholars, people with a lot of knowledge, have gone into
quietude.

Q: My questions are answered.

M: When your problems are solved, you are also solved. I want you to dwell on that borderline of
consciousness, no-consciousness.

[Jewell]

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

M: The world itself is contact -- the totality of all contacts actualised in consciousness. The spirit
touches matter and consciousness results. Such consciousness. when tainted with memory and
expectation, becomes bondage. Pure experience does not bind; experience caught between desire
and fear is impure and creates karma.

Q: Can there be happiness in unity? Does not all happiness imply necessarily contact, hence
duality?

M: There is nothing wrong with duality as long as it does not create conflict. Multiplicity and variety
without strife is joy. In pure consciousness there is light. For warmth, contact is needed. Above the
unity of being is the union of love. Love is the meaning and purpose of duality.

Q: I am an adopted child. My own father I do not know. My mother died when I was born. My
foster father, to please my foster mother, who was childless, adopted me -- almost by accident.
 He is a simple man -- a truck owner and driver. My mother keeps the house. I am 24 years now. For
the last two and a half years I am travelling, restless, seeking. I want to live a good life, a holy life.
What am I to do?

M: Go home, take charge of your father's business, look after your parents in their old age. Marry
the girl who is waiting for you, be loyal, be simple, be humble. Hide your virtue, live silently. The five
senses and the three qualities (gunas) are your eight steps in Yoga. And 'I am' is the Great
Reminder (mahamantra). You can learn from them all you need to know. Be attentive, enquire
ceaselessly. That is all.

Q: If just living one's life liberates, why are not all liberated?

M: All are being liberated. It is not what you live, but how you live that matters. The idea of
enlightenment is of utmost importance. Just to know that there is such possibility, changes one's
entire outlook. It acts like a burning match in a heap of saw dust. All the great teachers did nothing
else. A spark of truth can burn up a mountain of lies. The opposite is also true; The sun of truth
remains hidden behind the cloud of self-identification with the body.

Q: This spreading the good news of enlightenment seems very important.

M: The very hearing of it, is a promise of enlightenment. The very meeting a Guru is the assurance
of liberation. Perfection is life-giving and creative.

Q: Does a realised man ever think: 'I am realised?' Is he not astonished when people make much
of him? Does he not take himself to be an ordinary human being?

M: Neither ordinary, nor extra-ordinary. Just being aware and affectionate -- intensely. He looks at
himself without indulging in self-definitions and self-identifications. He does not know himself as
anything apart from the world. He is the world. He is completely rid of himself, like a man who is
very rich, but continually gives away his riches. He is not rich, for he has nothing; he is not poor, for
he gives abundantly. He is just propertyless. Similarly, the realised man is egoless; he has lost the
capacity of identifying himself with anything. He is without location, placeless, beyond space and
time, beyond the world. Beyond words and thoughts is he.

Q: Well, it is deep mystery to me. I am a simple man.

M: It is you who are deeply complex, mysterious, hard to understand. I am simplicity itself,
compared to you: I am what is -- without any distinction whatsoever into inner and outer, mine and
yours, good and bad. What the world is, I am; what I am the world is.

Q: How does it happen that each man creates his own world?

M: When a number of people are asleep, each dreams his own dream. Only on awakening the
question of many different dreams arises and dissolves when they are all seen as dreams, as
something imagined.

[Jewell]

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

M: It is beyond time. Birth and death are but points in time. Life weaves eternally its many webs.
The weaving is in time, but life itself is timeless. Whatever name and shape you give to its
expressions, it is like the ocean -- never changing, ever changing.

Q: All you say sounds beautifully convincing. yet my feeling of being just a person in a world
strange and alien, often inimical and dangerous, does not cease. Being a person, limited in space
and time, how can I possibly realise myself as the opposite; a de-personalised, universalised
awareness of nothing in particular?

M: You assert yourself to be what you are not and deny yourself to be what you are. You omit the
element of pure cognition, of awareness free from all personal distortions. Unless you admit the
reality of chit, you will never know yourself.

Q: What am I to do? I do not see myself as you see me. Maybe you are right and I am wrong, but
how can I cease to be what I feel I am?

M: A prince who believes himself to be a beggar can be convinced conclusively in one way only: he
must behave as a prince and see what happens. Behave as if what I say is true and judge by what
actually happens. All I ask is the little faith needed for making the first step. With experience will
come confidence and you will not need me any more. I know what you are and I am telling you.
Trust me for a while.

Q: To be here and now, I need my body and its senses. To understand, I need a mind.

M: The body and the mind are only symptoms of ignorance, of misapprehension. Behave as if you
were pure awareness, bodiless and mindless, spaceless and timeless, beyond 'where' and 'when'
and 'how'. Dwell on it, think of it, learn to accept its reality. Don't oppose it and deny it all the time.
Keep an open mind at least. Yoga is bending the outer to the inner. Make your mind and body
express the real which is all and beyond all. By doing you succeed, not by arguing.

Q: Kindly allow me to come back to my first question. How does the error of being a person
originate?

M: The absolute precedes time. Awareness comes first. A bundle of memories and mental habits
attracts attention, awareness gets focalised and a person suddenly appears. Remove the light of
awareness, go to sleep or swoon away -- and the person disappears. The person (vyakti) flickers,
awareness (vyakta) contains all space and time, the absolute (avyakta) is.

[Jewell]

M: And what are you after now?

Q: Well, what are we all after? Some truth, some inner certainty, some real happiness. 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. Is it so? The body is looked after by the
brain, the brain is illumined by consciousness; awareness watches over consciousness; is there
anything beyond awareness?

M: How do you know that you are aware?

Q: I feel that I am. I cannot express it otherwise.

M: When you follow it up carefully from brain through consciousness to awareness, you find that
the sense of duality persists. When you go beyond awareness, there is a state of non-duality, in
which there is no cognition, only pure being, which may be as well called non-being, if by being you
mean being something in particular.

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

M: Everything implies a collection of particulars. In pure being the very idea of the particular is
absent.

Q: Is there any relationship between pure being and particular being?

M: What relationship can there be between what is and what merely appears to be? Is there any
relationship between the ocean and its waves? The real enables the unreal to appear and causes it
to disappear. the succession of transient moments creates the illusion of time, but the timeless
reality of pure being is not in movement, for all movement requires a motionless background. It is
itself the background. Once you have found it in yourself, you know that you had never lost that
independent being, independent of all divisions and separations. But don't look for it in
consciousness, you will not find it there. Don't look for it anywhere, for nothing contains it. On the
contrary, it contains everything and manifests everything. It is like the daylight that makes
everything visible while itself remaining invisible.

Q: Sir, of what use to me is your telling me that reality cannot be found in consciousness? Where
else am I to look for it? How do you apprehend it?

M: It is quite simple. If I ask you what is the taste of your mouth all you can do is to say: it is neither
sweet nor bitter, nor sour nor astringent; it is what remains when all these tastes are not. Similarly,
when all distinctions and reactions are no more, what remains is reality, simple and solid.

Q: All that I understand is that I am in the grip of a beginningless illusion. And I do not see how it
can come to an end. If it could, it would -- long ago. I must have had as many opportunities in the past as I shall have in the future.
What could not happen cannot happen. Or, if it did, it could not
last. Our very deplorable state after all these untold millions of years carries, at best, the promise of
ultimate extinction, or, which is worse, the threat of an endless and meaningless repetition.

M: What proof have you that your present state is beginningless and endless? How were you
before you were born? How will you be after death? And of your present state -- how much do you
know? You do not know even what was your condition before you woke up this morning? You only
know a little of your present state and from it you draw conclusions for all times and places. You
may be just dreaming and imagining your dream to be eternal.

Q: Calling it a dream does not change the situation. I repeat my question: what hope is left which
the eternity behind me could not fulfil? Why should my future be different from my past?

M: In your fevered state, you project a past and a future and take them to be real. In fact, you know
only your present moment. Why not investigate what is now, instead of questioning the imaginary
past and future? Your present state is neither beginningless nor endless. If is over in a flash. Watch
carefully from where it comes and where it goes. You will soon discover the timeless reality behind
it.

Q: Why have I not done it before?

M: Just as every wave subsides into the ocean, so does every moment return to its source.
realisation consists in discovering the source and abiding there.

Q: Who discovers?

M: The mind discovers.

Q: Does it find the answers?

M: It finds that it is left without questions, that no answers are needed

[Ravi.N]

Jewell,
Wonderful Posts-The questions are asked in Right earnestness and How Maharaj drives home the point is simply wonderful.Thanks very much.
Namaskar

[Jewell]

Thank You,dear Sri Ravi!

This is what i love the most. Intelligent,open and beautiful questions,and above all,Maharaj's easiness when answering them,not bothering in which way they are asked.

And indeed,how He gets straight to the point.


With love and prayers,