I am

1. The Sense of ‘I am’ I AM THAT: 1

Q: Before waking up I was unconscious. – M: In what sense? Having forgotten, or not having experienced? Don’t you experience even when unconscious? Can you exist without knowing? A lapse in memory: is it a proof of non-existence? And can you validly talk about your own non-existence as an actual experience? You cannot even say that your mind did not exist. Did you not wake up on being called? And on waking up, was it not the sense ‘I am’ that came first? Some seed consciousness must be existing even during sleep, or swoon. On waking up the experience runs: ‘I am – the body – in the world.’ It may appear to arise in succession but in fact it is all simultaneous, a single idea of having a body in a world. Can there be the sense of ‘I am’ without being somebody or other? I AM THAT: 1

Q: I am always somebody with its memories and habits. I know no other ‘I am’. – M: Maybe something prevents you from knowing? When you do not know something which others know, what do you do? I AM THAT: 1

Q: What benefit is there in knowing that I am not the body? – M: Even to say that you are not the body is not quite true. In a way you are all the bodies, hearts and minds and much more. Go deep into the sense of ‘I am’ and you will find. How do you find a thing you have mislaid or forgotten? You keep it in your mind until you recall it. The sense of being, of ‘I am’ is the first to emerge. Ask yourself whence it comes, or just watch it quietly. When the mind stays in the ‘I am’ without moving, you enter a state which cannot be verbalised but can be experienced. All you need to do is try and try again. After all the sense ‘I am’ is always with you, only you have attached all kinds of things to it – body, feelings, thoughts, ideas, possessions etc. All these self-identifications are misleading. Because of them you take yourself to be what you are not. I AM THAT: 1

Q: Then what am I? – M: It is enough to know what you are not. You need not know what you are. For as long as knowledge means description in terms of what is already known, perceptual, or conceptual, there can be no such thing as self-knowledge, for what you are cannot be described, except as except as total negation. All you can say is: ‘I am not this, I am not that’. You cannot meaningfully say ‘this is what I am’. It just makes no sense. What you can point out as ‘this’ or ‘that’ cannot be yourself. Surely, you can not be ‘something’ else. You are nothing perceivable, or imaginable. Yet, without you there can be neither perception nor imagination. You observe the heart feeling, the mind thinking, the body acting; the very act of perceiving shows that you are not what you perceive. Can there be perception, experience without you? An experience must ‘belong’. Somebody must come and declare it as his own. Without an experiencer the experience is not real. It is the experiencer that imparts reality to experience. An experience which you cannot have, of what value is it to you? I AM THAT: 1

Q: The sense of being an experiencer, the sense of ‘I am’, is it not also an experience? – M: Obviously, every thing experienced is an experience. And in every experience there arises the experiencer of it. Memory creates the illusion of continuity. 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. Identity and continuity are not the same. Just as each flower has its own colour, but all colours are caused by the same light, so do many experiences appear in the undivided and indivisible awareness, each separate in memory, identical in essence. This essence is the root, the foundation, the timeless and spaceless ‘possibility’ of all experience. I AM THAT: 1

Q: What do you see? – M: I see what you too could see, here and now, but for the wrong focus of your attention. You give no attention to your self. Your mind is all with things, people and ideas, never with your self. Bring your self into focus, become aware of your own existence. See how you function, watch the motives and the results of your actions. Study the prison you have built around yourself by inadvertence. By knowing what you are not, you come to know your self. The way back to your self is through refusal and rejection. One thing is certain: the real is not imaginary, it is not a product of the mind. Even the sense ‘I am’ is not continuous, though it is a useful pointer; it shows where to seek, but not what to seek. Just have a good look at it. Once you are convinced that you cannot say truthfully about your self anything except ‘I am’, and that nothing that can be pointed at, can be your self, the need for the ‘I am’ is over – you are no longer intent on verbalising what you are. All you need is to get rid of the tendency to define your self. All definitions apply to your body only and to its expressions. 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. Just like gold made into ornaments has no advantage over gold dust, except when the mind makes it so, so are we one in being – we differ only in appearance. We discover it by being earnest, by searching, enquiring, questioning daily and hourly, by giving one’s life to this discovery. I AM THAT: 2

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. But a general memory of well-being is there. There is a difference in feeling when we say ‘I was deeply asleep’ from ‘I was absent’. I AM THAT: 3

Q: In sleep there is neither the known, nor the knower. What keeps the body sensitive and receptive? – M: Surely you cannot say the knower was absent. The experience of things and thoughts was not there, that is all. But the absence of experience too is experience. It is like entering a dark room and saying: ‘I see nothing’. A man blind from birth knows not what darkness means. Similarly, only the knower knows that he does not know. Sleep is merely a lapse in memory. Life goes on. I AM THAT: 5

Q: What is the use of a quiet mind? – M: When the mind is quiet, we come to know ourselves as the pure witness. We withdraw from the experience and its experiencer and stand apart in pure awareness, which is between and beyond the two. 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. Its identification with the witness snaps. I AM THAT: 6

Q: There are very interesting books written by apparently very competent people, in which the illusoriness of the world is denied (though not its transitoriness). According to them, there exists a hierarchy of beings, from the lowest to the highest; on each level the complexity of the organism enables and reflects the depth, breadth and intensity of consciousness, without any visible or knowable culmination. One law supreme rules throughout: evolution of forms for the growth and enrichment of consciousness and manifestation of its infinite potentialities. – M: This may or may not be so. 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). In pure being consciousness arises; in consciousness the world appears and disappears. All there is is me, all there is is mine. Before all beginnings, after all endings – I am. All has its being in me, in the ‘I am’, that shines in every living being. Even not-being is unthinkable without me. Whatever happens, I must be there to witness it. I AM THAT: 7

Q: In your consciousness? – M: All idea of ‘me’ and ‘mine’, even of ‘I am’ is in consciousness. I AM THAT: 7

Q: How is it done? – M: Refuse all thoughts except one: the thought ‘I am’. The mind will rebel in the beginning, but with patience and perseverance it will yield and keep quiet. Once you are quiet, things will begin to happen spontaneously and quite naturally without any interference on your part. I AM THAT: 8

Q: I was born, I shall die. – M: Can you truly say you were not before you were born and can you possibly say when dead: ‘Now I am no more’? You cannot say from your own experience that you are not. You can only say ‘I am’. Others too cannot tell you ‘you are not’. I AM THAT: 8

Q: There is no ‘I am’ in sleep. – M: Before you make such sweeping statements, examine carefully your waking state. You will soon discover that it is full of gaps, when the min blanks out. Notice how little you remember even when fully awake. You just don’t remember. A gap in memory is not necessarily a gap in consciousness. I AM THAT: 8

Q: How can I get rid of this idea? – M: If you trust me, believe when I tell you that you are the pure awareness that illuminates consciousness and its infinite content. Realise this and live accordingly. If you do not believe me, then go within, enquiring ‘What an I’? or, focus your mind on ‘I am’, which is pure and simple being. I AM THAT: 10

Q: Since reality is all the time with us, what does self-realisation consist of? – M: Realisation is but the opposite of ignorance. To take the world as real and one’s self as unreal is ignorance. The cause of sorrow. To know the self as the only reality and all else as temporal and transient is freedom, peace and joy. It is all very simple. Instead of seeing things as imagined, learn to see them as they are. It is like cleansing a mirror. The same mirror that shows you the world as it is, will also show you your own face. The thought ‘I am’ is the polishing cloth. Use it. I AM THAT: 11

Q: But he remains a person? – M: When you believe yourself to be a person, you see persons everywhere. In reality there are no persons, only threads of memories and habits. At the moment of realisation the person ceases. Identity remains, but identity is not a person, it is inherent in the reality itself. The person has no being in itself; it is a reflection in the mind of the witness, the ‘I am’, which again is a mode of being. I AM THAT: 13

Q: This does not make the picture causeless. The film is there, and the actors with the technicians, the director, the producer, the various manufacturers. The world is governed by causality. Everything is inter-linked. – M: Of course, everything is inter-linked. And therefore everything has numberless causes. The entire universe contributes to the least thing. A thing is as it is, because the world is as it is. You see, you deal in gold ornaments and I – in gold. Between the different ornaments there is no causal relation. When you re-melt an ornament to make another, there is no causal relation between the two. The common factor is the gold. But you cannot say gold is the cause. It cannot be called a cause, for it causes nothing by itself. It is reflected in the mind as ‘I am’, as the ornament’s particular name and shape. Yet all is only gold. In the same way reality makes everything possible and yet nothing that makes a thing what it is, its name and form, comes from reality. But why worry so much about causation? What do causes matter, when things themselves are transient? Let come what comes and let go what goes – why catch hold of things and enquire about their causes? I AM THAT: 14

Q: Without God’s power nothing can be done. Even you would not be sitting here and talking to us without Him. – M: All is His doing, no doubt. What is it to me, since I want nothing? What can God give me, or take away from me? What is mine is mine and was mine even when God was not. Of course, it is a very tiny little thing, a speck – the sense ‘I am’, the fact of being. This is my own place, nobody gave it to me. The earth is mine; what grows on it is God’s. I AM THAT: 15

Q: Is there no God apart from you? – M: How can there be? ‘I am’ is the root, God is the tree. Whom am I to worship, and what for? I AM THAT: 15

Q: I may not remember, but that does not disprove my being occasionally unconscious. – M: Why not turn away from the experience to the experiencer and realise the full import of the only true statement you can make: ‘I am’? I AM THAT: 16

Q: How is it done? – M: There is no ‘how’ here. Just keep in mind the feeling ‘I am’, merge in it, till your mind and feeling become one. By repeated attempts you will stumble on the right balance of attention and affection and your mind will be firmly established in the thought-feeling ‘I am’. Whatever you think, say, or do, this sense of immutable and affectionate being remains as the ever-present background of the mind. I AM THAT: 16

Q: How does one go beyond the mind? – M: There are many starting points – they all lead to the same goal. You may begin with selfless work, abandoning the fruits of action; you may then give up thinking and end in giving up all desires. Here, giving up (tyaga) is the operational factor. 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. I AM THAT: 16

Q: The witness of the mind knows the mind. – M: Did anybody come to you and say: ‘I am the witness of your mind’? I AM THAT: 16

Q: Please tell me which road to self-realisation is the shortest. – M: No way is short or long, but some people are more in earnest and some are less. I can tell you about myself. I was a simple man, but I trusted my Guru. What he told me to do, I did. He told me to concentrate on ‘I am’ – I did. He told me that I am beyond all perceivables and conceivables – I believed. I gave him my heart and soul, my entire attention and the whole of my spare time (I had to work to keep my family alive). As a result of faith and earnest application, I realised my self (swarupa) within three years. You may choose any way that suits you; your earnestness will determine the rate of progress. I AM THAT: 16

Q: No hint for me? – M: Establish yourself firmly in the awareness of ‘I am’. This is the beginning and also the end of all endeavour. I AM THAT: 16

Q: I would call it rather unconscious existence; I am, but I do not know that I am. – M: You have said just now: ‘I am, but I do not know that I am’. Could you possibly say it about your being in an unconscious state? I AM THAT: 18

Q: No, I could not. – M: You can only describe it in the past tense: ‘I did not know. I was unconscious’, in the sense of not remembering. I AM THAT: 18

Q: I am what I know myself to be. – M: You cannot possibly say that you are what you think yourself to be! Your ideas about yourself change from day to day and from moment to moment. Your self-image is the most changeful thing you have. It is utterly vulnerable, at the mercy of a passer by. A bereavement, the loss of a job, an insult, and your image of yourself, which you call your person, changes deeply. To know what you are you must first investigate and know what you are not. 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’. The ideas: I am born at a given place, at a given time, from my parents and now I am so-and-so, living at, married to, father of, employed by, and so on, are not inherent in the sense ‘I am’. Our usual attitude is of ‘I am this’. 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’. All our habits go against it and the task of fighting them is long and hard sometimes, but clear understanding helps a lot. 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. I AM THAT: 18

Q: People talk of seeing God. – M: When you see the world you see God. There is no seeing God, apart from the world. Beyond the world to see God is to be God. The light by which you see the world, which is God is the tiny little spark: ‘I am’, apparently so small, yet the first and the last in every act of knowing and loving. I AM THAT: 19

Q: How can I see the world as God? What does it mean to see the world as God? – M: It is like entering a dark room. You see nothing – you may touch, but you do not see – no colours, no outlines. The window opens and the room is flooded with light. Colours and shapes come into being. The window is the giver of light, but not the source of it. The sun is the source. Similarly, matter is like the dark room; consciousness – the window – flooding matter with sensations and perceptions, and the Supreme is the sun the source both of matter and of light. The window may be closed, or open, the sun shines all the time. It makes all the difference to the room, but none to the sun. Yet all this is secondary to the tiny little thing which is the ‘I am’. Without the ‘I am’ there is nothing. All knowledge is about the ‘I am’. False ideas about this ‘I am’ lead to bondage, right knowledge leads to freedom and happiness. I AM THAT: 19

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. I AM THAT: 19

Q: I am just trying to understand. You are telling us of the Person, the Self and the Supreme. (vyakti, vyakta, avyakta). 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). All this is fine as far as the words go. But when it comes to distinguishing in myself the person from the Self and the Self from the Supreme, I get mixed up. – M: The person is never the subject. You can see a person, but you are not the person. 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. I AM THAT: 20

Q: Yet they all say ‘I am’. – M: It is only because you identify yourself with them. Once you realise that whatever appears before you cannot be yourself, and cannot say ‘I am’, you are free of all your ‘persons’ and their demands. The sense ‘I am’ is your own. You cannot part with it, but you can impart it to anything, as in saying: I am young. I am rich etc. But such self-identifications are patently false and the cause of bondage. I AM THAT: 20

Q: No purposeful action is then possible? – M: All I say is that consciousness contains all. In consciousness all is possible. You can have causes if you want them, in your world. Another may be content with a single cause – God’s will. The root cause is one: the sense ‘I am’. I AM THAT: 20

Q: The world is full of desires: Everybody wants something or other. Who is the desirer? The person or the self? – M: The self. All desires, holy and unholy, come from the self; they all hang on the sense ‘I am’. I AM THAT: 20

Q: But is there anything beyond the Self? – M: Outside the Self there is nothing. All is one and all is contained in ‘I am’. In the waking and dream states it is the person. In deep sleep and turiya it is the Self. Beyond the alert intentness of turiya lies the great, silent peace of the Supreme. But in fact all is one in essence and related in appearance. In ignorance the seer becomes the seen and in wisdom he is the seeing. But why be concerned with the Supreme? Know the knowers and all will be known. I AM THAT: 20

Q: My question is: How to find the way to one’s own being? – M: Give up all questions except one: ‘Who am l’? 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. I AM THAT: 21

Q: Why has God made me as I am? – M: Which God are you talking about? What is God? Is he not the very light by which you ask the question? ‘I am’ itself is God. The seeking itself is God. In seeking you discover that you are neither the body nor mind, and the love of the self in you is for the self in all. The two are one. The consciousness in you and the consciousness in me, apparently two, really one, seek unity and that is love. I AM THAT: 21

Q: How am I to find that love? – M: What do you love now? The ‘I am’. Give your heart and mind to it, think of nothing else. This, when effortless and natural, is the highest state. In it love itself is the lover and the beloved. I AM THAT: 21

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. I AM THAT: 21

Q: In Europe there is no tradition of a mantra, except in some contemplative orders. Of what use is it to a modern young Westerner? – M: None, unless he is very much attracted. For him the right procedure is to adhere to the thought that he is the ground of all knowledge, the immutable and perennial awareness of all that happens to the senses and the mind. If he keeps it in mind all the time, aware and alert, he is bound to break the bounds of non-awareness and emerge into pure life, light and love. The idea – ‘I am the witness only’ will purify the body and the mind and open the eye of wisdom. Then man goes beyond illusion and his heart is free of all desires. 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. I AM THAT: 22

Q: Everybody says ‘I am’. The realised man too says ‘I am’. Where is the difference? – M: The difference is in the meaning attached to the words ‘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. He may not even know the theory and practice of self-realisation, and be born and bred free of religious and metaphysical notions. But there will not be the least flaw in his understanding and compassion. I AM THAT: 22

Q: I may come across a beggar, naked and hungry and ask him ‘Who are you?’ He may answer: ‘I am the Supreme Self’. ‘Well’, I say, ‘suffice you are the Supreme, change your present state’. What will he do? – M: He will ask you: ‘Which state? What is there that needs changing? What is wrong with me? I AM THAT: 22

Q: Then what is beyond? Emptiness? – M: Emptiness again refers only to consciousness. Fullness and emptiness are relative terms. The Real is really beyond – beyond not in relation to consciousness, but beyond all relations of whatever kind. The difficulty comes with the word ‘state’. The Real is not a state of something else – it is not a state of mind or consciousness or psyche – nor is it something that has a beginning and an end, being and not being. All opposites are contained in it – but it is not in the play of opposites. You must not take it to be the end of a transition. It is itself, after the consciousness as such is no more. Then words ‘I am man’, or ‘I am God’ have no meaning. Only in silence and in darkness can it be heard and seen. I AM THAT: 22

Q: There must be some difference. – M: God is the All-Doer, the jnani is a non-doer. God himself does not say: ‘I am doing all.’ To Him things happen by their own nature. To the jnani all is done by God. He sees no difference between God and nature. Both God and the jnani know themselves to be the immovable centre of the movable, the eternal witness of the transient. 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. I AM THAT: 24

Q: How does one bring to an end this sense of separateness? – M: By focussing the mind on ‘I am’, on the sense of being, ‘I am so-and-so’ dissolves; “I am a witness only” remains and that too submerges in ‘I am all’. Then the all becomes the One and the One – yourself, not to be separate from me. Abandon the idea of a separate ‘I’ and the question of ‘whose experience?’ will not arise. I AM THAT: 24

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’. I AM THAT: 24

25. Hold on to ‘I am’ I AM THAT: 25

Q: To forget, one must know. Did I know who I am, before I forgot it? – M: Of course. Self-forgetting is inherent in self-knowing. Consciousness and unconsciousness are two aspects of one life. They co-exist. To know the world you forget the self – to know the self you forget the world. What is world after all? A collection of memories. Cling to one thing, that matters, hold on to ‘I am’ and let go all else. This is sadhana. In realisation there is nothing to hold on to and nothing to forget. Everything is known, nothing is remembered. I AM THAT: 25

Q: You say at the root of the world is self-forgetfulness. To forget I must remember What did I forget to remember? I have not forgotten that I am. – M: This ‘I am’ too may be a part of the illusion. I AM THAT: 25

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. – M: Before the world was, consciousness was. In consciousness it comes into being, in consciousness it lasts and into pure consciousness it dissolves. At the root of everything, is the feeling ‘I am’. The state of mind: ‘there is a world’ is secondary, for to be, I do not need the world, the world needs me. I AM THAT: 26

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. I AM THAT: 26

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. I AM THAT: 26

Q: Can’t they co-exist, as the tumult of the waves and the quiet of the deep co-exist in the ocean. – M: Beyond the mind there is no such thing as experience. Experience is a dual state. You cannot talk of reality as an experience. Once this is understood, you will no longer look for being and becoming as separate and opposite. In reality they are one and inseparable, like roots and branches of the same tree. Both can exist only in the light of consciousness, which again, arises in the wake of the sense ‘I am’. This is the primary fact. If you miss it, you miss all. I AM THAT: 27

Q: Is the conviction: ‘I am That’ false? – M: Of course. Conviction is a mental state. In ‘That’ there is no ‘I am’. With the sense ‘I am’ emerging, ‘That’ is obscured, as with the sun rising the stars are wiped out. But as with the sun comes light, so with the sense of self comes bliss (chidananda). The cause of bliss is sought in the ‘not-I’ and thus the bondage begins. I AM THAT: 27

Q: In your daily life are you always conscious of your real state? – M: Neither conscious, nor unconscious. I do not need convictions. I live on courage. Courage is my essence, which is love of life. I am free of memories and anticipations, unconcerned with what I am and what I am not. I am not addicted to selfdescriptions, soham and brahmasmi (‘I am He’, ‘I am the Supreme’) are of no use to me, I have the courage to be as nothing and to see the world as it is: nothing. It sounds simple, just try it! I AM THAT: 27

Q: What is the real cause of suffering? – M: Self-identification with the limited (vyaktitva). Sensations as such, however strong, do not cause suffering. 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. I AM THAT: 28

Q: Just as a child cannot help growing, so does a man, compelled by nature, make progress. Why exert oneself? Where is the need of Yoga? – M: There is progress all the time. Everything contributes to progress. But this is the progress of ignorance. The circles of ignorance may be ever widening, yet it remains a bondage all the same. In due course a Guru appears to teach and inspire us to practise Yoga and a ripening takes place as a result of which the immemorial night of ignorance dissolves before the rising sun of wisdom. But in reality nothing happened. The sun is always there, there is no night to it; the mind blinded by the ‘I am the body’ idea spins out endlessly its thread of illusion. I AM THAT: 29

Q: Is dreaming caused by thinking? – M: Everything is a play of ideas. In the state free from ideation (nirvikalpa samadhi) nothing is perceived. The root idea is: ‘I am’. 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. The ‘I am’ remains as the witness, but it is by the will of God that everything happens. I AM THAT: 29

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. Now, please do not tell me that it is because I am not earnest enough and I should be more earnest! I know it and admit it and only ask you – how is it done? – M: At least you are asking! Good enough, for a start. Go on pondering, wondering, being anxious to find a way. Be conscious of yourself, watch your mind, give it your full attention. Don’t look for quick results; there may be none within your noticing. Unknown to you, your psyche will undergo a change, there will be more clarity in your thinking, charity in your feeling, purity in your behaviour. You need not aim at these – you will witness the change all the same. For, what you are now is the result of inattention and what you become will be the fruit of attention. I AM THAT: 31

Q: You advise us to concentrate on ‘I am’. Is this too a form of attention? – M: What else? Give your undivided attention to the most important in your life – yourself. Of your personal universe you are the centre – without knowing the centre what else can you know? I AM THAT: 31

Q: You mean to say that this was enough? – M: What more needs be done? It was quite a lot to remember the Guru and his words. My advice to you is even less difficult than this – just remember yourself. ‘I am’, is enough to heal your mind and take you beyond. Just have some trust. I don’t mislead you. Why should l? Do I want anything from you. I wish you well – such is my nature. Why should I mislead you? Commonsense too will tell you that to fulfil a desire you must keep your mind on it. If you want to know your true nature, you must have yourself in mind all the time, until the secret of your being stands revealed. I AM THAT: 32

Q: There is in me the conviction: ‘I am the body’ Granted, I am talking from unwisdom. But the state of feeling oneself the body, the body-mind, the mind-body, or even pure mind – when did it begin? – M: You cannot speak of a beginning of consciousness. The very ideas of beginning and time are within consciousness. To talk meaningfully of the beginning of anything, you must step out of it. And the moment you step out, you realise that there is no such thing and never was. There is only reality, in which no ‘thing’ has any being on its own. Like waves are inseparable from the ocean, so is all existence rooted in being. I AM THAT: 33

Q: The fact is that here and now I am asking you: when did the feeling ‘I am the body’ arise? At my birth? or this morning? – M: Now. I AM THAT: 33

Q: Like beads on a string, events follow events – for ever. – M: They are all strung on the basic idea: ‘I am the body’. But even this is a mental state and does not last. It comes and goes like all other states. The illusion of being the body-mind is there, only because it is not investigated. Non-investigation is the thread on which all the states of mind are strung. It is like darkness in a closed room. It is there – apparently. But when the room is opened, where does it go? It goes nowhere, because it was not there. All states of mind, all names and forms of existence are rooted in non-enquiry, non-investigation, in imagination and credulity. It is right to say ‘I am’, but to say ‘I am this’, ‘I am that’ is a sign of not enquiring, not examining, of mental weakness or lethargy. I AM THAT: 33

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: Yes, sadhana (practice) consists in reminding oneself forcibly of one’s pure ‘being-ness’, of not being anything in particular, nor a sum of particulars, not even the totality of all particulars, which make up a universe. 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. If you say: ‘I am the body’, show it. I AM THAT: 33

Q: I am being told that to think ‘I am the body’ is a blemish in the mind. – M: Why talk like this? Such expressions create problems. The self is the source of all, and of all – the final destination. Nothing is external. I AM THAT: 33

Q: When the body idea becomes obsessive, is it not altogether wrong? – M: There is nothing wrong in the idea of a body, nor even in the idea ‘I am the body’. But limiting oneself to one body only is a mistake. In reality all existence, every form, is my own, within my consciousness. I cannot tell what I am because words can describe only what I am not. I am, and because I am, all is. But I am beyond consciousness and, therefore, in consciousness I cannot say what I am. Yet, I am. The question ‘Who am I’ has no answer. No experience can answer it, for the self is beyond experience. I AM THAT: 33

Q: Do you mean to say, that you have the power to do everything rightly? – M: There is no power as separate from me. It is inherent in my very nature. Call it creativity. Out of a lump of gold you can make many ornaments – each will remain gold. Similarly, in whatever role I may appear and whatever function I may perform – I remain what I am: the ‘I am’ immovable, unshakable, independent. What you call the universe, nature, is my spontaneous creativity. Whatever happens – happens. But such is my nature that all ends in joy. I AM THAT: 33

Q: Is it a matter of the known and the knower becoming one? – M: Both are ideas in the mind, and words that express them. There is no self in them. The self is neither, between nor beyond. To look for it on the mental level is futile. Stop searching, and see – it is here and now – it is that ‘I am’ you know so well. All you need to do is to cease taking yourself to be within the field of consciousness. Unless you have already considered these matters carefully, listening to me once will not do. Forget your past experiences and achievements, stand naked, exposed to the winds and rains of life and you will have a chance. I AM THAT: 35

Q: Still, you have a body and you depend on it. – M: Again you assume that your point of view is the only correct one. I repeat: I was not, am not, shall not be a body. To me this is a fact. I too was under the illusion of having been born, but my Guru made me see that birth and death are mere ideas – birth is merely the idea: ‘I have a body’. And death – ‘I have lost my body’. Now, when I know I am not a body, the body may be there or may not – what difference does it make? The bodymind is like a room. It is there, but I need not live in it all the time. I AM THAT: 35

Q: What I want to say is very simple. As long as I believe: ‘I am the body’, I must not say: ‘God will look after my body’. God will not. He will let it starve, sicken and die. – M: What else do you expect from a mere body? Why are you so anxious about it? Because you think you are the body, you want it indestructible. You can extend its life considerably by appropriate practices, but for what ultimate good? I AM THAT: 35

Q: Imagine a pot of ghee. (Indian clarified butter). When the pot breaks, the Ghee remains and can be transferred to another pot. The old pot had its own scent, the new – its own. The Ghee will carry the scents from pot to pot. In the same way the personal identity is transferred from body to body. – M: It is all right. When there is the body, its peculiarities affect the person. Without the body we have the pure identity in the sense of ‘I am’. But when you are reborn in a new body, where is the world formerly experienced? I AM THAT: 36

Q: An idea, of course. How can a brain remember what it has not experienced? – M: You have answered your own question. Why play with ideas? Be content with what you are sure of. And the only thing you can be sure of is ‘I am’. Stay with it, and reject everything else. This is Yoga. I AM THAT: 36

Q: The pattern is significant and important. It has its own value. By saying that a woven design is merely coloured threads you miss the most important – the beauty of it. Or by describing a book as paper with ink stains on it, you miss the meaning. Identity is valuable because it is the basis of individuality; that which makes us unique and irreplaceable. ‘I am’, is the intuition of uniqueness. – M: Yes and no. Identity, individuality, uniqueness – they are the most valuable aspects of the mind, yet of the mind only. ‘I am all there is’ too is an experience equally valid. The particular and the universal are inseparable. They are the two aspects of the nameless, as seen from without and from within. Unfortunately, words only mention, but don’t convey. Try to go beyond the words. I AM THAT: 36

Q: What dies with death? – M: The idea ‘I am this body’ dies; the witness does not. I AM THAT: 36

Q: The Jains believe in a multiplicity of witnesses, forever separate. – M: That is their tradition based on the experience of some great people. The one witness reflects itself in the countless bodies as ‘I am’. As long as the bodies, however subtle, last, the ‘I am’ appears as many. Beyond the body there is only the One. I AM THAT: 36

Q: The faith you have in yourself, is not that too a shape of a desire? – M: When I say: ‘I am’, I do not mean a separate entity with a body as its nucleus. I mean the totality of being, the ocean of consciousness, the entire universe of all that is and knows. I have nothing to desire for I am complete forever. I AM THAT: 36

Q: I am not your projection, nor are you mine. I am on my own right, not merely as your creation. This crude philosophy of imagination and projection does not appeal to me. You are depriving me of all reality. Who is the image of whom? You are my image or am I yours. Or am I an image in my own image! No, something is wrong somewhere. – M: Words betray their hollowness. The real cannot be described, it must be experienced. I cannot find better words for what I am now. What I say may sound ridiculous. But what the words try to convey is the highest truth. All is one, however much we quibble. And all is done to please the one source and goal of every desire. whom we all know as the ‘I am’. I AM THAT: 36

Q: If reality is my real nature, how can I ever be unready? – M: Unready means afraid. You are afraid of what you are. Your destination is the whole. But you are afraid that you will lose your identity. This is childishness, clinging to the toys, to your desires and fears, opinions and ideas. Give it all up and be ready for the real to assert itself. This self-assertion is best expressed in words: ‘I am’. Nothing else has being. Of this you are absolutely certain I AM THAT: 37

Q: ‘I am’, of course, but ‘I know’ also. And I know that I am so and so, the owner of the body, in manifold relations with other owners. – M: It is all memory carried over into the now. I AM THAT: 37

Q: How do you come to know a state of pure being which is neither conscious nor unconscious? All knowledge is in consciousness only. There may be such a state as the abeyance of the mind. Does consciousness then appear as the witness? – M: The witness only registers events. In the abeyance of the mind even the sense ‘I am’ dissolves. There is no ‘I am’ without the mind. I AM THAT: 37

Q: Without the mind means without thoughts. ‘I am’ as a thought subsides. ‘I am’ as the sense of being remains. – M: All experience subsides with the mind. Without the mind there can be no experiencer nor experience. I AM THAT: 37

Q: Does not the witness remain? – M: The witness merely registers the presence or absence of experience. It is not an experience by itself, but it becomes an experience when the thought: ‘I am the witness’ arises. I AM THAT: 37

Q: All this is very interesting, no doubt, but my goal is more simple. I want more pleasure and less pain in life. What am I to do? – M: As long as there is consciousness, there must be pleasure and pain. It is in the nature of the ‘I am’, of consciousness, to identify itself with the opposites. I AM THAT: 37

Q: From the Westerner’s point of view there is something disturbing in your ways. To sit in a corner all by oneself and keep on repeating: ‘I am God, God I am’, appears to be plain madness. How to convince a Westerner that such practices lead to supreme sanity? – M: The man who claims to be God and the man who doubts it – both are deluded. They talk in their dream. I AM THAT: 38

Q: Your answer is always the same. A kind of clockwork which strikes the same hours again and again. – M: It can not be helped. Just like the one sun is reflected in a billion dew drops, so is the timeless endlessly repeated. When l repeat: ‘I am, I am’, I merely assert and re-assert an ever-present fact. You get tired of my words because you do not see the living truth behind them. Contact it and you will find the full meaning of words and of silence – both. I AM THAT: 39

Q: Is it not a feeling? – M: A feeling too is a state of mind. Just like a healthy body does not call for attention, so is the unconditioned free from experience. Take the experience of death. The ordinary man is afraid to die, because he is afraid of change. The jnani is not afraid because his mind is dead already. He does not think: ‘I live’. He knows: ‘There is life’. There is no change in it and no death. Death appears to be a change in time and space. Where there is neither time nor space, how can there be death? The jnani is already dead to name and shape. How can their loss affect him? The man in the train travels from place to place, but the man off the train goes nowhere, for he is not bound for a destination. He has nowhere to go, nothing to do, nothing to become. Those who make plans will be born to carry them out. Those who make no plans need not be born. I AM THAT: 39

Q: Which foolishness? – M: Of thinking that you were born and will die, that you are a body displaying a mind and all such nonsense. In my world nobody is born and nobody dies. Some people go on a journey and come back, some never leave. What difference does it make since they travel in dream lands, each wrapped up in his own dream. Only the waking up is important. It is enough to know the ‘I am’ as reality and also love. I AM THAT: 40

44. ‘I am’ is True, all else is Inference Maharaj: The perceiver of the world, is he prior to the world, or does he come into being along with the world? I AM THAT: 44

Q: We call it God. – M: God is only an idea in your mind. The fact is you. The only thing you know for sure is: ‘here and now I am’. Remove, the ‘here and now’ the ‘I am’ remains, unassailable. The word exists in memory, memory comes into consciousness; consciousness exists in awareness and awareness is the reflection of the light on the waters of existence. I AM THAT: 44

Q: Still I do not see how can the world be in me when the opposite ‘I am in the world’ is so obvious. – M: Even to say ‘I am the world, the world is me’, is a sign of ignorance. But when I keep in mind and confirm in life my identity with the world, a power arises in me which destroys the ignorance, burns it up completely. I AM THAT: 44

Q: Is the witness of ignorance separate from ignorance? Is not to say: ‘I am ignorant’ a part of ignorance? – M: Of course. All I can say truly is: ‘I am’, all else is inference. But the inference has become a habit. Destroy all habits of thinking and seeing. The sense ‘I am’ is the manifestation of a deeper cause, which you may call self, God, reality or by any other name. The ‘I am’ is in the world; but it is the key which can open the door out of the world. The moon dancing on the water is seen in the water, but it is caused by the moon in the sky and not by the water. I AM THAT: 44

Q: How does one break the spell? – M: Assert your independence in thought and action. After all, all hangs on your faith in yourself, on the conviction that what you see and hear, think and feel is real. Why not question your faith? No doubt, this world is painted by you on the screen of consciousness and is entirely your own private world. Only your sense ‘I am’, though in the world, is not of the world. 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. Once you realise that the world is your own projection, you are free of it. You need not free yourself of a world that does not exist, except in your own imagination! However is the picture, beautiful or ugly, you are painting it and you are not bound by it. realise that there is nobody to force it on you, that it is due to the habit of taking the imaginary to be real. See the Imaginary as imaginary and be free of fear. Just as the colours in this carpet are brought out by light but light is not the colour, so is the world caused by you but you are not the world. That which creates and sustains the world, you may call it God or providence, but ultimately you are the proof that God exists, not the other way round. For, before any question about God can be put, you must be there to put it. I AM THAT: 44

Q: God is an experience in time, but the experiencer is timeless. – M: Even the experiencer is secondary. Primary is the infinite expanse of consciousness, the eternal possibility, the immeasurable potential of all that was, is, and will be. When you look at anything, it is the ultimate you see, but you imagine that you see a cloud or a tree. Learn to look without imagination, to listen without distortion: that is all. Stop attributing names and shapes to the essentially nameless and formless, realise that every mode of perception is subjective, that what is seen or heard, touched or smelt, felt or thought, expected or imagined, is in the mind and not in reality, and you will experience peace and freedom from fear. Even the sense of ‘I am’ is composed of the pure light and the sense of being. The ‘I’ is there even without the ‘am’. So is the pure light there whether you say ‘I’ or not. Become aware of that pure light and you will never lose it. 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. I AM THAT: 44

Q: Does not ‘I am’ remain? – M: The word ‘remain’ does not apply. ‘I am’ is ever afresh. You do not need to remember in order to be. As a matter of fact, before you can experience anything, there must be the sense of being. At present your being is mixed up with experiencing. All you need is to unravel being from the tangle of experiences. 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. Self-limitation is the very essence of personality. I AM THAT: 45

Q: All you say is held together by your assumption that the world is your own projection. You admit that you mean your personal, subjective world, the world given you through your senses and your mind. In that sense each one of us lives in a world of his own projection. 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. Do you deny the existence of such an objective world, common to all? – M: Reality is neither subjective nor objective, neither mind nor matter, neither time nor space. These divisions need somebody to whom to happen, a conscious separate centre. But reality is all and nothing, the totality and the exclusion, the fullness and the emptiness, fully consistent, absolutely paradoxical. You cannot speak about it, you can only lose your self in it. When you deny reality to anything, you come to a residue which cannot be denied . All talk of jnana is a sign of ignorance. It is the mind that imagines that it does not know and then comes to know. Reality knows nothing of these contortions. Even the idea of God as the Creator is false. Do I owe my being to any other being? Because I am, all is. I AM THAT: 45

Q: In my free moments during the course of the day. Sometimes I was murmuring to myself ‘Who am l?’ ‘I am, but who am l?’ Or, I did it mentally. Occasionally I would have some nice feeling, or get into moods of quiet happiness. On the whole I was trying to be quiet and receptive, rather than labouring for experiences. – M: What were you actually experiencing when you were in the right mood? I AM THAT: 48

Q: May I be permitted to ask how did you arrive at your present condition? – M: My teacher told me to hold on to the sense ‘I am’ tenaciously and not to swerve from it even for a moment. I did my best to follow his advice and in a comparatively short time I realised within myself the truth of his teaching. All I did was to remember his teaching, his face, his words constantly. This brought an end to the mind; in the stillness of the mind I saw myself as I am – unbound. I AM THAT: 48

Q: Search means lacking, wanting, incompleteness and imperfection. – M: No, it means refusal and rejection of the incomplete and the imperfect. The search for reality is itself the movement of reality. In a way all search is for the real bliss, or the bliss of the real. But here we mean by search the search for oneself as the root of being conscious, as the light beyond the mind. This search will never end, while the restless craving for all else must end, for real progress to take place. One has to understand that the search for reality, or God, or Guru and the search for the self are the same; when one is found, all are found. When ‘I am’ and ‘God is’ become in your mind indistinguishable, then something will happen and you will know without a trace of doubt that God is because you are, you are because God is. The two are one. I AM THAT: 48

Q: But the now has no dimension. I shall become a nobody, a nothing ! – M: Exactly. As nothing and nobody you are safe and happy. You can have the experience for the asking. Just try. But let us go back to what is accidental and what is spontaneous, or natural. You said nature is orderly while accident is a sign of chaos. I denied the difference and said that we call an event accidental when its causes are untraceable. There is no place for chaos in nature. Only in the mind of man there is chaos. The mind does not grasp the whole – its focus is very narrow. It sees fragments only and fails to perceive the picture. Just as a man who hears sounds, but does not understand the language, may accuse the speaker of meaningless jabbering, and be altogether wrong. What to one is a chaotic stream of sounds is a beautiful poem to another. King Janaka once dreamt that he was a beggar. On waking up he asked his Guru – Vasishta: Am I a king dreaming of being a beggar, or a beggar dreaming of being a king? The Guru answered: You are neither, you are both. You are, and yet you are not what you think yourself to be. You are because you behave accordingly; you are not because it does not last. Can you be a king or a beggar for ever? All must change. You are what does not change. What are you? Janaka said: Yes, I am neither king nor beggar, I am the dispassionate witness. The Guru said. This is your last illusion that you are a jnani, that you are different from, and superior to, the common man. Again you identify yourself with your mind, in this case a well-behaved and in every way an exemplary mind. As long as you see the least difference, you are a stranger to reality. You are on the level of the mind. When the ‘I am myself’ goes, the ‘I am all’ comes. When the ‘I am all’ goes, ‘I am’ comes. When even ‘I am’ goes, reality alone is and in it every ‘I am’ is preserved and glorified. Diversity without separateness is the Ultimate that the mind can touch. Beyond that all activity ceases, because in it all goals are reached and all purposes fulfilled. I AM THAT: 49

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. 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 THAT: 49

Q: You told me that I can be considered under three aspects: the personal (vyakti), the super-personal (vyakta) and the impersonal (avyakta). The Avyakta is the universal and real pure ‘I’; the Vyakta is its reflection in consciousness as ‘I am’; the Vyakti is the totality of physical and vital processes. 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. It is essentially the witness as well as the residue of the accumulated experiences, the seat of memory, the connecting link (sutratma). It is man’s character which life builds and shapes from birth to birth. The universal is beyond all name and shape, beyond consciousness and character, pure unselfconscious being. Did I put down your views rightly? – M: On the level of the mind – yes. Beyond the mental level not a word applies. I AM THAT: 50

Q: Yet I feel I am not as helpless as you make me appear. I feel I can do everything I can think of, only I do not know how. It is not the power I lack, but the knowledge. – M: Not knowing the means is admittedly as bad as not having the power! But let us drop the subject for the moment; after all it is not important why we feel helpless, as long as we see clearly that for the time being we are helpless. 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. I AM THAT: 51

Q: How am I to think myself out when my thoughts come and go as they like. Their endless chatter distracts and exhausts me. – M: Watch your thoughts as you watch the street traffic. People come and go; you register without response. It may not be easy in the beginning, but with some practice you will find that your mind can function on many levels at the same time and you can be aware of them all. It is only when you have a vested interest in any particular level, that your attention gets caught in it and you black out on other levels. Even then the work on the blacked out levels goes on, outside the field of consciousness. Do not struggle with your memories and thoughts; try only to include in your field of attention the other, more important questions, like ‘Who am l?’ ‘How did I happen to be born?’ ‘Whence this universe around me?’. ‘What is real and what is momentary?’ No memory will persist, if you lose interest in it, it is the emotional link that perpetuates the bondage. You are always seeking pleasure, avoiding pain, always after happiness and peace. Don’t you see that it is your very search for happiness that makes you feel miserable? Try the other way: indifferent to pain and pleasure, neither asking, nor refusing, give all your attention to the level on which ‘I am’ is timelessly present. Soon you will realise that peace and happiness are in your very nature and it is only seeking them through some particular channels, that disturbs. Avoid the disturbance, that is all. To seek there is no need; you would not seek what you already have. You yourself are God, the Supreme Reality. To begin with, trust me, trust the Teacher. It enables you to make the first step – and then your trust is justified by your own experience. In every walk of life initial trust is essential; without it little can be done. Every undertaking is an act of faith. Even your daily bread you eat on trust! By remembering what I told you you will achieve everything. I am telling you again: You are the all-pervading, all transcending reality. 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. No effort is needed. Have faith and act on it. Please see that I want nothing from you. It is in your own interest that l speak, because above all you love yourself, you want yourself secure and happy. Don’t be ashamed of it, don’t deny it. It is natural and good to love oneself. Only you should know what exactly do you love. It is not the body that you love, it is Life -perceiving, feeling, thinking, doing, loving, striving, creating. It is that Life you love, which is you, which is all. realise it in its totality, beyond all divisions and limitations, and all your desires will merge in it, for the greater contains the smaller. Therefore find yourself, for in finding that you find all. Everybody is glad to be. But few know the fullness of it. You come to know by dwelling in your mind on ‘I am’, ‘I know’, ‘I love’ – with the will of reaching the deepest meaning of these words. I AM THAT: 51

Q: Can I think ‘I am God’? – M: Don’t identify yourself with an idea. If you mean by God the Unknown, then you merely say: ‘I do not know what I am’. If you know God as you know your self, you need not say it. Best is the simple feeling ‘I am’. Dwell on it patiently. Here patience is wisdom; don’t think of failure. There can be no failure in this undertaking. I AM THAT: 51

Q: But can anything be left for good? – M: You want something like a round-the-clock ecstasy. Ecstasies come and go, necessarily, for the human brain cannot stand the tension for a long time. A prolonged ecstasy will burn out your brain, unless it is extremely pure and subtle. In nature nothing is at stand-still, everything pulsates, appears and disappears. Heart, breath, digestion, sleep and waking – birth and death everything comes and goes in waves. Rhythm, periodicity, harmonious alternation of extremes is the rule. No use rebelling against the very pattern of life. If you seek the Immutable, go beyond experience. When I say: remember ‘I am’ all the time, I mean: ‘come back to it repeatedly’. No particular thought can be mind’s natural state, only silence. Not the idea of silence, but silence itself. 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. Now, what you have learnt here becomes the seed. You may forget it – apparently. But it will live and in due season sprout and grow and bring forth flowers and fruits. All will happen by itself. You need not do anything, only don’t prevent it. I AM THAT: 51

Q: Surely there must be something in common between the many points of consciousness we are. – M: Where are the many points? In your mind. You insist that your world is independent of your mind. How can it be? Your desire to know other people’s minds is due to your not knowing your own mind. First know your own mind and you will find that the question of other minds does not arise at all, for there are no other people. You are the common factor, the only link between the minds. Being is consciousness; ‘I am’ applies to all. I AM THAT: 55

Q: The Supreme Reality (Parabrahman) may be present in all of us. But of what use is it to us? – M: You are like a man who says: ‘I need a place where to keep my things, but of what use is space to me?’ or ‘I need milk, tea, coffee or soda, but for water I have no use’. Don’t you see that the Supreme Reality is what makes everything possible? But if you ask of what use is it to you, I must answer: ‘None’. 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. The very idea of profit is foreign to him; he abhors accretions; his life is constant divesting oneself, sharing, giving. I AM THAT: 55

Q: Yet, you must believe in having lived before. – M: The scriptures say so, but I know nothing about it. I know myself as I am; as I appeared or will appear is not within my experience. It is not that I do not remember. In fact there is nothing to remember. Reincarnation implies a reincarnating self. There is no such thing. The bundle of memories and hopes, called the ‘I’, imagines itself existing everlastingly and creates time to accommodate its false eternity: To be, I need no past or future. All experience is born of imagination; I do not imagine, so no birth or death happens to me. Only those who think themselves born can think themselves re-born. You are accusing me of having been born – I plead not guilty! All exists in awareness and awareness neither dies nor is reborn. It is the changeless reality itself. All the universe of experience is born with the body and dies with the body; it has its beginning and end in awareness, but awareness knows no beginning, nor end. If you think it out carefully and brood over it for a long time, you will come to see the light of awareness in all its clarity and the world will fade out of your vision. 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. Timelessly the self actualises itself, without exhausting its infinite possibilities. In the incense stick simile the stick is the body and the smoke is the mind. As long as the mind is busy with its contortions, it does not perceive its own source. The Guru comes and turns your attention to the spark within. 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. Awareness takes the place of consciousness; in consciousness there is the ‘I’, who is conscious while awareness is undivided; awareness is aware of itself. The ‘I am’ is a thought, while awareness is not a thought, there is no ‘I am aware’ in awareness. Consciousness is an attribute while awareness is not; one can be aware of being conscious, but not conscious of awareness. God is the totality of consciousness, but awareness is beyond all – being as well as not-being. I AM THAT: 56

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’. I AM THAT: 57

Q: I find it hard to grasp what exactly do you mean by saying that you are neither the object nor the subject. At this very moment, as we talk, am I not the object of your experience, and you the subject? – M: Look, my thumb touches my forefinger. Both touch and are touched. When my attention; is on the thumb, the thumb is the feeler and the forefinger – the self. Shift the focus of attention and the relationship is reversed. I find that somehow, by shifting the focus of attention, I become the very thing I look at and experience the kind of consciousness it has; I become the inner witness of the thing. I call this capacity of entering other focal points of consciousness – love; you may give it any name you like. Love says: ‘I am everything’. Wisdom says: ‘I am nothing’ Between the two my life flows. Since at any point of time and space I can be both the subject and the object of experience, I express it by saying that I am both, and neither, and beyond both. I AM THAT: 57

Q: When asked about the means for self-realisation, you invariably stress the importance of the mind dwelling on the sense ‘I am’. Where is the causal factor? Why should this particular thought result in self-realisation? How does the contemplation of ‘I am’ affect me? – M: The very fact of observation alters the observer and the observed. After all, what prevents the insight into one’s true nature is the weakness and obtuseness of the mind and its tendency to skip the subtle and focus on the gross only. When you follow my advice and try to keep your mind on the notion of ‘I am’ only, you become fully aware of your mind and its vagaries. Awareness, being lucid harmony (sattva) in action, dissolves dullness and quietens the restlessness of the mind and gently, but steadily changes its very substance. 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. I AM THAT: 58

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. I AM THAT: 58

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. I AM THAT: 58

Q: There is one thing I cannot grasp. 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. On the other hand you take so much trouble in helping the person to realise itself. If the person is so unimportant, why be so concerned with its welfare? Who cares for a shadow? – M: You have brought in duality where there is none. There is the body and there is the Self. Between them is the mind, in which the Self is reflected as ‘I am’. Because of the imperfections of the mind, its crudity and restlessness, lack of discernment and insight, it takes itself to be the body, not the Self. All that is needed is to purify the mind so that it can realise its identity with the Self. When the mind merges in the Self, the body presents no problems. It remains what it is, an instrument of cognition and action, the tool and the expression of the creative fire within: The ultimate value of the body is that it serves to discover the cosmic body, which is the universe in its entirety. As you realise yourself in manifestation, you keep on discovering that you are ever more than what you have imagined. I AM THAT: 58

Q: How can I set right a tangle which is entirely below the level of my consciousness? – M: By being with yourself, the ‘I am’; by watching yourself in your daily life with alert interest, with the intention to understand rather than to judge, in full acceptance of whatever may emerge, because it is there, you encourage the deep to come to the surface and enrich your life and consciousness with its captive energies. This is the great work of awareness; it removes obstacles and releases energies by understanding the nature of life and mind. Intelligence is the door to freedom and alert attention is the mother of intelligence. I AM THAT: 59

Q: Self or no self, facts are real. – M: Of course facts are real! I live among them. But you live with fancies, not with facts. Facts never clash, while your life and world are full of contradictions. Contradiction is the mark of the false; the real never contradicts itself. For instance, you complain that people are abjectly poor. Yet you do not share your riches with them. You mind the war next door, but you hardly give it a thought when it is in some far off country. The shifting fortunes of your ego determine your values; ‘I think’, ‘I want’, ‘I must’ are made into absolutes. I AM THAT: 60

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. I AM THAT: 61

Q: 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? – M: 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. I AM THAT: 62

Q: What is this big talk about elimination of the self? How can the self eliminate itself? What kind of metaphysical acrobatics can lead to the disappearance of the acrobat? In the end he will reappear, mightily proud of his disappearing. – M: You need not chase the ‘I am’ to kill it. You cannot. All you need is a sincere longing for reality. We call it atma-bhakti, the love of the Supreme: or moksha-sankalpa, the determination to be free from the false. Without love, and will inspired by love, nothing can be done. Merely talking about Reality without doing anything about it is self-defeating. There must be love in the relation between the person who says ‘I am’ and the observer of that ‘I am’. 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. 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. 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. Affectionate awareness is the crucial factor that brings Reality into focus. I AM THAT: 62

Q: There are teachers who will not talk of the higher self and lower self. They address the man as if only the lower self existed. Neither Buddha nor Christ ever mentioned a higher self. J. Krishnamurti too fights shy of any mention of the higher self. Why is it so? – M: How can there be two selves in one body? The ‘I am’ is one. There is no ‘higher I-am’ and ‘lower I-am’. All kinds of states of mind are presented to awareness and there is self-identification with them. The objects of observation are not what they appear to be and the attitudes they are met with are not what they need be. If you think that Buddha, Christ or Krishnamurti speak to the person, you are mistaken. 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. One may be conscious, for every being is conscious, but one is not aware. What is included in awareness becomes the inner and partakes of the inner. You may put it differently: the body defines the outer self, consciousness the inner, and in pure awareness the Supreme is contacted. I AM THAT: 62

Q: There is the body and there is myself. I know the body. Apart from it, what am l? – M: There is no ‘I’ apart from the body, nor the world. The three appear and disappear together. At the root is the sense ‘I am’. Go beyond it. The idea: ‘I-am-not-the-body’ is merely an antidote to the idea ‘I-am-the-body’ which is false. What is that ‘I am’? Unless you know yourself, what else can you know? I AM THAT: 62

Q: From what you say I conclude that without the body there can be no liberation. If the idea: ‘I-am-not-the-body’ leads to liberation, the presence of the body is essential. – M: Quite right. Without the body, how can the idea: ‘I-am-not-the-body’ come into being? The idea ‘I-am-free’ is as false as the idea ‘I-am-in-bondage’. Find out the ‘I am’ common to both and go beyond. I AM THAT: 62

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. There are moments when we are without the sense of ‘I am’. at peace and happy. With the return of the ‘I am’ trouble starts. I AM THAT: 63

Q: How is one to be free from the ‘I’-sense? – M: You must deal with the ‘I’-sense if you want to be free of it. Watch it in operation and at peace, how it starts and when it ceases, what it wants and how it gets it, till you see clearly and understand fully. 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 suffer because you have alienated yourself from reality and now you seek an escape from this alienation. You cannot escape from your own obsessions. You can only cease nursing them. It is because the ‘I am’ is false that it wants to continue. Reality need not continue – knowing itself indestructible, it is indifferent to the destruction of forms and expressions. To strengthen, and stabilise the ‘I am’ we do all sorts of things – all in vain, for the ‘I am’ is being rebuilt from moment to moment. It is unceasing work and the only radical solution is to dissolve the separative sense of ‘I am such-and-such person’ once and for good. Being remains, but not self-being. I AM THAT: 63

Q: I have definite spiritual ambitions. Must I not work for their fulfilment? – M: No ambition is spiritual. All ambitions are for the sake of the ‘I am’. If you want to make real progress you must give up all idea of personal attainment. The ambitions of the so-called Yogis are preposterous. A man’s desire for a woman is innocence itself compared to the lusting for an everlasting personal bliss. The mind is a cheat. The more pious it seems, the worse the betrayal. I AM THAT: 63

Q: How does one come to know the knower? – M: I can only tell you what I know from my own experience. When I met my Guru, he told me: ‘You are not what you take yourself to be. Find out what you are. Watch the sense ‘I am’, find your real self’. I obeyed him, because I trusted him. I did as he told me. All my spare time I would spend looking at myself in silence. And what a difference it made, and how soon! It took me only three years to realise my true nature. My Guru died soon after I met him, but it made no difference. I remembered what he told me and persevered. The fruit of it is here, with me. I AM THAT: 64

Q: The mind remembers. This stands for continuity. – M: Memory is always partial, unreliable and evanescent. It does not explain the strong sense of identity pervading consciousness, the sense ‘I am’. Find out what is at the root of it. I AM THAT: 65

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. I AM THAT: 65

Q: Of course I know that I am. But I do not know what it means. – M: What you take to be the ‘I’ in the ‘I am’ is not you. To know that you are is natural, to know what you are is the result of much investigation. You will have to explore the entire field of consciousness and go beyond it. For this you must find the right teacher and create the conditions needed for discovery. Generally speaking, there are two ways: external and internal. Either you live with somebody who knows the Truth and submit yourself entirely to his guiding and moulding influence, or you seek the inner guide and follow the inner light wherever it takes you. In both cases your personal desires and fears must be disregarded. You learn either by proximity or by investigation, the passive or the active way. You either let yourself be carried by the river of life and love represented by your Guru, or you make your own efforts, guided by your inner star. In both cases you must move on, you must be earnest. Rare are the people who are lucky to find somebody worthy of trust and love. Most of them must take the hard way, the way of intelligence and understanding, of discrimination and detachment (viveka-vairagya). This is the way open to all. I AM THAT: 66

Q: I am lucky to have come here: though I am leaving tomorrow, one talk with you may affect my entire life. – M: Yes, once you say ‘I want to find Truth’, all your life will be deeply affected by it. All your mental and physical habits, feelings and emotions, desires and fears, plans and decisions will undergo a most radical transformation. I AM THAT: 66

Q: What am I if not human? – M: That which makes you think that you are a human is not human. It is but a dimensionless point of consciousness, a conscious nothing; all you can say about yourself is: ‘I am.’ You are pure being – awareness – bliss. To realise that is the end of all seeking. 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 not at all difficult, but detachment is needed. It is the clinging to the false that makes the true so difficult to see. Once you understand that the false needs time and what needs time is false, you are nearer the Reality, which is timeless, ever in the now. Eternity in time is mere repetitiveness, like the movement of a clock. It flows from the past into the future endlessly, an empty perpetuity. Reality is what makes the present so vital, so different from the past and future, which are merely mental. If you need time to achieve something, it must be false. The real is always with you; you need not wait to be what you are. Only you must not allow your mind to go out of yourself in search. When you want something, ask yourself: do I really need it? and if the answer is no, then just drop it. I AM THAT: 66

67. Experience is not the Real Thing Maharaj: The seeker is he who is in search of himself. Soon he discovers that his own body he cannot be. Once the conviction: ‘I am not the body’ becomes so well grounded that he can no longer feel, think and act for and on behalf of the body, he will easily discover that he is the universal being, knowing, acting, that in him and through him the entire universe is real, conscious and active. This is the heart of the problem. Either you are body-conscious and a slave of circumstances, or you are the universal consciousness itself – and in full control of every event. Yet consciousness, individual or universal, is not my true abode; I am not in it, it is not mine, there is no ‘me’ in it. I am beyond, though it is not easy to explain how one can be neither conscious, nor unconscious, but just beyond. I cannot say that I am in God or I am God; God is the universal light and love, the universal witness: I am beyond the universal even. I AM THAT: 67

Q: So you say I should try to stop thinking and stay steady in the idea: ‘I am’. – M: Yes, and whatever thoughts come to you in connection with the ‘I am’, empty them of all meaning, pay them no attention. I AM THAT: 67

Q: Strong desire, strong faith – it comes to the same. These people do not trust either their parents or the society, or even themselves. All they touched turned to ashes. Give them one experience absolutely genuine, indubitable, beyond the argumentations of the mind and they will follow you to the world’s end. – M: But I am doing nothing else! Tirelessly I draw their attention to the one incontrovertible factor – that of being. 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. I AM THAT: 67

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. I AM THAT: 69

Q: Is not the unreal the expression of the real? – M: How can it be? It is like saying that truth expresses itself in dreams. To the real the unreal is not. It appears to be real only because you believe in it. Doubt it, and it ceases. When you are in love with somebody, you give it reality – you imagine your love to be all-powerful and everlasting. When it comes to an end, you say: ‘I thought it was real, but it wasn’t’. Transiency is the best proof of unreality. What is limited in time and space, and applicable to one person only, is not real. The real is for all and forever. Above everything else you cherish yourself. You would accept nothing in exchange for your existence. The desire to be is the strongest of all desires and will go only on the realisation of your true nature. I AM THAT: 69

Q: Some sensory experiences as related to myself. – M: Not even that. You only know that you react. Who reacts and to what, you do not know. You know on contact that you exist – ‘I am’. The ‘I am this’, ‘I am that’ are imaginary. I AM THAT: 70

Q: I must begin with some absolute truth. Is there any? – M: Yes, there is, the feeling: ‘I am’. Begin with that. I AM THAT: 70

Q: But the person does not want to be eliminated. – M: The person is merely the result of a misunderstanding. In reality, there is no such thing. Feelings, thoughts and actions race before the watcher in endless succession, leaving traces in the brain and creating an illusion of continuity. A reflection of the watcher in the mind creates the sense of ‘I’ and the person acquires an apparently independent existence. In reality there is no person, only the watcher identifying himself with the ‘I’ and the ‘mine’. The teacher tells the watcher: you are not this, there is nothing of yours in this, except the little point of ‘I am’, which is the bridge between the watcher and his dream. ‘I am this, I am that’ is dream, while pure ‘I am’ has the stamp of reality on it. You have tasted so many things – all came to naught. Only the sense ‘I am’ persisted – unchanged. Stay with the changeless among the changeful, until you are able to go beyond. I AM THAT: 71

Q: Does creation come before investigation? – M: First you create a world, then the ‘I am’ becomes a person, who is not happy for various reasons. He goes out in search of happiness, meets a Guru who tells him: ‘You are not a person, find who you are’. He does it and goes beyond. I AM THAT: 71

Questioner: I come from Switzerland. I stayed there with a remarkable man who claims to have realised. He has done many Yogas in his past and had many experiences that passed away. Now he claims no special abilities, nor knowledge; the only unusual thing about him is connected with sensations; he is unable to separate the seer from the seen. For instance, when he sees a car rushing at him, he does not know whether the car is rushing at him, or he at a car. He seems to be both at the same time, the seer and the seen. They become one. Whatever he sees, he sees himself. When I asked him some Vedantic questions he said: ‘I really cannot answer. I do not know. All I know is this strange identity with whatever I perceive. You know, I expected anything but this.’ He is on the whole a humble man; he makes no disciples and in no way puts himself on a pedestal. He is willing to talk about his strange condition, but that is all. M: Now he knows what he knows. All else is over. At least he still talks. Soon he may cease talking. I AM THAT: 72

Q: I shall have to eliminate the ego! – M: The sense ‘I am a person in time and space’ is the poison. In a way, time itself is the poison. In time all things come to an end and new are born, to be devoured in their turn. Do not identify yourself with time, do not ask anxiously: ‘what next, what next?’ Step out of time and see it devour the world. Say: ‘Well, it is in the nature of time to put an end to everything. Let it be. It does not concern me. I am not combustible, nor do I need to collect fuel’. I AM THAT: 72

Q: Is the ‘I am’ real or unreal? Is the ‘I am’ the witness? Is the witness real or unreal? – M: What is pure, unalloyed, unattached, is real. What is tainted, mixed up, dependent and transient is unreal. Do not be misled by words – one word may convey several and even contradictory meanings. The ‘I am’ that pursues the pleasant and shuns the unpleasant is false; the ‘I am’ that sees pleasure and pain as inseparable sees rightly. The witness that is enmeshed in what he perceives is the person; the witness who stands aloof, unmoved and untouched, is the watch-tower of the real, the point at which awareness, inherent in the unmanifested, contacts the manifested. There can be no universe without the witness, there can be no witness without the universe. I AM THAT: 72

Q: Time consumes the world. Who is the witness of time? – M: He who is beyond time – the Un-nameable. A glowing ember, moved round and round quickly enough, appears as a glowing circle. When the movement ceases, the ember remains. Similarly, the ‘I am’ in movement creates the world. The ‘I am’ at peace becomes the Absolute. You are like a man with an electric torch walking through a gallery. You can see only what is within the beam. The rest is in darkness. I AM THAT: 72

Q: In love there must be duality, the lover and the beloved. – M: In love there is not the one even, how can there be two? Love is the refusal to separate, to make distinctions. Before you can think of unity, you must first create duality. When you truly love, you do not say: ‘I love you’; where there is mentation, there is duality. I AM THAT: 72

Q: The experiencer is the proof of his experience. – M: Quite, but the experiencer needs no proof. ‘I am, and I know I am’. You cannot ask for further proofs. I AM THAT: 73

Q: I am an inference to others. but not to myself. – M: So am I. An inference to you, but not to myself. I know myself by being myself. As you know yourself to be a man by being one. You do not keep on reminding yourself that you are a man. It is only when your humanity is questioned that you assert it. Similarly, I know that I am all. I do not need to keep on repeating: ‘I am all, I am all’. Only when you take me to be a particular, a person, I protest. As you are a man all the time, so I am what I am – all the time. Whatever you are changelessly, that you are beyond all doubt. I AM THAT: 73

Q: When I ask how do you know that you are a jnani, you answer: ‘I find no desire in me. Is this not a proof?’ – M: Were I full of desires, I would have still been what I am. I AM THAT: 73

Q: Does it mean that the universe and its contents will come to an end? – M: The universe is your personal experience. How can it be affected? You might have been delivering a lecture for two hours; where has it gone when it is over? It has merged into silence in which the beginning, middle and end of the lecture are all together. Time has come to a stop, it was, but is no more. The silence after a life of talking and the silence after a life of silence is the same silence. Immortality is freedom from the feeling: ‘I am’. Yet it is not extinction. On the contrary, it is a state infinitely more real, aware and happy than you can possibly think of. Only self-consciousness is no more. I AM THAT: 73

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. I AM THAT: 73

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. I AM THAT: 73

Questioner: My question is: What is the proof of truth? Followers of every religion, metaphysical or political, philosophical or ethical, are convinced that theirs is the only truth, that all else is false and they take their own unshakable conviction for the proof of truth. ‘I am convinced, so it must be true’, they say. 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. They are like clothes men put on, which vary with times and circumstances and follow the fashion trends. Now, can there be a religion or philosophy which is true and which does not depend on somebody’s conviction? Nor on scriptures, because they again depend on somebody’s faith in them? Is there a truth which does not depend on trusting, which is not subjective? Maharaj: What about science? I AM THAT: 74

Q: I have abandoned it intellectually, but the sense of being the particular, a person, is still with me. I can say: ‘I am’, but what I am I cannot say. I know I exist, but I do not know what exists. Whichever way I put it, I face the unknown. – M: Your very being is the real. I AM THAT: 74

Q: How am I to answer? My sense of being proves only that I am; it does not prove anything which is independent of me. I am relative, both creature and creator of the relative. The absolute proof of the absolute truth – what is it, where is it? Can the mere feeling ‘I am’ be the proof of reality? – M: Of course not. ‘I am’ and ‘the world is’ are related and conditional. They are due to the tendency of the mind to project names and shapes. I AM THAT: 74

Q: I am sorry, but I seem unable to convey my difficulty. I and asking about the proof of truth and am being given the methods of attaining it. Assuming I follow the methods and attain some most wonderful and desirable state, how do I come to know that my state is true? Every religion begins with faith and promises some ecstasy. Is the ecstasy of the real, or the product of faith? For, if it is an induced state, I shall have nothing to do with it. Take Christianity that says: Jesus is your Saviour, believe and be saved from sin. When I ask a sinning Christian how is it that he has not been saved from sin in spite of his faith in Christ, he answers: My faith is not perfect. Again we are in the vicious circle – without perfect faith – no salvation, without salvation – no perfect faith, hence no salvation. Conditions are imposed which are unfulfillable and then we are blamed for not fulfilling them. – M: You do not realise that your present waking state is one of ignorance. Your question about the proof of truth is born from ignorance of reality. 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. You are taking duality so much for granted, that you do not even notice it, while to me variety and diversity do not create separation. 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. You ask for the proof of truth while to me all existence is the proof. You separate existence from being and being from reality, while to me it is all one. 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. Yet I see no difference between us, except that you are imagining things, while I do not. I AM THAT: 74

Q: Sir, were you to say: Nothing is true, all is relative, I would agree with you. But you maintain there is truth, reality, perfect knowledge, therefore I ask: What is it and how do you know? And what will make me say: Yes, Maharaj was right? – M: You are holding on to the need for a proof, a testimony, an authority. You still imagine that truth needs pointing at and telling you: ‘Look, here is truth’. It is not so. Truth is not the result of an effort, the end of a road. It is here and now, in the very longing and the search for it. It is nearer than the mind and the body, nearer than the sense ‘I am’. You do not see it because you look too far away from yourself, outside your innermost being. You have objectified truth and insist on your standard proofs and tests, which apply only to things and thoughts. I AM THAT: 74

Q: Sir, if you want the body to be still and the mind – quiet, tell me how it is done. In self-awareness I see the body and the mind moved by causes beyond my control. Heredity and environment dominate me absolutely. The mighty ‘I am’, the creator of the universe, can be wiped out by a drug temporarily, or a drop of poison – permanently. – M: Again, you take yourself to be the body. I AM THAT: 74

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. If I dismiss these also as not-me, I still remain with consciousness, which also is a kind of body. – M: You are quite right, but you need not stop there. Go beyond. Neither consciousness, nor the ‘I am’ at the centre of it are you. Your true being is entirely un-self-conscious, completely free from all self-identification with whatever it may be, gross, subtle or transcendental. I AM THAT: 74

Q: The mind is so absolutely restless. For quieting it what is the way? – M: Trust the teacher. Take my own case. My Guru ordered me to attend to the sense ‘I am’ and to give attention to nothing else. I just obeyed. I did not follow any particular course of breathing, or meditation, or study of scriptures. Whatever happened, I would turn away my attention from it and remain with the sense ‘I am’, it may look too simple, even crude. My only reason for doing it was that my Guru told me so. Yet it worked! Obedience is a powerful solvent of all desires and fears. Just turn away from all that occupies the mind; do whatever work you have to complete, but avoid new obligations; keep empty, keep available, resist not what comes uninvited. In the end you reach a state of non-grasping, of joyful non-attachment, of inner ease and freedom indescribable, yet wonderfully real. I AM THAT: 75

Questioner: What you say appears simple, but not everyone would say it. It is you, and you alone, who talks of the three and the void beyond. I see the world only, which includes all. M: Even the ‘I am’? I AM THAT: 76

Q: Even the ‘I am’. The ‘I am’ is there because the world is there. – M: And the world is there because the ‘I am’ is there. I AM THAT: 76

Q: I can distinguish two states of mind: ‘I am’ and ‘the world is’; they arise and subside together. People say: ‘I am, because the world is’. You seem to say: ‘The world is, because I am’. Which is true? – M: Neither. The two are one and the same state, in space and time. Beyond, there is the timeless. I AM THAT: 76

Q: How can ignorance be known? To know ignorance presupposes knowledge. – M: Quite right. The very admission: ‘I am ignorant’ is the dawn of knowledge. An ignorant man is ignorant of his ignorance. You can say that ignorance does not exist, for the moment it is seen it is no more. Therefore, you may call it unconsciousness or blindness. All you see around and within you is what you do not know and do not understand, without even knowing that you do not know and do not understand. To know that you do not know and do not understand is true knowledge, the knowledge of an humble heart. I AM THAT: 76

Q: Please tell us more. – M: Talking is not my hobby. Sometimes I talk, sometimes I do not. My talking, or not talking, is a part of a given situation and does not depend on me. When there is a situation in which I have to talk, I hear myself talking. In some other situation I may not hear myself talking. It is all the same to me. Whether I talk or not, the light and love of being what I am are not affected, nor are they under my control. They are, and I know they are. There is a glad awareness, but nobody who is glad. Of course, there is a sense of identity, but it is the identity of a memory track, like the identity of a sequence of pictures on the ever-present screen. Without the light and the screen there can be no picture. To know the picture as the play of light on the screen, gives freedom from the idea that the picture is real. All you have to do is to understand that you love the self and the self loves you and that the sense ‘I am’ is the link between you both, a token of identity in spite of apparent diversity. Look at the ‘I am’ as a sign of love between the inner and the outer, the real and the appearance. 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’. I do nothing, nor is anything done to me. I am what I am and nothing can affect me. I appear to depend on everything, but in fact all depends on me. I AM THAT: 77

Q: Everybody says: ‘I work, I come, I go’. – M: I have no objection to the conventions of your language, but they distort and destroy reality. A more accurate way of saying would have been: ‘There is talking, working, coming, going’. For anything to happen, the entire universe must coincide. It is wrong to believe that anything in particular can cause an event. Every cause is universal. Your very body would not exist without the entire universe contributing to its creation and survival. I am fully aware that things happen as they happen because the world is as it is. 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. When the body is born, all kinds of things happen to it and you take part in them, because you take yourself to be the body. You are like the man in the cinema house, laughing and crying with the picture, though knowing fully well that he is all the time in his seat and the picture is but the play of light. It is enough to shift attention from the screen to oneself to break the spell. When the body dies, the kind of life you live now – succession of physical and mental events – comes to an end. It can end even now – without waiting for the death of the body – it is enough to shift attention to the Self and keep it there. All happens as if there is a mysterious power that creates and moves everything. realise that you are not the mover, only the observer, and you will be at peace. I AM THAT: 77

Q: What happened to you then? How did you know that you are the Supreme? – M: Nobody came to tell me. Nor was I told so inwardly. 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. Once the Guru told me: ‘You are the Supreme Reality’, I ceased having visions and trances and became very quiet and simple. I found myself desiring and knowing less and less, until I could say in utter astonishment: ‘I know nothing, I want nothing.’ I AM THAT: 78

Q: Where do you live, then? – M: In the void beyond being and non-being, beyond consciousness. This void is also fullness; do not pity me. It is like a man saying: ‘I have done my work, there is nothing left to do’. I AM THAT: 78

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. The other thing that I noticed was that I lost all my habitual certainties. Earlier I was sure of so many things, now I am sure of nothing. But I feel that I have lost nothing by not knowing, because all my knowledge was false. My not knowing was in itself knowledge of the fact that all knowledge is ignorance, that ‘I do not know’ is the only true statement the mind can make. Take the idea ‘I was born’. You may take it to be true. It is not. You were never born, nor will you ever die. It is the idea that was born and shall die, not you. By identifying yourself with it you became mortal. Just like in a cinema all is light, so does consciousness become the vast world. Look closely, and you will see that all names and forms are but transitory waves on the ocean of consciousness, that only consciousness can be said to be, not its transformations. In the immensity of consciousness a light appears, a tiny point that moves rapidly and traces shapes, thoughts and feelings, concepts and ideas, like the pen writing on paper. And the ink that leaves a trace is memory. You are that tiny point and by your movement the world is ever re-created. Stop moving, and there will be no world. 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’. There is only light, all else appears. I AM THAT: 78

Q: Is the sense ‘I am’ real or unreal? – M: Both. It is unreal when we say: ‘I am this, I am that’. It is real when we mean ‘I am not this, nor that’. The knower comes and goes with the known, and is transient; but that which knows that it does not know, which is free of memory and anticipation, is timeless. I AM THAT: 78

Q: Is ‘I am’ itself the witness, or are they separate? – M: Without one the other cannot be. Yet they are not one. It is like the flower and its colour. Without flower – no colours; without colour – the flower remains unseen. Beyond is the light which on contact with the flower creates the colour. realise that your true nature is that of pure light only, and both the perceived and the perceiver come and go together. That which makes both possible, and yet is neither, is your real being, which means not being a ‘this’ or ‘that’, but pure awareness of being and not-being. When awareness is turned on itself, the feeling is of not knowing. When it is turned outward, the knowables come into being. To say: ‘I know myself’ is a contradiction in terms for what is ‘known’ cannot be ‘myself’. I AM THAT: 78

Q: On what side is the witness? Is it real or unreal? – M: Nobody can say: ‘I am the witness’. The ‘I am’ is always witnessed. The state of detached awareness is the witness-consciousness, the ‘mirror-mind’. It rises and sets with its object and thus it is not quite the real. Whatever its object, it remains the same, hence it is also real. It partakes of both the real and the unreal and is therefore a bridge between the two. I AM THAT: 78

Q: If all happens only to the ‘I am’, if the ‘I am’ is the known and the knower and the knowledge itself, what does the witness do? Of what use is it? – M: It does nothing and is of no use whatsoever. I AM THAT: 78

Q: Then why do we talk of it? – M: Because it is there. The bridge serves one purpose only – to cross over. You don’t build houses on a bridge. The ‘I am’ looks at things, the witness sees through them. It sees them as they are – unreal and transient. To say ‘not me, not mine’ is the task of the witness. I AM THAT: 78

Q: I am amazed! – M: So was I. But what was there to be amazed at? My teacher’s words came true. So what? He knew me better than I knew myself, that is all. Why search for causes? In the very beginning I was giving some attention and time to the sense ‘I am’, but only in the beginning. Soon after my Guru died, I lived on. His words proved to be true. That is all. It is all one process. You tend to separate things in time and then look for causes. I AM THAT: 79

Q: In your mind, or also in other minds? – M: There is only one mind, which swarms with ideas; ‘I am this, I am that, this is mine, that is mine’. I am not the mind, never was, nor shall be. I AM THAT: 79

Q: How does the person come into being? – M: Exactly as a shadow appears when light is intercepted by the body, so does the person arise when pure self-awareness is obstructed by the ‘I-am-the-body’ idea. And as the shadow changes shape and position according to the lay of the land, so does the person appear to rejoice and suffer, rest and toil, find and lose according to the pattern of destiny. When the body is no more, the person disappears completely without return, only the witness remains and the Great Unknown. The witness is that which says ‘I know’. The person says ‘I do’. Now, to say ‘I know’ is not untrue – it is merely limited. But to say ‘I do’ is altogether false, because there is nobody who does; all happens by itself, including the idea of being a doer. I AM THAT: 79

Q: I am the river too. – M: Of course, you are. As an ‘I am’ you are the river, flowing between the banks of the body. But you are also the source and the ocean and the clouds in the sky. Wherever there is life and consciousness, you are. Smaller than the smallest, bigger than the biggest, you are, while all else appears. I AM THAT: 80

Q: You said once that the seer, seeing and the seen are one single thing, not three. To me the three are separate. I do not doubt your words, only I do not understand. – M: Look closely and you will see that the seer and the seen appear only when there is seeing. They are attributes of seeing. When you say ‘I am seeing this’. ‘I am’ and ‘this’ come with seeing, not before. You cannot have an unseen ‘this’ nor an unseeing ‘I am’. I AM THAT: 80

Q: I can say: ‘I do not see’. – M: The ‘I am seeing this’ has become ‘l am seeing my not seeing’, or ‘I am seeing darkness’. The seeing remains. In the triplicity: the known, knowing and the knower, only the knowing is a fact. The ‘I am’ and ‘this’ are doubtful. Who knows? What is known? There is no certainty, except that there is knowing. I AM THAT: 80

Q: Yes, I can see that what moves and changes is the ‘I am’ only. Is the ‘I am’ needed at all? – M: Who needs it? It is there – now. It had a beginning it will have an end. I AM THAT: 81

Q: What remains when the ‘I am’ goes? – M: What does not come and go – remains. It is the ever greedy mind that creates ideas of progress and evolution towards perfection. It disturbs and talks of order, destroys and seeks security. I AM THAT: 81

Q: What exactly do you want me to do? – M: Give your heart and mind to brooding over the ‘I am’, what is it, how is it, what is its source, its life, its meaning. It is very much like digging a well. You reject all that is not water, till you reach the life-giving spring. I AM THAT: 81

Q: Perception is primary, the witness – secondary. – M: This is the heart of the matter. As long as you believe that only the outer world is real, you remain its slave. To become free, your attention must be drawn to the ‘I am’, the witness. Of course, the knower and the known are one not two, but to break the spell of the known the knower must be brought to the forefront. Neither is primary, both are reflections in memory of the ineffable experience, ever new and ever now, untranslatable, quicker than the mind. I AM THAT: 83

85. ‘I am’: The Foundation of all Experience I AM THAT: 85

Q: I hear you making statements about yourself like: ‘I am timeless, immutable beyond attributes’, etc. How do you know these things? And what makes you say them? – M: I am only trying to describe the state before the ‘I am’ arose, but the state itself, being beyond the mind and language, is indescribable. I AM THAT: 85

Q: The ‘I am’ is the foundation of all experience. What you are trying to describe must also be an experience, limited and transitory. You speak of yourself as immutable. I hear the sound of the word, I remember its dictionary meaning, but the experience of being immutable I do not have. How can I break through the barrier and know personally, intimately, what it means to be immutable? – M: The word itself is the bridge. 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. It is like trying to find a person knowing his name only. A day comes when your enquiries bring you to him and the name becomes reality. Words are valuable, for between the word and its meaning there is a link and if one investigates the word assiduously, one crosses beyond the concept into the experience at the root of it. As a matter of fact, such repeated attempts to go beyond the words is called meditation. Sadhana is but a persistent attempt to cross over from the verbal to the non-verbal. The task seems hopeless until suddenly all becomes clear and simple and so wonderfully easy. But, as long as you are interested in your present way of living, you will shirk from the final leap into the unknown. I AM THAT: 85

Q: Is not awareness a form of consciousness? – M: When the content is viewed without likes and dislikes, the consciousness of it is awareness. 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. Reflection of the sun in a drop of water is the reflection of the sun, no doubt, but not the sun itself. Between awareness reflected in consciousness as the witness and pure awareness there is a gap, which the mind cannot cross. I AM THAT: 85

Q: If I have to go beyond myself, why did I get the ‘I am’ idea in the first instance? – M: The mind needs a centre to draw a circle. The circle may grow bigger and with every increase there will be a change in the sense ‘I am’. A man who took himself in hand, a Yogi, will draw a spiral, yet the centre will remain, however vast the spiral. A day comes when the entire enterprise is seen as false and given up. The central point is no more and the universe becomes the centre. I AM THAT: 85

Q: What you say is true, but what can I do about it? Such indeed is the situation. My helplessness and dullness are a part of it. – M: Good enough. Look at yourself steadily – it is enough. The door that locks you in, is also the door that lets you out. The ‘I am’ is the door. Stay at it until it opens. As a matter of fact, it is open, only you are not at it. You are waiting at the non-existent painted doors, which will never open. I AM THAT: 86

Q: How does one attend to the unconscious? – 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. Wrong desires and fears, false ideas, social inhibitions are blocking and preventing its free interplay with the conscious. Once free to mingle, the two become one and the one becomes all. The person merges into the witness, the witness into awareness, awareness into pure being, yet identity is not lost, only its limitations are lost. It is transfigured, and becomes the real Self, the sadguru, the eternal friend and guide. You cannot approach it in worship. 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. In the beginning the attempts are irregular, then they recur more often, become regular, then continuous and intense, until all obstacles are conquered. I AM THAT: 86

Questioner: Once I had a strange experience. I was not, nor was the world, there was only light – within and without – and immense peace. This lasted for four days and then I returned to the every-day consciousness. Now I have a feeling that all I know is merely a scaffolding, covering and hiding the building under construction. The architect, the design, the plans, the purpose – nothing I know; some activity is going on, things are happening; that is all I can say. I am that scaffolding, some thing very flimsy and short-lived; when the building is ready, the scaffolding will be dismantled and removed. The ‘I am’ and the ‘What am I’ are of no importance, because once the building is ready, the ‘I’ will go as a matter of course, leaving no questions about itself to answer. Maharaj: Are you not aware of all this? Is not the fact of awareness the constant factor? I AM THAT: 87

Q: On the verbal level it sounds all right. I can visualise myself as the seed of being, a point in consciousness, with my sense ‘I am’ pulsating, appearing and disappearing alternately. But what am I to do to realise it as a fact, to go beyond into the changeless, wordless Reality? – M: You can do nothing. What time has brought about, time will take away. I AM THAT: 87

Q: Why then all these exhortations to practice Yoga and seek reality? They make me feel empowered and responsible, while in fact it is time that does all. – M: This is the end of Yoga – to realise independence. All that happens, happens in and to the mind, not to the source of the ‘I am’. Once you realise that all happens by itself, (call it destiny, or the will of God or mere accident), you remain as witness only, understanding and enjoying, but not perturbed. I AM THAT: 87

Q: Is the ‘I am’ the Ultimate? – M: Before you can say: ‘I am’, you must be there to say it. Being need not be self-conscious. You need not know to be, but you must be to know. I AM THAT: 87

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. Thus I have understood your teaching. What I cannot grasp is how did this subtle body arise in the first instance? – M: It is created with the emergence of the ‘I am’ idea. The two are one. I AM THAT: 88

Q: How did the ‘I am’ appear? – M: In your world everything must have a beginning and an end. If it does not, you call it eternal. In my view there is no such thing as beginning or end – these are all related to time. Timeless being is entirely in the now. I AM THAT: 88

Q: You say that the illusion of the world begins with the sense ‘I am’, but when I ask about the origin of the sense ‘I am’, you answer that it has no origin, for on investigation it dissolves. What is solid enough to build the world on cannot be mere illusion. The ‘I am’ is the only changeless factor I am conscious of; how can it be false? – M: It is not the ‘I am’ that is false, but what you take yourself to be. I can see, beyond the least shadow of doubt, that you are not what you believe yourself to be. Logic or no logic, you cannot deny the obvious. You are nothing that you are conscious of. Apply yourself diligently to pulling apart the structure you have built in your mind. What the mind has done the mind must undo. I AM THAT: 88

Q: You cannot deny the present moment, mind or no mind. What is now, is. You may question the appearance, but not the fact. What is at the root of the fact? – M: The ‘I am’ is at the root of all appearance and the permanent link in the succession of events that we call life; but I am beyond the ‘I am’. I AM THAT: 88

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. I AM THAT: 89

Q: You mean to say that all these glories will come with the mere dwelling on the feeling ‘I am’? – M: It is the simple that is certain, not the complicated. Somehow, people do not trust the simple, the easy, the always available. Why not give an honest trial to what I say? It may look very small and insignificant, but it is like a seed that grows into a mighty tree. Give yourself a chance! I AM THAT: 89

Q: I am fully aware that my fear of death is due to apprehension and not knowledge. – M: Human beings die every second, the fear and the agony of dying hangs over the world like a cloud. No wonder you too are afraid. But once you know that the body alone dies and not the continuity of memory and the sense of ‘I am’ reflected in it, you are afraid no longer. I AM THAT: 90

Q: There is a body and there is compassion and there is memory and a number of things and attitudes; collectively they may be called a person. – M: Including the ‘I am’ idea? I AM THAT: 90

Q: The ‘I am’ is like a basket that holds the many things that make a person. – M: Or, rather, it is the willow of which the basket is woven. When you think of yourself as a women, do you mean that you are a women, or that your body is described as female? I AM THAT: 90

Q: I have read recently a book by a Yogi on his experiences in meditation. It is full of visions and sounds, colours and melodies; quite a display and a most gorgeous entertainment! In the end they all faded out and only the feeling of utter fearlessness remained. No wonder – a man who passed through all these experiences unscathed need not be afraid of anything! Yet I was wondering of what use is such book to me? – M: Of no use, probably, since it does not attract you. Others may be impressed. People differ. But all are faced with the fact of their own existence. ‘I am’ is the ultimate fact; ‘Who am l?’ is the ultimate question to which everybody must find an answer. I AM THAT: 92

Q: You are reducing sadhana to simple attention. How is it that other teachers teach complete, difficult and time-consuming courses? – M: The Gurus usually teach the sadhanas by which they themselves have reached their goal, whatever their goal may be. This is but natural, for their own sadhana they know intimately. I was taught to give attention to my sense of ‘I am’ and I found it supremely effective. Therefore, I can speak of it with full confidence. But often people come with their bodies, brain and minds so mishandled, perverted and weak, that the state of formless attention is beyond them. In such cases, some simpler token of earnestness is appropriate. The repetition of a mantra, or gazing at a picture will prepare their body and mind for a deeper and more direct search. After all, it is earnestness that is indispensable, the crucial factor. Sadhana is only a vessel and it must be filled to the brim with earnestness, which is but love in action. For nothing can be done without love. I AM THAT: 93

Q: I have sometimes the feeling that space itself is my body. – M: When you are bound by the illusion: ‘I am this body’, you are merely a point in space and a moment in time. When the self-identification with the body is no more, all space and time are in your mind, which is a mere ripple in consciousness, which is awareness reflected in nature. Awareness and matter are the active and the passive aspects of pure being, which is in both and beyond both. Space and time are the body and the mind of the universal existence. 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. What I take myself to be, becomes my body and all that happens to that body becomes my mind. But at the root of the universe there is pure awareness, beyond space and time, here and now. Know it to be your real being and act accordingly. I AM THAT: 93

Q: Who is aware in awareness? – M: When there is a person, there is also consciousness. ‘I am’ mind, consciousness denote the same state. If you say ‘I am aware’, it only means: ‘I am conscious of thinking about being aware’. There is no ‘I am’ in awareness. I AM THAT: 94

Q: What about you? Do you continue in awareness? – M: The person, the ‘I am this body, this mind, this chain of memories, this bundle of desires and fears’ disappears, but something you may call identity, remains. It enables me to become a person when required. Love creates its own necessities, even of becoming a person. I AM THAT: 94

Q: I am afraid of my own mind. It is so unsteady! – M: In the mirror of your mind images appear and disappear. The mirror remains. Learn to distinguish the immovable in the movable, the unchanging in the changing, till you realise that all differences are in appearance only and oneness is a fact. 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. 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. The senseless sorrow of mankind becomes your sole concern. I AM THAT: 96

Q: Does it imply acceptance by a living master belonging to the same tradition? – M: Those who practise the sadhana of focussing their minds on ‘I am’ may feel related to others who have followed the same sadhana and succeeded. They may decide to verbalise their sense of kinship by calling themselves Navnaths. It gives them the pleasure of belonging to an established tradition. I AM THAT: 97

Q: I cannot make out whether I am the creature or the creator of the universe. – M: ‘I am’ is an ever-present fact, while ‘I am created’ is an idea. Neither God nor the universe have come to tell you that they have created you. The mind obsessed by the idea of causality invents creation and then wonders ‘who is the creator?’ The mind itself is the creator. Even this is not quite true, for the created and its creator are one. The mind and the world are not separate. Do understand that what you think to be the world is your own mind. I AM THAT: 97

Q: You keep on telling me that I am dreaming and that it is high time I should wake up. How does it happen that the Maharaj, who has come to me in my dreams, has not succeeded in waking me up? He keeps on urging and reminding, but the dream continues. – M: It is because you have not really understood that you are dreaming. This is the essence of bondage – the mixing of the real with unreal. 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. I AM THAT: 97

Questioner: How do we learn to cut out worries? M: You need not worry about your worries. Just be. Do not try to be quiet; do not make ‘being quiet’ into a task to be performed. Don’t be restless about ‘being quiet’, miserable about ‘being happy’. Just be aware that you are and remain aware – don’t say: ‘yes, I am; what next?’ There is no ‘next’ in ‘I am’. It is a timeless state. I AM THAT: 98

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. I AM THAT: 98

Q: You seem to advise me to be self-centred to the point of egoism. Must I not yield even to my interest in other people? – M: Your interest in others is egoistic, self-concerned, self-oriented. You are not interested in others as persons, but only as far as they enrich, or ennoble your own image of yourself. And the ultimate in selfishness is to care only for the protection, preservation and multiplication of one’s own body. By body I mean all that is related to your name and shape – your family, tribe, country, race, etc. To be attached to one’s name and shape is selfishness. A man who knows that he is neither body nor mind cannot be selfish, for he has nothing to be selfish for. Or, you may say, he is equally ‘selfish’ on behalf of everybody he meets; everybody’s welfare is his own. The feeling ‘I am the world, the world is myself’ becomes quite natural; once it is established, there is just no way of being selfish. To be selfish means to covet, acquire, accumulate on behalf of the part against the whole. I AM THAT: 98

Q: You seem to have little use for religion. – M: What is religion? A cloud in the sky. I live in the sky, not in the clouds, which are so many words held together. Remove the verbiage and what remains? Truth remains. 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. In the inner search the unexpected is inevitable; the discovery is invariably beyond all imagination. Just as an unborn child cannot know life after birth, for it has nothing in its mind with which to form a valid picture, so is the mind unable to think of the real in terms of the unreal, except by negation: ‘Not this, not that’. The acceptance of the unreal as real is the obstacle; to see the false as false and abandon the false brings reality into being. The states of utter clarity, immense love, utter fearlessness; these are mere words at the present, outlines without colour, hints at what can be. You are like a blind man expecting to see as a result of an operation – provided you do not shirk the operation! The state I am in words do not matter at all. Nor is there any addiction to words. Only facts matter. I AM THAT: 98

Q: One cannot live by denying everything! – M: Only by denying can one live. Assertion is bondage. To question and deny is necessary. It is the essence of revolt and without revolt there can be no freedom. There is no second, or higher self to search for. You are the highest self, only give up the false ideas you have about your self. Both faith and reason tell you that you are neither the body, nor its desires and fears, nor are you the mind with its fanciful ideas, nor the role society compels you to play, the person you are supposed to be. Give up the false and the true will come into its own. You say you want to know your self. You are your self – you cannot be anything but what you are. Is knowing separate from being? Whatever you can know with your mind is of the mind, not you; about yourself you can only say: ‘I am, I am aware, I like It’. I AM THAT: 99

Q: All I know is that I do not know myself. – M: How do you know, that you do not know your self? Your direct insight tells you that yourself you know first, for nothing exists to you without your being there to experience its existence. You imagine you do not know your self, because you cannot describe your self. You can always say: ‘I know that I am’ and you will refuse as untrue the statement: ‘I am not’. But whatever can be described cannot be your self, and what you are cannot be described. You can only know your self by being yourself without any attempt at self-definition and self-description. Once you have understood that you are nothing perceivable or conceivable, that whatever appears in the field of consciousness cannot be your self, you will apply yourself to the eradication of all self-identification, as the only way that can take you to a deeper realisation of your self. You literally progress by rejection – a veritable rocket. To know that you are neither in the body nor in the mind, though aware of both, is already self-knowledge. I AM THAT: 99

Q: I find that the various aspects of myself are at war between themselves and there is no peace in me. Where are freedom and courage, wisdom and compassion? My actions merely increase the chasm in which I exist. – M: It is all so, because you take yourself to be somebody, or something. Stop, look, investigate, ask the right questions, come to the right conclusions and have the courage to act on them and see what happens. The first steps may bring the roof down on your head, but soon the commotion will clear and there will be peace and joy. You know so many things about yourself, but the knower you do not know. Find out who you are, the knower of the known. Look within diligently, remember to remember that the perceived cannot be the perceiver. Whatever you see, hear or think of, remember – you are not what happens, you are he to whom it happens. Delve deeply into the sense ‘I am’ and you will surely discover that the perceiving centre is universal, as universal as the light that illumines the world. All that happens in the universe happens to you, the silent witness. On the other hand, whatever is done, is done by you, the universal and inexhaustible energy. I AM THAT: 99

Q: I can only investigate the mind with the mind. – M: By all means use your mind to know your mind. It is perfectly legitimate and also the best preparation for going beyond the mind. Being, knowing and enjoying is your own. First realise your own being. This is easy because the sense ‘I am’ is always with you. Then meet yourself as the knower, apart from the known. Once you know yourself as pure being, the ecstasy of freedom is your own. I AM THAT: 99

Q: Shall I call the way of control and discipline raja yoga and the way of detachment – jnana yoga? And the worship of an ideal – bhakti yoga? – M: If it pleases you. Words indicate, but do not explain. What I teach is the ancient and simple way of liberation through understanding. Understand your own mind and its hold on you will snap. The mind misunderstands, misunderstanding is its very nature. Right understanding is the only remedy, whatever name you give it. It is the earliest and also the latest, for it deals with the mind as it is. Nothing you do will change you, for you need no change. You may change your mind or your body, but it is always something external to you that has changed, not yourself. Why bother at all to change? realise once for all that neither your body nor your mind, nor even your consciousness is yourself and stand alone in your true nature beyond consciousness and unconsciousness. No effort can take you there, only the clarity of understanding. Trace your misunderstandings and abandon them, that is all. There is nothing to seek and find, for there is nothing lost. Relax and watch the ‘I am’. Reality is just behind it. Keep quiet, keep silent; it will emerge, or, rather, it will take you in. I AM THAT: 99

Q: I thought there is always a chance. – M: In theory – yes. In practice a situation must arise, when all the factors necessary for self-realisation are present. This need not I discourage you. Your dwelling on the fact of ‘I am’ will soon create another chance. For, attitude attracts opportunity. All you know is second-hand. Only ‘I am’ is first-hand and needs no proofs. Stay with it. I AM THAT: 99

Q: What do you mean by saying: I know myself as I am? – M: Before the mind – I am. ‘I am’ is not a thought in the mind; the mind happens to me, I do not happen to the mind. And since time and space are in the mind, I am beyond time and space, eternal and omnipresent. I AM THAT: 100