Questioner: It is a matter of daily experience that on waking up the world
suddenly appears. Where does it come from?
Maharaj: Before anything can come into being there must be somebody to whom it
comes. All appearance and disappearance presupposes a change against some
changeless background.
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?
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?
Q: I seek the source of their knowledge under their instruction.
M: Is it not important to you to know whether you are a mere body, or
something else? Or, maybe nothing at all? Don’t you see that all your problems
are your body’s problems -- food, clothing, shelter, family, friends, name,
fame, security, survival -- all these lose their meaning the moment you
realise that you may not be a mere body.
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.
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?
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.
Q: How do I get at it?
M: You need not get at it, for you are it. It will get at you, if you give it
a chance. Let go your attachment to the unreal and the real will swiftly and
smoothly step into its own. Stop imagining yourself being or doing this or
that and the realisation that you are the source and heart of all will dawn
upon you. With this will come great love which is not choice or predilection,
nor attachment, but a power which makes all things love-worthy and
lovable.
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