
Questioner: Is the witness-consciousness permanent or not?
Maharaj: It is not permanent. The knower rises and sets with the known. That
in which both the knower and the known arise and set, is beyond time. The
words permanent or eternal do not apply.
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.
Q: And what is death?
M: It is the change in the living process of a particular body. Integration
ends and disintegration sets in.
Q: But what about the knower. With the disappearance of the body, does the
knower disappear?
M: Just as the knower of the body appears at birth, so he disappears at
death.
Q: And nothing remains?
M: Life remains. Consciousness needs a vehicle and an instrument for its
manifestation. When life produces another body, another knower comes into
being,
Q: Is there a causal link between the successive body-knowers, or
body-minds?
M: Yes, there is something that may be called the memory body, or causal
body, a record of all that was thought, wanted and done. It is like a cloud
of images held together.
Q: What is this sense of a separate existence?
M: It is a reflection in a separate body of the one reality. In this
reflection the unlimited and the limited are confused and taken to be the
same. To undo this confusion is the purpose of Yoga.
Q: Does not death undo this confusion?
M: In death only the body dies. Life does not, consciousness does not,
reality does not. And the life is never so alive as after death.
Q: But does one get reborn?
M: What was born must die. Only the unborn is deathless. Find what is it
that never sleeps and never wakes, and whose pale reflection is our sense of
'I'.
Q: How am I to go about this finding out?
M: How do you go about finding anything? By keeping your mind and heart in
it. Interest there must be and steady remembrance. To remember what needs to
be remembered is the secret of success. You come to it through
earnestness.
Q: Do you mean to say that mere wanting to find out is enough? Surely, both
qualifications and opportunities are needed.
M: These will come with earnestness. What is supremely important is to be
free from contradictions: the goal and the way must not be on different
levels; life and light must not quarrel; behaviour must not betray belief.
Call it honesty, integrity, wholeness; you must not go back, undo, uproot,
abandon the conquered ground. Tenacity of purpose and honesty in pursuit
will bring you to your goal.
Q: Tenacity and honesty are endowments, surely! Not a trace of them I
have.
M: All will come as you go on. Take the first step first. All blessings come
from within. Turn within. 'l am' you know. Be with it all the time you can
spare, until you revert to it spontaneously. There is no simpler and easier
way.