
Maharaj: When people go about on their search for spiritual knowledge they don’t think for themselves. They only think of what knowledge [concepts] they have already acquired.
Many who come here have read I Am That They come here to see, as a curiosity, who this person is. They have a look and then go away. If you want to find out something more, then sit quietly and listen for as long as you can, and try to understand what is said.
What is to be understood, have you understood?
Questioner: I have difficulties accepting. I watch this incredible resistance building up.
M: Who says that?
Q: The difficulty itself.
M: Whatever is to be understood is there, One. That state in which you were before you acquired this knowledge
you identified with the body-mind. Whatever you have acquired, including the body-mind, that will go, and it is useless, and that is that. But your original state, before you acquired the body, is the Truth, is the Real state, and it will remain.
Infancy has grown into youth, middle age, and old age. During all these stages, that enjoyment you had of being, of being alive, of existing, all that is false. All these stages will disappear, and that which understands, even that will go.
Q: Concerning this coming and going that Maharaj talks about—are they experiences of the body or of consciousness?
M: Through what do you derive experiences?
Q: Through the senses.
M: What is the original cause of your existence, what is it a mixture of?
Q: My existence is this consciousness, and all the happenings are already contained in consciousness.
I don’t agree that you can lose it, as you say. The body may go, but all the experiences in consciousness, consciousness itself, don’t go. What goes is the particular form of this body, but the knowing, which is consciousness itself, doesn’t go. That will appear again in another form.
M: How did you get your form? What is the cause of that form?
Q: That is another matter.
M: No second and no third and not another. I am talking to you. It concerns you. I am asking you about that first moment of mix-up. This body, this form is there. What is the root cause?
Q: Two people getting together. These two people getting together, is it not that same knowing prolonging itself? Consciousness itself keeping this movement. . . .
M: I want to know the name and form of that mixture.
Q: All name and all form.
M: You are not hearing what I am talking about. It is not reaching you. Keep quiet.
Do you understand the cause of your calling some person your parent? Is it by the bodies or the essences of the bodies?
Q: The essences.
M: What exactly has happened there?
Q: I don’t know.
M: You presume you have become a Jnani and are going to write a book, don’t you?
Q: No, he is presuming that I am going to write a book. Because I am seeing a Jnani, that’s why I am in this discussion.
M: In that state in which the mind was not—put your attention there. Pay attention to that state.
You are all just like people who visit many shops, spiritual shops. To get a taste of various delicacies, tasting bit by bit, little by little.
Q: If Maharaj has answered all his questions, why are all these questions coming through his mind?
M: I am apart from the questions.
Q: It is no solution, talking.
M: It appears to you like that? Pay attention and it will happen. You must learn to live without identifying yourself with the body. All activities, even the mind flow, come from the vital breath. Give attention to the consciousness—that is meditation.
Q: Thoughts grab us and take us away.
M: Thoughts have so much power because of the identification with the body.
Q: It is very difficult just to watch pain. I become afraid.
M: What is watching pain is yourself. With consciousness you have to hold consciousness. Give attention to this
what you are. Once you know what you are you become fearless. Remove the concept of death from your mind. There is no death as such. I am sure you are not going to die. That is only a concept or idea.
Your identification with the body has continued since childhood, so in order to get rid of it also takes time.
For the beingness to sustain itself there is occupation. Whatever you gain has no value, and the one who gains also has no value. You will come to understand the hollowness of this game. Only in your ignorant phase you take everything as so important. We give undue importance to things that come and go.
I am talking from the standpoint where I do not know of myself, that I am. I don’t belong to the realm of waking and sleep states. How can I presume that I am like this or that? You presume that I am something or somebody.
Q: Could Maharaj talk about posture, Hatha Yoga, a little bit?
M: I don’t deal with any physical disciplines, nor with Yoga, nor with anything you get from it. What I am trying to expound is this: you are I only, I am you. I know that you are I only, but you don’t know; so I am trying to give you that introduction, that acquaintance. By performing these physical Yoga asanas, etc., you get a certain satisfaction, but that is not spiritual knowledge.
Q: Do people acquire powers through the Yoga process?
M: In the Yogic process some people acquire powers, but it does have an end. It is not the Ultimate, the Eternal. This Absolute, this Eternal, people do not get instantly. People get involved in powers and miracles and revel in that only. They will be busy with that but not the Ultimate. They will undergo rebirths.