January 2, 1980


Questioner: In the unmanifest, in the awareness, a feeling '‘I Am” becomes total consciousness, but the consciousness within oneself, which is time-bound, the knower of this consciousness cannot be that consciousness. He is totally different. A Jnani is established in the state prior to all knowledge. 

Maharaj: Where did you come from? Who directed you here? 

Q: I am from Australia and I was here before, three years ago, for a few days. 

M: Have you felt any effects from when you were here before? 

Q: Yes, a change. 

M: You have been coming here for knowledge, but would you be prepared to accept life without the body? 

Q: Yes. What are the characteristics of life without the body? 

M: That is unchanging; the life with the body is changing, transient. Your true nature is such that you are not aware of the consciousness or the waking and sleep states. 

The trouble is that people do not really understand with conviction that the body, breath, and consciousness are time-bound, and the beginning and end of life is a tiny thing that has happened in the state that is permanent. At the end of the day the consciousness will disappear and no one will want to know the road by which to travel. 

In life one comes with a ticket, and at the end of life one must go; there is no appeal. Realize that the beginning and end of life is a journey with a time-bound ticket, and know that at the end of the ticket whatever has come will go; and be a witness of that, step out of it. 

Q: There seems to be a lot of evidence that consciousness does somehow continue after death. 

M: It is a concept. Actually no one has an experience even of the birth and death of this life. 

Q: How did they happen? 

M: Have you had any dreams? 

Q: Yes. 

M: You are also present in your own dreams and you see as someone totally different; at the end of the dream it all disappears. 

Q: Why did I get into this body consciousness? 

M: You are sleeping safe and sound in your bed, warm and comfortable. So why do you convey yourself in your dreams to a state where you are struggling for breath and dying in a nightmare? All this manifest is only a dream of the Unmanifest and is not really happening. 

That which makes us believe that we are is the cause, and at the end of it we are back in our original state. One who knows this has no fear of anything that is happening. 

Q: Would it be reasonable to say that the Jnani has certain spontaneous observable characteristics, one of which might be compassion? 

M: Exactly what do you mean by the word compassion? 

Q: Everyday Maharaj meets people and tries to communicate a kind of knowledge. Why does he bother? 

M: This compassion is not for the individual, but that beingness which has trapped itself into identifying with a number of individuals. 

Q: Is this compassion a spontaneous relationship between the Absolute and the consciousness? 

M: At the very point and at the same time that the Unmanifest became manifest the reason for this compassion arose spontaneously. 

Q: I understand. When the Jnani’s body dies his true state is unconditioned, but this compassion doesn't die. Does the Jnani then reincarnate himself? What happens to the compassion that has originated itself and vanished? 

M: ITie entire manifest world is a very clear expression of the spontaneous arising of this compassion. One does not realize the instant expression of this compassion in the world. Before the baby is born the milk is formed in the breast of the mother, and the compassion to feed the baby arises at the same moment. A woman is not inclined to feed someone else’s baby. 

Q: What I was getting at is whether after death a seed remains, a kind of continuity, whether the Jnani wishes to take a new body. 

M: The very conception of something continuing from one birth to another is wrong. When you become a full Jnani you will understand that without you even the five elements will not have any life. The knowledge I am giving now is like feeding infants, but when you have the full knowledge you will understand that your beingness sustains the entire universe. 

This beingness is of no value, it brings nothing but unhappiness, and it is time-bound, but simultaneously, so far as the manifest world is concerned, the tiniest being alive is the support of the entire universe. 

This consciousness that one has is of a manifold nature— it can adopt any form it likes—whereas your true nature is full in itself, unchanging. 

You have knowledge of the nature of man and of the nature of consciousness. What more knowledge are you seeking? 

Q: Actually I am seeking to go beyond knowledge. 

M: There is really no going, either beyond or prior to. That state is there. Man thinks he has to go from one state to another, but there is no going. Is there anything further you are seeking? 

Q: Just to have all the false attachments, false identification fall off. 

M: That is the whole trouble, one thinks that certain misconceptions have come to him. All those concepts are movements in consciousness, and once the consciousness itself disappears the movements that have come with it also disappear. You are already in that state, there is nothing to acquire. Now you know this, and, for you, all this is useless. 

Q: Right. I would like Maharaj to explain about the Brahma-randhra. I am familiar with the Yoga teaching on it, but Maharaj's is slightly different. 

M: There are two things, the world and one's presence, the feeling of presence, that is, the consciousness, the beingness. That is Brahma, “l am present"; randhra means the tiniest of apertures, and in that aperture is the silent, primordial sound, which gives you the impression that you are, but you really are not. This sound in that aperture gives you the feeling that you are, but be sure that you are not. 

Q: Very good. 

M: I take my stand in the original state where I was not aware that I am. This body and the beingness has come, but knowing its nature I do not expect anything from it. 

When a Yogi is totally absorbed in his meditation or Yoga, this soundless sound so fills him that he becomes drunk with it for a while and then it subsides. 

When the body dies this individual consciousness will merge with the total consciousness, but even so, that total consciousness knows that it is, and so long as one knows that it is, it is in a state of duality. 

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