January 3, 1980


Maharaj: The moment the sense of beingness arose there was a sense of duality. The manifest world is full of movement which creates and destroys innumerable forms all the time. This consciousness is of a universal nature; just like space. The consciousness within the body is a minute experience, but its nature, its quality is essentially the same, exactly like space. 

The imagination and memory create a body and a personality, and the manifest assumes wrongly that it is a body and a personality. 

Questioner: What causes the beingness to arise? 

M: Just as you have no cause for your dream, there is no cause for the beingness. Explain to me how you have a dream. It is causeless; therefore it is without logic. 

All that we see in this manifest world is exactly like a picture on the television screen. 

Whom do we call parents? Only two physical forms; if they disappear we consider that our parents are gone. That which has brought about my beingness without my knowledge constitutes my parents, that is the root. 

It is only because I am that I see the world and think of God; therefore God is because I am. If I am not, God is not. I will give you a formula which will do everything for you: think continuously in terms of “I am God, there is no God without me.” When you are firmly established in this, whatever is unimportant will gradually fade away. 

A step further: I have told you to say “I am God,” but now what I am getting at is not the words “I am God,” but that which was prior to the understanding of the words. That is God and that is you, not the words. 

The postman comes here to deliver the mail. He may be a small man but he is fully aware that he represents the government. My feeling that I am is the registration of the presence of God. 

The original question was how to go beyond this consciousness. The consciousness is time-bound, but it is the only capital we have and that is why it is so important. 

Q: I haven't got the hang of it yet. 

M: That is because the identity with the body is so strong; that is not easy to give up. 

Q: Give us some trick by which we can give up this identity with the body. 

M: The only answer is continuous practice of meditating and thinking on what I have said. Gradually this self-limitation will disappear and the sense of separation will go. For the riddle to be solved one has to meditate deeply over a long period. Meditation means the beingness absorbing itself into the beingness. Over a long period of this kind of meditation one will come to know the Knower of this beingness. 

I am the Knower of this consciousness. I can only know something else, I cannot know myself; and that riddle will solve itself by continuous deep meditation. 

You are now convinced, are you not, that you are the knower of the consciousness? 

Q: Yes. 

M: You are convinced, but there is still a mental identification with the body which makes you feel that something good is going to happen to you. Now you have a certain amount of knowledge and it makes you feel very happy. This knowledge has driven away ignorance. In the washing away of the ignorance the knowledge will also disappear, only you remain. 

The sound that must be heard is the silent sound. Only the silent sound can hear the actual sound. 

Q: Is God the equivalent of the manifest formless? 

M: God is the soundless sound. It is in the manifest because all we are talking about is the manifest; the Unmanifest cannot talk at all. 

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