October 2, 1979


Questioner:: What is the witness? Is it the mind or something beyond the mind? 

Maharaj: It is the knower of the mind. 

Q: If I say “I Am,” is that the mind? 

M: Beingness expresses through the mind with the words. 

Q: In the books translated by Mr. Frydman the words destiny and justice are used. Are these the same as karma? 

M: Justice is the decision given. Destiny is the storehouse out of which all this manifestation flows. It is the principle out of which you have emanated. It is something like the negative of a filM: consciousness is already present in that source from which you have emanated, so the film is being projected. What is to be projected is already recorded; so whatever activities happen through that beingness—which is you—are your destiny. Every action, or every step, which that beingness will take is already registered in the film. 

Q: Do the stars show that negative, as some astrologers claim? 

M: It is a direct perjury. Nine months prior to your birth the destiny was created. 

Q: By whom? 

M: Nobody; it just happens. 

Q: The negative exists before the destiny starts. Where is the negative printed? 

M: That is the skill of Mula-Maya [primary illusion]. 

Q: Some people believe that as they sow, so shall they reap, so that somewhere before they have sown the structure of the negative. 

M: That is only hearsay; do you have evidence of it? 

Q: No. 

M: Maya is the primary source of illusion. At that point love for the Self begins; “I Am,” the love to be. Its expression is all this manifestation. 

Q: Why do some people have more love for this false self than others? 

M: There is no question of one loving more than another; the state of love is present, and you have to enjoy or suffer it. Even when we suffer we love our beingness. 

Q: When you practice witnessing, is it consciously? 

M: What do you mean by practicing witnessing? What you are trying to do is intensify your own beingness. Witnessing will happen automatically, but the Self must open up. Prior to witnessing you are. 

Q: Maharaj said to quiet down, but my life style makes it difficult to be quiet; my job has a lot of pressure and activity. Does Maharaj recommend getting a different job? 

M: I don’t say do this or that. Do what you like; just know that you are not the doer, it is just happening. The destiny that has come into existence on the first day of conception is unfolding itself. There is nothing that you can claim the doership of. Once you know who you are, that destiny does not bind you. 

Q: What do people who die do to realize that they don't have a body? 

M: Nothing happens, nobody is dead. The texts say that those who die with undissolved concepts will be reborn. 

Q: When they are reborn, do they have choices of different bodies, such as going into family A or family B? 

M: Why do you bother yourself with such extraneous matters? Concentrate on convincing yourself that you are not the body. This body is made of the five elements and is really a food body; you have no part in it. You are not concerned with this food body. Strength, the breath, and the beingness are dependent on food and water. Without food and water the “l Amness" is absent. 

Q: Then does the “I Amness" come back again later? 

M: You are none of these things. There is no question of rebirth. 

Q: It seems that something called food is floating around in the air. You can make a body out of it, and if you have some wrong concepts you'll land in that food body. Actually implicit in the teaching, it seems to me, is that there really isn’t such a thing as food and a food body; that's only a concept. 

M: From what level are you talking now? How do you understand that the body is not there, that it comes from the mind? 

Q: I'm getting that from what Maharaj says in the book. 

M: Have you realized it? 

Q: If I had realized it I would be a Jnani. 

M: Exactly. Until then the body is born the way every body is born. 

Q: Is the way things are for us now that we have a concept of a body which we should accept and not create another concept that there is not a body? 

M: Go to the source. Who knows that there is a body? Something is prior to the creation of the body. 

Q: Do all the efforts that we make in this regard have any effect in destroying the sense of “I Am," or is that part of the film? So the effort that people think they are making to reach the goal has no effect, it is just all contained in that film? 

M: Be in that source which is the light behind consciousness. You are not the consciousness, understand that. What is happening is in that Mula-Maya. 

The cassette records what I am saying, but whatever is recorded in the cassette is not me. Just as the original voice is not in the cassette, so you are separate from the chemical, the body, the "I Amness," the consciousness. 

Q: Is the realization in the film? 

M: It cannot be in the film because you are the knower of the film. Now ponder whatever you have heard and come back at five o'clock. 

That mind is only an accumulation of the thoughts that are present in the manifestation. All your activities depend on the mind, and mind depends on all your memories and whatever you have heard in this world. 

We are absorbing whatever happens in this world, and we are also looking at it from our own point of view, putting our own concepts on those things. And because this body- mind consciousness absorbs all that happens in the world, we go on crediting this “I Am" consciousness with previous births, birth, karma, etc. You accept certain things as good and virtuous, and reject other as bad or sinful, but these are only the concepts you have acquired in the world, and there is no basis for the distinction. 

Q: Yesterday Maharaj spoke of the chakras [centers of psychic energy in the body], and the Brahma-randhra. I wondered if we should be concerned with them in our meditation. 

M: Forget about chakras. Catch hold of the knowledge 

Q: Who is to catch hold of the “I Am"? 

M: Who is asking this question? 

Q: Are we able to go beyond our thoughts, or, in the Absolute, are the thoughts just part of the film, and if they are, do we just have to bear with them? 

M: Who wants to go beyond thought? Who is he? Be- fore consciousness appears in the waking state, that is the Absolute; as soon as the consciousness appears the thoughts come. You do not have to bear with them, nor discard theM: simply know them. 

Q: All the other things that determine who you call the original—those things do not exist? 

M: But that is only when you reach that original stage, when you are a Jnani. 

Q: We are already that. 

M: If you knew it there would be no questions, and you would not be here. 

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