
Questioner: In the process of meditation when one reaches the silence and asks “Who am I?” there comes a profounder silence where the notion “I” does not arise. Is this the state, and if so, can one have flashes of it prior to Self realization?
Maharaj: These experiences are in the realm of your birth state.
Q: The state that I am referring to is the state where birth is forgotten, as are the name and form.
M: What you have described of samadhi, or meditation, is correct, but it is still the product of the body-mind imagination. Whatever experiences you have in meditation, of that silence also, is confined to the realm of consciousness. Consciousness is born and it will go. You are prior to it.
Q: It is also said that the Self is Self-effulgent, that it is light, and that the consciousness appears by a reflection of that light. If one were to pursue the light, could one find the state to which Maharaj is alluding?
M: Whatever is manifest before you has come out of that consciousness.
Q: I was talking about a Self-effulgent light which equates itself with the Self. If one is a seeker of Truth, by finding that light would one find the Truth?
M: There is the true Awareness, from which comes consciousness, which is your feeling “I Am”; be one with your consciousness and that is all that you can do, the Ultimate state must come to you. You can only watch whatever happens—there is nothing you can do to get it.
Q: Is there in Maharaj’s awareness a Self-effulgent light that does not constrict his awareness but is part and parcel of it?
Translator: He has confirmed that earlier. Those are only names—you can call it true Awareness, the Ultimate state, or the effulgent light—the meaning is the same.
Q: It is not literal?
Translator: It is not literal.
Q: Many of the religious texts of Advaita Vedanta express the notion that as one becomes Self-aware there is a light which permeates, and that the light which the world, or Maya, has is a reflection of that primordial light. Is that not literal?
M: Maya is the expression of that One which cannot be described. Consciousness is manifesting itself through all this, and you are before the consciousness. The consciousness is the soul of this manifest world, and you, the Absolute, are the soul of the consciousness.
Whatever you may have read is only the concepts of the writers. Does it tally with your personal knowledge?
Q: No, these are the guidelines toward achieving the sense of the “I Am.” They also say that all Gurus are one.
M: Guru is the same all-pervading consciousness “I Am.” The Sat-Guru has gone beyond all these concepts, including the primary concept “I Am.”
Q: Can this going beyond be done on a step-by-step basis, or does it happen immediately?
M: You say a child is born when the body arrives. Didn't it take nine months to develop that body? If you consider the nine months it is step-by-step, but the birth itself is sudden.
Q: All right, there is a gestation period; is that analogically correct with the facts?
M: I have an analogy that even the nine months is not correct. You Are before the gestation period. The whole thing is Maya: nobody is born and nobody dies—it is a distortion.
Q: That is true, but some of us are more distorted than others. The question is how to become less distorted.
M: Back again to the original position—nothing is to be done. Be in your beingness and everything that is to happen will happen. You must have a deep yearning to attain the Truth. You must have the intense need to understand. To such a person, the Guru arrives and breaks the shell.
Q: Yes, but there is another injunction that one should remain desireless; the yearning is also a desire.
M: At that moment it is a necessity. To become desireless is the last desire and it must exist.
Q: How should this yearning manifest itself?
M: Do you have to be told that you are awake?
Q: Sometimes, yes.
M: You know it.
Q: Well, sometimes the sadhaka has to be hit on the head.
M: I agree. Your beingness is something to which you are entitled. That is your primary capital in life and that will do whatever is to be done. That state which was yours before you were born, and which is yours after the body dies, is your permanent property. Your “I Amness” is consumed in that Ultimate capital of yours.
Q (Another questioner): I have a question. Why do I feel sad when I see that my parents and the Guru are only concepts? I have so much love, and to see them as concepts brings a feeling of pain.
M: There is no other concept except that “I am born”; at the root of all parents and Gurus is that primordial illusion.
Q: Things that are ugly go easily, but not so the things that one loves; that brings pain.
M: These are the pangs of things which should not have been done and are done, and which should have been done and were not done; hence these pains. That attachment should not be body-bound; overcome that sense of body identification. Love for the Guru is without the feeling of duality.
Q: There are so few Self-realized beings and so many sadhakas wishing to become realized. Why are there so few who have achieved success?
M: Everything is spontaneous, this manifestation has no cause; therefore nothing can be pointed out as a cause for your question as to why few become Siddhas. This question cannot be answered.
You try to be that love which is not conditioned by the body-mind. If you are that love, it is total, complete love, but if it arises out of your body-mind, that is the root cause of your misery. Detachment comes only after you are free from bodily love. Be free from the body-mind state and be in the state of love, and that will be the source of all bliss.
Q: Sometimes I believe there is a communion—the high- est communion—with the Sat-Guru in the silence.
M: It's a good taste, but it is personal.
Q: Perhaps it might be personal until one becomes absorbed by what one adores; then it may become impersonal.
M: Did you see us worship this morning?
Q: Yes, I did.
M: There is no darkness, there is no daylight, there is no deep sleep, there is no waking state, no hunger, no thirst. That is the state, but all this is my expression. You feel that you are in that, but I feel that I am not in that. I worship, I do bhajans, but I am not in that. My true state is beyond that.
Q: I felt like the Self was worshiping the Self.
M: Whatever you call it is all right, but it is still a concept. Any concept you utter frames your future; therefore don't have any concepts. You are already the Ultimate, don't try to be something.
Q: What does one do about the practical side of this relative existence? That is, the working, the achieving, the goal-oriented society that we live in, the families that we have; what is to be done about them?
M: This world expression is out of the five-elemental consciousness, whose responsibility it is to take care of this manifest world. The world is the expression of your consciousness, but you are not the consciousness. Understand this principle and carry out your life as you like.