
Maharaj: No great man having taken birth has wrought an iota of change in the consciousness. What is, is; it will never change. You just have to see and know; no action or ritual is called for. Unknowingly this knowingness has appeared in you, and you have to go through it, willingly or unwillingly. The experience is there and somebody comes later to experience it.
No one can change what he has to face as experience so long as he is identifying with the body and mind. When there are floods or fires, loss or gain, you just have to accept them. That is consciousness working.
Questioner: I had an interesting experience last night. I was sitting alone, enjoying my dinner, when a very boorish man with his family of five came in and commandeered my table, telling me that I should not have the table to myself. I felt like hitting the guy. What is one supposed to do?
M: You must restrain yourself as much as possible.
Q: It would not have been the body restraining itself.
M: The body does nothing. The body is protected by the vital breath and that quality of beingness. Vital breath is responsible for all movement, and the quality of beingness sits on a high pedestal and watches.
Q: Is there a state where you feel that beingness is unrelated to the body?
M: Why don't you steady yourself in that beingness. Forget the body sense, and what remains is only you.
Q: I have faith that I am everything—there is nothing else—but it only comes rarely and for a short time.
M: Even when you witness that everything is you, it is still the quality of the five elemental body and will not last. Waking state, deep sleep, and this Turiya—all these are temporary states.
Q: Then what is eternal?
M: That One which you have not forgotten. That Eternal state is beyond the state of remembering and forgetting.
Q: Where is the proof?
M: At that stage, whatever the principle is that is demanding proof, only that principle remains. In that state there is nothing; so where is the question of producing proof and for whom?
Q: What I meant is: at what stage do you feel that you have it?
M: There is nobody else, there is you only. What you are doing is trying to identify with God, but God can’t be unless you are.
Q: I don’t believe in God.
M: If you don’t believe in God, do you believe in body? Who rejects God? Who is that?
Q: Me.
M: What is that “me”?
Q: It is just a feeling.
M: You are God; if God is not, you are not. If God is, you are.
Q: When Christ said that He and the Father were one, was He referring to His father as Iswara and not as the Supreme Being?
M: The one whose actions are responsible for the beingness is the father.
Q: Christ was not referring to a physical being as the Father?
M: I would not like to decide that. Since Christ was there, the beingness was sustained by the food body. Christ is a great Sage; don’t involve yourself in His ancestry. Meditate on Him, be yourself sanctified with His memory; in the process you will be purified. No form will be left of you.
Q: In Western tradition there have been many Saints and Sages who have cured people of various afflictions. The Eastern Sage tends not to get involved in healing. Why is that?
M: An Eastern Sage also has powers to perform miracles. In the process of curing people, naturally his status would be elevated and he would be held in high esteem by society, with the result there is the chance that he will develop pride.
Q: But there is no one there to feel pride.
M: Don't get involved in concepts; it will strangle you. Rarely some Sage can perform miracles and not feel pride.
Q: The Sage does not have pride. Who is there to have pride?
M: All the activities of this manifest world are through the consciousness. You are imagining a Sage with a body.
This beingness is contained in all the five elements, but it is not personal, it is universal. If you go to sleep with the knowledge that you are consciousness, that same thought will prevail through the day. Sleep with the conviction that the body is space. It is the thought that you are the body that brings suffering. Keep in mind, every day, that you are not the body, that you are simply the knowledge, the consciousness. After my death my body will be transformed into space; so why not presume that it is the space now?
Q: This is adding more concepts.
M: I am getting rid of the concept that you are the body. Why do you say that I am adding more concepts?
Q: To say that my body is space is another concept.
M: The very soul of all concepts is “I Am."
Q: To think “I am space" before going to sleep is a technique.
M: You had better quit and tell everyone that you came across a fool and that he would have hanged you, but somehow you saved yourself. I was telling you the nature of that consciousness; I want to gradually make you free from all concepts. Just by saying that everything is a concept does not free you. You will merely go from a gross concept to a subtler one. When you are entertaining gross concepts such as “I am the body," they multiply into more concepts: “My body is ill," “I must take pills," “I must see a doctor," etc. Suppose you say, “I am space"; what further concept can you have?
I want to take you to that “I Am" concept which is the last outpost of illusion and get rid of it. Understand the quality of these concepts.
Q: I have a question. Earlier Maharaj said that attentiveness should always be present. Can attentiveness be experienced as a feeling? Feeling seems to be prior to the knowing. There is an underlying sensation of always knowing that I am. Is that equal to perceiving, witnessing?
M: The feeling is the same as attention. When you are aware “I am the seer, I am the knower," that simply is, and It has no shape. That knowledge is formless; when you embrace the form the problems arise.