September 3, 1979


Maharaj: When death approaches you, remember that you have no shape and no color. “I am Nirguna [without attributes]this is the last thought that you should have. You know the body, but you are not the body. When you go to sleep, sleep with the remembrance of that truth. “Many impure thoughts have come and gone away, but I am immutable, I am infinite, I am the Truth.” Sleep with these thoughts and all those impure thoughts are absolved. 

Don’t go off to sleep as a slave to the mind; be its master. Form this habit, become absolutely detached and master of your mind. 

Questioner: How do I eradicate fear? 

M: The fear named birth has to be eradicated. You come here with acquisitions of various kinds of education. I want to defeat that acquisition of yours and that food which you have taken. Before that food and that knowledge, what were you? I want you to think about this. 

Q: What is consciousness? 

M: The activity of your beingness, and the activity that you see, of the whole world. This consciousness is without any color, but where there is a personality, it takes the color of that particular personality. When the beingness goes, that colorful personality merges into that colorless one, con- sciousness. There is no difference in the consciousness, it is all one, but we call it by different names. 

It is all knowledge, all consciousness, it has no measurements. When the taste of that beingness which you are feeling today merges into that universal consciousness it does not have the consciousness of limited individuality. It has not come from anywhere and it does not go anywhere. 

You are existence which is without any desire or objective; that Great One where several manifested universes have come and gone. 

Q: I have been reading and studying I Am That . 1 I still feel dissatisfied with my way of living. 

M: Have you tried to find out the reason? 

Q: No, I guess that I love my personality too much. 

M: You still feel that you are the body-mind; that is why you are feeling unhappy. 

Q: That’s right. 

M: You have been reading with the mind. Now, whenever you read the book consider that you are the universal consciousness, and from that point of view do your reading and studying. Read it from the point of view that you have no form or color, that you are the light. 

Q: I cannot read anymore if I think that I am not the body and mind. 

M: Don’t be anxious as to whether you will be able to read or not. You just do what I have told you and gradually things will unfold. Some people are quite ready to take it, and some people have to be beaten and still they don’t understand, but if you are ready, it will unfold. Some people are so tough they are like the Indian dish poppaduM: it has to be beaten a lot, and even then the dough is so tough that it has to be rolled very forcefully, and then it is fried. Some people have to be taught in this laborious way, while others are quite ready and will accept immediately they are told. Others just listen and concentrate on my words, and suddenly there is an explosion. 

You must meditate on that “I Am” without holding on to the body and mind. As you nursed at your mother’s breast when you were a baby, so you nurse at this “I Am,” the knowledge of your beingness. 

Q: For four years I have been trying to remember to stay in the “I Am.” 

M: Will you do what I have told you today? 

Q: Read the book? 

M: Whatever you have heard. Will you live like that, without the sense of being a body-mind? 

Q: I’m ashamed that I was very afraid to come here, because you never know what is going to happen. Maybe nothing, maybe many things. So, I am a little nervous. 

M: Your fear will be completely destroyed. Not only will you not be nervous, but your fear itself will go. You must nurse at the knowledge "I Am.” Remember and meditate on this also: “I have no fear, I am beyond fear.” 

Q: I have fear for all the people. If I am walking through a city in Holland, for example, I am afraid for all the people. 

M: I am telling you that this fear will gradually lessen, and will go completely, because I say so. The medicine for that fear is my word. 

Q: What is bondage? 

M: Mind is the very foundation of your bondage and liberation. The Muslims have the concept that after death the soul is confined to the tomb until the dissolution of the world; therefore they provide for that soul. In the Christian religion also they say that man, once buried in the grave, will be awakened only on doomsday and judgment will be given. 

Q: Does that really happen to those people? 

M: If they die with that concept it must happen, because the mind creates everything. The mind creates bondage and it also liberates. Today suppose I am not able to think, my mind is not very clear. What does it mean? My food essence is rather dull today. It is not getting into combustion in proper order; therefore the thinking faculty is also dull. This mind faculty also pertains to the body essences and I am not that. 

Understand clearly “You are” and “I am”; these feelings are the products of this gross earth. Out of the earth comes vegetation and the essence of “I Amness.” That “I Amness” disappears when the body drops off, because essentially it is only a product of the food essence. 

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