
MAHARAJ: What I am talking about is the knowledge Ae AN # of totality. It is not a piece of information. I ponder over manifestation as a whole, while you pick up only a fragment, a concept out of my talks, and say “I like this idea” and then give it a high status by naming it as Brahma, Vishnu etc. But you do not attempt to comprehend the total and “wholesome” meaning.
V:: You have been talking about this ignorant-child principle. Could you explain this a bit more fully?
M: When an infant is born, he is just an innocuous form of flesh and bones and all innocence. He has no mentation but has the instinct for eating, evacuation and crying. In due course, this lump of flesh develops the capacity for knowledge and action. Gradually, the knowingness “I am” is felt by it and this is followed by the mind. This “I-am-ness” feeling before the formation of mind is the ignorant-child principle, termed the balkrishna state. It is this very principle which is the source or foundation on which the infancy develops into childhood, boyhood, teenage and so on, undergoing physical and biological changes all the time. Eventually manhood is attained, when all physical and mental faculties reach their peak. But what is the root of all these attainments? It is that ignorant-child principle only, which developed with growth exclusively from inside to outside. During its growth to adulthood and later it receives, records and reacts to all the impressions through its senses and the mind. But all this happens only after it knows itself.
Your erroneous concept of knowledge is that of collecting information and ideas from the outside through the five senses of knowledge or perception. Then you give out this information to others as important knowledge and are fascinated by it. But when I talk about knowledge, I do not refer to this but to the knowledge that “you are,” your beingness, to the child principle or the balkrishna state, which is the root cause of all your acquisitions, both spiritual and worldly. You should try to understand what this child principle is. I am dealing with this only and not with your so-called “knowledge” gained externally through the senses.
This balkrishna principle has great potential. It is the “chemical” that can develop photographic memories, can retain and reproduce whatever was read or heard only once. This is the innate capacity of the “non-knowing,” ignorant-child principle, balkrishna. Here bal means the food essence, child-body, and krishna means “non-knowing,” that is, ignorance. But it has the potential to receive, respond and react.
You are not doing anything. All this is happening spontaneously in you. If you want to understand the deep underlying meaning of this, go to the very source, to your beingness, and hold on to that. But above all, do not collect concepts.
Here, these talks proceed as automatically as breathing. Hundreds of people come and listen to the talks, but I do not assume any pose. Why? In the speck of my beingness, with the beingness, while I observed myself and everything else, realization occurred to me. Henceforth, all happenings took place spontaneously. Even the talks here are spontaneous occurrences, and so I am not the speaker. Nor am I, in this state, the child principle, balkrishna, as I abide in the Absolute.
April 4th 1980