
VISITOR: One Spanish gentleman, who visited here, had practiced a lot of meditation but he could not get rid of attachment.
MAHARAJ: So long as you are attached to the body, you will not be able to transcend attachment to various people and things.
V: Whenever I try to get hold of myself, I feel the absence of love for my relatives.
M: Do not be concerned about other people, be concerned with yourself.
V: After doing meditation, I lost love for others.
M: It is not that your love became less. The love now merges in your own self. Your own beingness is love and bliss. You have objectified your love.’ Your very nature is love. By stabilizing in beingness you collect all the love which was diffused and spread outside. You abide in that knowledge “I am.” Whatever “you are” inside the body represents love only. This love works, collects food, eats, digests, and acquires knowledge. “You are” is the love, and expresses itself through the vital breath; that is, activities go on because of the vital breath. Just as the body has a number of limbs for carrying out worldly activities, so the knowledge “you are” has the vital breath as its limb for activity. It is not a question of loving others, but directly knowing what “you are.” That love is looking after you; it is your nourishment, your motive and energizing force. You focus your attention there. Its movement is indicated by the vital breath; it is the life force. The tangible feeling of its manifestation is the knowledge “you are.” This love is the universal love. Not directed at any particular person or thing, it is very much like space. Space does not say, I am exclusively for so and so. It does not make love privately to someone. That love is manifest and universal. Because you identify with the body, all the troubles begin. Primary love is “love to be”; only after that can you think of loving others. Why do you strive “to be”? Simply, because you “love to be.” The biggest stumbling block is the identification with the body-mind. Understand that it is not that you can become God; you are God. You are godly, originally, but you become something you are not. You should understand that your destination is your own self, the “I am.” It is the very source of everything. That “I am” is to be realized.
V: That is the destination, but how to reach it?
M: You are derailed from the search because of the body. You toppled from the godly vantage point by catching hold of the body. Because “you are,” the consciousness is. Before you say “I am,” you already are.
V: Agreed.
M: You know now that “you are.” Be that. Here I am not going to tell you what is written in the scriptures, however sophisticated they may be. I am going to tell you simply that “you are.” If you like my talks, you may come; if you do not like them, then stay away. At present, you may consider yourself to be an insignificant person of limited worth, intelligence. But actually it is not so. You are very ancient. You are infinite, eternal. This feeling of “I-am-ness” is like an advertisement; it indicates that eternal state. “I am’—the word or the “I am” feeling that you get inside you—is not eternal. But You are eternal and ancient.
V: How to understand that I am the eternal?
M: This cannot be understood in the usual intellectual way; that state is spontaneously realized. When you are in the state of “I-am-ness,” you merge in the eternal state. Now you know that you are and that you are sitting. How did you develop this conviction?
V: I know I am sitting here.
M: In the same way, you must develop the conviction that you are the Absolute; this is most important. You have to focus your attention on that only. Before the appearance of the beingness or knowingness, I, the Absolute, am already there, eternally. Who will focus attention? Who knows that this is focusing of attention? That which focuses attention is prior to attention.
In the mind, how can you meditate? In what you call “meditation,” you need an object. Who observes the meditation? Who practices the meditation? The process necessitates the presence of “someone” as well as an “object,” does it not? But before anything else, the Meditator must be present. Now let Him alone be, without any object. In true meditation, the Meditator is “alone,” without any object to meditate upon.
Prior to the waking state, I, or the Absolute, ever is. On waking it dawns upon me that “I am.” And only after that, all other happenings and things come to mind. Again, I, the Absolute, must be before the waking state. Stay put here. Abide therein. You have to stabilize in your present true nature, “I am.” All other secondary and redundant objects should be got rid of. Do not focus your attention on any of these things. The whole process is to be in your source. At present, what is your source? “I am.” Catch hold of that “I-am-ness” and be in it.
You have to realize your own self. You must be at the borderline between “I am” and “Not-‘I am’”. Suppose it does not occur to you that “you are.” Does it mean that you are not? If that “I-am-ness” is not there, You, the Absolute, are. As such, You prevail prior to, during and after the waking state. During the waking state the sense of your “I-am-ness” perceives the world; and from the standpoint of You, the Absolute, there is witnessing of your “I-am-ness” and its perceptions.
V: I want to do something spiritual.
M: Do you want self-knowledge or not? You want to do something spiritual, but you must be there for doing something. You must know “You.” Who is the doer of spirituality? “I am” is the doer. When you are involved in daily activities, in the house, street and office, “who” is the common factor? It is your “I-am-ness.” This “I-am-ness” of yours is doing everything.
Suppose from morning till night I have been doing a lot of things. What is the sum total of my activities? All these many activities took place in my state of beingness. In deep sleep, “I am” went into oblivion; it forgot itself. Then what is the use of everything that was done? Beingness is not an eternal state. It is a temporary phase—a passing show. Consciousness is the product of the five elements and their interactions. The result of the five elements is temporary, and time-bound. Your knowingness and all that you accumulate always come subsequent to your beingness. You can know something only when knowingness knows “it is.” Your fall occurs when you try to identify something within the sphere of consciousness as “yourself.” Your consciousness manifests the world. When you try to equate the body with yourself, the fall begins.
V: Who thinks I am the consciousness?
M: You! Without beingness, there is no thinking. Beingness is a basic precondition for thinking or not-thinking. Suppose you have pain in the body. Who witnesses that pain? Your beingness only witnesses it. In the absence of beingness, how can there be witnessing at all? The real witness is the eternal Self only. So long as beingness is there, you are the beingness. When the beingness is not, you are the Absolute. Everybody that comes here has to go. Similarly, the beingness which has come, must go.
July 28th 1980