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There can be, but that has no relevance to awakening. Being isn't the slightest bit interested in degrees of its own apparent self-consciousness. All and everything is the expression of being. The apparent individual can be as neurotic, as quiet and still, as intelligent, as schizophrenic or self-conscious as you like, and this is all the play of being. It is already immaculately whole.

So there can therefore be a diminishing of self-consciousness?

With themselves?

In the story, would you say that there is a correlation between awakening and people who are perhaps more at ease generally ,

No, no absolutely not, there is no correlation. But obviously, in the story, there are apparent people who are easier with being separate than others. What that someone is like has absolutely nothing to do with the reality that there isn't someone. There doesn't have to be less someone for there to be no someone. (laughing!

With themselves, yes. The correlation between that state and awakening.

Yes, it is very tempting and somehow logical to believe that if you could quiet your agitation, enlightenment might be more available. That is a confused personal belief.

people do talk about neurosis falling away.

There aren't any rules. And anyway it doesn't matter how interested anybody is in so-called liberation; already there is wholeness. Being interested or even passionately devoted to finding enlightenment is what is apparently happening in the fairy story of seeking what already is.

Surely in a sense someone who isn't so self-conscious wouldn't be interested in liberation?

Yes, it wouldn't matter if you climbed 60 mountains this afternoon, it's no different than this, it is just that you think it is. Wherever you apparently go there is only ever silence, being. So-called voices and stuff are simply being, just as your apparent need to escape from them is.

We are going to climb a mountain this afternoon, and I realised I was thinking that would be great, because I feel I want to be away from voices and stuff. And that's just mind, it's got nothing to do with ,

Yes, because all this speaking that is going on here is all simply silence sounding. That's why I would never try to impose the idea of a silent retreat because that idea is based on the misconception that not speaking is silence and silence is somehow better than apparent sound. However, in these meetings much silence happens organically because the mind just gives up.

It's a judgment about what's it all about?

When there is no-one there is no need for difference, that's the difference. All there is is what's happening and it doesn't matter if that's an inhibition or a thought; it doesn't matter if it's dream-thinking, it is what's happening. The frustration and anger of not getting this can be what's happening. Resistance or non-resistance to this may also be what's happening. Sitting on the seat, drinking tea, walking, feeling warm, feeling cold, there is only ever what is happening , including deep sleep when no-thing is what is happening. There is only being that which is apparently happening. We can't escape or attain or be aware of being; it is simply what it is. It is totally open and it's totally secret all the time there is an apparent seeking of it. What is sought can never be known but has also never been lost.

Sometimes I get that and sometimes I am just all rigid about it.

Before anything can come into being there must be somebody to whom it comes. All appearance and disappearance presupposes a change against some changeless background

It is a matter of daily experience that on waking up the world suddenly appears. Where does it come from?

In what sense? Having forgotten, or not having experienced? Don’t you experience even when unconscious? Can you exist without knowing? A lapse in memory: is it a proof of non-existence? And can you validly talk about your own non-existence as an actual experience? You cannot even say that your mind did not exist. Did you not wake up on being called? And on waking up, was it not the sense ‘I am’ that came first? Some seed consciousness must be existing even during sleep, or swoon. On waking up the experience runs: ‘I am — the body — in the world.’ It may appear to arise in succession but in fact it is all simultaneous, a single idea of having a body in a world. Can there be the sense of ‘I am’ without being somebody or other?

Before waking up I was unconscious.

Maybe something prevents you from knowing? When you do not know something which others know, what do you do?

I am always somebody with its memories and habits. I know no other ‘I am’.

Is it not important to you to know whether you are a mere body, or something else? Or, maybe nothing at all? Don’t you see that all your problems are your body’s problems — food, clothing, shelter, family, friends, name, fame, security, survival — all these lose their meaning the moment you realise that you may not be a mere body

I seek the source of their knowledge under their instruction.

Even to say that you are not the body is not quite true. In a way you are all the bodies, hearts and minds and much more. Go deep into the sense of ‘I am’ and you will find. How do you find a thing you have mislaid or forgotten? You keep it in your mind until you recall it. The sense of being, of 'I am' is the first to emerge. Ask yourself whence it comes, or just watch it quietly. When the mind stays in the 'I am' without moving, you enter a state which cannot be verbalised but can be experienced. All you need to do is try and try again. After all the sense ‘I am’ is always with you, only you have attached all kinds of things to it — body, feelings, thoughts, ideas, possessions etc. All these self-identifications are misleading. Because of them you take yourself to be what you are not

What benefit is there in knowing that I am not the body?

It is enough to know what you are not. You need not know what you are. For as long as knowledge means description in terms of what is already known, perceptual, or conceptual, there can be no such thing as self-knowledge, for what you are cannot be described, except as except as total negation. All you can say is: ‘I am not this, I am not that’. You cannot meaningfully say ‘this is what I am’. It just makes no sense. What you can point out as 'this' or 'that' cannot be yourself. Surely, you can not be 'something' else. You are nothing perceivable, or imaginable. Yet, without you there can be neither perception nor imagination. You observe the heart feeling, the mind thinking, the body acting; the very act of perceiving shows that you are not what you perceive. Can there be perception, experience without you? An experience must ‘belong'. Somebody must come and declare it as his own. Without an experiencer the experience is not real. It is the experiencer that imparts reality to experience. An experience which you cannot have, of what value is it to you?

Then what am I?

Obviously, every thing experienced is an experience. And in every experience there arises the experiencer of it. Memory creates the illusion of continuity. In reality each experience has its own experiencer and the sense of identity is due to the common factor at the root of all experiencer-experience relations. Identity and continuity are not the same. Just as each flower has its own colour, but all colours are caused by the same light, so do many experiences appear in the undivided and indivisible awareness, each separate in memory, identical in essence. This essence is the root, the foundation, the timeless and spaceless 'possibility' of all experience

The sense of being an experiencer, the sense of ‘I am’, is it not also an experience?

You need not get at it, for you are it. It will get at you, if you give it a chance. Let go your attachment to the unreal and the real will swiftly and smoothly step into its own. Stop imagining yourself being or doing this or that and the realisation that you are the source and heart of all will dawn upon you. With this will come great love which is not choice or predilection, nor attachment, but a power which makes all things love-worthy and lovable

How do I get at it?

There is no basic difference

Maharaj, you are sitting in front of me and I am here at your feet. What is the basic difference between us?

Because you imagine differences, you go here and there in search of ‘superior’ people

Still there must be some real difference, I come to you, you do not come to me.

Did I ever tell you that you do not know and, therefore, you are inferior? Let those who invented such distinctions prove them. I do not claim to know what you do not. In fact, I know much less than you do

You too are a superior person. You claim to know the real, while I do not.

I know nothing about it all and see no difference between you and me. My life is a succession of events, just like yours. Only I am detached and see the passing show as a passing show, while you stick to things and move along with them

Your words are wise, your behaviour noble, your grace all-powerful.

Nothing in particular. It so happened that I trusted my Guru. He told me I am nothing but my self and I believed him. Trusting him, I behaved accordingly and ceased caring for what was not me, nor mine

What made you so dispassionate?

Who can say? It happened so. Things happen without cause and reason and, after all, what does it matter, who is who? Your high opinion of me is your opinion only. Any moment you may change it. Why attach importance to opinions, even your own?

Why were you lucky to trust your teacher fully, while our trust is nominal and verbal?

I know nothing about miracles, and I wonder whether nature admits exceptions to her laws, unless we agree that everything is a miracle. As to my mind, there is no such thing. There is consciousness in which everything happens. It is quite obvious and within the experience of everybody. You just do not look carefully enough. Look well, and see what I see

Still, you are different. Your mind seems to be always quiet and happy. And miracles happen round you.

I see what you too could see, here and now, but for the wrong focus of your attention. You give no attention to your self. Your mind is all with things, people and ideas, never with your self. Bring your self into focus, become aware of your own existence. See how you function, watch the motives and the results of your actions. Study the prison you have built around yourself by inadvertence. By knowing what you are not, you come to know your self. The way back to your self is through refusal and rejection. One thing is certain: the real is not imaginary, it is not a product of the mind. Even the sense ‘I am’ is not continuous, though it is a useful pointer; it shows where to seek, but not what to seek. Just have a good look at it. Once you are convinced that you cannot say truthfully about your self anything except ‘I am’, and that nothing that can be pointed at, can be your self, the need for the ‘I am’ is over — you are no longer intent on verbalising what you are. All you need is to get rid of the tendency to define your self. All definitions apply to your body only and to its expressions. Once this obsession with the body goes, you will revert to your natural state, spontaneously and effortlessly. The only difference between us is that I am aware of my natural state, while you are bemused. Just like gold made into ornaments has no advantage over gold dust, except when the mind makes it so, so are we one in being — we differ only in appearance. We discover it by being earnest, by searching, enquiring, questioning daily and hourly, by giving one's life to this discovery

What do you see?

What do you consider to be wrong with your mind?

As I can see, there is nothing wrong with my body nor with my real being. Both are not of my making and need not be improved upon. What has gone wrong is the ‘inner body’, call it mind, consciousness, antahkarana, whatever the name.

What is wrong with its seeking the pleasant and shirking the unpleasant? Between the banks of pain and pleasure the river of life flows. It is only when the mind refuses to flow with life, and gets stuck at the banks, that it becomes a problem. By flowing with life I mean acceptance — letting come what comes and go what goes. Desire not, fear not, observe the actual, as and when it happens, for you are not what happens, you are to whom it happens. Ultimately even the observer you are not. You are the ultimate potentiality of which the all-embracing consciousness is the manifestation and expression

It is restless, greedy of the pleasant and afraid of the unpleasant.

Surely, the memory of an event cannot pass for the event itself. Nor can the anticipation. There is something exceptional, unique, about the present event, which the previous, or the coming do not have. There is a livingness about it, an actuality; it stands out as if illuminated. There is the ‘stamp of reality’ on the actual, which the past and the future do not have

Yet, between the body and the self there lies a cloud of thoughts and feelings, which neither server the body nor the self. These thoughts and feelings are flimsy, transient and meaningless, mere mental dust that blinds and chokes, yet they are there, obscuring and destroying.

There is nothing peculiar in the present event to make it different from the past and future. For a moment the past was actual and the future will become so. What makes the present so different? Obviously, my presence. I am real for I am always now, in the present, and what is with me now shares in my reality. The past is in memory, the future — in imagination. There is nothing in the present event itself that makes it stand out as real. It may be some simple, periodical occurrence, like the striking of the clock. In spite of our knowing that the successive strokes are identical, the present stroke is quite different from the previous one and the next — as remembered, or expected. A thing focussed in the now is with me, for I am ever present; it is my own reality that I impart to the present event

What gives the present that 'stamp of reality’?

We consider memories, only when they come into the present The forgotten is not counted until one is reminded — which implies, bringing into the now

But we deal with things remembered as if they were real.

You need not say it is unknown, for you see it in constant operation. Since you were born, has it ever changed? Things and thoughts have been changing all the time. But the feeling that what is now is real has never changed, even in dream

Yes, I can see there is in the now some unknown factor that gives momentary reality to the transient actuality.

The blankness of deep sleep is due entirely to the lack of specific memories. But a general memory of well-being is there. There is a difference in feeling when we say ‘I was deeply asleep’ from ‘I was absent’

In deep sleep there is no experience of the present reality.

Desire is the memory of pleasure and fear is the memory of pain. Both make the mind restless. Moments of pleasure are merely gaps in the stream of pain. How can the mind be happy?

We shall repeat the question we began with: between life’s source and life’s expression (which is the body), there is the mind and its ever-changeful states. The stream of mental states is endless, meaningless and painful. Pain is the constant factor. What we call pleasure is but a gap, an interval between two painful states. Desire and fear are the weft and warp of living, and both are made of pain. Our question is: can there be a happy mind?

Still, joy is joy only against a background of pain

That is true when we desire pleasure or expect pain. But there are moments of unexpected, unanticipated joy. Pure joy, uncontaminated by desire — unsought, undeserved, God-given.

The universe is complete and where there is completeness, where nothing lacks, what can give pain?

Is pain a cosmic fact, or purely mental?

A part of the whole seen in relation to the whole is also complete. Only when seen in isolation it becomes deficient and thus a seat of pain. What makes for isolation?

The Universe may be complete as a whole, but incomplete in details.

Good enough. The mind, by its very nature, divides and opposes. Can there be some other mind, which unites and harmonises, which sees the whole in the part and the part as totally related to the whole?

Limitations of the mind, of course. The mind cannot see the whole for the part.

In the going beyond the limiting, dividing and opposing mind. In ending the mental process as we know it. When this comes to an end, that mind is born

The other mind — where to look for it?

Not as we know them, as desirable or repugnant. It becomes rather a question of love seeking expression and meeting with obstacles. The inclusive mind is love in action, battling against circumstances, initially frustrated, ultimately victorious

In that mind, the problem of joy and sorrow exist no longer?

What else? Mind creates the abyss, the heart crosses it

Between the spirit and the body, is it love that provides the bridge?

Causation means succession in time of events in space, the space being physical or mental. Time, space, causation are mental categories, arising and subsiding with the mind

On several occasions the question was raised as to whether the universe is subject to the law of causation, or does it exist and function outside the law. You seem to hold the view that it is uncaused, that everything, however small, is uncaused, arising and disappearing for no known reason whatsoever.

Like everything mental, the so-called law of causation contradicts itself. No thing in existence has a particular cause; the entire universe contributes to the existence of even the smallest thing; nothing could be as it is without the universe being what it is. When the source and ground of everything is the only cause of everything, to speak of causality as a universal law is wrong. The universe is not bound by its content, because its potentialities are infinite; besides it is a manifestation, or expression of a principle fundamentally and totally free

As long as the mind operates, causation is a valid law.

Yes, there is a lot of such activity going on, because of ignorance. 'Would people know that nothing can happen unless the entire universe makes it happen, they would achieve much more with less expenditure of energy

Yes, one can see that ultimately to speak of one thing being the only cause of another thing is altogether wrong. Yet, in actual life we invariably initiate action with a view to a result.

The very urge to achieve is also an expression of the total universe. It merely shows that the energy potential has risen at a particular point. It is the illusion of time that makes you talk of causality. When the past and the future are seen in the timeless now, as parts of a common pattern, the idea of cause-effect loses its validity and creative freedom takes its place

If everything is an expression of the totality of causes, how can we talk of a purposeful action towards an achievement?

When I say a thing is without a cause, I mean it can be with-out a particular cause. Your own mother was needed to give you birth; But you could not have been born without the sun and the earth. Even these could not have caused your birth without your own desire to be born. It is desire that gives birth, that gives name and form. The desirable is imagined and wanted and manifests itself as something tangible or con-ceivable. Thus is created the world in which we live, our personal world. The real world is beyond the mind's ken; we see it through the net of our desires, divided into pleasure and pain, right and wrong, inner and outer. To see the universe as it is, you must step beyond the net. It is not hard to do so, for the net is full of holes

Yet, I cannot see how can anything come to be without a cause.

Look at the net and its many contradictions. You do and undo at every step. You want peace, love, happiness and work hard to create pain, hatred and war. You want longevity and overeat, you want friendship and exploit. See your net as made of such contradictions and remove them — your very seeing them will make them go

What do you mean by holes? And how to find them?

Causality, even as a concept, does not apply to chaos

Since my seeing the contradiction makes it go, is there no causal link between my seeing and its going?

One of the many. For everything there are innumerable causal factors. But the source of all that is, is the Infinite Possibility, the Supreme Reality, which is in you and which throws its power and light and love on every experience. But, this source is not a cause and no cause is a source. Because of that, I say everything is uncaused. You may try to trace how a thing happens, but you cannot find out why a thing is as it is. A thing is as it is, because the universe is as it is

To what extent is desire a causal factor?

It is not permanent. The knower rises and sets with the known. That in which both the knower and the known arise and set, is beyond time. The words permanent or eternal do not apply

Is the witness-consciousness permanent or not?

Surely you cannot say the knower was absent. The experience of things and thoughts was not there, that is all. But the absence of experience too is experience. It is like entering a dark room and saying: 'I see nothing'. A man blind from birth knows not what darkness means. Similarly, only the knower knows that he does not know. Sleep is merely a lapse in memory. Life goes on

In sleep there is neither the known, nor the knower. What keeps the body sensitive and receptive?

It is the change in the living process of a particular body. Integration ends and disintegration sets in

And what is death?

Just as the knower of the body appears at birth, so he disappears at death

But what about the knower. With the disappearance of the body, does the knower disappear?

Life remains. Consciousness needs a vehicle and an instrument for its manifestation. When life produces another body, another knower comes into being

And nothing remains?

Yes, there is something that may be called the memory body, or causal body, a record of all that was thought, wanted and done. It is like a cloud of images held together

Is there a causal link between the successive body-knowers, or body-minds?

It is a reflection in a separate body of the one reality. In this reflection the unlimited and the limited are confused and taken to be the same. To undo this confusion is the purpose of Yoga

What is this sense of a separate existence?

In death only the body dies. Life does not, consciousness does not, reality does not. And the life is never so alive as after death

Does not death undo this confusion?

What was born must die. Only the unborn is deathless. Find what is it that never sleeps and never wakes, and whose pale reflection is our sense of 'I'

But does one get reborn?

How do you go about finding anything? By keeping your mind and heart in it. Interest there must be and steady remembrance. To remember what needs to be remembered is the secret of success. You come to it through earnestness

How am I to go about this finding out?

These will come with earnestness. What is supremely important is to be free from contradictions: the goal and the way must not be on different levels; life and light must not quarrel; behaviour must not betray belief. Call it honesty, integrity, wholeness; you must not go back, undo, uproot, abandon the conquered ground. Tenacity of purpose and honesty in pursuit will bring you to your goal

Do you mean to say that mere wanting to find out is enough? Surely, both qualifications and opportunities are needed.

All will come as you go on. Take the first step first. All blessings come from within. Turn within. 'l am' you know. Be with it all the time you can spare, until you revert to it spontaneously. There is no simpler and easier way

Tenacity and honesty are endowments, surely! Not a trace of them I have.

We know the outer world of sensations and actions, but of our inner world of thoughts and feelings we know very little. The primary purpose of meditation is to become conscious of, and familiar with, our inner life. The ultimate purpose is to reach the source of life and consciousness

All teachers advise to meditate. What is the purpose of meditation?

When the mind is quiet, we come to know ourselves as the pure witness. We withdraw from the experience and its experiencer and stand apart in pure awareness, which is between and beyond the two. The personality, based on self-identification, on imagining oneself to be something: 'I am this, I am that', continues, but only as a part of the objective world. Its identification with the witness snaps

What is the use of a quiet mind?

It is not so much the matter of levels as of gunas (qualities). Meditation is a sattvic activity and aims at complete elimination of tamas (inertia) and rajas (motivity). Pure sattva (harmony) is perfect freedom from sloth and restlessness

As I can make out, I live on many levels and life on each level requires energy. The self by its very nature delights in everything and its energies flow outwards. Is it not the purpose of meditation to dam up the energies on the higher levels, or to push them back and up, so as to enable the higher levels to prosper also?

The sattva is pure and strong always. It is like the sun. It may seem obscured by clouds and dust, but only from the point of view of the perceiver. Deal with the causes of obscuration, not with the sun

How to strengthen and purify the sattva?

What is the use of truth, goodness, harmony, beauty? They are their own goal. They manifest spontaneously and effortlessly, when things are left to themselves, are not interfered with, not shunned, or wanted, or conceptualised, but just experienced in full awareness, such awareness itself is sattva. It does not make use of things and people — it fulfils them

What is the use of sattva?

By watching their influence in you and on you. Be aware of them in operation, watch their expressions in your thoughts, words and deeds, and gradually their grip on you will lessen and the clear light of sattva will emerge. It is neither difficult, nor a protracted process; earnestness is the only condition of success

Since I cannot improve sattva, am I to deal with tamas and rajas only? How can I deal with them?

This may or may not be so. Even if it is, it is only so from the mind’s point of view, but In fact the entire universe (mahadakash) exists only in consciousness (chidakash), while I have my stand in the Absolute (paramakash). In pure being consciousness arises; in consciousness the world appears and disappears. All there is is me, all there is is mine. Before all beginnings, after all endings — I am. All has its being in me, in the ‘I am’, that shines in every living being. Even not-being is unthinkable without me. Whatever happens, I must be there to witness it

There are very interesting books written by apparently very competent people, in which the illusoriness of the world is denied (though not its transitoriness). According to them, there exists a hierarchy of beings, from the lowest to the highest; on each level the complexity of the organism enables and reflects the depth, breadth and intensity of consciousness, without any visible or knowable culmination. One law supreme rules throughout: evolution of forms for the growth and enrichment of consciousness and manifestation of its infinite potentialities.

I do not negate the world. I see it as appearing in consciousness, which is the totality of the known in the immensity of the unknown. What begins and ends is mere appearance. The world can be said to appear, but not to be. The appearance may last very long on some scale of time, and be very short on another, but ultimately it comes to the same. Whatever is time bound is momentary and has no reality.

Why do you deny being to the world?

That is how it appears to you. What in your case occupies the entire field of consciousness, is a mere speck in mine. The world lasts, but for a moment. It is your memory that makes you think that the world continues. Myself, I don't live by memory. I see the world as it is, a momentary appearance in consciousness

Surely, you see the actual world as it surrounds you. You seem to behave quite normally!

All idea of ‘me’ and ‘mine’, even of ‘I am’ is in consciousness

In your consciousness?

The idea of un-consciousness exists in consciousness only

Is then your ‘absolute being’ (paramakash) un-consciousness?

Because I am in it. It is the only natural state

Then, how do you know you are in the supreme state?

Only by negation, as uncaused, independent, unrelated, undivided, uncomposed, unshakable, unquestionable, unreachable by effort. Every positive definition is from memory and, therefore, inapplicable. And yet my state is supremely actual and, therefore, possible, realisable, attainable

Can you describe it?

Abstraction is mental and verbal and disappears in sleep, or swoon; it reappears in time; I am in my own state (swarupa) timelessly in the now. Past and future are in mind only — I am now

Are you not immersed timelessly in an abstraction?

Which world?

The world too is now.

It is your world you have in mind, not mine. What do you know of me, when even my talk with you is in your world only? You have no reason to believe that my world is identical with yours. My world is real, true, as it is perceived, while yours appears and disappears, according to the state of your mind. Your world is something alien, and you are afraid of it. My world is myself. I am at home

The world around us.

Consciousness and the world appear and disappear together, hence they are two aspects of the same state

If you are the world, how can you be conscious of it? Is not the subject of consciousness different from its object?

How do you know?

In sleep I am not, and the world continues.

Memory is in the mind. The mind continues in sleep

On waking up I come to know. My memory tells me.

But its world picture is not affected. As long as the mind is there, your body and your world are there. Your world is mind-made, subjective, enclosed within the mind, fragmentary, temporary, personal, hanging on the thread of memory

It is partly in abeyance.

Oh no. I live in a world of realities, while yours is of imagination. Your world is personal, private, unshareable, intimately your own. Nobody can enter it, see as you see, hear as you hear, feel your emotions and think your thoughts. In your world you are truly alone, enclosed in your ever-changing dream, which you take for life. My world is an open world, common to all, accessible to all. In my world there is community, insight, love, real quality; the individual is the total, the totality — in the individual. All are one and the One is all

So is yours?

No, it is full of myself

Is your world full of things and people as is mine?

Yes, l appear to hear and see and talk and act, but to me it just happens, as to you digestion or perspiration happens. The body-mind machine looks after it, but leaves me out of it. Just as you do not need to worry about growing hair, so I need not worry about words and actions. They just happen and leave me unconcerned, for in my world nothing ever goes wrong

But do you see and hear as we do?

How can anything be steady in a mind which itself is not steady?

As a child fairly often I experienced states of complete happiness, verging on ecstasy: later, they ceased, but since I came to India they reappeared, particularly after I met you. Yet these states, however wonderful, are not lasting. They come and go and there is no knowing when they will come back.

How can an unsteady mind make itself steady? Of course it cannot. It is the nature of the mind to roam about. All you can do is to shift the focus of consciousness beyond the mind

How can I make my mind steady?

Refuse all thoughts except one: the thought 'I am'. The mind will rebel in the beginning, but with patience and perseverance it will yield and keep quiet. Once you are quiet, things will begin to happen spontaneously and quite naturally without any interference on your part

How is it done?

Yes, you can. Just live your life as it comes, but alertly, watchfully, allowing everything to happen as it happens, doing the natural things the natural way, suffering, rejoicing — as life brings. This also is a way

Can I avoid this protracted battle with my mind?

Sure. You may or may not be happy, take it in your stride

Well, then I can as well marry, have children, run a business… be happy.

True happiness cannot be found in things that change and pass away. Pleasure and pain alternate inexorably. Happiness comes from the self and can be found in the self only. Find your real self (swarupa) and all else will come with it

Yet I want happiness.

It is not your real being that is restless, but its reflection in the mind appears restless because the mind is restless. It is just like the reflection of the moon in the water stirred by the wind. The wind of desire stirs the mind and the 'me', which is but a reflection of the Self in the mind, appears changeful. But these ideas of movement, of restlessness, of pleasure and pain are all in the mind. The Self stands beyond the mind, aware, but unconcerned

If my real self is peace and love, why is it so restless?

You are the Self, here and now Leave the mind alone, stand aware and unconcerned and you will realise that to stand alert but detached, watching events come and go, is an aspect of your real nature

How to reach it?

The aspects are infinite in number. Realise one, and you will realise all

What are the other aspects?

You know best what you need!

Tell me some thing that would help me.

For what do you need peace?

I am restless. How can I gain peace?

Are you not happy now?

To be happy.

What makes you unhappy?

No, I am not.

Why don’t you invert it: want what you have and care not for what you don’t have?

I have what I don’t want, and want what I don’t have.

How do you know what is pleasant and what is not?

I want what is pleasant and don’t want what is painful.

Guided by memory you have been pursuing the pleasant and shunning the unpleasant. Have you succeeded?

From past experience, of course.

Which pain?

No, I have not. The pleasant does not last. Pain sets in again.

Every pleasure, physical or mental, needs an instrument. Both the physical and mental instruments are material, they get tired and worn out. The pleasure they yield is necessarily limited in intensity and duration. Pain is the background of all your pleasures. You want them because you suffer. On the other hand, the very search for pleasure is the cause of pain. It is a vicious circle

The desire for pleasure, the fear of pain, both are states of distress. Is there a state of unalloyed pleasure?