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It is the un-selfconscious knowledge of life itself

Pragnanam Brahma. What is this Pragna?

Energy comes first. For everything is a form of energy. Consciousness is most differentiated in the waking state. Less so in dream. Still less in sleep. Homogeneous — in the fourth state. Beyond is the inexpressible monolithic reality, the abode of the jnani

Is it vitality, the energy of life, livingness?

By the power of life

I have cut my hand. It healed. By what power did it heal?

It is consciousness. AII is conscious

What is that power?

Consciousness itself is the source of everything

What is the source of consciousness?

No, nor consciousness without life. They are both one. But in reality only the Ultimate is. The rest is a matter of name and form. And as long as you cling to the idea that only what has name and shape exists, the Supreme will appear to you non-existing. When you understand that names and shapes are hollow shells without any content whatsoever, and what is real is nameless and formless, pure energy of life and light of consciousness, you will be at peace — immersed in the deep silence of reality

Can there be life without consciousness?

How can I tell you? Such things need special training. Or, just travelling to New York. I may be quite certain that I am beyond time and space, and yet unable to locate myself at will at some point of time and space. I am not interested enough; I see no purpose in undergoing a special Yogic training. I have just heard of New York. To me it is a word. Why should I know more than the word conveys? Every atom may be a universe, as complex as ours. Must I know them all? I can — if I train

If time and space are mere illusions and you are beyond, please tell me what is the weather in New York. Is it hot or raining there?

The world and the mind are states of being. The supreme is not a state. It pervades, all states, but it is not a state of something else. It is entirely uncaused, independent, complete in itself, beyond time and space, mind and matter

In putting the question about the weather in New York, where did I make the mistake?

That's the point that it leaves no traces. There is nothing to recognise it by. It must be seen directly, by giving up all search for signs and approaches. When all names and forms have been given up, the real is with you. You need not seek it. Plurality and diversity are the play of the mind only. Reality is one

By what sign do you recognise it?

It is. It cannot be denied. It is deep and dark, mystery beyond mystery. But it is, while all else merely happens

If reality leaves no evidence, there is no speaking about it.

It is beyond both, the known and the unknown. But I would rather call it the known, than the unknown. For whenever something is known, it is the real that is known

Is it the Unknown?

This too is of the mind. All states and conditions are of the mind

Is silence an attribute of the real?

Not making use of one's consciousness is samadhi. You just leave your mind alone. You want nothing, neither-from your body nor from your mind

What is the place of samadhi?

From the highest point of view the world has no cause

Repeatedly you have been saying that events are causeless, a thing just happens and no cause can be assigned to it. Surely everything has a cause, or several causes. How am I to understand the causelessness of things?

Everything is uncaused. The world has no cause

But what is your own experience?

Once you create for yourself a world in time and space, governed by causality, you are bound to search for and find causes for everything. You put the question and impose an answer

I am not enquiring about the causes that led to the creation of the world. Who has seen the creation of the world? It may even be without a beginning, always existing. But I am not talking of the world. I take the world to exist — somehow. It contains so many things. Surely, each must have a cause, or several causes.

I see only consciousness, and know everything to be but consciousness, as you know the picture on the cinema screen to be but light

My question is very simple: I see all kinds of things and I understand that each must have a cause, or a number of causes. You say they are uncaused — from your point of view. But, to you nothing has being and, therefore, the question of causation does not arise. Yet you seem to admit the existence of things, but deny them causation. This is what I cannot grasp. Once you accept the existence of things, why reject their causes?

The light does not move at all. You know very well that the movement is illusory, a sequence of interceptions and colour-ings in the film. What moves is the film — which is the mind

Still, the movements of light have a cause.

Of course, everything is inter-linked. And therefore everything has numberless causes. The entire universe contributes to the least thing. A thing is as it is, because the world is as it is. You see, you deal in gold ornaments and I — in gold. Between the different ornaments there is no causal relation. When you re-melt an ornament to make another, there is no causal relation between the two. The common factor is the gold. But you cannot say gold is the cause. It cannot be called a cause, for it causes nothing by itself. It is reflected in the mind as 'I am', as the ornament's particular name and shape. Yet all is only gold. In the same way reality makes everything possible and yet nothing that makes a thing what it is, its name and form, comes from reality. But why worry so much about causation? What do causes matter, when things themselves are transient? Let come what comes and let go what goes — why catch hold of things and enquire about their causes?

This does not make the picture causeless. The film is there, and the actors with the technicians, the director, the producer, the various manufacturers. The world is governed by causality. Everything is inter-linked.

Of what use is the relative view to you? You are able to look from the absolute point of view — why go back to the relative? Are you afraid of the absolute?

From the relative point of view, everything must have a cause.

All this talk shows ignorance

I am afraid. I am afraid of falling asleep over my so-called absolute certainties. For living a life decently absolutes don't help. When you need a shirt, you buy cloth, call a tailor and so on.

There is only light and the light is all. Everything else is but a picture made of light. The picture is in the light and the light is in the picture. Life and death, self and not-self —- abandon all these ideas. They are of no use to you

And what is the knower's view?

From which state are you asking?

From what point of view you deny causation? From the relative — the universe is the cause of everything. From the absolute — there is no thing at all.

In the waking state all these problems arise, for such is its nature. But, you are not always in that state. What good can you do in a state into which you fall and from which you emerge, helplessly. In what way does it help you to know that things are causally related — as they may appear to be in your waking state?

From the daily waking state, in which alone all these discussions take place.

When the mind is still, absolutely silent, the waking state is no more

The world and the waking state emerge and subside together.

You are bringing up questions which you alone can answer

Words like God, universe, the total, absolute, supreme are just noises in the air, because no action can be taken on them.

Do you want to know all the causes of each event? Is it possible?

Don't brush me off like this! You are so quick to speak for the totality, the universe and such imaginary things! They cannot come and forbid you to talk on their behalf. I hate those irresponsible generalizations! And you are so prone to personalise them. Without causality there will be no order; nor purposeful action will be possible.

To influence events, you need not know the causes. What a roundabout way of doing things! Are you not the source and the end of every event? Control it at the source itself

I know it is not possible! All I want to know is if there are causes for everything and the causes can be influenced, thereby affecting the events?

You are confused, because you believe that you are in the world, not the world in you. Who came first — you or your parents? You imagine that you were born at a certain time and place, that you have a father and a mother, a body and a name. This is your sin and your calamity! Surely you can change your world if you work at it. By all means, work. Who stops you? I have never discouraged you. Causes or no causes, you have made this world and you can change it

Every morning I pick up the newspaper and read with dismay that the world's sorrows — poverty, hatred and wars — continue unabated. My questions are concerning the fact of sorrow, the cause, the remedy. Don't brush me off saying that it is Buddhism! Don't label me. Your insistence on causelessness removes all hope of the world ever changing.

On the contrary, a world of which you are the only source and ground is fully within your power to change. What is created can be always dissolved and re-created. All will happen as you want it, provided you really want it

A causeless world is entirely beyond my control.

You have created them out of your own desires and fears, you deal with them. All is due to your having forgotten your own being. Having given reality to the picture on the screen, you love its people and suffer for them and seek to save them. It is just not so. You must begin with yourself. There is no other way. Work, of course. There is no harm in working

All I want to know is how to deal with the world's sorrows.

To take appearance for reality is a grievous sin and the cause of all calamities. You are the all-pervading, eternal and infinitely creative awareness — consciousness. All else is local and temporary. Don't forget what you are. In the meantime work to your heart's content. Work and knowledge should go hand in hand

Your universe seems to contain every possible experience. The individual traces a line through it and experiences pleasant and unpleasant states. This gives rise to questioning and seeking, which broaden the outlook and enable the individual to go beyond his narrow and self-created world limited and self-centred. This personal world can be changed — in time. The universe is timeless and perfect.

You think God knows you? Even the world He does not know

My own feeling is that my spiritual development is not in my hands. Making one's own plans and carrying them out leads no where. I just run in circles round myself. When God considers the fruit to be ripe, He will pluck it and eat it. Whichever fruit seems green to Him will remain on the world's tree for another day.

You pray to save one, while thousands die. And if all stop dying, there will be no space on earth

Yours is a different God. Mine is different. Mine is merciful. He suffers along with us.

If you and your God are both helpless, does it not imply that the world is accidental? And if it is. the only thing you can do is to go beyond it

I am not afraid of death. My concern is with sorrow and suffering. My God is a simple God and rather helpless. He has no power to compel us to be wise. He can only stand and wait

All is His doing, no doubt. What is it to me, since I want nothing? What can God give me, or take away from me? What is mine is mine and was mine even when God was not. Of course, it is a very tiny little thing, a speck — the sense 'I am', the fact of being. This is my own place, nobody gave it to me. The earth is mine; what grows on it is God's

Without God's power nothing can be done. Even you would not be sitting here and talking to us without Him.

God is my devotee and did all this for me

Did God take the earth on rent from you?

How can there be? 'I am' is the root, God is the tree. Whom am I to worship, and what for?

Is there no God apart from you?

I am neither, I am devotion itself

Are you the devotee or the object of devotion?

You are always after the improvement of the world. Do you really believe that the world is waiting for you to be saved?

There is not enough devotion in the world.

Without you is there a world? You know all about the world, but about yourself you know nothing. You yourself are the tools of your work, you have no other tools. Why don't you take care of the tools before you think of the work?

I just do not know how much I can do for the world. All I can do, is to try. Is there anything else you would like me to do?

By not enquiring you keep the world waiting

I can wait, while the world cannot.

For somebody who can save it

Waiting for what?

That's what you say! Did God come and tell you that the world is His creation and concern and not yours?

God runs the world, God will save it.

Consider. The world in which you live, who else knows about it?

Why should it be my sole concern?

Did anybody come from outside of your world to tell you? Myself and everybody else appear and disappear in your world. We are all at your mercy

You know. Everybody knows.

You have no evidence of my world. You are completely wrapped up in the world of your own making

It cannot be so bad! I exist in your world as you exist in mine.

Within the prison of your world appears a man who tells you that the world of painful contradictions, which you have created, is neither continuous nor permanent and is based on a misapprehension. He pleads with you to get out of it, by the same way by which you got into it. You got into it by forgetting what you are and you will get out of it by knowing yourself as you are

I see. Completely, but — hopelessly?

When you are free of the world, you can do something about it. As long as you are a prisoner of it, you are helpless to change it. On the contrary, whatever you do will aggravate the situation

In what way does it affect the world?

Righteousness will undoubtedly make you and your world a comfortable, even happy place. But what is the use? There is no reality in it. It cannot last

Righteousness will set me free.

To help you God must know your existence. But you and your world are dream states. In dream you may suffer agonies. None knows them, and none can help you

God will help.

These are but the stirrings of a man who is tired of sleeping. They are not the causes of awakening, but its early signs. But, you must not ask idle questions, to which you already know the answers

So all my questions, my search and study are of no use?

By asking a true question — non-verbally, but by daring to live according to your lights. A man willing to die for truth will get it

How am I to get a true answer?

The knower and the witness are two or one? When the knower is seen as separate from the known, the witness stands alone. When the known and the knower are seen as one, the witness becomes one with them

Another question. There is the person. There is the knower of the person. There is the witness. Are the knower and the witness the same, or are they separate states?

The jnani is the supreme and also the witness. He is both being and awareness. In relation to consciousness he is awareness. In relation to the universe he is pure being

Who is the jnani? The witness or the supreme?

The person is a very small thing. Actually it is a composite, it cannot be said to exist by itself. Unperceived, it is just not there. It is but the shadow of the mind, the sum total of memories. Pure being is reflected in the mirror of the mind, as knowing. What is known takes the shape of a person, based on memory and habit. It is but a shadow, or a projection of the knower onto the screen of the mind

And what about the person? What comes first, the person or the knower.

The supreme is the sun

The mirror is there, the reflection is there. But where is the sun?

It is neither conscious nor unconscious. Don't think of it in terms of consciousness or unconsciousness. It is the life, which contains both and is beyond both

It must be conscious.

You talk of the unconscious when there is a lapse in memory. In reality there is only consciousness. All life is conscious, all consciousness — alive

Life is so intelligent. How can it be unconscious?

Even stones are conscious and alive

Even stones?

You would be wiser to deny the existence of what you imagine. It is the imagined that is unreal

The worry with me is that I am prone to denying existence to what I cannot imagine.

Imagination based on memories is unreal. The future is not entirely unreal

Is all imaginable unreal?

The unexpected and unpredictable is real

Which part of the future is real and which is not?

What do you mean by realisation and liberation?

I have met many realised people, but never a liberated man. Have you come across a liberated man, or does liberation mean, among other things, also abandoning the body?

What is wrong with the body?

By realisation I mean a wonderful experience of peace, goodness and beauty, when the world makes sense and there is an all-pervading unity of both substance and essence. While such experience does not last, it cannot be forgotten. It shines in the mind, both as memory and longing. I know what I am talking about, for I have had such experiences. By liberation I mean to be permanently in that wonderful state. What I am asking is whether liberation is compatible with the survival of the body.

So what? Let the physical expressions be limited. But liberation is of the self from its false and self-imposed ideas; it is not contained in some particular experience, however glorious

The body is so weak and short-lived. It creates needs and cravings. It limits one grievously.

All experience is time bound. Whatever has a beginning must have an end

Does it last for ever?

On the contrary, one is always free. You are, both conscious and free to be conscious. Nobody can take this away from you. Do you ever know yourself non-existing, or unconscious?

So liberation, in my sense of the word, does not exist?

Why not turn away from the experience to the experiencer and realise the full import of the only true statement you can make: 'I am'?

I may not remember, but that does not disprove my being occasionally unconscious.

There is no 'how' here. Just keep in mind the feeling 'I am', merge in it, till your mind and feeling become one. By repeated attempts you will stumble on the right balance of attention and affection and your mind will be firmly established in the thought-feeling 'I am'. Whatever you think, say, or do, this sense of immutable and affectionate being remains as the ever-present background of the mind

How is it done?

I call it normal. What is wrong with being, knowing and acting effortlessly and happily? Why consider it so unusual as to expect the immediate destruction of the body? What is wrong with the body that it should die? Correct your attitude to your body and leave it alone. Don't pamper, don't torture. Just keep it going, most of the time below the threshold of conscious attention

And you call it liberation?

Because you want them back, you cannot have them. The state of craving for anything blocks all deeper experience. Nothing of value can happen to a mind which knows exactly what it wants. For nothing the mind can visualise and want is of much value

The memory of my wonderful experiences haunts me. I want them back.

Want the best. The highest happiness, the greatest freedom. Desirelessness is the highest bliss

Then what is worth wanting?

You are free to fulfil your longings. As a matter of fact, you are doing nothing else

Freedom from desire is not the freedom I want. I want the freedom to fulfil my longings.

Overcome them

I try, but there are obstacles which leave me frustrated.

What makes you weak? What is weakness? Others fulfil their desires, why don't you?

I cannot, I am too weak.

What happened to your energy? Where did it go? Did you not scatter it over so many contradictory desires and pursuits? You don't have an infinite supply of energy

I must be lacking energy.

Your aims are small and low. They do not call for more. Only God's energy is infinite — because He wants nothing for Himself. Be like Him and all your desires will be fulfilled. The higher your aims and vaster your desires, the more energy you will have for their fulfilment. Desire the good of all and the universe will work with you. But if you want your own pleasure, you must earn it the hard way. Before desiring, deserve

Why not?

To earn a livelihood some specialised knowledge is needed. General knowledge develops the mind, no doubt. But if you are going to spend your life in amassing knowledge, you build a wall round yourself. To go beyond the mind, a well- furnished mind is not needed

I am engaged in the study of philosophy, sociology and education. I think more mental development is needed before I can dream of self-realisation. Am I on the right track?

Distrust your mind, and go beyond

Then what is needed?

The direct experience of being, knowing and loving

What shall I find beyond the mind?

There are many starting points — they all lead to the same goal. You may begin with selfless work, abandoning the fruits of action; you may then give up thinking and end in giving up all desires. Here, giving up (tyaga) is the operational factor. Or, you may not bother about any thing you want, or think, or do and just stay put in the thought and feeling 'I am', focussing 'I am' firmly in your mind. All kinds of experience may come to you — remain unmoved in the knowledge that all perceivable is transient, and only the 'I am' endures

How does one go beyond the mind?

By all means attend to your duties. Action, in which you are not emotionally involved and which is beneficial and does not cause suffering will not bind you. You may be engaged in several directions and work with enormous zest, yet remain inwardly free and quiet, with a mirror-like mind, which reflects all, without being affected

I cannot give all my life to such practices. I have my duties to attend to.

I would not talk about it, if it were not. Why should I engage in fancies?

Is such a state realisable?

Those who know only scriptures know nothing. To know is to be. I know what I am talking about; it is not from reading, or hearsay

Everybody quotes scriptures.

Since you have read the scriptures, why do you ask me?

I am studying Sanskrit under a professor, but really I am only reading scriptures. I am in search of self-realisation and I came to get the needed guidance. Kindly tell me what am I to do?

Your own self is your ultimate teacher (sadguru). The outer teacher (Guru) is merely a milestone. It is only your inner teacher, that will walk with you to the goal, for he is the goal

The scriptures show the general directions but the individual needs personal instructions.

Since he is in you and with you, the difficulty cannot be serious. Look within, and you will find him

The inner teacher is not easily reached.

That which sees all this, and the nothing too, is the inner teacher. He alone is, all else only appears to be. He is your own self (swarupa), your hope and assurance of freedom; find him and cling to him and you will be saved and safe

When I look within, I find sensations and perceptions, thoughts and feelings, desires and fears, memories and expectations. I am immersed in this cloud and see nothing else.

The idea 'it escapes me', where does it arise?

I do believe you, but when it comes to the actual finding of this inner self, I find it escapes me.

And who knows the mind

In the mind.

Did anybody come to you and say: 'I am the witness of your mind'?

The witness of the mind knows the mind.

Then who is the witness?

Of course not. He would have been just another idea in the mind.

So, you know the witness because you are the witness. You need not see the witness in front of you. Here again, to be is to know

I am.

What a question! What kind of profit do you expect? To know what you are, is it not good enough?

Yes, I see that I am the witness, the awareness itself. But in which way does it profit me?

It helps you to understand what you are not and keeps you free from false ideas, desires and actions

What are the uses of self-knowledge?

What helps you to know yourself is right. What prevents, is wrong. To know one's real self is bliss, to forget — is sorrow

If I am the witness only, what do right and wrong matter?

It is the reflection of the real in the mind (buddhi). The real is beyond. The witness is the door through which you pass beyond

Is the witness-consciousness the real Self?

Seeing the false as the false, is meditation. This must go on all the time

What is the purpose of meditation?

Deliberate daily exercise in discrimination between the true and the false and renunciation of the false is meditation. There are many kinds of meditation to begin with, but they all merge finally into one

We are told to meditate regularly.