12

N.MAHARAJ: " Have you brought any questions?"

V: Last year I came to India to find a Guru who could lead me to Self -Realisation. I came with the idea of finding a form who would give me detailed instructions, step by step. 

When I met Maharaj, instead of finding a Guru with a form, all I walked away with was an empty frame or a mirror. I found I didn't have any form, anything. Just pure space that changes all the time. When I think of Maharaj, sometime I see him as myself, sometimes I see him as nothing. the person that I see in front of me changes all the time. There is nothing I can point at and say, ' That is he'. It is frightening, and the fear has been growing.

M:"What you have said is quite appropriate, quite correct. Whatever you observe is nothing else but your Self only. Get rid of the body image as yourself. Whatever you have seen is your Self.:

V: Often the concepts, the ideas that are in the books, or that are discussed here, come to my mind, or his image comes to my mind. Immediately after, not before, the feeling comes that there is nothing here, that what I'm hearing is not what it is, but it's only after thinking of him that I feel the space.

M:" Who realises that nothing is, that everything is gone" And when everything is gone, what remains?"

V: That's what is frightening.

M:" When everything goes, you are the Real."

V: As a concept I understand that. For a second I realise, and then I go back to the unreal. I attach myself to my family, my wife, my children. It's habit, I go back.

M:" You are so used to the support of concepts that when your concepts leave you, although it is your true state, you get frightened and try to cling to them again. That is the meeting point of that immanent principle and the Eternal, the borderland. Why is the intellect puzzled then? That beingness which you are experiencing is melting away. When that concept of ' I Am goes, intellect also goes. So the intellect gets that frightening experience of ' I Am going."

V: How to overcome the fright?

M:" Just watch that moment. One who feels ' I Am dying' is not a Jnani. Your true state is beyond the primary concept of ' I Am'. Consciousness is the primary concept, but this ' I Amness' or Consciousness is the product of the food body. You, the Absolute are not that.

Death comes to the quality of I Amness' which is a product of the food, but the Absolute prevails always. This is the Ultimate knowledge. This knowledge was expounded by Lord Krishna to Arjuna on the battlefield, the horses poised, on the point of battle. He never advocated to Arjuna that he should shave his head and go into the forest and perform tapas. Nothing of the sort. Once you understand this ultimate knowledge, then do what you like. Lord Krishna said, ' With true dynamism you fight this battle'; and I say, once you understand this, you carry out your worldly life with full enthusiasm, full of zest, but understand that your true identity is beyond this quality of ' I Amness'.

For a Jnani, the moment of so-called death is the most blissful, because he is going to the very source of bliss. Eternity is bliss, the very ocean of nectar, immortal."