Maharaj: Awareness is not of time. Time exists in
consciousness only. Beyond consciousness where are time and space?
Questioner: Within the field of your consciousness there is
your body also.
M: Of course. But the idea 'my body', as different from other
bodies, is not there. To me it is 'a body', not 'my body', 'a mind', not 'my
mind'. The mind looks after the body all right, I need not interfere. What
needs be done is being done, in the normal and natural way.
You may not be quite conscious of your physiological
functions, but when it comes to thoughts and feelings, desires and fears you
become acutely self-conscious. To me these too are largely unconscious. I find
myself talking to people, or doing things quite correctly and appropriately,
without being very much conscious of them. It looks as if I live my physical,
waking life automatically, reacting spontaneously and accurately.
Q: Does this spontaneous response come as a result of
realization, or by training?
M: Both. Devotion to you goal makes you live a clean and
orderly life, given to search for truth and to helping people, and realization
makes noble virtue easy and spontaneous, by removing for good the obstacles in
the shape of desires and fears and wrong ideas.
Q: Don’t you have desires and fears any more?
M: My destiny was to be born a simple man, a commoner, a
humble tradesman, with little of formal education. My life was the common kind,
with common desires and fears. When, through my faith in my teacher and
obedience to his words, I realized my true being, I left behind my human nature
to look after itself, until its destiny is exhausted. Occasionally an old
reaction, emotional or mental, happens in the mind, but it is at once noticed
and discarded. After all, as long as one is burdened with a person, one is
exposed to its idiosyncrasies and habits.
…
Q: Sorry. But I just do not understand. You say you are
bodyless and mindless, while I see you very much alive and articulate.
M: A tremendously complex work is going on all the time in
your brain and body, are you conscious of it? Not at all. Yet for an outsider
all seems to be going on intelligently and purposefully. Why not admit that
one’s entire personal life may sink largely below the threshold of
consciousness and yet proceed sanely and smoothly?
Q: Is it normal?
M: What is normal? Is your life—obsessed by desires and
fears, full of strife and struggle, meaningless and joyless—normal? To be
acutely conscious of your body is it normal? To be torn by feelings, tortured
by thoughts: is it normal? A healthy body, a healthy mind live largely
unperceived by their owner; only occasionally, through pain or suffering they
call for attention and insight. Why not extend the same to the entire personal
life? One can function rightly, responding well and fully to whatever happens,
without having to bring it into the focus of awareness. When self-control
becomes second nature, awareness shifts its focus to deeper levels of existence
and action.
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