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When Bhagavan returned from his morning walk at about
7-45, the attendant Sivananda offered to massage his legs. Bhagavan forbade him and said: "If I let them they go on massaging for a long time. This morning too, at parayana ^[?], I did not let them. They begin with the parayana ^[?] and don't stop till it is finished, and sometimes I am unaware of it."

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G.V. Subbaramayya: Bhagavan once told me that
Bhagavan is aware of the beginning of parayana ^[?] and knows nothing more till the end of it.

Bhagavan: Yes, it often happens that I hear the beginning
and then the end and have been absorbed so that I have lost count of time in between, and then I have wondered whether they had left out whole passages to get to the end so soon.

After a moment, Bhagavan continued: "Similarly, those
people go on massaging and I am sometimes not at all aware that I am being massaged. So now I am not going to let them. I will do it myself." So saying, Bhagavan took the liniment and rubbed it over his knees.

In the afternoon Bhagavan explained in answer to
Mr. H.C. Khanna of Kanpur:

Why should your occupation or duties in life interfere
with your spiritual effort? For instance, there is a difference between your activities at home and in the office. In your office activities you are detached and so long as you do your duty you do not care what happens or whether it results in gain or loss to the employer. But your duties at home are performed with attachment and you are all the time anxious as to whether they will bring advantage or disadvantage to you and your family. But it is possible to perform all the activities of life with detachment and regard only the Self as real. It is wrong to suppose that if one is fixed in the Self one's duties in life will not be properly performed. It is like an actor. He dresses and acts and even feels the part he is playing, but he knows really that he is not that character but someone else in real life. In the same way, why should the body-consciousness or the feeling `I-am-the-body' disturb you, once you know for certain that you are not the body but the Self? Nothing that the body does should shake you from abidance in the Self. Such abidance will never interfere with
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the proper and effective discharge of whatever duties the body has, any more than the actor's being aware of his real status in life interferes with his acting a part on the stage.

You ask whether you can tell yourself: "I am not the
body but the Self". Of course, whenever you feel tempted to identify yourself with the body (as you may often have to, owing to old vasanas) it may be a help to remind yourself that you are not the body but the Self. But you should not make such repetition a mantram, constantly saying: "I am not the body but the Self". By proper enquiry into the Self, the notion `I am this body' will gradually vanish and in time the faith that you are the Self will become unshakeable.

K.M. Jivrajani: In the early stages would it not be a help
to man to seek solitude and give up his outer duties in life?

Bhagavan: Renunciation is always in the mind, not in
going to forests or solitary places or giving up one's duties. The main thing is to see that the mind does not turn outward but inward. It does not really rest with a man whether he goes to this place or that or whether he gives up his duties or not. All that happens according to destiny. All the activities that the body is to go through are determined when it first comes into existence. It does not rest with you to accept or reject them. The only freedom you have is to turn your mind inward and renounce activities there.

K.M. Jivrajani: But is it not possible for something to
be a help, especially to a beginner? Like a fence round a young tree. For instance, don't our books say that it is helpful to go on pilgrimage to sacred shrines or to get sat sang.

Bhagavan: Who said they are not helpful? Only such
things do not rest with you, as turning your mind inward does. Many people desire the pilgrimage or sat sang ^[?] that you mention, but do they all get it?

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K.M. Jivrajani: Why is it that turning inward alone is
left to us and not any outer things?

I answered: Nobody can answer that. That is the Divine
scheme.

Bhagavan: If you want to go to fundamentals, you must
enquire who you are and find out who it is who has freedom or destiny. Who are you and why did you get this body that has these limitations?