Talk 313.
Mr. Greenlees: Bhagavan said yesterday that, while one is engaged in search for "God within", outer work would go on automatically. In the life of Sri Chaitanya it is explained that while he sought Krishna (the Self) during his lectures to students, he forgot where his body was and went on talking of Krishna. This rouses doubt whether work can safely be left to itself. Should one keep part-attention on the physical work?M.: The Self is all. Now I ask you: Are you apart from the Self? Can the work go on apart from the Self? Or is the body apart from the Self? None of them could be apart from the Self. The Self is universal. So all the actions will go on whether you engage in them voluntarily or not. The work will go on automatically. Attending to the Self includes attending to the work.
D.: The work may suffer if I do not attend to it.
M.: Because you identify yourself with the body, you consider that the work is done by you. But the body and its activities, including the work, are not apart from the Self.
What does it matter whether you attend to the work or not? Suppose you walk from one place to another place. You do not attend every single step that you take. After a time, however, you find yourself at your destination. You notice how the work, i.e., walking, goes on without your attention to it. Similarly it is with other kinds of work.
D.: Then it is like sleep-walking.
M.: Quite so. When a child is fast asleep, his mother feeds him in sleep.
The child eats the food quite as well as when well awake. But the next morning he says to the mother "Mother! I did not take food last night". The mother and others know that he did. But he says that he did not. He was not aware and yet the action had gone on. Somnambulism is indeed a good analogy for this kind of work.
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Take another example: A passenger in a cart has fallen asleep. The bulls move or stand still or are unyoked on the journey. He does not know these occurrences, but finds himself in a different place after he wakes up. He has been blissfully ignorant of the occurrences on the way, but his journey has been finished. Similarly with the Self of the person. He is asleep in the body. His waking state is the movement of the bulls, his samadhi is their standing still (because samadhi = jagrat sushupti) i.e., to say, he is aware of but not attached to actions. So the bulls are in harness but do not move. His sleep is the unyoking of the bulls, for there is complete suspension of activities corresponding to the release of the bulls from the yoke. Still another example: Scenes are projected on the screen in a cinema show. But the moving pictures do not affect or alter the screen. The seer pays attention to the pictures and ignores the screen. They cannot remain apart from the screen. Still its existence is ignored. So also the Self is the screen on which the pictures, namely activities, are going on. The man is aware of the latter, ignoring the former. All the same he is not apart from the Self. Whether aware or unaware the actions will continue.
D.: There is an operator in the cinema.
M.: The cinema show is made out of insentient materials. The screen , the pictures, lamp, etc., are insentient and require an operator, a sentient agent. In the case of the Self, it is consciousness itself and therefore self-contained. There cannot be an operator apart.
D.: Protested that he did not confuse the body with the operator as the above answer would imply.
M.: The functions of the body were kept in mind involving the need for the operator. Because there is the body - a jada [?] object - an operator, a sentient agent, is necessary. Because people think that they are jivas, Sri Krishna has said that God resides in the Heart as the operator of the jivas. In fact there are no jivas and no operator. The self comprises all. It is the screen, the pictures, the seer, the actor, the operator, the light and all else. Your confounding it with the body and imagining yourself as the actor amounts to the seer being represented as an actor in a cinema
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picture. Imagine the actor in the picture asking if he could enact a scene without the screen. Such is the case of the man who thinks of his acting apart from the Self.
D.: It is like asking the spectator to act in the cinema picture.
Somnambulism seems to be desirable.
M.: There is the belief that the crow rolls only one iris into either eye to see any object. It has only one iris but two eye sockets. Its sight is manipulated according to its desire. Or again the elephant has one trunk with which it breathes and does work such as drinking water, etc. Again serpents are said to use the same apparatus for either seeing or hearing. Similarly the actions and states are according to one's point of view. Sleep waking or waking sleep or dreaming sleep or dreaming wakefulness are about the same.
D.: We have to deal with a physical body in a physical waking world.
If we sleep while work is done or work when sleep overtakes us, the work will go wrong.
M.: Sleep is not ignorance; it is your pure state. Wakefulness is not knowledge; it is ignorance. There is full awareness in sleep; there is total ignorance in waking. Your real nature covers both, and extends beyond. The Self is beyond knowledge and ignorance. Sleep, dream and waking are only modes passing before the Self. They proceed whether you are aware or not. That is the state of the Jnani [?] in whom pass the states of waking, samadhi, deep sleep and dream, like the bulls moving, standing or being unyoked when the passenger is asleep as aforesaid. These questions are from the point of view of the ajnani [?]; otherwise these questions do not arise.
D.: Of course they cannot arise for the Self. Who would be there to ask? But unfortunately I have not yet realised the Self.
M.: That is just the obstacle in your way. You must get rid of the ide a that you are an ajnani yet to realise the Self. You are the Self. Was there ever a time when you were apart from the Self?
D.: So it is an experiment in somnambulism …. or in daydreaming.
Bhagavan laughed.
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