Consciousness, the Only 'Capital'

Maharaj often comes out with the statement that consciousness is the only 'capital' that asentient being is born with. This, he says, is the apparent position. The real situation, however, isthat what is born is consciousness, which needs an organism to manifest itself in, and that organismis the physical body.

What is it that gives sentience — capacity to feel sensations, to respond to stimuli—to asentient being? What is it that distinguishes a person who is alive from the one who is dead? It is, ofcourse, the sense of being, the knowledge of being present, consciousness, the activizing spiritwhich animates the physical construct of the body.

It is consciousness indeed that manifests itself in individual forms and gives them apparentexistence. In human beings through such manifestation arises the concept of a separate ‘I’. In eachindividual the Absolute gets reflected as awareness, and thus pure Awareness becomes selfawareness,or consciousness.

The objective universe is in continuous flux, constantly projecting and dissolving innumerableforms. Whenever a form is created and is infused with life (Prana), consciousness (Chetana)appears, simultaneously and automatically, by the reflection of the Absolute Awareness in matter.Consciousness, it must be clearly understood, is a reflection of the Absolute against the surface ofmatter, bringing about a sense of duality. As different from it, pure Awareness, the Absolute state,is without beginning and end, without the need of any support other than itself. Awareness becomesconsciousness only when it has an object to reflect against. Between pure Awareness and awarenessreflected as consciousness, says Maharaj, there is a gap which the mind cannot cross. Reflection ofthe sun in a drop of dew is not the sun!

Manifested consciousness is time-bound inasmuch as it disappears as soon as the physicalconstruct it inhabits comes to an end. Nevertheless, according to Maharaj, it is the only 'capital' asentient being is born with. And manifested consciousness being his only connection with theAbsolute, it becomes the only instrument by which the sentient being can hope to get an illusoryliberation from the 'individual' he believes himself to be. By being one with his consciousness andtreating it as his Atma, his God, he can hope to attain what he thinks as the unattainable.What is the actual substance of this animating consciousness? Obviously, it must be physicalmaterial because in absence of the physical form it cannot survive. Manifested consciousness canexist only as long as its abode, the body, is kept in a sound and habitable condition. Althoughconsciousness is a reflection of the Absolute, it is time-bound and can be sustained only by the foodmaterial, comprising the five elements, that the physical body is.

Consciousness resides in a healthy body and abandons it when it is decayed and moribund.Reflection of the sun can be seen only in a clear dew drop, not in a muddy one.Maharaj often says that we can observe the nature and function of consciousness in our dailyroutine of sleeping, dreaming and waking states. In deep sleep consciousness retires into a state ofrepose, as it were. When consciousness is absent, there is no sense of one's existence or presence,let alone the existence of the world and its inhabitants, or of any ideas of bondage and liberation.This is so because the very concept of 'I' is absent. In the dream state a speck of consciousnessbegins to stir— one is not yet fully awake — and then in a split-second, in that speck ofconsciousness is created an entire world of mountains and valleys, rivers and lakes, cities andvillages with buildings and people of various ages, including the dreamer himself. And, what ismore important, the dreamer has no control over what the dreamed figures are doing! In otherwords, a new living world is created in a split-second, fabricated out of memory and imaginationmerely by a single movement in that speck of consciousness. Imagine, therefore, says Maharaj, theextraordinary power of this consciousness, a mere speck of which can contain and project an entireuniverse. When the dreamer wakes up, the dream-world and the dreamed figures disappear.

What happens when the deep sleep as also the dream state are over and consciousness appearsagain? The immediate sense then is that of existence and presence, not the presence of 'me' butpresence as such. Soon, however, the mind takes over and creates the 'I' - concept and awareness ofthe body.

Maharaj tells us repeatedly that we are so accustomed to thinking of ourselves as bodies havingconsciousness, that we find it very difficult to accept or even understand the real position. Actuallyit is consciousness which manifests itself in innumerable bodies. It is, therefore, essential toapperceive that birth and death are nothing but the beginning and the ending of a stream ofmovements in consciousness, interpreted as events in space-time. If we can realize this, we shallalso realize that we are pure being-awareness-bliss in our original pristine state, and when in touchwith consciousness, we are only the witnessing of (and totally apart from) the various movements inconsciousness. This is an indisputable fact, because obviously, we cannot be what we perceive; theperceiver must be different from what he perceives. ••••••

The person is merely the result of a misunderstanding. In reality, there is no such thing. Feelings, thoughts and actions race before the watcher in endless succession, leaving traces in the brain and creating an illusion of continuity. A reflection of the watcher in the mind creates the sense of 'I' and the person acquires an apparently independent existence. In reality there is no person, only the watcher identifying himself with the 'I' and the 'mine'. The teacher tells the watcher: you are not this, there is nothing of yours in this, except the little point of 'I am', which is the bridge between the watcher and his dream. ‘I am this, I am that' is dream, while pure 'I am' has the stamp of reality on it. You have tasted so many things—all came to naught. Only the sense 'I am' persisted—unchanged. Stay with the changeless among the changeful, until you are able to go beyond.

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