Larry: I practised some meditation this morning.

SWAMIJI: And every day, with deep concentration, by plumbing into yourself.

Larry: I tried to remove myself from myself, as you suggested.

SWAMIJI: You lose yourself in order to gain yourself.

Larry: I tried to project myself a few feet away from myself.

SWAMIJI: Yes; this is perfectly correct. Project yourself away from yourself and become a larger being than what you appear to be. You are a small person now inside the body. I wish you to become bigger. When you place yourself away from your body, you will become larger than you are. Your dimension has increased, and you can place yourself even in the sun and the moon and the stars, not merely on carpet, so that the dimension becomes so big that you almost look like Universal Existence. You can simply place yourself at the periphery of space itself as far as possible, so that you are so far away from what you appear to be now that you look like an inclusive universality yourself, everything absorbing into yourself, and nothing is outside you. “I am what I am”, “I am that I am”, whatever you call it—this is the technique of meditation. It has to be done every day for as long a period as possible. This is the primary duty of a person. All other duties are subsidiary, secondary. Otherwise, you will be taking care of the pennies and losing the pounds. All the business of life is only a question of taking care of pennies, while losing pounds. That should not be.

All things you gain when you lose yourself. You can gain the whole world but lose yourself. The entire enterprise of people, everywhere in the world, is an adventure towards gaining the world and losing oneself. We are very much concerned about things in the world outside, but not bothered about ourselves, as if the world can be there even without us. When you are not there, your world also goes with it.

So, take care of yourself, and all things shall be taken care of. When you water the root of a tree, you do not have to water the branches and the leaves separately. The branches may be hundreds in number; nevertheless, hundreds of branches and leaves will be taken care of very effectively by watering and manuring one single thing, which is the root of the tree. The multitudinous variety and the diversity of this world need not worry you provided you know the root, and that you take care of. The world will be taken care of automatically, as the root will take care of all the branches and the leaves and fruits.

“God first, the world next, yourself last.” This is what Swami Sivanandaji Maharaj used to say—the cause first, the effect afterwards. God was first; the world came afterwards and you are the last one, so you cannot place yourself in the position of the first. The first is the largest, inclusive of what is produced, and inclusive of yourself. Meditation is our duty. It is not something that you are doing as an occupation; it is the art of being yourself. Nothing can be more profitable for a person than to be one’s own self. “To thine own self be true.” To be true to everything else except to your own self, is not of any avail.

Larry: Is there a thought that I can concentrate on, or something I can. . .

SWAMIJI: You can concentrate on God, wherever God be, according to you. God is somewhere, and on that you meditate. Each one has to choose one’s own point of concentration according to one’s understanding and predilection. Some say He is inside, some say He is outside, some say He is everywhere. Let it be whatever it is. Your definition is for your meditation. Did I give you a book on Self-realisation, last time?

Larry: Yes.

SWAMIJI: Did you read it?

Larry: Yes, at the time, I read it.

SWAMIJI: You might not remember all things mentioned there, because every question that you are raising to me I have answered there to some extent. If you read it again, you will find the answer to every question of yours.

Larry: I find that it is important to go over it, and go over it.

SWAMIJI: You have to read it again and again. It is a concentrated stuff.

Larry: Even when I hear an answer, I need to repeat the answer and hear it again and again.

SWAMIJI: If you read that book again and again, you will find that most of the things will be clear to you. It is an in-depth analysis of consciousness itself.

Larry: I am trying to understand now what Cosmic Will is.

SWAMIJI: Cosmic Will? It is the function of Cosmic Existence. Consciousness of existence is what you may call ‘will’, if you like. The Universal Existence is conscious that it is existing, and that consciousness of its existence you may call by any name you like. You may call it ‘will’. Will is only an affirmation of consciousness. You may call it ‘Cosmic Will’, if you like, because it is Cosmic Consciousness.

Larry: Cosmic Consciousness has taken this form of the universe—the form of the world?

SWAMIJI: Without losing itself it has taken this shape. It has not become, as milk becomes yogurt. It has become, as a solid stone becomes a statue. The stone has not become the statue, but it has all the patterns of the statue inside it. The statues are not there, but yet they are there, because any statue can be carved from a block of stone. Likewise, in the Absolute there is no world, and no form, and yet, you can say everything is there. A potful of ink has all the pictures inside it, though there is no picture in the ink. Both ways can be said in regard to the ink. There are no statues in a stone, and no pictures in ink; and yet they are there.

Larry: Yesterday you said that ultimately we all move towards the Absolute, that this whole life is a process of evolution towards the Absolute. I am trying to understand why the process began in such a way.

SWAMIJI: Again you are asking the same question, “Why?” Don’t use the word ‘why’ in future. You only ask, “How?” “How can I reach that state?” you ask me. Do not say, “Why, why, why?” I have told you many times, this ‘why’ cannot arise. You are finding the cause in the effect—impossible.

Larry: I am trying to understand the cause of it.

SWAMIJI: There is no such thing as a cause unless there is a visible effect. You have got an idea that every effect has a cause, but it is only an empirical way of the thinking of consciousness caught up in space and time. There is no such thing as cause and effect; it is one indivisible mass. You will get the answer automatically, as the answer to the dream when you wake up. When you wake up, you get the answer to the dream. Before waking up, why do you put questions? Wake up first. Then you will not have to bother about asking questions. You will never ask me any question regarding the dream that you had yesterday, because it is clear to you already. Now you are already inside the dream, and you are asking questions. My suggestion is that you wake up first, and then you will find your answer. This waking takes place when you become the very object you are seeking.

Our duty is to move practically in the direction of realisation and not unnecessarily ask, “Why should we move, why have we come?” That question you cannot answer and you need not answer. As you move onward, the questions will be answered gradually, stage by stage. The light will dawn so intensely that at every step you will find an answer coming from within yourself. The question is the actual practice.

Larry: So there was a cause, but not in the sense that we understand it.

SWAMIJI: Yes, yes, it is a cause only in a theoretical sense. God does not cause anything. He just is what He is. But from our point of view, it looks that all this causation is taking place. Our work is to do something practically, and be at it—and every moment you will find some answer coming to you from within. The horizon will go on becoming brighter and brighter.

Larry: So there is no time and no space in reality, either? It just is.

SWAMIJI: It is just what it is. The great word “I-am-what-I-am” is the final truth, and nothing more can be said about it.

Sarah: That one is to move towards God, one is to move towards the Absolute, to merge with the Absolute—how do you know that’s not just part of the dream, the illusion in this dream?

SWAMIJI: It is a part of the dream only—perfectly right. Even your movement towards the Absolute is a part of the dream, but there are dreams that can cut off a dream. One dream can sever another dream, just as when you are dreaming that there is a tiger jumping on you, you will wake up from the dream because of the tiger jumping on you. The tiger is a dream object, and your feeling fear of the tiger also is a dream object, yet that tiger-dream has woken you up by the fright. The false tiger has ended the false dream and created a real waking.

The Guru is like the tiger in a dream; the disciple is the dreamer. Both are within the dream only, and yet one is the tiger and another is the person dreaming. The growling of the tiger, though it is also only a part of the dream, can wake you up by the fright of it. So, there are two kinds of dream: that which will help you in waking from the dream, and that which will make you enter the dream and be there only. You are perfectly right. The entire process is only within the dream, it is not outside; and yet there is a point in it. There are two categories of dream—that which continues the dream and another which ends the dream. Your practice of sadhana, meditation, is like a tiger, though it is also a part of the dream.

Sarah: I see sometimes that the desire for God can’t be as strong as desire for a car, or for anything.

SWAMIJI: That is because you don’t understand what God is. Your understanding of God is so poor that you are unable to get attracted to it. If you give a gold necklace to a cow, will it be really happy to put it on its neck? It only wants grass. What do you say? Now which is better, grass or a gold necklace? The appreciation of the value of it is dependent upon your comprehension of what that substance is. Our understanding of the car is more clear than our understanding of God; the car is a solid, tangible substance and you can sit in it, whereas you cannot sit in God, which looks like a mere thought. But the reverse is the case: the car is the thought actually; the reality is God only. To understand that, active effort is necessary on your part to decondition yourself from the conditioned effects under whose weight you are thinking generally. All our thoughts are deeply conditioned, and you have to decondition yourself with sufficient effort. The invisible is the real; the visible is not the real.

Sarah: What is the meaning of prayer? Is it not meaningless?

SWAMIJI: Prayer? Prayer is an affirmation of consciousness for rousing itself to a dimension higher than its own self. You are mentally asking for something that is more than what you are. You may call it God, or anything you like. An aspiration or an affirmation of a longing, an aspiration for something larger than you, greater than you—that is your prayer, which you may express in words or merely by thought. Either way it is effective.

Sarah: And is it that the higher self is God, or that is still not the level of God?

SWAMIJI: Yes, you can call it God. Anything that is higher than you is a manifestation of God, in some degree; there are levels of God-experience.

Sarah: But does that higher self not also have prayers, and have a higher self protecting it?

SWAMIJI: The higher self will pray for a self that is still higher. There are various degrees of this self-manifestation.

Sarah: And does it go ultimately to the Absolute or is there a break—is there something significantly different before there is a break?

SWAMIJI: No. There is no question of breaking. It gradually rises from the lower whole to the higher whole until it reaches the Absolute Whole. Then there is no further prayer, and all that. It ceases in All-ness.

Sarah: And let us say my higher self—what is the conditioning of my higher self? The higher self that has no body?