"The multifarious forms around us, says he, are constituted of the five
elements. They are transient, and in a state of perpetual flux.
Also they are governed, by the law of causation. All this applies
to the body and the mind also, both of which are transient and
subject to birth and death. We know that only by means of the
bodily senses and the mind can the world be known. As in the
Kantian view, it is a correlate of the human knowing subject,
and, therefore, has the fundamental structure of our way of
knowing. This means that time, space and causality are not
‘objective’, or extraneous entities, but mental categories in
which everything is moulded. The existence and form of all
things depend upon the mind. Cognition is a mental product.
And the world as seen from the mind is a subjective and private
world, which changes continuously in accordance with the
restlessness of the mind itself.
In opposition to the restless mind, with its limited categories —
intentionality, subjectivity, duality etc. — stands supreme the
limitless sense of ‘I am’. The only thing I can be sure about is, that
‘I am’ not as a thinking ‘I am’ in the Cartesian sense, but without
any predicates. Again and again Maharaj draws our attention to
this basic fact in order to make us realize our ‘I am-ness’ and thus
get rid of all self-made prisons. He says: The only true statement
is ‘I am’. All else is mere inference. By no effort can you change
the ‘I am’ into ‘I am-not’.
Behold, the real experiencer is not the mind, but myself, the
light in which everything appears. Self is the common factor at the
root of all experience, the awareness in which everything hap-
pens. The entire field of consciousness is only as a film, or a
speck, in ‘I am’. This ‘I am-ness’ is, being conscious of con-
sciousness, being aware of itself. And it is indescribable, be-
cause it has no attributes. It is only being my self, and being my
self is all that there is. Everything that exists, exists as my self.
There is nothing which is different from me. There is no duality
and, therefore, no pain. There are no problems. It is the sphere of
love, in which everything is perfect."
