This morning a gentleman with his wife came to Mother and sat outside on the verandah patiently waiting for the undiminishing crowd to diminish so that he would have a quiet chance to talk to Mother. He was wrinkled with a saturnine appearance while his wife seemed very fulsome. Both appeared very weary and beaten by the strains and hazards of life. I took pity on them and encouraged him to take his wife and go inside to Mother.
He took my advice but first explained laboriously how he had wished to see Mother (it was his first time) and how he had struggled to make the final decision and make the journey to Jillellamudi. From this brief conversation it also became clear how tied-up he was in the web of his ethical and philosophical reasonings derived from theosophy, Bhagavad Gita and so on.
After a few hours he and his wife came to my room “to take leave of me” as they had to catch the train. As I had personally noticed.
Mother’s alchemy worked on people whenever they decided “to have the time to stay” for one or two days, I advised the gentleman to stay one day at least; and if he felt like doing so, to ask Mother’s permission for it and that I felt sure Mother would agree.
He was fairly anxious about this matter though obviously caught in a constricting web of etiquette rules of his own making. The fact of being urged to stay made him shed some tears. He also desired to stay but could not overcome his own mental barriers except through persuasion.
When his decision for staying was made, he poured out his troubles and burst out.
“I did not wish to be born! I did not ask to be born!” How much do we trouble ourselves with these questions about our existence! Why should we bother at all, why we are born or when shall we die?
We think that being born is our beginning, but it is only the beginning of our body and nothing more than just that.
So, if you think that you are the body, then, quite right: you are born. But how do you know that you are the body? Have you ever tried to find out for yourself? Are you in your leg, your finger, in your heart or in your brain? Your ego seems to be somewhere inside, does it not? If we are the body, then an invalid with one leg does not have a complete ego; one part of the ego is then gone with the other leg; sawn off in the hospital or chopped off by an accident.
Surely you don’t believe that your consciousness can be chopped into two pieces by a hospital surgeon or by a car accident.
Well then, your consciousness must be something higher and more subtle than the body.
I tell you; your experience is changing all the time, your picture of the present is continuously varying from birth to death. But the consciousness which is looking at these pictures, looking at these awarenesses of pleasure and pain, this consciousness itself is not changing, it is ever constant. This ever constant, pure consciousness is your basic Essence; it is your Mother, Amma. It takes you from birth to death without itself changing.
So, if your basic Essence is never changing, why are you worrying about birth and death? Your worries are a fallacy, an illusion. Wake up and become aware of your real Essence. And then your problems of birth and death will just vanish, disappear into nothingness.
Just to finalize the reasoning for the benefit of doubters, I ask you: why are you puzzled about death and after-death? What a waste of time and energy, on matters which are far ahead of us in time and experience and far beyond our understanding. Why must we have any idea about after death or death? Just forget about it and have no ideas at all. Why should you have any ideas, any picture about things which are beyond your understanding. Just wait until direct perception tells you the Truth and do not listen to so-called Teachers of Truth. Because Truth cannot be taught, it can only be perceived through direct perception. And then you will find that all questions about birth and death have disappeared. And you can laugh happily about the silly thoughts of birth and death.
(Reprinted from “Matrusri” – English Vol. 9 No.11)