Consciousness Of No Difference

Neelima: The innocence and the freedom which you exemplify is what we want. That’s what I want; that is really beautiful. And you don’t seem to have any difference between the deep, wonderful inner reality and every reality, all the realities, your reality. That’s a freedom that I am interested in hearing you talk about, or give me, or make somehow more clear.

Swamiji: Yes, there is a difference in what ordinary men think. They think that each one is individual and others are the collectivity of human beings. This is the basic difference between the knowledge of all human beings, and that of a person like me or a child who has no such idea that the collectivity is there, and individual is there. I am trying to express the consciousness of difference. And now there’s a consciousness of ‘no difference’. The person who has imbued himself with differentiation, he will not understand no difference, as a sprout with two leaves will not understand the seed. A human being who is born cannot understand that he is not born. He is born, and he thinks now as he is developed, not as a child. As a child he is okay, because at that time he doesn’t appear to have to be a person of differences. But he is born with difference. Therefore, that which is the obvious reality of a person cannot be changed.

Like now at one time these gadgets were not there, and we had no idea of differentiation, or multiplicity of the gadgets. Now that multiplicity is there, you cannot think there is only one system or style of cell phone or television. Everywhere it is different. Cars are different, airplanes are different, and countries are different. You became more and more aware of the differences. It means your power of knowing differences became expanded and powerful, and that which is no difference, Oneness, has not been achieved. Why? It is lost already, from the very beginning. And it is getting lost every single day. The Oneness is being lost or is disappearing, and multiplicity is coming. You have seen yesterday I talked to Arun about Sachin, who was a little boy. Now he has grown up and gotten married. The girl is from Venezuela. Harsha got married. Arun got married. And then Harsha’s son got married. And Arun’s daughter got married. There was only one Ragunath, and now there’s a whole city of Delhi. He produced Delhi. What is that? Again and again, One is missing and multiplicity is growing. Seven billion people you say, and by now perhaps more. But there was not a single person when Adam came. Even Eve came later on. Adam was older. Right? [Laughing]

I’m talking about the state of consciousness. The state of existence, multiplicity, is seen visible to the eyes. The state of consciousness which is one and the same, is not recorded. Matter can be recorded. You watch television daily, and you can remember and describe all that is on, tennis schedules and cricket schedules and whatever else is there. But you never say that light is one. What is television if vision is not there, and if it is not the subtlest possible, much more so than the differences, where it is only blue light on the television? There is no figure, but you never describe that. Why? Your sense of Oneness is lost. So the human being has no sense of Oneness. It has been lost, and those whose sense of Oneness is not lost they are like the child or me.

I mean that the sense of Oneness is not there. Therefore, we are established in the sense of differences and differences are multiple, and they are our understanding and knowledge. So to you I appear a little bit away from your kind. Why is it? Because you do not leave your way of thinking and your knowledge. But I perhaps never got it, so I try to find out where’s the duality. I say Mary, try to find out as to when did you become Mary. I have no such idea as to when did I become Swamiji. You call me Swamiji, or my wife calls me husband. But when did it happen that I became a name? When did you become a name?

Mary: Never.

Swamiji: Now this is the difference. Neelima will immediately say she is telling lies.

Neelima: No, I believe her.

Swamiji: You believe her, but you don’t believe in yourself!

Neelima: That’s right!

The difference is what you call freedom. Freedom from what? Freedom from duality, that’s all. And human beings are not born like that, that they should be free from duality. They landed in the space on earth which is other than Space. A child is born, and as parents you never say, “You are not a form.” Nine months before they knew there was no form, of the same child. But they don’t tell the truth, though they knew he was not the child and he did not have any relationship. So how will the child ever come to know that he has the capacity to realize formlessness, the original Self, the nature of his own, the Oneness?

So that is the difference, and it is to be unfolded. Unfolded means: yesterday I said that as the nose comes, realization appears. Realization means sense of Oneness. If that appears, then you know the sense of Oneness, and then you will be like an artist. An artist never knows that his drawings are something other, that have been made or produced by somebody else. For the artist the drawings are he himself, he knows it. He never thinks that a drawing is separate from himself. Everybody says it is the illusion of the artist. But the artist knows it is me, and not a bird, not a mountain, not a color separate. An artist should be like a paper. It’s paper, and on it you draw a circle. Paper will never say that the pencil drawing is other than the paper. In this way, the artist will never say that the drawings are separate from me. But at what time did he begin to say that my drawing should be kept in an exhibition? There is no answer for that. When did you begin to see yourself as separate, which means body? It was never there. At that time I could not speak to you that you are formless. But the same Oneness thought to become sky, and thought to become air. The same Oneness. And thought to become sun, thought to become moon, or water and earth and trees and grass and everything. Or man and human beings. The same Oneness. Now if it is the same Oneness, then for Oneness there is no duality. All the drawings, all the creation is nothing but him, he says. But for the creation it is different, different. The mind has been given difference, so the creation has been given different forms. Yet for gold, all the ornaments are gold. We give examples so human beings can understand. The ornament never says I am other then gold. Neither gold says my ornaments are other than me, nor ornament says this. But the human being is described.

So now when you say you are born, this is a very, very important point and you can pay attention to it: I want to communicate to you that when we say the child is born, through this you know that the child was never born. It is the deficiency in the head of a human being that you say a child is born, and that the appearance of the child should be treated as a unique form and separate. I am saying ‘the child is born’ so that you should know chaytan is never born. I am describing chaytan is Oneness, but we do not see it and do not know it. Therefore we want to say the child is born. I am speaking to you of birth, with your language, in which you see that the child is born. And I see chaytan is. You can understand with a few examples: ocean water is the same; the wave is born. For you bubbles are born. So I say ‘the wave is born’ so you can know that the wave is not born, it is the same water. When I say ‘the child is born’ it is so you can understand that the child is not born, it is the same Self. That is missing. Thank you.