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240 SPIRIT AND THE MIND
THE WAY TO SELF-REALIZATION
Q: In what way can life without desire make Gods of men?
Baba: Life without desire means the realization of the pure, genuine self that is atma. Bound to desire, the self degenerates into selfishness. Atma turns into ego. The way of self-realization is to cleanse the self of this ego of selfishness. Then you reach a state of consciousness beyond the mind or intellect, revealing the true self that is God. The mind is like a cloth that covers and stifles consciousness, the threads of which are desires. If we give up the desires, the threads fall and the cloth disappears, revealing our true nature. This is what Vedanta (epic of ancient wisdom and knowledge) means when it enjoins that one must get rid of the ego to realize oneself.
Q: You mean that the mind of man as such creates the block between man and God?
Baba: Yes. One must make a distinction between the mind that is the ego, and the real self that is consciousness. The latter helps us to cross the frontiers of the ego-mind and become aware of oneself as the witness of truth. Normally the scientist of the mind looks outside to what can be perceived by the senses existing in the world of the mind to ask: What is this? The scientist of consciousness, on the other hand, always looks inside to that which is beyond the senses or the grasp of the mind to ask: What is that?
One has, therefore, to rise beyond the mind to consciousness to achieve self-realization. To gain the infinite, universal, atma, the embodied self must break out of the puny, finite little prison of individuality. Desire belongs to the senses, the brain, the mind; once you become free of it, you realize the self, atma, consciousness, enlightenment, and become one with the cosmic power. Self-realization is God-realization. Thus man reaches God.
Q: What is the significance of the vibuthi (holy ash) and the trinkets that you materialize and give to people? Is there any need for a Godman to demonstrate such miracles, which any magician can conjure?
Baba: So far as 1 am concerned this is evidence of my divinity. It is not by any means an exhibition of divinity. All performances of magic, as you know, are done for the sake of income. These are tricks of the magician‘s trade. They constitute a kind of legalized cheating, the transfer of an object from one place to another by a trick of the hand, which goes unnoticed. They involve no siddhi (occult power) or miraculous power.