Our friend Q, the questioner, reverts to a Humean position.
“I am always somebody with its memories and habits. I know no other ‘I am’.”
How does a conscious state become conscious of itself as a series, asks Hume, and proceeds not to give a very satisfactory answer. By implication Maharaj would say to him, ‘perhaps you ought to ask someone who knows the answer to that conundrum.’ It is after all very important to discover whether you are the body or something else. “Or maybe nothing at all?” If you could resolve that then you would cease to worry about a great many things that now bother you, namely, friends, health, fortune etc.
This attitude is so outside the scope of the mind of friend Q that he does not see these benefits and in a way he is right. Going on this adventure into viveka/discrimination on the basis of supposed benefit is a poor approach. M. implies this by reverting to a recommendation to an open minded practice of ‘I AM’.
“When the mind stays in the ‘I am’, without moving, you enter a state which cannot be verbalized but can be experienced. All you need to do is try and try again. After all the sense ‘I am’ is always with you, only you have attached all kinds of things to it - body, feelings, thoughts, ideas, possessions etc. All these self-identifications are misleading, Because of them you take yourself to be what you are not.”
More later:
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