Kelly:  You said either somebody is awake, and they cannot go back to sleep, or they are not awake. Then you said, otherwise they are dozing. I wondered if you could say a little bit more about that.

SWAMIJI:  What is the matter? You have already explained it correctly.

Kelly:  I did not understand quite how you could either be awake or asleep or...

SWAMIJI:  Just now you are awake, isn't it?

Kelly:  Yes.

SWAMIJI:  Now, are you asleep, also?

Kelly:  No.

SWAMIJI:  So, here is the whole point. You cannot be asleep and awake at the same time. If you are asleep, you are not awake; if you are awake, you are not asleep. Now, what is the question?

Kelly:  But, you also said it is possible to be dozing.

SWAMIJI:  If you are not fully awake, and if the impressions of sleep are still persisting, you may be dozing. But if you are fully awake, and the need for sleep has gone, you will not doze.

Kelly:  Impressions of...

SWAMIJI:  Impressions of sleep. Sometimes you have not slept well, and you get up and feel like sleeping once again. Though you are speaking and doing some work and having your breakfast, etc., you have not slept well, so you feel like this. But if your sleep is complete, and you have woken up thoroughly, you will not doze. So, the fully awake person will not fall asleep. Otherwise, the impression of the old sleep will continue, and you feel like dozing. But in Self-realisation, all is everywhere awake.

Amir:  Is it not possible to have moments of complete awakening, and then times of dozing?

SWAMIJI:  You cannot use the word "complete."

Amir:  Being completely awake.

SWAMIJI:  You are not completely awake - rather semi-awake. The word "complete" dissociates itself from every other factor. You cannot bring another factor, and then call it "complete." If you are a complete person, you will desire nothing; because your personality is complete in every way, you have no desires. Complete awakening is totally different from having any other factor getting introduced into it.

Amir:  I understand.

Michael:  Swamiji, I would be very interested to hear your story of what happened to you, and what you went through.

SWAMIJI:  Nothing has happened to me. I have gone through nothing. I am very fine and happy. What can I tell you?

Michael:  I mean, how you discovered That.

SWAMIJI:  I have not discovered anything. It has come to me somehow - God only knows. Maybe in the previous birth I must have done some good deed, and the impressions of it have blossomed forth in an aspiration which has spontaneously acted in this birth. In my case, I was religious right from my age of six. Even at that age, I wanted God, and that cannot be attributed to any personal effort. What effort can be there? I have a memory even now of what I thought at six. That makes me feel, with a sense of wonderment, how things work.

I was born in a highly religious family. My father and grandfather were saintly persons, masters of the Vedas, and religious experts. Their blessing also must have been there. If you believe in the transmission of genes, their genes must be in me, also. Real sages they were - my father and grandfather. That also may be one factor. And also, it might have been some good deed that I did in the previous birth, all have acted together and made me what I am. This is my short autobiography.

Janie:  ...main thing is being guided by one's intention to be free. Think about one's intention to be free.

SWAMIJI:  One goes on thinking one's intention to be free. This is what you mean?

Janie:  And every other thought, you know, I think...

SWAMIJI:  Every other thought is different. I'm talking especially of thoughts that are connected with your final freedom.

Janie:  Yes. Right.

SWAMIJI:  How do you generate that thought?

Janie:  Really, just by staying with the intention to be free, that's all.

SWAMIJI:  The intention is something that you maintain in yourself as an awareness. You are constantly aware that you have an intention to be free.

Janie:  Yes.

SWAMIJI:  It is very important that you must maintain the awareness always, and you should not miss it. But it is possible sometimes that the mind can get diverted into another thought. Sometimes it is unavoidable. When you are traveling, when you are purchasing a ticket, when you walk in the market, you will have the necessity to think in a manner that is not exactly as you are describing. What do you say?

Janie:  Yes, it happens, but home is always the intention to be free.

SWAMIJI:  Though the other thoughts are not in any way inconsistent with this main thought, they may look like distractions, when you are not able to discover the harmony between the secular existence and your life of aspiration. Most people, the majority, ninety- nine percent, do not see the vital connection between the humdrum life of the world and the life of spiritual aspiration. They think they are two different things. Actually, they are not two things. They are two aspects of the working of the human circumstance. And if you always feel that they are two different things, you get disgusted with the ordinary life of the world. You get fed up with it. You want to renounce, as people generally say. That is because you want to give up something which you do not consider as in any way relevant to your spiritual aspiration. This is the psychological impasse through which people have to pass. And, everyone has to pass, big or small, whoever he is.

You can never be able to reconcile, usually, the two things that are before you, this world of activity and conflict and war and what not, and God Almighty. We do not know how to bring them together, in spite of the fact that we may accept that God has created this world. What kind of world has God created? You will feel that everything in this world is not fine and peaceful. You would have liked the world to be better. That would be a complaint against God, to some extent: He has not created a proper world. When you expect the world to be a little better than what you see with your eyes, you are intending thereby that God has not thought well before creating this world. This is not a proper attitude on our part. God has thought well. He has not created unseemly, unaesthetic things in the world; yet, they seem to be there before our eyes.

The problem before a spiritual seeker is a reconciliation of these two things, the integration of the visible and the invisible, the outer and the inner, the empirical and the transcendental, the secular and the spiritual, the world and God. If you can blend them together, harmoniously, as you are able to blend your soul with your body, you can be said to be living an integrated life. This is the problem before spiritual seekers, and this rift that one perceives in consciousness is due to the impulsion of the sense organs which work in one way, and the consciousness which moves in another way. They have to be brought together. Here is a great task before spiritual seekers.

Janie:  Before I met my master, I always felt that I could only be in touch with God if I was away in a quiet place, meditating. And after I met my master, I knew that that was not true, that, as you know, God was everywhere.

SWAMIJI:  Yes, you are not making those complaints which you made earlier. That is good. In your satsanga, the Master gives discourses, is it?

Janie:  Yes.