SWAMIJI: Every moment you have to restore a balance, in some way, appropriately. You have no other duty in this world except maintaining balance, internally as well as externally.

Larry: So, if I see something out of balance and I take action to restore it…

SWAMIJI: You can take action only in the sense of maintaining the balance, but your action should not create another imbalance. That you must be very careful about. Do not act by taking one side of the issue.

Larry: The dreamer, the Absolute dreamer, does not do any action, does not interfere in the dream itself, when it is out of balance?

SWAMIJI: The Absolute is not out of balance, because It is the ‘Total’ above both the percipient and the perceived.

Larry: In other words, when there is a world war like World War II…

SWAMIJI: A world war can take place in dream also, and it is taking place within the total action of the mind that dreams. A person has a high temperature, he has got stomach trouble, and he has a headache. These three different things are taking place in a person, and yet it is one thing that is taking place in the whole organism in three different phases. Whether war takes place or anything takes place, it is one action in the total perception.

Larry: You are saying that there is only one action taking place in the dream, not two or three actions.

SWAMIJI: One action takes place not only in dream but even in waking. There is only one action taking place in the whole universe, even just now. Only ‘one person’ is doing all things. There is only One Person in the universe.

Larry: When it appears that I do an action to restore a balance…

SWAMIJI: Then you are making a mistake, by isolating yourself as a ‘doer’.

Larry: It is not me that is doing the action?

SWAMIJI: No.

Larry: So, I do not have any free will.

SWAMIJI: Your free will is only to the extent you are united with the Total—not independently as a person. You cannot be wholly free as an individual person.

Larry: Do I choose to be united with the Total or not to be united with the Total? Is there a choice in that?

SWAMIJI: You have no such choice, individually. Your duty is to be conscious that you are a part of It. There is no other choice for you except to be sure that you are involved in the Total.

Larry: Do I have a choice in choosing to be conscious?

SWAMIJI: Tomorrow the leg will start thinking, “I am independent of the body.” Do you think it has a freedom of choice like that?

Larry: No.

SWAMIJI: Will the leg say, “I will go to that side”? It cannot have a choice like that. It is a part of the body. It has to obey the law of the organism.

Larry: Do I have a choice in choosing to meditate or not to meditate?

SWAMIJI: Meditation also is a total action of the total mind, and not of Mr. So-and-so meditating. It is not some subject meditating on an object. It is the total mind trying to become conscious of itself. That is meditation, where the ‘middle one’ is the real meditator.

Larry: If I as an individual choose to meditate, I really have not chosen to meditate? It is the total mind that has chosen to cause me to meditate?

SWAMIJI: The total mind; yes.

Larry: When you are telling me to meditate…

SWAMIJI: I am not telling in the sense you are perhaps seeing.

Larry: It is the total mind influencing…

SWAMIJI: It is the total mind talking to itself, in a way.

Larry: And when I have an independent thought, it is not independent. In other words, if I decide not to meditate, it is the total mind . . .

SWAMIJI: Even if you do that, it is the total mind deciding it for some reason.

Larry: And is there any purpose to the Total Mind trying to maintain its balance?

SWAMIJI: No purpose standing outside. Existence has no purpose; it just is. One does not exist for some other purpose. The purpose is to exist only. Existence is not having another purpose behind it, or beyond it. Everything has a purpose towards existence. Existence is final, and that itself cannot have another purpose beyond it. Everything is; and that is all.

Larry: So, when Hitler began a war, it was not his action.

SWAMIJI: It was not his action, no doubt; but he was still thinking that it was his action. His feeling undid the whole thing. Actually a whole world-process was taking place in the organism of history.

Larry: It was his action, but it was really not his action.

SWAMIJI: Ultimately it was not his, but yet he felt it was his, and so he paid for it. It is your feeling that binds you or frees you. It is not the action that you do that is important. Your feeling connected with that action is important—your feeling that you are doing it. When you feel that you are doing it, you are responsible for it. Your consciousness is your bondage. Your action is not the point.

Larry: Even my feeling that I am responsible for something or that I did something—is that my feeling, or is it the Total feeling?

SWAMIJI: The Total feeling has gone completely even as your conscious awareness of your being So-and-so stultifies it. Though it is there, it is temporarily suspended. You can become a butterfly in a dream, though you have not become a butterfly. The Mr. Krauss consciousness has been submerged by the butterfly consciousness in spite of the fact that it has really not taken place. This is what is happening to us. Really you may be anything; that is a different matter altogether. But your affirmation at present is what is important.

Larry: But is it my affirmation, or is it…

SWAMIJI: That also is the Total only, in fact.

Larry: Any feeling is the Total feeling, is the feeling of the Absolute?

SWAMIJI: Yes, in fact, and finally.

Larry: Hitler suffered for his actions.

SWAMIJI: He never was conscious of the Total. That is why he was struggling, which was a battle against truth.

Larry: He struggled and he suffered for his action.

SWAMIJI: If he had the consciousness of the Total, he would have kept quiet without doing anything. There was no need to do anything, actually, except as a world-spirit operating towards an evolution of a higher order.

Larry: When he suffered, was it not the Total also suffering?

SWAMIJI: The Total does not suffer. It is the individual that feels, experiences joy or sorrow.

Larry: Was his suffering outside?

SWAMIJI: If the finger is cut off by a surgeon, do you say that the body is suffering, or it is happy? If it is a suffering, one will not go to the surgeon at all. It is a happy thing even if the limb is severed.

Larry: If the finger was sick, you mean.

SWAMIJI: Yes. Even surgery is a happy thing, though you are losing a part of your body. Otherwise, who will go to the doctor? Even if you lose two legs, it is only a joy to you. You cannot call it suffering, because it was a necessary surgery.

Larry: If you have gangrene.

SWAMIJI: Whatever it be. Otherwise, who will go to the surgeon? You cannot call it a suffering. Just because some loss has taken place from your point of view, it cannot be called pain. You may lose something and yet you can be happy for other reasons.

Larry: When we talk about the Total, nothing can be lost.

SWAMIJI: The Total does not suffer. It has no pain, and no joy. It has not done anything; therefore, the question of suffering does not arise in Its case.

Larry: How is it possible for the individual to suffer?

SWAMIJI: That is exactly like the moth-consciousness of a dreamer. How did a Mr. So-and-so become a moth in dream? And you may call it a suffering if you like. The man has become a moth or a butterfly in dream. How did it happen? Do you call it a suffering or a joy? You cannot use such ethical mandates with regard to a scientific phenomenon. Nothing is good, nothing is bad, nothing is a pleasure, nothing is a pain to the All. Such things do not exist for the world. You are giving names to certain phenomena that are taking place almost in a mathematical fashion.

There is no such thing as joy and sorrow except as reactions to circumstance. It is only your assessment from your particular point of view. When you change the point of view, pain can took like joy or joy can look like pain. There is no such thing as absolute pain, no such thing as pure joy, also. It is only a point of view that you are emphasising at certain times. Things do not exist by themselves.

Larry: So, people in a gas chamber in World War II—they did not suffer?

SWAMIJI: Gas chamber, or whatever it is. They suffered because their consciousness was tied to the body. Suppose they were in some other consciousness which was outside the body; they would not feel the pain—for example, a corpse does not feel pain.

Larry: But the Absolute dreamer tied their consciousnesses to their body.

SWAMIJI: He did not do anything. Again, you are imputing something to the Total, which has no adjective or adjunct.

Larry: How is it that the consciousness is tied to the body?

SWAMIJI: You should not put questions like ‘how’, and all that. You are again putting the same question, why it has taken place. Until the effect returns to the cause, it can have no answer.

Larry: Nonetheless, those people whose consciousnesses were tied to their bodies, they suffered.

SWAMIJI: Naturally, they will suffer because the body is limited. When the consciousness is absolved from the body, they will not feel pain. People throw corpses to the Ganga, which do not feel the pain of drowning. The consciousness is the cause of pain, not the action itself, or the temporal event.

Larry: Then, does not the Total consciousness. . .

SWAMIJI: The Total consciousness does not suffer or enjoy. It just is Itself.

Larry: It does not experience the suffering of the individual consciousness?

SWAMIJI: No, it cannot suffer, because in the Total the tree that is cut and also the axe that is cutting are both of the same force. There is no question of somebody feeling something. It is like the right hand hitting the left hand and you cannot know who is hitting whom.

Larry: A child that is seven or eight years old that has not had the opportunity to. . .

SWAMIJI: There is no such thing as child and all that for the Total. Such a thing does not exist to It.

Larry: But in terms of the individual?

SWAMIJI: Why are you talking of ‘individual’ now? You should brush aside these ideas from the mind. We are here trying to rectify our thoughts, not affirming the old thought again and again.

Larry: That is me as an adult.

SWAMIJI: No adult! You are not an adult even. You are one pressure point in the cosmic force which is intense sometimes and less intense at other times. When it is intense, you call it an adult; when it is less intense, you call it a child. Really, there is no such thing as child or adult. They are only two pressure points of electric energy, or whatever you call it. We think only in human terms, but now we must try to think in cosmic terms.